The sun had long since dipped behind the mountain ridge, bleeding red across the battlefield. Bodies were strewn across the slopes like discarded dolls—Senju, Uchiha, mercenaries, innocents. It didn't matter. In the Warring States period, death wore no uniform. It simply feasted.
Kuro Tatsuro stood alone, dragging a broken sword across the ground.
It wasn't his blood that coated him—but his hands trembled all the same.
Behind him, the remnants of his clan staggered through the mist, wounded and silent. Barely two dozen survived the ambush. They had been hired to defend a border village caught between a minor Uchiha squad and Senju advance scouts.
The noble who paid them was long dead—head split like a melon.
This wasn't war. It was slaughter.
Tatsuro stopped at a dying enemy, a Senju youth no older than twelve. The boy's ribs jutted from his armor, breath coming in shallow gasps. His eyes—wild with fear—locked onto Tatsuro's.
He raised a kunai with shaking hands.
Tatsuro didn't flinch.
He knelt.
"I won't kill you," he said quietly. "I've had enough killing for one night."
The boy's hand dropped. Tears welled up in his eyes.
Tatsuro reached into his pouch and placed a water flask in the boy's hands.
"Tell your elders… that the Black Dragon of the North showed mercy today."
Then he walked away.
Later, under the shade of a shattered tree, Tatsuro held the broken hilt of his blade in silence. The steel had snapped during the battle—right as he blocked an attack meant for one of his men. It was cheap, iron-forged by a wandering smith. But it had served him well.
He'd need a real weapon soon.
"You should've killed that kid," said a voice from behind.
It was Takeshi, one of his oldest lieutenants. His left arm was wrapped tight in cloth, fingers missing from his right hand. His face was cold, but not unkind.
Tatsuro didn't turn.
"I've seen too many corpses today, Takeshi."
"You think mercy will build our future?"
"I think… cruelty already defines everyone else."
They stood there for a moment in silence.
Then Takeshi nodded. "You're still a fool. But you're our fool."
That night, the survivors buried the dead.
No ceremonies. No prayers. Just dirt, sweat, and silence. They didn't even have time to carve names into the stones—they barely had strength to dig.
Tatsuro stood vigil as the others rested. His eyes scanned the stars—distant, cold, indifferent.
He clenched his fist.
His bloodline was awakening again.
He could feel it—cells shifting beneath his skin, senses sharpening beyond normal human range. His chakra pulsed differently. As if the death around him had forced his body to adapt once more.
The Shinka Ryōiki was more than evolution. It was survival carved into his DNA.
And something else stirred.
The mark on his back—the one that had appeared after his first kill—burned faintly under the moonlight. A swirling spiral of veins and ink, pulsing like a heartbeat.
The bloodline was growing stronger.
Weeks passed.
They returned to the valley—a hidden stretch of land between the northern mountain cliffs and thick pine woods. Their home, for now. The land was fertile, the waterfall nearby pure. It had once belonged to a forgotten clan now long erased by the flames of war.
Tatsuro made it theirs.
The dead were burned in silence. A new wall was erected from stone and wood. Watchtowers were carved into trees. Children trained with sticks while veterans reforged rusted swords.
A clan was not made from blood alone.
It was made from memory, pain, and promise.
Tatsuro sat atop the cliff one morning, meditating, when she approached.
Kaede.
The woman was built like a warrior, her lean body wrapped in a black-and-crimson haori marked with the rising sun. Her long hair was tied in a tight braid, a pair of short tanto sheathed at her waist.
She had joined the clan two years ago—an ex-mercenary betrayed by her former employer.
They had barely spoken beyond orders, training, and battlefield coordination.
But today, she carried something else in her eyes.
"You didn't eat again," she said flatly, placing a wrapped rice ball in his hand.
He looked at it, then at her. "You climbed the entire cliff just to feed me?"
"You've been staring at trees for three hours. I figured you were either dying or sulking."
He chuckled. "A bit of both, maybe."
She sat beside him, arms wrapped around her knees.
They didn't speak for a while. The wind carried pine and smoke through the valley.
Then she said, "They follow you like a god, you know. Even the kids."
"I'm just a man," he replied.
"You keep saying that. But men don't stop blades with their bare hands. They don't glow when they bleed. They don't stare death in the eye and ask for his name."
Tatsuro turned to her. Her gaze was locked on the horizon.
"What do you see me as, Kaede?"
She hesitated.
Then, quietly: "Someone I'd follow to hell."
That night, they stood together before the fire.
No declarations. No ceremonies. Just fingers brushing against fingers. Eyes locked in understanding. In a world where love was a battlefield and death was ever close, they chose to walk beside each other.
Not because they needed each other…
But because it was the only thing that still felt human.
A year later, their first son was born.
Raikō.
A silent baby, but with eyes that shimmered like silver steel. His chakra flared the moment he took his first breath, rattling the wooden beams above the bed.
Tatsuro held him gently.
His first heir.
The future of the Tatsugan Clan.
He felt it in his bones:
This was the beginning of a storm.