Three weeks had passed since the night Kazuki's eyes had briefly flashed red, and the mountain village had returned to its deceptive peace. The boy continued his daily routines—meditation with Grandfather Keita, helping with village chores, practicing his letters—but beneath the surface, something fundamental had changed. The dreams came every night now, more vivid and coherent than before, painting pictures of a world he'd never seen but somehow knew intimately.
He was sitting cross-legged in their small garden, attempting to focus his chakra as Keita had begun teaching him, when the sound of approaching hooves shattered the morning quiet. The rhythm was wrong—too urgent, too desperate, accompanied by the labored breathing of both horse and rider pushed beyond their limits.
"Inside. Now." Keita's voice cut through the air like a blade, all traces of his gentle grandfather persona vanishing in an instant. His hand moved instinctively to the kunai pouch he'd started wearing again, eyes scanning the treeline with the alertness of a seasoned shinobi.
Kazuki didn't argue. He'd learned to trust that tone completely over the past weeks. They made it to the window just as a horse burst from the forest path, its sides heaving and foam flecking its muzzle. The rider slumped forward in the saddle, dark stains spreading across his green vest, and for a moment Kazuki thought they were going to watch someone die.
The horse stumbled into the village center and collapsed, its legs finally giving out. The rider hit the ground hard, rolling once before lying still. In the sudden silence, Kazuki could hear the man's ragged breathing and see the glint of metal at his forehead—a hitai-ate bearing the spiral symbol of Konohagakure.
"Stay here," Keita commanded, but even as he spoke, he was moving toward the door. Years of retirement hadn't dulled his instincts, and those instincts were screaming that this messenger carried news that would change everything.
Kazuki followed anyway, his bare feet silent on the wooden floor. By the time they reached the fallen rider, other villagers were emerging from their homes, drawn by the commotion. Dr. Hana was among them, her medical bag already in hand and her weathered face set in grim determination.
The messenger was young—perhaps twenty—with the lean build and callused hands of someone who lived in the saddle. His forehead protector was cracked down the middle, and one edge was stained with what looked like dried blood. Multiple wounds covered his body, but the worst was a deep gash across his ribs that had soaked his entire left side crimson.
"Help me," he gasped as Keita knelt beside him, his unfocused eyes struggling to track movement. "Have to... have to deliver..."
"Easy, son." Keita's hands moved with practiced efficiency, checking pulse points and assessing the damage. "You're safe now. What happened? Who did this to you?"
The messenger tried to sit up despite Dr. Hana's protests, his face contorting with pain and desperation. "Bandits. Organized... they knew the route. Knew exactly where to hit us." His hand fumbled weakly at his vest, searching for something with increasing panic. "The message... Lord Hokage's message..."
Kazuki felt something cold settle in his stomach. A message from the Hokage, carried by a dying man through bandit-infested roads. Whatever news this messenger brought, it was important enough that someone had been willing to kill to stop it.
"What message?" Keita's voice remained calm, but Kazuki could see the tension in his shoulders. "Who sent you?"
"Third Hokage... Hiruzen Sarutobi." The young man's breathing was becoming more labored, each word a struggle. "All the villages... mountain settlements... they have to know."
With tremendous effort, he managed to extract a sealed scroll from inside his vest. The paper was somehow undamaged despite the blood that had soaked everything else, protected by the kind of careful chakra work that suggested its contents were vitally important.
"Know what?" Keita took the scroll carefully, his fingers tracing the official seals. "What's so urgent that they sent you through hostile territory?"
The messenger's eyes found Kazuki then, and the boy saw something in them that made his breath catch—a mixture of horror and pity that seemed far too old for such a young face.
"The Uchiha," he whispered, and Kazuki's world tilted sideways. "The Uchiha clan is... is gone. Murdered. All of them."
The words hit like physical blows. Even though Kazuki had known—had seen it in his dreams, had been told fragments by Keita—hearing it spoken aloud by an official messenger made it real in a way that nothing else had. His family was dead. His entire clan had been wiped out in a single night.
"Gone how?" Keita's voice was carefully controlled, but Kazuki could hear the underlying steel. "Be specific."
