When Shisui awoke for the second time, the world felt like a memory on the verge of collapse.
The air was heavy, thick with chakra that didn't pulse—it lingered. Trees surrounded him, enormous and ancient, their roots snaking across the earth like petrified veins. Their bark was etched with symbols: old clan crests, forgotten jutsu formulas, and seals designed to keep spirits bound. Sunlight barely filtered through the canopy, casting shadows that refused to flicker.
He stood slowly. The last thing he remembered was the Sage of Six Paths bestowing upon him the path of shadows. But this place—this forest—was no celestial realm.
It was purgatory wrapped in history.
He activated his eye instinctively, and what flared to life was not the traditional Sharingan, nor even the Mangekyō, but the Kagegan. A ripple of rings bloomed around his pupil, giving form to the unseen. Chakra trails etched themselves into the air. He could see remnants of battles—flashes of blood, falling leaves caught in dying breaths, and cries that lingered like ghosts.
The Kagegan let him see the residual memory of chakra itself.
He was standing in the Grave of the Forgotten.
The term was familiar—whispers in old clan scrolls, myth among the Uchiha elders. It was said to be a realm that existed outside the elemental nations' borders, hidden from time and untouched by war. A final resting place not for the physical body, but for the chakra of those whom history had refused to remember.
Shinobi who had died in anonymity, whose acts of valor were buried for political reasons, or whose mere existence threatened the stability of nations.
Shisui took a cautious step forward. Beneath his feet, the moss-covered ground pulsed faintly, like a living thing.
Here, memory was sediment.
He walked until the trees began to part and reveal what lay beyond: towering chakra pillars, each shaped like a gravestone but humming with spiritual resonance. Hundreds—no, thousands of them—stood in rows that bent with the curvature of the land. Each was unique: some were smooth obsidian, others jagged and cracked. Many glowed with a faint inner light, as though preserving something within.
He approached one of the nearest. On its surface, a fragmented seal glimmered. Through the lens of his Kagegan, a vision emerged.
A shinobi, clad in lightning-patterned robes, stood atop a hill as enemy forces surged below. He raised a single finger. What followed was blinding—an arc of blue fire that consumed the battlefield.
When the vision faded, the gravestone let out a low hum and quieted.
Shisui exhaled. "These aren't memorials," he muttered. "They're vessels."
Each one held chakra memories—sealed final moments of shinobi whose names had been stripped from history.
A whisper carried on the wind. "To know what was stolen… is to know what was once sacred."
Shisui turned sharply. A figure stepped from the mist, cloaked in layered robes, his face obscured by a cracked porcelain mask resembling a Noh actor's expression—neither smiling nor frowning.
"Who are you?" Shisui asked.
The figure bowed slightly. "I am the Warden. Keeper of silence. Guardian of the forgotten."
His chakra signature was unlike anything Shisui had sensed before—aged, muted, like paper burned to ash and reformed again.
"Why am I here?"
The Warden raised his head. "Because you carry what they could not. The Seventh Path. The Path of Shadows."
Shisui's eye narrowed. "You know of it?"
"I served the Sage. I watched as each path was forged. The Seventh was never meant for mortals—but neither was the world meant for gods."
Shisui's hands curled into fists. "What is this place really? What purpose does it serve?"
The Warden turned and began walking between the graves. "These souls were not evil. They were inconvenient. They defied the narratives their leaders built. Their sacrifices didn't fit the scrolls, so they were buried in secrecy. But their chakra… it never died. It echoed."
As Shisui followed, visions began to emerge unbidden from the gravestones.
A Kaguya clansman weeping in battle, refusing to kill his Hyuga lover.
A Sand jonin slaughtering his own squad to stop the release of a forbidden summoning beast.
An Uzumaki sealing herself inside a dimensional rift to trap a cursed artifact—while pregnant.
Each soul cried out. And the Kagegan heard.
Shisui's heart began to pound. "They were all… heroes."
"They were shinobi," the Warden said. "Neither good nor evil, but human. They walked paths denied to them."
He stopped at one grave—larger than the rest. Unlike the others, it bore an Uchiha crest, split down the center.
"This one," the Warden said quietly, "is yours."
Shisui stepped forward. The gravestone was smooth obsidian, but blood darkened its base. As he touched it, a wave of pain surged through him. His death—his jump, the theft of his eye by Danzo, Itachi's scream, and the river swallowing him—rushed back in perfect clarity.
But something was different. The memory didn't end with the river.
Instead, it continued.
He saw his own body drift into a black space—a realm where chakra had form but no mass. There, he had been caught by a giant hand of light. The Sage's hand.
"You were never meant to die," the Warden said behind him. "You were meant to be forgotten."
"Why?"
"Because had you lived, peace might have come too soon. Too clean. Too different from what the powers of your world wanted."
Shisui turned. "Peace isn't clean."
"No. But neither is silence."
The Warden raised a hand and the forest responded.
Chakra pillars lit up one by one, each memory unspooling into the air like threads of fire. Visions played across the sky—wars stopped, children saved, weapons sealed away. And in every one, a face—nameless, erased, unwanted.
"You were brought here to remember them. Because the power you now carry is built from shadow—not evil, but sacrifice. The Seventh Path requires a vessel who knows what was lost."
Shisui looked around. "So what am I meant to do?"
The Warden stepped close, placing a hand on his shoulder.
"You will carry them. Their names. Their choices. Their will. When you walk into battle again, you do so as a legion."
Suddenly, Shisui's body pulsed.
The chakra of the graveyard surged toward him—an invitation. His Kagegan absorbed it not like a parasite, but a beacon. Each soul did not fade, but became a whisper in his being.
Memories flooded him: jutsu forgotten by the world, languages spoken in extinct clans, philosophies born in caves that no longer existed.
A kunai made of ice and flame formed in his hand—crafted by the regret of a weapons master who killed her own brother to prevent a coup.
A cloak of shadow wrapped around him, not black, but textured with faces that blurred into light.
He was no longer one man.
He was the memory of thousands.
The Warden stepped back.
"You are now the Shadow Vessel."
Shisui collapsed to his knees.
For a moment, he felt everything. And nothing.
But he rose.
Because ghosts cannot kneel.
---
When he emerged from the graveyard's boundary, the world had changed.
It was night now, or at least it appeared to be. The stars overhead twinkled like eyes. The land ahead was a field of silence.
Then he saw them.
Six figures in the distance, standing in a circle.
The Sage of Six Paths stood at the center.
Behind him, five more beings shimmered with divine light—each a former bearer of a path.
Pain, the first of the Six Paths, stood solemnly—his own pain still etched in the creases of his Rinnegan eyes.
Hagoromo's brother, Hamura, watched silently, his gaze steady and cold.
Kaguya's will—a remnant spirit—hovered like mist.
And beside them… stood a boy. Blonde, blue-eyed. Naruto Uzumaki. But not the boy Shisui remembered. This was a memory of the boy's future—a future that had not yet come to pass.
"You have walked the graveyard," the Sage said.
"I have," Shisui replied.
"Then you understand."
"I do."
"Will you bear their voices?"
"I will."
"And will you walk the world, not as legend, but shadow?"
"I already do."
The Sage nodded.
"You are the Seventh."
The figures dissolved.
And Shisui was alone again.
But this time, the silence felt like kinship.
The world did not welcome him.
But the forgotten did.
And from this day forward, Shisui Uchiha would no longer be a man.
He would be memory.
He would be the Gravewalker.