Orochimaru pressed his advantage without mercy. His Kusanagi thrust forward in a blur of silver, the blade extending to impossible lengths, forcing Renjiro to twist and dodge and reposition constantly. Snakes erupted from the ground, from the trees, from the very air—each one a potential death sentence, each fang a promise of paralysis. The Sannin moved with the fluid grace of something that had long ago abandoned the limitations of human anatomy, his body twisting, contorting, flowing around obstacles rather than avoiding them.
Renjiro kept evading. He shifted between positions using Bunshin no Aida, appearing a meter to the left, then behind a tree, then above a branch. But something had changed. He could feel it—the weight of time pressing against him, the inexorable drain of his most precious resource.
He's winning this exchange. Not because he's stronger. Not because he's faster. Because time favours him.
His chakra reserves were still substantial—months of training, years of conditioning, the natural advantage of Uzumaki vitality. His stamina was holding. His body was still responsive, still capable of the rapid movements required to survive against a Sannin.
But my eyes are failing.
Every activation, every use of its abilities, pushed him closer to blindness. The burning behind his left eye was becoming unbearable, and the blood that traced down his cheek was no longer a single tear but a steady stream. He needed to change the terms of engagement.
Then I stop playing his game.
Renjiro shifted tactics. Instead of avoiding everything—instead of dodging every snake, sidestepping every thrust, evading every attack—he deliberately chose a risk. He let a serpent slip through his defences, its fangs raking across his forearm. Not a bite—he twisted at the last moment, preventing the fangs from sinking deep enough to inject their paralytic venom—but a deep grazing wound that tore through skin and muscle.
Hiss.
Blood sprayed from the wound, dark in the firelight. The pain was sharp, immediate, but Renjiro did not flinch. He had anticipated it. He had planned for it. His healing factor was already activating, the wound beginning to close, the bleeding slowing.
Orochimaru noticed.
A slight smile crossed the Sannin's face.
There, Orochimaru thought. Come closer.
He pressed forward, believing that Renjiro was degrading, that the Mangekyō was failing, that the young Jonin Commander was finally reaching his limit. He moved into close range, his Kusanagi held low, his body coiled and ready.
"Your eye weakens," Orochimaru said. "Your body follows. How disappointing."
He looked directly into Renjiro's eyes.
The world around them fractured.
Crack.
Sound disappeared. The crackle of flames, the hiss of snakes, the whisper of wind—all of it vanished, swallowed by a silence that was absolute and terrible.
Kōkai no Kagami, Renjiro thought, the name surfacing from the depths of his consciousness. The Mirror of Regret.
The technique was not an illusion in the traditional sense. It did not create false images or manipulate sensory input. It reached into the target's own memories, their own emotions, their own buried regrets and weaponised them. It forced the target to confront the truths they had spent years denying, the wounds they had thought healed, the fears they had buried so deep they believed they had vanished.
This will work, Renjiro thought. It has to.
Orochimaru opened his eyes to a grey sky.
He was standing before two graves—simple stones, weathered by years, their inscriptions barely legible. The wind was cold, cutting through his robes, and the trees around him were bare, their branches reaching toward the sky like skeletal fingers.
Where am I?
He recognised the graves. He had visited them once, decades ago, on the day he had left his childhood home and never returned. His parents' graves. The stones were smaller than he remembered, the inscriptions fainter, the names almost erased by time.
This isn't real.
But it felt real. The cold wind against his skin. The rough texture of the stones under his fingers. The ache in his chest—an ache he had thought he had buried, had outgrown, had transcended.
Hiruzen appeared.
The Third Hokage was younger here—not the aged, weary leader of Konoha's later years, but the man Orochimaru had first known: strong, confident, disappointed. He stood beside the graves, his arms crossed, his expression not angry, not shouting. Just disappointed.
That was worse.
"You could have been Hokage," Hiruzen said, and his voice was not accusatory. It was sad. "You could have led the village. Instead, you chose this path."
Orochimaru opened his mouth to respond—to explain, to justify, to defend—but no words came.
"I thought I taught you better."
The genjutsu was not inventing anything. It was not creating false memories or manufacturing emotions. It was simply revealing—pulling back the curtain on truths that Orochimaru had spent decades denying.
Death.
The word echoed through his consciousness. He remembered finding his parents' bodies—the stillness, the coldness, the absolute absence of life. He remembered realising that everyone died, that everything ended, that no amount of knowledge or power could prevent the inevitable.
The terror of mortality.
He had built his entire existence around transcending that terror. The experiments. The immortality research. The pursuit of every forbidden technique. All of it was rooted in that single, primal fear.
What if immortality was never about knowledge?
What if it was fear?
