Even Kakashi Hatake shut his normal eye, leaving only the Sharingan exposed.
"Do not open your eyes, no matter what. If you look into his eyes now, it's over. The only one who can probably fight him is someone with the same Sharingan," Kakashi said cautiously. Even as he spoke, he could not say with complete confidence that his own judgment was correct.
Itachi Uchiha remained as calm as ever. "With the Sharingan, you can resist my Mangekyo Sharingan to a certain extent. But you cannot overcome the unique ocular techniques of these eyes—the genjutsu known as Tsukuyomi."
"The only one who can defeat me is a Sharingan user who possesses the same bloodline limit as I do."
At that instant, Kakashi Hatake thought of the lone surviving child of the Uchiha clan—Uchiha Sasuke.
"Me?" Sasuke blurted out off-screen, disbelief surging through him.
He knew better than anyone how vast the gap between himself and Itachi was. Right now, there was no hope of catching up. And yet… he still had one thing. He was the last pure-blooded Uchiha still left in the village.
No, not quite the last. There was also Kitahara Kaede.
Sasuke immediately thought of the other person from the diary—the one who had most likely inherited a scattered trace of Uchiha blood. Aside from Itachi, that person might be the closest thing he had left to a clansman.
But Sasuke did not know the full truth. Kitahara Kaede carried Uchiha blood, yes, but he was not truly a member of the Uchiha clan.
In the scene, Kakashi only had time to utter a single word—"Sasuke"—before the world around him shattered.
In the next instant, he was dragged into a black-and-white mental space.
He found himself bound to a cross. Opposite him stood Itachi Uchiha, staring at him in silence, a long sword in hand.
"Without a bloodline limit, how long can you endure?" Itachi asked.
Then he stabbed him.
The blade sank into Kakashi's body without mercy, and the pain was so intense it tore straight through his mind. Kakashi's vision went white. When he came back to himself, he found that he was still tied to the cross, completely unharmed.
For a moment, he thought it had been nothing but an illusion.
Nothing real.
Nothing more than a trick of the mind.
But before that thought could fully settle, Itachi stabbed him again.
"In Tsukuyomi's world, space, time, and even matter are under my control," Itachi said coldly. "For the next seventy-two hours, I will pierce you with this blade again and again."
The torture continued.
How long did it last? Kakashi could no longer tell.
Pain washed over him in endless waves, so sharp and so real that the boundary between reality and illusion simply ceased to matter. Then, once again, he opened his eyes and found himself still bound to the cross, as if nothing had changed.
And once more, Itachi stood before him and repeated those same chilling words.
"In Tsukuyomi's world, space, time, and even matter are under my control. For the next seventy-two hours, I will pierce you with this blade again and again."
Those words, spoken in that toneless voice, were enough to drive a person to the edge of collapse all by themselves.
"Calm down… it's only a genjutsu…"
Kakashi was no inexperienced rookie. He was a battle-hardened jonin who had survived war, betrayal, loss, and countless brushes with death. Under ordinary circumstances, his mind was not so easily shaken.
But this time, he was wrong.
Tsukuyomi was not an ordinary illusion.
"Do not dismiss it just because it is genjutsu," Itachi said, and stabbed him again without the slightest trace of hesitation. "The pain is not false. This suffering is no different from reality. How long can your spirit endure?"
Under the blood-red moon hanging in that twisted sky, the scene grew even more horrifying.
One Kakashi became ten. Ten became a hundred. Bound crosses stretched out in every direction. Then, just as suddenly, one Itachi became ten. Ten became a hundred. Countless Itachis surrounded him, each holding the same blade, each wearing the same detached expression.
"Seventy-one hours, fifty-nine minutes, and fifty-nine seconds remain," Itachi said.
"Only… only one second has passed?" Kakashi's voice shook as countless blades drove into him from every direction.
The image alone was enough to make anyone's scalp go numb.
Even off-screen, Kakashi Hatake and Sasuke Uchiha were shaken to the core.
"This Tsukuyomi… this genjutsu…" Kakashi muttered, his expression turning grim. It was too unreasonable. Too overwhelming.
Back when he and Itachi had still worked together, Itachi had only been one of his subordinates in the Anbu. Even then, Kakashi had known that Itachi's talent in genjutsu was exceptional. He had recognized it long ago.
But he had never imagined it could reach such a monstrous level.
Among the jonin of Konoha, Kurenai Yuhi was already known as a specialist in genjutsu. Her entire family line was skilled in illusion techniques. Yet in front of Itachi's eyes, she looked no different from a child waving a toy blade.
This was no longer a matter of ordinary illusion arts.
Was this the power of the Mangekyo Sharingan?
Fragments of knowledge surfaced in Kakashi's mind.
Because of his status, and because the Hatake clan had accumulated records over generations, he knew a little about the Uchiha clan's secrets. He knew that beyond the ordinary three-tomoe Sharingan, there existed another state—one called the Mangekyo Sharingan. According to the little that had survived in old records, it was a far more extraordinary power.
But that was all.
After the Uchiha clan was wiped out, there had been no way to investigate further. The line of knowledge had effectively been severed.
Kakashi had never expected that the Mangekyo Sharingan could be this terrifying.
He possessed the Sharingan too. Even if his was an external eye, it was still a real Sharingan. Under normal circumstances, that eye gave him tremendous resistance to most illusion techniques. It was one of the powers he relied on the most.
Yet in front of Itachi's eyes, all of that pride shattered in an instant.
He had been dragged into that mental world without even the slightest chance to resist.
The immunity to ordinary genjutsu that he had always relied on was completely useless here.
Sasuke was even more shaken.
He had watched Kakashi suffer through that merciless torture in the illusion. It had gone on and on, long enough to break a person's mind a hundred times over. And then Itachi had calmly said that only one second had passed.
Just one second.
Then came another seventy-two hours.
If it had been him in that position, Sasuke knew he would have collapsed instantly.
Was this really Itachi Uchiha's current strength?
Had he truly become this monstrous?
At that moment, Sasuke remembered a line from Kitahara Kaede's diary.
There are differences even among Sharingan.
Before, he had assumed it was only referring to the difference between Kakashi's Sharingan and Itachi's. But now, watching this scene, he understood that it also described the difference between himself and Itachi.
A difference in rank.
A difference in depth.
A difference so vast it felt almost hopeless.
Do I need those eyes to stand against him? Sasuke thought. Is the source of Itachi's power hidden in those eyes?
Bits and pieces of an old memory surfaced in his mind.
When he was small, he had once overheard some of the clan elders talking among themselves. They had spoken about the Sharingan as if it were something that did not merely awaken, but evolved. And each time it evolved, the user's strength would rise dramatically along with it.
That was why, among the great eye-technique clans and bloodline-limit families, the Uchiha were often spoken of as monsters.
The Hyuga preserved their bloodline through strict internal marriage, ensuring that nearly every member of their clan could awaken the Byakugan. In terms of stability and inheritance, theirs was a purer and more reliable system.
But the Sharingan was different.
It was much harder to awaken. Much rarer.
And precisely because it was so rare, every Uchiha who awakened it was an elite among elites.
That was the cruel glory of the clan.
Sasuke clenched his fists until his nails bit into his palms.
"Do I need eyes like yours to surpass you, Uchiha Itachi?" he muttered, each word thick with hatred. "Then I'll go against your wishes. Even without those eyes… I'll still kill you. I'll avenge the entire clan with my own hands."
His voice was low, almost like a vow whispered into darkness.
But the hatred inside it was real enough to burn.
And from that moment on, the shadow that Itachi's eyes cast over Sasuke's heart only grew deeper.