To me, he seemed like the sort of monster stories were written about.
The kind that lurks not in shadows, but in noon suns, wearing humanity like an ill-fitted mask. Whose footprints filled with blood no matter how lightly they fell.
His hair was like flame, and his skin, streaked with blood. Cold green eyes that burned like pits of malice.
Nothing I said or attempted could affect him, nothing Shinpachi tried could reach him, and nothing Shiori had done could stop him.
It's no surprise I learned all the wrong lessons from that night — about mercy, about strength, about what it means to be human.
Or perhaps that is not entirely true, and the lessons weren't wrong, just bitter medicines I wasn't ready to swallow.
In any case, that night left me with a reminder I have never been able to shake.
犠
牲
20 — SACRIFICE
THERE WAS BLOOD in his eyes, and dust too.
It caked his lashes, and clung to the corner of his mouth. He didn't care.
Naruto knelt in the middle of the desolation, the world around him reduced to charred wood, melted metal, and silence. Shinpachi was unmoving, but if he himself was alive, then the other boy had to be too. His gaze was fixed on two spots: the wreckage where Aiko had stood, all her laughter and unrelenting optimism snuffed out in an instant; and the still, broken body of Shiori, who was supposed to be invincible. The hands that had guided him through the mainland's logograms with precise care now sprawled in unnatural angles, pale and cold as ash.
His own trembled. Nails biting into his palms until warm blood seeped out, and that blood dripped onto the wreckage.
"Why—" The word cracked in his throat, a raw thing. "What the hell?"
No one answered. Of course, no one answered.
Tenjin stood motionless beneath the moon's cold scrutiny, a statue carved from shadow and certainty.
Naruto's breath came fast, erratic, and his chest felt tight as though some dark hand had wrapped its fingers around his ribs and squeezed.
"That's what we are, isn't it?" Tenjin asked evenly. His voice was calm, detached, like he was commenting on the weather. "Stand proud, shinobi. You are hereby baptized."
The world condensed to white noise and thunder — whether from the wind or his own heart, Naruto couldn't tell anymore. Time stretched like cold honey, making each moment crystallize with terrible clarity: Tenjin's shadow falling across Shiori's broken form, his movements carrying a horrible gentleness, as though she were merely sleeping, and not dead by his hand.
The crimson scarf settled around her neck like a wound reopening, its ends catching the night air in a final, defiant dance as Tenjin cast her into the endless, dark sea below.
She fell with the grace of a star returning to the void, the scarf streaming behind her like a trail of blood across the sky.
Shiori's voice surfaced from the depths of memory, each word precise and measured, as though she were still trying to teach him one final lesson. The image struck him with painful clarity: her sitting cross-legged in the airship room's morning light, that same crimson scarf coiled around her like a sleeping dragon, her eyes holding that mix of steel and kindness that had defined her.
A pleasant hope, or a dream, it might be. But if it spurs even a shred of growth, then my work here is done.
His lips twisted into a grimace, his vision blurring. He hated the words — her words — almost as much as he hated himself. Growth? Out here? What room was there for that? Shiori had believed in all that, and now she was dead.
And Aiko—
Do you ever think about how small we are? Up here, it feels like the sky could swallow us whole.
Aiko had taken a liking to him for reasons he could never understand, had believed his half-thought lies, and told him about her life, her hopes, her fears. Now there was nothing left of her but a smoldering crater.
They're dead because of me.
The thought slithered into his mind, venomous and cold, coiling tighter and tighter around his heart.
I suppose we can just become so good they will allow us to bring our family there, someday.
His breath hitched.
No matter where your path leads you, or how much I may disagree... I'll always be proud of you.
A low, guttural sound escaped him. It grew, swelling into a howl that tore out of his throat and echoed across the ruin. The sound wasn't human, or perhaps it was simply an extreme — it was raw, jagged pain, the kind that didn't fit inside a person but spilled out anyway, shattering them piece by piece.
