Chapter 21: The Cage of Pain
The moment Hyūga Ryōtomo rose to his feet, the very atmosphere in the hall congealed into something brittle and sharp. His movement was not the lumbering rise of an elder, but the uncoiling of a predator. His eyes, cold and pitiless, fixed on Reitō.
"Very well, Hyūga Reitō!" Ryōtomo's voice cracked through the silence like a whip. "Such stubborn pride! Since you are so willfully blind to the order of things, I will personally enlighten you. I will make you understand, in your very bones, the consequence of a branch family member daring to raise his hand—and his voice—against the Main Family."
As he finished speaking, his right hand came up. Not in a fist, not in a palm strike. His index and middle fingers extended, forming a precise, familiar seal, and he pointed them directly at the ceiling.
A collective, horrified inhalation swept through the branch family members in the room. Their faces, moments ago alight with defiant pride, blanched with visceral, inherited terror. Bodies stiffened; hands unconsciously flew to foreheads, fingers tracing the hidden, cursed lines beneath their bandanas.
That gesture…
Recognition dawned on Reitō with a surge of cold dread. His internal vision, always active on some level, screamed a warning. He didn't need to see the specific chakra pattern; the reaction of every branch member around him was proof enough.
The Caged Bird Seal.
This was not a disciplinary beating. This was the activation of the very mechanism that defined their subjugation. The clan had lured them all here not for a reward, but for a public execution of spirit. He was to be the example, the living theater of their absolute control.
BOOM!
The pain was not gradual. It was an instant, catastrophic invasion. It did not originate in his muscles or bones, but erupted from the very center of his forehead, from the cursed seal itself. It was as if a white-hot brand had been driven directly into his brain. A silent scream tore through his nervous system. His vision whited out. His legs, which had held him so defiantly upright, gave way as if severed. He crashed to the polished floor, the impact a distant, irrelevant thud against the roaring agony in his skull.
What is this?!
Through the white-hot static of pain, Reitō's training and his unique perception fought for purchase. He could feel it—a strand of malignant, invasive chakra, released by Ryōtomo's gesture, drilling from the seal like a psychic worm, burrowing into the deepest layers of his consciousness. Its purpose was not just to hurt, but to dominate, to shatter the will and enforce obedience through sheer, unbearable torment.
Around him, the world dissolved into a blur of cruel, gloating faces from the Main Family and a panorama of helpless, mirrored horror from the Branch. In their eyes, he saw his own fate reflected—a fate of absolute vulnerability, where your very mind and senses were not your own. It was a lesson for all of them: no amount of talent, no act of defiance, could ever trump this ultimate leash.
Gritting his teeth until he felt they might powder, Reitō made no sound. A thin trail of blood trickled from his bitten lip, stark against his pallor. He would not give them the satisfaction. He would not cry out.
Ryōtomo stared, momentarily nonplussed. The boy's silence was unexpected. The curse's pain was designed to be irresistible, to reduce strong men to weeping infants. This stubborn, silent writhing was an affront.
"You think your will is stronger than centuries of our clan's artistry?" Ryōtomo sneered, his voice dripping with contempt. "You underestimate the Cage. Let's see how long that silence lasts."
He intensified the flow. The Caged Bird Seal's functions were manifold: upon death, it would scramble the Byakugan to protect its secrets. But in life, at the command of the Main Family, it could do more—it could temporarily blind the Byakugan, severing the branch member from their very heritage. Ryōtomo now channeled chakra toward that specific, exquisite cruelty, aiming to burn out the connection behind Reitō's eyes even as he tortured his mind.
Reitō felt the assault shift. The general agony sharpened, focusing behind his eyes. A new, terrifying sensation joined the pain—a feeling of disconnection, as if the world was being pulled away from him, sight itself beginning to fray at the edges.
No. Not my eyes. Not my sight.
Driven by a primal instinct to protect the core of his identity, Reitō's body reacted. His Byakugan, without conscious command, flared to life in a desperate, defensive response. Veins bulged around his temples. And with the activation came a sliver of clarity through the pain.
