Chapter 103: A Brother's Gaze
The four Suna shinobi were little more than statues now, their minds trapped in a prison of phantom pain, their bodies soon to be monuments to his passing. Ren dismissed them from his thoughts as one would dismiss a minor irritation. Their worth had been 40,000 system points; their lives held no other value.
He took a single step to continue his journey.
"And just where do you think you're going, little brother? You've been causing quite a stir."
The voice was calm, almost bored, but it carried an undercurrent of something else—surprise, perhaps, or long-dormant curiosity. It came from behind him, a place that had been empty a moment before.
Ren didn't startle. His senses, honed by the Sharingan and his own constant vigilance, had registered the two new chakra presences the instant they'd appeared, their signatures flaring into existence with the silent suddenness of a master-level Body Flicker. He turned, his movements slow and deliberate, to face them.
Two figures stood perhaps twenty yards away, their black cloaks with red clouds stark against the beige of the desert. One was hulking and shark-like, a strange, bandaged weapon slung over his shoulder, a cruel and playful grin on his face. The other was slimmer, paler, his face a perfect, unreadable mask. But his eyes… his dark eyes held a flicker of something complex that his expression refused to show.
Uchiha Itachi. And Kisame Hoshigaki.
Ren's lips curled into a cold, mocking smile. "Well, well. If it isn't my dearest, most beloved brother. To what do I owe the honor? Come to wish me well on my travels?"
Itachi ignored the taunt. His gaze was fixed, intense, drilling into Ren's own eyes. "You…" he began, his voice low and measured. "How far can you see with those eyes now?" New ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄhapters are published on novel•fire.net
The question was cryptic, layered with meaning only another Uchiha could understand. Ren's smirk didn't falter.
"How far?" he repeated, letting the silence hang for a beat. "Far enough to see the path to your grave, brother. Clearly."
Itachi's expression remained impassive, but a subtle tension tightened the skin around his eyes. This was not the broken, silent boy he had left behind. This was someone entirely new, forged in a crucible of secrets and power he hadn't anticipated. He had always found Ren… different. Unreadable. Even on that horrific night, amidst the carnage of their clan, Ren's reaction had been a silent, terrifying stillness—a depth of despair and understanding that felt far older than his years. The subsequent descent into supposed madness had, in a twisted way, been a relief. It meant safety from Danzo's machinations.
But this… this confident, powerful, and bitterly sarcastic man was an unforeseen variable. A dangerous one.
"The way I die…" Itachi murmured, almost to himself. Then, in a flash of motion almost too quick to perceive, his own eyes changed. The familiar three tomoe swirled and bled into the stark, boomerang-like pattern of his Mangekyō Sharingan. "Then show me. Prove your vision is not clouded by arrogance."
The world should have dissolved. The familiar, oppressive pressure of the Tsukuyomi should have descended, pulling Ren into a hellscape of Itachi's design.
Instead, Ren stood firm. His own eyes pulsed, the complex hexagram of his Eternal Mangekyō flaring with an even deeper, more ancient power. He didn't resist the pull; he inverted it.
Itachi's body went rigid for a fraction of a second. In his mind's eye, the genjutsu he had tried to cast had turned back upon itself. He was no longer the master of the illusion; he was its prisoner. He found himself bound to a cold, stone stake in a featureless gray space. Ren stood before him, a long, wicked-looking katana held loosely in one hand.
A flicker of genuine surprise—a rare crack in the perfect facade—crossed Itachi's features before his mask of indifference slammed back into place.
"Huh?" Ren's voice echoed in the psychic space, dripping with mockery. "Surprised? Did you think your parlor tricks still worked on me?"
"I am… surprised," Itachi conceded, his voice calm even in captivity. "To reflect my Tsukuyomi… Your ocular power has grown formidable. You have become strong, Ren."
"Stronger than you," Ren stated, it was not a boast, but a simple, cold fact. "I've surpassed the prodigy."
"I see that." Itachi's captive form seemed to almost smile. "It makes me desire them all the more."
"Your eyes. I spared your life that night for a reason. I believed that one day, if you awakened the same eyes as mine, they could be the key to overcoming my own… limitations. That they could help me evolve my power further. It seems that day has finally come." His tone was clinical, but his gaze on Ren's eyes was unmistakably greedy.
"The Mangekyō is a curse," Itachi continued, his voice taking on the cadence of a dark parable. "From the moment of its awakening, these eyes march inevitably toward darkness. The more one uses their power, the closer they bring the user to eternal night. They will be sealed in blindness. That is the price for their power. Yet… there was one who broke this curse. Uchiha Madara. He, too, had a brother. They both gained the Mangekyō through the ultimate sacrifice. Madara, who led our clan, found his power waning, his world turning to shadows… the inevitable end for our eyes."
He paused, expecting to see dawning horror or realization on Ren's face. He saw only amusement.
"Let me guess," Ren interrupted, his voice laced with sarcastic glee. "The great Madara didn't fancy a life in the dark. So he plucked out his little brother's fresh, new eyes and popped them right in. Presto. Eternal light. The Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan. Is that the big secret you were going to impart, brother? The one you've been coveting my eyes for?"
The crack in Itachi's composure widened. The shock was real this time. *He knows. How does he know?*
The psychic space shattered. Both men blinked, back on the windy plain. The entire exchange had taken less than two seconds. To Kisame, it had looked like the two brothers had simply stared each other down for a moment.
Itachi took an almost imperceptible step back. The plan, the carefully constructed narrative, the belief that he held all the knowledge… it was crumbling. His little brother was no longer a piece on the board. He had become a player. And Itachi had no idea what his next move would be.
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