Chapter 534: The Dead Need No Sacrifice (Patreon)

Unknown Fire Dimension

"You got what you want…" Madara said, his Rinnegan fixed on Alaric through the thinning curtains of white fire. "Now, revive my brother."

The cigar remained between Alaric's fingers.

For several seconds, he merely looked at Madara.

The pale-gold jinchūriki robe surrounding him had nearly disappeared after he restricted the Ten-Tails' chakra exchange, leaving only faint traces of Six Paths power moving beneath his skin.

One Truth-Seeking Orb still hovered behind his shoulder, perfectly still, while the crimson phoenix marking beneath his left eye had already begun to lose some of its earlier brilliance.

Madara noticed none of that.

The name sitting unspoken between them had swallowed his attention entirely.

Izuna.

Alaric finally drew from the cigar before releasing a slow stream of smoke.

"Alright."

Madara's expression tightened... that was all.

No warning about consequences. No declaration that resurrection belonged to the domain of gods. No reminder that Madara had once attempted to imprison the world inside an illusion.

Just alright.

"You agree so readily."

"I'm the one who offered, remember?"

Madara studied him carefully. "Then explain your technique."

Alaric raised a brow.

"You expect me to permit someone to manipulate my brother's soul while understanding nothing about the method."

"That," Alaric admitted, "is actually reasonable."

He tucked the cigar into the corner of his mouth and gestured toward Madara's protective barrier.

The fūinjutsu surrounding the weakened Uchiha loosened. It did not disappear, because Madara's restored living state remained dependent upon several of Alaric's stabilizing formulas, but the transparent shell opened enough to allow Madara to hover freely within the fire dimension.

Madara emerged slowly.

His body had recovered substantially since the extraction, although the difference between his present state and his brief existence as the Ten-Tails' jinchūriki remained enormous. His chakra was once again recognizably his own. There was no primordial ocean beneath it, no Divine Tree pushing against his nerves, and no beast rebuilding him faster than injury could register.

He hated how light he felt.

Alaric watched him adjust and decided it was time for a brief explanation, stating, "Shinsei Tensei is something I created."

Madara's attention snapped fully toward him.

"So this is your own creation. I have never heard of it."

"Yes."

"A resurrection technique superior to the Outer Path."

"I would say so..."

"From nothing?"

"Not from nothing."

Alaric removed the cigar and studied the glowing tip. "I had examples."

Madara's eyes narrowed. "Rinne Tensei."

"Among other things."

"You reverse-engineered the Outer Path."

"Not exactly."

Alaric flicked a small ribbon of ash into the endless fire, where it vanished before traveling more than an inch.

"Rinne Tensei treats resurrection like forcing a door open from one side. The caster uses the Outer Path to recall souls and reconstruct living bodies, but the technique demands an enormous exchange from whoever performs it."

Madara knew that cost intimately.

His own resurrection had twisted the technique into something almost self-contradictory. He had used a reanimated body, Ten-Tails chakra, Rinnegan authority, and the remnants of Edo Tensei to force himself across the boundary separating death from life.

The result had nearly collapsed several times.

"And Edo Tensei?" Madara asked.

Alaric's expression soured slightly. "Edo Tensei doesn't actually resurrect anyone."

"It summons the dead."

"It summons their soul and traps it inside a living sacrifice covered by reconstructed material."

Madara said nothing.

Alaric continued, "The person is dead. Their body is fake. Their heartbeat is irrelevant. Their existence depends upon the technique remaining active, and the caster can overwrite their autonomy if the formula allows it."

"That has advantages in warfare."

"It also makes it an abomination."

Madara's mouth curved faintly. "Morality again."

"Biology, mostly."

Alaric gestured toward him with the cigar.

"Shinsei Tensei is different because I don't create a substitute body, and I don't pay for one life by destroying another."

Madara's expression changed by a fraction. "No sacrifice."

"Yes, no sacrifice. No caster death either, no vessel, no equivalent human life."

Madara fell into silence.

The simplicity bothered him.

