That night, they returned with Yuki.
Ryan remained silent for a moment, then asked:
"What did your grandson used to do? What did he do in his free time? Did he have friends? Who did he spend time with?"
The woman slowly turned her face toward him. There was a mixture of distrust, exhaustion... but also need. A need to tell the story that no one wanted to hear.
"He was a normal child," she whispered. "Mischievous, sweet... he liked bugs. He made little sketchbooks. He loved to climb trees and watch the squirrels. But all that changed when that man showed up."
"What man?" Ryan asked, frowning.
"Orochimaru," she said, her lips trembling involuntarily. "I never knew his real face. He called himself something else. But then I recognized him... from the posters, from what the ANBU said. My sons did business with him. They were scientists, researchers... they worked for Konoha, or so they always told me. But over time... they became stranger and stranger. They would leave for days... weeks... and come back with dark circles under their eyes, silent. They never talked about what they were doing. But I knew it wasn't good.
Lia, sitting next to Ryan, stared at her wide-eyed. She held her notebook on her lap, pencil in hand, as if she wanted to write everything down.
"The boy..." the woman continued, "had a terminal illness. Something the village doctors couldn't cure. That man promised them he could save him. But in exchange... he asked for their cooperation. To experiment. To modify. To search for a cure... as if my grandson were a lab rat."
The woman's hands were shaking. Ryan noticed how she was clutching the fabric of her apron.
"They never told me what the experiments consisted of. Only that it was dangerous. That they were doing it for him... for the child. One day, they took him away. They said they were going to 'try a final solution.' I... never saw them again. Days later, the ANBU found their bodies... in a clearing in the forest."
She swallowed hard.
"My daughter... they had torn her arms off. She was still clutching them around the child, as if she had tried to protect him. Her husband was a few feet away... his neck twisted at an impossible angle. As if something had broken his spine with a single hand. And the child..."
She covered her mouth. Tears began to roll down her face.
"His body was... torn apart. His legs were swollen, his fingers twisted like claws. He had marks... like black scales... and blood. Lots of blood. He didn't look like himself. But it was his eyes. Even though he no longer had a soul."
Ryan felt a chill run down his spine. Even Lia looked down, clutching the notebook tightly.
"I never blamed the boy," whispered the woman. "It was his parents who handed him over to that monster. The real culprit was Orochimaru.
No one recognized him... he had changed his face. But the evil was the same. I knew it from the very beginning. I tried to report him. I investigated. But they threatened me. They watched me. They told me that if I kept digging... they would kill me. So I stayed here. Old. Alone. Listening to his voice in the forest.
She was silent for a moment. Then she looked Ryan straight in the eye.
"Did you find him?"
Ryan nodded solemnly.
"Yes. I saw him... not physically. It was his chakra, his pain... trapped in an illusion. An echo of what he was. But he's gone now. The forest is clean. His soul was able to... rest, I think."
The woman's eyes filled with tears.
"So... it was him..." she whispered. "Thank you."
She said no more. She handed them a small bag of money. And for the first time in a long time, she closed the door to her house without fear.
__________________________________________________________
Ryan decided to rent a room nearby, on the edge of the forest, where he could rest for a while. Lia quickly adapted to the routine. She didn't speak, but she expressed more than any child her age. In the mornings, they trained together in the fields east of the village; in the afternoons, they visited the local library.
There, Ryan searched for information. Lia leafed through books on basic techniques: kunai throwing, seal formation, chakra concentration. Sometimes she showed him questions written in her notebook, which Ryan answered patiently. Between them, the bond grew. Without the need for many words.
But Ryan read darker things.
Scattered reports. Crossed-out names. Old notes that spoke of "fragments of unstable chakra," "contaminated areas," and "residues of energy foreign to common chakra."
It was there that he found a term he didn't quite recognize:
Senjutsu.
