NNT -- 12:00pm -- Territory of the wind -- Kingdom of Rōran
The desert had this way of making everything feel... hollow. Like the world was holding its breath.
Minato Namikaze wiped sweat from his forehead as he crouched on the crumbling watchtower, squinting through the heat shimmer at Rōran's ancient spires. Four days he'd been here now, and the place still gave him the creeps. Not the obvious kind—not like walking through a graveyard at midnight. This was different. Subtler. Like there was something massive sleeping just beneath his feet, and every step might be the one to wake it up.
"Just a recon mission," he muttered, echoing the briefing he'd gotten back in Konoha. "Map the chakra flows. See if the rumors are worth investigating." He snorted. "Right."
The ruins weren't dead. That much he'd figured out on day one. They *breathed*—not literally, but... hell, maybe literally. The stones seemed to expand and contract in rhythm with something he couldn't quite identify. And that pulse, that weird vibration he'd been feeling in his bones for the past two nights? It was getting stronger.
The sky above Rōran started to change while he was thinking about it.
At first, Minato thought it was just his eyes playing tricks on him. The sun looked... dimmer somehow. Not like clouds were blocking it—there weren't any clouds. More like someone had thrown a heavy blanket over the whole desert, muffling the light. The air went from dry and scorching to thick and electric, like the moment before lightning strikes.
His cloak stirred in a wind that didn't feel quite right. Too warm. Too... alive.
"What the hell..." he whispered, and then felt stupid for whispering. There was nobody around to hear him anyway.
But that wasn't true, was it? Down in the marketplace, he could see people stopping mid-conversation, looking up at the sky with confused expressions. A woman selling herbs had gone perfectly still, her hands frozen around a bundle of something purple. The baby on her back wasn't crying exactly—more like... whimpering. Like it knew something the adults didn't.
Then the ground started to shake.
Not a tremor. Not an earthquake. Something else. Something that seemed to start from the very center of the city and spread outward like ripples in a pond. Minato felt it in his teeth, in his chest, in places he didn't have names for.
"Oh, shit," he breathed. "Oh, this is really not good."
--
The first scream came from somewhere near the old temple.
Minato was moving before he'd consciously decided to, leaping from rooftop to rooftop as chaos erupted below. People were pouring out of buildings now, some carrying children, others clutching possessions they probably couldn't even remember grabbing. The smart ones were already running for the city gates. The not-so-smart ones were standing around gawking at the temple complex, where purple and gold light was starting to bleed through the cracks in the ancient stones.
"Mama, what's happening?" a little girl cried, tugging on her mother's robe.
"I don't—I don't know, sweetheart. Just... just stay close to me, okay?"
An old man with a cane was shaking his head, muttering something about "old stories" and "chakra myths," but even he was backing away from the temple. Smart guy.
The light was getting brighter. And with it came a sound that made Minato's skin crawl—not quite a roar, not quite a scream. More like the sound of something ancient and terrible stretching after a very long sleep.
Then the temple tower cracked right down the middle.
Stones the size of boulders tumbled down the steps, crushing market stalls and sending people diving for cover. The purple-gold light was pouring out of the fissure now, and it wasn't just light—Minato could feel it from here, could taste the metallic tang of raw chakra in the air.
And standing in the heart of it all, completely untouched by the destruction, was a figure Minato had hoped he'd never see again.
Tall. Cloaked. Those dead, feline eyes that seemed to look right through you.
"Raghoul," Minato whispered, and the name felt like poison on his tongue.
The screaming got louder.
---
Raghoul couldn't hear the chaos around him. Didn't want to. The only sound that mattered was the one inside his head—that deep, thrumming pulse that had been calling to him for weeks. Ever since that night in the Ōmyōji crypt when he'd felt something vast and ancient brush against his consciousness.
Finally, he thought, stepping into the blazing chakra light. Finally, I can see it clearly.
The Dragon Vein. Not some myth, not some legend passed down by old fools who didn't understand what they were talking about. It was *real*, writhing beneath the city like a living thing, pure chakra given form and substance. It was beautiful. It was perfect.
It was his.
The energy licked at his skin as he walked deeper into the light, and where it touched him, he felt... more. Stronger. Like he'd been living his whole life with weights strapped to his limbs and had finally cut them free. Most people would have been incinerated instantly by this much raw chakra. But Raghoul wasn't most people.
"I've been caged long enough," he said, though there was no one to hear him. His voice was calm, conversational, like he was discussing the weather. "By the clans. By tradition. By small minds who can't see what's possible." The Dragon Vein's energy wrapped around him like eager pets, and he smiled. "But not anymore."
His chakra flared—not the usual blue or red, but something else entirely. Deep violet shot through with veins of gold, colors that seemed to hurt to look at directly. The ground beneath his feet cracked and began to rise, lifting him higher as the ancient power flooded through him.
From his perch on a distant rooftop, Minato extended his sensory field and immediately wished he hadn't. The chakra signature coming off Raghoul was... wrong. Not just powerful—Minato had felt powerful chakra before. This was something else entirely. Like staring into the heart of a star. No human should have been able to contain that much energy, let alone use it.
But Raghoul wasn't just containing it. He was drinking it.
"He's not here to destroy the city," Minato realized with growing horror. "He's here to become it."
----
The panic spread like wildfire.
Guards were shouting orders that nobody could hear over the screaming. Mothers clutched their children and ran for the gates. Old men who hadn't moved faster than a shuffle in years were suddenly sprinting down alleyways. The lucky ones had already made it to the outer walls. The unlucky ones...
