In the highlands of the Land of Lightning, the Chinoike clan had been hunted from civilization and cast into a land that even cartographers feared to mark. The old roads were gone now, burned bridges, shattered outposts, ruined trails. All that remained was what the youngest began to call.
Ash Road.
Named for the soot still clinging to their feet.
Named for the Home they left behind.
Of the two hundred and seven Chinoike who had survived the Uchiha assault, only one hundred eighty-five remained. The first to fall was a wounded high Shinobi whose leg had bleed beneath his bandage for too long. Infection took him.
The second, a mother who had refused to leave her husband's body.
The third… had not been killed by injury.
He had been murdered.
By a fellow clansman.
Chinoike Tenga, former field leader and interrogator, stood over the corpse of his cousin with blood clinging to his palm. His eyes, the Ketsuryūgan, burned in the twilight fog. Others stood in a wide circle, watching in silence.
"He wanted to turn back," Tenga said. "Said he'd rather face the Daimyō's mercy than starve in the wild."
His words were not apologetic.
Reika stood at the edge of the group, arms folded.
Beside her, Hana. The girl's eyes studied the scene without fear.
"Was it necessary?" Reika asked softly.
Tenga turned. "If one returns, all suffer. You know this."
Reika looked past him to the corpse. Then to the forest beyond.
"We need to move."
No burial. No words.
Just silence.
And footsteps.
Hana did not sleep.
She rarely spoke.
But when the others lay against the stone to rest, she walked. Often alone.
That night, she walked down the trail of the Ash Road and reached a place where the riverbed cracked open into a dry basin. There, her reflection appeared warped by the uneven stone.
Her eyes stared back at her.
Once, in the burned Home, a tutor told her the Ketsuryūgan meant "Blood Dragon Eye."
But it never felt like a dragon to her.
It felt like... something older. Hungrier. Like it remembered things she didn't.
She touched the water.
It rippled.
Then stilled.
Behind her, a voice.
"You see things, don't you?"
It was Sakuya, a kid no older than fourteen. One of the few who still smiled.
Hana didn't answer.
Sakuya sat beside her, knees drawn up.
"My dad says your eyes are stronger than anyone's in the clan. That you'll be our next Clanhead. You know what that means?"
Hana shook her head.
"It means," Sakuya said, grinning, "you'll burn anyone who tries to stop us."
Hana looked at her hand.
And slowly… closed her fist.
Reika had never wanted to lead.
But now, without En, without elders, without council or written orders, she became the voice the survivors followed. She distributed food, planned movements, rotated guards, assigned chakra use limits.
They were not refugees.
They were banished shinobi.
And that meant survival by code.
No campfires.
No clan name spoken aloud outside the inner circle.
No bloodline techniques except in defense.
And above all.
"We do not speak of revenge until we can survive."
Her orders were clear. Absolute.
But not unchallenged.
It happened on the ninth day.
Chinoike Juro, a former Mid Shinobi and cousin of Tenga, stood before the gathered survivors and declared.
"We walk to die."
Reika stood before him. Unflinching.
"Then die alone."
But Juro had followers.
Seven shinobi. All tired. All restless.
They broke from the group.
Refused food rations.
Refused orders.
And two nights later, they were found dead. Every one of them.
Blood boiled inside the body.
Chakra veins ruptured.
Tenga examined them in silence, then burned the bodies before anyone else could speak.
He left no evidence.
By the twelfth day, they reached the valley.
It had no name.
The air was different here, thick. Sweet. The kind of place that felt watched. Fog drifted low across the roots of trees larger than any seen in Lightning.
The survivors paused at the edge.
Something... pulsed beneath the soil.
A warmth.
A breath.
Hana, standing beside Reika, stared forward without blinking.
"Something's here."
Reika placed a hand on her shoulder.
"I feel it too."
The Rootless did not yet know.
But the Hollow had opened its eye.
That night, Hana dreamed of a tree with eyes.
It whispered in her voice, but deeper.
"They feared you because you remember things they have forgotten."
"You do not belong to fire or lightning."
"You belong to fog."
She woke with her heart still beating in rhythm to something she couldn't name.
And in her palm. a small curl of bark, wet with dew, shaped like an eye.
She hadn't picked it.
But it was there.
The Chinoike Clan continued forward into the valley.
They did not know what waited ahead.
Only that something, alive, had chosen not to reject them.