But I’d already heard two versions of Akatsuki’s master plan, so who was to say there wasn’t a third? Unlike most experts I could actually see the complexities hidden inside a rolled-up seal array if I focused my perception properly, and I had permission to spend as long as I wanted to studying the thing. So I spent long hours every day meditating on it while the other Akatsuki members did their work, and gradually I came to suspect that something odd was going on.
“What I can see of it mostly makes sense,” I told Hinata one day. “But there’s so much hidden complexity in that thing I don’t see how Nagato could possibly have designed it. Even if he’s a genius with seals we’re talking several decades of work, and he isn’t that old. Besides that, I keep getting this nagging feeling that there’s something here I’m missing.”
Hinata shrugged. “Sorry, but I don’t know nearly enough about seals to help you there. I can see all sorts of strange shapes and colors in the bijuu container, but I have no idea what any of it means. I suppose we need some way for you to see the truth more clearly, but I’m not sure how to do that.”
“See the truth… clearly… the veil!” I exclaimed. “Why didn’t I ever think of that? You’re a genius, Hinata!”
She looked so confused I had to laugh. “Veil? What are you talking about, Sakura?”
“I’ll explain next time you come inside,” I reassured her. “I guess it might not work, actually, but I’m going to give it a try. Give me an hour or two?”
“Um, alright,” she agreed reluctantly.
I settled into a comfortable position before the bijuu container, and dropped easily into my mindscape. Then I closed my eyes again, and fell into the lower layers of my inner perception. Down, past the swirling dance of thought and memory that represented my truest view of myself. Down, past the place where every aspect I’d ever worn left its ghostly impression, eight translucent forms sleeping in the dark. One of them had hair of black instead of pink, and I paused for a moment to make sure she was still sleeping.
Then deeper still, to the place where a slender thread of gold sprang out across the infinite void between worlds to reach the heart of the man I love. I still wasn’t sure quite how that connection had come to exist, though I suspect absorbing the version of me that he’d created had something to do with it. Regardless, I was glad of the landmark. I might never have found this place again without it.
Carefully, I took hold of the thread and floated out into the abyss. Just as it had that one time before, the darkness seemed to twist and crawl with hidden movement. I looked away, and back, and found again that sensation of a veil drawn over my sight that protected me from the truth of what lay before me.
I cast the veil aside.
For a moment I was frozen into immobility by the sheer grandeur of the cosmic vision that stretched out around me. I floated at the edge of a universe, an ocean of blue and green seals that sang of worlds and stars and stranger things I had no names for. In my hand was a thread of love spun from the substance of my own soul, singing a defiant song of partners standing together against the world. Beyond was a place where swirling abstract shapes too vast to see in their entirety danced forever through the void, in a symphony too great for any mortal mind to contain.
I felt the first prickling of strain, but this time I didn’t pull the veil back. Instead I turned away, and stepped back into myself. I kept the veil in my hand and my eyes open as I floated carefully back up through the layers of my consciousness, and emerged once more into what we humans call the real world.
The bijuu container swirled with undercurrents of black chakra, carefully hidden from normal perception by something that was to genjutsu what a typhoon is to a spring shower. The seals themselves were distorted somehow, twisting from one shape to another as space warped around them, madly whispering their hunger for souls to twist and mutilate. I’d been more right than I’d realized. Whatever this thing really was, its heart was forged by demons.
I swallowed nervously, and looked away. Kakuzu was working on a stretch of the seal, and I saw five blackened hearts beating in the corrupted abomination he called a body. Each had a different chakra nature, but all were bound together by the black webbing of a demonic pact.
I looked up at Hinata, and found I could see her chakra as well. A river of clean blue power flowed calmly through her chakra vessels, spilling out to form a faint aura around her. The silver collar and chain of our contract were clearly visible, as was a thread of braided gold and blue that connected our souls. But there were swirls of darkness surrounding her in a dense cloud, touching her deeply, spreading black stains through her soul like ink poured into water.
I thought for a moment it was part of her, and indeed much of the darkness did seem to be of her own making. But more of it seemed connected to some other source, something I couldn’t quite make out. I strained to resolve the strands that drifted off into our surroundings, thinning into diaphanous streamers of barely-visible shadow that vanished into thin air.
Or did they? Was it my imagination, or was the air itself a shade darker than I remembered? I frowned in concentration as I shifted the layers of this odd new perception, trying to make sense of it. There was something in the air. A tenuous cloud of subtle influence that permeated everything around me, brushing against people and inanimate objects alike. Some sort of wide-area jutsu, perhaps?
“What do you see, Sakura?” Hinata asked quietly.
“The true nature of the world, I think,” I replied. “But I’m not sure what most of it means. There are layers I can’t make any sense of at all, but this one… is this a genjutsu? I need a better look, but I’ll lose this if I get distracted. Help me get out onto a balcony?”
“Of course.”
Whatever the shadow was, it extended all through the halls of Nagato’s tower. I was sure now that it was made up of demonic chakra, but the seals that would have defined a normal technique’s function seemed to be completely missing. It was just a diffuse cloud of formless evil. Perhaps it was leakage from something in Amegakure, but if so it was odd that I didn’t get a sense of direction or see any variations in intensity.
It took ten minutes of careful walking to make our way up five flights of stairs and across the tower, but thankfully we weren’t interrupted. Hinata opened the door for me, and I stepped out onto one of the high balconies overlooking the city. Sure enough the shadow extended through all the streets and towers I could see from my position, but on this larger scale it didn’t seem quite as uniform. There still weren’t any seals, but some areas seemed just slightly thinner or denser than others.
Then I looked up, and gasped.
The cloud extended across the whole sky, from horizon to horizon, lending the whole world a faint tinge of black. And there was one of the seals I’d expected, its harsh angles stretching halfway across the sky. Others peeked over the horizon on all sides, so huge they were only partly visible from here. But what little I could read of this vast array was disturbing enough…
…every hatred fanned into an eternal flame, every good deed punished with suffering and loss, every bearer of hope forced to choose between evils…