Echoes of a Crow (Itachi x Eleceed)

[XjO]

"Time doesn't heal anything, it just teaches us how to live with pain" – Itachi Uchiha

———
Kabuto stood frozen in the dim cavern, his posture slack, arms hanging loosely at his sides. The echo of dripping water punctuated the silence, the air thick with the scent of damp stone and blood. A faint, spectral light flickered across the surface of the cave walls, cast by the chakra patterns swirling from Itachi Uchiha's left eye. The forbidden jutsu—Izanami—had already closed around Kabuto like an invisible cage, binding him within a ceaseless loop of time and self, a mirror he could not refute nor flee.

Itachi's gaze remained fixed upon him, calm and unblinking. In that calmness, however, was a gravity that pressed inward like the weight of the world. Izanami was not a weapon meant to harm. It was a verdict, merciless in its mercy. Kabuto would walk the same steps, make the same choices, again and again, until he confronted the lie of the person he had crafted himself to be. Until he accepted the truth he had run from.

The pale serpentine Sage stood trapped mid-motion, his pupils dilated, lips parted halfway through a breath that would never finish. His body remained in the here and now, but his mind spiraled endlessly within the illusion.

Itachi watched him, but a shift in the air pulled his attention away. Soft footsteps echoed behind him.

Sasuke.

The younger Uchiha stood a short distance away, his expression usually guarded and cold. Yet now, something fractured beneath the surface. His brows were knit, his lips pressed into a thin line that trembled almost imperceptibly. His dark eyes—so similar to Itachi's, yet so different—carried a wave of regret, disbelief, and a grief he would never willingly voice.

Sasuke understood. He had realized what Itachi intended long before the words had been spoken.

Itachi would end the Reanimation Jutsu.
And this time, when his soul was released, there would be no returning.

The cavern seemed to narrow around them, the shadows stretching long and silent. For a moment, neither brother spoke. The war raged somewhere far beyond the stone ceilings above, armies clashing, jutsu shattering landscapes, but inside this space, time slowed to something fragile and unbearably human.

Itachi's expression did not change. Yet, in the stillness of his gaze, there was something gentle. Something almost sorrowful.

He turned his attention back to Kabuto. His remaining Sharingan glowed faintly, warping the world with a subtle red sheen. He invoked Tsukuyomi to guide Kabuto's body to obedience. The Sage's hands rose slowly, stiffly, like a puppet suspended by unseen strings.

"As the caster," Itachi murmured, his voice quiet, steady, "you alone can end it."

His tone carried neither accusation nor contempt. Only resolve.

Within Tsukuyomi's control, Kabuto's lips parted and began to form words, the sounds empty, detached, echoing like distant chimes against the cavern walls. His hands hovered in front of him, awaiting direction.

Itachi's gaze sharpened as he listened, analyzing, memorizing every motion, every breath of the incantation. The sequences etched themselves into his mind—one final burden, one final duty.

So… this is it, he thought.

He drew in a slow breath.

Then, aloud, he spoke.

"Rat," he intoned softly, guiding Kabuto's hands.

"Ox."

The seals formed one after another, deliberate and inevitable.

"Monkey. Tiger. Dragon. Boar."

Each gesture echoed with meaning, with memory. The technique that had called the dead to walk again would now be undone by the one who had lived a life of lies so that others could continue breathing.

A faint shimmer spread outward like ripples across water as chakra surged. Itachi's form glowed at the edges, the ephemeral light clinging to him, pulling him gradually toward dissolution. His reanimated body had already begun to crumble. Dust—no, not dust, but tiny motes of light—flaked gently from his skin, rising as though drawn upward by an unseen breeze.

He held Kabuto's final motion suspended for a breath that seemed to stretch forever.
Then, with calm that defied the weight in his chest, he spoke the final words.

"Reanimation Jutsu… release!"

The moment the words left his lips, the world shifted.

Across distant battlefields, countless reanimated bodies began to glow and break apart into drifting ash and light, souls loosening from their undead vessels. But here, in the cavern, Itachi did not look outward. He did not watch the war, nor the consequences of his choice.

He turned.

Slowly, gently, he began walking toward Sasuke.

With every step, more of him dissolved. Fingers faded at the edges first, fragments of his cloak peeling away into shimmering streaks. Yet his posture remained composed—unwavering, serene, as though even now he refused to fall.

His heart, however, felt heavier than it ever had in life.

