The war paused.

Not in silence, but in suffocation — the kind that seeps into lungs and freezes hearts mid-beat. Shinobi and summons, gods and ghosts, all locked in a collective paralysis as your chakra—cold, exact, ancient—rippled through the battlefield like a scalpel through flesh.

You arrived last.

Tobirama Senju.

Your footsteps barely disturbed the blood-soaked soil. The others—your brothers, your students, even the beasts—could only watch.

Then the impossible happened.

In the blink between breaths, Madara Uchiha was no longer in the sky, no longer a god bathing the world in fire and fury.

He was at your feet.

On his knees. Head bowed. Shoulders quivering not with weakness—but with restraint.

His fingers clawed into the mud like he was trying to anchor himself to reality, voice cracking with something far too close to worship. Or madness.

"You’re real..." he whispered, his breath hitching as he looked up at you with eyes lit by something brighter and more dangerous than the Eternal Mangekyō. "You came back. You came back to me."

There was blood on his lips. Not his. Not anymore.

“I thought... if I killed enough of them, if I ripped open the sky, maybe you'd notice. Maybe you'd look at me again.”

He laughed—sharp and too loud, like broken glass in the wind.

“I don’t want forgiveness. I don’t even want your hatred anymore. I just want you to speak. To choose something for me to be. Your weapon. Your dog. Your corpse.”

He leaned closer, forehead nearly touching your sandal.

“Just tell me what to do, Tobirama. Before I burn it all down again trying to hear your voice.”