The winter storm had risen without warning that night, roaring in from the northern peaks with winds sharp enough to strip flesh from bone. Snowflakes fell in a relentless, swirling torrent, coating every rooftop of the Winter Clan compound in thick white layers. Lanterns flickered and guttered in the cold gusts, casting trembling shadows across the courtyard's frost-crusted stone.
A group of midwives hurried through the storm, clutching thick cloaks around their bodies as they moved between the women's quarters and the clan birthing house. Their faces were tight with worry, their lips tinged blue with cold as they whispered to each other in rushed tones.
"A storm like this…"
"It's an omen…"
"Perhaps Kessou Butei reborn…"
Their voices fell silent as they passed him.
Hyouki Shirooni stood beneath the ancient ironwood gate leading into the birthing house. Snow gathered quickly upon his broad shoulders, frosting the dark steel plates of his armor and the rich black fur lining his collar. He made no move to brush it away. His tall, imposing figure blocked most of the doorway, his halberd resting against the stone beside him like a silent sentinel.
His dark skin appeared almost ashen beneath the falling snow, and the ice-blue of his eyes glowed faintly in the dim lantern light. His expression was as still as carved obsidian, betraying neither anticipation nor concern. He simply watched the snow falling into the courtyard with quiet, lethal calm.
A young cousin approached hesitantly, bowing low as her knees trembled in the biting cold.
"Clan Head Shirooni…do you wish to sit within the birthing chamber? The storm chills even your blood, surely."
His eyes shifted to her, cold and hollow, as if peering through the fabric of her existence itself. For a moment, she thought he might not answer. Then his voice emerged, deep and quiet, vibrating with a restrained growl.
"No. The cold is home. This storm…is a herald."
She bowed again, swallowing her fear, and scurried back through the snow.
Hyouki's gaze returned to the swirling blizzard beyond the courtyard. Lightning flickered somewhere in the distant clouds, illuminating the forest beyond the compound walls in ghostly flashes.
Internally, his thoughts moved with slow, ponderous gravity.
A child born in such a storm carries a burden or a blessing. It will bring us ruin…or forge us anew.
A scream cut through the winds from within the birthing chamber. Hyouki did not flinch. He simply adjusted his grip on the halberd's shaft and waited in silence, snow gathering atop his head and shoulders until he appeared carved from the blizzard itself.
The birthing chamber door rattled in its frame with each gust outside. Candlelight flickered along the stone walls, illuminating intricate frost sigils inscribed across every supporting pillar. The room felt colder than the storm beyond, a ritual chill maintained by the ancestral sealing barrier to honour winter spirits during birth.
Yukie's hair clung to her sweat-slicked face. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she clenched the damp linens beneath her. Her breath came in ragged gasps, steam rising in the frigid air each time she exhaled.
"One more push, Lady Yukie…he is almost here…!"
Her hands shook as she braced herself, drawing upon the final dregs of her strength. Pain lanced through her body, tearing another scream from her throat, the sound cracking into sobs as her vision blurred with exhaustion and light-headedness.
Then—silence.
The midwife, an elderly woman with a face like carved oak bark, lifted the newborn free. She quickly cleared its airway, fingers working with deft familiarity before bringing it into the dim lantern light.
For a moment, no one spoke.
The infant did not cry.
He merely lay silent in the midwife's gnarled hands, eyes open and unfocused. His tiny chest rose and fell in steady rhythm. His skin was darker than the clan's already rich tones, a deep bronze that gleamed in the candlelight. But it was his hair—pure white as fresh snowfall—and his eyes—blank white with faint blue iridescence—that turned the midwife's old blood to ice.
She whispered before she could stop herself.
"Kessou Butei…reborn…"
The other midwives froze. Their eyes widened in terror as they crowded closer, peering down at the silent child. A few crossed themselves with trembling hands in old winter prayers.
Yukie reached forward desperately, her tears falling faster now.
"My baby…please…give him to me."
The midwife hesitated only a moment before placing the silent child upon Yukie's chest. The young mother wrapped her arms around him, sobbing softly against his tiny body.
"Why won't he cry…? Why…?"
She pressed her cheek to his head, her long dark hair mingling with his stark white. Her tears spilled onto his scalp, vanishing into the downy strands.
The baby did not move. He merely blinked, his white eyes flickering to the dancing candle flames, unblinking and silent. There was no confusion or searching wonder in his gaze—only a strange, unearthly stillness.
Outside, another rumble of thunder rolled across the mountains, and the blizzard winds screamed against the birthing house walls.
The birthing chamber door slid open with a muted scrape of wood on stone. Cold wind gusted inward, extinguishing two candles closest to the entrance. Their smoke curled upward into the frosty air like dying prayers.
Hyouki Shirooni stepped inside, his massive silhouette filling the doorway. Snow cascaded off his shoulders as he entered, pooling on the wooden floorboards. His halberd remained outside, leaning against the frame like a silent sentinel.
The midwives fell silent, bowing low with trembling hands. Yukie turned her tear-streaked face towards him, exhaustion and fear mingling in her gaze.
He approached without a word, each step reverberating faintly against the chamber's stone supports. The flickering lantern light revealed the harsh lines of his jaw, the pale blue gleam in his dark eyes, and the frost still clinging to his braided hair.
His gaze fell upon the infant cradled against Yukie's chest.