Sasuke did not move at first. He stood tense, shoulders rigid, as if rooted in place by something he could neither fight nor accept. His eyes widened, dark irises reflecting the fragile light of Itachi's unraveling form. A hundred emotions surged behind them—anger, sorrow, longing, confusion—yet his lips remained pressed shut, pride warring against grief.
Itachi stopped before him.

For a moment, he simply looked at his younger brother. At the boy he had once carried on his back through the quiet village streets, the boy who had chased after him, laughing, always trying to catch up. At the young man who had grown into vengeance incarnate and loneliness because of the burden Itachi had placed upon him.

The weight of it pressed deep into his chest.

He lifted his fading hand and placed it gently atop Sasuke's head. His palm was warm—surprisingly so, despite the light consuming his form. Sasuke stiffened, breath catching, and his eyes flickered. The familiar gesture pierced through layers of pride, of resentment, of walls built over years of hatred.

Itachi's thumb brushed lightly through his brother's hair in the same tender motion he had used when Sasuke was still small.

"You do not ever have to forgive me," Itachi said.

His voice was quiet, but every syllable carried the depth of his entire life—its sins, its love, its contradictions. His tone was steady, controlled, but beneath it lay an ache so deep it quivered at the edges.

Sasuke's breath trembled, a sound barely audible.

Itachi's gaze softened.

"I will always love you."

The words were not dramatic. Not desperate. They were simple, honest—an unadorned truth laid bare, spoken without expectation of redemption. He did not ask for forgiveness. He did not ask to be understood. He asked only that Sasuke know this: his love had been real, even when it destroyed them both.

Those were his last words to his brother.

The cavern seemed to breathe around them, the dim light shimmering like a distant dawn. Sasuke's hands finally lifted, reaching upward as if to grasp the dissolving figure before him, but his fingers closed only around drifting fragments of light. His lips parted as though to speak, yet no sound came.

Itachi watched him, absorbing every detail, the sheen of tears that refused to fall, the fierce, wounded pride, the rawness of a boy who had never been allowed to mourn.

In that fleeting moment, he cherished everything.

He cherished fighting beside Sasuke against Kabuto, blades and jutsu flashing side-by-side—a fragment of a world that might have been. In some distant, impossible reality, perhaps they would have stood together openly, brothers united not by tragedy, but by choice.

Was I kind, Itachi wondered silently, to place him on the path of vengeance? To make him walk through hatred and darkness so that others could live?

The thought cut through him like a blade.

He had watched Sasuke's life twist and fracture beneath the weight of the lies he had woven. Every step Sasuke had taken after that night had led him deeper into rage, into isolation, into despair. And all of it—the loneliness, the hatred, the blood on his hands—had been born from Itachi's decision.

Pain shuddered through his fading heart.
Was it right… to love the village more than the clan?

He saw again the silent streets of the Uchiha compound beneath a pale moon. The bodies. The stillness. The breaths he had taken, each one heavier than the last. The choice he had made: to condemn his clan for the sake of peace, to bear their hatred alone so that Sasuke might survive in a world without war.

A world that had never come.

If there was cruelty in what he had done, it was a cruelty he had forced upon himself first but Sasuke had paid for it all the same.

And yet…

He looked at his brother one last time.
Sasuke's eyes were not empty. They burned. Not only with hatred, but with life, fierce and unyielding. Sasuke had survived every darkness he had been thrust into. He had grown, scarred yet unbroken, still reaching forward even when the path ahead was painted in blood.

That strength, the same strength Itachi had always believed lay within him was real.
Perhaps, Itachi thought, this was not the end of Sasuke's journey.

Perhaps the truth, now revealed, would finally free him from the endless circles of hatred and grief.

"I leave the future to you," he whispered inwardly, though no words passed his lips.
His hand slid gently from Sasuke's head, disintegrating before it could fall.

The light spread faster now, consuming his arms, his chest, his face. His features blurred, yet his gaze never wavered. He continued to look at Sasuke as long as he could, memorizing the shape of him, the boy he had protected, the man he had burdened.

For the first time since his childhood, his expression softened into something faintly peaceful.

Then his body shattered into a soft cascade of light, scattering like fireflies into the darkness.

Sasuke stood alone in the cavern, his hand still lifted toward the space where his brother had been. The last fragments of light drifted upward and vanished into the shadows overhead.

Silence returned.

