While Ren lingered in that quiet, almost trance-like state, eyes clear yet distant, chakra flowing with an ease that hadn't existed before, the reactions of those around him could not have been more different.
Hiruzen had finally steadied himself.
The storm inside his chest had not vanished, but it had calmed enough for him to breathe again.
He remained seated on the ground, legs bent awkwardly beneath him, robes creased and dirtied without a care. The dignified posture of the Third Hokage, the image carefully maintained for decades was nowhere to be seen. Tear stains still marked his cheeks, faint tracks cutting through the grime of battle and age, but he no longer bothered wiping them away.
For once, he allowed himself to simply be.
His gaze rested on the two figures in front of him, Ren, standing quietly, and Kagami… no, Sayaka, her presence split between past and present, between what was lost and what remained.
There were still countless questions burning in his mind.
How Kagami had survived. How Sayaka existed as she did now. What truths had been hidden for twelve long years beneath layers of silence and compromise.
But for the moment, those questions could wait.
What mattered, what truly drew his attention was Ren.
Hiruzen had been a shinobi for longer than Ren had been alive twice over. He had seen prodigies rise and fall. He had seen monsters born and heroes crumble under the weight of their own expectations. And while the shinobi world spoke endlessly of strength, of jutsu, bloodlines, and killing intent, the truly strong knew better.
Strength of the body was only the beginning.
What separated the great from the merely powerful was the mind.
A sound mind did more than sharpen techniques. It stabilized chakra, strengthened spiritual energy, and allowed a person to act with clarity even when the world was collapsing around them. It gave a leader the ability to see beyond the immediate battlefield, to weigh lives, consequences, and futures instead of acting on impulse.
Among the upper echelons of shinobi, this state had a name.
Enlightenment.
It was not mystical in the way civilians imagined, no divine voices, no sudden omniscience.
It was simply the moment a person truly understood what it meant to be a shinobi, however different people would have different meaning. If a person was simply radical, this enlightenment would subtly push them towards even more radicalism.
But even then, not everyone reached it. Many died before they ever had the chance. Others brushed against it once, fleetingly, and lost it again in the chaos of war. But every Kage, every great commander who had truly led their village through crisis, had experienced something like this.
Hiruzen had felt it once.
Long ago.
Minato had felt it too.
And now…
Hiruzen watched as Ren's chakra continued to settle, no longer surging wildly but flowing with a calm, deliberate rhythm.
It was… familiar.
Soft.
Pure.
The kind of chakra that didn't crush those around it, but instead made them want to stand closer. To rely on it, to believe and to trust them.
It was the same quality Minato's chakra had carried.
Back then, shinobi would unconsciously gravitate toward the Fourth Hokage. They fought harder simply knowing he was on the battlefield. Not because he demanded it, but because his presence inspired confidence.
Ren's chakra carried that same gentleness.
But there was a difference.
Minato's edge had been sharp, precise, like a blade honed to perfection.
Ren's felt heavier, it was much deeper., which was also a Senju trait.
There was a quiet weight to it, a promise of something vast still sleeping beneath the surface. Not overwhelming yet, but unmistakably present.
Hiruzen's breath hitched slightly as the realization settled in.
'He might surpass Minato.'
It would not today, not tomorrow, but one day for sure.
The possibility alone sent a strange mix of relief and regret through his chest.
Hiruzen's own chakra had always been different, dense, heavy, all-encompassing. It reflected the way he had ruled, touching every corner of the village, mastering every art, trying to shoulder everything himself.
And yeat he had failed when it mattered most.
Minato, on the other hand, had almost succeeded. He had been on the verge of uniting the village fully, of healing old wounds, of creating a future that didn't rely on fear and suppression.
His death had cut that future short.
Now, standing before him, Ren felt like a second chance.
A new hope.
Not built on domination, not built on secrecy, but on balance.
Hiruzen's fingers curled slightly into the dirt as a decision crystallized in his mind, quiet, resolute, and absolute.
'I will not let this child die like Minato did.'
If fate demanded a life in exchange for the village's future, then it would not be Ren's.
It would be his.
The village deserved better than a man who had hesitated when action was required. It deserved a leader who could carry both strength and understanding without letting either rot into arrogance.
Ren was that hope.
And this time, Hiruzen vowed he would not fail again.
Hiruzen's gaze then lingered on the other party, on them.
Kagami.
Sayaka.
Yoru.
Three names, one presence, and yet none of them fit together cleanly in his mind.
He knew the original Yoru.
That man had been a shadow even among shadows, appointed personally by the First Hokage and Madara Uchiha themselves. A guardian meant to exist outside clan, outside politics, outside even the Hokage's direct authority. A failsafe. A blade kept sheathed unless the village itself was on the brink.
Hiruzen had never seen his face. No one had. But he knew one thing with absolute certainty.
That Yoru was older, far older.
He could not have been Kagami and he certainly could not have been Sayaka and yet here stood a person wearing that name, carrying that authority, and holding truths heavy enough to bend the air around them.
Hiruzen swallowed, the dryness in his throat suddenly unbearable.
"Kagami…" he began, then hesitated.
His eyes flicked to the softer half of the face, to the light blue eye that mirrored Ren's so closely it hurt to look at.
"Sayaka…?" he tried again, uncertainty seeping into his voice despite himself. "What… what are you two?"
He drew in a slow breath, steadying himself.
"What happened? And… where is the original Yoru? What happened to him?"
The questions hung in the air, fragile and heavy.
Sayaka let her hand fall away from Ren's chest, fingers lingering for just a heartbeat before she stepped back. She understood that Ren needed time. What had unlocked inside him would not settle instantly. Some realizations demanded silence afterward.
