Keina felt her awareness slip away as memories bombarded her one after another. The days after she lost her father were a blur that passed with little notice. The rest of the clan, her clan, had seemingly disregarded that event too fast in her opinion. It had barely been a few days after Hazuki’s death that Kotetsu was fully introduced to the clan. On that day, standing somewhere in the distance by herself, she saw how everyone laughed. There was nothing weighing them down, as they stood around to witness Kotetsu’s and Eito’s antics.

  Nothing like what weighed her down.

  It was an event no one seemed to mention ever again. Her father’s death passed by so quickly, she had legitimately wondered if they even remembered his name. But that wasn’t her place to mention. She was just a child of the Uchiha, and the adults were in charge. Surely, the adults knew what they were doing, she had thought.

  But there was a quiet undertone held by many of the clan adults. A competitive nature, which she now recognised as one born from childish tendencies that they never grew out of. Keina had to grow up, she had been forced to live up to expectations that none of them applied to themselves. Through that competitive nature, the adults quietly mocked Hazuki’s death.

  “You don’t want to end up like your father, do you?...”

  “She has great potential with the Sharingan… clearly cut from a different cloth than her father…”

  “Keina definitely carries her own weight… she is nothing like Hazuki…”

  Keina was suffocated by rage as she looked down at her incompetent clan leader. He wanted her to leave, to forget about her life, just like that. The raw emotions she felt in that moment were on a scale several magnitudes larger than anything she had ever experienced before. A single agonising thought occupied her mind, pushing her to carry out the action she had started. Her head hurt with a familiar pressure as she reached past the Sharingan, into a box that had remained shut for the last two years. The Mangekyo Sharingan flared to life in her eyes.

  She would punish him for his crimes against her. For never growing up, for never being better, for never living up to those same expectations. She even considered going back to the clan to teach a lesson to the rest of the gutless ‘adults’. Keina was utterly blind to anything else. Which was why she failed to see the vague form standing between herself, and the fallen Eito.

  “Stop.”

  Through the red haze, she barely saw the figure standing before her. She had a moment to hesitate, but anger pushed her past the line of reasoning. She continued to stride forward.

  “Fine.”

  Suddenly, a force pushed in on her from all sides, crushing her arms to her sides and binding her legs. The wrapping force kept her upright. Alarm bells began to go off in the back of her head, pushing some of her rage away, letting her truly think about her situation. Terror began to replace the rage, and she moved to defend herself any way she could. Chakra leaked from her body like an open tap as she attempted to push her arms together to form a handsign.

  “Enough…”

  She was bodily lifted into the air, the crushing force pulling her up into the trees. She had no time to make a sound or react in any other way as she was pulled upward, speeding through branches and sailing high above the ground. Flashes of treetops were all she could make out as the kidnapping continued for several minutes, wind lashing at her face.

  By the point she had begun flying through the air, her killing intent had been completely replaced by an existential fear. The last few moments of her life caught up to her, and she made a horrific connection. Eito’s story depicted someone completely invisible to all of his senses. He could not see, hear, or even feel this person.

  Her assailant had appeared before her as a vague form. She had not been thinking straight enough to remember hearing a voice. And even now, she could not truly feel whatever was keeping her bound as they moved through the trees. It had to be made of some sort of earth, or even water based on how dense it felt, but she could not feel any interaction other than the pressure. If it was earth, she could perhaps overpower the control her attacker held over it, but her Chakra could not penetrate the force.

  Then, she came to a full stop, her body held horizontal high above the ground. She had a great view of the forest floor several dozen meters below her.

  Then without warning, the pressure evaporated in an instant, causing her to suddenly drop with rapid speed. Her survival instincts kicked in after three gut-wrenching seconds of falling, and she pooled all of her focus on figuring out a way to survive. An image immediately flared in her mind, and she latched onto it.

  She quickly flashed through two handsigns and began to push Chakra just beyond the skin of her hands and arms, creating a thick layer of infused Chakra. If she had carried more skill with Fire release, she could have done something similar to Kotetsu’s modified fire pulse technique, slowing her fall in the air. But that was not an option for her. Instead, she had something that suited her much better.

  Her downward descent continued for only a handful of seconds before she slammed full force into the ground. However, instead of becoming paste or even breaking several bones, the earth parted like liquid as she turned her fall into a diving motion. She needed to maintain absolute control over the layered Chakra, as well as replenishing the Chakra as it was used to liquefy the ground, or else she really would end up as paste. Her momentum leveled out as she came to a stop several meters below the earth’s surface.

