In the Abandoned Temple grounds, rain beat against broken stone statues and crumbling columns, its echoes hollow and forlorn. The air was heavy with stale dampness and an indescribable sense of oppression mingled with faint chakra fluctuations.
Sasuke followed that familiar chakra presence, seemingly branded into the depths of his soul, step by step into the ruins. The dark power within him grew increasingly restless as he drew closer. Like a shark scenting blood, it battered the embankments of indra's chakra within his chakra pathways, bringing waves of tearing pain and seductive whispers in his mind. His knuckles whitened around the Kusanagi Sword, and his Sharingan gleamed a dangerous red in the dim light as he fixed his gaze on the entrance to a relatively intact main hall.
Just as he was about to step into the main hall-
"You came after all, Sasuke."
A calm, detached voice drifted from the shadows inside the hall, seeming to pierce the curtain of rain and time itself.
Sasuke stopped dead, every muscle in his body tensing at once. That voice... it had echoed through his nightmares countless times, bearing the source of all his hatred and pain!
A figure in an Akatsuki cloak slowly emerged from the shadows. Uchiha Itachi stood there, his expression utterly calm. His deep black eyes-his Sharingan inactive-regarded Sasuke as though he were looking at a wayward child, or perhaps... a work nearing completion.
There was no immediate attack as expected, no hysterical demands for answers, only a confrontation so calm it was suffocating.
"Uchiha... Itachi!" Sasuke forced the name through clenched teeth. His towering hatred nearly broke free of the cage of reason, and the dark power within him pulsed with something like delight. He could feel it feeding on his hatred.
"It seems you've obtained something...