Years passed in a tense tranquility.
In Konoha, Ren was just another Uchiha child. He kept to himself in class, clever enough to get a nod but never any praise. His kunai always found their mark, his hand seals were sharp, and he controlled his chakra better than most kids his age. Teachers in the academy whispered about his potential, while clan elders dismissed him as ordinary.
That was exactly how Ren liked it.
Stay low. Don't attract attention. When the storm hits, just survive.
When night fell and the lamps dimmed, he shed his façade. Scrolls spread out across the tatami—genealogy records, patrol paths, old battle accounts written in dark brown ink. He pored over the compound's maps repeatedly until he could navigate them in his sleep. He memorized where the walls were thin, where rooftops dipped low enough to traverse, where a child's form could slip through but an adult's could not.
Knowledge is my shield. I won't fall because I forgot what's behind a door.
Sometimes the corners of the room would distort, the air feeling off-kilter. On those nights, he sensed Gojo's presence nearby. The man rarely showed up—there could be weeks of silence followed only by a ripple in the darkness—but Ren never doubted he was there. Gojo observed. Gojo waited. His aura was like a smile without a face: playful yet unhurried, completely self-assured.
Tensions among the Uchiha grew. The police patrolled Konoha like an impending storm. Elders gathered behind closed doors, their voices subdued and bitter.
"They'll never trust us."
"They fear our eyes."
"If we don't act, the clan will be trapped forever."
Ren listened from the shadows, a child whose footsteps made no sound. He knew the stakes. He understood where this path was headed. They're correct, he thought, but it won't matter. The script's already been written. And it ends in blood.
He learned to be the kind of boy adults forgot about.
In sparring, he won through sheer luck. When he lost, he smiled and asked for tips. When a teacher praised his chakra control—taking three steps up a tree before tumbling down with a yelp—he laughed along with the others and shook off his sore feet. Later, when he was alone, he would climb that same tree, up and down, backwards.
He practiced his breathing until his chakra dwindled to a mere whisper, until his reflection seemed to fade away. The System rewarded this routine with subtle notifications—quiet nudges for control, patience, and calm—never flashy, never overt. He embraced every one.
He once smiled at Sasuke in the courtyard. The younger boy, smaller and bright-eyed, glared back with hurt pride. Ren returned to his book as if nothing had happened. You'll have your tragedy, he thought, and I won't take that from you. I've got my own.
And above the compound, the moon shifted, gleaming like a blade being honed.
That fateful night of the massacre arrived beneath a full moon.
It started with a single scream—a sound too real to be a part of training. Steel clashed. The compound's long paths were filled with the rush of sandals and cries from men trying to maintain order. Flames leaped from rooftop to rooftop, racing along beautifully carved beams like veins ignited.
Ren woke before the scream had ended. He didn't need to ask what was happening.
It's begun. Itachi's purge.
He rolled out of his futon into the darkness, drawn by an invisible thread, feet bare and silent. The corridor already smelled of smoke. He ducked under a doorframe and slipped through a narrow servant's passage. The lane was soaked in blood. A man sprinted past, clutching a child, stumbled, and fell. Another figure dragged him into the shadows. Ren didn't look back.
Keep moving. Survive. Don't look back.
His chakra sank within him like a shutter falling. The System's training fell into place, a habit he'd rehearsed countless times: stillness, thinness, a flame snuffed out without a puff of smoke. He reached a storehouse he'd picked out weeks earlier and slipped inside, leaving the door cracked open.
Outside, the village was tearing itself apart.
Footsteps approached: measured, not hurried. Ren pressed himself against a stack of crates, watching the door with eyes attuned to the dark.
The door creaked open.
Red tomoe spun in the shadows.
Itachi.
Ren's breath hitched. His heart felt too loud, too alive. He sees me, he thought, not in a rush of fear but as a cold, clear fact. He knows. This is my end.
The ensuing silence wasn't empty. It was dense—an acknowledgment shared between two beings who comprehended more than they should. Itachi's gaze swept through the cramped space. It didn't scan like a predator's; it weighed. Ren felt it mark him, not merely as another boy among many, but as something the night had overlooked and must now decide whether to account for.
His child's form shuddered. The adult within remained steady. If you kill me, nothing changes. If you let me live… I will change it.
Itachi tilted his head slightly.
He didn't do anything.
Then he exited, the door slid shut with a normal sound inappropriate for a night like this.
Ren's legs buckled. He caught himself on the edge of a crate, trembling, while cold sweat trickled down his back like rain.
Why? The thought flickered, fragile but bright. Why let me live? Was it mercy? Strategy? Did you… choose me?
Itachi moved through his clan like a surgeon among sickened flesh: precise, relentless, grieving silently. His Sharingan revealed a world so sharp it was painful. Each face became a map of the choices that led to this night. Every strike was a line in a story he had chosen to write to prevent a worse one.
