The scroll arrived before dawn.

  Official seal. Hokage’s script.

  Ken sat at his desk, reading it under candlelight. His gear was already half-packed. His bde already sharpened. He didn’t need to read it twice.

  Promotion to Chūnin: Confirmed.ANBU Induction: Approved.Reporting Division: Twelve (Reconnaissance & Precision Operations).

  He rolled the scroll closed and set it aside. No joy. No surprise. Just another step forward on a road he had chosen long ago.

  The vilge celebrated his victory two days prior with music and medals and meaningless speeches. Squad 9 was praised. Daisuke was already bragging. Reina was in talks for medical tutege under the best.

  And Ken?

  He kept moving.

  Because celebration didn’t slow the war. It only dulled people before the next bde fell.

  ANBU induction wasn’t a ceremony.

  It was a silence.

  Ken stood inside the deep underground barracks, masked veterans fnking both sides. Hiruzen watched from the shadows, arms folded.

  The captain handed Ken a fox mask with narrow eyes and a bnk expression.

  “Codename?”

  Ken didn’t hesitate.

  “Sei.”

  Silence.

  Then a nod.

  He was one of them now.

  Not a name.

  A shadow.

  His first bck-ops mission came fast.

  Recon at the border of the Land of Cw—three missing-nin meeting with foreign weapons runners. No Leaf insignia. No diplomacy. Eliminate or extract.

  He moved with two veterans—silent as snow.

  The mission was clean. Efficient. Ken got the intel, disabled the target, and returned before sunrise.

  No one spoke on the way back.

  But in the silence of travel, his mind whispered:

  It’s happening too fast.

  In the original timeline—the one burned into Ken’s old-world memory—the Uchiha tension didn’t explode this early. Not yet. Not now.

  But things were different here.

  Because he was here.

  And his presence had accelerated the game.

  The news came three days ter.

  Delivered in hushed voices around the ANBU barracks.

  “Shisui Uchiha. Dead.”

  Ken froze mid-stride.

  The words didn’t compute at first. He forced himself to stay composed as he followed the hallway to the mission board.

  He found the red stamp:

  Mission Failed – Casualty Confirmed.

  Operative: Shisui UchihaCause: Fall from cliff during pursuit.Status: Accidental death during combat maneuver.

  Bullshit.

  Ken read the report twice. His Sharingan flickered once, then dimmed.

  It wasn’t an accident.It wasn’t a fall.It was Danzo.

  He had seen it coming.

  Danzo had watched Shisui too closely. The elders had grown too nervous. Shisui had stood between the cn’s darkness and the vilge’s secret rot for too long.

  And now he was dead.

  Ken couldn’t stop it.

  That night, a sealed envelope arrived at the house his parents lived in.

  Not a mission notice.

  Not from the Hokage.

  From the Uchiha compound.

  A bck invitation scroll.

  Simple kanji on white:

  In memory of Shisui Uchiha.Cn memorial service.Attendance required.All branch and main family members.Even the exiled.

  Ken stared at the paper.

  His hands didn’t shake.

  But his heart did.

  Airi, his mother, looked at him from the table. “We don’t have to go.”

  Daiki nodded. “They didn’t respect him when he lived. This is a performance.”

  Ken lit the scroll over the candle.

  Let it burn.

  “No,” he said quietly. “We don’t go.”

  The next day, the Uchiha compound was full.

  Cn members in full gear. Children lined up in formation. Elders dressed in their highest formal robes.

  A great banner hung above the shrine:

  “One lost, all mourn.”

  But Ken saw through it.

  He wasn’t even there—but he knew.

  It wasn’t about mourning.

  It was mobilization.

  The death of Shisui was no longer an internal tragedy. It was being painted as another wound dealt by the vilge.

  And whether they knew it or not…

  They were marching toward civil war.

  That night, Ken stood alone on the old ridge above the training field Shisui used to visit.

  No one else was there.

  Just wind and memory.

  He didn’t speak. Didn’t pray.

  But he dropped one thing into the grass:

  A small, folded cloth.

  Inside it: a bck tag.

  One he had made himself.

  One marked with a single seal:

  For when it’s time.

  He walked away.

  The vilge would remember Shisui as a lost talent.

  The Uchiha would remember him as a symbol of their fracture.

  But Ken?

  Ken would remember what they did.

  And he’d make sure someone paid for it.