But the silence was different now—heavier, endless, echoing like a hollow inside his chest.

Sasuke lowered his hand slowly, fingers curling into a trembling fist. His jaw tightened, his breath unsteady, his eyes flickering with a storm of emotions even he could not name. Regret. Anger. Love. Loss.

No tears fell.

He swallowed them as he always had.
Somewhere in the distance, the sound of war thundered on.

Yet in that moment, in that cavern where light had vanished and truth had been laid bare, the world felt unbearably still.

And the absence left in Itachi's wake lingered like a wound that would never fully heal.

————
The last traces of light that made up his body scattered like embers on the wind.
Itachi's form dissolved completely, the reanimation jutsu finally undone, the chakra threads binding him to the living world severed. There was no pain when it happened, only a steadily growing quiet, like the surface of a lake smoothing after a stone sank beneath it.

He had wanted to speak again.

I will always love you, little brother.

The words echoed soundlessly inside him, aching with the weight of all the times he had never allowed himself to say them. He had said them once, with difficulty, and he knew they had been heard, but still he wished, just for one more moment, to say them again. To imprint them into Sasuke's heart so deeply that nothing, not war, not hatred, not the world itself, could erode them.

But no voice left him. There was no mouth to form the words anymore. And then everything fell away.

There was no battlefield, no cavern, no brother standing before him with eyes full of storms. There was only darkness—complete, unbroken, absolute. It was not the simple absence of light, but a deeper emptiness, as though reality itself had folded inward and left only a void where existence once was.

Itachi floated.

Or perhaps he did not float at all. It was impossible to tell without a body, without sensation. There was no up, no down, no sense of movement. His consciousness simply was, suspended in endless black.

Is this, the afterlife? he wondered.

His thoughts were calm, even now. There was no panic in him, no fear of the unknown. He had long ago accepted death, and every step since then had been borrowed time. Still, he tested the boundaries of this new state, as he did with anything unfamiliar.

He tried to move his hand.

There was nothing.

No fingers to curl, no muscles to command. He could not even feel a body attached to his will. He attempted again, searching for some trace of sensation but the attempt only revealed the absence more clearly.

He tried to speak. His mind shaped the impulse, the intention of sound… and nothing answered. Not even silence changed. There was simply the same, crushing stillness, indifferent and infinite.

He reached for his senses one by one. Sight was only darkness. Hearing was nothingness. Smell, taste, touch—emptied away, stripped from him like layers of clothing until only his consciousness remained, naked and solitary.

If time existed here, it did not move in any way he could measure. There was no progression of moments, only the steady, unchanging black that pressed in from all directions. He could not feel the passing of seconds, minutes, hours; he only knew that something passed, because his thoughts continued even when nothing else did.

It might have been a heartbeat.

It might have been eternity.

So this is where sinners with the most heinous crimes go, he thought.

Yet even in this void, one thing did not fade. His awareness of himself.

He remembered the moonlit streets of the Uchiha compound. The weight of a blade in his hand. The warmth of small fingers clutching his sleeve as a child's voice called, nii-san. He remembered foreign lands and missions in shadow, the cold eyes of Danzo, the Third Hokage's quiet sorrow, Akatsuki's dark cloaks fluttering in wind.

He remembered lies told for the sake of love.

And then, like a ripple across still water, something shifted.

The darkness shuddered.

Itachi did not see light at first; he felt the difference. A thin thread of sensation tugged at him, subtle yet undeniable, as if something beyond the void had reached into it and taken hold. There was a pull—not painful, but absolute.

The world lurched.

Itachi fell.

There was no wind, no direction, only motion. The void cracked and then, abruptly, there was a sensation he had not realized he missed until it returned.

He was breathing.

His chest rose, air sliding into lungs that had not existed moments before. A body knitted itself around his consciousness in a single, seamless instant—weight, warmth, the faint thrum of blood moving through veins.

His senses came back in a rush.

Sound returned first: a quiet hush, like distant city noise muffled through walls. The faint ticking of something mechanical. The rustle of fabric. Then smell, clean tatami, wood polish, a hint of something faintly floral beneath it.

Light pressed through his closed eyelids.

Itachi's eyelashes trembled, then lifted.

He woke.

He lay on a bed, staring up at a ceiling that felt both familiar and unfamiliar all at once. Smooth wooden beams ran across the overhead space, polished but unadorned, lines clean and deliberate. The ceiling was pale, the wood grain visible—traditional, almost like the Uchiha compound's architecture.

