The attack came three days after Naruto's punishment had been decided, in the gray hours before dawn when the village slept and even the most vigilant guards allowed their attention to drift toward thoughts of breakfast and shift changes. Later, survivors would struggle to piece together how enemy forces had infiltrated the Sarutobi compound so completely—how they'd bypassed external security, neutralized the barrier seals, and established their assault position without triggering a single alarm. But in the moment, all anyone will be get to know is that the residence was under siege by what appeared to be Iwagakure special forces, their distinctive armor and masks marking them as the same elite unit that had been harassing Konoha's borders for months.
Naruto had been unable to sleep, his mind churning endlessly with questions and self-loathing and the terrible weight of knowing what lived inside him. The conversation with his grandfather had been scheduled for that evening—answers to every question, explanations for every lie—but dawn seemed impossibly far away when darkness pressed against the windows and thoughts spiraled into increasingly dark territory.
He'd eventually abandoned his bed entirely, moving to the compound's garden where he could watch the sky lighten degree by degree, where the gradual transformation from night to dawn felt like proof that change was possible, that morning always came eventually no matter how endless the darkness seemed.
That's where he was—sitting on the stone bench near his grandfather's favorite cherry tree—when he felt it. A disturbance in the air, a wrongness that made every hair on his body stand on end and sent his instincts screaming danger even before his conscious mind could process the threat.
The barrier erected itself in seconds, purple energy forming a dome over the entire Sarutobi residence. This wasn't the protective kind meant to keep intruders out—Naruto recognized the technique from scrolls he'd studied with growing dread. This was a cage, designed specifically to keep those inside from escaping or calling for help, to isolate the compound from the rest of the village. A Four Violet Flames Formation, requiring four coordinated shinobi to maintain, creating walls that would incinerate anyone foolish enough to try passing through them.
Figures materialized from the shadows wearing Iwagakure armor—the same distinctive red and brown pattern that intelligence reports had described, complete with the Earth Country's stylized mountain insignia. Their movements were coordinated with the precision of extensive joint training, their formation suggesting special operations experience rather than typical raiding parties.
The household guards engaged them immediately, kunai and shuriken filling the air, defensive techniques activating to protect the main building. But these weren't ordinary raiders disrupted by resistance. They fought with techniques designed for assassination and infiltration, their coordination suggesting they'd trained specifically for this exact scenario.
Naruto's body moved on instinct, abandoning the garden and racing toward the main house where his grandfather would be. The garden became a battlefield around him—clashing steel, explosive tags detonating with thunderous force, earth techniques that matched Iwagakure's reputation for doton jutsu creating walls and projectiles from the very ground itself.
A masked operative stepped directly into his path, blocking the route to the house. Naruto didn't slow—hours of training with Guy and Lee had built reflexes that operated independent of thought. He dropped into a slide, passing beneath a sword strike that would have decapitated him, rolled to his feet, and continued his desperate sprint.
The main house's interior was eerily quiet compared to the chaos outside, the contrast so stark it felt like moving between worlds. Most of the household staff lay unconscious in hallways—alive but incapacitated through pressure point strikes or sleep-inducing gas, Naruto noted with desperate relief as he checked each fallen person for signs of life. This wasn't wholesale slaughter. This was surgical, targeted, professional in ways that made it somehow more terrifying than random violence.
He found his grandfather in the study.
Hiruzen stood near his desk, his sleeping robes torn and already bloodied from wounds that suggested he'd been fighting since before Naruto had even sensed the barrier. Around him on the floor lay metal stakes driven into precise positions—cursed tools that pulsed with malevolent energy visible even to Naruto's untrained perception. They formed some kind of suppression field, Naruto realized with growing horror, watching his grandfather try to mold chakra for techniques only to see the energy dissipate uselessly before it could fully form.
The God of Shinobi, the Professor, the legendary Third Hokage who'd fought in three wars—reduced to taijutsu alone by tools specifically designed to counter his signature versatility.