The messenger coughed, specks of blood appearing on his lips. "Massacre. One night, the whole compound. Men, women, children... all dead except for two survivors."
"Two?" Kazuki found his voice, though it came out smaller than he'd intended.
"Sasuke Uchiha," the messenger said, his unfocused gaze settling on the boy. "Just seven years old, found by ANBU the morning after. And..." He paused, struggling with words that seemed too terrible to speak. "And the one who killed them all. His own brother—Itachi Uchiha."
The confirmation shattered something inside Kazuki's chest. The sad young man from his dreams, the one who had spoken of duty and sacrifice, had murdered their entire family. Had murdered Kazuki's parents, his grandparents, his cousins. Had left a seven-year-old boy alone in a world that would never understand his pain.
"Why?" The word tore itself from Kazuki's throat. "Why would he do that?"
The messenger shook his head weakly. "No one knows. Official report says he went rogue, wanted to test his abilities. Killed his own parents last, then disappeared into the night. He's S-rank now... massive bounty on his head."
Dr. Hana had been working steadily throughout the conversation, sealing wounds and starting an IV from supplies she'd brought from her clinic. "He'll live," she announced, wiping sweat from her brow. "But he needs proper medical attention. More than I can provide here."
"I have to finish... the delivery," the messenger protested weakly. "Orders were... all mountain settlements."
"The message is delivered," Keita assured him, holding up the scroll. "We'll make sure word spreads to the other villages. Rest now."
As Dr. Hana and several villagers carefully moved the wounded messenger to the clinic, Keita remained crouched in the dirt, staring at the bloodstained scroll in his hands. Kazuki could see the wheels turning in the old man's mind, calculating implications and possibilities.
"It's really true," Kazuki said quietly. "They're all dead."
"So it appears."
"And Sasuke—my cousin—he's alone in Konoha?"
"Yes." Keita's expression was grim. "A seven-year-old boy with no family, no clan, nothing but the memory of finding his parents' bodies and the knowledge that his beloved older brother was responsible."
Kazuki closed his eyes, trying to imagine what that kind of trauma would do to a child. In his dreams, he'd seen flashes of that night—the blood, the bodies, the terrible stillness of death. But he'd experienced it from a distance, filtered through nightmare logic and his own limited understanding. Sasuke had lived it. Had walked through those streets of corpses, had found their parents' bedroom, had seen what Itachi had done with his own eyes.
"What kind of person does that make?" Kazuki asked. "Someone who survives something like that?"
"Angry," Keita said simply. "Consumed with hatred and the need for revenge. Focused on a single goal to the exclusion of everything else." He looked at Kazuki with eyes full of concern. "The kind of person you could have become, if you'd been there that night."
The implication hung in the air between them. Kazuki had been spared the worst of it—sent away before the massacre, raised in peace and love rather than trauma and isolation. But that same blood ran in his veins, that same loss echoed in his dreams. Under different circumstances, he might have become exactly what Sasuke was surely becoming: a weapon pointed at his brother's heart, shaped by hatred into something barely human.
"The messenger said there were bandits," Kazuki said, changing the subject before his thoughts could spiral deeper into darkness. "Organized ones who knew the route. That's not normal, is it?"
Keita's eyes sharpened with approval. The boy was learning to think tactically, to look beyond the surface of events for deeper patterns. "No, it's not. Bandits are usually opportunistic, disorganized. For them to know official routes and timing..." He trailed off, but Kazuki could follow the logic.
"Someone's intercepting Konoha's communications."
"Or someone in Konoha is selling information to hostile parties." Keita stood slowly, his joints protesting the movement. "Either way, it suggests the political situation is more complex than a simple fratricide."
They made their way back to the house in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Once inside, Keita moved to a chest in the corner that Kazuki had never seen opened. From within, he began extracting items that had no place in a peaceful mountain village: weapons, armor, scrolls covered in complex sealing formulas, and gear marked with symbols Kazuki didn't recognize.
"What are you doing?" Kazuki asked, though part of him already knew.
