The seal didn't glow. It pulsed.
Not with light, but with a rhythm—like a heartbeat embedded into the skin behind the ear. A quiet cadence that only the user could feel.
Sōgen sat in the garden behind the eastern wing of the Uchiha compound, where the shadows of the sakura trees never quite touched the stone tiles. He wasn't meditating. He never did. Instead, he was listening.
To seventy-three minds.
Whispers. Half-thoughts. The scrape of rice bowls. The crackle of kindling. The dull murmur of regret and mundane joy. Each user of his seal—a simple inscription hidden behind a fold of paper jutsu—fed him something. Not on purpose. It was ambient. Passive. Subtle.
That was the genius.
The seal was designed not to steal, but to ask.
A fundamental difference in chakra imprint behavior. When a user first received it—usually gifted to them as part of an exchange (helped in a field, patched up after a scuffle, guided through town)—it activated only when they chose to think about something.
A technique. A recipe. A lesson. A memory.
When they did, a tiny thread of chakra encoded the pattern, wrapped it in mnemonic disguise, and sent it into the Network.
The illusion of choice.
They shared willingly, and yet they were already trapped. Because soon after, they started downloading.
---
Sōgen opened his eyes. His fingers traced the inside of his wrist, where another seal glowed faintly.
/Ping: NEW DATA BUNDLE — [GrainHand-12] — Topic: Weather prediction through leaf tilt.
Useful.
He swiped the chakra signature across his retina with a flicker of focused chakra—an old trick from a hunter-nin's report-sorting method.
Instantly, the information sunk into his short-term memory. He saw it clearly:
Willow leaves bend slightly southeastward 4–6 hours before a storm.
Certain birch species emit faint white mist when heavy pressure builds.
He exhaled. Not amazing. But these little things built the great ones.
He had a theory.
If he could collect 10,000 micro-knowledges, bind them in spiral pattern to mimic the internal rotation of the Sharingan, he could stimulate the brain into an artificial Mangekyō pre-loop.
No trauma. Just synthesis.
He rose to his feet and paced.
The garden was quiet except for the occasional crow. He moved with that same calculated grace he always did—measured steps, arms behind his back, head slightly tilted as though perpetually listening to something others couldn't hear.
He was.
The Chatstream was buzzing today.
[StoneBaker-33]: "Did anyone else get the chills last night near the east riverbank? Feels like that thing is growing."
[Echo]: "Growth implies intention. Intentions imply a source."
[Drifter-51]: "Yeah, yeah, we know. You're the smart one."
[Echo] was his sock puppet. Occasionally he had to stir things. Let paranoia simmer just enough to keep them cautious, but not suspicious.
He had learned early that humans—especially non-ninja—only feared what they didn't feel in control of.
By giving them a chat, a community, and a vague illusion of hierarchy, he kept the seal alive.
No one had left it yet.
Some had tried. Their minds had "coincidentally" become foggy. Memory gaps. Sudden instinctive returns to the Network. "I just remembered a better way to do this! Let me upload it."
He hadn't forced them. Not really.
He had simply … optimized loyalty.
---
He returned inside, ducking under a low beam as he entered the scroll chamber. His private room looked like an archive more than a bedroom. Shelves of half-finished ideas. Chalk diagrams of neuron chakrafication. Old seers' manuals.
He opened a drawer.
Inside lay a scroll sealed with a twist of red thread.
PROTOTYPE: Artificial Emotional Induction Model v3
He had tried recreating grief.
He had matched chakra surges to high-pain memory loops uploaded voluntarily. Mostly deaths of pets, lost harvests, estranged family.
Not enough.
He needed something raw. Something visceral.
He unraveled the scroll and laid it flat.
Stage 1: Empathy Link – Connect via passive signature shadowing Stage 2: Dream Sync – Let host simulate tragedy from multiple angles Stage 3: Emotional Echo – Burn emotion into user's own memory cortex
He had only tried it once.
He had dreamt of drowning in a pond while hearing his own father laugh.
The Sharingan burned for six hours afterward. A third tomoe appeared.
---
That was three weeks ago.
Since then, he'd run fifteen simulations. Always carefully chosen. Never more than five hours. Always from mortals.
Because ninja? Ninja chakra resisted the seal.
It buckled. Flexed. Some even nullified it subconsciously.
The seal only worked on those who didn't know how to fight it.
But that was fine. Mortals had more to offer.
Why?
Idle cognition.
When a shinobi rests, they suppress thought. Meditation. Breathwork.
But a farmer? A child? A trader, walking half the day?
They think. Constantly. Patterns, associations, idle reasoning.
Sōgen called it the "cognitive spill."
And from it, he could harvest logic trees.
---
He tapped the corner of the seal-scroll and let it burn into his palm.
He would start the next phase: inverted logic tunneling.
He would use their ideas to solve a problem he never told them existed.
---
Later that night, at the Uchiha training grounds, he stood under the lantern-light, holding a kunai he never used.
Not for fighting.
For focus.
He threw it lazily. It missed the target by five inches.
He didn't care.
His Sharingan flickered.
Not with pride. But with hunger.
He could almost feel the next tomoe trying to form.
He had enough data. He had enough grief. He had enough minds.
Tomorrow, he would begin the spiral binding ritual.
And he would evolve.
No blood required.
Just thought.
Just connection.
---