But the light was wrong.

It did not flicker like candle flame or sway like lantern light. It shone soft and steady, diffused through a fixture set flush against the ceiling.

Itachi turned his head slightly.

The room around him resembled a traditional tatami chamber. The floor was covered with woven mats that yielded softly beneath him. Sliding doors framed the walls—shoji-style, but instead of delicate rice paper, their panels seemed reinforced, translucent yet clearly durable, allowing filtered daylight to seep through.

Yet alongside these familiar elements were details he could not place.

On one wall rested a low wooden cabinet with smooth metallic handles—sleek, too precise for hand carving. A rectangular device sat atop it, slim and dark, with an unlit screen that reflected the room faintly.

The faint hum he had heard earlier emanated from the ceiling fixture—a quiet, steady vibration unlike anything in the world he knew.

He pushed himself upright slowly.

His movements felt strange—lighter than he expected, the angle of his limbs unfamiliar.

He glanced down.

His hands were small.

Not slender and scarred from years of weapon handling, not the hands of the Uchiha prodigy who had carried the weight of a clan and a nation before he was grown—these were the rounder, softer hands of a child. The fingers were shorter, the wrists narrow, veins faintly visible beneath pale skin.

His breath stilled.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood. The tatami pressed gently under his bare feet, grounding him with its faint straw scent and textured touch. He crossed the room silently, instinctively soundless even now, and stopped in front of the mirror mounted on the wall beside the cabinet.

A child stared back at him.

Black hair framed his face—straight and fine, too long for a toddler but not yet tied in the ponytail he once wore as a young shinobi. It fell slightly over his forehead in loose, wispy strands that refused to be tamed. His eyes were dark, deep onyx, framed by lashes longer than most boys', their gaze steady despite his confusion.

His cheeks were softer than he remembered having in his youth, subtly rounded with lingering baby fat. The angles of his face had not yet sharpened into the quiet severity of the man he would become. His chin was small, lips pale and naturally downturned at rest, giving him a contemplative expression even now.

He lifted a hand slowly and touched his reflection.

Cold glass met his fingertips.

Then he touched his own face, feeling the unfamiliar roundness beneath his palm. The child in the mirror mirrored him exactly: hand to cheek, brows knit faintly, mouth barely parted.

There were similarities to the boy he had once been in the Uchiha compound, yes—yet there were differences as well. His features were not a perfect match to either of his parents. There was a subtle shift in cheekbone shape, the arch of his brows, the set of his jaw. Familiarity tinged with foreignness.

Not quite the same child.

But undeniably… him.

"How?" he murmured aloud without meaning to.

His voice startled him.

It was soft, light—higher than he remembered, the voice of a child not yet hardened by training or beliefs. It held no hoarseness from years of speaking too little and breathing too much blood and dust.

He fell silent again.

His mind turned with calm precision—not racing, not panicking. Itachi had long been accustomed to confronting the extraordinary without allowing emotion to cloud his judgment. Even death had not broken that discipline.

Letting the facts arrange themselves, he considered.

He had been released from the Reanimation Jutsu. His soul should have parted, moving beyond the world entirely.
Instead, he had entered a void.

Then he awakened here.

He possessed a body, one that appeared human, childlike, living. He was breathing. His heart beat. His Sharingan… he did not attempt to awaken it; there was no need, and it was not something to be invoked without reason.

This place was not Konoha.

That much he was certain of already.

Even without stepping outside, the subtle differences announced themselves. The materials, the devices, the faint background hum of unseen technology, this world breathed differently than his own. It was quieter in some ways, yet there was an undercurrent of energy beneath it that did not stem from chakra as he understood it.

Another world? Another life?

He lowered his hand from his face.

His reflection looked back with quiet composure. Even in this small, unfamiliar body, the calm in his eyes had not changed. They were the eyes of someone who had lived too much and died once already.

A knock sounded at the door.

It was soft, polite—two gentle taps against the wooden frame of the sliding panel. The sound reverberated faintly through the room, anchoring him more firmly in the present than anything else had.

Itachi's head turned toward it.

His posture shifted automatically—relaxed, yet ready. Even as a child, even newly arrived in a world he did not recognize, the habits of a lifetime did not abandon him. His breathing stilled. His awareness expanded subtly, attention sharpening toward the presence beyond the door.

