Ken woke to screaming.

  Not the kind that echoed from fear or pain—but the raw, helpless wail of an infant. His lungs burned, his arms filed uncontrolbly, and the light above him was too bright, too real.

  And yet, somehow, he understood.

  He was alive.

  No, reborn.

  The ceiling was smooth stone. Voices spoke in a nguage he somehow understood, though it was nothing like the Japanese he used to know. The chakra that now pulsed faintly inside him wasn’t a dream, nor the strange bck eyes of the man who held him—eyes that carried the telltale comma marks of the Sharingan.

  Uchiha.

  The thought hit him like cold water.

  He was born into the Uchiha cn.

  Ken didn’t cry after that—not in fear, not in shock. He just listened.

  The years that followed were a slow flood of discovery. He wasn’t a genius child. He didn’t have perfect chakra control or prodigious strength. But his mind—sharpened by years of adult thought—picked up patterns fast.

  By the time he was four, he could read people in ways children shouldn’t. That alone set him apart.

  His father, Uchiha Daiki, was a quiet man who barely spoke above a murmur and worked as a low-ranking guard in the Konoha administration building. His mother, Airi, came from a civilian background—non-shinobi, soft-spoken, and always tired. They lived on the far edge of the Uchiha compound, near the stone walls that marked its border with the rest of the vilge.

  This was the branch family—invisible, unimportant. They didn’t sit in meetings. They didn’t train in the cn’s main yard. They didn’t even attend the same functions as the rest. “Keep your head down, and no one will care who you are,” his father once said over dinner. That was the motto of the quiet Uchihas.

  It was safety through silence.

  Ken, even as a child, understood why. He could feel the weight in the air every time they passed near the main compound. Eyes watched. Words didn’t always match expressions. The Uchiha weren’t just a cn—they were a pressure cooker. Every greeting was yered, every gnce sharpened with something unspoken.

  And yet, he also saw the cracks.

  The older kids who trained too hard, spoke too little, and wore too much pride on their sleeves. The fathers who talked about the vilge with barely hidden resentment. The whispers of “surveilnce,” “distrust,” and “being pushed aside.”

  He was still too young for the full picture, but he remembered the old timeline. It was there, in the back of his mind: the massacre, the coup, the genocide disguised as sacrifice.

  And Itachi.

  The prodigy. The tragedy. The executioner.

  Ken met him once, briefly. Itachi was six, polite and eerily calm for a child. Their eyes met in passing. Ken recognized the weight behind them, and for a second, he wondered if Itachi saw something in him too.

  But just like that, the moment passed.

  Shisui, though—that was different.

  Shisui was Ken’s cousin, older by a year, and the only person who seemed to bridge the worlds of main and branch. He visited often, usually unannounced, and with a kind of ease no one else carried. Where most Uchiha were formal, stiff, Shisui was open, grinning, alive.

  “You look like you're always thinking about something too serious,” Shisui told him once, ruffling Ken’s hair. “Try smiling. It confuses people.”

  Ken didn’t smile much, but he appreciated the visits. They trained sometimes—basic taijutsu forms in the back lot, where their parents couldn’t see. Shisui moved like a shadow, but always slowed down enough for Ken to learn.

  “You're not strong yet,” Shisui said after one session, hands on his hips, “but your footing’s good. You think ahead. That’s rarer than you think.”

  Ken held onto those words.

  By five, he’d started at the Academy. It was easy—almost insultingly so. The taijutsu drills were repetitive, the ninjutsu was rudimentary, and the other kids hadn’t yet grown into their confidence. Ken pyed the average student. He got things wrong on purpose. He made sure not to stand out.

  But in the evenings, he trained.

  His father didn’t approve of going beyond basics. “You’ll attract attention,” he warned. “That’s not a good thing in this cn.” But Ken was careful. He practiced alone—quiet, methodical, never pushing hard enough to draw eyes.

  Until one day, he found the sword.

  It was an old thing—half-rusted and forgotten in a sealed weapons box behind the storage room of their home. Likely Daiki’s from his own academy years. It was unremarkable in design, but when Ken picked it up, something clicked.

  This was a tool, not a symbol. It didn't rely on chakra or bloodline. It demanded nothing but discipline.

  It was perfect.

  From then on, Ken trained with it every night. Forms, bance, transitions. At first, he mimicked what he remembered from anime and old martial arts videos in his past life. Later, he adapted. Mistakes became lessons. Movements became instinct.

  Swordsmanship wasn’t fshy. It wasn’t cn-defined. That’s what made it his.

  At six, he stood in the backyard one night, wooden sword in hand, breathing steady after an hour of quiet practice. The compound was dark around him. His mother had gone to sleep early. His father hadn’t come home yet.

  And then—it happened.

  A fsh of movement behind him. A whisper of breath.

  Ken turned just in time to catch a kunai in the air, deflecting it with the wooden bde.

  Shisui dropped down from the rooftop, grinning. “Nice reflexes. You’re getting serious.”

  Ken didn’t lower the sword. “What are you doing?”

  “Testing you,” Shisui said, stepping forward, his smile softening. “And checking in.”

  He paused. “I’ve seen how you move. You’re better than you let on. Why hide it?”

  Ken hesitated, then said simply, “Because no one’s watching a shadow.”

  Shisui looked at him for a long moment. “Smart,” he said, finally. “But shadows don’t get to change anything.”

  Ken didn’t answer.

  Later that night, lying in bed, Ken stared at the ceiling. Shisui’s words echoed in his mind.

  He thought of his parents—quiet and safe. He thought of Itachi—brilliant and doomed. And he thought of himself—a shadow trying to sharpen its edge.

  This time, he wouldn’t live a quiet, forgettable life.

  This time, he would be ready.