  Her sensory abilities with Earth made this position underground more suitable against her enemies. While underground, she was capable of sensing not only obstructions within the ground itself, but anything that even lightly disturbed the earth, such as footsteps. It was the perfect technique for ambush and defence. Or, it would have been against any other foe, at least.

  Suddenly, two voids in her senses appeared on either side of her several meters apart, digging into the ground until they were roughly beneath her. Then, the earth she hid in was violently displaced as the two shapes pulled the ground up, along with her flailing body. Keina fell through the muddy air at a less rapid pace, slamming into a mound of dirt with an audible thud. She rolled across the ground, trying to regain a sense of her surroundings while dodging falling rocks and other debris. That was when a distinctly male voice from behind brought her whirling around to face her assailant.

  “My apologies, young lady. Are you unharmed?”

  She saw nothing at first. Even with her Sharingan still active, there was no person standing behind her, yet she knew that she heard a male voice.

  “I will not hurt you, Keina.”

  That time, she pinpointed the source of the voice, and angled herself slightly in its direction. She did not look directly at where it came from, building up courage to do what she needed to do.

  “Just let me explain, please. My name is-”

  The voice began to get closer. She only had the voice’s volume to go off of, but she was certain it was within distance. She moved. Flashing forward with both feet, her arms shot out like sewing needles, roughly drawing a line up from where she guessed a stomach would be to a chin that she could not feel. The only way she knew there was an impact was the sudden forceful stop of her arms, as there wasn’t even any pressure against her fists from the blows. Then, she lurched forward, snapping a kick into where a groin should be, resulting in the same lack of substantial impact. She grew emboldened, until a familiar pressure picked her up off the ground yet again to slam her into a nearby tree, all while the male coughed out in a garbled voice.

  “-Ouaugh!”

  Suddenly, like lifting a cover from her eyes, a man appeared on the ground in front of her, curled forward in a fetal position. The pressure that had picked her up vanished, leaving her to slide down the tree. When her feet hit the ground, she instantly began to run toward the fallen man, intending on finishing whatever this interaction was before it could get worse. That was her initial plan, until the man wheezed once again, flipping her view of the situation on its head.

  “-I can see why my grandson likes you so much…”

  Keina froze mere feet from the man.

  “...What?”

  Her heart thumped with enough force to be felt in her feet.

  Slowly, the man pushed himself up into a vague sitting position, until he could fully look her in the eye. The man wore a dark blue shirt, grey pants, tanned sandals, and an ordinary looking cloak. After a moment, Keina noticed her knapsack slung across his back. She also noted that his dark brown hair was neatly trimmed to a manageable length, and his head was bereft of any facial hair.

  “Sorry. I spend so much of my time using that tool, I sometimes forget to turn it off. Hah…” The old man breathed a self-pitying sigh.

  Keina had several questions, but felt like asking any of them was a dangerous proposition. The man turned his pained expression into a small grin as he bowed his head toward her.

  “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ihiro Uchiha. I apologise for my rather abrupt entrance, but I needed to prevent any further damage from occurring.”

  Keina took a step back, her head suddenly feeling light. She addressed Ihiro’s words.

  “Prevent further damage? You mean… you didn’t want me to hurt the clan leader?”

  Her racing mind came to an abrupt crash as she interpreted what Ihiro said. She had been ignoring her own feelings on what had nearly transpired mere minutes ago, but now they spilled out. She was about to kill the clan leader. Her rage had been fueled by the sudden realisation that their clan had been run by children. All of her pain was caused by their inadequate leadership, the death of her father, of Teruo, and who knew how many other Uchiha. She had not once considered Atsuo’s feelings, either, should she have carried out her bloody action.

  Ihiro’s smile fell as he gave Keina a somber look.

  “No. I needed to prevent my stupid son from causing you further damage.”

  Keina felt her eyes widen uncontrollably as his words brought her train of thought to crash once again. Repeating herself, she spoke.

  “...What?”

  Ihiro took a moment to look her over, his eyes assessing.

  “The event that awakened your Mangekyo was not the sole contributor. You have experienced an undue amount of stress over the last few years of your life, thanks in no part to my son and his clanmates…”

  The supposed grandfather glanced at the ground for a moment, then focused back on her.

  “My son obviously did not tell you everything from that night, either out of fear or… otherwise. For instance, I am obviously not dead, despite the event having taken the life of every adult Uchiha in the clan at the time.”

  Keina remained quiet as Ihiro spoke.

