The Secret of the Mangekyō Sharingan

At two in the morning, the training ground on the back mountain of the Uchiha Clan District was deserted.

The autumn night wind passed through six wooden posts, making the vines rustle. Insects chirped from the grass, high and low, as though the mountain were breathing. Clouds covered half the moon, and moonlight spilled down in intermittent patches, turning the sandy ground into alternating gray and white stripes.

Shuo Ye stood in the center of the field, with no shuriken in his hand.

He took a deep breath, then closed his eyes.

The chakra in his blood began to flow. It rose from his core, coursed through his meridians and limbs, and finally gathered in his eyes.

The darkness before him began to change.

At first, there were blurry spots of light—like the lingering afterimages left behind after keeping one's eyes shut too long. Then the spots condensed into lines, and the lines wove themselves into a pattern—three tomoe, suspended steadily deep within his pupils, rotating at an even speed. The three-tomoe Sharingan.

He was already very familiar with this state. Since the night of the massacre, the three tomoe had become his body's default configuration. It took no effort and no hand seals. As long as he willed it, the three tomoe would light up.

But the three tomoe were not tonight's goal.

Shuo Ye continued pushing his chakra upward.

The three tomoe spun faster and faster—first becoming three arcs, then new connecting lines appeared between them. Ocular power was dragged from deep within his eye sockets, like a string pulled tighter and tighter, until it reached a critical point—

The three tomoe vanished.

A new pattern took their place.

Against a black backdrop, three diamond-shaped patterns formed a triangle, connected by hair-thin lines into a geometric design. The entire pattern rotated slowly, only slightly, like the gears of some precise instrument being driven forward.

The Mangekyō Sharingan.

Shuo Ye opened his eyes.

His vision had changed.

The air was no longer transparent—he could see traces of chakra within it. The faint life energy flowing through every blade of grass in the distance had been magnified. The grain on the wooden posts was clear enough for him to count the rings.

But at the same time—the edges of his vision were slightly blurred. It was not the blur of poor focus. The brightness was dropping, as though a layer of dark gray gauze had been draped over the corners.

He raised his right hand, spread his fingers, and aimed them at a stone before him.

First ability: Time Retrace.

He activated it.

An ant had just been sitting on the stone—the ant had been crawling, then it vanished. It had not died, nor had it been crushed while moving. It had returned to where it had been several seconds earlier. A small patch of moss beneath the stone also shifted—the leaves that the wind had flattened rose back up.

The stone itself changed even more visibly: a tiny crack disappeared. That crack had been fresh, made yesterday when Naruto threw a shuriken and hit it. Now the crack had been erased, and the stone had returned to its state from yesterday.

Shuo Ye withdrew his hand.

Sweat had already seeped across his forehead. Not a drop or two—his entire forehead was sweating, the moisture running down his brow bones and over his eyelids. Some of it flowed into his eyes, stinging them sour. It felt as if the hollow behind his retinas had been pricked by needles, while a buzzing filled his ears.

He dismissed the Mangekyō and collapsed onto the stone, gasping for breath.

He had tested Time Retrace several times. The conclusion was that, with his current stamina, he could rewind at most five seconds—localized rewinding, over an area smaller than a basketball. Afterward, his whole body would be drained. During the first test, he rewound three seconds, then lay in the training ground for three hours, unable to feel where his arms were.

He did not know where this ability's limit lay. But he knew one thing: if he continued increasing his ocular power, he might be able to apply Time Retrace over a wider area, further into the past. Maybe ten years. Maybe longer.

But he did not dare test it casually.

One reason was that he lacked enough chakra to support it. The other—and it was a concern he had to face every time he came here to test in the dead of night—was that he feared his Sharingan was deteriorating. Ever since the night of the massacre, he had noticed certain signs.

The edges of his vision occasionally blurred. Especially after using the three-tomoe Sharingan for extended periods—such as rapidly reading ninjutsu scrolls for a long time—a faint gray ring would appear at the edge of his vision. It would remain for a while before fading. That duration was growing longer.

The standard price of using the Mangekyō Sharingan—blindness.

In the original story, Shisui leaped from a cliff, Itachi nearly went blind after using an incomplete Susanoo, and Sasuke had only preserved his sight by transplanting Itachi's eyes after the final battle. But Shuo Ye had no brother. He had no second pair of Mangekyō Sharingan to replace his own. Every use cost him another piece of his vision.

He stood and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Moonlight illuminated the training ground brightly. He looked down at his drenched hands—the creases in his palms had been filled with sweat, gleaming beneath the moon.

Second ability: Void Flame.

Shuo Ye looked up at the hillside across from the training ground. A lone dead pine stood on the slope. Lightning had struck it last year, leaving its bark charred black, while bare branches pointed at the sky like stiff, dead fingers.

He pointed at the dead tree.

Ocular power gathered deep in his eyes—the difference from the previous ability was that Void Flame did not require "rewinding," but "burning." Not physical burning, but annihilation on the level of ocular power. That meant that once activated, it would gradually erase its target from existence itself. A flame more terrifying than fire.

The air before his fingertips began to distort. A transparent outline took shape, like an invisible lens—fine ripples flickered within it, like heat haze rising from asphalt. A dead branch near the top of the tree began to turn black—

No.

