Night bled into morning without ceremony. A thin haze crept along the floorboards of Torao's room, drawn from candle smoke and fatigue. He sat hunched over a ring of parchment and scrolls, eyes bloodshot, fingers stained with ink.
No dreams. No sleep. Just diagrams.
Each scroll he'd uncovered now had a replica. His own hand had redrawn every chakra blueprint, every muscular overlay, every sequence of theoretical movements. But it wasn't enough to copy. He had begun to alter them. Shift angles. Re-measure distances. Question placements. This wasn't mimicry anymore.
It was translation.
He leaned back, spine popping, and stared at the ceiling.
They—whoever they were—had wanted fusion. Total convergence of man and beast. Chimera outcomes. It was blunt, inelegant. Torao could see the appeal, but also the failure. The human body was too self-contained. It didn't want to be rewritten. And the spirit? Even less so.
He turned to a margin note he had scribbled the night before:
> Interface, not overwrite. Overlay, not fusion.
That was the key. Not becoming the animal. But wearing its shape as a principle, not as flesh.
And to do that—he needed chakra.
He exhaled and stared at his palm. Still nothing.
---
Kana was waiting for him on the veranda, sipping tea with a practiced calm that made her chakra-hyperactive hounds lie flat and quiet. Takuma sat nearby, carving a length of wood into something vaguely resembling a comb.
"You're up late," Kana said without looking.
"Didn't sleep," Torao admitted.
Takuma chuckled. "You're starting to sound like a real Inuzuka."
Torao didn't answer. He sat down opposite them, scrolls bundled under one arm, and laid them out slowly.
They both paused.
"Those from the Archive?" Kana asked.
He nodded. "I found them last week. I've been studying them. And I think I know what they were trying to do. I think I know a better way. But I can't move forward without chakra."
His parents exchanged a glance. Not concerned. Not amused. Just measuring.
"You're of age," Kana finally said. "And we were going to begin the process soon anyway. You just beat us to the question."
---
They cleared a space inside, laid out a mat, and guided him into a seated posture. Kana knelt behind him. Takuma sat cross-legged in front.
"You have chakra," Kana said, placing a hand against the back of his neck. "You're born with it. But until now, it's been asleep."
Takuma nodded. "We guide it awake. Slowly. We push some of ours into yours. Like warming cold hands. Then we help you circulate it."
He closed his eyes.
Warmth spread from Kana's hand first, down his spine. Then another pulse rose from his stomach, Takuma's chakra meeting his own, dormant pool.
There was a flicker.
A spark.
And then everything shuddered.
His coils opened like blooming flowers, slow and stretching. His tenketsu nodes ached, then burned, then calmed. He gasped.
And just like that—he had chakra.
---
"It'll be weak at first," Kana said. "Like an untrained muscle. Don't push too hard."
"Can I try something?"
They gave him space.
Torao reached for a piece of paper. Focused. Let the warmth rise in his belly, draw up his arm, collect in his fingertip.
It sparked. Then faded.
Again. Again.
On the fourth try, a steady stream of energy pooled beneath his skin. He touched the paper. Nothing happened.
He frowned.
"You're trying to use chakra like a weapon," Takuma said. "But it's not just fuel. It's information."
"What carries it best?" Torao asked. "I mean… ink? Cloth? Clay? What holds chakra like a container?"
Kana tilted her head. "Seals use ink. Explosives use parchment. Blood works, but it's dangerous. Metal, sometimes. Clay if you're reckless."
"Ink," he murmured.
He looked toward his brush kit. Fresh ink. Fine-tipped. Deliberate.
His heart beat faster.
He wasn't ready to draw yet. Not permanently. But he could test. Study.
---
That night, alone again, he returned to the bear scroll.
He ran a chakra pulse into a fresh page, trying to match the pressure of the blueprint's described muscle nodes. Nothing activated.
Of course it didn't.
Because it wasn't about copying a form. It was about copying a function.
He wrote slowly in the corner of the parchment:
> Chakra as conductor. Medium as translator. Form as intent.
He smiled.
He had a name now, at least in his head.
Kemojutsu.
Not a path. Not yet.
But it would be.