The world, as it is known, is built on a foundation of lies.

  History is a carefully curated narrative, written by victors to justify their conquests and pacify their descendants.

  Power is not a birthright.

  It is a raging river, and those who rule are simply those ruthless enough to build their dams in the right place, at the right time. Rei understood this with a clarity that was both a gift and a curse.

  His gift was a lifetime of knowledge he had never lived.

  His curse was the lifetime of suffering he had.

  He was born in Jigokudani, the Valley of Hell. It was less a home and more a festering wound in the Land of Hot Water. It was the prison the Uchiha had gifted the Chinoike clan generations ago, a place where the very earth seemed to bleed.

  The geothermal vents and the hot springs, the source of the valley’s name, were the color of rust. The Chinoike clan hated living here, but they had no other choice, as they were banished.

  The clan itself was a mirror of its environment.

  Toxic, volatile, and perpetually boiling just beneath the surface. The Ketsuryugan, their proud dōjutsu, had become an instrument of paranoia.

  Instead of a tool for defense against the outside world, it was now used to settle internal grudges, to enforce the will of the clan elders, to peer into the hearts of their own people and find only betrayal.

  They were a clan of ghosts, haunted by the memory of their defeat, and they had turned their home into a charnel house.

  Rei’s mother, Shiona, was a quiet of a woman, her spirit worn thin by the constant abuse. She was a gentle soul in a land that had no use for gentleness, and she loved her son with a fierce, terrified desperation.

  His father, Kagehisa, was one of the clan’s most powerful and respected elders. He was a man who thought himself the head of a household, the ruler of a family. He was stone cold, abusive both verbally and physically. He saw the world through the lens of his clan’s humiliation, and his every waking moment was dedicated to a single purpose.

  Vengeance against the Uchiha, and against the world that had forgotten them.

  In his son, Kagehisa did not see a child.

  He saw a tool to be used for his ambitions.

  Rei’s Ketsuryugan manifested at the age of three.

  For Kagehisa, it was a divine omen. Here was a vessel of unparalleled potential, the tool that would restore the Chinoike to their rightful place.

  However, for Rei it was a curse.

  The “training” began the next day.

  It was not training. It was a systematic deconstruction of a child’s soul. Kagehisa’s methods were brutal, born of a conviction that pain was the only true path to power.

  He would force Rei to activate his Ketsuryugan for hours on end, his small body trembling, his mind strained from the constant feedback. He would make him train without rest, constantly advancing his radical beliefs in the process.

  Failure was met with cruelty.

  Kagehisa would use his own Ketsuryugan on Rei, seizing control of the boy’s own blood, creating agonizing pressure points, forcing his small limbs to contort into unnatural positions.

  He testing the limits of his endurance, hardening him into a tool that would not break.

  “Compassion is a disease.”

  “It is the rot that led to our downfall. You will be strong. You will be ruthless. You will be the blade that purges our shame.”

  Rei’s mother would try to intervene, but it was futile. Instead, she was abused more and more as they days passed. She lost weight, her spirit dwindling to nothing more than a kindle.

  Then, the breaking point, the moment that redefined Rei’s existence, came.

  Kagehisa had grown impatient with Rei’s progress in iron manipulation. He brought in a live subject, a captured traveler, and ordered Rei to kill him using only his dōjutsu.

  Rei hesitated.

  He was a child.

  The thought of taking a life was an alien, horrifying concept.

  His hesitation was his final act of childhood innocence.

  Enraged, Kagehisa seized him.

  “You are still weak.”

  It was this moment that had changed everything.

  His father dragged him toward a restricted area of the clan by his hair. Rei screamed in protest, trying to escape, even ripping some of his hair in the process, but it was futile.

  After what felt like an eternity of pain, the dragging stopped, leaving Rei with a moment to compose himself. He glanced around, finding the place eerie and scary.

  A giant basin of thick red blood bubbled in the middle of the room, while red banners with a strange symbol he had never seen before covered the walls.

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  An upside down triangle with a circle around it.

  The same symbol was carved into the floor, somehow shining in red.

  Kagehisa once again began dragging him toward the basin. Rei screamed in protest, feeling as if something was very wrong with the situation. But it was futile.

  Kagehisa plunged Rei’s head into the thick, warm liquid. The world dissolved into a suffocating, crimson darkness. The coppery taste of it filled his mouth, his nose, his lungs.

  He thrashed, his small body fighting for air, for life.

  The terror was absolute.

  And in that moment of ultimate despair, something within him shattered.

  The dam holding back the memories of another life burst.

  A universe of knowledge, of a life lived in a different world, one where his own world was nothing but a story of fiction.

  He saw the story of Naruto, the future, the wars, the Akatsuki, the Ten-Tails, Madara, Kaguya. And he his own clan’s fate.

  However, the memories he saw weren’t just that. They were the memories of a soldier, one who had climbed the ranks of the military, someone who was trained to be a killer. One who retired and couldn’t acclimate to society. One who didn’t suffer from the ravages of war, but one that thrived in it.

  It was odd.

  He saw an entire lifetime.

  From birth till their death, of a man who thirsted for war.

  The sheer, overwhelming weight of it should have driven him mad.

  But it didn't.

  The pain of his current life and the cold cynicism of his past one fused into a single moment of absolute clarity.

  His struggles ceased. He went limp.

  Kagehisa, sensing the fight had gone out of him, pulled him from the basin.

  “Have you learned, whelp?”

  He stopped. The boy in his grip was not the same. The fear was gone.

  He was met with a pair of eyes that were cold, and utterly devoid of emotion. Rei’s Ketsuryugan was blazing, but it was no longer just a crimson iris. Within each eye, a single, petal had formed, spinning slowly.

  “You are pathetic.”