"Preparing." Keita's voice was grim. "That messenger wasn't the only one who sensed your awakening three weeks ago. The fact that he was attacked, that his route was compromised, suggests that someone is very interested in controlling the flow of information about surviving Uchiha."
"You think they know about me."
"I think we can't afford to assume they don't." Keita pulled out a set of child-sized armor and weapons, clearly prepared long ago for exactly this situation. "Our quiet life here is ending, Kazuki. The question is whether we leave on our own terms or wait for them to come collect you."
As if summoned by his words, the red-tailed hawk that had been circling their house for weeks appeared at the window. It perched on the sill, fixing its golden eyes on Kazuki with an intelligence that seemed almost human. In its talons was a small scroll, sealed with wax that bore a symbol Kazuki recognized from his mother's letter—the Uchiha fan.
Keita approached the window carefully, his movements slow and non-threatening. The hawk allowed him to take the scroll but didn't fly away, continuing to watch them with that unsettling intelligence.
"What does it say?" Kazuki asked as his grandfather broke the seal.
Keita's face went pale as he read. "It's from your mother. Written before the massacre but arranged to be delivered only if certain conditions were met." He looked up, his expression a mixture of wonder and fear. "She knew, Kazuki. She knew exactly what was going to happen, and she made preparations."
"What kind of preparations?"
Instead of answering directly, Keita handed him the scroll. The elegant script was unmistakably the same as the letter he'd read weeks ago, but these words carried a different weight—not the loving farewell of a mother to her son, but the careful instructions of a strategist preparing for war.
If you are reading this, then my vision has come to pass and the clan walks no more among the living. The child has awakened early, which means the timeline has accelerated beyond my calculations. Trust Keita's judgment, but know that the mountain sanctuary was always meant to be temporary.
There are caches hidden along the old trade routes—supplies, weapons, information that will be needed for what comes next. The hawk will guide you to them. More importantly, there are allies who have been waiting, people who knew the truth about that night and have been preparing for the child's return.
The Mirror Eye is not just a bloodline mutation—it is the key to understanding what really happened to our clan. Itachi was not the true architect of our destruction, merely its most visible instrument. The real enemies work from shadows, and they will not stop until every trace of Uchiha blood is under their control or eliminated entirely.
Train hard. Trust carefully. And remember that vengeance is a luxury we cannot afford. Justice, however, is a necessity.
The hawk remembers our friendship because she is no ordinary bird. She carries within her a fragment of my chakra, a technique I learned from the Inuzuka before they forbade its teaching. She will serve as guide and protector until the child is strong enough to stand alone.
Tell him that every day I carried him was a blessing. Tell him that I am proud of what he will become.
Kazuki's hands trembled as he finished reading. His mother had known not just that the massacre would happen, but that he would survive, that he would awaken his bloodline, that he would need guidance to navigate the dangerous world that awaited. She had planned for contingencies he couldn't even imagine.
"The Mirror Eye isn't just a mutation," he said, looking up at Keita with new understanding. "It's connected to what happened that night."
"Your mother was always the smartest of us," Keita said quietly. "If she says the bloodline is the key to understanding the massacre, then we need to take that very seriously indeed."
The hawk at the window let out a sharp cry, then took flight, circling once before heading toward the forest path. The message was clear: it was time to go.
"Pack only what you need," Keita said, moving with sudden urgency. "If your mother's network is still active, then staying here another day is a death sentence. They'll come for you, and when they do, I won't be enough to protect you."
As Kazuki gathered his few possessions, he couldn't help but think about Sasuke—his cousin, the other survivor, growing up alone in the village that had been both their family's home and their family's grave. Someday, he promised himself, they would meet. They would discover the truth together, uncover the real architects of their clan's destruction, and decide what justice looked like for the children of the dead.
But first, he had to become strong enough to survive what was coming. And judging by his mother's letter, that was going to be harder than he'd ever imagined.
The hawk's cry echoed from the forest, urgent and commanding. It was time for the forgotten child to step out of the shadows and begin the journey that would eventually lead him home to Konoha—and to the brother he'd never met but already understood better than anyone else in the world.
The Mirror Eye had begun to awaken, and with it, the final phase of Mikoto Uchiha's long game was beginning to unfold.