The bodies of the two attackers lay broken, their chakra burned out and limbs numb from the web of energy I had unleashed. I stood still, surrounded by the dead silence of a village that no longer existed. The ruins of Uzushiogakure were cold and hollow, yet the ground beneath me pulsed like a heartbeat — the Divine Tree buried below was alive and aware. And now, so was I.
I didn't need to breathe heavily. I wasn't exhausted. If anything, my body felt too still, too perfect, like it had been sculpted for war and only now realized it was unfinished. The spiral-shaped Karma mark on my chest dimmed back to a dull crimson glow. One of my attackers, the older man with the faded Byakugan, stirred and coughed up blood. He looked up at me with something between awe and regret.
"You… weren't supposed to wake yet," he whispered.
I knelt beside him and looked into his eye. "What am I?" I asked plainly.
"You are a rupture," he said. "A fracture in the wheel they tried to keep turning."
His words confirmed it. I had not been reborn randomly. I was something else. My body had not been born in the normal sense — it had been grown, deep within the roots of the Divine Tree sealed beneath this ruined land. The chakra inside me was foreign, dense, woven from more than one bloodline. Senju. Hyūga. Uzumaki. And something else. Something not human.
He told me the name of his order — the Hollow Veil. A secret society formed after the Fourth Great Ninja War, from among those who studied the ruins of the ancient world: outcast Hyūga, rogue Uzumaki monks, descendants of forgotten bloodlines. They had uncovered records and relics even the Five Great Nations had buried, documents hinting at a final Ōtsutsuki contingency: a seed, left behind in case the celestial hierarchy ever collapsed.
That seed was me. My name Shinraku was not a birth name. It was a code. One of their scrolls translated it loosely as "The Divine Fracture."
The Hollow Veil had existed for one reason: to monitor the root-chamber in which I slept and ensure I never awoke. They feared me more than Kaguya. More than Madara. They believed I was not reincarnated through the cycle of Indra and Asura — but born outside it. I was a third anomaly, one that did not follow fate.
But they were too late.
As I absorbed his memories, a realization hit me: the current shinobi world still stood, but the age of glory had passed. Naruto Uzumaki was still alive, still Hokage, but the world had grown quiet around him. Peace had held, but it was fragile — an illusion held together by reputation and memory. The Akatsuki were gone. Kaguya was sealed. But the world never truly rid itself of the Ōtsutsuki influence.
And the Moon was no longer stable.
According to the dying man's thoughts, a presence had stirred on the Moon. A rift had opened in the ancient Ōtsutsuki palace orbiting Earth. The Hollow Veil believed that Toneri Ōtsutsuki, the last of his line, had awoken from centuries of isolation. Not to conquer — but to defend. Because something was coming. And he could feel it too.
Me.
The system inside me, no longer sleeping, provided updates through flashes of instinct and inner pressure. It wasn't a voice. It was intuition sharpened into prophecy.
Genetic integration: Seventy-two percent complete.
Dojutsu development: Shin'engan forming. Awaiting celestial alignment.
Shinjutsu access: Locked. Prerequisite — planetary chakra resonance.
I understood none of it fully, yet I felt it in my bones. The Shin'engan — the eye forming in my left socket — had begun to draw in celestial chakra. It wasn't a Rinnegan or Tenseigan. It was both and neither. I saw the world flicker, for just a second, as if multiple timelines tried to exist at once.
The man coughed again. "Naruto… will find you. And if he doesn't… Toneri will."
I stood slowly, letting the earth finish claiming the Hollow Veil's final guardian. His death brought no satisfaction. Only clarity. I was no longer waiting for the world to change. The world would now be reacting to me.
Above, the moon glowed with new fractures. I sensed movement in its orbit — a pulse, a signature. Not just Toneri. Something else. Watching. Waiting.
I spoke my name aloud, and this time, the ground echoed it back.
"Shinraku."
It wasn't just who I was. It was a signal to every being tied to the divine order of chakra. The fracture was real. The final seal had broken. And the celestial era that began with Kaguya's arrival… would end with me.