What remembers doesn’t fade
The mountains opened like jaws before him — twin cliffs framing the path ahead. The air was colder here. Heavier.
Elias moved slowly, guided by something less than instinct and more than curiosity.
The forest thinned, and he saw it:
A shrine.
Half-swallowed by ivy and earth. Stones cracked, wooden beams softened by rain and age. A single bell hung from the archway — motionless, silent.
No paths led here.
No chakra pulsed from within.
But the Jougan glowed.
Faint. Eager.
Drawn.
⸻
He stepped across the threshold.
Dust stirred in the stillness.
There were no signs of worship. No offerings. Only scattered bones of branches and rusted tools. A faded inscription above the main door read:
"That which remembers does not fade."
Inside, the air grew warm.
Elias's hand brushed the old stone altar — and the Jougan flared.
His body tensed.
Then stilled.
The world didn't shift — he did.
⸻
Suddenly, he saw her.
A little girl, maybe six, darting through the overgrown courtyard. Hair tied with twine, laughter echoing like birdsong. She climbed a pillar, fell, laughed again. No one else in sight.
Then—
The scene shifted.
She was older — twelve, maybe.
Serious now. Kneeling before the altar, lips moving silently as she unrolled a chakra scroll across the stone.
She practiced.
Repeatedly.
Failing. Bleeding. Trying again.
Days passed in moments. Each flick of her hand, each seal, burned into Elias's mind.
Then again — older still.
Fifteen.
Fierce.
Moving through kata so fast the wind itself seemed to pause.
She left the shrine often now — always returning with wounds.
⸻
Then one day, she returned covered in blood.
Not her own.
She dropped to her knees and didn't pray.
She wept.
And the altar listened.
Elias's chest tightened. The Jougan reflected her emotions — amplifying them. He felt her loneliness. Her need to protect something… or someone.
She came again.
And again.
Each time, less like a girl and more like a shadow.
Then—
She was old.
Gray hair pulled back. Wrinkles like rivers down her cheeks.
She stood where Elias stood now.
But she was not alone.
Children sat in a circle around her.
She spoke slowly.
Demonstrated the chakra arts.
Not the violent ones.
The healing. The sensing. The stillness.
⸻
Then she bowed before the altar.
Placed her scroll down.
And disappeared.
⸻
Elias gasped.
The world snapped back.
Dust in his lungs.
Altar beneath his hand.
The scroll was there.
Exactly where she'd left it.
Still warm.
Still waiting.
The Jougan dimmed to a hum.
Not every battle left scars.
Some left guides.
⸻
Elias took the scroll.
Not to use.
But to learn.
He sat beneath the broken archway as the sun fell behind the mountains, and for the first time in weeks—
He felt peace.
No one hunted him.
No one watched.
Only the memory of a girl who had once trained here.
And become something more.
Morning arrived slowly in the shrine, sunlight filtered through broken rafters like liquid gold. Elias sat cross-legged in the shadow of the altar, the scroll unfurled before him. Its parchment was old, the ink faded but pulsing faintly with embedded chakra — alive in some quiet way.
He read the first sutra aloud.
"To know the world, one must hear without ears."
It wasn't a command.
It was a suggestion.
And the Jougan responded.
⸻
At first, nothing changed.
Elias closed his eyes. Slowed his breath. Let his heartbeat settle into rhythm.
The shrine faded around him.
Then—
Voices.
No words, not truly. Just presence.
The wind whispered with intent. The stone beneath him sighed with age. The moss curled like fingers, and the mountain's hum threaded through it all like a heartbeat.
It was not madness.
It was the echo of chakra.
⸻
The first technique taught him to sense life without chakra signatures.
He felt the emotions of squirrels nesting in the beams above. The contentment of moss drinking dew. The uncertainty of roots reaching blindly through soil.
It overwhelmed him.
Elias clutched his chest, breath ragged.
Too much.
Too many feelings.
⸻
He stopped for hours.
Let the shrine be still again.
Then he tried the second technique.
This one required movement — a slow spiral of the hands, a breath held between inhale and exhale, and a focus on the center of his being.
"Harmonize," the scroll read,
"or the storm within will become the world without."
He obeyed.