  “To be brief, I had left the clan nearly a month before the incident. Certain events had enlightened me on the near future of my people, and I was forced to make a decision.”

  Ihiro sat cross legged, and patted the ground in front of him.

  “There is much for us to discuss. I have to tell you why I am here, and why I had to stop you. We also need to talk about what happened with my grandson, Atsuo, and that Cinder boy your clan had harboured, Kotetsu, was it?...”

  After battling with her own instincts for several seconds, Keina unfroze to sit down just out of reach in front of Ihiro. Taking a deep not-so-calming breath, she released it and the Sharingan, feeling her eyes fade back to normal and pulling with it another portion of her Chakra. The draining sensation faded after a few moments and she put her focus on the strange man.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Okay… I will listen.”

  —

  Mutsue Senju hiked a trail only she knew about, walking deep into the woods far beyond where the Senju clan lived. The giant redwood trees only grew larger and larger the further she walked, until she came upon an impossibly wide tree. The tree itself spanned nearly 20 meters in diameter at the base. Even then, its height barely matched its surrounding neighbors, leaving its width as its defining feature.

  At least, until she got closer to see the bark of the tree.

  Appearing at first as nothing more than gnarls marking up the base of the tree, the gnarls quickly turned into the morphed visages of countless faces as Mutsue grew closer. She eventually reached the lowest face in the tree.

  “Elders… I require your knowledge.” Mutsue spoke in a respectful tone.

  After several seconds of piercing silence, the face creaked, its mouth vaguely moving.

  “Speak… your… question…” Deep reverberating words sounded out, barely recognisable as her mother’s voice.

  Mutsue braced herself as she asked her question.

  “It is about the Hoku royal line. I need to know the full history of those people, of the Azuchi Kingdom. It is of utmost importance-”

  “HOKU!”

  “Hoku…!”

  “HOKU!!”

  The deafening cries of dozens of voices echoed out into the forest. Mutsue waited nearly a full minute for the wailing to die down to a manageable level, reminded of the kind of history the elders were reminiscing about. For decades, the Hoku family, and by extension the Cinders, had proven difficult adversaries for the Senju clan. Even with their fading power, their pressure on the surrounding region was too great to ignore. Any attempts to reach for power in the land had been violently subdued by those of the Azuchi Kingdom.

  Even though most of the elders had not needed to deal with the Hoku family, they still knew of their clan’s recent history, as helpfully explained by Mutsue after the incident with Koyu Hoku. The previous Matriarch, her elder sister, would have joined them if not for that incident. Now, she used their outrage to gain insight into the workings of one of their most hated enemies.

  “We shall… explain… what we… can…” Her mother’s visage explained slowly, after most of the elders had stifled their outrage.

  Mutsue listened with wrapped attention as her elders passed down knowledge built up over centuries of their clan’s existence. And as they spoke, she felt a grin split her tired face.

  —

  Kotetsu learned a lot while witnessing his father’s memories. He had experienced what was likely several months of constant training, during which he uncovered much of what drove his father and grandmother to do what they were doing. Kouga had been the youngest of five children, with only the eldest daughter meant to inherit the position of General in the Azuchi Kingdom. However, an incident took the life of both Kouga’s sister and his father.

  That event marked the beginning of a war. A mostly silent war, waged between the dwindling Cinders of the Kingdom, and an unending horde of human-shaped monsters. Or, Asuras, as he now knew they were called. That was the name many of the Cinders within the kingdom used. Outside of the kingdom, he couldn’t recall the name being used by the Hyuuga clan or the Uchiha clan, though that could just be a result of his lack of attention.

  The human Asuras were devious. Unlike most Asuras which tended to be beasts, human Asuras were intelligent and capable of strategy, as he knew well. Kotetsu did not get to learn anything substantial about Asuras during Kouga’s memories.

  His newfound knowledge let Kotetsu piece together a painful picture of this period in history. All of the suffering he himself had gone through paled in comparison to what Kouga had experienced. Several questions had begun to fester, knocking at the door of his psyche the longer he spent in these memories. Why was the world the way it was? How could there be so many powerful people, yet none of them seemed effective at making a difference? What kind of anger does it take to wish destruction on their Kingdom, and where do they continue to come from?

  Suddenly, the memory he was watching caught his attention. It became familiar as it played out.

  The memory had begun normally, as any memory did. Kouga woke up, covered in sores and bruises from the previous day of battles. His training had progressed from ‘simple’ instruction, to full spars with swords. This day was supposed to be one of rest, but his mother, Koyu, had other ideas.