Naruto's fingers tangled in his hair, pulling, pulling, as though pain might drown out the guilt.
He saw them everywhere. Aiko's bright eyes, wide with that horrible, understanding emptiness as the explosion swallowed her whole. Shiori's composed expression twisting into something fragile, human, in those final moments before her shield failed.
Karin. His father. Red eyes. Faces, so many faces, blurring together in a tide of blood and silence.
He wasn't fast enough. He wasn't strong enough.
"I can't—I can't—" The words shattered against his teeth, fragments of sound too sharp to swallow.
His fingers clawed at the ground, each handful of dust and ash a desperate attempt to anchor himself to something — anything — solid.
But reality kept slipping away, fracturing into snapshots of horror: the wet gleam of his kunai catching moonlight, the way screams turned to whispers turned to silence, the precise moment when resistance gave way beneath his blade.
The face of the man he'd killed — because there was no "rather sure" about it anymore — burned behind his eyelids, a photograph developing in reverse, features blurring into the universal mask of death.
He tried to wrap himself in the cold comfort of justification: they were enemies, they would — might — have killed him, this was survival. But the lies crumbled like ash on his tongue, knowing he was meant to be captured, leaving only the copper taste of truth: he had crossed a line that could never be uncrossed.
We know you. There's no way you won't become a great shinobi. Or whatever else you would choose to become there.
Naruto's body shook with sobs he couldn't control, couldn't stop. He wanted to scream again, to rage against the world, but what was the point? All he felt was emptiness, a hollow ache that spread through him like poison.
Above him, Tenjin shifted. "Death changes us all," he said quietly. "The question is how."
A stilling.
Naruto's head barely lifted.
Tenjin's expression remained impassive, the gleam in his eyes steady under the moonlight. "Your pain can become something else. Something useful." He knelt down, his voice dropping to almost a whisper. "I can show you how."
Naruto stared at him, the words grinding against the raw edges of his mind. His hands trembled harder now, his nails digging deeper into his skin.
"You don't get to say that," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Not when—" His throat clenched.
Tenjin shrugged, unbothered. "The path of a shinobi isn't an easy one. You knew that." He paused, studying Naruto's face. "There are things you should know. About your mother. About why she really—"
Naruto lunged at him.
He didn't care if it made sense, didn't care about the outcome. All he knew was the boiling rage that overtook the crushing grief, giving him something — anything — to fight against.
Tenjin didn't flinch. His hand flicked in an arc, and the ground between them cracked with a sharp hiss of displaced air. Then it detonated, stopping Naruto short. He staggered back, breath coming fast and shallow.
"Don't say her name," Naruto spat.
"As you say. You're breaking," Tenjin said softly. "I can see it. The weight of it all, crushing you piece by piece." He gestured at the devastation around them. "This moment — it changes people. Some go mad. Some give up. Some throw themselves into death, hoping it'll wash away the guilt. And some…" He shook his head. "No, I don't think you're ready."
Naruto's shoulders shook, but he couldn't look away. There was something there, something ancient and terrible in its understanding. Something that was perhaps so insane it had looped back into sanity.
Tenjin tilted his head, looking almost serene. "You don't have to keep it, you know," he said softly, his voice slipping into something gentler. It was like oil on water, smooth, but with an undertone of something dark and slick.
Naruto's eyes narrowed, his hands still trembling. Perhaps in disbelief. "What?"
Tenjin extended his hand, palm up, like a father offering comfort to a child. "I can help you forget. Not everything — some scars serve a purpose. But the sharp edges, the pieces that are flaying you alive right now? Those can be reshaped.
"I can take these fragments of yourself and forge them into armor instead of shrapnel. Something stronger. Something that bends but never breaks."
The offer hung in the silence between them.
"You..." Naruto's voice cracked. "You fucking lunatic — You killed them!"
