The cold smell of disinfectant stubbornly invaded his nostrils, each breath carrying a thread of coolness.
Uchiha Shisui lay on the hospital bed in the medical department of Star City's military base, his eyes wrapped in thick bandages, blocking out all light.
In the darkness, only the rhythmic beeping of medical equipment echoed in the dead silence.
He tried hard to recall the battle at the temple before… Danzo's cold, ruthless face, the sudden burst of intense pain, the tearing sensation of his right eye being brutally gouged out...
'That Dojutsu, without a doubt, was Izanagi-'
As one of the only two Mangekyo users in the clan, Shisui had learned many secrets about the Sharingan from Fugaku, such as the reality-rewriting [Izanagi].
But he couldn't understand why Danzo would have a Three-Tomoe Sharingan to activate Izanagi…
'Could it be that Danzo-'
Just as he tried to sort through his chaotic) thoughts, an irresistible torrent of will violently crashed into his mind!
The darkness before his eyes shattered and peeled away like fragile glass.
The pungent smell of blood instantly replaced the disinfectant odor of the hospital room, so strong it was nauseating.
He slowly opened his eyes. A crimson moon hung in the black sky, casting a nauseating, seemingly blood-soaked radiance.
The light enveloped the familiar scene below… the Uchiha Clan's compound.
Yet, this was no longer a peaceful home, but hell!
Blood, everywhere was blood!
Thick, dark red liquid, like disgusting paint, splashed across familiar courtyard walls, soaked the meticulously maintained stone paths, reflecting a sinister glow under the crimson moonlight.
The intense smell of blood and the stench of ruptured internal organs, thick enough to suffocate, poured into Shisui's senses like a tangible tide, instantly triggering violent spasms in his stomach.
"No— What— what is this?!" Shisui's consciousness screamed.
He found himself 'floating' above the clan's compound, like a desperate viewer nailed before a painting.
His gaze was uncontrollably pulled downward.
On the central street of the compound, a figure was moving.
Its movements were as fast as a ghost's, every flicker was accompanied by a cold flash of a blade and an abruptly cut-off scream.
It's Itachi!
That face was the familiar face of his close friend, yet now it seemed to wear the most perfect, cold, emotionless Noh mask.
The scarlet Sharingan gleamed with an inhuman cold light under the moonlight, the Mangekyo Sharingan slowly rotating.
The sword in his hand was swung with precision, efficiency, and a ruthless coldness that shattered one's heart and courage with every strike.
The sound of the blade cutting through flesh, severing bone, was infinitely amplified in the dead silence of the night, as clear as if it were sawing right beside Shisui's ears!
"Itachi! Stop!!" Shisui's consciousness roared madly within the illusion, his very soul trembling.
He desperately tried to rush down, to stop it, to grab that figure and demand answers!
But an invisible force pinned him firmly in the air. He was like a desperate ghost, forced to merely watch!
A massacre!
A targeted, indiscriminate, efficient massacre of all Uchiha Clan's members!
There was no fierce resistance, only one-sided, ruthless harvesting!
The elderly, women, even infants in swaddling clothes… the weak crying that had just started in a room was instantly silenced, like a chick with its neck wrung.
Dead silence.
Complete dead silence.
Only the monotonous, terrifying 'squelch' of Itachi's sword cutting through air and flesh remained, like the drumbeats of hell, pounding on Shisui's nerves, which were on the verge of collapse.
"Itachi! Why! Why is it like this-" Shisui roared, instinctively wanting to charge forward and stop it.
However, his body passed through burning houses, toppled trees, and even through the body of a clansman being pierced by a sword, as if he were a ghost without substance!
He could only watch, helplessly watch as that once-gentle Itachi, now with empty eyes, his sword precisely and efficiently slicing across the throats of one familiar face after another, regardless of gender or age.
Every flash of the blade brought forth a spray of warm blood, splashing onto Itachi's numb face and into Shisui's despairing pupils.
A toddler learning to walk was swept by the merciless blade, the small body softly collapsing, an elderly woman tried to shield a child behind her with her body, and the next second, the cold blade tip had pierced through both.
"No-!" Shisui's eyes nearly burst from their sockets, his soul roaring in agony.
He lunged at Itachi again, arms spread wide, wanting to stop the swinging slaughtering blade.
The result was the same, he passed through Itachi's body like an empty wind.
He could only stand beside Itachi, watching those Mangekyo Sharingan, reflecting the deaths of clansmen coldly in the firelight, without a single ripple.
"Why is it like this… why?!" Shisui watched in disbelief as the clansmen he valued were slaughtered by Itachi, a chill rising from his spine.
Not far from Itachi's side, a mysterious figure wearing an orange-red spiral-patterned single-eye mask and a dark robe was also moving at high speed.
This person's methods were even more bizarre, a chain hung from his arm like a prehensile tentacle, easily grabbing fleeing clansmen, violently twisting their necks, or pulling them back before piercing them with a sword.
The single eye visible through the mask revealed a madness that chilled one to the bone… a pure enjoyment of slaughter.
Through a sliver of moonlight, Shisui saw a scarlet Sharingan within the mask's eyehole.
"Who are you?!" Shisui roared at the masked man, but his voice dissipated in the storm of slaughter.
The masked man seemed completely unaware of his existence, merely cooperating with Itachi's actions, efficiently eliminating life in every corner.
Despair coiled around Shisui's heart like a cold venomous snake, tightening its grip.