  “Get up.” Koyu’s voice rang out right as she pushed open the door to his chambers.

  Kouga shot out of bed, ignoring the twinges of pain that shot up his ankles. His instructions the previous day had involved hanging upside down from his feet for several hours while practicing his parry skills.

  “Follow me.” She ordered, not bothering to check if he followed. He did.

  By this point, Kouga had grown dull to the experimental training. Seeing as how those were dangerous words, he never dared to speak them aloud, for fear his mother would hear and take it as a personal challenge. The two marched down a long flight of steps to the grounds of the keep, before passing through a large double set of doors leading further down into a series of underground chambers. Koyu led Kouga down a long hallway to a rather decrepit looking door. Walking up and pushing past the door without pause, Kouga found himself walking into a literal torture room.

  The room was lined with equipment that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on edge. From one end to the other, there appeared to be five distinct instruments of torture, each looking progressively worse. The first appeared to be a thin plate of ebony suspended over a stone slab large enough to lay on, with a mechanism for lowering the plate. The second and third instruments were similar, except the bottom stone slab was replaced by ebony. The third instrument appeared to have a hole cut out in the bottom slab, just large enough for someone to curl up in, with a large cube of ebony replacing the top plate.

  As far as the fourth and fifth instruments went, he only had time to spot a single chair next to an ominous crate, and a giant cube of ebony sitting square on the chamber floor.

  “Get up.” Koyu ordered, waving at the first stone slab with the ebony plate hanging above. Kouga hesitated for only a moment, before hopping up on the slab and laying on his back.

  Hearing footsteps somewhere to his side, he had one last moment to look directly up into the dark stone plate suspended over his near naked body, before the clunk of a lever caused it to fall directly onto him.

  The plate was much heavier than he anticipated. The pain that followed was also much more than he anticipated. The only way to survive direct contact with the ebony was to wrap his entire body in the hastily infused Chakra, which he had summoned mere moments before impact. His willpower formed the Chakra into a continuous wave, beating back the ebony’s effect for the moment. He could hardly feel his body from the crushing pain.

  Suddenly, Koyu began to speak in an instructing tone.

  “What is Chakra?” She called out.

  Almost distracted by the question, he tried to formulate his best response.

  “...Chakra is my Ninjutsu.”

  “Wrong.” Koyu coldly stated.

  Kouga attempted to push back against the ebony. It ate away his Chakra at a precipitous rate, and if he didn’t hurry, he would be out of energy to pour his willpower through.

  While battling the ebony, he also battled with his mother’s vague question.

  “Chakra is an arsenal?” Kouga answered without confidence.

  “Wrong.” Koyu’s voice became harsher.

  “Chakra is not your technique, boy. It is not your weapon, or your tool. Nor is it your armor…” Koyu instructed, clearly trying to get Kouga to remember something. Whatever it was, he only drew blanks.

  Kouga could feel his Chakra levels slip further and further down until he was pulling dregs. It felt as if hours had passed, but the test had only begun a few minutes ago.

  “What is Chakra?” Kouga pleaded.

  Koyu did not answer. Kouga felt the last of his Chakra pass through his body into the barrier which separated the ebony from his skin by a hair’s width. He had been attempting to lift the plate the entire time, but the simultaneous focus of pouring Chakra into his crude barrier and reinforcing his bodily strength proved too much. It was either one or the other, and he clearly chose wrong.

  If only he could pull Chakra from thin air as easily as breathing, he might have been able to come up with a solution. His own 11-year old muscles could do nothing without the power of Chakra. He would fail, and his mother would be disappointed in him again.

  Except, he did not want to fail.

  In those final seconds, with his Chakra being carved away by the all-consuming hunger of the ebony, he wracked his brain for a solution. He found himself coming back to the question. In a flash of insight that made him wish he could slap his forehead, he finally understood that his mother had asked one of the simplest questions with one of the simplest answers.

  Chakra, or rather, uninfused Chakra, was simply a representation of his physical power. It was basically the raw potential power of his body, because it came from him. Which must mean that he was not truly out of Chakra, as long as he had more physical energy to give. The whole point of Chakra was that like his body, it conformed to his will, to his thoughts. It was essentially useless without any will. Even though his Chakra network had been drained of every last drop, he just needed to tap into what filled that network.

  He willed it.