Facing Hiruzen across that cursed formation stood a figure in Iwagakure commander's armor, his stance radiating authority that suggested leadership rank. Behind him, four operatives maintained positions near the walls—the ones powering the barrier outside, Naruto understood with sick clarity.
"You're finished, Hokage," the masked commander said, his voice carrying cold satisfaction that felt somehow performative, like an actor playing a role. "Konoha's weakness has made you a target. Iwagakure sends its regards for every slight, every border dispute, every trade agreement that favored Fire Country over Earth."
But something felt profoundly wrong to Naruto. The voice was familiar somehow beneath the mask's distortion, the cadence not quite matching what he'd expect from an actual Iwa commander. The phrasing was too formal, too carefully constructed to sound threatening rather than actually being naturally threatening.
And his grandfather's expression wasn't fear or anger at enemy forces—it was recognition mixed with profound disappointment, the look of someone betrayed by people they'd trusted.
"Even disguised, I know you," Hiruzen said quietly, his voice strained from trying repeatedly to force chakra through the suppression field targeting him specifically. Blood dripped from wounds on his side and shoulder—not immediately fatal, but accumulating damage that would eventually prove lethal if the fight continued. "This won't work. The village will see through the deception. They'll investigate, they'll question—"
"The village will see what they expect to see—Iwagakure finally escalating from harassment to direct assault," the commander interrupted smoothly. "Your death will rally them toward the war footing they should have maintained all along instead of this naive pursuit of lasting peace. They'll remember that strength comes from vigilance, not from trust in treaties and diplomatic gestures."
"By murdering me and framing another nation?" Hiruzen's voice carried absolute conviction despite his weakened state, despite the blood loss and suppression and impossible odds. "That's not strength. That's cowardice dressed as pragmatism. That's choosing the easy path of hatred over the difficult work of actual peace."
"Call it what you wish. Results matter more than methods. History is written by survivors, not by the dead and their principles." The commander gestured to his operatives with casual authority. "Finish it. Make it look like he fought well but was overwhelmed by superior numbers. No execution-style killing—combat wounds only, consistent with extended resistance."
Two operatives attacked with coordinated precision that spoke to years of partnership training. Their weapons were designed to look like standard Iwa equipment—the distinctive tanto blades favored by their special forces—but wielded with techniques that seemed almost too refined, too familiar to anyone who'd spent years observing Konoha's own combat styles.
They weren't trying to kill Hiruzen quickly. They were making it look like extended combat, like he'd resisted fiercely before falling, creating a narrative through the pattern of wounds they inflicted.
What followed was painful demonstration of how completely the cursed suppression field had neutered someone legendary. Hiruzen fought with pure taijutsu, his decades of experience allowing him to counter and dodge despite his injuries and age, but without chakra-enhanced strength or techniques to create distance or area denial, he was fundamentally limited in ways the God of Shinobi should never have been.
A blade opened another wound across his chest—not deep enough for immediate fatality, but bleeding freely. Poison senbon embedded in his leg, their toxin calibrated for gradual weakening rather than quick death. His movements became incrementally more desperate, less controlled, the legendary Hokage reduced to struggling survival against opponents he should have been able to defeat easily under normal circumstances.
But Hiruzen refused to yield. Even crippled, even suppressed, even bleeding from multiple wounds, he fought because yielding meant more than his own death—it meant whatever plan these disguised attackers had would succeed unchallenged, would plunge the village into exactly the kind of hatred-fueled conflict he'd spent his entire tenure trying to prevent.
"Grandfather!" The scream tore from Naruto's throat before he could stop it, instinct overriding any tactical consideration about revealing his presence.
Suddenly every eye in the room was on him. Hiruzen's expression shifted instantly to horror mixed with desperate calculation—the look of someone whose worst fear had just materialized. The masked operatives turned with professional efficiency, assessing this new variable in their carefully planned operation.
