Ruins

Shuo Ye woke up.

That word wasn't accurate. He wasn't sure he had ever fallen asleep. He had merely surfaced from some bottomless darkness, like a drowning man being lifted by something, his head breaking the surface.

He opened his eyes.

There was a hole in the ceiling. He had burned it himself with Fire Release—a hole the size of a palm, its edges charred black. Moonlight leaked through it. The moonlight had already faded greatly. The sky had changed from pure black to dark gray. Soon. Dawn was near.

He lay on the floor in the same position as when Tsukuyomi had ended. His mouth tasted of blood. The corners of his eyes were dry—blood had dried into two dark brown streaks on his face. His left and right eyes still ached faintly. The Mangekyo Sharingan had reverted to ordinary Sharingan, but he could feel them emerging again at any moment.

He rolled over.

There were footprints on the floor. His own—stained with blood, left from pacing back and forth between the hallway and living room. There were Itachi's footprints—two sizes larger than his, with the standard ANBU tread pattern on the soles. There were two drag marks—the traces of his body being dragged.

Then there was nothing else.

There was no one else's presence in the house.

His father was in the living room, lying where he had been before. Shuo Ye paused as he passed. He crouched down and closed his father's eyes with his hand. The eyelids had already stiffened. He pressed them gently twice. They closed.

His mother was in the bedroom. The corners of her mouth were still curved upward. Petals still rested on the tips of her hair. Shuo Ye did not touch her. He didn't know how. He stood, stepped around the shattered vase, and took a clean coat from the rack—his mother's favorite one, light blue. It had been folded neatly. He covered her with it, moving very gently, leaving her face uncovered.

He stood there and watched for a while.

"I'll go take a look outside."

He said it aloud. His voice came out rough as sandpaper, startling even him.

He walked out of the house.

The sky was dark gray. A faint bluish-white glow lingered in the east. Today's sun would rise from that direction. When the sun rose yesterday, he had picked the morning glories off the wall. Mom had laughed at him.

Bodies lay on the road.

Not only on the road. In the yards. At the gates. Beneath utility poles. Smoke rose in the direction of Naka Shrine. There was smoke in more than one place. Around thirty households in the clan compound had caught fire. The flames had already been contained by ANBU and had not spread. Hidden Leaf Village's crisis management department really was efficient.

ANBU.

Itachi wore ANBU clothes. ANBU were controlling the fires. Did the Third Hokage know about what had happened tonight? What about Danzo? The destruction of the Uchiha Clan—an event this massive—could not possibly have happened without the tacit approval of the village's upper ranks.

Shuo Ye kept walking. He wasn't thinking about these things. His mind was running on its own. He no longer had the strength to think actively.

He passed the neighbor's house. Old Man Nakajima was at the entrance—not dead from external wounds. There were traces of a hidden weapon at his throat. The weapon was standard ANBU issue.

He passed Teacher Haibara's house. The door was broken. Teacher Haibara was no longer at the door—he had been at the training grounds earlier. But there was someone inside. His wife lay in the kitchen. A kitchen knife had fallen beside her. She might have tried to fight back.

He passed the main family residence. The gates stood wide open. Beyond them—he stopped looking.

He knew the clan compound's layout too well. For seven years, he had run through every corner of it. He knew whose house stood past every turn, which alley led to which road, which family's dog usually barked at him, which family's children liked to cling to him and play.

The dogs were dead. The children were dead too.

Birdsong. Yes—the birds were chirping. Morning birds, just like every morning in his memories. They didn't know what had happened on this land. Or maybe they did—they just didn't care.

Shuo Ye walked to the central square of the clan compound.

People usually played chess here. Some practiced shuriken. Children chased one another around. Today—the square had become a morgue.

He counted. He stopped at seventeen.

He stood alone in the square. Seven years old. Wearing bloodstained pajamas. Two dried streaks of blood on his face.

He turned in a circle.

Dead people were everywhere, in every direction.

There was no one left.

No—wrong. There should have been survivors. Sasuke. Itachi's foolish little brother. Sasuke was still alive. But Sasuke wasn't here. He should be in the hospital, or under ANBU isolation.

And—Obito? If the original story's setting held true, Obito had also taken part in tonight's events. But he had not appeared in the clan compound. Or perhaps he simply had not appeared before him.

"Am I the only one left...?"

