Death was supposed to be final.
Elias Harper thought so, at least, when the darkness claimed him. The pain had faded, his regrets screamed one last time—and then, silence.
But something tugged him back.
Not warmth. Not peace.
A presence.
"You should not exist here… and yet, you are needed."
Elias tried to speak, but he was bodiless, floating. Then the voice spoke again—less a sound, more a feeling etched into the marrow of his soul.
"A world forged in blood… a balance disturbed. Let us see what fate you carve."
A surge of light swallowed him whole.
⸻
He woke to the scent of iron.
His back was pressed against cold earth. The sky above was crimson with dawn—or was it smoke? Groaning, Elias sat up and blinked, vision blurry.
The landscape was chaos. Scorched grass. Fallen bodies. The aftermath of battle.
But not modern warfare. These were corpses in armor, wearing old-world clothing—shinobi gear from another age. Some bore a fan-shaped crest. Others, a tree-like spiral.
Uchiha. Senju.
It wasn't possible.
Elias staggered to a nearby stream, stumbling over bloodied soil. He needed water. Clarity. Something—
He froze.
His reflection stared back, unfamiliar and yet undeniably him—now younger, 15 years old maybe. Black hair tied loosely, pale skin smeared with grime. But it was the right eye that locked him in place.
Black sclera. A glowing, bluish pupil.
The Jōgan.
His pulse thundered.
"I… I shouldn't be here."
The echo of battle roared behind him. From the trees, two figures burst through—a young Uchiha and a Senju, both bloodied, both burning with fury. They didn't notice him at first.
Their chakra flared like wildfires. Elias felt it—not just saw it, but felt the current of power in their bodies. His eye pulsed. Time slowed. He saw every twitch of muscle, every shift in stance, like premonitions etched into light.
Then they noticed him.
"A survivor?" one of them growled. "Which clan are you with?"
Elias backed away, heart racing. He had no answer. No allies. No weapons.
The Uchiha raised a kunai. "Doesn't matter. If he saw the battle, he can't live."
"Wait—" Elias lifted his hands, but his eye surged again—brighter now, as if reacting to danger. In an instant, he saw it: the path of the kunai before it was thrown.
He ducked before his mind caught up. The blade whistled past, and his body moved—fluid, fast, trained. But he wasn't trained.
Something else was guiding him. The eye? The Jougan?
A second strike came—a burst of chakra from the Senju's palm. He threw himself to the ground, and as he did, the Jougan reacted again. Symbols and lines appeared faintly over their bodies—pressure points? Weak spots?
He didn't understand it.
But he used it.
Elias lunged, striking the Senju's arm at one of the glowing points. The man's hand went numb instantly. Shock crossed his face just before Elias swept his leg and brought him down.
The Uchiha snarled and charged, Sharingan spinning red and black.
Jougan met Sharingan.
Their gazes locked—and Elias's eye burned with pain. The world twisted. For a split second, he saw not just the Uchiha… but fragments of something more. A future? A memory? A world not his own?
It snapped away. The Uchiha flinched, blood trickling from his nose. Confusion replaced aggression.
"What… what are you?"
Elias didn't answer.
Because he didn't know.
He only knew this: he had been thrown into a world still in the cradle of shinobi hatred—when clans lived and died by honor, when peace was just a myth.
And he carried a power that didn't belong in this age.
.
.
.
"This is a dream."
Elias Harper repeated the thought like a mantra as he walked through the remnants of a battlefield—no, a massacre. Bodies littered the landscape. The stench of iron choked the air. Crows circled above, cawing like grim wardens of death.
He didn't know how long he had been walking. Hours, maybe. Days? The sun had set and risen again since he first woke in this nightmare.
No… not a nightmare.
This was real.
Too real.
The pain in his ribs from falling. The cuts on his hands from clambering over a broken spear. The burning pulse behind his right eye every time he focused on the strange glowing threads that danced around living beings.
The Jougan.
A power he barely understood, a burden he never asked for.
Elias crouched behind a moss-covered boulder, watching a small group of shinobi from afar. They were camped near a stream, cooking meat over a fire. Symbols on their armor—some stylized fan crests, others bearing jagged lines he didn't recognize. Uchiha and… maybe another allied clan?
Don't be seen.
He wasn't stupid. He'd watched Naruto. He knew what this world could do to people like him. He was a foreigner here—no clan, no chakra control, no ninjutsu, no allies. If he was caught by the wrong people, they'd interrogate him. Torture him. Use him.
Or worse—steal the eye from his skull.