"And I'll kill again. So will you. That's our nature." Tenjin's lips curved into a slight smile. "But I can teach you to understand it. To master it. Everything I know about sealing, about the true nature of chakra, about the secrets the villages keep buried..." He paused. "Even the reasons for your parents' fate."
There was a long silence.
"What?" Naruto asked numbly.
"Oh?" Tenjin raised an eyebrow, amused. "Caught your attention, have I? You cannot truly believe a woman as spirited as Kushina used to be would lose all hope simply because her husband died and she fell terribly ill."
There was a sound like a beating drum, and it took Naruto a moment to understand it was his own heart.
"What…" he muttered.
Tenjin wagged his finger. "That is not how we do things. Come with me, willingly. There is no need for more violence, now that Master is dead. No need for the usual lies and secrecy." Seeing Naruto's face, his grin broadened. "Let us speak freely."
Tenjin simply waited for his answer like that.
Before Naruto could begin making sense of his raging thoughts, a crimson streak slashed through the air. Fast and deliberate, soaring toward Tenjin.
The spell card struck the ground at his feet with a sharp crack, glowing as fiery seals unraveled and spread in an intricate pattern. Tenjin jumped back leisurely, a flicker of amusement breaking his composure.
"Bakufu?" he asked. "Perhaps it truly is time for the Gakusha-ke to update their traditions."
He waved his hand and the card didn't detonate.
"You're standing there," Shinpachi said, his voice quiet but unyielding, "talking about remaking him. About teaching him." He gingerly stepped forward, his fists clenched at his sides, trembling not from fear but from suppressed fury. "But all I see is someone who keeps killing needlessly."
Violence and grief. Both were as alive in Shinpachi's voice as the tension in the night air.
He moved deliberately, placing himself next to Naruto. His stance lacked polish, by Shinpachi's standards — Shiori would have scolded him for it — but the fire in his eyes could have burned through steel.
"Karin died." His words dropped like stones in a still pond. "Lady Shiori died. You won't take him too."
Tenjin's face betrayed only mild curiosity, though there was a glimmer of something else — interest, perhaps, or amusement. "And what do you plan to do about it, boy?"
In one swift motion, Shinpachi drew a spell card from the pouch, its surface covered in shimmering, delicate ink.
The spell card ignited in Shinpachi's hands, its designs bleeding golden light into the night air. Seals burst outward, forming a spinning wheel of ancient symbols that hummed with barely contained power. Each glyph pulsed like a heartbeat, their edges sharp enough to cut shadows.
"Do you think a different sort of toy will change anything?" Tenjin's voice carried that same terrible amusement.
Shinpachi's answer came through gritted teeth. "They're not toys." The seals around him blazed brighter, responding to his fury. "They're our craft."
The glyphs collapsed inward, folding reality into a single point of light. Then they erupted. Golden energy lanced forward, splitting the air with a sound like tearing silk. The beam carried enough force to vaporize steel, its wake leaving afterimages burned into Naruto's vision.
The beam hit.
It was a bright flare, a cascade of raw power exploding outward, a blinding light that swallowed both figures.
When the light faded, Tenjin hadn't moved an inch. One hand raised lazily, he waved away wisps of steam like an annoyed host dealing with unwelcome smoke. Not a single hair was out of place.
"Violent Tear." He said the name like someone commenting on a child's drawing. "You've mastered it well for your age. Better than most prodigies." His lips curved into that infuriating smile. "Better than I was, even. But you're still disappointing. Still reaching for the heavens with a ladder made of reeds."
Shinpachi didn't waste breath on a response. His fingers had already found another card, this one heavier, its grooves deeper and darker.
Before Tenjin was even done speaking, the metal deck shuddered, then cracked. A burst of golden chains erupted from below, spiraling upward like serpents striking from the dark, each gleaming link etched with seals meant to bind. They wrapped around Tenjin in a flash, locking his arms and legs in place, the glyphs glowing brighter as they tightened their hold.
For the first time, Tenjin's expression shifted. It wasn't fear — no, that would have been too much to hope for. But there was a flicker of acknowledgment.
