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Chapter 126 – The Weight of Judgment
🕑 Added 2025-07-21 07:13:36 +0000 UTCChapter 126 – The Weight of Judgment
The battlefield lay in a broken hush. Debris and charred soil painted a grim canvas under the gray light of dusk. Blood, ash, and silence mingled in the air. The storm had passed. Only its consequences remained.
Itachi stepped forward from the ruins, his Akatsuki cloak fluttering softly in the wind, frayed and torn. His expression remained calm, as it always had, but the way his eyes movedl slow, deliberate, watching every step as if it might be his last, betrayed a deeper truth.
Hajime stood ahead, motionless. His silver-gray armor gleamed faintly beneath the shifting sky, his blue-lensed helmet obscuring any trace of humanity. He stood like a monument. Unmoving. Judgment incarnate.
Itachi stopped a few paces away.
"Will you kill me now?" he asked softly, his voice flat. "For the massacre? For treason against the Uchiha?"
The wind did not answer, but Hajime's silence thundered louder than any storm. The blue lenses fixed on Itachi, unwavering.
Itachi continued, his eyes narrowing slightly. "I chose Konoha over my clan. I accepted the mission from the Third Hokage. I believed a civil war would open Konoha's walls to every other hidden village. So I killed them all... to protect Konoha. Even so, I'm still a criminal. A traitor."
The pressure that came from Hajime was not rage, nor hatred. It was an aura beyond comprehension, dense and suffocating. Itachi, a man who'd faced death countless times, felt the sweat bead on his temple. The helmeted figure was silent, unmoved. Watching.
Finally, Hajime stirred.
"No," he said.
Just one word.
Then he stepped forward.
"You're already dying, Itachi. Even if I could heal you... I won't."
Itachi's eyes widened just a fraction.
"Why?"
"Because someone else deserves to face you," Hajime said. "Your brother. Sasuke."
He stopped before Itachi, the two men mere feet apart.
Inwardly, Hajime's thoughts turned, quiet and precise. I've seen glimpses of him. The same potential that burns in Naruto burns in Sasuke. If I ever leave this world for too long... they will be needed.
A vision passed through his mind. Vast, dark skies of other worlds. Unspeakable threats. Realms where time twisted and gods made sport of men. In those places, Hajime might walk alone. But here, this world needed its own champions.
Someone had to stay behind to defend it.
Itachi closed his eyes. A long breath escaped his lips, tension releasing from his frame.
"That was always the plan," he said. "To die by his hand. Not in vengeance. But so he might grow strong."
Their conversation ended there. Words were no longer needed.
A groan broke the quiet.
Konan was crouched beside Nagato, gently wiping the sweat from his brow. The pain of defeat lingered in his pale eyes. His breathing was shallow, his body still brittle and twisted.
"We lost," she whispered, her voice trembling. "He defeated all the remaining Akatsuki..."
Nagato didn’t respond. He merely stared at the broken sky.
Footsteps approached. The quiet crunch of armored boots.
Hajime.
He removed his helmet.
Konan looked up, startled. The face revealed was striking, silver eyes glowing with faint psychic light, tousled black and silver hair, features carved with grace and purpose. Not just a warrior.
Nagato tried to sit up, failed.
Hajime knelt beside him and reached out a gauntlet-covered hand.
Konan’s eyes widened. She stepped in the way, shielding Nagato instinctively.
"Don't! Don’t take his eyes! He’s too weak. You’ll kill him!"
Hajime looked at her.
"I'm not taking them yet," he said calmly. "I'm healing him first. He won’t survive teleportation like this."
Konan blinked. Then flushed in embarrassment.
"Ah... I see. Sorry."
She stepped aside.
Hajime placed a hand on Nagato’s shoulder. Golden psychic light bloomed from his palm, not fiery or radiant, but warm, like the sun behind clouds. Biomancy. A living force that restructured matter, knit nerves, restored what nature had lost.
Nagato gasped.
His hunched frame slowly rose. Muscle returned to atrophied limbs. His back straightened. The black chakra rods embedded in his spine fell to the ground one by one. His hair began to regain its reddish hue. His flesh, once pale and sagging, began to fill out with life.
"How..." he murmured, voice rasping. "How can this be?"
Hajime said nothing. Only watched.
Then, with a subtle motion, he lifted a hand. Telekinetic force flared.
Nagato’s eyes, the Rinnegan, were gently drawn from their sockets.
Nagato screamed in pain.
Konan lunged.
But a hand caught her wrist.
Itachi.
"Wait."
Konan stopped, confused and breathing hard.
Hajime focused again. Psychic light poured from his fingers. He placed them over Nagato's eyes. The tissue glowed, reformed. Organs rebuilt. When the light faded, Nagato blinked, eyes no longer Rinnegan, but his own. Original. Human.
He looked around, confused, overwhelmed.
"You... healed them too?"
"You’re free now," Hajime said. "You’ve done enough."
He stood. Looked over the broken land.
Konan held Nagato, whose face was unreadable. For the first time in years, he felt something he hadn’t since childhood.
Relief.
Hajime placed the Rinnegan into a sealed capsule, a miniature containment pond. A stasis field not capable of freezing time, but can preserved organic balance. The same form it entered, unchanged.
He slipped his helmet back on.
His thoughts drifted again.
The Ōtsutsuki... they will come in the future, might be decades or years. I don’t have patience to search this galaxy or wait for them.
But they will come. And if I’m gone when they do... Naruto. Sasuke. They must be ready.
The wind whispered across the battlefield.
Judgment had been passed.
