The mist had lifted, but Phantom's mind remained fogged.
He sat with his back against the base of a withered tree on the far edge of the Land of Waves, chakra reserves low, systems glitching again. Beside him, Haku was quiet, mending a gash on his own shoulder with precise, practiced movements.
Neither of them spoke—not for a while.
They didn't need to.
Too much had been remembered in too short a span.
Too many ghosts had stirred.
Phantom stared down at his hand, watching faint flickers of light pass over his palm.
[Code Phantom: Temporal Chain Unlocked – 3/10]
[System Sync Instability: 41%]
[Warning: Divergence Threshold Approaching]
His breath was shallow.
Each fragment he reawakened made the world less stable.
His mind was trying to reintegrate memories from a timeline that no longer existed, one where Root had turned him into a weapon of surgical silence—until he broke free. Until he tried to kill the boy that now slept peacefully a few kilometers away, dreaming of ramen and Hokage titles.
Phantom closed his eyes.
He remembered the order.
Kill Naruto Uzumaki before the Kyūbi fully awakens. Extract the beast. Cleanse the timeline.
He'd almost done it.
In the last world.
But this time…
This time, he wasn't sure fate had the right script.
Hours Earlier – Return to Tazuna's HomeKakashi hadn't asked questions when Phantom returned.
He simply looked up with that single eye and said, "You're late."
Phantom merely nodded and said, "You're not dead."
Kakashi smirked.
The mission resumed like nothing had happened, at least on the surface. They stayed another day in Tazuna's modest home while Kakashi recovered from chakra depletion.
Naruto rambled. Sakura overcompensated. Sasuke watched.
But the quiet tension beneath the team was undeniable.
They all felt it now—Phantom was different.
Not just skilled. Not just secretive.
He moved like a shadow with purpose.
Naruto cornered him outside that night.
"You're hiding something," he said, arms crossed. "You vanish when things get dangerous. You don't sleep. And I saw your eyes change when Zabuza showed up."
Phantom said nothing.
Naruto stepped closer. "I'm not an idiot."
"That's debatable," Sasuke's voice said from the roof above, where he was eavesdropping not-so-subtly.
Naruto ignored him. "Are you one of them? Like Root? Like those guys that attacked Kakashi-sensei once before?"
The name Root cut deeper than expected.
Phantom's jaw tensed. "I'm not with them. Not anymore."
"Then what are you?"
A long pause.
Phantom met Naruto's gaze, the air charged with silent weight.
"Someone trying to make sure you live long enough to become what you're meant to be."
Then he walked off.
Leaving Naruto blinking under the moonlight, with a hundred questions and no answers.
Present – Deep Forest Outskirts"You can't delay it forever," Haku said, breaking the silence. "Your system's running out of time."
"I know."
"Then you'll have to choose soon."
"Choose what?"
"Whether to fix the timeline—or break it."
Phantom exhaled slowly, his breath fogging in the cool morning air.
He looked to Haku. "You knew more than you let on back there. In the mist."
Haku didn't deny it.
"I've remembered bits and pieces too. About… before. About the Mirror Pulse. About you. Me. Echo."
Phantom's eyes narrowed.
"You knew Echo?"
"She was our commander," Haku said quietly. "In the timeline that never stabilized."
The air dropped ten degrees with that name.
Echo—the ghost in the machine. The one who embedded the Shadow Enlistment protocol in Phantom before the reset. The one who whispered in glitches and sealed memories. She was more than a system architect.
She was his handler. His partner.
His betrayer.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked.
"Because you weren't ready to remember. And because she's still watching."
Phantom flinched.
[System Interference Detected: Echo Protocol Ghost Pinged]
[Message Fragment Incoming…]
A single sentence appeared in his vision, written in a font that no one should ever see again.
"Don't trust the boy with mirrors."
Haku watched Phantom pale slightly.
"You saw something."
"She's alive."
"Echo?" Haku frowned. "That's not possible. She was erased in the Reset."
"No. She backed herself up into my system. Into my damn head."
He stood slowly.
And that's when the world shifted.
The ground rippled.
The sky turned violet for an instant.
And a timequake rolled across the forest—only Phantom could feel it.
[Divergence Alert – Priority Zero]
[World Thread Splintering]
[Trigger: Uchiha Sasuke – Memory Glitch Initiated]
"What the hell—"
Phantom turned north instinctively.
Sasuke.
The world was reacting to Sasuke's bloodline awakening early—because Phantom's presence had shifted fate.
He had touched the code of destiny… and now destiny was unraveling.
"I need to go," Phantom said.
Haku didn't argue.
"I'll find you again."
"You'd better," Phantom said, then flickered out of sight.
Meanwhile – Tazuna's HomeSasuke gripped the side of his bed hard enough to crack the wood.
Visions burned behind his eyes—blue flames, red tomoe spinning, a dark hallway filled with mirrors.
Bloodlines.
Fangs.
And one word echoing from deep inside his blood:
"Mangekyō…"
He gasped and looked down.
On the floor beside his bed, a single black feather lay.
Not a crow's.
Not a raven's.
A phantom's.
And the seal carved into it was Uchiha-class encryption.
How the hell did Phantom have access to Uchiha-level sealcraft?
Phantom appeared at the treeline just as Kakashi was walking the perimeter.
The silver-haired jōnin turned sharply.
"Something's wrong," he said.
"Everything is wrong," Phantom replied.
And then—just as he opened his mouth to explain—the sky cracked.
A pulse of light burst overhead, invisible to all but those with tampered timelines.
And in the middle of the ripple—
A figure emerged.
No chakra.
No heartbeat.
Just presence.
A man in ANBU armor that hadn't existed since the First Shinobi War.
And a mask marked with a spiral and a single phrase:
"The Future Doesn't Belong to You."
Phantom stepped forward, instinctively shifting into a combat stance.
Because he recognized the armor.
He had worn that armor—once.
And the figure wasn't a stranger.
It was a version of himself.
From a timeline where Phantom never broke free.
A perfect Root soldier.
No emotion.
No name.
No mercy.
The fight would come.
But first, fate demanded a choice.
Fix the past.
Or kill the future.
And Phantom…
Was done following orders.