I don't remember the exact moment I realized my mother was going to die.
I remember the sounds. The midwives shouting over each other, their voices sharp and panicked. The splash of water—too much water, I thought later, though at five I didn't know what too much meant. The creak of the floorboards as my father paced outside the room, something he never did because my father didn't pace. He waited. He was good at waiting. But that night he couldn't wait.
I remember the smell, too. The metallic tang of blood that seeped through the paper doors and hung in the hallway like fog. I had never smelled so much blood before. I didn't know a person could have that much inside them.
Mostly, though, I remember the silence when it was over.
Not the kind of silence that comes after a storm, when the world holds its breath and waits for the next crack of thunder. This was heavier. The kind of silence that settles into the bones and stays there. I was five years old, and I learned that night that silence can be louder than any scream.
My name is Ren. Ren Uzumaki-Uchiha, though most people just call me the heir and leave it at that. I was born in Uzushiogakure, the Village Hidden in the Whirlpools, which is a fancy name for a small island nation that most of the big countries pretend doesn't exist until they need our sealing techniques. Then they remember us real quick.
My mother was Akari Uzumaki. She was the younger sister of Mito Uzumaki—yeah, that Mito, the one who married the First Hokage and got the Nine-Tails stuffed inside her. My mother could have been famous too, if she'd wanted. She had the chains. The real ones, the Uzumaki chakra chains that could hold down a tailed beast and make it whimper. But she didn't want fame. She wanted a quiet life with my father and her kids on this little island in the middle of nowhere.
My father was Daichi Uchiha. He was a missing-nin from Konoha who fell in love with my mother and never looked back. The Uchiha clan disowned him. The Uzumaki clan never fully trusted him. He didn't care. He had my mother, and for him, that was enough.
They met during the First War, which was stupid and brutal and killed a lot of people who didn't deserve to die. My mother was on the front lines, healing wounded shinobi and binding enemy soldiers with her chains. My father was on the other side, fighting for Konoha, his Sharingan cutting through the battlefield like a knife through smoke.
I don't know the exact details of how they fell in love. My mother used to tell me the story sometimes, but she always changed the details. One time she said he saved her life. Another time she said she saved his. Once she said they just looked at each other across a field of bodies and something clicked. I think the last one was probably the truth. Love doesn't need a grand story. It just needs a moment.
They left the war together. My father abandoned his village, his clan, his whole life. My mother gave up her position as the heir—she was next in line to lead the Uzumaki, but she passed it to her younger sister out of convenience, and then that sister died, and the title came back to her anyway. Fate has a sense of humor like that.
They built a life on Uzushio. They had me. For a few years, they were happy.
Then my mother got pregnant again, and everything fell apart.
The night Kushina was born, the moon really did look red. I'm not making that up for dramatic effect. I went outside to pee—I was five, I still needed help wiping, don't judge me—and I looked up, and the moon was this weird rusty color, like someone had painted it with dried blood.
I remember thinking that it was pretty. I didn't know it was an omen. I didn't believe in omens back then. I was too young to understand that the world sends you signs and you're supposed to read them before it's too late.
The labor started around noon. My mother had been having pains for a few days, but she'd waved them off. "Uzumaki women are tough," she said. "We've been having babies for a thousand years. This one won't be any different."
She was wrong.
I was in the garden when the first scream came. I was trying to catch a grasshopper—I don't know why, I just liked the way they jumped. The scream cut through the afternoon air like a blade, and I dropped the grasshopper and ran inside.
The hallway was chaos. Midwives running back and forth with towels and basins and bundles of herbs that smelled like mint and something sharper. My father stood outside the birthing room door, his back straight, his face blank. But his hands were shaking. I noticed that because my father's hands never shook.
"Ren," he said, not looking at me. "Go to your room."
"But Mama—"
"Go to your room."
I went. But I didn't stay.
The walls in Uzushio are made of paper and wood. Not great for soundproofing. I pressed my ear against the shoji screen and listened to everything I wasn't supposed to hear.
"The cord's wrapped around the neck," one midwife said.
"We need to turn the baby."
"I can't get a grip. The chakra's too dense. It's pushing me back."
"Call for Elder Hana. She's the only one who can—"
"There's no time. The mother's losing too much blood."
I didn't understand most of it. But I understood the fear in their voices. It was the same fear I felt when I fell out of a tree and couldn't breathe for a few seconds. That tight, squeezing feeling in the chest that says something is very wrong.
My mother screamed again. This one was different. Quieter. More like a moan.
I heard my father say something. I couldn't make out the words, but his voice was low and desperate, the kind of voice you use when you're begging for something you know you can't have.
Then there was a new sound. A baby's cry. Thin and reedy and very, very loud.
I exhaled. I didn't realize I'd been holding my breath.
But no one came out to tell me it was okay. No one laughed or cheered. The baby kept crying, and the midwives kept murmuring, and my father went very, very quiet.
I slid the door open.