Chapter 107 – The Key Who Doesn’t Know

Ino couldn't breathe.

The room spun.

Not from fear.

From pressure.

Something inside her had cracked open.

She clutched her head.

Screamed.

Not in pain.

In recognition.

Like meeting someone you forgot you once were.

A voice whispered—

"The seal is in your blood."

Outside her room.

Shikamaru knocked.

"Oi, you alive in there?"

No answer.

He reached for the knob.

Ino's scream sliced through the door.

He kicked it open.

She was floating.

Hair rising. Eyes glowing.

Not chakra.

Something colder.

Older.

"IN—!"

She dropped.

Collapsed.

Shikamaru rushed to her.

She was breathing. Barely.

"Ino—what the hell was that?"

Her voice was distant. Hollow.

"He's calling me."

"Who?"

Ino blinked.

"I don't know."

But her hand touched her chest.

Where something pulsed.

A mark.

Not drawn.

Branded.

Elsewhere—

Sasuke stood before the old Uchiha tablet.

Still glowing.

Still unreadable.

Even with his Rinnegan.

He narrowed his eyes.

"Kaito," he muttered.

This wasn't over.

Behind him—Itachi appeared.

Not real.

A memory.

A Genjutsu the shrine triggered.

But it spoke anyway.

"Some eyes shouldn't open."

Sasuke stared at his brother's phantom.

"Then why do I feel like it's already too late?"

Far beneath Konoha.

Danzo stood before the altar.

Again.

The second seal was crumbling.

He could feel it.

The Eye of the Abyss pulsed.

Faintly.

Hungry.

He placed one hand on the stone.

And the stone wept.

Black tears.

It was activating on its own now.

"No... not yet," he muttered.

But it ignored him.

The Eye was choosing.

Not him.

Not Root.

Not power.

Just chaos.

Danzo backed away.

Even he—feared.

In the forest outside the Land of Fire.

Kaito stood before the floating shrine.

His eye bled freely now.

The ring had split again.

Now two inner circles.

Rotating separately.

Like a clock with no hands.

Time was folding.

Not forward.

Not backward.

Just… collapsing.

Kaito whispered, "Where's the Key?"

The shrine answered.

"She has awakened."

"Where?"

"You already know."

His eyes widened.

"Ino Yamanaka…"

The shrine pulsed.

"Touch her, and the final seal breaks."

Kaito turned.

Walked toward Konoha.

Not to attack.

Not to destroy.

But to remember.

Everything.

Inside Konoha Hospital.

Ino sat alone.

Still pale.

Still shaken.

Her father stood at the doorway.

Worried.

But silent.

She looked up.

"I saw him."

Inoichi frowned.

"Who?"

"I don't know his name. But he knows mine."

Inoichi sat beside her.

"You were born under strange stars," he said quietly.

She blinked.

"What?"

He hesitated.

Then leaned in.

"There's something we've never told you."

Flashback.

A birth.

In the middle of a storm.

Not rain.

Not wind.

Just chakra.

Wild. Ancient. Unstable.

She had no umbilical cord.

Just a seal burned into her spine.

The Yamanaka elders panicked.

But Inoichi kept her.

Raised her.

Loved her.

Even though her chakra never quite… felt human.

Even the Nara noticed.

Back in the hospital.

Ino whispered, "He's coming."

Inoichi tensed.

"Who?"

She stared out the window.

"The boy with no fate."

Elsewhere, high above the world.

The floating shrine rotated once.

The third door cracked.

A whisper echoed across the sky.

"Time is ready."

Meanwhile.

Naruto and Jiraiya moved through the ruins of an old Uzumaki vault.

Dust clung to every surface.

But something shimmered ahead.

A scroll.

Floating.

Not touching the ground.

Naruto reached for it.

His hand passed through.

Jiraiya blinked.

"It's not physical."

"It's sealed in memory," Naruto muttered.

The scroll burst open—

Words bled into his mind.

"The Eye that sees before time is not a dojutsu. It is a hole. A rift in fate. It can't copy. Can't track. It only reveals."

"Once it opens, all other destinies become irrelevant."

"And the Key… the one marked in flesh… must decide whether to close it—or let it consume the world."

Jiraiya looked at him.

Naruto's fists tightened.

"Ino is the Key."

Jiraiya nodded.

"Then we protect her."

In the Root compound.

Danzo stood before a mirror.

Peeling back his wrappings.

Revealing his arm.

The Sharingans were dying.

One by one.

His body was rejecting them.

The Eye of the Abyss was awakening on its own.

His control slipping.

He snarled.

"This power… belongs to me!"

But the mirror didn't reflect Danzo anymore.

It reflected Kaito.

Danzo stared.

Frozen.

Kaito's eye bled.

Even in reflection.

Even in thought.

"I'm taking it back," Kaito's voice whispered through the glass.

Danzo stepped back.

Afraid.

Alone.

Back in the forest.

Kaito stepped through time.

He didn't walk.

He existed forward.

One blink—and he stood at Konoha's gates.

The guards froze.

Eyes wide.

He didn't kill them.

Didn't threaten.

Just walked.

Slow. Calm. Silent.

And the village… let him in.

No alarms.

No bells.

Just silence.

The world felt it.

Inside her hospital room—

Ino sat up.

Her heart slammed once.

A pulse.

Not chakra.

Something deeper.

He's here.

She whispered it aloud.

And the windows cracked.

Shikamaru burst into the room.

"Ino!"

"I know," she said.

He looked out the window.

People had stopped moving.

Frozen.

A pause in time.

No Genjutsu.

No jutsu at all.

Just presence.

Shikamaru's breath caught.

"Kaito…"

Down the hallway.

Naruto and Jiraiya ran toward her.

Sasuke emerged from a rooftop.

ANBU flickered into position.

Then—

Kaito appeared.

Just stood outside Ino's room.

No aura.

No threat.

Only the eye.

Spinning.

Cracking.

Bleeding.

He touched the door.

It melted.

And he stepped through.

End of Chapter 107