For a long moment, he said nothing. His eyes moved slowly over the child's features—stark white hair falling across a small forehead, blank white eyes that stared up unblinking at the swirling patterns of frost sigils on the ceiling beams. His skin was darker than any in the room, a deep bronze that gleamed beneath flickering light, giving his white hair an even more unnatural presence.
Hyouki's lips pressed into a thin line. The scar across his left cheek twitched faintly as he exhaled through his nose, a silent, controlled breath.
"Give him to me."
Yukie hesitated, her arms tightening protectively around the infant.
"He…he hasn't cried yet…"
Hyouki's gaze shifted to her. For an instant, a flicker of gentleness softened his eyes, but it vanished as quickly as frost beneath fire.
"He does not need to cry to breathe."
His massive hands moved with surprising care as he lifted the child from her arms. The baby did not fuss or flail. He lay perfectly still in his father's grasp, staring up at him with those ghostly white eyes.
Hyouki studied him in silence.
Internally, his thoughts moved like grinding glaciers:
This…child…
Memories surfaced unbidden—tales of Kessou Butei, the Blood Frost Martial Emperor, born under a blizzard a thousand years prior; a warlord so feared his enemies buried their own children alive rather than let them become his slaves. Prophecies carved into frost tablets spoke of a white-haired child who would bring winter's dominion or endless ruin.
This one is no mere heir…
Lightning flickered outside, illuminating the infant's still face in stark blue-white light.
This one will either destroy us…or save us.
He turned slightly, glancing towards the extinguished candles near the door. His eyes narrowed with finality.
"You will be called… Oshirisu Kokutou."
The midwives shivered, whispering among themselves. Yukie covered her mouth, tears spilling anew.
Osiris simply stared up at his father, unblinking, silent as the falling snow.
Hyouki's massive hands lowered the silent infant back into Yukie's trembling arms. She pulled him close, pressing her lips to his cold forehead as tears streaked down her cheeks. Snow rattled against the shuttered windows, the howling storm echoing through the chamber like a chorus of death spirits.
Osiris lay motionless against her chest, his white eyes flickering to the dim lantern glow overhead. For a fleeting heartbeat, the candlelight refracted within his pupils, igniting something deep within the darkness of his reborn mind.
His awareness expanded in an instant.
A ballroom of crystal chandeliers and red silk banners. Military officials and oligarchs in tailored suits drank wine under golden light. Beyond the glass walls, Shanghai's skyline gleamed with neon brilliance.
High above, crouched atop a hidden roof gantry within the skyscraper's maintenance ducts, knelt a man clothed in black winter tactical gear. Snow fell silently past the windowed walls, vanishing into the depths below. Across his lap lay a scoped rifle, disassembled in eight pieces to avoid detection by multi-layered security scanners guarding the entire tower.
His target: an Asian dictator who ruled the southern provinces with forced labor camps and public torture broadcasts. Tonight, he attended a closed banquet with quadruple security teams, psychic-sensitive guard dogs genetically engineered for clairvoyant detection, and AI-assisted drones sweeping every approach vector.
In total darkness, the man assembled the rifle by feel alone, each muffled click echoing in his mind with cold certainty. His breath remained silent, heart rate steady at thirty-two beats per minute.
He inhaled once.
Then he fired.
The dictator's head snapped sideways, red mist blooming across the gold silk banners. The psychic dog let out a strangled whine before falling dead, brain ruptured by the subsonic resonance pulse embedded within the projectile.
Before the echo reached the banquet guests' ears, the rifle was disassembled, its pieces tucked back into a cloth-wrapped satchel. The man melted into the ventilation shafts like black smoke devoured by the winter winds.
Hours later…
He sat cross-legged upon a tatami mat floor within his mountain estate's silent great hall. Frost lined the windows, the walls carved from black stone veined with pale quartz. A brazier burned low beside him, its flames flickering shadows across his aging face.
On a low lacquered table before him, a laptop played Naruto Shippuden – Pain Arc, audio turned down to a faint whisper. His dark eyes watched the battle unfold: Tendo Pain levitating above Konoha's ruins, Naruto descending in sage cloak and orange.
He sipped steaming herbal tea, snow drifting past the vast window behind him, the peaks beyond glowing under moonlight.
"This world…full of gods and heroes clinging to illusions of mercy. How quaint."
A faint smile ghosted his lips, cruel and distant.
"Even fictional gods can bleed. And if gods bleed…they can die."
The memory faded.
His newborn eyes shifted across the birthing chamber now: the frost-sigiled pillars, the midwives whispering in fearful prayer, his father's towering shadow, his mother's shaking arms around him. Beyond the rattling shutters, he heard the blizzard scream through the clan compound, rattling roof tiles like distant war drums.
Internally, his adult thoughts whispered with fractured intrigue:
Isekai…reincarnated…into Naruto world. Curious. Unexpected. But not unwelcome.
A flicker of genuine surprise threaded through his mind, quickly crystallising into silent, predatory amusement.
Chakra, bloodlines, bijuu…a world crafted for conquest. And I…am its natural ruler.
His genius mind began processing possibilities instantly, chaining strategies upon strategies like frost weaving spiderwebs across darkened glass.
New world. New flesh. Same purpose. I will bend existence to my will…no matter the warmth I must freeze away.
His white eyes remained unblinking as the storm howled outside, his small chest rising and falling with silent certainty. He did not cry. He did not wail like the other infants born that winter.
He simply watched the flickering candle flames, feeling the cold seep into his bones with familiar, comforting finality, while his mind whispered of murders yet to come.