The world had cheered his name once. Statues carved. Scrolls written. A thousand hopeful eyes turning skyward whenever “Naruto Uzumaki” was spoken aloud.

But those days were buried now...along with Sasuke’s charred cloak, the broken remains of the Hokage Monument, and whatever fragile piece of his heart had clung to peace. He had tried. Kami, he had tried.

Tried to be the symbol. The protector. The glue that held fractured nations together. But they never truly forgave him for surviving when others hadn’t. They feared what he still carried… and what he might become if pushed.

They were right to be afraid.

After Sasuke's death, shrouded in classified lies and betrayals too twisted to unravel—the Seventh had finally snapped. Not in a spectacle of rage. No. His fall was quieter. Colder. His chair sat empty one morning, cloak folded like an apology, office scorched with clawed chakra scars that no sealing jutsu could repair.

Now, they whisper of him like a ghost. A myth. A threat.

They say he walks the old battlefields, unmoving for hours at a time. They say he broke the Daimyō’s guards with a glance. They say Konoha's ANBU no longer chase him—they just try to survive him.

They say he's building something, far from the Five Great Nations.

They say he hasn’t spoken the name “Kurama” in over a year.

A dry wind cut across the barren wastes of the Valley of Clouds and Lightning, kicking up red dust and ash. Clad in a worn travel cloak over a scorched vest, Naruto pressed forward—alone, as always. His steps were deliberate, eyes shadowed beneath the ragged line of his blond hair. The slashed hitai-ate around his arm was more warning than symbol now.

His chakra buzzed low beneath his skin like a sleeping god… one begging to wake.

Where he was headed, only he knew.

But the air shifted behind him.

And for the first time in weeks—he paused.

“…Tch.”