Outside, the moment Sasuke lay back on the operating table and closed his eyes, the remaining shadow clones moved at once.
Adhesive seals were pressed onto his body in practiced motions. Thin chakra threads connected them to compact instruments laid out in neat rows. Neural activity monitors, heartbeat sensors, blood pressure gauges, bioelectric readers. Each device hummed softly, fed by a steady flow of chakra.
Two clones stayed close to Sasuke's side, eyes never leaving him. The rest watched the instruments in silence.
At first, everything was stable.
Then Sasuke's breathing slowed.
Not abruptly. Gradually. Almost imperceptibly.
One clone leaned closer to the readings.
"Blood pressure is dropping," it reported. "Approaching the lower threshold."
"Heart rate and metabolic activity are declining," another added. "Entering a hibernation-like state."
Sasuke's chest still rose and fell, but the rhythm was faint. Pain stimuli would no longer wake him. His body had shut itself down to conserve what little remained.
Suddenly, the monitors spiked, then fell.
"Brain activity is collapsing."
"Cellular bioelectric signals are fading."
"Danger."
Dozens of shadow clones dispersed in a single instant, their memories and chakra surging back into the body on the table.
Sasuke's breath hitched.
The monitors steadied. Not safe. But no longer falling.
Inside.
The moment Sasuke's hand touched the other self, the world vanished.
No light. No sound.
Not even darkness in the usual sense. Just absence.
Time slowed.
Then slowed again.
Thoughts stretched thin, like ice cracking under pressure. Each idea took longer to form, longer to pass. His mind felt frozen, suspended in a vast stillness.
There was no body here. No sensation. No up or down.
Only awareness.
And even that was slipping.
Sasuke forced himself to think.
Anything.
Words formed painfully slowly, each fragment dragging behind the last. What should have taken a breath felt like an eternity. Time no longer flowed forward. It pooled. Thickened.
This was not confinement.
This was erasure.
The silence pressed in, endless and absolute. It did not frighten him. It did not anger him.
It emptied him.
His thoughts thinned until they were almost gone. His sense of self wavered, like a flame starved of air.
If he stopped thinking, even for a moment, he knew what would happen.
He would not wake.
Just as his awareness began to scatter, something stirred.
Calm.
Cool.
A memory not his own.
The shadow clones.
Dozens of minds dissolving into him at once, carrying stillness, discipline, and deliberate calm. The quiet strength of meditation flooded in, anchoring his drifting consciousness.
Sasuke held onto it.
Barely.
Then, without warning, the world shifted.
Time snapped back into focus.
His thoughts moved again.
And with them came understanding.
A concept formed in his mind, ancient and precise.
Ame-no-Tokotachi.
The Ever-Standing One.
The awareness of time itself.
Not speed. Not foresight. But perception. Control over the flow of one's own temporal awareness. The seventh sense.
Sasuke understood it instinctively.
In the endless solitude endured by the other self, something had awakened. Not power born of rage or ambition, but survival. The ability to anchor the self against eternity.
To remain constant while time stretched into nothing.
The realization shook him.
This was not his power.
It belonged to the other.
To take it would mean surrendering himself. Becoming cold, detached, stripped of desire and purpose. A being that endured time, but no longer lived within it.
Sasuke rejected it.
The vision faded.
The darkness churned.
From where the other self dissolved, a tide of black surged forward. Thick, viscous, alive with emotion. Rage. Hunger. Fear. Loneliness. Hatred. Desire. All the things that had been sealed away now poured out at once.
The inner world drowned in it.
Above, storm clouds spiraled. Black rain fell endlessly. For an instant, Sasuke glimpsed a towering shape, something ancient and vast, roots piercing the world, branches blotting out the sky. A hunger that consumed everything it touched.
Another name surfaced in his mind.
Takamimusubi.
Creation through consumption.
To take. To devour. To grow without limit.
This power, too, was rejected.
It would strip him of restraint, of reason. Leave only instinct.
Sasuke stood unmoving as the darkness washed over him. He did not resist. He endured.
Slowly, the storm receded.
The world quieted.
Three days later, Sasuke's eyes opened.
For a heartbeat, they reflected exhaustion, age, and something distant. Then hunger. Then fury.
Finally, all of it settled.
His pupils spun, merging, reshaping.
A six-pointed star bloomed in crimson.
The Mangekyō Sharingan turned, calm and complete.