"Naruto, no!" Hiruzen's voice carried command authority that demanded obedience. "Run! find Asuma, get help, don't—"
But the masked commander had already gestured. One operative peeled away from the assault on Hiruzen and moved toward Naruto with killing intent that made the air itself feel heavier, made breathing suddenly difficult. This wasn't hesitation or mercy or the reluctance some adults showed toward harming children. This was someone willing to eliminate any witness to maintain operational security, regardless of age.
"Leave him alone!" Hiruzen's roar carried chakra despite the suppression field, the sheer force of will temporarily overwhelming the cursed tools' effect through nothing but desperate love. He lunged toward Naruto, putting himself between the approaching operative and his grandson with complete disregard for the wounds already weakening him.
The sword that had been meant for Naruto found Hiruzen instead. The blade pierced completely through his torso, emerging from his back with his blood coating the steel in rivulets that caught the pre-dawn light. The Hokage's eyes went wide—not primarily from pain, though that was clearly agonizing, but from betrayal, as if some part of him had still hoped this wouldn't escalate to actual murder of someone these operatives had once served under.
"No..." The word escaped Hiruzen as blood fountained from the wound, as he felt the blade pierce organs that wouldn't recover from this damage. His hand pressed uselessly against the injury, blood flowing between his fingers. "Naruto... run..."
Time seemed to fracture into crystalline moments, each one sharp and clear and unbearably slow. Naruto saw his grandfather—the one person who'd loved him unconditionally despite the demon inside him, who'd taught him and protected him and believed in him when no one else had reason to—dying. Murdered by enemies who'd infiltrated their home specifically to kill him, who'd planned this with such calculation that they'd brought suppression tools custom-made to counter his specific abilities.
And behind that masked commander's visor, Naruto thought he saw satisfaction. Thought he heard a whispered "Finally" that suggested this outcome had been planned for, desired, worked toward with cold calculation and patience.
As the operative withdrew the blade from Hiruzen's body, as the Hokage collapsed to his knees with blood pooling beneath him, another masked figure moved with speed that suggested this had been choreographed. They approached Naruto from behind while his attention was fixed on his dying grandfather, while shock and horror paralyzed him more effectively than any binding technique.
Something small pressed against Naruto's back—a slip of paper that radiated wrong energy, chakra that felt fundamentally corrupted in ways his limited sensor abilities could barely perceive. The seal activated instantly upon contact, absorbing through his clothing and skin before he could even register what was happening.
The paper dissolved into his body, and immediately Naruto felt something inside him respond. Not his natural chakra. Not even the Nine-Tails in its sealed state. Something else—something the foreign seal was creating through interaction with the demon's power.
The attackers scattered immediately, their mission apparently complete. The masked commander gave a signal, the four maintaining the barrier responded, and within seconds the purple flames dissolved as they abandoned their positions and fled through windows and walls with the kind of coordinated retreat that spoke to extensive planning.
The whole compound was suddenly visible to the village again, the barrier's dissolution meaning anyone looking this direction would see smoke and destruction and evidence of combat. Help would come soon. But too late—far too late for what was already happening.
Inside Naruto, the foreign seal was doing something catastrophic to the Nine-Tails' chakra. The demon's power was being twisted, corrupted, transformed into something that felt rabid and mindless and infinitely more destructive than the original beast had ever been. The seal designed by the Fourth Hokage to contain the Nine-Tails was never meant to handle this kind of contamination, this fundamental alteration of what it was trying to suppress.
Naruto felt the transformation beginning, felt his control shattering as something that was and wasn't the Nine-Tails erupted from within him. Red chakra exploded outward like a detonation, but this wasn't the controlled manifestation he'd experienced before. This was rabid, mindless, pure destruction given form.
The cursed suppression stakes targeting Hiruzen cracked and shattered under pressure they'd never been designed to withstand from an external source. The walls developed fractures that spread like lightning. The very air seemed to burn with malevolent energy that had no purpose except devastation.