"Adamantine Sealing Chains." The words rolled off his tongue like he was savoring them. "And they're not even yours. How... curious."
Sweat beaded on Shinpachi's forehead as he forced more power into the chains. His hands trembled with effort, but his voice carried steel when he spoke. "You won't take anyone else tonight." The words rang out, raw and absolute. "I won't let you."
Naruto's stomach twisted. The chains weren't Shinpachi's; they couldn't be. He knew that. His mother had wielded them once, long ago, with effortless grace. Maybe, in another life, he would have been able to as well.
"A borrowed trick." Tenjin tested the chains with an almost gentle tug. "One use only, I would wager." His eyes glittered with amusement. "I could guess who gave them to you. But mysteries have their own charm."
And from his reaction, Naruto knew at once.
"One time will be enough," Shinpachi spat, his voice cracking. His face was a portrait of defiance and despair, glistening tears carving silent lines down his cheeks. His hands stilled, clenched into fists so tight the knuckles turned white. The chains tightened in response, their glow intensifying, a visible strain on his chakra reserves.
"I'm done." Shinpachi's voice broke through the mounting hum, raw and edged with fury. "Done watching people die. Done watching horrible things happen because I'm not strong enough. Not again. I won't let anyone else I care about be—"
"Are you quite finished?" Tenjin asked.
For a moment, everything stilled.
Then the chains shuddered.
Naruto's eyes widened as he saw it clearly — the faint distortion rippling across Tenjin's body, like a heat haze on a summer's day. The golden light of the chains flickered, dimmed, and then failed altogether as they began to dissolve into motes of fading light.
"No." The word escaped Shinpachi like a dying breath. His legs buckled as he stumbled back, the spent sealing card crumbling between his fingers. "That's—No!"
"Oh, Shinpachi." Tenjin's voice dripped false sympathy. "Your conviction is admirable. Truly. But conviction, like hope," the shroud around him pulsed brighter, "is such a small thing."
Horror dawned in Naruto's mind as he understood. Tenjin's barrier wasn't deflecting the chains — it was unmaking them. Negating their very existence with methodical precision.
"Shinpachi, stop!" Naruto shouted, stepping forward and grabbing his friend's arm. Shinpachi's chakra was draining rapidly, the lines of exhaustion carved into his face deepening with every passing second. "The chains aren't working! They can't!"
Shinpachi jerked away, eyes wild with desperation.
Naruto could guess what that subtle, terrible distortion radiating from Tenjin was. The chains didn't fail because they weren't strong enough. They failed because they couldn't exert their effect inside that barrier. Because that's what that heat haze was: a barrier.
The night air blew, and Tenjin took a deliberate step forward, his expression serene.
"I," Tenjin said, flicking his wrist, scattering the remnants of the chains like ash, "am pleasantly surprised. You are only boring, rather than disappointing."
Shinpachi collapsed. The sound of his knees striking the deck echoed like a funeral bell. The sealing card — his final hope, his last defiance — crumbled to ash between his fingers.
His shoulders shook with more than exhaustion. Each tremor carried the weight of every death, every failure, every moment they'd been too weak to change anything at all.
Naruto watched his friend break and saw his own reflection in the pieces. The same despair that had dragged him into that dark pit of helplessness, the same crushing realization that sometimes your best meant nothing at all.
But where Naruto had found Shinpachi's hand reaching down to try and pull him from that darkness, he saw his friend reaching into the void.
Tenjin took another step forward, his presence looming, vast and unshakable.
"It's over," he said simply, the words cutting through the din like a blade.
Naruto's fists clenched. Over? What about this was over?
The words burned in his ears, but he refused to let them take root.
He stepped in front of Shinpachi, blocking Tenjin's path. His heart pounded in his ears, his skin tingling with the residual energy in the air. Shinpachi's shallow breaths came in gasps behind him. Every instinct screamed for him to run, to find some way out. But there was nowhere to go.
