The Mountains' Graveyard lay buried between the Land of Waterfalls and the Land of Sound, a quiet, eerie place filled with forest and the bones of creatures too large to belong to this age
Once an old mining site, it had long since become something else entirely, a tomb, and a laboratory.
This was where Madara Uchiha hid after the world thought him dead.
The battle with Hashirama at the Valley of the End had crippled him, but not ended him.
In secret, he dragged himself here, carrying with him a single piece of Hashirama's flesh, a fragment strong enough to keep him alive when every normal man would've turned to dust.
The mine's tunnels led deep underground, where an enormous, half-living tree spread through the caverns.
Fed by the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path, it grew in strange shapes, its trunk split into claw-like branches and its roots buried in a pool of dark water.
From one side of the tree, a pale humanoid figure hung suspended, a clone of Hashirama, grown from that stolen flesh, more puppet than person.
Madara sat nearby, old and skeletal, his body fused to the tree by thick black tendrils that pulsed faintly with chakra.
It kept him breathing, but calling it life was generous.
He was more like a ghost running on borrowed power.
Madara Uchiha wasn't born a monster.
He was born in an age where children learned to kill before they learned to read, yet somehow still believed in peace.
He wanted a world where boys like him didn't die with their brothers on muddy battlefields.
And for a time, he almost believed that Hashirama Senju, his childhood friend from a rival clan, could make that dream real.
But the seeds of its collapse were sown the day Izuna fell by Tobirama's, Hashirama's own younger brother, hand.
He got an upgraded version of his dojutsu, but slowly lost his heart ever since that day.
Izuna's death didn't just take his own younger brother; it shattered the one thing that gave his ideals meaning.
When Hashirama spared him and offered peace again, Madara accepted, not out of faith, but perhaps out of exhaustion, confusion, and guilt.
Izuna's absence left a hole that no words could fill, so Madara filled it with that dream of a village where brothers would never have to die again.
But that same dream demanded his brother's life as its price. He could never forgive that contradiction later.
Yet, even when Konoha rose, Madara tried to believe.
He and Hashirama stood together as symbols of unity, the two strongest shinobi alive.
Yet the cracks were already there.
Tobirama's logic turned the Uchiha into watchmen of their own prison.
Control disguised as duty.
To Madara, it proved that this so-called peace was nothing more than subjugation with prettier words.
And when he tried to warn his clan, they laughed.
To them, he was just the man destined to lose to Hashirama again.
Worse still, Hashirama, ever gentle, ever compromising, silently sided with his brother every single time.
That was the moment Madara's last hope finally died.
Madara realized peace through choice was a lie.
People would always reach for power, even if it burned everything else.
So he chose a different path.
If the world couldn't find peace on its own, then he would force it.
Through illusion.Through control.Through absolute power.
...
In the dim light, White Zetsu stood before him, now merged with a darker half on its right side, the one Madara called Black Zetsu, believing it to be an extension of his own will.
"The plans are moving forward," Madara said, his voice dry but steady.
"The shinobi world still sleeps. Tell me, what's the situation above, White Zetsu… and you, Black Zetsu?"
Obito, the boy he'd recently taken under his wing, was asleep in another chamber, worn out from training.
Madara had spent too much time shaping him lately, leaving little attention for the outside world.
This question wasn't casual.
It was a test, mostly for Black Zetsu, the supposed mirror of his own will, created through his newest jutsu.
He didn't expect much from White Zetsu, who had always been a simple thing, grown from Hashirama's stolen cells and something far older.
Useful, yes, but not clever.
Madara's sunken eyes followed their movements quietly, his thoughts already drifting toward the next phase.
The body was fading, but the plan was not.
Black Zetsu's calm, steady tone broke the silence. "Nothing major has changed lately. Ever since that battle in the northeast about seven months ago, Konoha's had the advantage. They reversed the flow completely there, and it's the same in the northwest, Iwagakure's being pushed back too."
He paused briefly before continuing. "The southern fronts were different. They were still losing there, especially against Sunagakure. The Hyuga commands the defense in that sector. Kirigakure was handled better since the Uchiha led there. But all of that started shifting a few months ago, when Minato Namikaze mastered Tobirama's old jutsu, Flying Raijin. He's taken it even further."
Madara's eyes opened slightly, faint light flickering across their dull red surface.
"Flying Raijin…" he repeated under his breath.
Madara knew well what the Flying Raijin truly was, a jutsu Tobirama had created specifically to counter the Uchiha, and more precisely, his brother's Sharingan.
It wasn't a technique of speed, but of instant displacement, body teleportation so absolute that even the Sharingan couldn't track it. It was the very jutsu, combined with Tobirama's kenjutsu, that ended Izuna's life.
Even now, the memory still burned. Madara had hated Tobirama for it, yet in some twisted way, he respected the man's genius.
The jutsu was cruelly efficient, a weapon born out of fear of their clan's eyes, and one that had proven that even the Uchiha could be outmatched by pure intellect and invention.
Black Zetsu went on. "Since then, he's been cutting through the southern battlefields almost unchecked. They call him Konoha's Yellow Flash now. He moves between fronts, wipes out enemy squads before they even see him, despite being only in his early twenties. He can mark his allies, too, for example, Kushina Uzumaki, Choza Akimichi, and Jiraiya, and jump between them instantly. He's also developed a personal technique, Rasengan. Pure chakra shape transformation, alongside his god-given reflexes, means one-hit kill. He uses it with Flying Raijin to eliminate entire units before anyone can react."
