"Shisui, wait!"
Itachi's voice rang out, desperate, his footsteps quickening on the rocky cliff's edge.
But Shisui only turned slightly, his blood-soaked face half-hidden in shadow. Both of his eyes were gone. Hollow sockets wept crimson tears, a reminder of what had been taken—one by choice, the other by force.
"Don't try to stop me, Itachi," Shisui said softly. A faint, bitter smile curled on his lips despite the pain. "You're my best friend… the only one I can still trust."
The wind pulled at his cloak, carrying his final words into the grey sky.
"Protect the village… and the Uchiha name."
And then he stepped back.
His body tilted, falling into the void as mist swallowed him whole.
Gone.
Itachi stood frozen, the air deafening in its silence.
His Sharingan spun wildly. The three tomoe twisted and merged, becoming a single, sinister shape.
The Mangekyō Sharingan.
A curse born not from hatred, but from helplessness.
His voice came low, firm with the weight of a new vow.
"I will protect… the village."
And just like that, he vanished.
...
Deep within a hidden cave, drowned beneath the crashing roar of a waterfall, Uchiha Shisui moved.
Barely.
Every breath was a battle. Blood still lingered at the corners of his lips, and the world around him remained engulfed in shadow—not just because of the cave, but because his eyes were gone.
This wasn't genjutsu.
He had checked. Again and again.
The pain was too real. The emptiness in his sockets, the tight burn in his chest, the bitter taste of betrayal that clung harder than the iron tang of blood in his mouth.
And still—something felt… off.
Memories not his own had wormed into his skull.
Worlds that didn't belong to him.
Names he should not know.
Events that hadn't happened—yet.
Another life. Another timeline. Another him.
"I was... a student?" he whispered, voice hoarse.
A life without chakra. A world where his death was already written—watched, even—by faceless masses on glowing screens. A world where everything here was fiction. A story. A narrative crafted for entertainment.
It was madness.
And yet—every fibre of his body told him it was true.
"An anime?" he whispered.
Confusion furrowed his brow. "Naruto… Uchiha massacre…?"
The words spilled out like a hallucination he couldn't shake. In those memories, he wasn't a shinobi. He was a high school student. A normal boy. Watching his own life, his own death, play out on glowing screens.
A twisted smile formed on his face. Bitterness flooded him.
"So that's the path you chose, Itachi."
He shook his head slowly, as if laughing at a cruel joke only he could hear.
"Maybe I'm the one who forced your hand."
Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. He coughed.
"I thought giving you my eye would give you the strength to carry it all. But one eye can't change everything. One sacrifice isn't enough."
He had thought giving his eye to Itachi would save everything. That sacrificing himself would stop the bloodshed.
He was wrong.
His voice fell to a whisper.
"I was a fool to believe in the Hokage. No, not the Hokage. Hiruzen Sarutobi."
He spat the name like venom.
"'Will of Fire'… what a joke."
The weight of his choices crushed him like a landslide.
If he had received these memories earlier, before the fall, before the eye, he might have seen the game from above the board. He might have saved them all.
His fingers dug into the dirt.
Too late.
He laughed.
Low at first. Then louder. Unrestrained. Mad.
"Ha… haha… HAHAHA!"
It rang off the cave walls, echoing like a battle cry from the mouth of a ghost.
"I can't die like this."
His voice rose, more certain with each word.
"I won't vanish. Not like this. Not when I finally see the truth, even if I no longer see at all."
Blood clung to his jaw, but he pushed himself upright, breath ragged.
"I was a fool. But fools can learn."
His palm struck the floor, steadying himself.
"And I still draw breath."
Each word sharper now. Each syllable a promise.
"I won't die."
"Not now."
"Not like this."
"I will fight. Against fate. Against history. Against the shadows that twisted this world into a lie."
He raised his head.
Blind.
But unbroken.
"I will rewrite everything."
[GACHA IS AVAILABLE NOW]
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