What if everything I've done—every atrocity, every betrayal, every life I've destroyed—began because I was afraid?
"You were always afraid," Hiruzen said. It was sad. "Even as a child. You just hid it better than most."
Minutes passed. Or hours. Orochimaru could not tell. The grey sky did not change, the wind did not shift, and Hiruzen's disappointed face remained fixed in his vision like a brand.
He struggled against the genjutsu—tried to break it, to dispel it, to force his way back to reality. Normal techniques did not work. The illusion was not layered on top of his consciousness; it was woven into it, inseparable from his own thoughts and memories.
This is my own mind attacking me, he realised, a cold fury building in his chest. He's using my regrets as weapons.
The rage helped. It gave him something to focus on, something to anchor himself against the tide of emotion. He was Orochimaru of the Sannin. He would not be defeated by a ghost and a memory.
"Enough."
The word was barely a whisper, but it carried weight.
He bit through his tongue.
CRACK
Pain exploded through his jaw—sharp, immediate, undeniable. Blood filled his mouth, warm and metallic, and the shock of it sent fractures through the illusion. The grey sky flickered. The graves wavered. Hiruzen's face distorted, became indistinct, became something else.
But it was not enough.
The illusion held, its grip on his consciousness unbroken.
Normal Genjutsu Release won't work, Orochimaru realised. This requires something more.
He reached deep within himself into the techniques he had developed over decades of forbidden research.
The Snake Shedding of the Mind. A technique he had never used in combat, had never even tested fully.
He had designed it as a contingency—a last resort, a final escape. He had never imagined using it against such a potent psychological attack.
But the boy has left me no choice.
He activated the technique.
It was horrifying. Even for Orochimaru, who had long ago abandoned conventional morality, the sensation was disturbing. He felt a layer of his consciousness peel away—like shedding skin, but internal, psychological. The part of him that was trapped in the illusion, the part that was vulnerable to regret and grief, the part that still remembered his parents and feared death—it separated, detaching from his core self like a snake shedding its old skin.
The illusion clung to the discarded residue, satisfied with its sacrifice.
Orochimaru escaped.
Reality crashed back with violent force.
THOOM.
Orochimaru stumbled, his body lurching forward, his hands catching himself on the ground. Blood ran from his nose and mouth, and his breathing was ragged, uncontrolled.
He peeled away part of his own mind, Renjiro thought. What kind of monster does that?
He had seen many things in his two lifetimes. He had witnessed death and destruction, had committed acts that would haunt ordinary men. But this—this was something else.
Orochimaru had literally shed a layer of his consciousness, had abandoned a piece of himself, had sacrificed his own memories and emotions to escape the genjutsu.
This almost worked, Renjiro realised. It should have worked.
But it wasn't enough.
Orochimaru straightened slowly. "You dredged up things I buried before you were born," he said. "That was a mistake."
He paused, his chakra surging, the pressure of his presence becoming almost unbearable.
The Sannin stopped playing.
No more clever tricks. No more experiments. No more testing. This was power—raw, absolute, overwhelming.
BOOM.
The ground trembled. The trees shook. The very air seemed to vibrate with the force of Orochimaru's chakra. He formed seals rapidly, his hands blurring through the sequences, and then he slammed his palms onto the earth.
"Rashōmon."
A colossal gate erupted from the ground—massive, ancient, its metal surface rusted and scarred by centuries of warfare.
CRACK. THOOM. GRRRRRR.
The gate crashed down between them, its shadow falling over the clearing, its presence a physical wall that divided the battlefield into two halves. Renjiro stood on one side; Orochimaru stood on the other.
"Snake Authority Spell."
Another summoning. This time, the snakes were not ordinary—they were gigantic, their bodies thicker than tree trunks, their scales gleaming like armour, their fangs longer than swords. They coiled around the Rashōmon gate, wrapped around its pillars, poured over its structure like a living tidal wave of scales and venom.
For the first time, Renjiro felt small.
This is why they're called Sannin, he thought, watching the colossal serpents descend. This is what it means to fight a legend. I need the second set of eyes. Now.
Orochimaru watched Renjiro from across the battlefield, his yellow eyes fixed on the bleeding Mangekyō.
That boy made me feel, Orochimaru thought, the realisation settling into his consciousness like poison. Feel.
He had not experienced genuine emotion in years—not since he had abandoned his humanity in pursuit of immortality. The genjutsu had forced him to confront things he had buried, had dredged up emotions he had thought long dead.
Dangerous, he concluded. The boy is dangerous.
His objective shifted. Not possession. Not research.
Personal vengeance.
I'll mount those eyes on my wall, Orochimaru decided, his smile widening. Even if the body is too damaged to inhabit. Even if the vessel is destroyed.
=====
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