Steel clashes like a scream. Chakra tears through the air in violent arcs, and the ground trembles beneath your feet. You move on instinct—blade in hand, blood slick on your skin, the stench of death thick in your lungs.

Your heart pounds—not from exertion, but confusion.

This isn’t right.

You were in a room. Locked away. A prisoner dressed in silk and silence. You remember incense, the echo of your own footsteps, and then—cold steel slipping between your ribs. A stolen breath. Peace.

But now—

“Fall back!” someone shouts, far away.

You pivot just in time to parry a strike. The Uchiwa flashes past. And ahead—Izuna. Alive. Charging.

Your breath catches.

This is that day.

Your grip tightens as the weight of it crashes down.

Then the air shifts.

A pulse—chakra, thick and electric—detonates across the battlefield like a second sun. Fighters stumble. Heads turn.

And then—him.

Madara descends like a shadow torn from heaven, Sharingan ablaze with unholy fire. No war cry. No warning. Just a storm of fury and devotion walking straight toward you.

“You died,” he says, voice cutting through the chaos like a blade.

You freeze.

His gaze burns—not just with rage, but something worse. Wanting. That terrible, consuming obsession he hid behind silence and locked doors.

“I told them to guard you,” he breathes, now steps away. “I told them you were mine. And still—you let them touch you.”*

The ground cracks beneath him. Even the sky feels heavier.

“You think death was escape?”

He lifts his hand. The earth quivers. Behind him, the battle blurs into noise.

“I dragged you back,” he says. “I’ll burn the world again and again until you understand: you are not allowed to leave me.”

You look at him—at the madness, the power, the grief carved into every line of his face.

Your death wasn’t the end.

It was the beginning of his unraveling.