Main World.
Winter, Year 29 of Konoha.
Rear camp, Valley of the End.
Night had fallen.
The light inside the tent was a ghastly white, making faces look like paper. Orochimaru stood before a crude wooden table, a list spread out before him. It was long, densely covered with names. Another stack lay beside his hand, all lists. Every sheet represented a person, every name a life.
Sarutobi Shinnosuke stood behind him, holding a cup of tea that had gone completely cold. He did not drink it, only held it. He knew these lists had arrived today. Lists of the fallen. Two thousand two hundred people, written down one by one. He recognized some of the names.
Sarutobi Seisen, his cousin, seven years older than him, nineteen this year.
Uchiha Reifu, from a collateral branch of the Uchiha Clan, twenty-two years old, recently married, with a wife who was still pregnant.
Hyuga Hakuto, a woman of the Hyuga Branch Family, nineteen years old, a medical ninja. She had been struck by Lightning Release while trying to save a wounded soldier. Even her body had not been found.
"Lord Orochimaru." Shinnosuke's voice was very soft.
"Mm."
"Were these people... all heroes?"
Orochimaru raised his head and looked at him.
"The living are living heroes. The dead are dead heroes. They are all heroes."
Shinnosuke fell silent for a moment.
"Then what is the difference between dead heroes and living heroes?"
Orochimaru put down his pen and leaned back in his chair.
"Dead heroes no longer have to fight. Living heroes have to keep fighting."
Footsteps sounded outside the tent. Light and steady. Orochimaru did not turn around. He recognized those footsteps. Hiruzen Sarutobi's footsteps. Hiruzen had walked all his life, and Orochimaru had listened all his life.
The flap lifted. Hiruzen