They called it coincidence.
At first.
A few rogue camps turned to ash. A few black-market scroll dealers left flayed in their hideouts. A weapons factory in the Land of Grass collapsed with thirty jōnin inside — no survivors, no chakra residue.
The countries blamed each other.
The underground blamed ghosts.
But then came the seals.
Not just symbols.
Marks.
The Uzumaki spiral burned into iron. Etched into chakra. Hidden in the bones of the dead like a whisper that no one wanted to hear:
"One survived."
In the Land of Earth, two battalion leaders resigned after receiving black scrolls in their sleep — each stamped with a bloody spiral and their original ANBU numbers.
The message was clear.
"I know who you are."
In the Land of Lightning, a convoy vanished. All except one — a genin left alive, shaking, muttering about red chains that sang in the dark.
She never spoke again.
In the Land of Water, the mist ran red for a week.
Their hunters found no trace.
Just seals.
Always the seals.
Danzo buried the Root files under six new encryptions. Moved his personal operations twice. Even hired ex-Akatsuki mercenaries for protection.
It didn't matter.
He was being stalked.
Not by a person.
By the weight of what he did.
And he could feel it now, in every silent corner of the Hokage Tower. In the way his personal guards flinched when the wind passed.
A seal appeared on his private desk — inside a locked room.
It read: "Try to forget me."
Danzo didn't sleep that night.
In Konoha, Tsunade was quieter now. No longer yelling. No longer drinking.
That worried people more.
Because silence from her meant clarity.
And clarity led to danger.
She had stopped trusting her own ANBU.
Started hand-delivering her own investigation scrolls.
Even summoned a former Uzumaki historian from a distant monastery.
The woman confirmed what Tsunade already feared.
There was no known Uzumaki survivor.
Which meant there was one.
Somewhere.
Hidden.
Alive.
Angry.
Whispers began in Konoha's underground.
That maybe the Chain Ghost wasn't some exiled mercenary.
Maybe he was one of their own.
Tsunade began to see it in the eyes of her council.
Fear.
Not fear of death.
Fear of shame.
Because if Naruto was alive...
If the boy they buried was walking through blood and silence...
Then the village hadn't just failed.
They created him.
One night, a hawk brought a sealed scroll to her window.
No name.
No symbol.
Just a spiral.
Inside: nothing.
Just blank parchment.
But she held it for hours.
Because she felt it.
Like chakra residue burned into the paper.
Like memory.
Like a ghost touching her fingertips and saying, "You still remember."
Sasuke never spoke of Naruto.
But every time he trained, he trained harder.
He didn't admit it.
But he felt it too.
In the pit of his gut.
The weight that someone out there wasn't chasing him anymore — because they didn't need to.
They'd already passed him.
The people began to murmur.
That maybe the Fourth Hokage had a son.
That maybe the Uzumaki weren't entirely gone.
That maybe the Chain Ghost was justice with a sword and nothing left to lose.
And Tsunade — every day — kept that belief buried in her chest like a second heart:
Naruto wasn't dead.
She didn't know where he was.
She didn't know who he'd become.
But she knew...
He was coming.
And when he did — the village would feel the weight of every smile they had at his funeral.