Awakening and Soliloquy

Deep within Angkor Fortress, torchlight cast flickering shadows across the stone walls.

Sou sat with his eyes closed, leaning back in an old wooden chair. A map of the Ninja World lay spread across the stone table, with a teacup at its edge. The tea had long gone cold, yet no one had come to replace it. The entire hall was vast and dim, filled only with the occasional crackle of burning torches and his steady, unhurried breathing.

He was waiting.

Not for someone, nor for news—he was waiting for a "feeling."

Even with his eyes closed, Causality Threads continued to flow through the depths of his consciousness, like an underground river—silent and ceaseless. Over the past twenty years, he had grown accustomed to this way of sensing. The world had never been a still painting in his mind, but a densely woven net—every thread carrying the past and future. Tug one lightly, and ripples would rise somewhere far away.

Tonight, those ripples were spreading.

Sou's breathing did not change, but his consciousness had already surfaced from that profound darkness. He was sensing—sensing the thickest and most ancient Causality Thread, the one extending from the depths of the Pure Land.

It belonged to Uchiha Madara.

Decades ago, that thread had come to an abrupt halt at the Valley of the End. It had not snapped; it had sunk—like a great river suddenly flowing underground, vanishing from sight while continuing to surge deep beneath the earth. From the first time Sou sensed that thread, he had known that Uchiha Madara had not truly died. That man had lain dormant in darkness, waiting through old age, like a wounded beast licking its wounds as it awaited one final strike.

And now—

That thread was trembling.

Not with a faint, meaningless fluctuation, but