Chapter 1: The Curse of Blood
My second life began not with a cry of triumph, but with utter confusion.
Disoriented. Helpless.
The only anchor in the chaotic storm of my earliest days was her. Mother. She held me close, even when I wailed far too much for a normal infant, her whisper cutting through the fog of conflicting memories. Her long hair fell around me like a protective curtain of silk, shielding me from a world I wasn't ready to face. Under the gleaming light, that black hair shimmered into a deep, comforting indigo.
"It's okay, sweetie. It's okay... Mama is here. It's okay, Hiroki."
And just like that, Uchiha Hiroki came into existence.
x-X-x
As I grew, dragging the heavy baggage of a previous life behind me, I often wondered if my mother possessed the gift of prophecy. My name was spelled in a peculiar manner.
Hiroki.
Searching Light.
It was painfully fitting. Once I managed to claw some semblance of order from my scrambled thoughts, I never stopped moving. I never stopped searching. Because I knew something no one else did:
There was so little time.
I was an Uchiha.
I was born of the line of Otsutsuki Indra.
I was blessed with his eyes, and cursed with his legacy of madness.
To be fair, dropping into the Elemental Nations wasn't the absolute worst fate imaginable. I would be strong—my blood guaranteed that. And in this world, strength was the only currency that bought survival.
My early years were a gilded cage. I was rarely allowed to leave the house, but my mother had cultivated a sanctuary in our backyard. It was a canvas of white and purple orchids, small but cozy, shaded by the monumental Hashirama trees.
Oh, the trees...
Those glorious, towering giants standing bulwark against the sky. They weren't just wood and leaf; they were the omnipresent pillars of the Shodaime's will. To a child, the dappled shadows cast by their broad green leaves were better than any security blanket. In the summer, they shielded me. In the fall, their orange leaves turned the dusk into a warm, inviting fire.
There would be time to train later. Time to grow. Time to prepare for the War that I knew might be looming, though the timeline remained a blur.
For a brief, fleeting moment, I was content.
How foolish.
x-X-x
I was three years old when the sky turned red.
The Kyuubi broke free from its seal and decimated Konoha.
Our pleasant sanctuary was obliterated. The orchids, the cozy house, the peace—gone in a roar of malevolent chakra. Mother and I huddled in the fallout shelters beneath the Hokage monument, crouched in terrified silence among the civilians, feeling the earth shake as titanic waves of hatred reshaped the landscape above us.
When the dust settled, the world had changed.
We moved to a new house. A new district. A walled-off part of the village.
There were no more cool summers.
There were no more shady autumns in the lee of the great trees.
And there never would be again.
x-X-x
The aftermath brought dreams to everyone. The malefic echoes of the Bijuu's chakra took form in the sleeping minds of the survivors.
But my nightmares were not of the Fox.
Run.
The command screams in my mind.
The trees rush past in the dim moonlight, but they are not the guardians of my childhood. They are twisted shapes defined by shadows, illuminated by anemic, silver light that offers no comfort. The inky blue hollows at their roots exert a sucking pressure, turning the grass a sickening, bruised green.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
My feet pound an unsteady rhythm on the traitorous earth. It's a drumbeat of frantic flight, warped into a torpid slowness by the clutching shades of indistinct figures hiding behind the wooden columns.
The ground shifts. It rushes up to blind me. I stumble, barely catching myself with shaking arms.
Step.
Sandaled feet appear ahead. Soundless.
They move across the cold, barren clearing, spreading flecks of ice that leech the color from the world, leaving everything a tired, clinical grey.
My gaze snaps up.
A cloaked figure looms. The visage bleeds from black inscrutability into a face I know too well.
Itachi.
His face is lined, pale, and utterly devoid of pity.
Then, his eyes open.
They expand and swirl. Red on black. They consume the moon, glowing down on my frozen limbs with baleful, crimson disdain. The Mangekyō peers through the incongruously bright leaves, a judge and executioner in one.
Steel flashes.
The world topples sideways.
A shooting, searing pain—
I wake up gasping.
My hands fly to my throat, clutching at the neck that was severed only seconds ago, a silent scream dying on my lips.
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