Whoever stood there did not barge in immediately. They waited.

The silence stretched for a heartbeat, then another, broken only by the faint electrical hum of the ceiling light and the soft whisper of wind beyond the walls.
Itachi did not answer right away.

He glanced once more at the child in the mirror—the unfamiliar familiarity of his own face—and let his hand drop to his side. His expression smoothed into neutrality, every trace of confusion buried beneath layers of composure.

 

[XjO]

The knocking continued, soft but persistent, a measured sound against the wooden frame that echoed faintly through the quiet room.

Itachi did not answer immediately.

His eyes remained fixed on the mirror, though his focus had long since drifted past his reflection. His thoughts moved inward again, folding into themselves like water pulled back into the depths of a still lake. Even in this unfamiliar body, even in this new world, his mind worked with the same calm precision it always had.

After the Reanimation Jutsu had been undone, he had believed or perhaps hoped that death would finally be his last destination.

He had walked a life of contradictions. A traitor and a protector. A murderer and a savior. A brother who destroyed everything for love. His final moments beside Sasuke had felt like closure—fragile and imperfect, yet enough. His last words had left his heart bare, and for once he had not hidden behind silence or calculated deception.

But hope, he knew, was a fragile thing.

The world rarely aligned itself to desire. Fate paid little attention to the wishes of men, even those who had bled themselves hollow in its service. He had carried burdens longer than any child ever should have been asked to. He had endured loneliness, betrayal, the hate of those he loved—all for the sake of a peace that even now felt transient and uncertain.

He had been tired long before he ever died.
And if eternity had awaited him in darkness, he would have accepted it in quiet relief.

Yet here he was again.

The rising sunlight pooled across the tatami floor in pale gold, creeping slowly into the room through the translucent sliding doors. Dust motes drifted lazily through the beam of morning light, suspended in air like small, wandering stars. Beyond the walls, he could hear birds greeting the day, light, rhythmic chirps carried on a soft breeze.

Life.

Breath.

Warmth.

Reality pressed against him in a hundred tiny, undeniable ways.

If this was a dream, it was one crafted with impossible precision. If this was genjutsu, it was flawless—seamless down to each shifting grain of wood and distant sound outside the walls.

His fingers curled slightly at his side.

Genjutsu? The thought crossed his mind, but he dismissed it as quickly as it formed. He had spent his life studying illusions, mastering them, shaping them, dismantling them. There were few people in the world capable of deceiving his senses to such an extent.

Shisui… perhaps.

But he had died. Edo Tensei had been undone. The war had still raged as he vanished.

There was no one alive who would ensnare him after the end.

No, this was not illusion.

This was something else entirely.

His attention returned to the present as the knocking came again.

The sound drew him out of the hushed corners of his thoughts. Knuckles against wood, firmer this time, echoing slightly through the quiet of the room. He shifted his gaze toward the door, his posture still and composed, every breath controlled and quiet.

Then a voice came, muffled through the door.
"Rei-san."

The name lingered in the air.

Itachi's eyes narrowed by the faintest margin.

Rei? he thought. Is that supposed to be my name?

The syllable rolled through his mind with detached curiosity. Calm. Grace. Dignity. Meanings layered into the word—fitting, almost ironically so. Had someone chosen it for him? Or had this body always belonged to that name?

He stood there in silence, letting the moment stretch, as though stillness itself could erase the voice beyond the door and undo this strange new existence. For a fleeting instant, he wished that if he did not respond, everything might simply fade that the room, the light, the child-body, the world itself would dissolve into the darkness he had left.

But the voice returned.

"Rei-san. Your mother is waiting outside. You should not make her wait any longer."

The tone was soft and feminine but beneath the politeness lay a subtle tension, faint but unmistakable. The woman sounded as though she would face reprimand if he delayed. The weight of someone else's expectations pressed faintly through her words.

He let the breath slip slowly from his lungs.

There was no use ignoring the reality he's unfortunately in.

"Come in," he said quietly.

His child-voice floated across the room—light, delicate, yet unmistakably calm. The familiarity of his speech patterns clung to the sound, tempered and measured, as though no amount of youth could strip away the restraint forged over two lifetimes.

The sliding door eased open.

A woman stepped into the doorway, her form silhouetted briefly against the brighter hallway beyond. She did not move with the alert, coiled discipline of a kunoichi, her steps were graceful, unhurried, the posture of someone accustomed to structured manners rather than combat.

