The Senju clansman staggered out of the Hyūga compound like he'd woken from the wrong dream.
"...Huh? Wasn't I resting at home?"
He rubbed his temples, confused, but shrugged it off.
The kind of shrug a man uses when instinct tells him not to ask questions.
When he walked back into the Senju district, no one sensed anything strange. He acted normal. Spoke normal. Laughed normal.
He had no idea he'd been turned into a loaded kunai waiting for a target.
Senju Hashirama, unaware of the rot already threading through his clan, pushed forward with preparations for the Four-Kage meeting. His requests had gone out days earlier, and—as he expected—each village agreed. Not because they trusted him, but because they wanted their share of the beasts.
Hashirama stood now in a secret chamber beneath the Senju lands, facing a masked operative cloaked in Root attire. He still resented what Root represented, but the village simply didn't have enough loyal manpower anymore.
"I'll be away from Konoha for some time," Hashirama said. "Monitor the clans. Report anything suspicious immediately."
"Yes, my lord."
The Root ninja vanished, leaving Hashirama alone with a knot of unease tightening in his chest.
"I pray nothing happens while I'm gone…"
He exhaled and climbed toward the light, unaware that danger wasn't waiting for him—it was standing right behind his own brother.
Senju Tobirama was ambushed in his own compound.
He didn't even have time to form a seal.
"Who are you—?!"
His muscles locked. Not a single finger twitched.
Across from him stood that same Senju clansman, expression blank, but with eyes glowing a disturbing crimson. A boomerang-shaped pupil rotated slowly in each socket.
A perversion of the Byakugan.
A twisted mirror that Tobirama recognized in an instant.
"Why does a Senju have a Sharingan—?!"
His voice caught. His strength bled out.
He dropped to one knee, panting, sweat dripping off his chin.
"One illusion… just one… and even my nervous system is frozen…"
He grit his teeth. "Not even Uchiha Madara could do this."
The clansman stepped forward, each movement deliberate, predatory.
Tobirama's heart hammered. And yet—
that eye. That shape. That eerie familiarity.
A name surfaced like a nightmare breaking water.
"...Amamiya Raizen."
The moment he breathed it, the oppressive genjutsu tightened like a wire around his skull.
Pain lanced through his mind. His thoughts blurred into static.
When the clansman stopped inches from him, the boomerang pupils shattered—
and reformed into a deep, unnatural violet.
Not Rinnegan.
Worse.
A perfect conduit for Raizen's buried will.
Tobirama's breath hitched.
His body surrendered.
The voice that filled his head wasn't human.
"The insects crawling on the soil dare to bare fangs at the hawk in the sky. You will kneel."
Tobirama's vision shook.
"You will obey."
His resistance crumbled.
Consciousness dissolved like sand in a tide.
When his eyes opened again, the world had a strange clarity. Cold. Sharp.
Detached.
He rose smoothly.
He reached forward.
His hand wrapped around the stunned clansman's throat.
A single twist.
A crack.
The body collapsed.
Tobirama didn't flinch.
In the next moment, he flickered away in a blur of white and red.
When he reappeared, it was inside the Hyūga clan's hidden chamber.
Hyūga Tennin was waiting.
A faint crimson glow lingered around Tennin's Kagami Byakugan as he bowed slightly.
"Welcome, Tobirama-dono. You're… on time."
The newly conditioned Tobirama stepped forward without expression.
Inside those calm eyes, a buried will pulsed—Raizen's contingency, now fully rooted.
From that night onward, Tobirama moved like a shadow within Konoha.
He visited Root.
He gathered the operatives he had once built with his own hands.
What he told them—only he and Tennin knew.
And no one else suspected a thing.
Konoha remained outwardly peaceful, its lanterns warm against the summer air.
But beneath the surface, clans stirred, plots writhed, and ambition sharpened its teeth.
By the time Hashirama and Tobirama departed for the great council, the hidden snakes of Konoha began uncoiling from their holes.
And the hunter lurking in the dark—Raizen's silent will—slid a round into the chamber and waited.
Three days after the brothers left, a secluded hall deep within Konoha was lit by hanging lamps.
Four figures sat around a low table. Old. Ambitious.
Predators who believed the forest momentarily unguarded.
The oldest leaned forward, the flame reflecting in his sickly yellow eyes.
"Then it's decided," he rasped. "With the Senju away, we strike. Konoha will fall into our hands."
The others exchanged glances.
Silent nods.
Cold calculations.
"Agreed."
"We move as planned."
"Konoha will be ours."
They didn't realize someone else was already hunting them.
They didn't realize the prey wasn't Senju.
It was them.