"Before there was chakra in my forge, there was only blood on my hands."
[Scene: Present — Taiki's Forge, Dawn After the Guardian's Bracer Incident]
The fire had gone cold. Only the rhythmic ticking of cooling metal filled the silence.Taiki sat on the forge's edge, staring into the dying embers as if searching for ghosts.
He turned his hammer slowly in his hand. Its worn handle still bore the faint engravings of an era long erased by war — a swirl pattern he had carved into it as a child to mark ownership, not knowing that the same spiral would someday become the symbol of a nation.
Funny… the world forgets who made the tools that shaped it.
The System pulsed faintly in his mind.
[SYSTEM REMINDER: Soul Sync Detected — Memory Archive Available.]Access: "Origin Flame Fragment I."Proceed?
He hesitated only a moment. "Show me," he whispered.
The world fell away — replaced by the past.
[Scene Shift: The Warring States Era — 68 Years Ago]
Smoke and rain.The air was thick with the scent of iron and fire — not from a forge, but from blood.
A young man stood beneath a collapsed roof, half his face streaked with soot, eyes burning with stubborn defiance. His name was Taiki Akinatsu, son of no clan, no lineage — just a boy who hammered broken plowshares into swords for whoever would pay.
Outside, shinobi clashed. Earth tore apart, fire rained from the heavens. Taiki's village was caught in the path of the endless wars between the Senju and Uchiha.
He had spent his youth crafting weapons for every side.He'd seen his swords raised by men shouting different creeds, but bleeding the same.
And on that day, he swore he'd never forge again.
[Scene: The Burned Forge]
The forge was in ruins, his mentor dead — the man who had taught him how to hold tongs and hammer, nothing more.
Taiki knelt before the ashes, clutching a warped sword that had belonged to a fallen samurai.Its edge was chipped. Its spirit, broken.
"Weapons that destroy…" he murmured. "Is that all I can make?"
His hands shook. The rain hissed as it touched the still-hot steel.Somewhere in the corner, a dull flame flickered stubbornly — the only fire left alive.
He approached it. Something called to him — not a voice, but a presence. A heartbeat deep in the metal.
He lifted the sword and thrust it into the coals.And for the first time, the flame didn't burn orange — it burned white.
[Scene: The Birth of the First Kusanagi]
Taiki worked for three nights without rest.He mixed metals scavenged from the battlefield — Senju kunai, Uchiha tanto, the steel of countless fallen warriors.
Each strike of his hammer was accompanied by whispers:
"Why do you forge?""For whom do you create?""Do you understand the weight of your craft?"
He didn't answer. He just struck, again and again.The white flame grew brighter until it consumed the forge itself.
When the sword finally took shape, it was neither samurai blade nor shinobi tool.It was something alive.
The metal sang. Runes appeared along its edge — ancient, shifting symbols that no one in his world could read.When Taiki lifted it, the blade hummed — resonating with his heartbeat.
He tested it once, swinging through the air — and the rain split apart.
"You are…" he whispered, "…Kusanagi."
The moment he named it, the blade pulsed.Something answered — a surge of warmth that flooded his body.And then, for the first time, he felt the System's embryo stir within his soul.
[FORGE CONDITION: Awakening.]User: Taiki Akinatsu — Status: Chosen Flame Bearer.
But he didn't understand. Not yet.
All he knew was that he had created something beyond human comprehension.Something that wanted to be wielded.
He would later learn that it was stolen — passed between shinobi, gods, and myths until its name became legend.But the truth, the first Kusanagi, was his.
And its forging had cost him everything.
[Scene Shift: Present — Back to Taiki's Forge]
Taiki gasped as he returned to himself, sweat streaking down his face. The System's hum faded, leaving behind silence.
He looked down at his trembling hands — the same hands that once birthed a legend and lost it to time.
"So… even this old flame remembers its first burn," he said quietly."That sword… it was my sin and my salvation."
The System pulsed again, gentle, almost compassionate.
[NEW QUEST: "Reclaim the Lost Flame."]Objective: Locate the first Kusanagi — now fragmented into four relics.Reward: Forging Blueprint – 'Runic Soulsteel.'
Taiki's expression hardened. "The Kusanagi… still exists?"
A faint image appeared in his mind — four locations, blurred by time. One pulsed faintly near the border between the Land of Fire and Lightning.
He rose, slipping his hammer into its strap, the fire of determination reigniting in his chest.
"If the world wields my creation as a weapon of death…""…then I will forge something greater — to redeem it."
As he stepped outside, dawn broke across the sky — bright, blinding, and mercilessly alive.The same sky that had once witnessed his first sin now bathed him in light again.
And somewhere, far away, the Kusanagi fragments vibrated faintly — recognizing their creator's return.
End of Chapter 4 – Flames of the Past