The Inuzuka Library was easy to miss, which seemed almost deliberate.
Wedged between two storage buildings and half-covered in the shadow of the northern kennel, the structure didn't look like much. Just another long hall of reinforced wood and cracked tile, its sliding doors faded from weather. Torao only noticed it because he'd been climbing again—perched on the edge of a rooftop, sketching the way one of the older ninken leapt across an obstacle course, and saw a clan member emerge from the doorway with a rolled scroll tucked under one arm.
It struck him as strange. The Inuzuka didn't seem like the bookish type.
Curious, he descended, brushed the tile dust from his knees, and approached. The sign above the door read simply: Archive.
Inside was cool and dim, the scent of old paper and fur mingling in a surprisingly pleasant way. There was no formal greeting, just a tired woman with grey-streaked hair manning the small desk near the front. She looked up, blinked, and then gave a faint smile.
"You're Kana's boy, right?"
"Torao," he supplied.
She gestured loosely. "Browse as you like. Just don't damage anything."
He bowed slightly, then moved into the rows.
It wasn't a large library. Maybe a hundred scrolls in total, give or take. Most of it was medical knowledge—canine anatomy, chakra-infused bandaging techniques, notes on dietary adjustments for over-charged ninken. Some scrolls cataloged training regimens, others chronicled breeding lines or paired successes. But tucked away in the third section—a back corner with dust and spiderwebs as dominant as parchment—Torao found something different.
A long box sealed with red wax.
He hesitated. Looked around. No one was watching.
The seal bore the shape of three claw marks in a triangle. He cracked it open.
Inside were ten tightly-bound scrolls, each labeled with an animal class or genus:
Chiroptera (Bats)
Canidae (Wolves, foxes)
Cercopithecidae (Monkeys)
Serpentes (Snakes)
Felidae (Cats)
Delphinidae (Dolphins)
Accipitridae (Raptors)
Ursidae (Bears)
Bufonidae (Toads)
Hominidae (Apes)
Each scroll was meticulously annotated with chakra flow diagrams, overlay sketches of musculature, cross-sections of nervous systems, and speculative commentary. Some of the notations were clearly half-theories, riddled with conjecture, but they weren't just anatomical studies—they were trying to model how the chakra moved through instinct.
"What they eventually discovered, buried at the very bottom of the creature, was what was, in essence, a blueprint made of chakra. It cataloged everything the beast was—physically and spiritually."
It wasn't poetic or spiritual, like the usual clan lore.
It was systematic. Structured. Someone had been trying to engineer something.
He sat on the floor, unrolling scroll after scroll until they surrounded him like a nest. He had no chakra of his own, not yet. But this—this was something he could study.
Each scroll carried a distinct flavor of approach: the bat scroll focused on sound transmission and sensory expansion; the snake scroll speculated on musculature compression and serpentine movement; the toad scroll included interesting foot notes on moisture retention and mucus chakra layering.
At the very end of the final scroll, there was a collection of jutsu that the ancient researchers used to perform they're work followed by a handwritten note:
> We have failed to weaponize this. And now our employer is refusing to fund us any further, The structures are promising, but we cannot bridge blueprint to application. Too unstable. Too unrepeatable. Still—we send these out to other clans, hidden and few. Perhaps one day, another mind will find the leap we could not.
Torao exhaled slowly.
He felt like someone had handed him the start of a language he already halfway knew.
The answers weren't here.
But the questions—finally—were the the right ones.