He shivered and crouched lower.
"I need a plan."
So far, survival had been instinct. Avoid settlements. Steal food from abandoned camps. Follow rivers downstream. But it couldn't go on forever.
And the more he traveled, the more stories he overheard—fragments from passing travelers, rumors spoken by dying warriors.
The world was unraveling.
The Uchiha and Senju were locked in a war that had killed thousands. Smaller clans were being devoured—either absorbed or annihilated. Mercenary groups roamed the forests like wolves, hired to slaughter whole families. There was no such thing as peace.
This was a time before Hidden Villages. Before laws. Before any hope of unity.
"I was thrown into the worst possible era," Elias muttered, fingers tightening around a makeshift staff he'd carved from a branch. He wasn't a fighter. He'd barely managed to survive his encounter with that Uchiha and Senju back at the hill—and only because of the Jougan.
That eye…
He hadn't told it to activate. It just did. When danger was near. When emotions ran high. When chakra flared.
And when it did, the world warped.
He saw things—pressure points, pathways of energy, lines that danced across trees and people and even the sky. Sometimes he saw flashes of the future. Or the past. He wasn't sure.
But he did know this:
It wasn't normal.
Not even for this world.
⸻
Night fell again.
Elias made camp in a hollow tree. The bark was damp, but it shielded him from the wind. He chewed on dry roots and nuts he'd gathered, thinking of home.
His sister.
Gone.
His life.
Gone.
Now he was here, in a time of blades and chakra and blood.
Why me?
The question echoed through him.
He hadn't been special. Not back home. No tragic past, no secret destiny. Just a college student with anxiety and a love of anime. If anything, he was painfully average.
So why did that voice choose him?
"Fragments of potential from a different branch of destiny…"
Was that what it said?
Fragments.
He closed his eyes and saw it again—the pale light that had consumed him. The strange symbols. The feeling of being judged.
Had the Jougan chosen him? Or had someone—something—forced it into him?
He didn't know.
But he had to survive long enough to find out.
⸻
By the third day, Elias had his first close call.
He had been following a deer trail, hoping it would lead to water, when he walked straight into a trap—shinobi wire strung between two trees. It caught his leg and yanked him upside-down.
Pain lanced through his thigh.
"Shit—!"
Within seconds, figures dropped from the trees.
Three of them. Young. Not children, but not much older than him. Two with short blades, one with a bow.
"Who the hell are you?" barked the leader. "Clanless?"
Elias's Jougan flared without warning. The chakra in their bodies became visible—steady, disciplined. Their stances were trained. These weren't scavengers. They were scouts.
He stayed silent.
"Answer, or we'll cut you down."
"I'm a traveler," Elias said carefully, hanging by one leg. "From a distant land."
"Liar. Only shinobi survive these forests. What's with that eye?"
They noticed it.
His right eye glowed faintly in the gloom. The leader stepped closer, eyes narrowing.
"It's like a Byakugan. But not." He sounded uneasy. "Mutant bloodline?"
The one with the bow added, "Could be valuable. Sell him to the Taketori."
Takatori? Elias had heard that name before. A minor clan known for black market dealings and bloodline theft.
Panic spiked. The Jougan pulsed.
He didn't think.
His body moved.
The chakra lines in the rope appeared—thin, almost invisible. A single strike with his kunai cut the weak point. He dropped hard to the ground, rolled, and swept the bowman's legs.
They shouted—"He's fast!"—and moved in.
Elias didn't have the stamina for a long fight. But the Jougan showed him everything.
He struck where it hurt. Where chakra disrupted. He hit a pressure point in the archer's shoulder, disabling his arm. He dodged the leader's slash by inches, drove an elbow into his sternum.
The last one got a blade across his arm.
Blood sprayed. Elias winced, shoved the attacker back, and ran.
Branches tore at his face. Roots tried to trip him.
But he didn't stop until he reached the river and collapsed on its bank.
His breath burned in his lungs. His wound throbbed.
But he was alive.
He washed the blood from his arm and stared at his reflection.
The Jougan stared back.
Unblinking.
Glowing.
Silent.
⸻
"I don't know what you are," he whispered to the eye, "but if I'm going to survive in this hell, I need to learn."
The Warring Clans Period didn't forgive weakness. And if he stayed weak, he'd die.
So Elias Harper, former college student and nobody, clenched his fist and made a vow to the stars above.
"If you threw me into this world, then I'll become someone who can live in it. And if this eye is a curse—"
He looked back into the water.
"—then I'll make it mine."