Rain struck the abandoned shrine in rhythmic pulses, steady as a heartbeat. The broken ceiling had long since surrendered to time, and through the jagged opening, moonlight pierced in fractured shafts.
Sasuke crouched low, blood trickling from a shallow cut on his cheek, eyes burning red with the three tomoe of the Sharingan.
The masked figure stood motionless across from him, kunai gleaming with a sheen of poison. Their movements had been precise—too precise. Whoever this was… wasn't just Root-trained.
They were a specter.
"Who are you?" Sasuke hissed, tightening his grip.
The masked operative didn't answer. Instead, they stepped forward, silent, calculating. Sasuke's mind whirled.
This fighting style—it's familiar.
He ducked the first swipe, spun, and struck at their ribs. The figure blocked it with the forearm and flowed into a backward flip. Their response was clean—elegant, even.
Then the operative spoke.
A female voice.
"You're too early. You weren't supposed to see the scroll."
Sasuke's eyes narrowed. "You were part of it, weren't you? The mission. The timeline reset."
She tilted her head.
"You're starting to remember fragments too. Just like him."
"Him?"
"The ghost in the Academy."
Sasuke's breath hitched.
Phantom.
Without another word, the woman launched forward again—this time with a spinning arc of chakra-bladed kunai.
Sasuke deflected it with a burst of lightning chakra, activating Chidori Nagashi. Sparks exploded around them, sending chakra-shards into the stone floor. The fight escalated—each move sharper, faster. Each exchange revealed more.
She was ANBU. But not from this time.
She knew his family's techniques.
She even mimicked his counters.
And when Sasuke finally landed a clean strike across her mask—it shattered with a sound like breaking glass.
He froze.
Behind the broken porcelain…
A familiar face stared back at him.
His mother's.
Meanwhile – Konoha's Underlayer (Sector 7)Phantom's footsteps echoed in the maintenance tunnels that ran beneath the central tower. His mind churned with the revelation Kakashi had dropped on him hours earlier. Minato's hidden message. His own title: Oblivion Echo.
He'd replayed the scroll's recording ten times.
"You are that memory. A walking failsafe."
He pressed forward, the silence punctuated by the occasional drip of condensation from above. Every tunnel here was supposed to be sealed since the Third Shinobi War.
Yet he found fresh boot prints.
Someone had been here. Recently.
[System Alert: Chakra Signature Matched – Danzo]
[Sub-Layer 5: Containment Vault]
He picked up speed, hand already hovering over his utility pouch. At the next turn, he passed an old Root insignia—a triangle with a single eye.
Then he saw it.
The vault door was ajar.
Inside, what he saw nearly made him stagger.
Suspended in containment fluid were dozens of children. Genin-aged. Each hooked to chakra-inhibitor tubes. Their eyes were closed, but their chakra… was active.
[System Recognition Detected: Subjects 12–23]
[Designation: Phantom Clone Variants – Alpha Series]
"No…" Phantom whispered.
They were him.
Or copies of him, pulled from a memory-sequence and stored like spare parts. Ghosts of a life he hadn't lived—or had forgotten.
Each pod bore a kanji etched into its seal: Mirror.
He turned as a flicker of chakra moved behind him.
A clone?
No. The chakra was different.
Then he saw her.
A girl, pale-skinned with white hair and eyes that glowed faintly purple, stepped into the light. She wore a Root coat with no insignia and carried a long-handled blade wrapped in sealing tags.
"I was wondering when you'd come here," she said.
"Who are you?"
"I'm the failsafe to the failsafe," she answered, voice flat. "They called you Phantom. I'm Mirror."
He drew a kunai.
She didn't flinch.
"They kept me dormant because you survived the reboot. I was designed to replace you—if you went rogue."
Phantom's breath slowed. "That means you're—"
"Not your sister. Not your friend. Just your reflection. A perfect counterbalance."
[System Notification: Threat Level – Mirror Class: Omega]
[Advisory: Do Not Engage Alone]
He stepped back. "Why are you awake now?"
She tilted her head slightly.
"Because you're beginning to remember too much."
And then she was gone—blinked out of sight.
He dodged just in time to avoid the blade that came screaming for his neck.
Back in the ShrineSasuke's world tilted.
The woman—his mother's face—was identical. Down to the tear mole beneath her left eye. But it wasn't her. She moved too fast, and her chakra signature was wrong.
"You're not—"
"I'm not her," she said softly. "I was modeled after her. A tool to manipulate you. But I was cast aside when the reboot occurred."
Sasuke's fists clenched. "Danzo."
She nodded. "He used her DNA. A mirror clone. I was supposed to keep you tethered to the path he designed."
"And now?"
"Now I serve no one."
She dropped her kunai.
"I came here to warn you. He's started waking the others. Protocol-13 was just the beginning."
Sasuke approached slowly, eyes still burning. "Why me?"
"Because of the link between you and Phantom."
Her words sent a pulse through his skull—another memory flash.
A mission.
A battlefield littered with corpses.
He stood beside Phantom, blood dripping from his fingers.
Naruto lay unconscious between them—surrounded by sealing tags.
"Don't let them rewrite him," Phantom said.
Then—
The vision shattered.
Sasuke's knees buckled, and he gasped. "What the hell was that—?!"
The clone—the mirror—was already gone.
Hokage Tower – Secret Briefing RoomTsunade stared at the reports in front of her. Pages filled with redacted lines, DNA sequences, and Root registry logs.
"Goddammit, Danzo…"
Beside her, Shikamaru held up a blood-seal key.
"Kakashi decoded this from one of the ANBU caches. It links Phantom directly to the previous ANBU Black-Ops roster—before the reboot."
Tsunade looked up sharply. "That timeline was supposed to be erased."
Shikamaru nodded. "Which means whatever brought Phantom back—wasn't part of the plan."
Tsunade's fists trembled. "We're standing on top of a broken mirror. And someone's reassembling the pieces."