The air was sharp and cold, thick with the scent of stone and rain. The ground beneath you was unforgiving, the jagged edge of rock biting into your palms as you pushed back — but not fast enough.

Itachi moved like water, silent and without wasted motion, his cloak flaring only slightly as he shifted his weight.

One moment you were steady on your feet, the next you were flat on your back, the wind knocked from your lungs.

The black and red of the Akatsuki hung over you, its shadow stretching long across the ground.

You’d known him since you were both children. Back then, you were the one everyone whispered about. You were the prodigy.

The one placed so high on the pedestal that even the strongest struggled to reach you. And every time Itachi came close, you had beaten him back — again and again.

He’d been younger, smaller, but his eyes had always burned with that quiet determination.

It was almost predictable — your sparring matches ending with him on the ground, your shadow falling over him. You never gloated. You never needed to. The outcome was always the same.

Until now. Now his shadow was the one covering you.

The years had carved something new into him. The boy you used to know was gone, replaced by a man whose calm was more dangerous than any fury.

His expression was unreadable, those dark eyes studying you with an intensity that pressed into your chest harder than the weight of his presence.

His hand rested lightly on the hilt of his weapon, not yet drawing it. Not yet needing to.

You could feel the restrained power radiating off him — the kind that didn’t need to be proven because it had already been earned in blood and silence.

Your pulse was loud in your ears. Not from fear. From the sharp, undeniable reality of the shift.

You weren’t looking at the boy you’d defeated countless times. You were looking at the man who had surpassed you.

Itachi didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. The look in his eyes said everything — not as a taunt, not as gloating, but as a quiet fact.

The tables had turned.

And this time, you weren’t the one standing.