  All across his body, a change rippled just under his skin. Muscles atrophied, fat lipids were consumed, and bones began to protrude from his now sunken skin as Kouga pulled on any and every scrap of energy he could feasibly access. His Chakra stores were consumed as quickly as he could replenish them, no longer hesitating to do what needed to be done to win against this test. The barrier that covered his body receded until it only covered his hands and arms, a much more manageable area, which he then strengthened with his newfound Chakra.

  At first, the ebony plate hardly budged from his strength as he adjusted to his new physique. The parts of his body now exposed to the plate began to sizzle under its weight, but less so than if he had his full Chakra reserves. Kouga could not help but madly grin as the situation pushed him to limits he did not even know were possible. As he grew accustomed to his form, so too did his control over his Chakra, which he used to violently shove the plate several meters up into the air.

  “Ya-TAAAH!”

  Kouga had a single moment of victory, his bony arms jut straight into the air, before reality caught up to him and he panicked. Just above, the plate hovered for a second at its peak, then began to fall once again seeking to crush his now feeble body to dust.

  “Oh CRAP-”

  He scrambled and rolled, finding his movement impeded by the layers of sweat that now covered his body and the slab. His flailing arms somehow found the edge of the platform, and he heaved himself forward to fly off of the slab with a titanic yelp.

  “YAAAUUAUGH-”

  His body crunched into the cold chamber floor, reflexively covering his ears before the loud crack of stone smashing against stone came. Except, instead of stone smashing, all he heard was the abrupt clang of chains. He twisted his head back slightly to see what happened, only to find that his mother had pulled the lever back to stop the plate roughly half a meter from the top of the slab. It would have given him plenty of room, should he have failed to escape. He sheepishly looked up into the expecting yellow-orange eyes of his mother.

  “What did you learn?” She questioned in a tone reserved for speaking to slow learners.

  Kouga’s vision began to darken, and Kotetsu realised he could barely hear or feel anything. Something like static pulsed back and forth through Kouga’s body, nullifying his movements and leaving Kouga filled with a weariness that seeped into his soul.

  “Chakra… is…”

  —

  “...power.”

  Mutsue Senju put down the scroll she had been reading, glancing around her study. She could have sworn she heard something. Light from the late sun poured in through curtains to her right, and she peeked out the open window into the dimming summer day. Nothing that could have made the sound caught her attention. Just then, another noise came, and this time she pinpointed the sound.

  “Chakra… is…”

  She whirled from her chair to find the wrapped form of the prisoner, right where she left him lying on the ground. He did not move, but soft words came from within the hefty bandages. Strange, as he had not shown any signs of sleep talking before. She worried that something seriously wrong might have happened with his healing. He continued his one sided conversation while she thought.

  “Chakra is power.”

  While it was a peculiar statement, Mutsue wondered at its significance. What was he dreaming about? What could he dream about? The prisoner had been passed out for only four days, so surely his physical state should still be-

  “Where… am I?”

  She froze midstep, having begun meandering his way.

  “Uh… hello?”

  The bandaged form rocked slightly from side to side. His body was completely wrapped from head to toe, binding his legs together and his arms to his sides. His head had also been liberally bandaged, leaving only his nose mostly uncovered. After a few seconds of movement, he stopped. Mutsue prepared herself should something happen. A small part of her cast serious doubt on the preparations, but she viciously beat it down with her experience gained from war.

  It was absolutely necessary, as a mere moment later, the boy flexed from his position laying down to a full stand in one fluid motion, as if pulled by a string. In the next moment, he bent his legs and arms in a show of controlled strength that ended in most of his bandages being ripped apart. Mutsue had acted in that moment as well, blasting coiled prickly vines directly at the boy. His head was still covered in bandages, and she knew that he lacked the capacity for Chakra senses. It was over for him. Or so she thought.

  Without hesitation, the boy leapt into the air, twisting himself until his feet slammed into the ceiling, where he stuck upside down. Mutsue guided her own vines toward the boy while weaving a set of handsigns, ready should the boy look to escape. The boy used his time to rip the bandaging from his face, whipping his head around the room until he saw the open window next to her desk. Dashing away from her trailing vines with impressive speed, he jumped for the window, arms outstretched, until…

  The walls on either side of the window closed the distance with a snap, catching the mostly naked prisoner by his chest. He gasped out a wheeze as the wooden walls attempted to crush him, his arms and legs flailing uselessly where he stuck out of the now deformed window. Mutsue’s vines caught him from behind, wrapping around his body where the thorns could prick into his skin, releasing a toxin into his body.

  Within seconds, the boy was out cold.

  And with that, Mutsue was a step closer to affirming her suspicion that the boy could see souls.