The mask still rested on his face.
Akari stood on the cliffs, wind pressing against his robes. But the world before him was gone.
Instead, memory swallowed him whole.
---
He was six years old again, barefoot in the woods beyond Konoha's outskirts. His hair was shorter then, tied back in a quick knot, his violet eyes dull with confusion.
A woman's hand gripped his shoulder—gentle, but firm.
> "Akari," she said, "do not follow the birds."
He remembered her voice. Low, like running water over stone. She smelled of smoke and blossoms.
Her name?
He couldn't remember it.
But her face—sharp, noble, framed in ink-black hair—was burned into his bones.
---
In the memory, they stood before a shrine carved into the cliffside. One of the first. Primitive, without seal or mark. But alive.
"Why can't I go in?" Akari had asked.
His mother crouched down. "Because it remembers."
"Remembers what?"
She smiled faintly. "Everything we tried to forget."
---
The vision shifted again.
Fire.
The scent of burning paper. Screams in the distance. He saw himself older—nine, maybe ten—running through a collapsing house.
Figures in black cloaks surrounded the building. Not shinobi. Not bandits.
Cultists.
He'd hidden behind a cracked wall, breath silent, clutching a broken kunai.
And then, he'd seen it.
His mother—surrounded, cornered—chanting something under her breath.
> A sigil ignited beneath her. A forbidden one.
> Flames burst from her skin—not to kill, but to seal.
She looked back once, eyes meeting Akari's.
And with that, she vanished.
Consumed in light.
Gone.
---
He awoke gasping, mask clattering to the ground beside him.
Raien stood nearby, arms crossed. "You were gone for a while."
Akari wiped the sweat from his brow. "I saw her."
Raien's expression didn't change. "The woman in the shrine?"
"My mother," Akari said. "She knew. She sealed something inside me… before they took her."
Raien's gaze sharpened. "Then the cult didn't choose you. She did."
Akari picked up the mask, slower this time.
"No," he whispered. "She protected me from them."
---
Back in the village, the council convened once more. Danzo was absent.
Tobirama read the latest intelligence with narrowed eyes.
> Cult movement increasing. Border villages reporting disappearances.
Three shrines awakened.
Akari's lineage—confirmed unknown. But chakra signature now matches sealed scrolls dating back over 200 years.
Tobirama sighed.
"He's no longer just a shinobi," he said.
One of the elders looked up. "Then what is he?"
The Second Hokage's eyes glinted.
> "He's the fire we hoped to control.
And fire doesn't ask permission."
---
Far north, in a hidden ruin cloaked in snow, the cult stood before the Fourth Shrine.
This one pulsed with dark light. The final gate.
The Feathered Priest kneeled.
> "Prepare the vessel. The final seal is cracking."
Behind him, another masked figure stepped forward—this one different. Taller. Robes lined with red and black. His voice was colder.
> "He carries her blood. But I carry her will."
Lightning cracked above the shrine.
---
To be continued...