The Land of Rivers didn’t smell like home.

  Too damp. Too quiet.

  Ken stood atop a tree overlooking the ravine where two tributaries split like veins from the central artery. The sun bled down over the canopy in gold rays, but nothing about the pce felt alive.

  Behind him, Reina nded softly on the branch.

  “Still nothing?” she asked.

  Ken shook his head, eyes narrowed.

  “No patrols. No trade caravans. Just… empty.”

  She frowned. “This pce used to be busy. Markets, bridges, even neutral shinobi outposts.”

  Ken’s hand went to the hilt of his sword.

  “Exactly. Someone’s cleaning the map.”

  Their mission was coded as Cloak-Level Recon—an ANBU dispatch with strategic intelligence priority. Unmarked uniforms. No Leaf insignia. Total deniability.

  The brief had been thin:

  "Unconfirmed sightings of rogue operatives tied to bck-market arms deals and restricted jutsu testing. Probable Akatsuki connections."

  The location? A burned-out mercenary outpost on the border.

  Ken and Reina moved fast, bypassing the old patrol paths and shadow-leaping across trees until they reached the clearing.

  What they found wasn’t a battlefield.

  It was a sughter site.

  Charred bodies. Some still smoldering.

  The outpost's central tower was little more than broken rebar and colpsed stone, scorched by fire jutsu far stronger than any C-rank technique.

  Reina knelt beside one of the corpses.

  She pced her fingers along the neck, activating a medical scan.

  "Dead for less than a day. Chakra was… twisted. Almost corrupted."

  Ken examined another corpse—this one half-buried in ash, but with a strange marking burned into the chest.

  A spiral of red ink, crusted bck where the skin had boiled.

  Ken frowned.

  “I’ve seen this before.”

  Reina looked up. “Where?”

  “In Root’s archives. Forbidden body-seal experiments.” He stood slowly. “They were testing weaponized suppression brands. Turn humans into jutsu batteries.”

  Reina’s voice dropped.

  “Akatsuki?”

  Ken scanned the treeline. “Or what they left behind.”

  Then his Sharingan fred.

  A flicker.

  A pulse of chakra—weak, erratic, but alive.

  “Someone’s breathing.”

  They found him twenty meters out—buried under a colpsed section of timber and tarp. A boy, maybe sixteen, missing an arm and half-conscious, breathing in shallow gasps.

  Reina began stabilizing immediately, palm glowing green.

  Ken leaned in close.

  "Who did this?"

  The boy choked. Spit blood.

  “They were… cloaked. One of them… he moved like mist. But the other…”

  His eyes fluttered open—bloodshot, terrified.

  “He had red eyes. Like yours. And a bck sword... with the Uchiha crest.”

  Ken froze.

  “Did he say his name?”

  The boy coughed violently. “No. But he said something before leaving.”

  Ken leaned closer.

  The boy whispered:

  “There’s no peace for the ones who kill to protect it.”

  Then passed out.

  Ken stood.

  Reina looked at him. “Itachi?”

  Ken didn’t answer right away.

  But he felt it. A thread of chakra. A scent of familiarity yered beneath all the death and fire.

  “It was him.”

  “But why would he be here? What would Akatsuki gain from—”

  Ken raised a hand. “Not Akatsuki. Not directly. He’s cleaning up something.”

  Reina followed his gaze as he scanned the horizon.

  “He left this boy alive on purpose.”

  “To send a message?” she asked.

  Ken nodded once. “To me.”

  As they prepped the survivor for emergency transport to the nearest allied medic post, Ken moved away and scouted deeper into the ruins.

  Then he found it.

  Half-buried under a stone sb, sheathed but scorched, y a bck tanto bde.

  Ken knelt, lifted it carefully.

  The sheath was engraved in dark metal—subtle—but the symbol was clear.

  The Uchiha crest, etched in fading silver.

  Not a weapon made by the vilge.

  A weapon made by the cn.

  Personal.

  Deliberate.

  And on the sheath's inside lip, barely visible—

  K.I.

  Ken’s breath caught.

  Itachi’s full name: Itachi Kenjirō Uchiha.

  No one called him by it. No one remembered the middle character.

  Except family.

  And Ken had been closer to Shisui than anyone—but Itachi was always there. Watching. Testing.

  Even back then.

  Even now.

  He brought the bde back to Reina, expression unreadable.

  “We’re leaving.”

  She looked at the bde, then at him.

  “You okay?”

  “No.”

  He didn’t eborate.

  Back in Konoha, the report was filed under Level Five Clearance—access restricted to the Hokage and high-tier ANBU only.

  The summary was simple:

  Survivor recovered. Outpost destroyed. Suspected Akatsuki movement confirmed. Signs of advanced chakra manipution techniques. Probable Uchiha involvement.

  Ken didn’t name Itachi.

  He didn’t mention the bde.

  Some secrets had weight.

  And Ken was starting to learn which ones to carry alone.

  That night, in his apartment, Ken pced the bde on the wall above his desk.

  Not as a trophy.

  As a reminder.

  There were still Uchiha in the world.

  And not all of them had chosen the vilge.

  Some had chosen something else.

  And Ken?

  He stood in the middle—the st one still trying to keep the bance.

  But for how long?

  Even he didn’t know.