Ken didn't go home that night.

  He didn’t go to the compound, didn’t report to Daen, didn’t even acknowledge the crowd that had watched him walk away from the ring.

  He walked the vilge perimeter until the moon was high and the vilge quiet, sword on his back, blood still drying on the wrappings.

  Free.

  For the first time in both his lives—he was free.

  Not owned by a cn. Not crushed under history. Not used as a symbol.

  But freedom had a weight.

  And it was heavy.

  The next morning, Daen found him leaning against the outer wall of the vilge training grounds, looking like he hadn't slept—and hadn't needed to.

  “You broke the system,” Daen said. No greeting.

  Ken looked at him. “It needed breaking.”

  Daen pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and didn’t speak for a moment. “You humiliated a senior jonin. You burned your cn ties publicly. You stared down the council and walked out.”

  He took a drag.

  “They’re going to make you a symbol whether you like it or not.”

  Ken didn’t blink. “Then let them try.”

  Daen sighed, crouching beside him. “You don’t get it yet. You weren’t just a kid fighting for independence. You won like a man who’s already survived three wars. You didn’t hesitate. You didn’t flinch. You performed.”

  He looked at Ken, serious now. “You think people are going to forget that?”

  Ken stared ahead. “No.”

  “Then you better decide what the hell you are now.”

  Reina didn’t know what to say.

  She’d seen blood. She’d treated wounds. She’d watched shinobi die.

  But she’d never seen someone walk into a deathmatch unflinching and walk out unchanged.

  She stood across from Ken during their next squad gathering, arms folded.

  “You should’ve told us,” she finally said.

  “I didn’t need you involved,” Ken replied.

  Daisuke, who had stayed quiet until now, spoke up. “That was the first time I saw you fight like... like it was easy.”

  Ken gnced at him. “It wasn’t easy.”

  “You didn’t look scared.”

  “I was calm.”

  Reina frowned. “That’s worse.”

  Ken didn’t argue.

  Daen interrupted before it escated. “He made a choice. It wasn’t ours to make. And we’re still a team.”

  Ken turned to him. “If that ever changes, you tell me.”

  Daen nodded. “I will.”

  Elsewhere, the vilge’s higher offices had already begun to stir.

  The Hokage’s office had received over a dozen internal inquiries—some formal, some veiled.

  Was the duel legally sanctioned?

  Was Ken Uchiha now cnless?

  Would the Hokage assign him an ANBU handler?

  Was the boy stable?

  Hiruzen reviewed every report himself.

  He already knew the answers. But what troubled him wasn’t what Ken had done.

  It was how easily he’d done it.

  “I’ve seen prodigies,” he said aloud in his office. “But this… this is something else.”

  Danzo, reading the same report elsewhere, had a simpler reaction:

  “Too visible,” he muttered. “Too clean. He’ll never be mine.”

  But he made a note.

  Monitor. Long term.

  Inside the Uchiha compound, silence reigned.

  Some saw Ken as a traitor. Others, a warning.

  But the younger ones—the ones who had grown up hearing that nothing outside the cn mattered—they saw something different.

  They saw someone who had stepped outside and survived.

  Even Shisui couldn’t shake the feeling.

  He stood by the old training grounds, watching the spot where Ken once practiced alone.

  “He wasn’t showing off,” he whispered.

  “He was showing us what we lost.”

  By the end of the week, Ken received an official document from the Hokage’s office.

  It read:

  Genin Ken —Status: ActiveCn: NoneSpecial Notes: Freed from Uchiha authority by duelChakra Affinity: Wind/WaterField Conduct: ExceptionalPsychological Risk: UnknownRecommendation: Continue squad integration under Jonin Morita Daen. Long-term evaluation advised.

  Ken folded the letter, tucked it into his pack, and didn’t say a word about it.

  In the days that followed, things changed.

  People stepped out of his way more often.

  Vendors looked twice.

  Academy instructors watched him from behind gss windows.

  But it wasn’t fear.

  It was expectation.

  Like he’d crossed some invisible line from student to story.

  Daen noticed it first.

  “They’re going to start telling tales about you soon,” he said during training. “The kid who walked away from the fan. The ghost who made the cn bleed.”

  Ken stared at his reflection in the water basin nearby.

  “I’m not a story.”

  Daen gave him a long look.

  “Not yet.”

  But something had begun.

  Something he couldn’t stop now, even if he wanted to.

  Not fame.

  Not glory.

  But legend.

  The kind born in silence. Forged in principle. Told in whispers.

  Not because Ken wanted it.

  But because the vilge couldn’t look away.