The night over Konoha was suffocatingly dark, as if the sky itself had been drenched in heavy, stagnant ink.
Deep within the Forest of Death, where the shadows grew thickest, a stone cavern lay embedded in the jagged slope of a fault line. Outside, the underbrush rustled with a wet, slithering sound.
Hiss… Sss…
Sensing a disturbance, a knot of snakes raised their heads in unison. Their forked, blood-red tongues flickered, tasting the air for danger.
High in the distant canopy, several figures clad in black materialized like owls settling on a branch. Their arrival was absolute silence; even the heightened senses of the vipers below failed to register them.
"Is this the place?"
At the forefront stood Sarutobi Hiruzen, clad in light battle armor. His expression was shadowed, his gaze fixed on the bottomless darkness of the cave mouth ahead. His murmur was heavy, carrying a complex weight of reluctance and duty.
"Scatter," Hiruzen commanded, his voice low.
Swish! Swish!
The shadows behind him dissolved instantly, fanning out into the perimeter. Like the spreading wings of a great black bird, they enveloped the area, ready to strike with beak and talon.
This was the Anbu—the Ansatsu Senjutsu Tokushu Butai—renowned across the elemental nations for their efficiency, cruelty, and icy composure.
Recently, Konoha had been plagued by unexplained disappearances. Genin, Chūnin, and even Anbu operatives had vanished without a trace. To abduct an Anbu member required overpowering a shinobi who was, at minimum, a specialist in killing. Even for a village as powerful as Konoha, these were significant losses.
Although Shimura Danzō had tried to obscure the tracks from the shadows, he could not erase every stain. The incidents had finally pierced through the noise of the border conflicts with the Land of Fire, catching the Third Hokage's attention.
And immediately, Hiruzen's mind had drifted to the unsettling rumors surrounding his student.
"Orochimaru..."
After a long, suffocating silence, Hiruzen and his two guards vanished into the night, leaving behind only a sigh that hung in the air—a sound suspended somewhere between disappointment and regret.
Meanwhile, deep underground, connected to the cave by a labyrinth of damp, neglected drainage tunnels.
Drip… Drip…
Sewage water fell rhythmically into a stagnant pool, sending ripples through the gloom.
In a hollowed-out concrete expanse, the dampness gave way to the sterile chill of a secret laboratory.
"No matter how many times I look at it, I am struck by the sheer engineering marvel of this vessel."
Orochimaru stood over an operating table, his golden, serpentine eyes gleaming with a hunger that bordered on reverence.
Before him lay a corpse.
He had traveled the breadth of the Shinobi World and seen countless ancient bodies. Usually, they were grotesque—skulls warped, eyes bulging, or limbs swollen until they burst through their burial shrouds.
But this... this was different.
The body belonged to a young man, exquisite and unblemished by decay. His skin was pale porcelain, his hair a lustrous raven black. Even his eyelashes remained intact. He looked not dead, but merely asleep.
Only the subtle signs of dehydration on the torso and the slight atrophy of the limb muscles hinted at the truth. Orochimaru was certain the boy was dead, yet the flesh retained a bizarre, impossible vitality.
It felt as though the soul had merely broken its chains and wandered off, leaving the empty shell behind in perfect stasis.
"So this is the Ōtsutsuki clan," Orochimaru whispered, his chest heaving slightly. The tip of his tongue darted out, moistening dry lips.
According to the ancient texts of the Hyūga, this was the progenitor race that had woven chakra and ninjutsu into existence. It was only natural that they possessed a life force and spirit far beyond the comprehension of mortals.
Yet, even a god bleeds red.
Orochimaru theorized that if he could transplant the organs of this being, he could retroactively rewrite his own genetic code—granting himself unparalleled vitality and an affinity for ninjutsu that defied logic.
It was a surgery of god-like complexity. Only he, with his mastery of cellular regeneration and biology, could attempt it. Even Tsunade would fail here.
It felt as though fate had prepared this gift specifically for him.
Reluctantly tearing his gaze away, Orochimaru turned to the second operating table.
Lying there was a boy of barely fifteen, close in age to the celestial corpse. His long black hair spilled over the metal like silk. His face was pale, his jaw set tight in tension. On his forehead, the green "Manji" seal—the Caged Bird—stood out stark and cruel against his skin.