His inner vision turned inward, towards the source of the invasion. He saw it now—not just felt it. The curse seal was like a complex, malevolent lock implanted in his brow. Ryōtomo's chakra was the key, turning it, causing vicious, psychic barbs to extend inward, seeking to pierce and control the chakra pathways connected to his ocular nerves and frontal lobe.
But seeing it, however horrific, was the first step to fighting it. With a Herculean effort of will that transcended the pain, Reitō did not try to push the invading chakra out. That was likely impossible. Instead, he did what only he could do. He marshaled his own chakra, minute and beleaguered as it was, and sent it streaming up from his core, not to confront the invasion head-on, but to interfere. He directed it to flood the pathways the curse was targeting, to create a buffer, a turbulent zone where the invasive signal became muddled and slightly diffused.
It was like trying to stop a flood with a cup of water. But it was something. The edge of the pain, the sharpest point of the disconnection, blunted—just a fraction. It was enough to keep him from total unconsciousness, enough to maintain the fierce, silent glare of his activated Byakugan up at Ryōtomo.
The elder's sneer faltered, replaced by a flash of incredulous fury. The boy was not just enduring; he was resisting. His eyes were still active, glaring up with hatred, not the vacant, pained dullness that should have been there.
"Enough!" Ryōtomo's patience shattered. The public lesson was turning into a public challenge. "If you will not submit, then you are of no use to the clan at all!" The killing intent in his eyes became explicit. He glanced at the patriarch, seeking tacit permission for a final, lethal surge of the curse—one that would not just blind or punish, but extinguish.
Just as Ryōtomo gathered his chakra for the terminal command, a new voice intervened, calm but carrying immense authority.
"Hold, Third Elder. That is sufficient."
Hyūga Hizashi and Hiashi's father, the Second Elder, stepped forward. His face was grave, but his eyes were on the wider room.
"Sufficient?!" Ryōtomo spat, turning his fury on his fellow elder. "He has shown nothing but contempt—!"
"The lesson," the Second Elder interrupted, his voice cutting through Ryōtomo's outrage, "is for the many, not just the one. Look."
His subtle gesture took in the assembled branch family. Their initial horror had not faded, but it had mutated. In their eyes, as they watched Reitō endure the unbearable in defiant silence, the fear was now mixed with something dangerously potent: a seething, smoldering rage. The public spectacle was not cowing them; it was radicalizing them. They saw in Reitō's agony their own potential future, and in his silence, a form of strength they had never dared to believe possible.
The Second Elder leaned close to the Clan Patriarch, his voice dropping to a urgent murmur meant only for his ears. "Patriarch, observe the faces in this room. The warning has been delivered, and it has struck deep—perhaps too deep. There is a limit to the pressure a vessel can bear before it shatters."
He paused, letting the image of the seething branch family sink in. "Furthermore, word comes from the borders. The skirmishes in the Land of Rain are escalating. The Tsuchikage mobilizes. When rock clashes with rain, the Land of Fire will not remain a spectator for long. Konoha will need all of its shinobi, their wills focused outward on a common enemy, not fractured inward by clan strife. We have shown the leash. Now we must ensure it does not strangle the hound before the hunt begins."
The Patriarch's eyes, which had been fixed on Reitō's tortured form, flickered. He was a man who thought in generations and geopolitical tides. The Second Elder's words reframed the scene from a disciplinary issue to a strategic one. A dead or broken prodigy was useless. A resentful, rebellious branch family was a vulnerability. But a branch family reminded of its place, yet with its strongest member technically subdued and perhaps later brought to heel… that could be managed. War was coming. Numbers and strength would matter.
He gave an almost imperceptible nod. The message was clear to Ryōtomo: Stand down. The killing blow was stayed.
But on the floor, trembling with pain and effort, Reitō had heard none of the political whispers. He only felt the relentless pressure of the curse suddenly ease, the vicious drilling in his mind recede to a throbbing, debilitating ache. He lay there, panting, his Byakugan still active, his body wracked with tremors, but his spirit—though battered—unbroken. He had looked directly into the heart of the clan's tyranny and had not screamed. He had learned a terrible, invaluable lesson about the price of defiance in the House of Hyūga. And he had survived. For now.