The words leaked from his throat. He wasn't asking for himself. It was just some instinctive reaction. He stood in the square, looking at the corpses, with only those words left in his mind. Like a broken radio, endlessly replaying the same frequency.

The—only—one—left—?

He sat on the stone steps of the square. The ground beneath him was icy. Morning mist rose from the ground—not mist, but the last vapor released by dying fire pits. Or perhaps it was from the river. The lower reaches of the Naka River flowed past the edge of the clan compound. The current would not change its pace because of the dead.

He sat there for a long time. Long enough for the eastern sky to change from bluish-white to orange-red. The sun rose. It was not blood-red—the moon had been blood-red yesterday, but the sun was not. The sun simply rose as it always did. Pale yellow light fell over the bodies, the bloodstains, the ruins.

Illuminating everything with perfect clarity.

What was there to see clearly about a dead person? Yet the sun rose as usual.

Shuo Ye stood. He didn't know where he was going. Hokage Tower? The hospital? Anywhere?

He looked back once.

His home—Uchiha Sakuya's home—the house he had lived in for seven years. The morning glories on the courtyard wall were still there. The wind chime was still there. The door stood half open. The lights were still on—the living room light, burning from last night until now. No one had turned it off.

His parents' bodies were inside.

He wasn't going back. Not because he didn't want to—he just didn't know what he could do if he did. He couldn't carry them. He couldn't cover them. He couldn't do anything. He was only a seven-year-old child. He had the Mangekyo Sharingan. He could rewind time by three seconds. He could burn chakra. But he could not carry a corpse.

He walked toward the edge of the clan compound, one step at a time. He could no longer feel pain in the sole of his foot—the wounds there had split open too many times, and perhaps the nerves had gone numb.

He passed Naka Shrine.

The gate was broken. The scent of scorched paper came from within. The clan's secret scrolls, historical records, stone tablets—perhaps all of them had been destroyed.

He passed the training grounds. Teacher Haibara was still in the same position, facedown, with no weapon in his hand.

ANBU stood by the roadside. Wearing white vests and gray masks, they handled the scene. Washing. Carrying. Recording. Their movements were mechanical and efficient.

One of them stopped him.

"Kid. You're hurt." His tone was routine.

Shuo Ye looked up at him. Behind the mask was a pair of ordinary eyes. An ordinary person. Someone who didn't know what had happened last night. Or perhaps he did—he was simply carrying out orders.

"Take me to the hospital."

Shuo Ye's voice was still hoarse. But it no longer sounded like a seven-year-old child's voice. It was too quiet. Too clear.

The ANBU froze for a moment, then nodded. He probably didn't know who Uchiha Sakuya was. Just a surviving child. There was more than one survivor tonight. Regulations required them to be sent to a medical facility, have their wounds treated, give statements, and have follow-up guardianship arrangements made.

Procedure.

By the time he was taken to the hospital, it was already broad daylight.

The corridor was painfully white. The smell of disinfectant. Hurried footsteps. Shuo Ye was placed in an ordinary ward. A medical ninja examined his eyes—he had deactivated the Sharingan, and his pupils were now merely ordinary black. The medical ninja found nothing wrong. He bandaged the wounds on the soles of Shuo Ye's feet, gave him a nutrient injection, and told him to sleep.

He lay on the hospital bed.

He couldn't sleep.

His eyes remained open, staring at the ceiling. A white ceiling, fluorescent lights. Different from the ceiling at home. The ceiling at home had a hole in it, burned through by Fire Release.

In his mind, he replayed every scene from tonight.

His father's last words.

His mother's smile.

The awakening of the Mangekyo Sharingan.

Itachi's Tsukuyomi.

What Itachi had said—watch over him for me. Sasuke does not need hatred. He needs someone who will not walk the same path as him.

What you saw today was not merely death.

Big Brother Shisui's final smile. Teacher Haibara's back. Old Man Nakajima's dried persimmons. His father saying, "Be yourself." His mother saying, "You are Mama's child."

Those fragments came together, forming a blurry shape. He still could not see what it was. But the knowledge from his past life was sounding an alarm. He had been thrown onto some vast chessboard. The massacre of the clan was part of some plan. Not all of it. A greater game was unfolding somewhere deeper.

And he—Uchiha Sakuya—the holder of the Mangekyo Sharingan—had been forced to become a piece on that board.

He closed his eyes.

The Mangekyo Sharingan slowly turned in the darkness. Three arcs in his left eye. Black flames in his right.

He was only seven years old.