"A form of natural energy that envelops all that exists. Invisible. Latent. Sleeping in the earth, the air, and life itself. Some are able to absorb it, shape it, and mix it with their own chakra... becoming more powerful. But if absorbed in excess... it can devour the user. Transform them. Corrupt them. Kill them."
Ryan read those lines over and over again. He remembered the area where he had seen the boy. That heavy air. That deformed chakra.
He spent hours reading. Dusting off old volumes. Some books were incomplete, crossed out. Others were sealed, and he had to secretly pay a librarian to let him look at them.
He also found records of unauthorized experiments. Fragments of unsigned reports that spoke of "corrupted areas," "residual effects," "illusory presences created by chakra impregnated in the earth."
The name appeared between the lines.
Orochimaru. One of the three Sannin. Scientist. Warrior. Monster. Wanted for crimes against humanity, exiled from Konoha. Master of body and soul.
Ryan closed the book. He took a deep breath.
Everything pointed to this man being behind not only Yuki's tragedy, but also what he himself was now.
Something inside him was boiling. Not for revenge. Not yet. But for answers.
He had to find them. And for that... He had to follow the snake's trail.
___________________________________________
The days passed like the leaves falling silently from the tree in front of the inn. Ryan did not stop. Every day, after Lia's training, he went out in search of answers. He questioned elders, tavern keepers, and passing merchants.
He did small favors in exchange for crumbs of information: finding lost pets, escorting caravans along quiet trails, recovering forgotten objects. They weren't big missions, but they were enough to get closer to anyone who could talk, even if it was with fear, about the man he was looking for.
"Orochimaru?" an elderly woman in a teahouse had said to him. "That name... brings bad luck." Don't say it so loudly.
Again, the same story. Precocious genius. Legendary Sannin. One of the great three alongside Jiraiya and Tsunade. And yet, a traitor. A monster. A scientist of the forbidden. The books repeated the story with different words, but with the same tone: talent overshadowed by ambition.
Ryan closed each volume with a grimace of disappointment. Nothing useful. No real clues.
Ryan trained Lia almost every day. At first, her movements were clumsy, like those of a fawn in a storm. But she didn't give up. Each fall was followed by a determined look and a new attempt. Ryan corrected her, sometimes harshly, sometimes patiently. And inside, a truth became increasingly unbearable:
This was no life for a child.
One afternoon, as the sun began to sink behind the mountains, Ryan called her over. They sat facing the field, the sky painted orange and purple. He knew it wouldn't be easy.
"Lia... I need to talk to you," he began, avoiding her gaze for a moment. "I've been doing some research. There aren't many answers yet... but what I know, what I sense... is not something I can ignore. I have to follow this path. Find him. Understand what he did to me. Why. And that means leaving... soon.
Lia looked down. She took her notebook with trembling hands and wrote quickly:
-When will you come back?-
"I don't know. But I'll be back. I swear."
-And why can't I go with you?-
Ryan sighed, clenching his fists.
"Because it's not a path for you. Where I'm going... There is death. There are dark things, Lia. Things that even I don't understand. I don't want you to see that. I don't want you to end up like me."
She shook her head vigorously, furious. Tears welled up in her eyes, but her face was firm. She scribbled furiously on the sheet of paper:
-You saved me. You are my family. Don't leave me here alone.-
"I'm not leaving you. I'm... giving you a better life. The village is peaceful. I've already asked about a home. A good woman, without children. She takes care of children without families. You would have food, shelter. Safety. You could study..."
Lia tore up the sheet. She wrote another hurried line with ink running from her tears:
-I don't want that! I want to be with you!-
The sheet fell from her hands as she stood up. Her shoulders shook. And without further ado, she ran toward the village.
"Lia!" Ryan shouted, jumping up. "Wait!"
But she didn't stop. She ran as if the world would break if she turned around. And Ryan was left alone, with the wind rustling the dry leaves and a promise that began to weigh heavily on his chest.
I won't leave you, he had wanted to tell her. But I have to.
He sat down again. The sun had already set.
And in the silence... all he could hear was the heartbeat of the world.