Shisui, Come Out Here!

Night lay thick as ink, soaking every corner of Sasuke's tiny apartment.

On the bed, the boy's brows were tightly furrowed, his forehead beaded with fine cold sweat.

His conversation with Gaara during the second exam—about survivors, about his mother, about the cruel truth that he had been deliberately left alive—even after several days, still fermented and twisted in his dreams, turning into an even more hideous nightmare.

Blood.

Blood as far as the eye could see.

The familiar streets of the Uchiha clan compound had now become a living hell.

Corpses lay everywhere—men and women, old and young, some faces familiar and some blurred—all soaked in thick pools of blood that seemed as if they would never dry.

The stench of blood was so strong it made him want to retch.

He staggered as he ran, calling out his parents' names, but the only answers he got were dead silence and the ominous caws of crows in the distance.

Then he saw them.

The sliding door at the entrance stood open. Under the dim light, his father, Fugaku Uchiha, and his mother, Mikoto Uchiha, lay collapsed on the tatami inside the room, the blood beneath them blooming like red spider lilies.

The elder brother he had once admired stood quietly beside their bodies, the Ninja Blade in his hand dripping warm beads of blood.

Hearing footsteps, Itachi slowly turned around. Those crimson Sharingan stared at him coldly, as if looking at a weak insect.

"Foolish little brother..."

"If you want to kill me... then resent me. Hate me..."

"And live on in ugliness..."

"Run. Run... cling to your pitiful life..."

"As you are now, you're too weak... so weak you don't even have the right to be killed by me."

The icy words were like shards of ice, piercing