Chapter 3
The first year was a prison of helplessness. Haruto's consciousness, now Itama's, was trapped in a body that could barely hold its head up. He observed everything with a jonin's sharp eyes. He saw Hashirama's boisterous kindness, Tobirama's intense, analytical gaze even as a child, and Kawarama's playful energy. He felt the constant, low-grade fear that permeated the Senju compound—the fear of Uchiha raids, of sudden death.
On his first birthday, as he focused on the flickering flame of a candle, he felt it. Not chakra—that would come later—but two dormant cores within his very soul, waiting like sleeping dragons. He instinctively knew their names: **Copy** and **Devour**. They were not foreign implants or stolen Kekkei Genkai; they were as intrinsic as his own heartbeat, born from the fusion of his previous life's soul and this new reality. They were *his*. No outside will could command them.