The monk's words lingered in Raizen's mind long after he left the ruined temple. "I remember you."
The world wasn't supposed to remember him. He had erased himself, erased nations, erased everything. Yet one man, in one forgotten temple, had pierced the veil.
It left a heaviness in Raizen's chest.
He walked deeper into the fog-drenched forest, boots brushing against damp moss. It was quiet—too quiet. The silence wasn't peace; it was a warning.
Raizen stopped. His eyes narrowed. Five signatures. Surrounding me.
From the mist, armored figures appeared, crimson paint smeared across their armor like dried blood. Their leader stepped forward, a scar running jagged across his face.
"The wanderer with white hair," the man sneered. "This is Blood Mist territory. That makes you ours."
Raizen's cloak shifted in the breeze, his gaze steady. "Mercenaries. Hired dogs who mistake their leash for freedom."
The men chuckled darkly. The scarred leader tilted his head.
"You speak boldly for a lone traveler. We don't just rob, you know. We collect. And someone's been paying a fortune for news of… unusual shinobi."
His eyes flickered toward Raizen's Sharingan, faintly visible in the shadows beneath his hood.
Raizen's body stilled. So they had seen. He whispered, voice low and calm:
"You shouldn't have seen that."
The leader smirked and raised his axe. "Alive, if possible! His eyes will make us kings!"
They lunged.
---
The first mercenary never even reached him. A blur of steel, and Raizen's blade severed the man's spear and pierced his throat in one fluid motion.
Another swung from behind—Raizen turned, hand snapping forward. A kunai shot through the fog and buried itself between the man's eyes before he even realized he'd been seen.
Two more rushed together, shouting. Raizen stepped past them as though walking through reeds in a river. When he stopped, their bodies collapsed in unison, throats cut so clean the blood only spilled after silence had already claimed them.
The scarred leader roared, charging with both axes raised. "Monster!"
Raizen didn't move. He simply raised his gaze.
The Mangekyō flickered for the briefest second.
The man froze mid-strike. His vision twisted—trees melting into corpses, fog becoming blood, his own comrades whispering his death. He staggered, terror flooding his veins.
Raizen stepped forward once. His sword whispered through the mist.
The mercenary leader's scream choked into silence as his body fell.
---
The forest was quiet again, save for the faint hiss of wind through the leaves. Blood mist clung to the air, too thick to be natural.
Raizen stood among the corpses, blade dripping red, expression unreadable. Not a single wound marked his body.
"Too weak," he murmured, wiping his sword clean on a fallen cloak. "And yet… even in a world where I erased myself, they still hunt me."
His crimson eyes dimmed, the Mangekyō retreating as exhaustion coiled in his chest.
He turned his back on the carnage, cloak fluttering, and walked deeper into the fog. Somewhere ahead lay another land. Another test. Another scar.
The mercenaries of the Blood Mist would never be remembered—but their deaths were a reminder.
The world might have forgotten Raizen Uchiha.
But the world itself had not.
---