No roads.No signs.Only instinct.
Raien walked through forgotten land.
Trees bent away from his path.
The grass wilted behind him.
It wasn't chakra.
It was something else.Older.Hungrier.
His left eye—dim.Flickering every few minutes.Like it was remembering something.
Raien had no map.
But his feet knew where to go.
Like he had walked this path before.
In another life.
Or maybe… another death.
Miles behind—
Someone was following him.
Silent.
Invisible.
But Raien already knew.
He just didn't care.
Not yet.
As the sun vanished—
He reached a cliff.
Below it… fog.
Thick.Alive.
And through it, a glimpse—
A stone gate.Half-buried.
Covered in vines and ash.
Raien stood still.
This was it.
His heart slowed.
But something else sped up.
His eye.
It blinked red.
Then black.
Then—
White.
A sharp stab.
Raien fell to his knees.
His hands gripped his face.
Teeth grinding.
It felt like his skull was splitting open.
Then—A whisper.
Not from outside.Not from inside.
From before.
"You've come back."
Raien's breath caught.
"We buried you. We killed you. Why are you still alive?"
The voice wasn't angry.
It was afraid.
Raien looked up.
His eye now fully white.
Pulsing.
Like it was reacting to the gate.
He stepped down the cliff path.
Closer.
The fog clung to his skin.
Slowed his steps.
Tried to turn him around.
But he didn't stop.
The gate was cracked.
No seals.No defense.
Just carvings.
Ancient.
Unreadable.
Until now.
Raien's eye translated.
Each symbol—
"Here sleeps the silence.""Here ends all voices.""Do not open."
He walked through anyway.
Inside—
The world changed.
No sound.
Not even his footsteps.
Not the wind.
Not his breath.
Not his heartbeat.
Nothing.
It was like sound itself had been erased.
The ground beneath was stone.
The walls bled black sap.
Every step felt like a scream he couldn't hear.
And at the end of the tunnel—A shrine.
But not to a god.
Not to a beast.
To an eye.
Floating.Suspended in pitch black.
Dead.
But watching.
Raien stared.
It stared back.
The moment lasted forever.
Then—
Raien's eye began to shake.
His entire body convulsed.
He hit the floor.
His back arched.
Mouth open—but no scream.
Because here, even pain had no voice.
And then—
His mind split.
He saw a world without chakra.
A world before shinobi.
Before Sage.Before Jutsu.
Before life.
Just war.
Endless.Cosmic.Nameless.
Entities that weren't human.Weren't beasts.
Eyes were currency.Eyes were weapons.Eyes were everything.
And among them—one rebelled.
Tore itself free.
Buried its power in the stream of reincarnation.
Waiting for a vessel.
Raien.
The accident.
The fracture.
The return.
He woke up.
Back in the shrine.
Still no sound.
Still no exit.
Only his eye—now fully awakened.
Red, white, and black.
Pulsing in three layers.
His heart synced with it.
And then—A pulse.
A wave burst out of his body.
The shrine cracked.
Stone shattered.
Fog split.
And sound returned.
A scream ripped out of him—
Raw.
Agonizing.
But alive.
Raien stood up.
His skin steaming.
Clothes torn.
But he was grinning.
Because now…
He understood.
Far away, in the hidden lab of Orochimaru—
A glass tube exploded.
Data scrolls caught fire.
The sensors melted.
Kabuto stumbled back.
"What… what just happened?!"
Orochimaru narrowed his eyes.
Licked his lips.
Then whispered—
"He found it."
In Konoha—
Tsunade dropped her cup.
Jiraiya froze mid-sentence.
Naruto sat up in bed, eyes wide.
Kurama roared in his mind.
"It's awake. The ancient one. The Eye That Remembers."
Back at the shrine—
Raien turned around.
He wasn't alone anymore.
The person following him stepped out.
A girl.Long black hair.Blank white eyes.
Hyūga.
But not normal.
Not Byakugan.
Something else.
She bowed slightly.
"You broke the seal," she said.
Raien didn't speak.
She walked closer.
Her hand glowing.
"Now I must test you."
Raien raised his hand.
Eye flickered.
"Try."
And they clashed.
Light.Silence.Then black.