Chapter 6: Hollow Thunder

The sky over New York cracked open like a drumbeat from the heavens. Thunder rolled through
the clouds, not merely a weather event, but a warning.

Sasuke stood atop the Sanctum's highest spire, cloak whipping in the wind. His eyes weren’t on
the skyline, but on the flickering strands of energy unraveling in the upper atmosphere threads
of the multiverse beginning to fray. He could see them now, a gift or curse of the Rinnegan
adapting further to this realm.

“Something is entering,” he muttered.

“Or escaping,” Strange said behind him. “I’ve only seen this pattern once. When Dormammu
breached dimensions.”

Sasuke didn’t turn. “This feels different. Not invasive. Calculated. Like a key being turned.”

Dr. Strange frowned. “A key... or a lock?”

Lightning split the sky, but it wasn’t white it was violet. It twisted into shapes, runes from no
known language, then dissipated into the clouds. Sasuke’s muscles tensed. He knew those
symbols. Not consciously, but in the bone-deep way memory lives when language fails.

“What’s causing it?” he asked.

Strange raised the Eye of Agamotto. “Time’s flow is being rewritten. Someone or something is
reaching into the past to change the origin point.”

“The origin of what?” Sasuke’s voice was sharp now.

“You.”

Elsewhere, in a forgotten Siberian bunker, Steve and Bucky found themselves in an antechamber
that didn’t exist on any map. The walls were inscribed with seals that pulsed faintly Uchiha seals,
mixed with Norse glyphs.

“This isn’t Hydra tech,” Bucky muttered, brushing dust off a slab etched with concentric circles.

Steve’s fingers traced the carvings. “It’s a message.”

At the center of the room stood a stone column, worn and ancient. There was a handprint
carved into the face. Steve pressed his hand to it without hesitation.

The room trembled.

A projection flared to life. Not a hologram. A memory.

“You must forget,” she said.

Sasuke’s past self was trembling. “I don’t want to forget Naruto.”

“If you remember him, they will find you.”

Steve’s jaw clenched.

The memory faded, leaving silence.

Bucky looked at Steve. “He didn’t fall into this world. He was sent here.”

Back at the Sanctum, Strange’s magic flared to life in a burning ring. “I’ve located the point of
interference,” he said. “A temporal rift. Latveria.”

Sasuke’s expression darkened. “Then we go now.”

“I’m coming with you,” came Steve’s voice as he and Bucky stepped through a shimmering
portal.

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. “You took your time.”

Steve smirked. “You ever try sneaking through Siberian snowdrifts without alerting half the
wildlife?”

Bucky added, “We found something. About you. And it confirms everything you feared.”

Sasuke folded his arms. “Which is?”

“That you were made. Not born. But something changed you. Someone anchored you to a
different path.”

Sasuke glanced at Steve. “Naruto.”

Steve nodded.

Bucky stepped forward, holding a small metallic shard engraved with that spiral sigil. “They’re
calling themselves the Void Architects. Whatever they are, they fear who you might become
when all your memories align.”

Strange began weaving a teleportation circle. “Then we better stop them before they realign
time.”
Latveria was silent beneath storm-clouds and smog. Doom’s citadel loomed like a metal
monolith, but they weren’t here for him. In the mountains beyond the capital, a hidden rift
crackled in mid-air, anchored by arcane pylons and guarded by spectral beasts that hissed like
broken radios.

Sasuke stepped forward. “I’ve got this.”

His Rinnegan flared, and with a twist of his fingers, he summoned a Susanoo unlike any before.
Not blue or purple but black, veined with gold.

Steve whistled low. “Didn’t know he could do that.”

“He didn’t,” Bucky muttered.

The beasts attacked in unison, but the Susanoo met them with force and grace. Each blow
landed with the sound of mountains breaking. Steve and Bucky moved to support the flanks,
while Strange sealed the perimeter with a warding incantation.

As the last specter fell, the rift pulsed and opened.

From it emerged a figure clad in robes that flowed like ink across parchment. Its face was blank,
but its voice resonated with infinite echoes.

“You are not ready, Paradox.”

Sasuke didn’t flinch. “Try me.”

The figure raised a hand, and suddenly they were elsewhere no longer in Latveria, but inside a
fractured memory.

Sasuke stood on a battlefield again. But not any he remembered. Around him were people he
never knew: warriors wielding both chakra and energy blades, creatures of thought and flame
locked in combat.

He saw himself another version standing atop a spire, leading the charge.

“You see now,” the figure said. “You are not singular. You are convergence. A product of choices
not made, lives unlived.”

“But this me...” Sasuke whispered. “He’s not me.”

“He could be. Unless you choose differently.”

The vision twisted. This alternate Sasuke descended into darkness, consumed by power, turning
into a god with no purpose but war.

Sasuke felt a hand on his shoulder Steve.

“What’s that?”

“A future worth fighting for.”

They emerged from the vision, breathing hard. The Void Architect was gone. The rift was closing.
But Sasuke felt different now.

Something inside him had reconnected.

He looked down at his hands one trembling, one steady.

He wasn’t whole. Not yet.

But he was no longer broken.

That night, as they returned to the Sanctum, Sasuke stood quietly on the balcony, staring into
the storm that never truly cleared.

Bucky joined him, hands in his coat. “You ever think about what might’ve happened if you’d
never come here?”

Sasuke didn’t answer immediately. Then, softly: “I think I would’ve destroyed my world. Or
myself. Maybe both.”

Bucky nodded. “Then maybe this world’s better for it.”

They stood in silence for a while. Two men haunted by their pasts, shaped by systems that used
them.

Bucky offered him a flask. “Stark’s old stash. To stubborn second chances.”

Sasuke took it, nodded, and drank.

In the dark corners of the multiverse, the Architects stirred. One of the locks had been
compromised.

But as one Architect whispered to the others: “He has chosen his path. Not as weapon. Not as
savior.”

“But as contradiction.”

And that, they knew, was the most dangerous thing of all.