It was not the black of charring. Its existence was fading. A strip of bark that touched the outer layer of Void Flame shifted out of place for an instant, as if that portion had never existed at those coordinates. Then the branch's substance began to diminish, collapsing in a way he had never seen before.

Shuo Ye abruptly pulled his hand back.

Void Flame went out.

He dropped to one knee, bracing both hands against the sand as he panted heavily. The sweat on his body was no longer seeping out—it was pouring out. Every chakra channel in his body had been emptied. The energy left within him was so faint that he could no longer raise any chakra. His chest, temples, spine, knees—every part of him ached.

The dead branch touched by Void Flame did not fall. It still hung from the tree. But the section where it connected to the trunk had changed color—only a short stretch, but it had indeed been "destroyed."

Shuo Ye stared at it for a long time, a chill running down his back.

Not because the ability was too powerful.

It was because he did not dare use Void Flame on a living thing at all. He did not know what that branch had felt as it was being "annihilated"—if it could feel anything. He was not sure whether Void Flame was fully controllable, nor whether its range of effect would exceed expectations. More importantly, the last time he had used Void Flame—the night of the massacre—he had nearly burned Sasuke too.

He would never forget the expression on Sasuke's face in that moment.

It was not fear. It was the despair of—Are you going to kill me too?

Shuo Ye closed his eyes and completely dismissed the Mangekyō. He dismissed the three tomoe as well, returning his eyes to ordinary pupils. He sat against a wooden post for a long time, until night dew fell onto his shoulders and seeped through his collar.

It was already three-thirty in the morning by the time he returned home.

Shuo Ye took a shower, changed clothes, and sat in the corridor.

The clouds in the sky had dispersed. The moon was fully exposed, hanging over the persimmon tree in the yard—his mother had planted that tree. Last year, it bore green fruit. No one picked them, and they fell all over the ground. This year, it had borne another one, hanging from the highest branch, barely bigger than a ball.

He stared at the persimmon for a long time.

In his vision, there was a very thin gray ring along the edge of the persimmon. It was almost impossible to see, but if he narrowed his eyes—he could see it. The gray ring neither expanded nor shrank. It simply remained there, like a layer of dust that could never be wiped away.

He rubbed his eyes. The gray ring was still there.

His eyesight was deteriorating.

He stood and walked to the mirror. The face in it was still clear—his outline, the whites of his eyes, his pupils, and his eyelashes were all unchanged. But the moment he shifted his attention to the lower left corner of his vision, that corner darkened. It was not completely black, but like a screen with its brightness turned down—to about one-fifth, over an area roughly the size of a pencil tip.

A month ago, it had been one-thirtieth.

Shuo Ye put the mirror back where it belonged and turned off the light.

In the darkness, he lay flat on the bed with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling. The crack in the ceiling still stretched out from the corner of the wall, just as it had last year—neither longer nor branched.

The price of the Mangekyō Sharingan was blindness. This was a clearly established rule in the original story. There were no exceptions, no loopholes, no way to avoid it—except by replacing one's eyes with another pair of Mangekyō Sharingan.

But he only had this pair of eyes.

If he was to continue down this path—if he was to become strong enough, strong enough to save more lives when that night of the massacre repeated itself—then he needed the full power of the Mangekyō Sharingan. To control Time Retrace, master Void Flame, and even awaken Susanoo.

Deteriorating eyesight was not the problem.

The problem was the speed of the deterioration.

At the current rate, he would not go completely blind within ten years, but in a few more years—by graduation at age twelve—his eyesight might already be bad enough to affect normal life. And age twelve was when the real story began.

He covered his eyes with his arm.

In the corridor, moonlight slowly shifted, moving from the branches of the persimmon tree to the wooden floor beneath the eaves. In the silence, it seemed as if liquid were flowing slowly—that was the Mangekyō deep within his retinas turning on its own. He could not touch it, but he could hear it searching for lost fragments of vision.

He needed two things. Better chakra control—to slow the rate at which his vision was consumed. More ocular power training—to let his Mangekyō abilities operate in a low-consumption mode.

And one more thing.

He needed a stronger body.

His body was that of an eight-year-old child. It could not contain chakra consumption at the Mangekyō level. It was like pouring a bucket of water into a cup—however much went in, just as much leaked out. If he could train his body until it could withstand higher-intensity chakra—an energy density like that of the Nine-Tails jinchuriki—then the rate at which his vision deteriorated could be greatly reduced.

The training plan would begin tomorrow.

He would take it more seriously than before, beyond merely "above average." But he could not make it too conspicuous—the abandoned Uchiha training ground on the back mountain was a good choice. No one went there. Only Naruto came by. Naruto was unreliable—his mouth was too loose—but fortunately, his mouth was so loose that nobody believed him.

At the thought of Naruto, the corner of his mouth twitched.

He turned over.

The shadow of the persimmon tree outside the window fell across the paper like a blade mark.

He stared at that shadow. Then he closed his eyes.

Tomorrow morning, after waking up—he would keep pretending.

Keep being "above average."

Keep letting everyone believe he was only an ordinary Uchiha orphan recovering from trauma.

And in the dead of night, he would continue testing the Mangekyō on the back mountain. Little by little, he would map out the limits of Time Retrace, little by little, he would tame the pull of Void Flame.

Until he could master them.

No matter the cost.