In all of Konoha, indeed in all the world, only the Hyūga clan possessed those pure, snow-white eyes. And only the Branch House carried the curse of that ugly seal.
Hyūga Kumokawa.
That was the boy's name.
It was Kumokawa who had brought this Ōtsutsuki corpse to him, along with the forbidden scrolls detailing the Hyūga's ancient lineage. The texts claimed the Hyūga were direct blood descendants of the Ōtsutsuki. Therefore, the compatibility for transplantation should be absolute, minimizing the risk of rejection.
"Kumokawa. Only the heart remains. Are you ready?"
Orochimaru smiled, a gesture that was both feminine and predatory. He deliberately dropped the honorifics and the clan name. It was the familiarity of ownership—an arrogant declaration that 'everything you are belongs to me.'
And in truth, it did.
Orochimaru had already placed his own Cursed Seal on the boy. Once the transplant was complete and he had developed the Living Corpse Reincarnation technique, he would find a way to break the Caged Bird seal and take this perfect, evolved body for himself.
With his Cursed Seal in place, Orochimaru feared no betrayal. To him, this boy was exactly what the Hyūga clan said he was: a piece of trash.
"Orochimaru-sama, please... do it."
Kumokawa's face was mask of fear, yet his voice held a rigid, desperate resolve. He looked up at the Sannin, his white eyes swimming with admiration and twisted gratitude. "You killed that old bastard. You avenged my parents. For that, I willingly offer you this body, even if it is no longer my own."
Orochimaru chuckled softly.
Infiltrating the Hyūga compound to assassinate a Main House elder had been troublesome. His sensei, the Professor, had likely pieced it together by now.
But it was necessary. The surgery required complex life-support seals; Orochimaru needed to focus entirely on the biology, leaving him no spare mental capacity to maintain a genjutsu on the patient. The host needed to be awake, lucid, and willing.
Satisfying Kumokawa's petty vendetta against the elder who drove his parents to suicide was a small price to pay for compliance.
Besides, Orochimaru had grown bored with Konoha. If he could unlock the secrets of the Ōtsutsuki, becoming a missing-nin was a trivial consequence.
"Orochimaru-sama... what are you planning to do?"
The third person in the room spoke up. It was an old man in a white coat—the missing Director of Konoha Hospital. In the shadows, he was known as "Owl," a medical talent cultivated by Danzō and Root.
Owl stared at the scene with a mixture of shock and terror.
Orochimaru ignored him completely. The old man would fall in line; fear always ensured obedience.
Clearing his mind of distractions, Orochimaru checked the preparations one last time. Satisfied, he channeled chakra into his feet, activating the seal array etched into the floor.
Hummmm!
Black markings crawled up the legs of the operating table, spreading over Hyūga Kumokawa's body. They bound him tight, simultaneously feeding chakra into his system to sustain him. The external blood circulation machine whirred to life, tubes pulsing as they routed blood through the superior and inferior vena cava.
Kumokawa's kidneys, liver, pancreas—they had already been replaced with the organs of the Ōtsutsuki corpse.
Now, only the heart remained. The most vital, and the most dangerous, piece of the puzzle.
Squelch.
Chakra scalpels materialized around Orochimaru's hands, glowing with blue luminescence. With the precision of an artist, he sliced along the sternum, parting muscle and bone. The chest cavity opened, revealing the pulsing, bloody machinery of life within.
With absolute focus, he severed the arteries and lifted the living heart from Kumokawa's chest, leaving only the posterior wall of the left atrium and part of the right atrium intact.
He turned to the Ōtsutsuki corpse.
He lifted the alien heart. It was silent, yet the red muscle seemed to hum with latent power. Orochimaru held it with both hands, a gesture approaching religious piety, though his surgical movements remained steady as stone.
The heart of a god was lowered into the chest of a mortal.
"You... you're actually doing a heart transplant?" Owl's voice trembled, breaking the silence. "Do you think just the two of us can handle this?"
"I think you can," Orochimaru said, his eyes sliding sideways to pin the old man with a cold stare. "Because if you can't, the next few minutes will become very messy for you. Do you understand?"
