Naruto x Fairy Tail: Fairy's Shadow

Bonus Chapters at 100 power Stones.

"Normal Dialogue"

'Inner thoughts'

"Telepathic Dialogue"

[Year X???]

~ With Shisui ~

In his meditative state, Shisui felt the change before he saw it. A presence gathering itself from the void, drawing shadow and silence into a form he recognized yet had never truly seen.

The Whisperer emerged, but not as it had before. This time, it rose as something magnificent and terrible, cloaked in shadows. When it spoke, the words were no longer hostile and monotounous. Instead, it's words carried more meaning despite still retaining a neutral tone.

"You have endured…" it said. "But more importantly... you have accepted."

Shisui remained still, though something deep within him understood that the trial had ended. Yet Shisui was confused as to how he could have successfully completed the trial, since he believed that he had failed. Just as how the visions kept showing him.

"This was never a test of strength. It was a reckoning. To face all that you refused to carry, and accept them as though they were a part of you."

The words hit him with surprising gentleness. All this time, he had been fighting against his past, trying to prove he could overcome it, transcend it, leave it behind. But the trial had never asked him to win. It had asked him to stop running.

"This was not a trial to overcome one's past." The Whisperer said, and Shisui felt something shift in his chest. A loosening of tension he hadn't realized he'd been carrying.

"But to become one with it."

As the words settled, Shisui felt a warmth spread across his palms. He looked down to see shadow gathering there. The darkness condensed and shaped itself, etching a crescent into his skin in a bat-like silhouette that seemed to pulse with its own quiet life.

The Mark of Umbra.

The sensation was not painful. The Whisperer Nocturnae's form began to shift again, becoming less imposing but no less significant.

"The void knows failure… Yet it does not fear it. Let this truth anchor you. Acceptance is not surrender. The past defines your beginning, not your end."

Shisui flexed his fingers, watching the mark move with his skin. It felt strange and familiar all at once.

Movement caught his attention then. Not from the Whisperer, but from the endless horizon around them. Shapes emerged from the void, hundreds, maybe even thousands of them, each one a different size and bearing. They did not approach, but their presence was unmistakable. Watching. Waiting.

"Several of my kind reveal themselves to you now. They have seen your acceptance. They acknowledge what you have become."

Shisui could feel them. A subtle breathing in the shadows around him, a sense of ancient eyes that saw everything and judged nothing. Through the mark on his palms, he understood what was being told to him by the Nocturnae surrounding him.

"The pact is sealed. In time, they will become your allies. They will be your witnesses."

The words carried finality, but not the kind that ended things. The kind that began them.

Shisui studied the creature before him. In its smaller form, he could see details that had been lost in its previous manifestation.

"I am Echorim. Whisperer Nocturnae, born of shadows from Umbra Noctis." The bat said, inclining its head in what might have been a bow or simply acknowledgment.

The distinction felt important, though Shisui was still learning why.

"The pact binds us in purpose, not in hierarchy. You may call upon the Nightwings, but you cannot command them. They will answer if your need aligns with the greater purpose we all serve."

Shisui looked at his palms again, at the mark that now seemed to pulse in rhythm with his heartbeat.

'And what purpose is that?'

Echorim's eyes seemed to glitter with something that might have been approval.

"That, ally of shadows, requires a deeper conversation and understanding of what we are, and of where we reside."

Shisui nodded, still processing the weight of everything that had happened.

"The Nocturnae are old. We are not creatures born of this world's magic, nor are we spirits that learned to take form. We are the First Shadows. Echoes of something that existed before this world learned to dream of dragons."

The words settled around them with the gravity of absolute truth. Shisui found himself leaning forward slightly, drawn by the scope of what he was hearing.

"Before the dragons ruled your skies, before the celestial realms were carved from starlight and will, before even the particles you call Ethernano learned to dance through your world's veins. We were. We emerged from Umbra Noctis when the boundaries between what is and what should not be were still being written."

Shisui tried to wrap his mind around the timescale. 'How long ago?'

Echorim tilted its head as it replied. "Time moves differently in Umbra Noctis. But if we must speak in terms your world understands, we watched the birth of civilizations that your histories have forgotten, and we will watch new ones rise from the ashes of those that have not yet fallen.

Umbra Noctis exists parallel to your Earthland, but it is not simply another realm that can be reached by magical means. It is a fold in reality itself. One does not simply open a rift to enter Umbra Noctis. No, one must be chosen."

Shisui glanced around at the endless darkness that surrounded them. 'We're there now?'

"At the boundaries," Echorim confirmed. "The true Umbra Noctis lies... deeper. It serves as a prison for beings that were lost to time. Entities that threatened the balance of existence itself. We are its guardians. Its watchers."

The implications of that statement sent a chill through Shisui. 'What kind of beings?'

Echorim's eyes seemed to grow darker, if such a thing were possible.

"You've already met one such being, an Ancient Demon, the Lord of Silent Dominion, Nihilora."

Shisui's eyes mirrored the Nocturnae before him at the mention of Nihilora. Only now did he understand just how unprepared and overconfident he was in exploring the Mountain Zone trying to look for the seal which keeps Nihilora locked away.

"Mistakes. Forgotten gods who turned to madness. Creations that devoured their creators. Powers that learned to hunger for more than they were meant to consume. They sleep in the deepest folds of Umbra Noctis, bound by seals that must never break."

The weight of responsibility that came with the mark suddenly felt heavier. 'And you've been guarding them all this time?'

"We have," Echorim said simply.

"While the outside world grew up around the light, we remained in the shadows, ensuring that what was locked away, stayed locked away. We do not hunger for glory or recognition. We exist to maintain the balance between what should be and what must never be allowed to return."

~ End of Chapter 67 ~

Some lore drop for future developments. Now we get into Shisui becoming a true Fairy's Shadow.