They carried Akane through the dim lower corridors, past the torches that flickered like steady heartbeats against the carved stone.
The air grew heavier the deeper they went.
Not ominous or frightening, but dense, prepared, as if even the walls knew what was about to happen.
This chamber had taken months of secret planning. No one outside the five of them even knew it existed.
And Kimimaro had planned every detail.
They laid Akane gently onto the center platform, a circular slab of stone engraved with Ashina's sealwork, each sigil connected by fine silver lines Reika had painted by hand moments before.
Around the platform stood Emi, Saya, Reika, and Kimimaro, each positioned exactly where the ritual demanded.
The only one unaware of the coming storm was Akane herself, fast asleep from the laced tea. Kimimaro looked down at her with clinical calm.
In his view, the Sharingan had never truly been about eyes.
Kimimaro saw a deeper truth: the Mangekyō was the awakening of latent Ōtsutsuki potential buried in their distant bloodline.
Not everyone possessed it in equal measure; it depended on how potent one's inherited connection was.
But the eyes were just the doorway.
The soul was the key.
Human bodies were far too dull and incompatible to express such lineage naturally, so something extreme had to happen first, a shock, one powerful enough to jolt that dormant blood awake.
In the Uchiha, this came as severe emotional trauma.
Their brain shook, their soul darkened and condensed, and the initial impact of that transformation rewrote the underlying genetic structure.
The soul changed first.
The body followed.
There was no bypassing that foundational logic.
It could only be imitated, not negated.
Which was why Kimimaro's plan had to be so elaborate.
He needed to trick Akane's entire being, brain, soul, and chakra, into believing an ordeal was real enough to force evolution.
But that immediately raised the question: if it were so simple, why hadn't the Uchiha clan, the world's greatest masters of genjutsu, mass-produced Mangekyō users?
Because genjutsu alone was not enough.
Yin chakra, illusion, could fool some parts of the brain, but not shake the deepest layers of the soul.
There were parts of consciousness untouched by mere illusion, places where the mind refused to adapt if it sensed even a sliver of artificiality.
So Kimimaro devised something closer to the truth.
First, Yin would be used, but not only as an illusion.
But with the second step — Yang.
Or more accurately, Yin–Yang, together.
Emi would apply that pre-programmed essence directly to the physical brain, using microscopic Byakugan vision and gentle fist pinpoint strikes to comprehensively stimulate the exact neural pathways that fired under real trauma.
The combination capable of making the false real and the real false.
A bit modified Chinoike ritual essence, now molded by Saya, in real time as well, was perfect for this, a medium born of Yin–Yang imbalance, potent enough to influence the boundary between mind and flesh.
Ashina's seals, all over the chamber, prepared and operated by Reika now, would stabilize the transformation in real time, ensuring Akane's mind and body didn't tear apart in response.
Emi's vision would also track every irregularity, enabling instant corrections.
Saya would channel essence from the chalice in controlled pulses, feeding the process as needed.
And Kimimaro himself would take the final, irreplaceable role.
Years ago, when he had killed that Yamanaka deputy who could weaponize fragments of his own soul.
Kimimaro studied that ability, refined it, twisted it, and turned it into something far more dangerous.
After all, even originally, thanks to his transmigration and the brutal internal struggle that followed against the original Kimimaro's young soul, in his mindscape, the current Kimimaro possessed an 'innate' understanding of souls that surpassed anything found in this world.
Their eventual real-time, devouring-type fusion of those two different souls only sharpened that insight, giving him a perspective no shinobi theory or clan record could ever teach.
What he lacked was time. Time to refine that knowledge, time to shape it into a technique, time to turn instinct into mastery.
But once he found a reason to dig deeper, everything accelerated.
That reason was Akane.
And the idea had taken root the moment he watched that Yamanaka deputy fight, splitting parts of his own soul, wielding them like weapons.
Not quite like traditional genjutsu, but more so like nin-genjutsu.
Kimimaro saw it, understood it, copied it, consulted with Ashina, and then quietly surpassed it in certain aspects, tailored to this use case specifically.
So, for the first time, he had a way to apply his soul-born intuition directly.
And Akane's Mangekyō would be the proof.
He would project a part of his consciousness directly into Akane, entering her brain and mindscape from the inside, to construct a layered, personalized ordeal capable of shaking her soul the way real grief or terror might.
A deception so complete that her own bloodline would respond as if it were true.
Now everything was prepared.
The chamber glowed softly as Reika activated the first seal layer. Ashina's sigils pulsed like breathing lungs.
Emi exhaled and focused, her vision narrowing into perfect clarity.
Saya lifted the chalice, the red-black essence swirling like it was alive.
Akane lay silent, unaware of the path ahead.
Kimimaro stepped forward, kneeling beside her.
He placed two fingers on her forehead, feeling the faint flicker of her chakra.
"Begin," he said.
Reika's seals flared. Emi struck the first microscopic point along Akane's neural ridge.
Saya began releasing the essence in slow streams.
He let his chakra split, the world around him dimming as a fragment of his soul detached, ready to descend into hers.
The chamber held its breath.
The operation had slowly begun.
Internally, Kimimaro understood perfectly that this procedure carried real risk for Akane.
They were dealing with the most fragile domains imaginable — brains and souls.
One wrong strike, one seal misaligned, one misjudged pulse of Yin–Yang chakra, and the damage could be permanent.
But he hadn't prepared this because he was cruel.
He prepared it because there was no other choice left.
Recently, everyone had begun to stagnate again — himself included.
And now, to cope with that, they were stockpiling more and more of this world's scientific instruments, accelerating his and Emi's planned familiarity and research.
Kimimaro knew this kind of activity was exactly the sort of thing that might finally draw Orochimaru's attention.
And if he really came now, none of them — not even together — could defeat him.
Not Kimimaro, not the four Blessed, not the hundreds of cultists behind him in this base.
This brought him to Akane.
Strangely, she had become the weakest among them currently.
Not from lack of talent, but because the Uchiha were built unevenly from the start — not for slow, steady growth, but for evolution in violent leaps.
Bursts, not balance.
And Akane herself felt that weight bitterly recently.
Especially when she carried a goal as impossible as avenging her clan.
Konoha's entire leadership.
Third Hokage.
Danzo.
And Itachi.
What could she do with mere elite jōnin-level strength?
Nothing meaningful.
Nothing lasting.
She knew it.
It ate at her.
So Kimimaro assumed — correctly — that if the Mangekyō awakened here, she would not resent them.
She would thank them.
He exhaled slowly, clearing his thoughts.
He had grown attached to her, just as he had to the others.
Akane with her sharp tongue and simmering pride, her stubborn fire that refused to be extinguished.
He didn't want to fail her. Not now.
"Careful," he murmured, voice calm but edged with focus as the seals brightened and the ritual's rhythm accelerated.
The procedure fully ignited — and all of them moved as one.