No one was coming.
Naruto's gaze dropped to his own hands, trembling as they curled into fists. They felt too small, too weak. What could he do with them? He was just a child. A boy who had thrown away almost everything he had and had next to nothing to show for it. No chains, no secret weapon. Nothing.
He was alone.
Run, a voice whispered in his mind. You can't win this.
You can't leave him, came another voice, stronger, steadier.
The thought crystallized, sharp and clear as broken glass. It wasn't about Tenjin. It wasn't about victory or survival. It wasn't even about himself. It was about something far simpler — the line between what he could live with and what he couldn't.
And if he couldn't live with it, what was the point of living at all?
It was that invisible, fragile line between what he believed and what he still stood to lose. A line that could only hold if he stood firm and let it cut through him instead.
And he knew, with bone-deep certainty, that he couldn't live with leaving Shinpachi. Nor even trying to do so.
The trembling in his hands stopped. They relaxed, not in surrender, but in resolution.
The fracture that had been spreading through his soul — spider-web thin but diamond-deep — completed its journey. Not with the violence of shattering glass or crumbling stone, but with the quiet inevitability of a glacier calving. Years of loss, failure, and powerlessness had carved their channels through him, preparing him for this moment.
What emerged wasn't wisdom or strength, but understanding. Some lessons could only be learned through unmaking, and as the pieces fell away, what remained wasn't emptiness but clarity — sharp as the line where shadow meets light.
Naruto straightened, spine locking into place as that clarity poured through him like liquid steel.
"Sick of people dying," he echoed Shinpachi's words, feeling their weight settle over him like armor. The presence he'd always carried inside him shifted, heavy with purpose. With sacrifice.
The word wasn't a thought or a choice. It simply was, threading through every fiber of his being. Not grand or noble, but quiet. Simple. Inevitable.
The air around him changed, a subtle shift that raised the hair on his neck.
Tenjin's head tilted, curious as a cat watching a cornered mouse.
Naruto inhaled deeply, his chakra swelling and surging, but not in the way it had before. It wasn't a flood or a roar. It was a steady pull, something that resonated with the aching hollowness he'd carried for seemingly his whole life.
"I killed a man tonight," Naruto said, his voice steady.
Tenjin's eyes gleamed. "Yes."
"All these people died, too." Naruto's gaze swept over the destruction around them. "And maybe this is pointless."
His chakra flared, but it wasn't a flare of power — it was a purpose of sorts. He could feel it, a thread weaving itself through his core, binding his breath, his pulse, his very life into something larger. His vision sharpened, the world narrowing to a single, undeniable focus.
"I don't care what happens to me," Naruto said, his voice rising. "But I won't stand aside. And I will never accept to come with you either."
The vow might mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, though it felt like the most important truth he'd ever spoken. It wouldn't close the impossible gulf between himself and Tenjin.
Could he surprise a man who seemed untouchable? No.
But it didn't matter if Tenjin struck him down in the next breath. The alternative — watching Shinpachi live or die on this monster's whims, or be dragged into whatever hell awaited them — was unthinkable.
A sneer twisted Naruto's lips as he dropped into the Crashing Gale stance. His breath steadied despite the chaos, mind racing through every scrap of his arsenal.
He dropped into the Crashing Gale stance, his breath steadying despite the chaos, his mind racing through every scrap of his arsenal.
Tenjin sighed, dragging a hand through his hair. "...You could have said any words, and it had to be these—?"
"Well said," a voice called from above, smooth and sharp like a blade of ice slicing through the din. "I didn't take you for the eloquent type."
Something in that familiar, infuriating drawl made Naruto's blood freeze. Not the words themselves. Not even the glimpse of water he caught rising silently around Tenjin's feet like liquid mercury.
No, it was the tone, which ignited something primal in his gut.
