Chapter 24 – Voices in the Smoke
"You can silence the world around you, but never the echoes inside."
Night had fallen over the valley.Sasuke sat alone beside a dying fire, its smoke curling lazily into the starless sky.The faint crackling of embers was the only sound left — a quiet rhythm, fragile and uncertain, much like the thoughts in his head.
He had washed the blood from his hands hours ago, yet the smell lingered.No matter how much he tried to forget, the crimson stains remained — not on his skin, but deep beneath it.
His mind returned, again and again, to the look in Karin's eyes after the battle — not gratitude, not anger, but something darker.Fear.Fear of him.
He clenched his fist, nails biting into his palm."Fear…" he muttered. "Even now, that's all I bring."
The fire flickered.
And then, a voice — calm, steady, impossible."You've always been like this. Too afraid of what you might become to see what you already are."
Sasuke froze. His eyes widened.He turned toward the smoke.
There, half-formed in the dim light, stood Itachi.Or rather, the illusion of him — an echo sculpted by guilt and memory.The firelight painted his face in shades of gray, his expression unreadable, gentle, and cruel all at once.
"Itachi…" Sasuke whispered.
"You think strength is what you need," the apparition said. "But what you seek isn't power. It's punishment."
Sasuke's jaw tightened. "I don't need your judgment."
"No," the illusion said softly. "You need your own."
The words hit harder than any blade.
For a moment, Sasuke wanted to dispel the vision, to reject it.But part of him couldn't.Part of him didn't want to.
The ghostly figure stepped closer, smoke swirling with each movement."You killed to save. You saved to atone. But you've forgotten how to live."
Sasuke's voice broke. "And what would you have me do? Pretend everything I've done can be erased?"
Itachi's eyes softened. "Not erased. Understood."
The fire crackled louder, the flames rising suddenly — a mirror to Sasuke's turmoil.
When the smoke began to fade, so did the illusion.Itachi's last words lingered in the air like ash.
"When the fire dies, so does the illusion. But remember, Sasuke… what you see in the smoke is never just the past. It's the part of you still burning."
The fire went out.Silence returned.And for the first time in a long while, Sasuke didn't run from it.He just sat there — staring into the darkness, listening to the quiet voices inside.