Naruto's consciousness began drowning beneath a tide of rage that wasn't his own, wasn't even the Nine-Tails' calculated malevolence, but something more primal and terrible. Whatever the foreign seal had done, it had created something new from the demon's chakra—something that made the original Nine-Tails look almost restrained by comparison.
His body began changing in ways more dramatic than previous transformations. Claws erupted from his fingers, tearing through skin and nail beds. His canines lengthened into fangs that made his gums bleed profusely. But worse—far worse—his body was beginning to warp beyond merely manifesting tails, beginning to reshape into something that resembled the actual Nine-Tails rather than just channeling its chakra.
Bones cracked and reformed. Muscles tore and regenerated larger. His skin began taking on an orange hue that suggested actual physical transformation rather than just chakra manifestation. One tail formed, then two, then three, then four—all manifesting simultaneously rather than the gradual progression of previous incidents.
This wasn't a jinchūriki losing control. This was something becoming a demon rather than just channeling one.
"NARUTO!" Hiruzen's voice cut through the haze of transformation despite his mortal wounds, despite the blood loss that should have rendered him unconscious if not dead. He was forcing himself upright through sheer willpower, standing despite the catastrophic injury, because his grandson needed him and nothing else mattered.
But words alone wouldn't stop this transformation. Hiruzen could see it with the clarity of someone who'd studied jinchūriki extensively—whatever that foreign seal had done, it had corrupted the Nine-Tails' chakra into something the original containment seal couldn't handle. Left unchecked, Naruto would complete a full transformation into something that might destroy the entire village before it could be stopped.
Now, Hiruzen understood the masked attacker's true intent. Stripped of his own chakra and surrounded by those too weak or unprepared to subdue the boy without devastating the village, he realized the cruel trap that had been set. If Naruto lost control here, the aftermath would leave no choice but to cage him, that he could explode at anytime and—to brand him as a weapon, not a child. And that, Hiruzen could not allow. His resolve hardened; the decision, once unthinkable, was now clear. With grim determination carved into his weary face, he prepared to take the ultimate step.
His hands moved through seals he'd hoped never to use—complex, agonizing, each gesture costing him strength he didn't have. Not his usual techniques this time, but something far more terrible. Something that required a price no sane person would pay.
"Dead Demon Consuming Seal," Hiruzen whispered, blood staining his lips. "Shiki Fujin."
The technique activated with a spiritual weight that made reality itself seem to warp. Behind Hiruzen appeared a spectral figure only those with chakra perception could see—the Shinigami, the death god itself, summoned through forbidden technique to serve as instrument of sealing. Its ghostly hand emerged through Hiruzen's body, reaching toward the transforming Naruto, grasping for the corrupted chakra that was destroying him from within.
The technique allowed the caster to seal anything by offering their own soul as payment to the death god. What was sealed would be trapped in the Shinigami's stomach for eternity, alongside the caster's soul suffering eternal combat. It was the ultimate sacrifice—not just death, but the complete loss of any afterlife, any peace, any hope of ever reuniting with loved ones beyond the veil.
Hiruzen's spectral hands—extensions of the death god's reach—grasped the corrupted chakra that the foreign seal had created. He could feel it writhing, could sense the wrongness that had been deliberately engineered into it, could understand that whoever had placed that seal on Naruto had intended exactly this outcome.
His first instinct was to tear it out completely, to use the Reaper Death Seal to extract the corrupted chakra and seal it separately, leaving Naruto free of its influence. His hands began the motion, began pulling the twisted energy away from Naruto's chakra network.
But as he pulled, Hiruzen felt something terrible—the corrupted chakra wasn't separate from Naruto anymore. The foreign seal had integrated it with his life force itself, had woven it so thoroughly into his existence that removing it would kill him just as surely as letting the transformation complete.
The choice crystallized with horrifying clarity: let Naruto die from extraction, or reseal the corrupted chakra and hope it could be purified later.
