The Hyuga Compound never knew fire.Only cold.Silence.Discipline.
And Hinata had embraced all of it.
She was no longer the girl who hesitated behind Neji's shadow.
No longer the soft-voiced heir who flinched when her name was called.
The Hinata of now bled alone, healed alone, and trained alone.
Three years had passed.
And no one called her weak anymore.
She woke before the sun.Always barefoot.Always in silence.Her hands bled through every rotation of the Gentle Fist drills.Her vision — the Byakugan — had extended to levels even the elders whispered about.360 degrees.20 kilometers.Precise enough to count heartbeats through stone.
And still she trained.
Neji had lost to her twice.Hanabi didn't spar anymore.Hiashi no longer questioned her title.
But she didn't care about any of that.
Not praise.
Not recognition.
Only one name kept her moving.
"Naruto."
She hadn't seen him.
Not once.
Not a whisper.
Not a rumor.
But she felt him in every breath of wind.
And she knew — he was alive.
And he was waiting.
She stopped smiling years ago.
Not out of bitterness.
Out of focus.
Her teammates had noticed.Kiba tried to joke.Shino didn't speak.
But she outpaced them both within months.Her chakra control was now on par with elite medics.Her palm strikes shattered stone.She could now cut through steel with a touch — focusing her chakra into microscopic blades at her fingertips.
The elders called it "Hyuga's Requiem."
She called it survival.
When she first fought Neji again, it wasn't a duel.
It was a warning.
He approached with confidence — years of experience, Sage training from the elders.
But her first strike broke his stance.
The second fractured his ribs.
The third never came.
Because he surrendered.
Not out of fear.
Out of understanding.
Hinata didn't cry anymore.
Not when she shattered her joints in chakra testing.
Not when she burned her palms raw adapting lightning chakra to Gentle Fist.
Not even when she stood alone under the shrine where Naruto once used to train.
But her voice did change.
No longer soft.
No longer uncertain.
When she spoke, even the elders listened.
Because she didn't speak often.
But when she did…
The air changed.
Every jutsu she learned, she rewrote.
Every technique she saw, she absorbed.
The Gentle Fist was no longer gentle.
Her chakra now surged with a balance of yin precision and yang ferocity.
She had unlocked the purest Byakugan her clan had seen in centuries.
A mutation.
Not from hatred.
From will.
And still…
She remembered his eyes.
His voice.
The way he once smiled through pain.
She never forgot.
But she stopped waiting.
Because when they met again—
She wouldn't run to him.
She would stand beside him.
Not as someone who needed saving.
But as someone who could burn the world with him.