She turned fully toward Hiruzen.
The softness she had shown Ren faded, not vanishing but withdrawing beneath layers of control. The right half of her face, Sayaka's, lost its warmth, while the left, Kagami's remained sharp and unreadable.
One Mangekyo Sharingan. One light blue eye.
Both fixed on Hiruzen.
For the first time since she had revealed herself, Hiruzen truly looked at her face and the longer he looked, the more wrong it felt.
It was not monstrous or unnatural, but… layered.
As if two lives had been pressed together so perfectly that the seam was no longer visible, yet the weight of both remained.
Sayaka exhaled slowly.
"It seems," she said at last, voice calm and even, "that hiding it any longer would be pointless."
Her gaze drifted briefly toward the night sky, then back to him.
"You asked what we are," she continued. "The answer is simple, and at the same time… extremely inconvenient."
She paused, choosing her words with care.
"Kagami Uchiha died."
The next moment a different voice came, the voice that came was unmistakably Kagami's.
It carried none of Sayaka's gentleness, none of the softness she had used to guide Ren earlier. It was calm, steady, and heavy with the weight of memory, like a man recounting his own autopsy without flinching.
"My Mangekyo Sharingan," Kagami said slowly, "had two abilities, one for each eye."
His left eye, the one that no longer existed, itched faintly as if remembering its absence.
"The one Danzo stole," he continued, glancing down at the man still pinned beneath Ren's grip, "had the ability to rewrite fate once, at the cost of the Mangekyo itself."
Hiruzen's breath hitched. "So that is Izanagi," he murmured.
Kagami shook his head faintly. "No, it was much weaker, Izanagi is different from what you might know, it could be repeatedly cast by a same person. What my eye possessed was closer to a single decision. A singular refusal imposed upon reality."
His gaze hardened.
"That was the reason I lived again."
Danzo's jaw trembled, but he said nothing.
"Before my death," Kagami went on, "I destroyed my left eye myself. I refused to let it fall into anyone's hands. The right eye, however… I used it."
His fingers curled slowly.
"I rewrote my own fate."
The clearing was silent, the night air pressing close as if listening.
"But rewriting death," Kagami continued, "has a prerequisite. There must be a source. A medium through which existence can be anchored."
His gaze snapped to Danzo.
"So while this wretch destroyed my body completely, he unknowingly ensured my survival by taking my eye with him."
Hiruzen felt a chill crawl up his spine.
"You revived… from the eye itself," he said quietly.
"Yes," Kagami replied. "Not whole or immediately, but alive enough."
His lips twisted faintly.
"When I awakened, I understood something instantly. If Danzo realized I had returned, he would stop at nothing to erase me again. And this time, he would succeed."
Kagami exhaled.
"So I plucked my own eye out… and left it where it was."
Danzo's eyes widened in horror.
"You…" he croaked.
Kagami ignored him.
"I abandoned the vessel that tied me to his awareness and escaped," he continued. "But my body… if you could call it that, was barely functional. Even if my survival became known, it would have accomplished nothing."
He looked at Hiruzen.
"More than that, revealing myself would have shattered the village. Questions would be asked, loyalties tested, old wounds reopened. A civil war would not have been unlikely."
Hiruzen lowered his head, fists clenched.
"And even if none of that happened," Kagami said quietly, "my body could not handle the power of the Mangekyo anymore. My death would have been inevitable."
He paused.
"So instead… I went to Mito-sama."
At the mention of her name, something shifted in Hiruzen's expression, nostalgia, regret, and respect tangled together.
"I told her everything," Kagami continued. "My death, my revival, Danzo's betrayal and the state of my body."
A faint, almost fond sigh escaped him.
"She did not hesitate."
Kagami's voice softened just slightly.
"Using Uzumaki sealing knowledge, techniques related to the Reaper Death Seal and Tobirama-sensei's Edo Tensei as a theoretical base, she devised a solution."
His eyes sharpened at that.
"At the cost of sacrificing my reconstructed body," Kagami said, "and a portion of my soul… I continued to exist."
Hiruzen stiffened. "As… what?"
"A bound soul-form," Kagami replied. "Anchored to my Mangekyo."
He lifted a hand slightly, as if feeling the phantom weight of the eye.
"We both knew it was not a permanent state. A soul cannot remain awake like that indefinitely without degrading."
His gaze drifted, distant now.
"So I chose to sleep."
The word carried finality.
"I sealed myself into a deep dormancy," he said. "My consciousness fractured, my presence reduced to almost nothing."
Hiruzen's eyes widened slowly.
"And my Sharingan," Kagami continued, "was entrusted to a child."
"She was young," Kagami said. "Young enough to adapt. Strong enough to endure. Kind enough to accept a burden she did not deserve."
Everyone present understood who he meant before he said the name.
"Sayaka."
~~~~~
{There were some concerns in the previous chapter that Sayaka was forced but don't worry, I dislike plots like that as much you, so I won't do anything like that. I'd try my best to make sure that you have a good story to read, so that you don't feel like I have betrayed your trust.}
{Also I don't think you guys got it in the previous chapter but the Boss man was Sayaka and Commander was Kagami in the previous chapters.}
{Bit dissapointed that you guys didn't understand, but oh well.}
{Well, I also have a news to share with you guys, I made a new fic, and this one is not for everyone, this needs a specific audience, which I don't think I will find among you guys, but still, do check it out from my profile, read it if you like fics of that genre, and even if don't, I hope, you guys could add it your collections anyway, help out a bro yeah?}