Shisui's absence was a shadow at his side.
In certain moments—a boy gasping on a threshold, an old woman gripping a cane—Itachi felt his heartbeat and wished it would stop. He didn't hesitate. Sasuke's face floated before him like a lantern over dark waters. He followed it without looking away. He followed it because the alternative was to lose himself.
He opened a storehouse door and spotted a child hiding behind a stack of crates. The child's chakra was something it shouldn't be: it didn't rise, didn't flare—it simply didn't exist the way it was supposed to. It was quiet, thinned, not like an elite suppressing their presence but like a candle that had decided to extinguish without smoke. The boy's eyes were off too—too steady, too focused, not trained, but aged.
Itachi met that gaze and, for a fleeting, cruel moment, wanted to ask, Who taught you that? But the moment passed, and he stood at a crossroads with only one choice.
He could strike. The story would close around the blow like a bag's mouth. Nothing would change.
He could walk away. The story would crack open—a small seam, invisible to anyone unaware. Something might burgeon there. It could be a weed, a crop, or poison. It might be nothing at all. But it would be a choice he made that didn't follow the script.
I've already chosen the village over the clan, Sasuke over everything. He could hear his own breaths. He saw the boy's shoulders tremble silently. Let me choose here, a possibility not dictated by men hiding in shadows, calling it peace.
Itachi turned and walked away.
He didn't convince himself he spared anyone. He refused to acknowledge the boy lived out of mercy. He simply added a variable to a world overflowing with certainties and continued toward the only truth he'd accepted: that his brother would hate him and survive.
Ren stayed put until his legs remembered how to move. The storehouse smelled of old straw, iron, and a faint sweetness of mice. When the next scream faded into the crackling, then collapsed into a timber groan, he slipped through the door and back into the lane.
The compound was ablaze.
He followed the path he had memorized: behind the coppersmith's shop, under the drying racks, across the low roof of the dye-worker's house, then down into a narrow gap where adult bodies couldn't fit. A man yanked at his wife's elbows, not noticing him. A child crawled out from beneath a bench, saw him, and froze; Ren pressed a finger to his lips, and the child solemnly nodded before retreating.
There will be time to save others when I have the power to do so, he reassured the part of himself that longed to turn and help the crying, the bleeding, the lost. Tonight, I must survive. Tomorrow, I will create.
He ducked into the alley behind a shuttered tea shop and came to a halt.
A figure blocked the exit—a tall man wearing a blank mask. The man stood straight, his posture rigid. His hand held a kunai, the kind of nonchalance that comes from someone who has used one far too often.
"Straggler," he said, the word flat and devoid of emotion, like a stamp on paper.
Ren's lungs froze, unsure of what to do next. The space between them felt too close, and the alley's angle was unfavorable. There was no way a child could escape quickly enough. Chakra suppression meant nothing to someone already aware of his presence. Too close. Too fast. No chance to—
"Now, now."
The voice drifted in from the side, breezy and careless, bringing with it no regard for the night.
"Not very polite. Are you planning to stab my boss?"
The Root operative pivoted, body snapping around like a tool obeying a hand.
Gojo strolled into the alley, hands in his pockets, his blindfold slightly askew. He whistled a low, appreciative note as if admiring the scene displayed before him. "Man… Root's hitting rock bottom tonight. What happened? Did your A-team lose their way at karaoke?"
The operative said nothing. Tools don't answer. He lunged, his blade a decisive line.
The kunai halted an inch from Gojo's throat.
There was no clash of metal, no ringing sound. The blade simply wasn't allowed to move forward. Infinity buzzed between them, a note too pure for anything human to strike.
The Root agent's arm trembled, his shoulder quivered. The muscles in his neck twitched, as if an invisible hand were constricting the tendon. The kunai remained still, occupying the exact space Gojo allowed it to.
Gojo leaned in, the blindfold's empty eyeholes mirroring his masked face. He grinned like a kid watching a trick he knew the secret to. "Ooooh, scary. Almost close. But this is VIP territory. No touching allowed."
The operative tried to back away. His foot scraped but found nothing to grip onto. Gojo sighed dramatically, turned his head just slightly, and flicked his finger.
The man's knee buckled sideways. His body folded gently, as if complying with gravity's suggestion. He didn't scream; the sound he made resembled a box collapsing.
Gojo brushed off ash from his sleeve with quick swipes. "Messy night," he remarked. "Definitely not a party I'd RSVP for."
Ren realized he hadn't breathed since the man appeared. He took one careful breath, and his chest ignited with pain.
