Fugaku closed his eyes. Two streams of cloudy tears silently slid down his aged cheeks.
"If Yao... hadn't returned in time and stopped him..."
"I... I would have died at my own son's hands."
"The Uchiha Clan... would have been utterly wiped out in that conspiracy."
As his words fell,
not a single voice of doubt remained throughout Naka Shrine.
All that remained was fury erupting like a volcano.
"Beast!"
"He wanted to kill us, and he even dared lay hands on his own father!"
"He doesn't deserve the Uchiha name!"
"No... that's not true!"
"Father is lying! You're all lying!"
Sasuke struggled desperately, his young face flushed red as tears streamed down like beads from a broken string.
"My brother... he wouldn't do something like this! He absolutely wouldn't!"
He looked at his father in the wheelchair, at the savage-faced clansmen around him, and finally at Uchiha Yao on the platform, as cold and aloof as a deity.
He didn't believe it.
He didn't believe a single word.
This had to be a dream.
A nightmare where everyone had joined forces to bully him and his brother.
"Release Sasuke."
Uchiha Yao's calm voice suddenly rang out.
The two jonin holding Sasuke were briefly stunned, but they immediately let go.
No Uchiha dared disobey the clan head's orders.
The moment he was free, Sasuke rushed onto the platform without a thought for anything else.
He had to get the truth.
He had to hear the answer from his brother's own mouth.
Uchiha Yao quietly watched it all unfold.
Only by tearing apart that false warmth with his own hands and laying the cruelest truth bare before him could he achieve the most complete destruction.
He would make Uchiha Itachi watch with his own eyes as the last glimmer of light