'Why? Besides Uchiha Hikari, were there other Uchiha Clan's members lost outside?'
'And furthermore, even though the Uchiha Clan's compound was on the outskirts of the village, how could a massacre of this scale occur without any reaction from the village?'
'Where are the Ninjas from the Anbu?'
Finally, that figure walked towards the largest, most solemn estate at the center of the compound.
The Uchiha Clan's head's residence. Fugaku's home.
The door slid open silently.
Fugaku sat upright on the tatami in the main hall, his back to the door, his spine ramrod straight like the pride he had upheld his entire life.
His wife, Uchiha Mikoto, knelt quietly beside him. There was no fear on her face, only a deep, almost tragic calmness.
Itachi's figure appeared in the doorway, the moonlight elongating his blade-holding shadow, casting it onto the room's floor.
Fugaku did not turn around. His low, calm voice rang out, each word like a hammer blow to Shisui's soul: "You've come, Itachi."
Mikoto's body trembled slightly. She closed her eyes, two clear tears silently tracing down her cheeks.
"Father. Mother." Itachi's voice came, cold, steady, without a single ripple, as if stating something unrelated to himself.
Fugaku turned around slowly, with a heavy sense of ritual.
His face was expressionless, only a pair of three-tomoe Sharingan burning quietly in the dim light, "Is this your choice, Itachi?"
His voice held no accusation, only a confirmation of a settled matter.
Itachi remained silent, the sword in his hand raising slightly. The tip of the blade reflected the crimson moonlight outside, cold and glaring.
Fugaku's gaze passed over Itachi, seeming to penetrate the walls, seeing the land outside flowing with the blood of their clansmen.
He nodded slowly and very slightly, as if a huge burden had been lifted from his shoulders.
"Do it, then. The Uchiha Clan's… sin... shall be ended... by our father and son... with our own hands."
He closed his eyes, his straight back like a mountain on the verge of collapse.
Mikoto also opened her tear-filled eyes. Her gaze was intertwined with indescribable pain and the deepest understanding belonging to a mother.
She opened her mouth and said, "Sasuke... I leave to you..."
Itachi's figure moved.
Fast!
So fast only a blurred afterimage remained!
Squelch!
Squelch!
Two sounds of a sharp blade cutting into flesh were exceptionally clear and heavy in the dead silence of the room.
Fugaku and Mikoto's bodies jolted simultaneously.
Fugaku's straight back slowly slumped forward, blood gushing from the huge wounds on his chest and back, instantly dyeing the tatami beneath him red.
Mikoto's body softened and leaned forward, collapsing onto her husband's back.
From beginning to end, there was not a single scream, not a word of curse.
Only the heavy gasps of life fading away, finally returning to eternal silence.
Itachi stood before his parents' bodies, his figure frozen for a moment in the moonlight.
The sword in his hand had beads of blood slowly dripping down its cold blade, tapping against the floor in the silence.
"Father... Mother..." Itachi's voice was so low it was almost inaudible, carrying an indistinguishable tremor.
He slowly raised his left hand, as if to touch something, but it stiffly halted mid-air.
"Itachi! Have you gone mad?!!" Shisui's consciousness within the illusion completely collapsed, roaring madly!
Witnessing Fugaku and his wife die so calmly, so submissively, under Itachi's blade,
And the countless clansmen being bloodily slaughtered,
This destroyed his beliefs more thoroughly than any torture!
This wasn't just a massacre… it was the core, silent self-sacrifice of the entire Uchiha Clan!
'For what?'
'For Sasuke?'
'For Konoha?'
At that moment, a powerful force violently yanked Shisui's consciousness away from the tragedy at Fugaku's residence.
In an instant, he 'floated' to the top of the outermost high wall of the Uchiha Clan's compound.
The cold night wind brushed against his non-existent body.
Outside the wall, about fifty meters from the compound's perimeter, in the shadows of a dense grove of trees, stood several shadowy figures.
They all wore the masks and uniforms of the Anbu and Root, clearly divided into two factions, standing like silent statues in the darkness.
Not a single one attempted to charge in and stop the clan massacre unfolding before them.
No exclamations, no anger, only a near ruthless… observation? Or perhaps, surveillance?
One Anbu wearing a white bird mask was slightly tilting his head, seemingly listening intently through some technique to the increasingly sparse screams and clashes of weapons coming from inside the wall, then whispering a report to another Anbu wearing a fox mask, whose aura was even more grave.
The fox-masked Anbu nodded slightly, his demeanor composed, as if merely evaluating a report on an unrelated exercise.
Inside the wall were the dying wails of clansmen, the crackling of burning houses; outside the wall, was the ruthless and merciless surveillance and waiting of Konoha's Anbu and Root.
"Konoha Anbu… and Danzo's Root…" Shisui suddenly realized something.
It wasn't shock, nor anger, but a bone-deep, abysmal chill that instantly froze the last ember deep within his soul!
'So... that's how it is.'
'So this night of the massacre wasn't merely Itachi's madness, nor was it solely the Uchiha's fate.'
'It was a tacitly approved, watched, and meticulously arranged purge!'
'From the very village we had sworn to protect!'
"Aaaaahhh...!!!"
Immense grief and indignation, the despair of betrayal, the helplessness against the clansmen's tragic deaths-
All extreme negative emotions erupted deep within his soul like volcanic lava.
This uncontainable, unbearable mental storm instantly found its only outlet.
His eyes, covered by bandages, freshly transplanted, still in a weakened state… his One-Tomoe Sharingans!