Tonight, Uchiha Sasuke was unusually irritable. It showed in the brutality of his hunting.
Another chunin disintegrated into dust within the dense mist, but not before cursing "Uchiha Itachi" with his last breath. That little detail pleased Sasuke—his Transformation Technique was flawless.
He recalled the strategy that the shadow had whispered to him. Sasuke's eyes darkened. The tactic was indeed ruthless—it struck directly at the heart of Konoha's leadership, killing not just people, but hope itself. A deep, surgical wound right at the root.
Konoha's trajectory had always been strange. Its peak strength was right after its founding. After that, everything declined. One by one, its most renowned warriors died mysteriously, defected, or abandoned the village and never returned. These days, Konoha was clearly running out of steam.
Of course, it wasn't just Konoha. The other major Hidden Villages were no better. It defied logic—history should've spiraled upward, not downward. It felt like some strange cultivation world where the further back you went, the stronger people got.
Only Uzumaki Naruto, in the future, would lead Konoha to new heights. Without him, the village might fall into irrelevance—or worse, drag the entire shinobi world down with it.
The shadow had once speculated that some force was slowly cooking the shinobi world alive, like frogs in warming water—subtly crushing the ninja class. But that wasn't the point. The point was Naruto.
"Kill him," the shadow had said. "Kill Naruto, and Konoha will never rise again." And Sasuke knew—when the shadow said something like that, he meant it. He truly wanted Naruto dead. He just... couldn't do it himself. Some unseen restriction held him back.
Even without Indra's influence, Sasuke couldn't bring himself to make the final decision. Two voices fought in his mind, constantly at odds.
"I told you—why waste energy on inner conflict when you could torment someone else instead? If you're feeling torn, set it aside. Go find something else... something fun," the shadow's seductive voice whispered in his ear.
Sasuke nodded without thinking. But he didn't know what counted as "fun" anymore. The Uchiha Massacre had choked off his ability to feel joy.
So, the shadow took him to someone. A strange man named Aburame Torune.
Sasuke dug through his memories and remembered—Torune had once served under Shimura Danzo. His body housed nano-sized poisonous insects.
In that moment, Sasuke's eyes changed.
Torune sensed the unfamiliar chakra and immediately released his insects to scout the surroundings.
"Who's there?"
A familiar silhouette emerged from the mist—a long cloak patterned with red clouds on black.
"Uchiha Itachi!" Torune's face twisted in shock. "Why have you returned to Konoha?!"
Even as he spoke, Torune attacked and sent a distress signal. Fighting Uchiha Itachi alone was madness—and he knew it.
"If I'm right, we'll be seeing a lot of the people you hate soon. What's your plan for them?" the shadow asked.
"Kill them."
"Tsk tsk. I thought you'd torture them for catharsis. I had the whole Ten Terrors lineup ready for you~"
While Sasuke and the shadow chatted like tourists on a stroll, Torune was gripped by horror. From his perspective, "Itachi" was talking to himself while surrounded by venomous insects—like some deranged lunatic.
Cold sweat trickled down Torune's face.
Has Uchiha Itachi really lost his mind? he wondered. The Uchiha were always unstable, and wiping out his own clan probably pushed him over the edge. Maybe now he regrets it. Maybe he's come back to kill Danzo?
Even as backup ROOT members arrived, Torune was still lost in paranoid fantasies.
...
Sasuke muttered, "Looks like Danzo didn't send anyone important. Just fodder."
The shadow replied, "That's expected. Inside Konoha, anything goes wrong, it's Hiruzen's problem. No need to waste his own people."
Sasuke said, "By now, the higher-ups probably know 'Itachi' is back, right?"
The shadow nodded.
"Good," Sasuke smiled.
As the words left his lips, the thin mist surrounding him suddenly turned into a thick, suffocating smoke that swept over everyone present.
When it cleared, they were all gone—completely vanished.
...
Cloudy in the morning, sunny by noon.
Just another day at the Ninja Academy for Sasuke. He went to class like usual. Not a single thing seemed off.
But inside the Hokage's office, chaos had already broken out.
Last night, the S-rank missing-nin Uchiha Itachi returned to Konoha. Torune had sent a distress signal, Danzo deployed a few expendables to assist, and then immediately reported the incident to Hiruzen Sarutobi.
Hiruzen had assumed Itachi returned with crucial intel and waited anxiously. But after hours passed, the only news was that Itachi—and every ROOT ninja chasing him—had vanished without a trace.
Shimura Danzo was furious. Torune had been one of ROOT's trump cards. A prodigy of the Aburame clan. Losing him was a massive blow.
ROOT and ANBU launched a sweeping search. At the scene, experienced shinobi followed the residual signs deep into the Forest of Death—and what they found there stunned even the most hardened veterans.
The corpses were skinned and arranged in a circle around a pit. Each body had been disemboweled, the tops of their skulls cracked open. Pale brains and viscera piled into the center like a grotesque pot of noodles. And worst of all—evidence suggested they had done it to themselves while still alive.
Torune was not among them.
ROOT and ANBU suppressed their rising panic and cleaned up the scene. Once the report came in, Danzo flew into a blind rage inside the Hokage's office.
Blind, because there was nothing he could do.
Konoha couldn't afford to chase Itachi. The village was in no shape to mount an operation of that scale. The only person who might possibly restrain Itachi was Sasuke—but who could say how much sway Sasuke really held over a man who had slaughtered their entire clan?
Danzo's solution? Throw Sasuke into ROOT, brand him with a cursed seal, and use him as leverage.
Hiruzen rejected the idea without hesitation. From his perspective, Itachi was unstable enough already. Pushing him could be disastrous.
Danzo's real goal, of course, was to provoke a direct confrontation between Hiruzen and Itachi. But Hiruzen could see through his petty manipulations and couldn't be bothered to call him out.
"For now, we have no other choice," Hiruzen said grimly. The bitterness in his voice was hard to hide. How had things come to this? One rogue shinobi was making the whole village look like fools.
Koharu Utatane and Homura Mitokado sighed heavily.
Truthfully, Konoha still had plenty of genin, chunin, and jonin. Numbers weren't the problem.
What they lacked were game-changers—those one-in-a-million powerhouses who could turn the tide with a single strike. With its central location, Konoha needed elite defenders at its gates—at the very least, someone on the level of Uchiha Shisui or Hatake Sakumo.
But lately, it felt like Konoha had been cursed.
The truly exceptional ones never seemed to live long.
----------------
Pls Drop some Power Stones
+60 chapters and support me on Patreon(.)com/Jixo