For a moment, Uchiha Madara felt a dangerous clarity blooming inside him.
A path. A world.
A future shaped by yin and yang.
But he forced the thought down.
The world Raizen envisioned hadn't failed yet—not in Madara's eyes. Even if chaos surged across Konoha, Raizen's dream still held weight. Hashirama still clung to it. Madara… hadn't abandoned it completely either.
He took a long breath and turned back to the stone tablet.
"The Sage of Six Paths… Rinnegan… Senjutsu… and that ruin."
His fingers brushed the carved text again.
More characters shifted, revealing a section he had never been able to read before.
Madara narrowed his eyes and began to translate.
"The world drowned in chaos. Nations devoured one another. The land burned, and people starved beneath endless war."
His voice echoed through the ancestral hall.
"All for the fruit of the Sacred Tree… the power that could end all conflict."
Madara frowned as more words unraveled.
"The princess who stole the forbidden fruit was named Ōtsutsuki Kaguya."
Ōtsutsuki.
Even pronouncing it felt wrong, like a foreign sound that didn't belong to mortal tongues.
"She ended the war herself… wielding the power of the sacred tree. The first human to ever possess chakra."
The tablet continued:
"Kaguya bore children. Her son inherited chakra by birth."
Madara's hand froze.
"…A being born with chakra?"
The text darkened.
"Enraged by the theft of its power, the Sacred Tree awakened… as a demon. As Ten Tails."
A chill crawled down Madara's spine.
"The Ten Tails ravaged the world.
And the one who stopped it… was her child.
Ōtsutsuki Hagoromo."
The Sage of Six Paths.
Madara stepped back, heart pounding, his Eternal Mangekyō flickering violently.
"The Sage… sealed his own mother," he whispered.
The stele's last lines glimmered faintly.
"Hagoromo spread chakra to the world, created Ninzō, and became the ancestor of all shinobi."
Madara exhaled slowly.
A legend older than every clan.
A war older than every war.
And Raizen, somehow, was tangled in it.
He didn't know the tablet had been altered—twisted to guide the Uchiha down a particular path. To shape them into a tool.
Madara believed every word.
"Then the one who fought Raizen… must be connected to the Sage of Six Paths."
His thoughts tightened into a single conclusion.
"The Sacred Tree… its power… Ten Tails…"
He swallowed hard.
"Is that what the man with Rinnegan wants?"
The idea was insane—yet eerily logical.
"If they fought over the power of the Sacred Tree… that explains everything."
Snow.
Disappearing chakra.
A vanished Raizen.
Madara could almost see it: a cosmic battle for power that belonged to neither of them.
"The power of the Sacred Tree…"
His voice trembled with desire he didn't bother hiding.
"If Ten Tails still exists—or can be revived—whoever wields it will surpass even the Sage."
He forced himself to calm down.
That path was a distant dream. The tailed beasts weren't even gathered yet. He didn't have Rinnegan. The clans would never allow him to possess Ten Tails alone.
Dreams meant nothing without the first step.
"Right now… I need answers from Raizen."
He left the shrine, intent to track down the only man who might understand the ruins.
But the moment he reached Konoha's cliff, he stopped dead.
A stone face stared back at him.
Raizen's.
Madara blinked, genuinely stunned.
"What… is this?"
Uchiha patrols explained quickly—the chaos after Raizen's disappearance, Hashirama's kneeling apology, all the suspicion, and finally the decision to carve the Hokage statues.
Madara's lips curled in a weary, bitter smile.
"Raizen… you leave for one moment, and they tear each other apart."
The disappointment stung deeper than he liked to admit.
"I thought Konoha would make peace possible," he murmured. "But it was only ever holding itself together because of you."
The illusion shattered without Raizen.
Power struggles rotted Konoha from the inside.
Madara shook his head.
"Maybe… yin and yang truly are the only path to real peace."
A dangerous idea flickered in his eyes—then he tore it away.
Not yet.
He still wanted to believe in Hashirama, in unity, in Konoha.
"This is only turbulence caused by Raizen's absence," Madara told himself. "Nothing more."
He left the village as swiftly as he came, his cloak snapping behind him like a dark omen.
He didn't know Hashirama arrived only minutes later.
Deep beneath Konoha, the dungeon smelled of damp stone and regret.
The Senju guards led Hashirama to the deepest cell.
A white-haired youth sat inside, sealed chains wrapped around his wrists and ankles.
"Tobirama…"
Hashirama's voice wavered.
His brother lifted his head.
Shame clouded his pale eyes.
He opened his mouth.
"Big Brother…"
And the cell fell silent except for the sound of two hearts breaking.