There was no sound.No light.No warmth.No body.
Just… a still, cold kind of nothingness — the kind Kazuki had grown familiar with in life. The kind that clings to you when even death feels redundant.
And then, all at once
Air. It flooded his lungs like lightning ripping through a corpse. His chest jerked. His heart pounded violently, as if restarted by a god's cruel mercy.
Kazuki's eyes flew open.
The ceiling above him was wooden, smooth planks nailed across narrow beams. Light spilled in through cracks in the wall. Dust danced in the sun like gold flakes.
He blinked.Once.Twice.
The air was thick with the smell of pine, rice, and faint ash.
He sat up slowly, cautiously. His arms felt wrong. Lighter. Smaller. The world around him was too big. The blanket too short. His hands
His hands.
Tiny.Pale as paper. Thin fingers, clean nails. Soft skin, like he had never held anything heavy.
He swung his legs off the futon and padded toward the mirror leaning against the wall.
And when he saw his reflection his breath caught.
The face staring back at him looked like something from a painting.
He was a boy no older than five, with features too sharp for his age, too symmetrical to be normal. His skin was bone-white, untouched by sun, smooth and unblemished like carved porcelain. It made his features look ethereal.
But the contrast… that's what made it unsettling.
Because his hair pitch-black, fine, and slightly messy framed his pale face like ink on snow. And his eyes
His eyes were black.
Not dark brown. Not hazel.Pure black. Glossy. Bottomless. Shimmering like polished obsidian.
And alive.
For the first time in forever, they weren't dead-fish grey, dulled by apathy and exhaustion.
They reflected the world like gemstones, glittering with something alien, unfamiliar—
Emotion.
Shock came first. His body trembled not from fear, but from the unbearable flood of sensation that came with finally feeling something after so long.
And then… awe.
Because he wasn't in his old life anymore. This wasn't his broken room, or that cramped apartment, or the stinking school building where he'd become invisible.
This was somewhere new.Somewhere impossibly different.
His eyes lowered.
On the corner of his shirt was a red-and-white fan symbol, simple but iconic.
His breath hitched.
He knew that symbol.
He'd seen it a hundred times. On TV. In manga. On headbands. In battle.
"Uchiha."
His mind reeled.
He ran to the window and pushed open the shutter—
The sun hit his eyes.
It was too bright. Too alive.
Stone walls. Narrow walkways. Traditional houses with tiled roofs and rice paper doors. People in dark yukata moving with the quiet grace of shinobi. The distant sound of kunai against wood.
And on nearly every building that same red-and-white fan symbol.
It was true.
He was reborn.
In the Naruto world.
And not just anywhere.
As a member of the Uchiha Clan.
There were people outside children his age training with wooden kunai, running drills. Older teens walking confidently with the air of prodigies. Shinobi in armor moving like shadows.
He watched them from the window. Watched the clan that would someday be slaughtered by one of their own.
The Uchiha.
The cursed clan of Sharingan and pride.The clan whose fate was sealed by history and hatred.
And him?
He was now one of them.
He should have been terrified.
Of dying again.Of the massacre.Of Madara, Obito, Itachi, Kaguya and all the unavoidable blood to come.
But instead
Kazuki smiled.
Slowly. Painfully. Like stretching a muscle that hadn't moved in years.
At first, it twitched awkward and unnatural.Then it widened, teeth showing, eyes glinting with a light that hadn't lived there in his entire past life.
It wasn't a gentle smile.
It was twisted. Wild. Borderline insane. A smile caught somewhere between joy and madness.
The kind of smile a man wears after crawling out of his own grave and realizing the sky still exists.
He was alive.
The world, this world was vibrant. Real. Beautiful.
The wooden beams overhead had character. The sunlight wasn't hollow. The air tasted like possibility, not dust.
This world was dangerous. Bloody. Unforgiving.
But it was honest.
Here, if someone wanted you dead, they'd try to kill you not kill your soul with words. Here, strength meant something. Weakness had a cost, but so did power.
And best of all
Here, he wasn't Kazuki Saito, the dead-eyed waste of space.
Here, he was Kazuki Uchiha.
An orphan.A nobody.
But alive.
And for once, life had color again.