Smoke still clung to the trees days after the valley burned.
Tatsuro stood atop the watchtower of the Tatsugan stronghold, eyes locked to the horizon. His crystal blade, now cracked and humming low, was sheathed at his side. Kaede was still recovering—her wounds deeper than expected. Guts hadn't said a word in two days. Takeshi buried the dead himself.
Twelve warriors lost.
Fifty-three civilians.
Three children.
And something darker still grew in the remains of the Jashinist vessel.
They'd buried it—sealed it under a ten-layer fuinjutsu barrier reinforced with living chakra crystals, and surrounded it with twelve watch-seals made from the bones of the fallen. But even sealed, it pulsed.
Each midnight, they heard it whisper through the walls.
"We have to prepare."
Tatsuro's voice was calm, but beneath it throbbed the pain of failure.
The clan council met around the obsidian table in the central chamber. Guts leaned against the wall, arms crossed. Kaede sat to Tatsuro's right, her arm in a sling. Takeshi sat opposite, a fresh scar cut from his brow to chin.
"The Jashinists are not just cultists," Tatsuro said. "They're a bloodline. Artificially created. Reanimated by doctrine. Given power by sacrifice."
"And they want you dead," Takeshi muttered. "You, specifically."
Guts finally spoke. "Because he wasn't born of this world."
The room fell silent.
Kaede's eyes narrowed. "You're saying they know what you are?"
Tatsuro didn't flinch. "They can sense it. That I'm not bound by the same karmic threads."
No one spoke.
Later that night, under the blood moon, Tatsuro knelt in the stone garden, eyes closed.
Raikō, now three, played with pebbles nearby—his silver hair falling over curious eyes. Guts watched him, arms folded like a guardian beast.
The child already showed signs—chakra sensitivity, natural resilience to cold, and his laughter had a strange harmonic resonance. Like his soul sang to the world around him.
He would be the next heir.
And he would carry the burden.
Tatsuro raised his hand and etched the First Flame Seal into the stone before him. Not a jutsu. Not a weapon. But a declaration.
"In fire, we were forged. In flame, we shall never break."
The Clan of Tatsugan would not fall.
Five Months Later.
It started with birds falling from the sky.
Then the water turned black in the southern tributary.
Then, the screaming.
A farm village three miles out—gone silent in an hour.
Tatsuro, Kaede, Guts, and their elite moved fast.
When they arrived, they found the buildings untouched.
But the people?
Gone.
All that remained was a message carved into the largest tree in the village.
"In the fire, we breed. In your blood, we rise."
A trail of footprints led away from the tree.
But they weren't human.
They were clawed.
And they burned the grass where they walked.
They tracked them through the forest.
Twenty miles west, near the marshes.
That's where they saw it.
Not a man.
Not even a beast.
A child, twisted and malformed, with bones of ash and a heartbeat that echoed like thunder. It was hissing to itself, dragging a corpse by the hair.
Tatsuro's eyes widened.
"It's one of ours."
The corpse was a Tatsugan scout. Face frozen in agony. Symbols carved across his chest. Eyes blackened by fire.
The child turned, sensing them.
Its mouth split open sideways.
And it spoke in three voices at once.
"You are the blasphemy."
Tatsuro stepped forward, blade half-drawn. "And you are the mistake."
The child shrieked.
The marsh exploded.
They fought in darkness.
Swamp mud up to their knees.
Kaede summoned walls of water to counter the cursed fire erupting from the child's limbs. Guts moved in to distract it, while Tatsuro used the environment—feeding chakra into the roots, drawing up vines laced with crystallized chakra to bind its limbs.
But it wasn't enough.
The child split.
Three bodies now.
Each with different elements. Fire. Wind. Acid.
Takeshi was the first to be hit—an acid blast tearing into his side. He went down screaming.
Kaede screamed for Tatsuro to retreat.
But he didn't.
Instead, he used his first true technique—a jutsu born not from the world's chakra, but from the knowledge granted by the second wish.
Sealed Genesis: Crystalized Void.
Everything froze.
The air thickened.
The world cracked around him.
And the children—spawn of flame and blood—were shattered into ash and silence.
When it ended, the marsh had collapsed into a crater.
Guts pulled Takeshi from the muck.
Kaede limped to Tatsuro's side.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
He looked out toward the north, where smoke rose in the distance.
"They're not children," he said softly.
"They're seeds."
Back at the stronghold, weeks later.
Takeshi recovered—scarred, but stronger.
Raikō learned to speak fluently.
And deep beneath the seal-chamber, the corpse of the first cultist split open.
From it crawled seven more—silent, eyeless, with tongues of black fire.
They didn't attack.
They just waited.
Because they knew.
The war hadn't even started yet.