Chapter 1
The corpse twitched—just once—before the stolen chakra settled into its new veins. Cold fingers flexed against damp earth, nails scraping through mud still warm with the lifeblood of a battle long since abandoned.
"Hash—" The name died in his throat, voice cracking like dry kindling. His own throat felt wrong—too narrow, too young. A child's vocal cords. He coughed, spat out dirt and something darker, metallic. When he wiped his mouth, the back of his hand came away smeared with old blood and fresh soil.
The battlefield stank. Not just of iron and voided bowels, but of wet earth churned open by footsteps and fallen bodies. Rain had started at some point—not enough to wash the stink away, just enough to make everything slick. He rolled onto his side, fingers digging into the mud where a kunai hilt protruded. When he pulled it free, the blade gleamed dull under cloud cover. His reflection in the steel showed a face he'd seen in clan records.
A sandal pressed into his field of vision. He recognized the tread pattern before the voice came. "You're supposed to be dead, Itama." The toe of the sandal nudged his ribs. Not hard. Just testing.
The name clicked. Itama Senju. Second son. Weak. Dead at twelve. He exhaled through his nose and tasted bile. This wasn't his body. But it was his now. The kunai's edge bit into his palm as he clenched it. He knew that voice. Knew the chakra signature thrumming just behind it. Uchiha.
"Disappointing," he rasped, rolling onto his back. Rain stung his eyes. The Uchiha stood silhouetted against storm clouds, sharingan already spinning. "You didn't check my pulse." His stolen muscles screamed as he moved, but he forced himself up onto one elbow. The copied chakra in his veins felt like liquid fire.
The Uchiha's sandal pressed down now—hard—on his wrist. Bones ground together. "I don't need to." The sharingan flared. "Your eyes are wrong." A heartbeat later, the world erupted into genjutsu flames.