Naruto's lips curled as he watched the united Iwagakure ninja below.
The will of stone?
Konoha had its will of fire, too.
Where leaves danced, fire would burn without end.
Its light would forever illuminate the village and allow new shoots to sprout.
It was a will imbued with the warmth of life and the weight of legacy.
It did not spring from some indestructible stone, but flowed through the bonds between people.
In Konoha, that will passed on in another form: through "burning."
When a ninja died, his family, disciples, friends, and everyone warmed by the fire of his life would quietly take up his unfinished dreams and convictions, carefully shelter those lingering embers, and rekindle them in their own ways.
Those tiny sparks might be faint, but as they passed from person to person, they gathered, intertwined, and grew.
In the end, countless acts of resolve and sacrifice, countless lives burning and passing on their flame, converged into the "will of fire" that illuminated Konoha's night sky and drove away the long winter.
It was about the tenderness of passing on a legacy, and the unwavering resolve to sacrifice.
Just as autumn's old leaves willingly withered and fell, breaking down into nutrients that quietly seeped into the earth, all so that new branches and leaves could grow stronger the following spring.
In the original story.
Perhaps only in the final moments of his life had Hiruzen Sarutobi truly touched the most bitter, most profound core of the will of fire.
Throughout his long rule, the great tree that was Konoha had slowly been eaten away by his excessive tolerance and compromises for the sake of old "bonds."
The conspiracies breeding in the shadows, the pointless infighting and sacrifices, were like a silent infestation, draining Konoha's strength until its