Chapter 1 – A Different Sky
The Shinobi world had always been a cauldron of conflict, simmering with grudges and greed. It was a place where peace was not so much a season as it was a fleeting gust of wind—brushed against the skin one moment, gone the next.
But the Fourth Great Ninja War had been different. It hadn't just singed the edges of nations; it had burnt the entire tapestry. Villages reduced to ash, forests stripped to black skeletons, even the seas themselves bearing the oily sheen of fire. Countries were no longer simply conquered—they were erased, their names now no more than strange syllables in the mouths of wandering survivors.
Kaguya had been sealed at last. That was supposed to be the end of it. Heroes could rest, the dead could be mourned, and the living could find something resembling home again.
But life—Naruto knew—had a particular talent for twisting the knife.
The battlefield was quiet now. Not peaceful—quiet. It was the kind of stillness that felt like the breath before a scream. The clouds above hung heavy and grey, pressing down upon the broken earth.
Naruto stood opposite Sasuke, his own chest rising and falling with a strange steadiness that did not match the storm raging behind his eyes. His voice, when it came, was low and almost… gentle.
"You know this hurts me more than it does you," he said, as though they were talking about a scraped knee or a foolish prank from years past. "I loved you. But all you could think about was how to end me. I would have given you a chance—if it didn't involve the world. But I have to make that sacrifice. I hope you understand… brother."
His hand moved before Sasuke could speak—piercing through cloth, muscle, and bone as though the universe itself had decided this was how it would be.
Sasuke's eyes widened. The air seemed to shrink, pulling tight around them both. He wanted to speak—wanted to say You'll do great things, Naruto. But all he could manage was a faint, knowing smile as the light began to leave him.
He was certain. Certain that Naruto would scour this accursed world of its evils. Certain because Naruto had just killed him—and Sasuke had always been the one thing Naruto could never bear to lose.
Naruto's arms tightened around him, drawing him into something between a warrior's embrace and a brother's last hug. Sasuke's weight sagged against him, heavy with finality.
That was when it came.
The scream.
It tore through the air—raw, ragged, and full of grief so sharp it seemed to cut the very silence. Somewhere on the battlefield, someone had just realised what had happened.
Naruto closed his eyes. For just a heartbeat, he allowed himself to imagine that this was all a genjutsu—that he would wake, that Sasuke would still be there, smirking at him like nothing had happened.
But the blood on his hands was warm. Real. Unforgiving.
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The silence after Sasuke's death didn't last.
It shattered—splintered—under the weight of a cry so full of disbelief that it seemed to echo from the mountains themselves.
"What have you done, Naruto?!"
Sakura's voice was a blade honed on grief, slicing straight through the still air. Her boots tore across the shattered ground as she charged, tears blurring her vision. Her fists trembled—not from fear, but from the rage of someone who had just lost one of the last people she called family.
Her punch came fast—an instinct, not a thought—but Naruto's hand moved faster.
The sound was sickening in its simplicity: the sharp crack of palm meeting cheek, the rush of displaced air, and then the distant roar of stone as Sakura's body slammed into the mountainside with enough force to spiderweb the rock.
The dust rose in lazy clouds, curling in the cold wind.
Naruto's eyes—once the colour of summer skies—were now dark, unreadable.
"Do you also think I was wrong?"
Kakashi had been approaching quietly, his face unreadable beneath the shadow of his forehead protector and mask. For a moment, he said nothing.
When he finally spoke, his voice was steady but heavy, as though every word was weighed down by years of failure.
"No. You did the right thing. It's my fault. I was… just not the right teacher for you all."
The words tasted of regret, and Naruto could hear it. He looked away, unwilling to let the moment settle into pity.
Bending down, he reached for Sasuke. The movement was deliberate—almost ceremonial—as he pried open the blood-streaked eyelid and plucked free the Rinne Sharingan from its socket. The orb gleamed unnaturally in the dim light, and for an instant, the wind seemed to hold its breath.
Without hesitation, Naruto pressed it to his own forehead.
The skin rippled as if resisting before the eye sank into place, settling into him as though it had been waiting. A faint heat spread across his brow, seeping down into his bones.