Even White Zetsu sounded half-impressed. "He's practically carrying Konoha on his back. The morale down there flipped overnight. He even outshines Orochimaru now. That one spends more time locked up in his camp doing who-knows-what than actually fighting."
Madara listened quietly, fingers twitching slightly where the tree's tendrils fed into his arm.
His expression barely shifted, but the faintest flicker of amusement crossed it.
"Tobirama's technique… refined."
He exhaled softly, the sound like stone cracking. "That man was a thief, taking bits of Uzumaki sealing arts, armies of researchers under him, and always dressing them as his own personal creations, yet even I can't deny his brilliance. He built something formidable out of scraps. But that technique was flawed, too complex, and too demanding, especially for non-Senju chakra reserve users. It was like a final killing move for Tobirama himself, and few ever touched it at all after him."
His eyes narrowed. "And this Minato Namikaze not only mastered it but improved it… making it efficient enough for constant war use. Thought I suspect his origins..."
He fell silent for a few heartbeats, the air around him heavy with thought. "Rasengan too, pure chakra rotation and compression. No nature transformation. Elegant. Compact. It's close in nature to the Bijūdama, only smaller and far more controllable."
His eyes narrowed slightly. "I wonder… did he develop it during this war? Perhaps after facing Iwagakure's jinchūriki? Inspiration born from survival tends to leave a deeper mark."
Madara's tone dropped to a low murmur, more to himself than to them. "So fast. He's a true prodigy, then. A real anomaly. That kind of talent, this early… dangerous."
He glanced toward the darker half of Zetsu. "If he continues to rise, he'll become a problem. Tell Obito, when the time comes, remove him. Quietly, if possible. I don't want that one standing in our way when the Nine-Tails must be reclaimed. He's too fast, too sharp. And too young. That kind of shinobi only grows more troublesome with age."
His eyes closed again, the faint hum of the tree echoing in the cavern.
"About half a year ago, we lost one of your kind to a Konoha teenager named Ryusei Nishida, we have been investigating," Madara said after a pause. "By your own reports, his strength for his age was very unnatural, far beyond what it should be. You've mentioned him more than once since then. Any new word about him?"
White Zetsu scratched the side of his head, sounding uneasy. "Yeah, that one. His chakra was insanely strong, and his senses were sharper than anything I've seen from a kid. He caught that clone before it could even retreat. The fragments we pulled from the others were a mess, but… something's still off about him. Feels like he's hiding even more than he shows. Why not let me go after him again? It's been months since we've had any updates. This time, I'll handle it myself instead of sending another clone."
Madara's eyes narrowed slightly. "He's worth watching, yes, but do you remember what happened last time? How fast and observant was he? That clone was expendable, unaware of me, and easily replaced. If it had been you, it would've jeopardized everything. The boy's progressing quickly, far faster than most. Forget him for now. Let him grow. Later, have Obito keep track of him. He's becoming one of the major variables of this war, along with Minato Namikaze."
He paused, his voice dropping lower. "And keep watching Fugaku Uchiha. I suspect he's awakened something he shouldn't have. If so, Obito will deal with him when the time comes. Quietly."
Madara leaned back against the twisted bark behind him, the thick tendrils pulsing with slow rhythm as they fed his body.
"So… Namikaze rising, Orochimaru scheming, Fugaku stirring, and now Ryusei emerging. The pieces are moving faster than expected."
A thin, satisfied smile crept across his face. "Good. Let them move. The more chaos they create, the easier it will be for my moon to rise."
Ever since the war began, Madara had known it would be one of the bloodiest in history.
The early months had proven him right; the casualties were enormous, and Konoha was barely holding its lines.
But as time passed, new forces shifted the balance: most groundbreaking Minato's sudden rise, Orochimaru's actions alongside this unknown teen of mysterious origins, Ryusei Nishida.
Madara's eyes glinted faintly. "Many sparks born of war. Let's see which one burns the longest."
Something else struck Madara as quietly ironic at this time. If his conjectures, instincts, and gathered reports were right, Minato was the perfect hybrid product of Tobirama's design, an obedient, well-polished heir to the Senju legacy, molded neatly and quietly into Konoha's framework, without him even knowing. The kind of type who would call assimilation loyalty and servitude unity.
Ryusei, however, was the other side of that lineage, the remnant that refused to fade, still carrying the raw defiance of the Senju who once stood apart from all rule but their own.
It was a new era, yet the stage was still ruled by the same few bloodlines, he also thought.
"This war will drag on long enough for Akatsuki to take root," Madara eventually said again, his voice slow but certain. "The organization will start as mercenaries, but it will grow. Konoha won't end this war quickly, no matter how much they pretend otherwise. And you two…" his eyes shifted toward the Zetsu halves, "should keep a close watch on Konoha's internal fractures. They're forming already, I feel it. Learn to use them, for our advantage, and all for the plan."
Black Zetsu gave a small nod, face unreadable, while White Zetsu nodded eagerly beside him.
Outwardly, there was agreement. Inwardly, there was only silence, the kind that hid much deeper thought.
Black Zetsu's expression didn't change, but his mind turned. 'Yes… our plan.'
Madara thought they shared a vision.
In truth, their paths only overlapped for a time.
Their end goals were never the same, their positions reversed.
He was not Madara's tool, as the old man believed.
It was Madara who had become his.
A pawn carved over decades, shaped perfectly to bring back what Black Zetsu truly served, not peace, not balance, but his mother.
Madara leaned back again, his voice fading into the hum of the cavern.
"Everything is aligning. All we must do is wait for the world to finish destroying itself."
And in the silence that followed, Black Zetsu almost smiled.
'Yes,' he thought, 'destroy itself — so she can be born again.'