Every resurrection technique he knew obeyed some form of brutality. Edo Tensei required a living sacrifice. Rinne Tensei exchanged the caster's life force for those restored. Even his own unconventional return had depended upon exploiting an immortal reanimated framework and stuffing enough stolen godlike chakra into it that the boundary between living and dead became vulnerable.

"You are claiming that death carries no price."

"No." Alaric's answer became more serious. "I'm saying the price doesn't need to be another person."

Madara waited.

"Shinsei Tensei requires power. A ridiculous amount, depending on the condition of the dead and how long they've been gone. It requires a soul that can still be identified, a biological template precise enough for reconstruction, and enough control to reconnect those two things without creating a corpse that merely resembles the original person."

Madara's gaze sharpened.

"A template."

"A piece of them," Alaric raised his hand. "Bone, or blood preserved well enough, or even teeth, and flesh if it somehow still exists, anything at all that carries the original person's biological identity."

He paused.

"Or, in Izuna's case…"

His eyes moved toward Madara's Rinnegan.

Madara understood immediately.

"One of my eyes."

"One of his eyes," Alaric corrected.

Madara's expression hardened. "These are mine."

"They are now."

Alaric pointed toward them.

"But you and I both know where your Eternal Mangekyō came from."

Madara's fingers rose toward his face.

Izuna's eyes.

They had ceased looking like Izuna's a lifetime ago.

The Mangekyō pattern had changed after transplantation. Eternal Mangekyō had emerged from the fusion between brothers, and decades later Hashirama's chakra had driven those same eyes toward the Rinnegan.

Yet beneath every transformation, the physical lineage remained.

Part of Izuna had survived inside Madara through wars, old age, death, reanimation, and resurrection.

Madara's fingers touched the skin beneath his right eye.

"Either one would be sufficient?"

"Yes."

Madara did not hesitate.

His fingers shifted toward Izuna's coffin.

Alaric watched him prepare to remove the eye.

Madara's chakra moved toward the socket.

Then he stopped, his hand still pressed against his face.

"You said tissue."

Alaric raised a brow. "Yes, I did."

"Any tissue belonging to Izuna."

"That's generally what 'a piece of them' means."

Madara slowly lowered his hand, something in his expression shifting.

Alaric recognized it almost immediately.

"Oh."

Madara brought his hands together.

Three hand signs followed... each one precise, deliberate, and unmistakably Uchiha in execution.

Alaric's eyebrow climbed higher with each one.

Madara finished.

A summoning formula spread across the dimensional space beside them.

POOF!

Smoke erupted into a world made entirely of fire.

Alaric stared into the cloud.

A rectangular shape appeared within it.

As the smoke cleared, a coffin floated beside Madara.

Alaric looked at the coffin, then at Madara, then back at the coffin, before a chuckle escaped him.

Madara's eyes narrowed further at the sound of the chuckle. "What?"

"You had your brother's coffin ready."

Madara's expression remained perfectly serious, "That is not amusing."

"It's a little amusing."

"It was practical."

Alaric laughed again.

Madara's jaw tightened.

"You spent decades planning to overturn death, collected the Rinnegan, controlled the Gedo Mazō, manipulated Obito, prepared for Rinne Tensei, and somewhere in the middle of all that you apparently thought…" Alaric gestured toward the coffin. "'Better keep Izuna nearby just in case.'"

Madara stared at him.

Alaric's mouth twitched around the cigar.

"That is unbelievably on-brand."

"I preserved what remained of my brother because I refused to accept that death necessarily represented an irreversible boundary."

"And here I thought you were sentimental."

"Do not test me."

Alaric looked deliberately toward Madara's weakened body.

Madara followed his gaze.

A moment of silence passed before Madara scowled.

Alaric chuckled under his breath. "Right, right... sorry."

He was not sorry, and Madara knew that, but he simply ignored it and turned toward the coffin, his hand resting upon its lid.

For the first time since summoning it, his composure faltered almost imperceptibly.

The object represented something he had refused to destroy even when logic gave him no reason to preserve it.