And the Jougan pulsed.
His chakra flowed differently now.
Like a river long dammed — slow, wide, controlled.
His limbs loosened. His spine aligned without thought. He could feel energy coils within his body adjusting, slowly stitching themselves into a more refined pattern.
When he opened his eye again—
He saw his own chakra.
And how it brushed against the world's.
⸻
The third technique… was stranger.
No hand signs.
Just touch.
"What is sealed in stone may speak to the hand that listens."
Elias pressed his palm to the altar.
A whisper.
A girl's laugh.
A scream.
A final goodbye.
The Jougan flooded his mind with moments — memories trapped in matter. Echoes stored in chakra residue.
It wasn't time travel.
It was resonance.
A new kind of sensing.
⸻
By nightfall, Elias sat in silence, the scroll beside him, his hand still pressed to the stone.
He felt… emptied.
And full.
Like something sacred had passed through him.
The Jougan glowed faintly beneath his bangs — not pulsing with power, but breathing gently, like it had become part of something larger.
The shrine no longer felt haunted.
It felt watched.
Protected.
Seen.
⸻
He closed the scroll, wrapped it carefully, and placed it back on the altar.
Not because he was done.
But because it wasn't his to take.
He carried what mattered now.
And as he stepped into the cold night, the mountain whispered behind him:
"You were not the first."
.
.
.
The wind had turned sharp.
Elias walked along a cracked game trail, his worn sandals silent on packed earth. Trees whispered above him, but not with peace — with tension. Chakra stirred ahead. Erratic. Violent. Elias slowed, breath held.
Smoke. Screams. Clashing steel.
A battle.
He crouched low and slipped into the underbrush, the Jougan already burning dim beneath his bangs.
Two banners flew in the clearing ahead — one red, the other dark gold. Names he didn't know. Faces blurred by war.
Small clans.
No shinobi headbands. Just hate wrapped in cloth, chakra barely molded, as raw as the age itself. One man screamed as he was speared through the gut, another set ablaze by a crude fire technique.
Elias's eye flicked with motion, tracking them all. He didn't intend to fight.
He circled the clearing, slipping past a dead sentry slumped against a mossy post. Further on, a half-collapsed building slouched near the edge of the battlefield, its door scorched, hinges broken.
Storage.
He slipped inside.
Dust. Blood. Scrolls flung across the floor. Some torn, others half-burned.
Then — two locked chests. One had already been broken open, its contents spilled. The other glowed faintly under his Jougan's sight.
Not chakra.
But chakra resonance.
Someone had sealed it with layered intent.
Elias pressed his palm against the surface and let the eye focus. The lock melted beneath the gaze — unsealing not by force, but understanding.
Inside…
Two scrolls. Bound in black silk. Untouched by fire.
He knelt. Slowly unraveled the first.
The ink shimmered like coiled lightning.
Ninja Art: Ghost Drive
The writing wasn't a technique — it was a memory. The scroll pulsed with phantom movements: a shinobi dashing forward, fracturing into afterimages, striking nine times in synchronized rhythm before exploding in a white flare.
Elias's heart thudded.
This wasn't brute force.
It was precision. Speed. Death delivered like music.
The second scroll was heavier. Tied with stone beads.
Art of the Raging Mountain God
(Ninpo: Hajin Shinzan)
Images flared into his vision as he unraveled it — the earth cracking, trees uprooted, enemies falling as the mountain itself roared. A shinobi stood at its center, calm and unmoved, channeling nature's breath through their legs and into the world.
The technique wasn't elegant.
It was retribution.
A last resort.
A god's scream buried in soil.
⸻
Footsteps outside.
Voices. Rushed. Nervous.
"The kogane clan's losing ground! Reinforcements never came—"
"Check the bunker!"
Elias cursed and gripped the scrolls, stuffing them into the cloth satchel he'd looted earlier. No time for stealth. He darted to the side of the shack, crouched behind crumbling stone.
A flash of movement — three shinobi entered the bunker.
He moved.
Ghost Drive.
His body remembered it before his mind did. A burst of speed. His chakra snapped like thunder. The Jougan surged.
One afterimage.
Two.
A blur behind the men.
One strike.
Two.