Gojo crouched to meet Ren's gaze, head tilted, his smile returned and relaxed. "Well, Boss, looks like the family reunion took a wild turn." The grin broadened. "What's the plan? Stick around for s'mores, or beat it before it gets awkward?"
Ren's hands clenched into fists. The smoke grayed his skin. Fire crackled behind the tea shop's wall. The night was thick with the scents of tannins, blood, and pine pitch.
The Uchiha are gone. But from their ashes, something new will rise.
"Out," he stated, voice steady. "We leave."
Gojo stood tall, stretching like a cat. "Lead the way, Boss. No need to rush. I'm with you—the strongest."
He winked beneath the blindfold, the boyish grin utterly out of place in a nighttime slaughterhouse.
Ren turned away from the devastation. The fire stretched his shadow long, and the boy within it didn't appear to be a child anymore. Come morning, civilians would awake to rumors, to ANBU language crafted to sound smooth and harmless. None would realize a child had escaped, guided by a king's decision burning in his heart.
Gojo fell into step beside him, humming a cheerful, off-key tune, as if they were leaving a theater after a comedy and not a graveyard.
They walked under a gate blackened by flames and out into the streets where the rest of Konoha remained asleep with windows shut and dreams unshattered. In the distance, the Hokage's office glowed, a rectangle of light amidst dark rooftops. Nearby, a cat crept along a wall, fur ignited with ash.
Ren did not glance back.
Elsewhere in Konoha, Hiruzen Sarutobi stood by the window, watching the crimson blaze of the compound. His pipe lay cold on its dish, forgotten. Behind him, a table held scrolls he had been reading when the first report arrived—requests about road conditions in the south district, a complaint from a merchant regarding police overreach. Routine matters. Now, their contents were lost to him.
"Report," he said without turning.
A masked ANBU knelt. "Confirmed: Uchiha Itachi executed the purge himself. Root squads have been seen conducting, um, 'containment.' Survivors remain unconfirmed."
Hiruzen closed his eyes. He felt ancient. Again, he thought, and the word carried the weight of wars, policies, compromises, letters written to grieving mothers. Again, we justify it as necessary.
"Scrub Root," he ordered. His voice sounded weak, hollow. "All of them. ANBU will handle the cleanup. No more… 'containment.'"
The masked figure bowed. "Understood."
Hiruzen opened his eyes and returned to the flames. You were just a child when I first saw you, he thought as he gazed into the red. So was he. We demand so much from our children, and when they give us what we ask, we call them monsters.
He foolishly imagined that somewhere within those flames, a small boy had found a door he could fit through and had taken it. He allowed the thought to linger briefly before exhaling it like smoke.
The streets outside the compound were eerily quiet, that kind of quiet that follows a scream. Ren and Gojo moved through it like an answer to an unasked question. The moon hung high, casting a silvery glow on the canal waters that wound toward the river. A lone drunk slept against a warehouse door, snoring like a purring cat.
Ren remained silent for quite a while. Gojo didn't fill the void. He walked with his hands tucked in his coat pockets, whistling softly every now and then, tuneless and cheerful, looking like a man headed home from a long day at a job he enjoyed for all the wrong reasons.
Finally, Ren spoke, "Thank you."
Gojo tilted his head. "For what? The sarcasm? The VIP seating? I offer fantastic amenities."
"For being here," Ren replied, no frills required.
Gojo's grin shone. "Well, sure. A contract's a contract. Plus, this is way more exciting than grading papers."
They walked on a little further.
Ren thought about the storehouse, the red tomoe in the shadows, how Itachi had looked at him and chosen to walk away. You saw me, he mused, You left me as a variable. The adult within recognized the cruelty and kindness of that choice. The child inside him just wanted to sleep and wake up somewhere else.
"When we leave," Ren declared, "we don't flee."
Gojo responded with an approving sound. "Good instinct. Running makes people pursue you. Walking makes them question if they should even be chasing."
"We walk," Ren affirmed. "We exit the village like ghosts. And then…" He gestured towards the forest, where paths transformed into choices. "We build."
Gojo's grin widened, revealing all his teeth. "Now that's my favorite word."
They reached the edge of the trees just as the first real wind of the night swept through the streets, pushing the smoke aside. The village shifted in its slumber. Somewhere, an ANBU agent on a rooftop turned his masked face, thinking he saw something move on the district's edge, then shook his head and resumed his watch over the glowing horizon.
Ren stepped beneath the first branches, allowing the dark to conceal his form. His body felt small. His steps were light. Inside, something vast inhaled deeply.
The Uchiha are ashes. But I remain. From this night onward, the world will change.
Gojo tapped two fingers lightly against Ren's shoulder. "Lead on, Boss," he said, with the unwavering confidence of someone who'd never considered defeat. "I'll make sure the sky doesn't fall."
Ren didn't look back.