Izuna had been dead for generations, and Madara had watched the body decay.

He had carried the eyes because those had been given to him, but the remains served no practical purpose after enough time had passed.

Still, he had kept them.

Perhaps some part of him had always imagined that the Rinnegan would eventually reveal one more secret.

Perhaps the Outer Path could be improved.

Perhaps mastery of life and death would someday become complete enough that bones were sufficient.

Perhaps one day he would find a way.

His fingers curled around the edge of the lid before he opened it.

The hinges moved with a low groan before revealing that inside the coffin lay what remained of Izuna Uchiha.

Bones.

Time had stripped away everything else.

The skeleton had been arranged carefully, each surviving piece resting upon dark cloth preserved through sealing techniques. Several fragments were missing, and age had discolored much of what remained, but the structure was unmistakably human.

Alaric's earlier humor disappeared. His gaze settled on the coffin, on Izuna's remains within, before he moved closer.

Madara watched him approach with an intensity that would have made lesser men uncomfortable.

Alaric looked into the coffin, his Rinne-Sharingan examining the remains.

Age and damage both mattered, but neither presented a serious obstacle.

The biological information within the bones remained sufficient, especially when combined with Madara's memories and the spiritual connection carried through Izuna's transplanted eyes.

Alaric lifted one hand... then paused.

He looked at Madara, "You're sure this is Izuna, right?"

Madara's stare became almost offended. "I can not be wrong."

Alaric held the look for a moment.

Madara did not blink; there was no hesitation in his chakra, no uncertainty.

Alaric nodded. "Alright."

His hand descended toward Izuna's remains, but as the crimson phoenix marking beneath his left eye flickered and he felt the transformation weakening, Alaric stopped with his fingers hovering several inches above one of Izuna's ribs.

Phoenix Sage Mode had burned through its second activation rapidly. The fight against the Ten-Tails, dimensional control, the modified Sun and Moon Seal, the Gakidō absorption, and the process of becoming the final jinchūriki had placed an extraordinary load upon a mode that was never meant to remain active indefinitely.

The red-gold current inside him had almost reached its floor.

Alaric slowly withdrew his hand.

Madara's gaze sharpened. "What is it?"

"Nothing with Izuna."

Madara immediately looked less murderous as Alaric glanced around.

The fire dimension stretched infinitely in every direction.

White flames moved across nowhere, carrying remnants of temperatures that had once exceeded the surface of the sun several times over. Even though Alaric had lowered the heat dramatically, the environment remained fundamentally hostile to ordinary life.

His Phoenix Sage Mode was the reason he could manipulate that hostility so casually.

It was also nearly gone.

Alaric looked at the fading marking beneath his eye.

"Let's get out of here first. My Sage Mode's almost down to zero again."

Madara raised one eyebrow as his gaze moved toward the coffin, understanding arriving immediately.

Izuna would return as a living human.

Not as an Edo body, not as a Ten-Tails-enhanced jinchūriki, not as some creature carrying Six Paths resistance.

A newly restored man would open his eyes inside a dimension composed entirely of fire.

If Phoenix Sage Mode expired during the resurrection and Alaric's control over the environment weakened...

Madara imagined Izuna drawing his first breath after generations of death only for that breath to become superheated plasma inside his lungs.

His expression darkened.

"Yes... we better go."

Alaric glanced at him.

"That was quick."

"I am not allowing you to resurrect my brother inside this place."

"Exactly."

Alaric reached toward the coffin, and Madara placed one hand upon its side.

The movement was instinctively protective.

Alaric noticed but said nothing, his other hand settling upon Madara's shoulder.

Madara looked at it before raising his eyes. "You can move all three of us simultaneously."

"I can move considerably more than three people."

"This is not the time for boasting."

"That wasn't a boast."

Madara gave him a flat look.

Alaric's mouth curved. "Ready?"

Madara glanced once more into the coffin.

His brother's bones remained inside.

For decades, every plan involving resurrection had been abstract. Rinne Tensei belonged to the end of a greater strategy. Edo Tensei had never been worthy of Izuna. Even becoming the Ten-Tails' jinchūriki had not provided a resurrection he considered acceptable.

