Published at 16th of September 2024 1:20 am

Chapter 17 The Hollow Path

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The cold air of the night clung to Kabuto Yakushi like a second skin as he walked through the dimly lit corridors of Orochimaru’s lair. Shadows danced across the stone walls, twisting and warping in strange shapes as the torches flickered in the damp, narrow passageways. There was a strange comfort in the solitude. The silence had become Kabuto’s closest companion over the years—second only to the voice of his master.

Orochimaru was dead now.

That fact alone had left a hollow space within him, an emptiness that echoed in his mind. Kabuto had never been a man of sentimentality. He had long since shed those frailties, but Orochimaru’s death still left a mark—like the phantom pain from a limb long gone. The void wasn’t grief, not exactly. It was something worse.

Purpose.

For so long, Kabuto had defined his life by serving Orochimaru. His role as the loyal right hand, the obedient subordinate, had given him a sense of direction. Without that, without his master’s serpentine gaze watching his every move, he had no anchor. No one to shape him. No one to dictate who he was supposed to be.

He stepped into a dark chamber, the low ceiling pressing down on him like a weight. Dust clung to the air, thick and heavy. This room had once been filled with life—experiments, test subjects, and Orochimaru’s endless pursuit of knowledge and immortality. Now, it was a tomb.

Kabuto knelt by a table cluttered with scrolls, syringes, and vials of strange, glowing liquids. His fingers traced the edges of a scroll detailing Orochimaru’s experiments on genetic modification. The curse of immortality was something Orochimaru had sought his entire life, but in the end, even he had fallen to death’s embrace. Kabuto had always admired his master’s ambition, but now…

Now, Kabuto sought to surpass him.

“Surpass” wasn’t the right word, though. Consume—that was the correct term. Orochimaru had become a part of him, quite literally. The cells, the chakra, the techniques, the knowledge—it was all inside Kabuto now. Orochimaru lived on within him, and yet, it wasn’t enough. Kabuto had always been in the shadows, serving, learning, mimicking. But who was he now? Without Orochimaru’s direct guidance, without a master to follow, what was his purpose?

The sharp click of metal echoed behind him, and Kabuto straightened, his senses sharpening in an instant. He turned, his golden, snake-like eyes gleaming in the darkness, and found himself staring into the reflective surface of a large mirror that Orochimaru had kept in the chamber.

His reflection stared back at him, but it wasn’t just his reflection. It was something twisted. Kabuto’s face was a grotesque combination of his own and Orochimaru’s, as if the two were merging, morphing into something neither one nor the other. His eyes, once a dull grey, now shimmered with the cold, predatory gleam of a snake, a gift—or perhaps a curse—from the countless experiments he had undergone.

The sight unsettled him. Was he still Kabuto? Or had he become something else?

The thought gnawed at him, and for the first time in years, Kabuto felt fear—not of death, but of loss. The loss of identity, of self. Had he gone too far in his quest for power?

He closed his eyes, trying to silence the rising tide of doubt. But the voices wouldn’t stop. Orochimaru’s voice was there, whispering in the back of his mind, urging him forward, telling him that his path was the correct one—that power was the only truth, the only thing that mattered. Yet, there was another voice—a quieter, distant one.

It was the voice of the child he had once been.

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Kabuto remembered little of his childhood, but what he did remember was fragmented and filled with pain. He had been found on a battlefield, bloodied and broken, with no memory of who he was or where he came from. Nono, the woman who had raised him at the orphanage, had been the closest thing to a mother he had ever known. But even that bond had been severed when he discovered the truth—when he learned that his entire life had been a lie, orchestrated by the Hidden Leaf Village and Danzo’s Root division.

His childhood had been stolen from him, replaced by espionage, manipulation, and a life of shadows. The memory of Nono’s death—his hands, her blood—flashed in his mind, causing him to wince. He had believed, for a brief moment, that he could escape the cycle of betrayal and violence. But that hope had been crushed the moment he took her life.

Kabuto shook his head, forcing the memory down. He had long since decided that attachments were a weakness, a liability. Emotions could be used against you—just as the Leaf had used him, as Orochimaru had used him.

But now, standing here, alone in this chamber filled with the ghosts of his past, Kabuto felt the weight of all those choices. The betrayal, the manipulation, the endless pursuit of power—it had brought him here. But where was “here”?

What was left for him?

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Kabuto’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of soft footsteps echoing through the hall behind him. He turned, his hand instinctively reaching for the kunai strapped to his thigh, but there was no immediate threat. Instead, a figure emerged from the shadows—an old, hunched-over man, his face hidden beneath a tattered hood.

“I’ve been watching you, Kabuto,” the man said, his voice a rasping whisper.

Kabuto’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”

The figure stepped closer, his pale hand emerging from beneath the cloak to point directly at Kabuto. “You’ve forgotten yourself, haven’t you? You’ve forgotten who you are.”

Kabuto’s grip on his kunai tightened. He hated when people tried to play mind games with him—he was the master of deception, not the other way around. “I don’t know who you think you are, but I suggest you leave. Now.”

The man chuckled softly, his laugh dry and hollow. “Oh, Kabuto. I am not here to harm you. I’m here to remind you of the truth. You’ve spent your life trying to become someone else—Orochimaru, the Hidden Leaf’s pawn, a shadow. But in doing so, you’ve lost the only thing that matters.”

“And what would that be?” Kabuto sneered, his voice laced with venom.

The man’s eyes glinted in the dim light. “Yourself.”

The words struck Kabuto like a blade, sharp and cutting. He had spent years trying to mold himself into the perfect tool, the ultimate weapon. But in that process, had he lost the very essence of who he was? Or had he never known who he was to begin with?

The old man turned and began to walk away, his footsteps slow and deliberate. “You must choose, Kabuto. Continue down this path of hollow power, or remember who you once were. But know this—one path leads to destruction, the other to salvation.”

Kabuto stood frozen, the weight of the man’s words pressing down on him. For a moment, doubt crept into his mind. What if the power he sought, the merging of Orochimaru’s essence with his own, wasn’t the answer? What if it was just another prison?

But no.

Kabuto clenched his fists, the kunai falling from his grip and clattering to the floor. He had come too far to turn back now. He had sacrificed too much. Orochimaru’s legacy wasn’t something he would abandon. Power was the only thing that mattered. Power was the only truth.

As the old man’s figure disappeared into the darkness, Kabuto turned back toward the table, his resolve hardening like steel. He would become something greater than Orochimaru. He would forge his own path, even if it meant losing the last fragments of his humanity.

Because in the end, there was no place for doubt. There was no place for fear. Only power.

And Kabuto would seize it, no matter the cost.

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The End

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