"With your feeble mind, you are still capable of awakening the eyes. Does it surprise you that I can claim them as my own?" Uchiha Dōhuan spoke coldly.
"Dōhuan, your ambitions are far too dangerous. For the sake of the village, I have no choice but to stop you!" Upon seeing the Mangekyō Sharingan in Dōhuan's eyes, Uchiha Shisui wasted no time. He activated the Kotoamatsukami in his left eye—originally prepared to permanently alter Uchiha Fugaku's will.
Yet, the next instant, a searing pain engulfed his eyes. Darkness consumed him entirely.
"Since I already know the nature of your ocular technique, did you truly think I would not guard against it?" Dōhuan's voice echoed beside Shisui, who was already lost to the void.
"H–How… did you do it?" Shisui rasped, clutching the hollow sockets where his eyes had been.
"My ocular technique is the Eighty-Fate Tsukujin Sun God," Dōhuan replied. Exploiting Shisui's disorientation, he swiftly disarmed him and sealed his chakra. "It allows me to perceive countless possibilities within an instant and select the most optimal path. When you used your technique upon me, I foresaw it, evaded it, and killed you—in one of those possible futures."
"How do you even know of my ability?" Though weakened beyond recovery, Shisui still sought to extract as much information as possible.
"I told you—my eyes see a future you cannot." Dōhuan idly toyed with the pair of freshly obtained Mangekyō Sharingan in his hands.
"A prophetic ocular art?" Shisui gave a bitter smile. "Then everything I have done… was already within your grasp?"
Dōhuan did not answer directly. Instead, he began speaking in a measured tone: "The clan records describe the Mangekyō as the Eye of Soul Reflection. I prefer to call it the Eye of Answer. Every clan elder who has awakened these eyes faced an inner question; the techniques born from them are the answers they chose."
"Since you speak so much of conviction," Dōhuan continued, "then answer me this: when confronted with the conflicts between our clan and the village, why was your 'answer' the will to dominate others? Do you also believe that the rift between the two cannot be reconciled through ordinary means?"
The question cut to the core. Shisui fell silent. Deep down, he knew Dōhuan was correct. His inability to see any hope for the village or his clan, combined with his own resignation—and the faint, ruthless instinct buried within him as a shinobi—had given birth to an ability as coercive as Kotoamatsukami.
"What a proud yet tragic answer," Dōhuan observed evenly. "The blood of our clan granted you this gift, and yet your first target was one of your own kin."
"What do you intend to do with my eyes?" Shisui asked through clenched teeth. "Will you attempt to control the Third Hokage? It will fail. Even if you succeed, the rest of the village will not stand idly by while the Uchiha plot a coup. The village's strength far exceeds that of a single clan. You will only drive us into the abyss."
"You remain arrogant, Brother Shisui," Dōhuan chuckled, untying him. "Still unwilling to admit my superiority? Controlling Sarutobi Hiruzen? That would be the most elementary application of these eyes."
From within his cloak, Dōhuan withdrew a small test tube and tossed it to the blinded Shisui.
Despite his blindness, Shisui's shinobi instincts allowed him to catch it effortlessly. "What is this?"
"A pair of three-tomoe Sharingan from the clan's shrine," Douhuan explained. "You may leave."
"You… won't kill me?" Shisui asked, startled.
"Kill you?" Dōhuan's lips curved faintly. "Why should I?"
He placed a hand on Shisui's shoulder. "Go—tell Sarutobi Hiruzen of your eyes' true power. Then, with these eyes of our ancestors, witness the future I am about to create."
Without another word, Dōhuan turned and walked out of the Forest of Death.
Upon returning to his secluded home on the outskirts of Uchiha territory, he summoned his ninja hawk, fitted the two Mangekyō Sharingan onto it, and released the summoning contract.
"Now that Kotoamatsukami is mine, my true plan can begin." Standing by the window, he gazed toward the night. The bright lights of the Hidden Leaf Village shimmered in the distance, starkly contrasting with the stillness of Uchiha lands.
Fourteen years earlier, Dōhuan had been brought into this world by a speeding truck. Ever since, he had felt alien to its warped order. Even the moral failings of capitalism, in his past life, seemed sophisticated compared to the feudal brutality of the shinobi world.
In that past life, he had been an ordinary office worker, his only passion the study of applied sciences in his spare time. He never imagined that, upon awakening in this body, the deceased parents of his new life would grant him such a solemn, loyal name.
But in this distorted world, survival demanded the art of killing. By the age of nine, under the false promises of the Will of Fire, he was sent to the battlefield. His inherited bloodline granted him the skill to endure. In the crucible of life and death, he awakened the Mangekyō Sharingan and survived the war.
Yet Dōhuan understood that survival was only temporary. A darker night—genocide—loomed on the horizon.
The clan's endless and petty disputes offered no solutions. If the future were to change, it would be by his own hand. Acquiring Shisui's Kotoamatsukami was merely the first step.
To Dōhuan, Shisui embodied arrogance, folly, and naïveté. He had wielded a weapon capable of making him a perpetual shadow over both the village leadership and the Uchiha elders. Yet, in the original timeline, he had squandered it—dying pointlessly.
Fortunately, it is mine now.
Dōhuan's gaze fixed on Hokage Rock. The four faces loomed faintly in the dark; his eyes locked upon the third.
"So, the strongest Hokage in history… what will you do?"