Owl's flabby, aged face twitched, but terror propelled him forward. He took his station at the head of the bed.
Orochimaru began the vascular anastomosis. His technique was primitive in its brutality but divine in its precision. A single leaking suture meant death.
Massive amounts of chakra flooded into Kumokawa's body, forcing life to cling to him. It was a miracle of medical ninjutsu, a defiance of the natural order.
Time blurred. Orochimaru's vast reserves of chakra began to dip.
Finally, the vessels held. The incisions on the heart fused. Even the cross-shaped wound on the chest began to knit together under the green glow of the Mystical Palm Technique.
"Last step. I am releasing the life-support barrier."
Owl was swaying on his feet, drained of energy. Orochimaru, too, looked ghastly pale, sweat beading on his forehead. He stared intensely at the boy on the table.
"Kumokawa. Don't disappoint me."
The surgery was over. Now, it was a question of whether the vessel could hold the wine.
The power of the Ōtsutsuki.
TH-THUMP!
A sound like a war drum struck deep underground echoed through the room.
Thick, ropey veins instantly surged across Kumokawa's skin, bulging like tree roots, turning a sickly dark green.
On the monitoring equipment, the artificial rhythm vanished, replaced by a chaotic, violent spiking of vital signs.
"AGHHHHHHH!"
Even though Kumokawa had prepared himself, the pain obliterated his resolve. It felt as though his body was being torn apart at the cellular level. A scream of pure, hysterical agony ripped from his throat.
The blood pumping from the new heart didn't feel like liquid; it felt like molten iron, scorching his veins, burning through the vessel walls. Capillaries across his skin burst, spraying fine mists of blood. His body temperature skyrocketed, radiating heat like a furnace.
"Use your chakra!" Orochimaru roared. "Subjugate the heart! Force it to calm down!"
Buzz!
Veins crawled up Kumokawa's neck and surrounded his eyes. A surge of chakra erupted from him—violent and uncontrolled—causing Orochimaru's pupils to contract.
But then, the struggle ceased.
Kumokawa's body went rigid. The frantically climbing lines on the monitor plateaued for a split second before plummeting.
The screech of the flatline alarm pierced the air. Deee—eeee—eeee—!
"Damn it!" Orochimaru's face twisted into a snarl. "The Hyūga line is the closest genetic match! How can he fail this quickly?"
If Kumokawa died, he would have to abduct a member of the Main House. The risk of exposure would skyrocket.
There was no choice. He had to harvest the heart immediately before necrosis set in.
Orochimaru raised his hand, forming the chakra scalpel once more, his killing intent flooding the room.
Thump...
A faint sound, barely a whisper, brushed against his ear.
Orochimaru froze. He looked down at the boy.
Thump!
Kumokawa's eyes were still squeezed shut, but the sound came clearly from his chest. Stronger than before.
The lab fell into a terrifying silence, broken only by that rhythm.
Thump! Thump-thump!
Slowly, steadily, the beat evolved. It shifted from the patter of rain on a leaf to the thunderous, deafening roar of a drum being beaten by a giant. It battered against the ribcage, demanding to be heard.
"This is..."
A look of unadulterated ecstasy dawned on Orochimaru's face. He stepped closer, moving softly, as if approaching a frightened animal—or a holy shrine. His vertical pupils darted to the monitor.
The vitals had stabilized.
No, not just stabilized. The readings were climbing again, pushing past human limits into a realm of terrifying, vibrant activity.
It meant... finally...
"Yes."
A voice answered Orochimaru. It was soft, gentle, like someone reading a bedtime story.
"Finally... it is a success."
Startled by the tone, Orochimaru looked down.
On the operating table, the boy slowly opened his eyes.
Orochimaru found himself staring into a gaze that was both familiar and utterly alien.
The pure, flat white of the Byakugan was gone. Under the harsh glare of the surgical lights, the eyes shimmered with depth. A layered iris had formed, flowing like molten colored glass—a mesmerizing swirl hovering between pale cyan and blinding white.
But the color was not what sent a chill down the Sannin's spine.
It was the emotion within them.
Or rather, the lack thereof. There was no gratitude, no fear, no pain. Those eyes were as calm and bottomless as a dead ocean.