"Help! Somebody help me!" A woman was trapped under a fallen beam, her leg twisted at an angle that made Minato's stomach turn. Her husband was trying frantically to lift the debris, but it was too heavy, and the purple light from the temple was getting brighter by the second.
In the royal palace, advisors were screaming at each other about evacuation routes and emergency protocols. Someone mentioned the Queen, but nobody seemed to know where she was. Some said she'd fled. Others claimed she was in the temple, trying to seal the Dragon Vein herself.
"Doesn't matter!" one of them shouted. "Nothing matters except getting out of here before—"
His words were cut off by another rumble from the temple. This one was stronger, and it sent cracks racing through the palace walls.
Sandstorms were brewing on the horizon—impossible, unnatural storms that seemed to be fleeing from the city rather than approaching it. Even the desert itself wanted nothing to do with what was happening here.
Minato watched it all from his vantage point and felt something cold settle in his chest. He should run. Should get back to Konoha and report what he'd seen. This wasn't a job for one person—hell, he wasn't even sure it was a job for an entire army.
But when he looked down at the people below—at that woman still trapped under the beam, at the children crying for parents who might already be dead, at the old couple helping each other toward the gates with trembling hands—he found he couldn't move.
Damn it.
----
Minato landed in the square between the fleeing civilians and the approaching destruction, kunai already in his hands. It was stupid. It was probably suicide. But he couldn't just watch.
"Raghoul!" he called out, surprised by how steady his own voice sounded.
The figure in the purple-gold light stopped. Turned. Those terrible eyes fixed on Minato, and for a moment, the world went very, very quiet.
Raghoul looked... amused. Not surprised, not angry. Just mildly entertained, like he'd encountered an interesting insect.
"The Yellow Flash," he said, his voice carrying easily across the square despite the chaos. "I was wondering when you'd show up. Though I admit, I expected more of you."
Minato felt his chakra before he saw it move—a tidal wave of wrongness that made every instinct he had scream in terror. This wasn't just power. This was something fundamental, something that belonged in the spaces between reality.
"You need to stop," Minato said, knowing even as he said it how pointless the words were. "These people—"
"These people are insects." Raghoul's smile was patient, almost kind. "They live. They die. They're forgotten. But this—" He gestured to the Dragon Vein's light. "This is eternal. This is evolution."
Minato took a step back without meaning to. His body was making the decision for him, every cell screaming that this was a predator too large to fight, too fast to escape.
"I'm not here to destroy them," Raghoul continued conversationally. "Destruction is... crude. Inefficient. I'm here to transcend them. To become something greater than any of us imagined possible."
The ground beneath his feet was floating now, chunks of stone and earth suspended in the violet-gold chakra like they weighed nothing. The air itself seemed to bend around him.
"You should run," Raghoul said, and for just a moment, his voice sounded almost regretful. "I remember what it was like to be... limited. It's not your fault you can't understand."
Minato's legs felt like water. His hands were shaking. He was fast—faster than anyone had ever been—but speed wouldn't help him here. Nothing would help him here.
Then the air behind Raghoul cracked like breaking glass.
----
The newcomer landed in a crouch, artificial chakra limbs extending from his spine like mechanical spider legs. Smoke hissed around his feet, and his laugh was just a little too high, a little too wild.
"Well, well," Mukade said, straightening slowly. "Looks like I found the right party after all."
Raghoul turned, and for the first time since this whole nightmare began, he looked genuinely surprised. "You. I thought I'd killed you already."
"You thought wrong." Mukade's grin was unhinged. "Amazing what a little time travel can do for one's health."
Minato didn't wait to hear the rest of the conversation. His fingers were already flying through hand seals, chakra gathering around him in preparation for Flying Raijin. This was his chance—probably his only chance.
A golden flash filled the square.
When it faded, he was gone.
Behind him, Raghoul was already dismissing Mukade with the kind of casual indifference you'd show a mosquito. Interesting timing, but ultimately irrelevant. The Dragon Vein still pulsed beneath the city, still called to him. And he had only just begun to answer.
---
Minato didn't stop running until Rōran was just a purple glow on the horizon behind him. His hands wouldn't stop shaking. His vision kept blurring. But he kept moving, kept putting distance between himself and that thing that used to be human.
He'd have to report this. Had to warn them. But how do you explain something like that? How do you tell people that one of their own had found a way to become a god?
Back in the ruins of Rōran, the few survivors who'd witnessed the confrontation huddled in whatever shelter they could find. For a moment—just one brief, shining moment—they'd thought the blonde shinobi might actually win. Someone had come to help them. Someone was going to fight the monster.
But when those dead eyes had turned toward their would-be savior, when that terrible presence had focused on him like the weight of a falling mountain...
He'd run. Just like everyone else.
They didn't blame him. How could they? You don't fight something like that. You just try to survive it.
In the center of the city, Raghoul stood amid the wreckage of the temple, arms outstretched toward the Dragon Vein's pulsing heart. Mukade was still ranting about something—revenge, time, the usual nonsense—but Raghoul wasn't really listening.
The blonde boy would be back eventually. They always came back, these heroes. With questions, with reinforcements, with desperate plans and noble intentions. And they'd all fail, just like this one had.
The Dragon Vein had so much more to offer, and Raghoul had only just begun to drink.
Somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled across a cloudless sky.
This was only the beginning.