Blood Moon

A blood moon hung overhead, shrouding the entire world in crimson light.

The God Tree's towering trunk rose from the earth, its branches reaching toward the horizon. Countless bodies littered the battlefield: ninjas from the Five Great Nations, the remains of White Zetsu. Their blood soaked into the ground, blending with the blood-red moonlight.

Madara Uchiha stood at the center of the battlefield.

The Sage of Six Paths' power surged through him. Truth-Seeking Orbs floated behind him in a ring of black light, and the staff in his hand gleamed faintly beneath the moon. His hair had turned from black to white, his robes snapped in the gale raised by his chakra, and the Rinne Sharingan opened on his forehead, nine Tomoe slowly turning within its crimson iris.

After decades of plotting, he had finally reached the pinnacle of the world.

From the boy skipping stones by the river in the Warring States Era, to meeting Hashirama, founding the Hidden Leaf Village, deciphering the shrine's stone tablet, battling Hashirama at the Valley of the End, and waiting alone in the darkness underground for decades—every step he had taken had led to this moment.

The light of Infinite Tsukuyomi had already enveloped the land. The God Tree's branches coiled around every living person, sinking them into an eternal dream.

The war was over. The hatred was over. The pain was over. He had created a perfect world.

A spasm of pain tore through his chest.

Madara's body stiffened.

He lowered his head.

A black hand had pierced his chest from behind, entering through his back and emerging from his breast. His blood stained its fingers, appearing dark and almost congealed beneath the blood moon.

"You..."

Black Zetsu's voice came from behind him. The being he had thought was the embodiment of his will, the "existence" he had created from his own shadow, pressed against his ear and spoke in a tone he had never heard before.

"You were wrong, Madara."

Black Zetsu's fingers slowly twisted inside his chest, as if tightening a screw.

"You're no savior. You never were. You're just a pawn, prepared to bring her back to life."

"Kaguya Otsutsuki..."

Madara's lips moved as he breathed the name.

"That's right."

Black Zetsu's voice held the satisfaction of a thousand years.

"My mother, the Progenitor of Chakra. You gathered the Tailed Beasts, awakened the Rinne Sharingan, and summoned the God Tree. Every step was part of the plan. Your ambition, your obsession, your Uchiha—"

The name forced its way out through the wound in his chest, mingled with blood.

"Uchiha..."

All his life, he had believed he was forging a path for the Uchiha Clan. From the boy in the Warring States Era who had said by the river, "I'll establish a new order," every step he took, he thought, would bring the Uchiha to the pinnacle of the world. The Uchiha, pushed aside by the Hidden Leaf; the Uchiha, suppressed by the Senju; the Uchiha, marginalized by the Will of Fire. He had wanted them to rule the world, so they would never have to bow to anyone again.

But now Black Zetsu was telling him the Uchiha had been pawns from the very beginning.

He was a pawn. Sasuke would be one too. The Uchiha Clan's pride and power, their Sharingan, Mangekyo Sharingan, and Rinnegan—all of it was a bridal gown prepared for someone else.

It wasn't that the Uchiha weren't strong enough.

It was that the Uchiha had never truly lived for themselves.

Madara had waited underground for decades over a lie. Shisui had given everything for the village. Sasuke had staked his entire destiny on Itachi for the sake of revenge. Every Uchiha had burned themselves up for something "else," only to discover, once they were reduced to ashes, that everything they had burned had become someone else's nourishment.

Black Zetsu pulled his hand from Madara's chest.

Madara's body gave way. Black chakra had already covered most of him, like a coffin crafted to fit him perfectly.

The wind roared in his ears. The blood-red moon spun in his vision.

He saw the God Tree's trunk receding into the distance, and the people tangled in its branches and sleeping on the ground drawing closer. He saw Black Zetsu standing atop the tree, its dark silhouette merging with the blood moon.

His consciousness began to blur.

But in the deepest part of his mind, something was taking shape.

A man who had been deceived for half his life, compressing his entire will into a single sentence at the final moment before death.

The sentence was not spoken aloud.

It was carved directly into the depths of his fading soul.

"Make the Uchiha great again."

Not as pawns. Not as tools. Not for anyone or anything else.

The Uchiha were the Uchiha.

The Uchiha's Sharingan should open for the Uchiha.

The Uchiha's power should be in the Uchiha's own hands.

His body fell at the roots of the God Tree. The blood moon cast his shadow across the blood-soaked earth. The Rinne Sharingan on his forehead slowly closed, and the last glimmer of crimson faded from its eye.

He died.

But he did not disappear completely.

That obsession, forged from the Sage of Six Paths' blood, the fury of betrayal, and the Uchiha Clan's resentment across a thousand years, peeled away from his fading soul and took the shape of a Tomoe.

A white bead, with a drop of dark red liquid sealed in its center—his blood, his obsession, his final words.

The Tomoe fell into the void.

The battlefield of the Ninja World War, the remains of the God Tree, the blood-red moon—all were torn apart, compressed, and left behind as it fell. It passed through the rifts between worlds, through realms even Kaguya Otsutsuki had never touched, and plunged into an unfamiliar sea.

The East Blue.

The waves carried it, pushing it toward an unknown destination.

It drifted for a long time—a month, two months, half a year—until one day, the tide swept it onto the beach of a small island.

A boy with flaxen hair was gathering seashells on the beach after the tide receded. His name was Roy. He pried the Tomoe from the sand and held it up to the sunset.

"What's this?"

"I'll take it home and show Pops."

He tucked the Tomoe into his pocket and walked toward town beneath the setting sun.

He had no idea what the Tomoe held. He didn't know where it had come from, how it would change his fate, his father's and his three siblings' fates, or the future of three generations of an ordinary family on this nameless island.

He knew nothing.

He had simply found a Tomoe.

It swayed gently in his pocket with each step. The dark red glimmer at its center—Six Paths Madara's blood—shone once in the sunset, then fell silent.

But that obsession remained.

"Make the Uchiha great again."