The candlelight flickered.
The scroll in Raien's hands felt heavier now.
Words written in a language older than chakra—etched into the fibers of the parchment with blood and something colder than ink.
Konan stood frozen.
Her eyes fixed on the drawing.
"The End," she whispered. "The prophecy... it warned this might happen."
Raien didn't blink.His left eye hummed with a low, painful throb.
He looked at the scroll again.
At the black sigil drawn beneath his name.
"Correction Entity?" he asked.
Konan nodded slowly.
"When fate is changed, something awakens. Something designed to maintain balance. It hunts anomalies."
Raien swallowed.
"I'm the anomaly."
The sky over Amegakure had gone completely silent.
No birds. No wind.
The rain... stopped.
Unnatural stillness.
Pain noticed it first.
He stood atop his tower, staring at the unmoving clouds.
"There is something in this silence," he said to himself.
Then he turned.
"Yahiko, what do you sense?" asked the orange-haired body beside him.
Yahiko's Rinnegan scanned the city.
"…A presence. Not chakra. Something deeper. It's looking for something."
Pain narrowed his eyes.
Or someone.
Underground.
Raien stumbled back from the scroll.
His breath sharp.
"Can I stop it?"
Konan didn't answer.
She simply turned and opened a black chest behind her.Inside, a mask.
Old. Bone-white. Etched with swirling seals.
She handed it to him.
"This belonged to a man who touched fate once. He didn't survive. But he delayed his death."
Raien stared.
"…You want me to wear a dead man's mask?"
"It will shield your identity from the Entity… for a time."
Raien took the mask.
It was cold. Too cold.
He put it on.
And for the first time—His eye went quiet.
The pain stopped.
Konan sighed."That's all we can do now."
But far away—The Entity had already arrived.
It stood in the middle of a fog-covered field.
A figure draped in darkness.
No face.
No limbs.
Just a humanoid shape wrapped in twitching threads of red light.
It whispered.
"Thread 1787 altered. Correction required. Initiating Purge."
It moved.
Instantly.
A blur through space.
Everywhere and nowhere.
Heading directly for Amegakure.
Elsewhere, in the Hidden Mist—
Tetsuo—now alive—sat in a wooden shack.
Bandaged.
Confused.
The old man who saved him placed soup on the table.
"You're lucky, boy. Something wants you alive."
Tetsuo looked at his trembling hands.
"I shouldn't be."
The old man chuckled.
"That's the trick about life. It doesn't care what should be. Only what is."
Then—Tetsuo's eyes flashed red.
A glimpse.
A memory not his own.
Raien's face.
The forest.The thread.The broken eye.
"…Who are you?" he whispered.
But no answer came.
Back in Amegakure—
Raien sat alone.
The mask still on.
His heartbeat steady.
The scroll lay open beside him.
Then—
A sudden pulse.
He stood.
Turned.
The walls cracked.
The ground trembled.
And from the shadows—It emerged.
The Correction Entity.
It didn't walk.
It unfolded.
Thread by thread.
Glowing red. Humming with silent wrath.
Konan appeared beside Raien.
Chakra paper swirling around her.
"That's it," she whispered.
Raien's eye pulsed beneath the mask.
He saw its shape clearly now.
It wasn't solid.
It was made of decisions.Unlived possibilities.Deaths that never happened.
A creature stitched from timelines.
The Entity turned to him.
"Subject identified. Thread corruptor. Classification: Broken Eye."
Raien stepped forward.
"Wait—"
"Initiating Nullification."
It moved.
Fast.
Too fast.
But not for Konan.
She threw a barrage of paper bombs.
Boom—boom—BOOM.
Flames lit the chamber.
Smoke everywhere.
But it walked through the fire untouched.
Raien flinched.
Konan whispered, "Run. You're the target. I'll stall it."
Raien shook his head."No."
His eye burned.
The third crack shimmered.
And suddenly—He saw its thread.
The one that bound the Entity to this moment.
Thin.
Flickering.
He reached.
Focused.
Pulled.
Just slightly.
The Entity paused.
Glitched.
The chamber shimmered—then shifted.
Time slowed.
Raien gasped.
"I... changed something."
The Entity looked at him again.
"Anomaly escalating."
It screamed.
Soundless.
But the walls shattered.
Raien stumbled back.
Blood trickled from his nose.
He couldn't hold the thread.
It snapped.
Time resumed.
Konan caught him before he collapsed.
"You can't fight it head-on. Not yet."
Raien breathed raggedly.
"So what do we do?"
She looked up.
The roof began to collapse.
"We run."
They shot through the underground tunnel systems.
The Entity followed.
Not running.
Not teleporting.
Simply appearing.
Over and over.
Every step Raien took, it was there.
Like it knew where he would be.
Like it had already seen this.
They reached the emergency exit.
Konan hit the seal.
A stone wall exploded outward.
Fresh air.
Raien gasped.
Freedom.
The night sky above.
But still no rain.
Only silence.
They ran into the alleyways of Amegakure.
Breathing hard.
The city didn't know.
Not yet.
That something unnatural was walking through its veins.
Raien leaned against a wall.
"We can't escape it forever."
Konan nodded.
"But we can learn."
Raien turned.
"I need to train."
She smiled faintly.
"Yes. And fast."
Raien looked up at the cloudless, starless sky.
"…I changed one death."
He paused.
"What happens when I change another?"
Konan didn't answer.
But far behind them—The Entity stood still.
Watching.
Waiting.
Then it faded back into the threads of the world.
Not gone.
Just… postponed.