There was no choice at all, really.
Hiruzen reversed the technique's direction, pushing the corrupted chakra back into Naruto's body while simultaneously reinforcing the original seal the Fourth Hokage had placed. The Reaper Death Seal could do more than just extract and contain—it could also layer seals, could add restrictions on top of existing containment.
He wove new bindings around the Nine-Tails and its corrupted chakra, created additional barriers that would require enormous emotional stress to breach, built in fail-safes that would prevent full transformation even if the seal was damaged. The work was agonizing, requiring precision while his body was dying, demanding chakra he was paying for with his soul.
"I'm sorry," Hiruzen gasped as he worked, his body literally burning from the inside as the Reaper Death Seal consumed him. "I'm so sorry, Naruto. I can't remove it without killing you. I can only... contain it. Seal it deeper. Give you time to grow strong enough to control it yourself."
The transformation reversed as the new seal took hold. Four tails receded to three, then two, then one, then none. Naruto's warping features returned to human configuration. His consciousness, which had been drowning beneath rabid fury, surfaced gasping and disoriented.
Behind Hiruzen, the Shinigami's blade descended through his spectral form, severing his soul from his body—payment for the technique demanded at the moment the seal completed. Hiruzen felt himself being pulled, felt the death god claiming its price, felt eternity opening beneath him like an abyss.
But before his soul was fully claimed, before consciousness left him entirely, Hiruzen forced out final words with every remaining scrap of will.
"Naruto... you are not... a demon. You are... my grandson. The corruption... can be overcome. You are stronger... than anything inside you. Never forget... that. Never let... anyone convince you... otherwise."
The Reaper Death Seal completed. Hiruzen's body collapsed like a puppet with severed strings, his soul already gone to whatever eternal combat the Shinigami's stomach held for those who used this forbidden technique.
Naruto fell to his knees beside him, human again but barely conscious, his body burning from the forced resealing. His eyes—blue again rather than red—focused on his grandfather's still form and understood with absolute clarity that this was death, that no amount of medical attention would bring him back.
"Grandpa?" The word came out broken, a child's plea for impossible reversal.
But there was no response. Would never be response again. Hiruzen Sarutobi was gone, his soul sacrificed to seal away corruption that had been deliberately inflicted, his final act protecting the grandson he'd loved more than his own continued existence.
The sun rose over Konohagakure, indifferent to tragedy. Guards finally broke through to the main house, followed seconds later by Asuma arriving at chakra-enhanced speed, finding a scene of devastation and death that would haunt everyone who witnessed it.
Naruto sat there cradling his grandfather's body, not understanding yet that the attack had come from within rather than without, that the masked commander had been Danzo Shimura orchestrating elimination disguised as enemy assault, that the foreign seal had been placed specifically to create a monster that would require Hiruzen to sacrifice himself stopping it.
All Naruto knew was that his grandfather was gone, murdered by Iwagakure forces, dead protecting him from a transformation he couldn't control. The details would come later. The investigation, the political fallout, the preparations for war against an enemy who'd actually been framed.
But in that moment, there was only grief so profound it felt like drowning, and the terrible knowledge that he'd lost the one person who'd loved him unconditionally despite the demon inside him.
Hiruzen Sarutobi was gone. And whether his sacrifice would prove meaningful or merely tragic remained to be seen.
The river of time flowed on. And Naruto would have to learn to navigate its currents without the grandfather who'd always been there to guide him, would have to become someone worthy of that final sacrifice.
The question now was what kind of shinobi that loss would forge him into—one defined by hatred and vengeance, or one who honored his grandfather's final wish to overcome the corruption and be better than the darkness within.
Only time would tell. And time, as always, moved inexorably forward whether anyone was ready for it or not.
*****************************************************************************************************
If you enjoyed this story, please check out my other original works as well — your support means a lot! Thank you so much for reading and for being part of this journey!