The first thing he felt was the cold, followed by the pain. A sharp, biting chill that pierced through his chest, turning his body into a cage of searing agony. He gasped, throat raw, but there was no time to recover. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.
He wasn't alone.
He sprang to his feet, disoriented, vision spinning as his legs gave out beneath him. His hands slammed into the cold earth, teeth gritted against the vertigo. His breath came in ragged gasps.
The world around him was chaos.
Fires raged across a torn landscape, distant screams echoing in the distance, clashing metal ringing in his ears. A battlefield spread out before him, but not a battlefield that should exist. The bodies around him weren't just human—they were twisted, broken, monsters woven into the wreckage of what once could have been a village.
Where was he?
The sky was wrong. There were no stars, only a sickly, bruised moon hanging above in a sky split by gaping rifts that pulsed like open wounds. Torn timelines—slices of realities that bled into each other—were crisscrossing the heavens, distorting everything.
Suddenly, the world itself felt alive—angry and threatening.
"Get up!"
A voice tore through the haze of his thoughts, sharp and commanding. He spun around to see a man—bloodied, battered, with the headband of a Konohagakure shinobi hanging loosely around his neck.
"You're not dead yet?" The man's voice cracked with disbelief, eyes wide, as if the boy standing before him shouldn't even be standing.
"Where am I?" the boy rasped. His throat felt like sandpaper, his body screaming for answers.
The man laughed bitterly, looking to the sky as though searching for salvation. "Does it matter? This… this world doesn't exist anymore. Not the one you knew. Everything's been warped."
The boy's eyes narrowed. War. It felt too familiar. But his memories were a blur, erased—distant fragments of something bigger.
Another screech—louder this time. The boy turned just in time to see a massive shadow charging toward them from the distant hills. A monstrous creature—a beast of chakra, like nothing he'd ever seen before, its body writhing with dark energy. The ground quaked as it grew closer.
The man cursed under his breath. "The Covenant of Crows... they've been sending their creations across the realms. They've turned this world into their playground."
A dark, terrible power began to gather in the boy's chest, swelling in response to the beast's approach. His fingers twitched as something unnatural surged through him—raw power, enough to split the earth itself.
But it wasn't just his chakra. Something else stirred within him—system energy, a strange interface flickering in his vision.
Throne System: Activation in Progress
❖ Authority: [Thronebreaker] — Acknowledged.
❖ Engaging Target: High-Risk Entity.
❖ Suggested Action: Eliminate.
The boy's heart pounded. Thronebreaker. The title burned in his mind, a compulsion he could neither deny nor understand. Eliminate? The beast? His fists clenched.
"Wait!" the man shouted, but it was too late. The boy's body moved before he could stop it.
With a grunt, the boy hurled himself toward the beast, his body propelled by that strange surge of power, an unstoppable momentum. He collided with the creature, and in that instant, the world seemed to fracture—a rippling wave of force expanded outward, tearing through the battlefield, sending debris flying.
The creature roared in agony as its form disintegrated in an explosion of shadowy tendrils, absorbed by the boy's own chakra. His power consumed it whole.
The battlefield fell silent.
The boy stood there, panting, blood dripping from his knuckles. His gaze fell on the man, who stared at him with a mix of disbelief and terror.
"You—" the man sputtered. "You're one of them. You've been marked."
Thronebreaker. The word echoed again. Something was happening. Something inside him was awakening—an ancient, untapped force that demanded he take action.
The boy staggered back, confused, and then he felt it—the pull, the need to move forward. To destroy, to claim what was his. The beast wasn't the only thing to fall today.
"This world," he said, barely recognizing the words that left his mouth, "is going to burn."
The man looked at him, eyes wide with terror, as realization struck him like a thunderclap.
"You don't understand. No one can stop the Covenant. They control everything—every timeline, every world. If you try to fight them—"
"I'm not here to fight." The boy's voice was low, determined. "I'm here to end it all."
The Throne System flashed again, its energy surging in his veins, as the ground beneath his feet cracked open, sending waves of power rippling outward.
For the first time, the boy understood.
He wasn't just a survivor. He was the storm.
The ground trembled beneath him as shadows loomed. From the rift in the sky, another figure descended—an enemy unlike any other, cloaked in dark energy, its eyes glowing with malicious intent. The Covenant of Crows was already hunting him.