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Konoha dies. Konoha dies and is rebirthed from its own ashes as unwillingly as it was torn from the living.
One human soul was enough to revive all of the people it had ended, a confession of guilt and remorse, an apology and an attempt to undo what cannot be undone.
He had given up what he had begun to live for, and in undoing what cannot be undone, he had given up the reprieve of eternal sleep. His soul was forfeit, and his life force was commodified, used as material to mend the torn threads of human tethers to the land of the living. There would be nothing left, and he would only live on in memories and mended strings.
Konoha births itself in the wake of its own destruction, but instead of a child, a new life, it is filled with souls and bodies already old and worn and weathered from a life already lived in her streets. The people, old and worn and already both dead and alive will recreate her into someplace new, created from their memories, an echo.
Konoha is a new place filled with the remnants of what she once was. A new city built off the ruins of its predecessor.
When Konoha is rebuilt, the visiting and travelling merchants speak of a city of the dead, living people who look at them and know what happens when you die. Their streets were once filled with their own blood, and they have conquered themselves, in a sense. People who have seen Konoha after speak in hushed tones, those who remember her before bow their heads in respect for the ghosts in living flesh.
Konoha praises its hero, and Naruto is the one who fought and fought and lost himself to the beast within only to pull himself out again, the only one who had witnessed them all live and die. The one who had chosen their fates. They worship and loathe him in equal measure, and he knows it. He is their holder, the one who cradles them and all their horrors and tragedy in his worn hands. He scorns them as much as he loves them, and keeps them for himself and for themselves in both selfishness and selflessness.
He will fight until his last breath for them, they know. But he is the only one who is still living in the city of ghosts.
