The pain in Ken’s ribs had faded to a dull throb.

  He stood now, not just out of the bed but at the edge of the hospital's training yard, letting the breeze carry across his face. Bandages still wrapped his torso, but his movements were fluid again. Intentional.

  Recovery wasn’t healing.It was recalibration.

  And Ken had spent every day of it with the same goal in mind: sharpening the edges dulled by failure.

  Shisui’s death.The massacre.Obito’s blow.

  Never again.

  The note came tucked inside a worn book from Ken’s childhood—left behind when he abandoned the Uchiha name.

  Folded into a corner of the final page, the handwriting was unmistakable.

  Shisui’s.

  “If things go wrong… the old well behind the northern watchtower. Third stone to the left. You’ll find what we never got to use.”

  Ken read it four times.

  Then moved.

  The northern watchtower was abandoned now—ever since Root was dismantled, and the Uchiha were decred "handled."

  Ken slipped through the woods just past midnight, alone, cloaked, silent.

  He found the well—weather-worn, half-swallowed by moss.

  He pulled aside the third stone.

  And inside the hollow?

  A bck scroll case. Uchiha-forged. Sealed with a chakra signature he hadn’t felt in half a year.

  Shisui.

  He unsealed it with a pulse of chakra and opened the scroll inside.

  At first, it looked like a list of coded phrases and symbols.

  But as his Sharingan fred, the seal technique activated.

  And the real contents revealed themselves.

  A mission.

  No... a contingency.

  “Operation Yurei”Drafted by: Shisui UchihaApproved by: Fugaku UchihaPurpose: Protection of Konoha through cndestine suppressionObjective: Infiltration and elimination of rogue cell maniputing internal vilge politicsIdentified Targets:

  Root Command

  Known bck ops traders

  Unnamed foreign instigator (“Mask”)

  It was clear.

  The Uchiha—Shisui, Fugaku, and a few trusted others—had once pnned a counter-coup against Danzo and the shadow maniputors that had driven the cn to rebellion.

  But it never unched.

  Ken traced his finger over the final line:

  “If we fail... let someone finish what we could not. Let them do it without name or praise. Let them be the ghost.”

  Ken closed the scroll.

  And knew what he had to do.

  Not now.

  Not loud.

  But in time, he would dismantle the rot—not just Danzo’s legacy, but every hand that fed on the vilge’s blindness.

  He wouldn’t be the next Uchiha leader.

  He would be the ghost behind it.

  Two days ter, fully cleared from medical recovery, Ken returned to his ANBU division.

  His commanding officer—a grizzled shinobi known only as “Ryou”—greeted him with a sharp nod and a scroll marked Urgent.

  “New assignment,” Ryou said. “Reactivation status. You’re back.”

  Ken opened the scroll.

  Recon mission near the Land of Rivers border. Possible sightings of bck-robed figures. Potential Akatsuki movements.

  “Solo?” Ken asked.

  “Two-man cell. You lead. You pick.”

  Ken nodded.

  “I’ll go with Reina.”

  Ryou raised an eyebrow. “She’s not ANBU.”

  “She’s ready.”

  Ryou didn’t argue.

  That night, as Ken prepped his gear, he felt it.

  A shift in the air.

  A pressure in the silence.

  And then—he was not alone.

  He turned.

  And there stood Danzo.

  The man should’ve been in exile. Broken. Powerless.

  But there he was—his single eye sharp, his body half-wrapped in worn Root garb, standing just inside Ken’s window like a ghost from a war that refused to die.

  “You cost me everything,” Danzo said softly. “Every operative. Every ledger. My future.”

  Ken’s voice was cold steel. “You cost the vilge its soul.”

  Danzo didn’t flinch. “You think this is over?”

  “I know it’s not,” Ken replied.

  Danzo’s eye narrowed.

  “I should have taken you instead of Shisui.”

  Ken’s chakra fred—faster than thought.

  Three tomoe spun into full formation.

  It was the first time he truly felt them burn—not as a symbol of grief, but focus.

  Danzo lunged.

  Ken was ready.

  Genjutsu.

  The illusion triggered mid-motion—Danzo saw Ken vanish, only to find himself standing alone in the dark, eyes watching from all directions.

  Danzo blinked—

  The real Ken was already gone.

  Flicker.

  Ken moved through rooftops like smoke through fingers—silent, fwless, and unrelenting.

  He didn’t stop for breath.

  Didn’t stop to think.

  His flicker step, now evolved with perfect chakra control, allowed him to maintain the technique for over an hour.

  He didn’t run to hide.

  He ran to remind Danzo of something.

  Ken was not the boy they cast out.

  He was the weapon they couldn’t leash.

  Back in the safehouse woods, Ken stood under moonlight, heartbeat steady.

  He hadn’t just run.

  He had made a move.

  He had set a trap.

  Because now, Danzo had acted.

  And Ken could act in return.

  He reached into his pouch, unrolled the scroll Shisui had left behind, and stared at the final seal.

  It wasn’t a jutsu.

  It was a trigger.

  One that led to the first of many silent targets Shisui had marked—traitors still hidden inside the walls of Konoha.

  Ken didn’t need permission to finish the mission.

  He already had the legacy.

  And from now on—

  he’d walk through the dark to burn out what remained.