Silence. Not the kind humans know, not even of the earth. It was timeless — a silence so profound that even thought couldn't cling to its surface. Somewhere between life and death, between the first light and the final breath, Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki slowly opened his eyes.
He felt no chakra.
No pulse of nature, no whisper of life energy. Everything was… different.
"This is not the Void," he thought. "Nor is it the realm of the dead. This… is something else."
His body, once ancient and frail, was now young again. His hands — strong. His face — smooth. White hair spilled across the stone beneath him like ash. Yet he sensed it — this was not reincarnation. It was a fall. A soul, once exalted, cast from its throne into the unknown.
The sea.
All around him was a coastline, bleak and jagged, overgrown with gray kelp and sea moss. Thunder cracked in the distant sky, but here, it was strangely calm. And yet, the air smelled of salt, blood… and rust.
Hagoromo rose. His legs trembled. He was too weak.
Too... human.
He scanned the area. No temple. No sacred trees. No eyes watching from beyond. Only a half-buried wooden sign at the shoreline. He stepped toward it, read the faded paint:
"Welcome to Fool's Haven! South Blue."
"South Blue…?"
He didn't know this world. Not the names, not the spirit. But he felt it:
there was no chakra here.
No clans. No dojutsu. No Rinnegan.
But something else filled the air — raw, jagged, primal. Will.
He took his first step.
His body screamed. His heart beat slowly. Even walking felt heavy.
He, who once split the Ten Tails, who raised Ashura and Indra, who gifted chakra to humanity — could barely walk ten steps.
But he kept moving.
In the distance, six figures approached — rough silhouettes outlined in haze. Two in uniform. Three with rifles. One smirking.
On one man's shoulder glinted a symbol: a maroon anchor, beneath it a skull.
Pirates.
"Hey, beggar!" one of them shouted. "You too broke to tremble?"
Hagoromo looked up at him.
Silent.
"Maybe he drowned his tongue in the tide," another joked, stepping forward. "Let's check his pockets. Might have gold teeth."
They moved in.
Hagoromo closed his eyes. He couldn't sense chakra. No jutsu. No godly force. But he still had memory.
He remembered how muscles moved. How balance flowed. How will could shift the world.
When the first punch came, he didn't dodge.
He received it — absorbed the rhythm — and redirected it with a single twist of his stance.
The pirate fell like a sack of wet flour.
Another reached for a knife — too late. Hagoromo caught his wrist, shifted, snapped the elbow. The bone popped like a twig. Screams followed.
The rest froze.
Stared at the barefoot boy in tattered robes standing on the beach like a stone idol. In his eyes — not rage. Not fear.
Truth.
"Who… are you?" the last one asked, nearly whispering.
Hagoromo turned his gaze on him. Calmly, without pride, he said:
— "I am... just a man who once was a god. And now I walk again."
He turned and walked away — toward the sea, toward the horizon, where the storm met the sky.
And on that day, the sea trembled for the first time…
not from a storm,
but from the presence of a man who was not born of it — yet whose path would break its laws.