Now a man stood beside him claiming the dead could be restored without sacrificing another life.

Madara wanted proof, but he also feared getting it.

If Alaric failed, Izuna remained dead.

That pain was familiar.

If Alaric succeeded, Madara would face something far more dangerous.

A future he had never prepared to live.

"Do it," Madara said.

Alaric's fingers tightened against his shoulder.

Platinum-gold light erupted around all three of them.

FWOOSH!

The fire dimension disappeared.

Land of Frost — Northern Wilderness

Snow crossed the cratered wilderness beneath a black sky.

Hours had passed since Madara Uchiha and Alaric Jonathan Kenway vanished.

The Land of Frost no longer resembled the place Obito remembered.

What had once been a frozen valley had become a vast basin gouged into the earth, surrounded by broken mountain ranges whose shattered faces still carried evidence of the violence that had begun here. Cracks stretched for miles beneath newly fallen snow, while several distant ridges had collapsed completely after the opening clash.

Yet there were no bodies.

No Madara, no Alaric, no Ten-Tails.

Obito landed upon a fractured stone pillar and immediately pushed away again.

His cloak snapped behind him.

The Sharingan within his exposed eye searched the wilderness while Kamui chakra remained ready beneath his skin.

He had been searching for hours.

At first, tracking the battle had been simple.

One did not need exceptional sensory abilities to find evidence of Alaric and Madara fighting.

The valley had disappeared.

Mountains had broken.

Chakra residue stained the ground so heavily that even ordinary shinobi would have felt uncomfortable entering the region.

Then everything stopped.

Not gradually.

There had been no trail leading east or west, no continuing series of impact craters, and no chakra signatures moving toward another country.

Madara and Alaric had simply ceased existing within the battlefield.

Obito had assumed space-time ninjutsu immediately.

That answer created another problem.

Which space?

Kamui revealed nothing.

He had checked the dimension associated with his own Mangekyō more than once. Neither man had entered it.

Madara's Limbo presence had disappeared and returned briefly before becoming impossible for Obito to follow.

The Ten-Tails had vanished with them.

That concerned him most.

Obito landed near the center of the old battlefield.

His sandals touched glass.

The stone beneath the snow had partially vitrified during one of the clashes, leaving a black reflective surface that extended through several fractured sections of earth.

He crouched, his fingers brushing the cold ground.

Whatever heat had created it had faded hours ago.

Obito straightened.

He remembered Alaric arriving before Madara.

He remembered the impossible confidence.

He remembered Black Zetsu being dragged into the open and Madara beginning to understand that the Eye of the Moon Plan might never have belonged entirely to him.

Then Madara had taken the Ten-Tails.

What happened afterward remained hidden.

Obito hated being blind.

He activated Kamui again.

Space spiraled around his body, distorting the air into a collapsing vortex of warped dimensions.

The wilderness vanished.

A moment later, Obito emerged several kilometers away upon the remains of a mountain slope.

Nothing.

He disappeared again.

Another location.

Nothing.

Again, again, and again.

Each teleport carried him toward somewhere that should have shown evidence of the battle continuing.

There was none.

There was no fire, no new crater, no Madara chakra, no impossible pressure from Alaric.

Obito landed upon a snow-covered ridge and remained there, his breathing growing heavier.

Not because the movement exhausted him, but because uncertainty did.

Madara had spent years constructing every step toward this moment.

Obito had shaped his own life around that same plan, even if his reasons had never perfectly matched Madara's.

The Ten-Tails was supposed to become the final weapon, with Infinite Tsukuyomi meant to follow.

Instead, Black Zetsu had been exposed, Madara had begun questioning the very foundation of the plan, and Alaric had somehow drawn all of them into events Obito could no longer predict.

His fist tightened as snow compressed beneath his glove while he searched the horizon.

The moon hung above the ruined country, indifferent to everything that had happened beneath it.

No answer came.

Obito's teeth clenched.

"Where the hell are they?"