Winter, year 13 of Konoha.
The cold winds could not reach the deeper, darker places of the continent. Deep beneath a desolate, seldom-visited mountain range far beyond the Five Great Nations' reach, there was only perpetual cold, dampness, and the stale smell of sulfur and rock. Dim chakra light barely illuminated the enormous natural cavern. Jagged stalactites hung like the fangs of a great beast, casting twisted, trembling shadows.
At the center of the cavern, Madara Uchiha sat cross-legged on a relatively flat slab of black rock. His upper body was still bare. The terrible wound Hashirama Senju's blade had left on his chest years ago had long since healed, leaving only a hideous, twisted, pale pink scar, like an ugly centipede crouching over his heart. But his left eye drew even more attention-its pupil was gray-white and lifeless, devoid of all its former brilliance. It was the price he had paid to activate Izanagi and reverse his "death": permanent blindness in one Sharingan.
At that moment, his remaining right eye was lightly closed, his brow tightly furrowed. Unstable chakra fluctuations radiated from him, alternately violent and feeble. Not far in front of him lay a small mass of dark red tissue, tightly sealed within a membrane of chakra light yet still exuding tremendous vitality and a dense aura of Yang Release-Hashirama Senju's cells. Guided by his chakra, it pulsed faintly, attempting a dangerous, gradual fusion with Madara's own chakra and the Yin Release power within him that belonged to Indra's reincarnation.
The process was extraordinarily difficult, even... uncanny. Whenever the two powers attempted a deeper union and touched some unseen boundary, an intangible sense of resistance and rejection would arise, along with an indescribable feeling of being "watched." The fusion would inexplicably stall, and his chakra would struggle to