Three.
Elias danced through them like wind past paper. On the ninth strike — he twisted and slammed his palm into the center shinobi's spine.
An explosion of raw force hurled all three from the bunker.
Dust flew. Screams echoed. Silence followed.
Elias stood alone inside again.
Panting. Shaking.
I didn't mean to kill them.
But the Jougan showed no life left.
He stepped back, chest heavy. These scrolls weren't tools. They were weapons — meant for war.
Still… he kept them.
Not because he wanted to fight.
But because he was tired of being hunted.
⸻
He vanished into the trees.
Behind him, the clans fought on, unaware that beneath their battlefield, something ancient and deadly had changed hands.
.
.
.
The forest beyond the skirmish was untouched by war.
No scorched banners. No broken bodies. Just trees — tall and unmoved — like they'd watched the clans kill each other for centuries.
Elias moved quietly. Every footfall was deliberate. His satchel was heavy now, not with supplies, but power. Power he didn't understand… yet.
He traveled for two days, sleeping under bark-thick canopies and listening to the wind hum across branches. On the third morning, he found the clearing.
High cliffs curved around it in a horseshoe. Mist clung to the ground. A small waterfall trickled from the rocks into a shallow basin. The earth felt untouched. Untamed.
Perfect.
He knelt and pulled out the scrolls.
The first — Ghost Drive — he'd already touched. But understanding it in battle was one thing. Commanding it was another.
He unrolled it again.
The ink shimmered.
Jougan… show me.
The eye flared to life — pale blue light casting shadows across the scroll. The script lifted in his vision, unfolding into phantom steps.
One. Lunge. Two. Twist. Three. Blink left.
A rhythm.
Not just a jutsu — a dance.
He stood. Focused chakra into his legs.
His heart pounded once — and he moved.
Faster than thought. Faster than fear.
The world stretched. His body blurred. Afterimages rippled behind him. Leaves scattered.
He struck — a ghostly punch into the air — and at the ninth motion, his chakra detonated outward, blasting a crater into the moss and stone.
He staggered, gasping.
That… was only half-power.
"I'm starting to understand," he muttered.
But the Jougan pulsed again. A warning.
Chakra.
Far. But approaching.
⸻
The Mercenaries
Four of them.
Ragged armor. Tattered coats. Men who hadn't belonged to a clan in years — but survived off the edge of others.
The leader grinned, slapping his broadsword against his shoulder. "This is the one. Same chakra as the scroll said."
Another spat. "We're not paid to ask why the Uchiha want him dead. Just to bring back the head."
Elias didn't wait.
He launched into Ghost Drive — again. Faster. Sharper. His body blurred forward — three clones of himself zigzagged in illusion.
He struck the first mercenary with a crushing elbow.
Blood sprayed.
The second slashed wildly — Elias ducked, spinning low and shattering the man's knee with a kick that echoed like thunder.
"Too slow."
But the leader — he'd seen combat before. His chakra flared dark red.
"Gotcha," he growled — and a sealing tag lit under Elias's feet.
Trap.
The explosive charge went off.
Elias flew backward, crashing through a tree trunk and skidding across dirt. Pain burned through his ribs. Blood filled his mouth.
Still alive.
He rolled to his knees, vision swimming.
The Jougan screamed.
Time slowed.
He saw the three remaining mercenaries rushing him — swords drawn, chakra twisted with malice.
He gripped the second scroll.
I don't have time to master it.
Then feel it.
He opened it with bloodied fingers.
Art of the Raging Mountain God.
Nature trembled.
Chakra didn't flow — it roared through his feet. Into the ground. Into the earth beneath all things.
The rocks cracked.
The air turned thick.
And then — the world exploded upward.
A shockwave burst from his position, pulverizing soil, hurling mercenaries into the cliffs. Trees bent. Water surged backward. The cliffside split with a low, rumbling groan.
When the dust settled…
Only Elias stood.
Steam drifted from his skin.
His body shook from overuse, blood trickling down his chin, but the mercenaries were gone — scattered like leaves in a storm.
He breathed.
"I… didn't even channel half of it."
He looked at the crater.
Power was a poison — but it was also a weapon.
And he wasn't done walking.