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The moment Kakuzu flickered forward, Neji's body froze... not from fear, but from loss of consciousness. His chakra reserves were empty, his body wrecked, his limbs barely functioning. There was no last-second jutsu, no clever counter. Just the inevitable end of a battle far beyond his limit.
He didn't feel pain. Not at first. Not even when the black threads surged toward him like vipers. Then silence.
When Neji opened his eyes, he was no longer in the canyon. There was no sky, no ground, no blood, no enemy. Just white.
A vast, endless space of nothing. Pure white, stretching into every direction. The kind of silence where you hear your own heart beat. He looked down and saw nothing but more white... yet he stood, somehow, as if on solid air.
"Am I... dead?" he muttered, his voice startlingly clear in the nothingness.
His words didn't echo. They just vanished.
Neji took a breath, but it felt strange. There was no wind, no scent, no sensation of air filling his lungs. He wasn't breathing to live anymore. Just breathing because that's what humans do.
He looked at his hands. Whole. Clean. No burns. No bandages. Not even a scratch.
"So this is what comes after," he said to himself.
He let the thought settle, but unease followed. Was it really death? It didn't feel like judgment. Or punishment. Or reward. Just an empty place.
He tried to remember the moment before this. The Uchiha he fought. A brutal, no-name boss. A genjutsu specialist, possibly. Fast hands. Sharp chakra.
Neji had survived that fight. Barely. He won by detonating explosive tags at point-blank range, a reckless move. The blast nearly killed him too. His hands were scorched. His body broken.
He'd barely made it out alive... only to run into a thread creature. It should be Kakuzu.
"Just my luck," he muttered with bitter amusement. "I survive a death match with a nameless Uchiha, and end up in the path of a mid-Kage level monster with a hobby for ripping out hearts."
He closed his eyes.
Hinata. Cold. Her eyes... empty. Not dead, but changed. Hardened. She had started craving strength after her father's death, and he had seen the slow burn of desperation in her.
Hanabi. Still too young to see how broken the Hyūga clan really was.
Shinra. His younger brother. The only one who could put a smile on Neji without trying. That boy deserved peace. Not this world of silent obedience and marked foreheads.
His parents. Especially his mother, she would kill him.
He had so much left to do. He had just begun.
He had started building a map of the Caged Bird Seal's chakra code. He had found a lost heritage though burnt. He had just started to spread his business and spy network.
And now? Gone.
His curiosity about the world outside Konoha... the thing that had led him on this solo adventure toward the Fire Country... if only I did not leave. I should still be practicing with hinta. Debating about with his father about the reforms. playing with his brother. teasing his little cousin hanabi. huh.
"Should've prepared better," he muttered. "Should've expected the unexpected. Should've waited to be strong."
He clenched his fists. He wanted to be angry. He should be angry. But there was no heat here. No fire. Just the gnawing ache of his unfinished work. Now what... Am I going to be reincarnated again?
Neji looked into the horizon of white, and something shifted.
A dot. A shape.
A silhouette... distant, then approaching without movement. As if the space itself warped to bring it closer.
It stepped out from the nothing like a ripple made flesh.
There stood a man... or something resembling a man.
Skin gray like stone left too long in moonlight, hair like black threads woven into a crownless halo. His eyes—closed. His chakra? Quiet but ancient, stretching far beyond any measure Neji had ever seen.
His chakra didn't surge or flare. It simply existed, like a mountain in still air. Ancient. Endless.
Neji flared his Byakugan on instinct, but nothing activated. No chakra pathways. No seal. No reaction. He was powerless here.
The figure spoke, half to himself.
"Hmm... so the inheritor has already brushed death," #$#%$#% murmured, voice like polished stone. "I had to descend again. Luckily Kali isn't at the coordinate. I have to make this quick."
Neji stepped back instinctively.
"Who are you?" he asked.
The being regarded him with a slow tilt of the head. Then, in a voice deeper and colder than winter, he answered:
"A question you're not ready to understand."
Neji narrowed his eyes. "That doesn't answer anything."
"Nor was it meant to."
The being stepped closer, the air around him folding as if space itself bent to accommodate his presence.
"You think you're dead, but you're not. Not entirely. You're in the seam between life and something else. A realm you were never supposed to enter without invitation."
Neji frowned. "Then why am I here?"
The being paused, then spoke with measured weight.
"Because you are not like the others. You have eyes that not many possess. You've glimpsed the lattice underneath your world. Truth, not just seen... but understood."
Neji's throat tightened. He remembered the feeling of seeing chakra flows not just as lines but as thoughts. As language.
"You're talking about the Byakugan," Neji said. He didn't want to reveal shingan.
The figure smiled faintly. "A fragment. An echo of something once divine. Yours, now. But dormant. Misused. Limited by your mortality. The Shingan."
Neji's fists clenched. His mind raced how did he know about shingan that was given by the old god by his request. He quickly recalled he mentioned there were other who choose naruto world. Could it be he is also like me?
Misused? So, Did I already use? When? Neji scratched his head, Is it when I have awaken a mask when Hinata's eyes were gouged out.