Itachi turned slightly toward her, regarding her with a composed, searching gaze.

She appeared to be in her mid-twenties, perhaps older, but softened by youth and careful living. Her skin was pale and smooth, untouched by the sun-weathered lines of battlefield hardship. Her hair was tied neatly behind her head, dark and glossy, falling over her shoulder in a simple, elegant style. Her eyes were bright, expressive, carrying a quiet alertness even as she smiled.

A civilian, he thought.

She looked at him, and relief flickered across her features.

"Good," she said with a soft exhale. "You're already dressed. Come, your mother is waiting outside. We must not keep her waiting."

Her voice was courteous, but urgency lingered beneath it. She stepped forward and lightly took his hand, her touch gentle, the faintest pressure guiding rather than pulling. Her warmth was real. The fabric of her sleeve brushed against his wrist, smooth, not the coarse weave of shinobi garments or tradition-bound robes.

Itachi allowed himself to be led.

Only then did he notice his clothes.

At some point he had already been dressed. The fabric was soft, muted in color. Something simple, neatly tailored, unfamiliar yet comfortable.

A child with a life already set in motion before his consciousness had awakened inside it.

They left the room.

The hallway stretched before him—long, spacious, and lined with sliding doors and polished wood. But unlike the austere, symmetrical hallways of the Uchiha compound, this one felt subtly different. The architecture flowed between eras—traditional beams and paper-paneled partitions paired with metal fixtures and modern railings. Soft lights glowed overhead blending seamlessly into carved ceiling recesses where lanterns might once have hung. The floorboards were polished smooth, reflecting faint traces of morning light from the windows along the corridor.

As they walked, Itachi's gaze traveled quietly from one detail to the next.

Subtle differences—unfamiliar decorations carved into door frames, patterns that did not belong to any clan crest he recognized. Wall hangings displayed ink-wash art beside framed printed photographs, their sharp contrast jarring and yet strangely harmonious. Vents lined the ceiling corners, humming faintly with circulating air—advanced technology woven seamlessly into an environment that otherwise evoked tradition.

Outside the windows, he glimpsed a courtyard.

Stone walkways crossed immaculately raked gravel gardens. A pond rested beneath a small wooden bridge.

He did not slow. His expression remained composed, each observation tucked away with quiet efficiency. Confusion did not shake him, nor did disbelief. He accepted what he saw and filed it into understanding.

The woman guiding him occasionally glanced back, ensuring he followed. She did not question his silence. Perhaps this child was naturally quiet. Or perhaps she simply knew better than to pry.

They reached the end of the corridor.

The entrance opened into a broader foyer, a blend of traditional entryway and modern front hall. Wooden shoe racks lined the wall, though alongside sandals and slippers rested sleek modern footwear. The faint scent of fresh polish mingled with the subtle aroma of flowers arranged in a tall, narrow vase. And by the open doorway, sunlight flooding around her, stood the woman waiting.

His supposed mother.

She stood poised with quiet dignity, posture straight, movements deliberate. Her hair was styled elegantly, dark and smooth, gathered into a low twist at the nape of her neck. Her face bore a refined beauty. She wore clothing foreign to his world—a tailored dress of deep, elegant fabric that draped neatly along her figure, accented by understated jewelry.

Her expression softened when she saw him.

"There you are," she said, her tone warm, though expectation shaped its edges. "Come, Rei. We don't want to be late."

The name fell from her lips with familiarity, shaped by affection and authority intertwined.

She gestured to someone nearby.

Only then did Itachi notice the structure outside.

Not a carriage but a large, gleaming vehicle of metal and glass resting along the path. It sat atop black circular wheels, its surface polished to a faint reflection of the morning sky. The light caught its curves, and its doors were framed with smooth silver edges.

The man standing beside it wore clothing unlike any uniform Itachi had known. Dark fabric fitted neatly against his frame—a jacket, straight-lined and structured, with crisp folds and precise seams. A white shirt lay beneath it, paired with a tie knotted neatly at the collar. His shoes gleamed exactly like the vehicle.

The man bowed respectfully, then reached for the vehicle door. The mechanism clicked softly, and the door swung open, revealing cushioned seating within, leather-lined and refined.

Itachi watched silently.

His mother turned toward him once more, one hand resting gently on his shoulder.

"Rei," she said softly. "Get inside."

He stepped forward.