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The cold bit deep.
Naruto opened his eyes to darkness.
It wasn't the kind of darkness that came with night. No, this one felt alive, as though it breathed with him. As though it watched. When he tried to inhale, the air was thick, cold, and sharp—like breathing in shards of frozen obsidian. His lungs protested.
Where was he?
His hand jerked to his chest. No warmth. No seal. No Kurama.
"Kurama?" he whispered. Silence.
There was no comforting voice in his head, no fiery growl or familiar presence. Just the sound of wind—harsh, unnatural wind that whispered in broken syllables.
He pushed himself up slowly. Beneath him, the ground was made of black ash, cracked like ancient bone. The sky above wasn't a sky—it was a ceiling of swirling shadows, and there was no sun, no moon. Just the faint glow of scattered, floating runes high above, flickering like dying stars.
He had been fighting. That much he remembered.
A battlefield—Otsutsuki above, his comrades below. A final attack. A sacrifice.
He had died.
So why was he breathing?
As he struggled to his feet, he noticed something horrifying—he couldn't feel his chakra. Not a trickle. Not a drop. It was like being hollow. His connection to the very energy that defined his existence as a shinobi… gone.
He wasn't just powerless.
He was empty.
A shiver danced down his spine—not from the cold, but from the realization that whatever this place was, it didn't allow chakra. Like it had been stripped from him on arrival. His instincts screamed danger, but without chakra, he was just a boy again.
"Naruto…"
The voice slithered through the air like oil across glass.
He spun, fists raised. "Who's there?!"
A figure stood on the edge of his vision. Tall, lean, cloaked in shadows that moved like smoke around its frame. Its face was a mask—half bone, half darkness—featureless except for two glowing white slits where eyes should have been.
"Who are you?" Naruto demanded.
The figure didn't respond at first. Then it spoke, voice layered, as if a hundred whispers overlapped.
"You do not belong here, yet you have arrived."
"Where is here?"
The creature tilted its head. "The Echo Void. The place between death and forgetting. You were claimed by neither."
Naruto's fists tightened. "If this is some twisted genjutsu, I swear—"
"There is no jutsu here. No chakra. No gods. Only shadows."
For a moment, Naruto's mind reeled. No chakra. No jutsu. No Kurama. Then the wind shifted—and something howled in the distance.
Not an animal. Not a human.
Something broken.
The masked figure turned toward the sound. "They come."
"Who?"
"Nightmares."
A shriek cut through the darkness. A second answered it.
Shapes emerged. Tall, crooked, malformed things with jagged limbs and gaping mouths. Some crawled. Others floated. All of them were drawn to the living.
To him.
Instinct kicked in. Naruto took a step back. "I don't have chakra—I can't fight them!"
The masked figure said nothing. Then, slowly, it extended a hand—and a stream of shadow surged from its palm, slamming into Naruto's chest.
His heart stopped.
Pain exploded inside him. Cold, acidic power wrapped around his spine, drilling into his very being. He screamed as the world spun, and then—
—he saw it.
A memory not his own.
A battlefield drowned in darkness. Warriors in armor made of shadows. A great city collapsing into void. And at the center of it all, a boy with golden hair and burning eyes—himself, but different. Covered in scars, surrounded by monsters he commanded like pets.
Then… nothing.
Naruto collapsed, gasping. The mark on his chest burned, shaped like a swirling spiral of ink. A brand.
"What did you do to me?" he hissed.
The masked figure's voice echoed. "I gave you what you needed. A bond."
And then the figure vanished into mist.
Naruto was alone. The monsters were almost on him now—crawling, snapping, growling. He couldn't run. He couldn't hide. And yet—
He felt it.
A pulse of something dark beneath his skin. Like a thread tugging him forward. Not chakra—but a replacement. Essence.
He raised his hands.
The first Nightmare lunged—a creature of broken bones and stitched flesh. Naruto moved without thinking, ducked under its swipe, and punched.
Nothing happened.
The thing turned its head, snarled, and swung again. This time, Naruto's fist cracked its jaw sideways. It staggered.
And then he felt it: the pulse again.
He pulled.
The creature's shadow detached from its feet and coiled toward him, wrapping around his arm.
A flash of black. A second mark burned onto his forearm. The creature shrieked once more—then disintegrated into ash.
Naruto stood, panting.
"What… the hell was that?"
A second Nightmare lunged.
This time, he was ready.
He dodged low, grabbed its shadow like a rope, and twisted. The monster convulsed, flailed—then exploded into smoke.
Another mark.
Another memory.
Flashes of past lives. A young boy with red hair standing alone in a desert. A girl with silver eyes walking through blood-soaked halls. A swordsman burning in purple flames.
All of them shadows. All of them—him?
"No," he muttered. "I'm Naruto Uzumaki. I'm not one of you."
But the shadows said otherwise.
The monsters fled now, sensing something shifting in him. He stood tall, breath heaving, body burning with a new kind of energy.
He wasn't a shinobi anymore.
He was something else.
Hours passed.
He wandered through the broken wasteland of the Echo Void, each step heavier than the last. His body was adapting—slowly. The more Nightmares he fought, the stronger the bond became. But with every kill, every essence consumed, the more the shadow inside him whispered.
Power is survival.
He stopped at a shattered ruin—a monument shaped like a kunai, half-buried in ash. There was something familiar here.
He knelt, brushed away the dust.
A Konoha forehead protector. Cracked. Burnt.
His heart twisted.
Someone had been here. From his world. But when?
He lifted it slowly, turned it in his palm.
"You're not the first."
The voice made him spin.
Another figure stood in the distance. Short. Slender. Hooded.
"Who are you?"
The figure lowered their hood.
Naruto froze.
Himawari.
Older. Eyes like her mother's—Byakugan active. But her face was hard. Her clothes torn. And a jagged blade made of black glass hung at her side.
"Big brother," she said quietly. "You died years ago. But I knew you'd return."
He stared. "What happened to you? To everyone?"
She looked away.
"They're gone."
Naruto's breath caught.
"The Otsutsuki came again. This time, stronger. They destroyed everything. I escaped—barely. Ended up here. This world… it feeds on pain."
She looked up.
"And you—you're not supposed to be here. Unless…"
Naruto stepped forward. "Unless what?"
She narrowed her eyes. "Unless you're the Echo. The one the shadows chose."
He said nothing.
Behind him, the ash shifted. The runes above glowed brighter.
She raised her weapon. "Then you're either going to save us all…"
She dropped into a stance.
"…or become the end of everything."
End of Chapter One