This was no whim. The Sage of Six Paths had told him it would come to this—that Sasuke, given the chance, would try to end him. Naruto hadn't needed the warning; he had felt it in the sharp edges of Sasuke's killing intent, in the silence between their words.
The Sage had wanted an end to the cycle of hatred, had wanted Naruto to take the mantle and bring peace by sheer will and power. But Naruto had still given Sasuke a chance. A chance that had been squandered.
The new eye pulsed. Somewhere far above, the crimson glow that had bathed the world in eternal illusion flickered… and died.
The war's final trickery dissolved like mist in the morning sun.
Naruto turned to Kakashi again, his tone now as flat and cold as the steel of a blade laid across the throat.
"No one will know what happened here. He died a hero against Kaguya, and he'll be revered as one for generations. Is that understood?"
Kakashi's single visible eye lingered on him for a heartbeat too long before he gave a slow, silent nod.
Without another word, Naruto lifted Sasuke's body into his arms. The weight was heavier than it should have been—not just flesh and bone, but years of battles fought together, of laughter in rare moments of peace, of the stubborn bond they had both sworn they'd never break.
He walked away from the battlefield without looking back, the wind tugging at his tattered cloak, carrying with it the scent of rain.
Sasuke would rest in the ancestral lands of the Uchiha. And the world… would never know the truth.
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Fifteen years passed like the last exhale of a dream—so vivid in the moment, so impossible to hold onto when it was gone.
The world had changed, racing forward with a hunger that left even the most stubborn traditions scrambling to keep up. Nations rebuilt themselves from ashes, their borders redrawn, their cities growing taller and brighter than the ones that had burned. And for the first time in centuries, there was peace—not the fragile kind that trembled at the sound of marching feet, but a peace held firm by the will of one man.
Naruto.
Just as Sasuke had once believed, Naruto judged the entire world in a single sweep, standing over it like a mountain judging the clouds. And when he found evil that ran too deep to be uprooted, he cut it away without hesitation. Criminal empires crumbled overnight, tyrants vanished, and whispered names of terror became nothing more than footnotes in the history books.
For this, he was hailed as a hero. For this, he was feared. And for this, he was hated.
Naruto bore it all with the same unflinching resolve he had shown on the battlefield.
The years shaped him into something entirely different from the boy who had once grinned through every challenge. That part of him—the playful, impulsive spark—had died on the same day Sasuke had. And though he never spoke of it, everyone could see the hollow space it left behind.
One year after the war, he took the Hokage's seat. Shikamaru and Kakashi stood at his side, and together they guided the nations with a strange mix of cautious diplomacy and uncompromising strength.
Naruto read endlessly—scrolls, books, records from foreign lands. He trained until his body ached, then trained more. His clones wandered every corner of the earth, from the frozen plateaus of the Land of Snow to the whispering jungles of River Country. There was not a street, not a temple, not a windswept mountain that had not felt his presence.
And everywhere he went, his conviction deepened.
Through sharpened senses, he learned to see not just the strength or weakness of a person, but the fragile threads that tethered them to the possibility of change. He could tell—almost instantly—whether someone's remorse was genuine, or whether their guilt was only a mask. Those who could be saved were given the chance. Those who could not… were removed from the board entirely.
By any measure, he had achieved his dream. The cycle of hatred, if not broken, was at least wounded badly enough to stagger.
All except for one dream.
He had never built a family of his own.
It wasn't for lack of trying—he had searched, quietly, for that spark of connection, for someone who could make him feel the way he once had. But it never came. Love, in that form, was something distant now, like sunlight on the far side of the mountains. He could see it, imagine its warmth… but it never reached him.
Even so, Naruto kept his word to Shion. The promise he had made to her long ago was fulfilled, though the act felt less like romance and more like duty—a strange echo of the boy he had once been, and the man he had become.
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The moon was silent.
Up here, away from the soft rustle of leaves or the hum of village streets, there was only the sound of breath—Kakashi's own, slow and steady inside his mask. The silver light washed over the two figures standing side by side, casting long shadows across the pitted grey surface.
"Are you really leaving?" Kakashi asked at last, his voice quiet but carrying easily in the empty stillness.