  Rei said, his voice flat.

  The shock caused Kagehisa to loosen his grip. Rei dropped to the floor. He did not cry. He did not cower. He looked at the man who was his father and saw a small, frightened zealot.

  “You speak of strength,” Rei continued, “but you are a slave to the past. You speak of honor, but you are a parasite feeding on the pain of your own child. You are not a leader. You are a cancer.”

  Kagehisa, his face a mask of disbelief and rage, backhanded him.

  “Insolent—”

  The blow, which should have sent the small boy flying, was met with an unyielding stillness. Rei did not flinch. He simply looked at his father, and the single petal in his Ketsuryugan began to spin faster.

  He had never killed before. But the memories showed him how.

  He didn't use a blade. He simply reached out with his mind and controlled his father’s blood.

  And he squeezed.

  Kagehisa’s eyes widened in horror. He choked, clutching at his chest, his own heart seizing, spasming, crushed by an invisible force. He collapsed, his life extinguished.

  Rei stood over the body, his expression unchanged. He was four years old. He had just committed patricide. He felt nothing but a cold, hollow sense of inevitability.

  He was not his father’s weapon.

  He was his own.

  The other clan elders who subscribed to his father’s brutal philosophy were next. He moved through the clan compound like a ghost. He didn’t engage in open combat.

  He used subtle genjutsu to turn them against each other, feeding their paranoia until it consumed them. He used his precise control of blood to induce heart attacks, strokes, aneurysms. To the rest of the clan, it seemed as though the factional infighting had finally reached its climax.

  He found his mother cowering in their small, desolate home. She looked at him, not with the terror he expected, but with a dawning, horrified understanding.

  The clan was in chaos, and the most dangerous men in it were dead.

  “What have you done?” she whispered.

  “I have opened the door,” Rei replied, his voice still the small, piping tone of a child, but the words carried a different weight.

  “This place is a grave. You can either lie down in it, or you can walk out.”

  He turned and walked away, not waiting for her reply. Sentiment was a weakness the soldier in his mind would not tolerate.

  His escape from the Valley was insultingly easy. In the ensuing power vacuum, no one paid any mind to a single, small child slipping out. He was a ghost, a non-entity. And that was exactly what he needed to be.

  Before he left, however, he made one last stop.

  Kagehisa’s hidden study. His father, in his obsessive quest for power, had collected forbidden knowledge. Tucked away beneath a loose floorboard was a weathered, blood-stained scroll. It did not belong to the Chinoike. The characters were jagged, almost violent.

  It detailed the rites and rituals of Jashin.

  Rei analyzed it with cold, professional interest. The primary ritual granted a form of immortality, a conditional one, tied to constant sacrifice. It was crude, messy, and required a fanatical devotion he had no intention of adopting. But the principles… the principles were valuable. It spoke of binding one’s life force to a higher concept, of using blood not just as a weapon, but as a medium for life and death itself.

  He found the ritual circle still glowing faintly in the secret chamber where his father had died. He didn’t need another’s sacrifice. He had one right at his feet. With a detached precision that was utterly chilling in a four-year-old, he began the rite. He did not chant Jashin’s name. He did not pray for power. He saw it as a scientific process, a transfer of energy.

  He used Kagehisa’s fresh blood, a grim form of inheritance. The symbols on the floor flared, not with divine fervor, but with the raw power of the Ketsuryugan he poured into them. He was not asking a god for a gift. He was hijacking a system.

  The ritual seared his body, branding a smaller, more intricate version of the Jashin symbol onto his own heart. He didn't gain Hidan's perfect immortality, but something different. His blood became a potent catalyst, his healing abilities magnified tenfold, his life-force inextricably linked to the blood he controlled. He had taken the art of a zealot and turned it into a science.

  When he finally emerged from the Valley of Hell, the Land of Hot Water felt like a new world. The air was clean. The people bustled with life. And to his eyes, every single one of them was a potential tool, an asset, or a liability. He was a war orphan, another piece of human refuse left by the endless conflicts of the shinobi world. It was the perfect camouflage.

  He walked for days, subsisting on what he could steal, his small frame hiding a will of tempered steel. He didn’t wander aimlessly. He was scouting. He observed the towns, the flow of commerce, the social structures. He was looking for his first acquisition.

  He found it in the bustling merchant town of Asatsuki. A middle-aged couple, the Ishidas. They were wealthy, their business in fine silks known throughout the region. And they were broken. Their only son had died a year prior, a sickness that had stolen him away. Their wealth was meaningless, their home a quiet mausoleum of grief. They were perfect.

  Rei orchestrated the encounter. He collapsed from “exhaustion” in the market, right in front of Mrs. Ishida’s stall. When she rushed to help, he looked up, his Ketsuryugan active, but not in a way anyone would recognize. It wasn't an aggressive genjutsu. It was a subtle nudge, a gentle suggestion planted deep in her grieving mind. In his face, she saw the faintest echo of her lost son. It was all it took.

  He played the part of the traumatized, mute orphan to perfection. The Ishidas, desperate to fill the void in their lives, took him in. They named him “Kenji.”

  Within a year, “Kenji” was their beloved son, the light that had returned to their world. Rei felt nothing for them, but he was a consummate actor. He gave them the love and affection they craved, and in return, they gave him a home, resources, and a new identity. Rei Chinoike was dead. Kenji Ishida was born.

  The next few years were a slow, meticulous game of acquisition.

  His mind, that of a reincarnated adult, soaked up knowledge. By age eight, he was secretly advising his “father” on trade routes and investments, using his foreknowledge of the world’s future to make them unbelievably wealthy. Their silk trade expanded, their influence grew, and their coffers overflowed.

  And finally, once his strength was enough, he joined the Akatsuki.