To walk among forgotten truths was to shoulder the pain of countless generations. As Shisui drifted deeper into the Between, the spectral plane known only to those chosen by the Sage of Six Paths, he felt time slow and stretch. His form, once flickering and formless, had stabilized. The Kagegan in his eyes spun with a quiet fire, its power no longer wild but tempered.
The path ahead was carved of obsidian, cracked and worn, lined by lanterns that bore no flames. Each one pulsed with the memory of an unfulfilled vow—the residue of warriors, rebels, and dreamers whose hopes were lost in the folds of time. These were not just echoes. They were pieces of lives refused by history, forced to smolder in this realm where memory met oblivion.
Shisui walked.
Every step awakened a whisper. A tale. A regret.
"I died to protect my clan... they called it treason."
"My jutsu could have saved thousands. They buried it with me."
"He said he loved me. Then used me to perfect his curse seal."
Their voices drifted into the cracks, feeding the path.
Ahead, a temple rose from the mist. Not of stone, but of memory itself. Its walls were constructed from forgotten dreams and failed revolutions—visions too dangerous or righteous to survive the shinobi world's brutal realism.
Above the temple floated a great brazier, unlit. Inscribed on its rim in ancient Uchiha script were the words:
"When the unseen flame burns, the veiled truth shall awaken."
Shisui stopped at the threshold. His chakra pulsed, as if reacting to the brazier's call.
"This is it," came a voice behind him.
He turned.
A figure emerged from the mist, cloaked in faded armor that bore both Uchiha and Senju crests. His face was weathered but noble. In his hand he held a broken tanto, its edge still glowing faintly with wind chakra.
"You are...?"
"Takeru," the man said. "First of the Forgotten Flame Guardians. I kept watch over the Unseen Flame until I too was forgotten."
"Flame Guardians?"
"Before the Sage passed on, he taught not only the Six Paths, but spoke of a seventh—a way of guiding the world through memory, rather than power. We were chosen to preserve truths too volatile for the world. When war claimed us, memory did not. The Flame remembers."
He pointed to the brazier.
"Light it, and the truths the world chose to forget will return."
Shisui looked at his own hands, remembering the countless lies, the illusions, the buried truths of his clan and his choices.
"What will it cost me?"
Takeru's expression darkened. "Everything you still wish to forget."
Shisui stepped forward, reached into his cloak, and drew his blade. Not to strike, but to offer. He placed the tanto at the brazier's base.
Then he closed his eyes.
He reached inward, into the sea of regrets that churned inside him—the death of his parents, his silent goodbye to Itachi, the eye stolen by Danzo, the hundreds he spared through unseen intervention. His greatest pain? That in doing so much good, he became invisible.
He opened the Kagegan wide.
Chakra flared.
The brazier ignited.
But the flame was not of fire. It was memory.
Visions exploded around him.
He saw Madara Uchiha as a child, clinging to his dying brother. Not the tyrant of history, but the boy consumed by grief. He saw Tobirama Senju propose the Konoha Police to isolate the Uchiha, out of caution turned resentment. He saw Hashirama weep alone after signing the founding treaty.
He saw the Root. Danzo implanting Hashirama cells. The creation of the first artificial Sharingan fusion. Failed experiments that predated Shin Uchiha. Bodies discarded. Names erased.
He saw Kagami Uchiha—his own ancestor—fighting alongside Hiruzen, then poisoned by the elders to prevent a future coup. He saw the truth of the Uchiha Massacre: that the elders had manipulated Itachi with half-truths, never giving him the full picture. That the Kyuubi attack had been used as pretext, orchestrated in part by remnants of Kaguya's will.
The flames rose higher.
He saw the Tailed Beasts in their purest forms—not weapons, but sentient beings bound into cycles of hatred. Kurama's sorrow. Shukaku's loneliness. The betrayal of Gyuki by shinobi who once worshiped him.
Then—the greatest secret:
The Voidwalker.
It was not born of malice. It was the husk of the Sage's twin brother, Hamura, cast into limbo when he refused to bind his soul to the moon. His body had dissolved, but his will lingered. Forgotten by history, distorted by isolation.
"Peace without memory is not peace," the Voidwalker had whispered to Shisui.
And now Shisui understood.
He collapsed to one knee, gasping.
Takeru stepped forward. "The Flame has accepted you. But it has also marked you. The world will feel your presence."
"Then it begins," Shisui whispered.
Takeru nodded. "You must return. The world is not ready to remember, but it is no longer safe to forget."
Shisui stood, the Kagegan glowing like twin suns. The Flame's light had entered him, and with it, knowledge that could unravel the world or save it.
He reached out.
The temple melted.
Before him opened a gate: a Torii of smoke and chakra, leading to a hidden part of the world he once knew. Not quite the present. Not quite the past. But a fragment in between.
He stepped through.
---
He landed in a bamboo grove.
Night had fallen, but stars blinked like sentient eyes. Chakra pulsed unnaturally in the air. He was in the Land of Valleys—a hidden region erased from shinobi maps after the Third Great Ninja War.
Once, it had been home to the Scorch Style clan—a people who could fuse fire and wind into devastating attacks. They had refused all alliances. During the war, they were wiped out.
But their chakra lingered.
Shisui walked among ruins. Symbols etched into stone. Scrolls burned but not destroyed. Bones holding kunai in clenched fists. He pressed his palm to the earth.
A memory whispered.
"We chose isolation. We chose death. But we did not choose erasure. Remember us."
The Flame within him pulsed.
A sigil ignited on the ground—a seal of Scorch Style. As it lit, figures formed. Not ghosts. Not spirits. Memory projections, reanimated by his chakra.
They bowed.
One stepped forward. A girl, no more than sixteen, with crimson eyes and hair like smoke.
"You are the Flamebearer."
"I am."
She placed her hand on his chest.
"Then take what remains."
Chakra flowed into him—Scorch Style. A bloodline long thought extinct. Not for combat. For cleansing.
He turned.
A rift opened in the sky.
From it descended shadows bearing the Voidwalker's mark. They had followed him. They had felt the Flame.
Shisui raised his hands.
One eye Kagegan. One eye blazing with new Scorch Style.
He whispered, "You erased their past. I will burn it into the world."
The battle lit the grove.
Fire and memory danced together.
The Unseen Flame had become visible.
And Shisui's legend had only begun.