"Yes," Naruto replied, without looking back. His hands rested loosely at his sides, his gaze fixed on the horizon where the black of space met the curve of the Earth. "This place has achieved peace, and I'm… bored of sitting around. Since the war, I've had one real battle, and that ended before it began. There's nothing left to fight."
He paused, then added with a faint, almost careless laugh, "With my chakra reserves, I'm probably going to live into the high thousands—might already be immortal—and honestly, I'd rather not admit it."
When he turned his head, Kakashi saw them—eyes like no human had ever worn before. Golden irises in an intricate floral pattern, with pupils as deep and blue as the ocean floor. They seemed to catch the faint light of distant stars and hold it captive.
"I see…" Kakashi murmured, the corners of his eyes creasing behind his mask. "Then have a good trip. But remember to come back before I expire."
Naruto grinned, and for the briefest instant, there was a flicker of the boy Kakashi had once known.
"Of course. I'll be there to put you to rest. Though, I think you've still got a hundred years in you, old man."
A chuckle, light but tinged with something hollow, left his lips.
And then the air beside him split open—not with the shimmer of genjutsu or the twist of space-time jutsu Kakashi had seen before, but with a rippling oval of light that hummed like a held breath.
Without hesitation, Naruto stepped through. The portal folded in on itself like the closing of an eye, and he was gone.
Kakashi stood alone, staring at the place where the light had been, the Earth hanging silently above him.
'He still hasn't let go of Sasuke,' Kakashi thought, a quiet ache settling in his chest. 'Even in death, that brat has a hold on him.'
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Naruto emerged from the portal into a sky unlike any he had ever seen.
The building beneath his feet was a giant of steel and glass, so tall that the clouds seemed to pause around it, their bellies brushing against its sharp edges. It dwarfed even the tallest towers of Kumogakure, and its style was alien—cold, angular, and yet oddly beautiful.
He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the new world breathe into him. The connection came instantly—a subtle thrumming beneath the surface of reality, telling him he had been right to come here. Power stirred in this place. Many beings existed here who could challenge him.
But fighting was not the only reason he had crossed worlds. He wanted—needed—to leave behind the shadow of tragedy. Already, simply standing here, he felt lighter, as though the years of grief had shifted slightly from his shoulders.
The humans are weak here, he thought, drifting a few feet above the rooftop until the wind curled lazily around him. The world is smaller… and it's dying faster. Pollution, greed—rot in the bones. I'll help it, when the time comes.
His body blurred, then vanished entirely, the air barely disturbed where he had been. Even the light seemed unsure where to land.
First things first—language. I'll need to blend in.
His gaze caught movement: a figure clinging to the side of a nearby skyscraper. A young man in a red-and-blue suit, the chest marked with a black spider emblem. The mask covered everything but his posture gave him away—alert, agile, confident. Special.
Naruto smiled faintly.
Without a ripple of sound, he floated closer, skimming the air until he was beside the wall-crawler. A flicker of intent, and Naruto copied the young man's linguistic ability—nothing more. He wanted to experience this world for himself.
"Hello," Naruto said softly. "What are you doing?"
The effect was immediate. The man in the spider-suit jerked sideways, his gloved hand splayed against the glass as his head whipped around.
How did I not feel him? Peter's brow furrowed beneath the mask. Spider-Sense isn't tingling… so he's not a threat.
"I'm just hanging around," Peter said, his tone light but edged with caution. "Resting a bit before swinging off to help someone. What about you, stranger? What brings you to this place?"
"Boredom," Naruto said simply, his lips curving in a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "I was bored, so I travelled. I can feel you're wary—and I understand—but I think we could be friends. You seem interesting… and we're alike. I also like to help people, even if it costs me my life."
Peter tilted his head slightly, trying to read him. "Is that so? People call me Spider-Man. What's your name?"
"Naruto," came the calm reply. Then Naruto's gaze shifted, as if listening to something far away. "And I think you should be going. Someone's in trouble, four blocks from here."
Peter glanced in the direction Naruto pointed, but his senses couldn't reach that far. By the time he turned back, the golden-eyed stranger was gone, as if the air had simply swallowed him.
Peter exhaled. "Guess I'll check it out."
And with that, he leapt from the glass and swung away, the sound of his web-shooters sharp against the hum of the city.