"Who's there? Show yourself."
The instant the voice reached him, Hyūga Hizashi activated the Byakugan.
Veins spread around his eyes.
The result was immediate and deeply wrong.
Aside from Neji inside the residence, the estate was empty.
No intruder.No chakra flow.No displacement.
Only wind moving through branches. The sound of leaves. His own breathing. His heartbeat loud enough to count.
Too quiet.
Hizashi turned, scanning every angle. Nothing.
"What are you looking at?"
The voice came again.
This time, behind him.
Hizashi pivoted sharply.
Still nothing.
Trees stood as they always had. Shadows overlapped and separated with the wind. For a moment, the darkness between the trunks looked crowded, as if depth itself were compressing.
Then footsteps.
Unhurried. Casual.
The sound carried no tension. Whoever was walking did so as if passing through a garden, not the Hyūga compound.
Moments later, a figure stepped out of shadow.
Black robes. Hood raised.
In the Byakugan's vision, the figure did not register as empty. It registered as distorted. A mass that absorbed perception rather than reflected it.
Hizashi focused harder, trying to force detail.
The hood swallowed his gaze.
No face.No outline.No readable structure.
Something inside him reacted before thought formed.
Danger.
Cold sweat formed at his temple.
Someone had entered Konoha unnoticed. Passed the village sensors. Crossed into the Hyūga estate. Nullified the Byakugan itself.
The figure stood directly in front of him.
If it had not spoken, Hizashi realized, he would never have known it was there.
"What are you?" he asked.
His left hand slid toward his chest, fingers seeking the emergency signal tag.
"If you move," the figure said calmly, "your throat will open before help arrives. I'd still have time to kill the child."
No rise in tone. No threat inflection.
Just a statement.
Hizashi froze.
With the capabilities already demonstrated, the calculation was simple. If this intruder possessed instant lethality, departure without trace was feasible.
Hizashi withdrew his hand slowly.
"What do you want?"
He did not ask who.
The figure did not answer.
Silence returned. Wind. Leaves. Hizashi's pulse grew uneven.
Then, finally:
"You said his suffering would become strength."
The voice was rough, controlled, deliberately quiet.
"You were lying to yourself."
The sense of pressure intensified. The figure's gaze moved across Hizashi as if evaluating tissue depth.
"Suffering is not growth," the voice continued. "It is damage. It erodes. It does not refine."
Hizashi clenched his jaw.
"You tell yourself it has meaning because you endured it."
A pause.
"Just as your parents did to you."
Hizashi's breathing caught.
"They dismantled you," the voice said. "Broke your sense of self. Rebuilt you with values that benefited them. Obedience. Silence. Submission, labeled as duty."
"You resisted."
"You were corrected."
"Pain. Fear. Confinement."
"Eventually, you accepted it."
The words landed with surgical precision.
"You survived by becoming what they wanted."
Hizashi trembled.
"And now," the voice continued evenly, "you see your child walking the same path. You tell yourself it will harden him. That it is necessary."
"That's how the cycle persists."
"Enough!"
The word tore out of Hizashi's throat.
His hands shook. Muscles locked. Something hot burned behind his eyes.
"I did it for him," he tried to say.
The words collapsed before exiting his mouth.
For him?
The justification turned foul in his throat.
Hizashi bent forward, choking. His stomach convulsed.
Disgust surged. Not outward.
Inward.
At himself.
When had defiance turned into compliance?When had survival become endorsement?
Fifteen minutes.
That was the difference between himself and Hiashi. Fifteen minutes determined freedom and bondage.
Once, he had questioned it.
Now he called it fate.
The figure stepped closer.
Very close.
"There are children who cannot be caged," the voice said. "Not without breaking something vital."
Then, plainly:
"Hyūga Hizashi. Choose."
"Be the executioner who snaps his wings."
"Or be a father."
Silence followed.
Heavy. Final.