Chapter 3: The Fire Within
(50 lines)
Kairo stood at the cave's mouth,
The wind now whispering his name.
Something burned inside him—not pain, not fear.
Power.
Riku looked at his hands.
They shimmered with black energy,
Like smoke from a dark flame.
"Did we… become something else?" he asked.
Kairo nodded, feeling the pulse of his heartbeat.
It echoed like a drum deep inside the earth.
"I think we awakened something ancient."
They returned to the village in silence.
But they were no longer unnoticed.
Elders watched them closely.
One even whispered, "He bears the wolf's flame."
And vanished before they could ask more.
Training became effortless.
Kairo could leap twice as high.
He struck faster, moved quieter.
Even time felt slower around him.
Riku's powers were stranger.
He could vanish in shadows—reappear from others.
Sometimes his voice echoed from places he wasn't.
But he never lost his grin.
At night, Kairo dreamed of wolves.
They ran beside him, silver flames trailing behind.
They howled at a red moon.
And always, a shadow ninja watched.
His mother's face haunted him.
He remembered the night she died—
A ninja in black cut her down,
But she didn't scream. She smiled.
Why?
What had she been hiding?
Kairo burned for answers.
And one night, answers came.
A scroll appeared at his doorstep.
Sealed in blood-red wax.
No sender, no name.
Only one phrase inside:
"The one who took her lives still."
Enraged, Kairo punched the wall—
And it cracked.
The flame in his blood surged.
He couldn't wait any longer.
"We hunt him down," he told Riku.
"We find the ninja who killed my mother."
Riku nodded, silent for once.
"We'll burn through the truth," Kairo whispered.
"No matter what."
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