Naruto moved before he thought, pure instinct taking over. He grabbed Shinpachi, pooling every shred of chakra into his legs. The metal beneath his feet cracked as he launched them across the airship's roof, barely stopping short of the void beyond its edge.
The world exploded.
Water erupted from within the ship's bones, not in gentle streams but in a roaring tidal wave that devoured everything in its path. The deluge swept away the space they'd occupied a heartbeat ago, and above it all, a winged shadow descended, vast and terrible, falling like an executioner's axe.
The impact hit like the wrath of an angry god.
The shockwave was immediate, a force that tore through the airship with the brutal indifference of a natural disaster, throwing the massive vessel off its course, and slamming Naruto as well as the barely-conscious Shinpachi to the ground. They tumbled across the roof as fire and steam erupted around them, painting the night in apocalyptic colors.
Naruto's ears rang, and the chaos around him muted to a low roar. His vision blurred, the edges darkening, but through the chaos he saw him — Tenjin, standing in the heart of destruction like a demon in his natural habitat, wearing that same damned grin.
"Are you two still alive, then?" Tenjin asked, his voice almost cheerful. "Both the slacker and my favorite?"
The words weren't meant for Naruto or Shinpachi.
"Guess we are," came another voice, this one low and even, with an edge that promised death.
Ryūjin rose from a pool of water as if the laws of nature were mere suggestions. Gone was the calm man, the patient guardian. This was something else — something that had shed its human skin to reveal steel and ice beneath. Each movement rippled with lethal grace as he flicked droplets from his fingers. "Hello, Tenjin."
A second figure landed with an impact that shook the very air. Of course.
The world had dissolved into primal elements: fire that painted the night in shades of fury, steam that writhed like lost souls seeking escape, and smoke that turned the air itself into a choking reminder of mortality.
Pure destruction. That's what it was: apocalypse rendered in miniature, genesis in reverse, a glimpse of how worlds might end. Flowing Moon's technique to cage a force of nature within walls of pure will; Kūten's sacrificial strike coming down like divine judgment, each technique perfectly aligned in their execution.
A memory pierced the chaos like sunlight through storm clouds: a lazy afternoon in the airship's room, learning Kyosei, watching Gojō slouch against his handmade practice dummy. His casual grin as he needled Ryūjin about their "embarrassingly outdated" combination techniques. Ryūjin's long-suffering sigh as he suggested that maybe, just maybe, if Gojō could stop destroying perfectly good shikigami, they might make actual progress.
They'd settled on something simple that day — a basic hammer-and-anvil strategy that Gojō, in his typical dramatic fashion, had christened "Tyrant Crush." Nagato had found it rather amusing. Shiori had just shaken her head.
That memory shouldn't have felt like a knife between his ribs.
It was barely days old, just another training session among countless others. But now he understood — every casual exchange, every half-serious bout, had been preparation for this moment. A dress rehearsal for this cataclysm, and he'd never even known the part he'd been cast to play.
Through the inferno, Gojō's familiar grin emerged. But this wasn't the playful smirk Naruto knew. This was something ancient and terrible—a war banner woven from teeth and hunger.
"You wanted the best," Gojō said, and even his voice had changed, becoming something that made Naruto's instincts scream of predators in the dark. His eyes blazed with that familiar, unsettling bloodlust, but now it had purpose. Direction. Intent.
"Well..." He let the word hang in the superheated air, knuckles cracking. "The best couldn't make it."
Power crackled between the three men like lightning seeking ground, or perhaps that moment between the bright flash and thunder. Tenjin's smile widened fraction by fraction, an apex predator recognizing its own kind. And Naruto knew what true power looked like — not just the overwhelming force Tenjin commanded, but the barely contained violence that lived in the men who now stood against him.
"So," Gojō's voice dropped to a temperature that made Naruto's bones ache. "Here's what you get."
i/MpRTLC : Threeway Split
i/MpRJXb : Extra — Neji: On a Good Night's Sleep
AN: Difficult one, for some reason...
Next chapter: Sealing of a Different Kind