The Senju Clan's main hall was silent, save for the flick of a candle and the quiet scrape of Tobirama's calligraphy brush.
He hadn't slept. Again.
Reports from the patrols showed minor anomalies—chakra response fluctuations, faster recovery among injured genin, an odd sense of mental clarity even in sleep-deprived shinobi. It was all too consistent to be coincidence.
He tapped the brush's tip against the inkstone, frowning. There was no known technique in the shinobi world that could subtly influence natural chakra across this scale—no genjutsu, no seal array, no medicinal infusion. And yet, the land beneath their feet was shifting in tone, pulse, rhythm.
Soromon had said it was a seed.
But Tobirama was starting to wonder what kind of tree it would grow into.
---
Three of the Senju clan's oldest advisors gathered across the table—grizzled veterans from the Warring States era, now worn but still sharp.
"The children are growing stronger," muttered Elder Hoshirama—not to be confused with the late First Hokage. "One of them broke a chakra stone yesterday—barehanded. At ten years old."
Another elder, Lady Itsumi, folded her arms. "Even our elderly are healing faster. My lungs… they've stopped rattling."
Tobirama didn't look up. "It's not natural. It's not medical. It's not chakra-based. And it's definitely not luck."
The elders fell silent.
One finally spoke the unspoken: "The one you brought into our house. The quiet one."
"…Soromon," Tobirama said. His brush moved slowly now, as he began to draw a new sigil on the scroll in front of him. Not for sealing. Not for war. A design. A schema. A hypothesis.
"What is he?"
Tobirama answered honestly. "I don't know."
"Then why allow him to interfere?"
"Because I allowed the world to interfere before," he replied quietly, "and it killed my brother."
---
That silenced them. Even in private, Tobirama rarely spoke of Hashirama with anything but stern reserve. But now, his voice had the weight of something personal, sharp like a kunai left buried too long.
"He offered no allegiance," Tobirama continued, "only an experiment. A change. No promises. No threats. But whatever he planted, it's growing. The soil has changed. The chakra around it too."
Elder Hoshirama narrowed his eyes. "So we ask again: what do we do about him?"
Tobirama set the brush down.
"We watch."
---
Later that day, Tobirama stood at the edge of the training field. Genin were sparring under the supervision of older chūnin. But it wasn't the taijutsu that caught his attention.
One girl was forming hand signs—slowly, carefully. Too slowly for combat.
Then her chakra flared in a soft wave of golden light—not quite ninjutsu, not quite medical chakra, and certainly not from any known elemental nature.
Tobirama's eyes sharpened.
A ripple formed in the air. The plants around her bent toward her instinctively.
The technique collapsed a moment later, and the girl gasped, sweating.
A strange fusion—one of Soromon's lingering concepts, leaking into a child's instinct like a whisper in a dream.
Tobirama folded his arms. "It's already begun."
---
That night, he summoned Soromon again. No guards. No formal setting.
They sat beneath the central tree of the compound—the one Hashirama had grown from a sapling with his own Wood Release.
The silence between them was not uncomfortable.
Finally, Tobirama spoke.
"They're changing."
Soromon said nothing.
"I don't like this. I don't like what I can't measure."
"You're not meant to measure it," Soromon replied calmly. "You're meant to let it breathe."
Tobirama exhaled through his nose. "I've spent my life controlling variables. You are… an outlier."
"I am a mirror," Soromon said, eyes closed. "What you see happening is not my doing. It's your people responding to something they never had before—a system without gods or walls."
Tobirama's gaze flickered. "What do you mean, system?"
Soromon didn't answer directly.
Instead, he held out a small parchment.
Tobirama took it.
Upon it was an incomplete diagram—circles, flowcharts, symbols that merged the geometry of seals with the rhythm of a living leyline. Words like transmutation chamber, chakra-stabilization dome, and furnace harmonics dotted the edges in a precise, alien hand.
A framework.
An alien power system.
"But only you," Soromon said softly, "can decide whether this becomes another tool of war… or the path to something else."
Tobirama stared at the page for a long time.
Then folded it.
---
Across the village, nothing looked different.
But beneath the surface, new chakra roots were spreading. New principles were taking hold—not as jutsu, but as logic. As potential.
Konoha had always been a tree.
Now, it was a tree with alien roots.
And the fruit… would take years to ripen.