𝐃𝐢𝐞 𝐀𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐃𝐚𝐲||𝐁𝐘 𝐓𝐑𝐔𝐄𝐕𝐎𝐃||

Chapter 1:Herald

"Greetings, mortal."

Uzumaki Namikaze Naruto opened sleep gummed eyes and promptly snapped them back shut. Hanging before him against the endless white was a creature straight out of nightmare; its golden black eyes framed by a wave of white tresses, bleached of all color, deathly white, from which two horns of crirsom peaked. Palid, purpilish emaciated skin, ribs exposed beneath the robe. A dagger clenched firmly between its jagged teeth, its lips pulled back in a ghastly grin. He wanted to deny it, to refute its existence, but there could be no mistaking it.

Shinigami.

"Do not close your eyes." Unbidden, the last Uzumaki watched his lids snap open, forcing him to regard the imposing apparition once more. A cold chill shot down his spine at the sight of the spectre looming before him, one he quickly quelled. If he was going to hell, then he'd at least face his afterlife with dignity.

"Oh, its you."

"Rise." the reaper intoned.

Naruto grunted, propping himself up on his elbows. So he really was dead, then. Funny. He'd always thought death would've hurt more. Not that his death had been painless mind you; using the Shiki Fūjin to seal away Madara's soul had been anything but painless. He'd known there would be pain; that even should he succeed nothing but hell awaited him in the afterlife. He'd known this from the beginning. It was a tenuous desperate last resot and although he'd failed to seal Obito in the bargain, he still considered it a victory.

Honestly, it was still something of a miracle he'd even managed to get his hands on one of them at all; with the Jyuubi flinging menacing balls in nearly every direction, he considered himself lucky to have accomplished half of his mission at all. Even with an undead/immortal body, nothing could've protected his immortal soul from being plucked from said body and sealed away. Granted, he'd lost an arm and a leg in the proccess but a win was a win in his book.

Uzumaki Naruto had left the world of the liviing knowing that, while he may have failed to preserve the lives of his friends and family; he'd managed to take the man responsible for their deaths, with him in the end. He could take some small solace in that fact, at the very least. He was sorrowed to have lost so many, with nothing to bring them back.

If I could do it over again...

"The world as you know it is coming to an end, mortal." The reaper droned on, dragging out each syllable with the deep double timbre befitting of an entity of its stature. "You may have sealed the one known as Uchiha Madara, but his legacy lives on. Already there is an imbalance in the souls I have come to collect. Yours is among them."

"You think I don't know that?" Naruto allowed a single tear to slip from his eye, to plink back into the white, into oblivion. "We failed. I failed. The war is over. We lost." Because they had failed. The Shinobi Alliance had been all but decimated. All but the Raikage were dead. Madara might be gone, but Obito had likely gained possession of the remaining bijuu by now, his own included. His only regret was that he hadn't been able to try and drag Obito with him to hell. That man deserved to burn in the ninth circle for the crimes he'd committed in the name of his so-called peace! Not that there was anything more to be done about it.

If I had another chance...

Even with Kurama's power, he wouldn't have been able to stand up to three Uchiha at once by himself; his one regret was that despite his best efforts to make it otherwise, his final sight before death had been that of Uchiha Obito, the last sound that of his determined growl that the Moon's Eye plan would come to fruition no matter what he-Naruto-did, that he'd at most delayed 'peace' by preventing the world from being cast under an infinite, endless genjutsu.