Pitter… patter… pitter… patter.
Night draped itself over the Land of Fire, and with it came rain.
Not the light, passing drizzle of a restless, but a steady, cold downpour.
It was rare here, even rarer in certain villages.
Outside the Land of Water, such storms felt… wrong.
Tonight, the sky wept as though the world itself had been wounded.
Deep within an unassuming forest, where towering trees pressed their canopies together like a conspiracy and the grass was soft from centuries of shade, a teenage boy dropped to his knees.
His breathing was ragged, his palm pressed to his chest as if holding something inside from escaping.
He sucked in the air and froze.
It stank of salt and rot.
His right hand instinctively moved toward the familiar weight of a katana at his hip but he felt Nothing.
Panic flared and then darkness closed in.
His vision blurred and his limbs became heavy.
Just before unconsciousness claimed him, a woman's voice brushed against his ears, faint and unfamiliar.
Then it began.
Lines etched themselves into the soil, twisting, spiraling, pulsing with a rhythm that felt alien to this world.
The mark glowed for a breath… then faded into nothing.
The forest then fell silent.
But it had not gone unnoticed.
Shinobi on patrol were already moving toward the disturbance.
When they arrived, the only witness was an elderly villager, trembling as she spoke.
She described what she had seen in disjointed, fearful detail before being escorted away.
On the surface, she was calm. Underneath she was still trembling.
---
Miles away, in the Village Hidden in Rain, a lone man stepped into a clearing littered with bodies.
He was lean, sharp-eyed, and radiated a pressure that had nothing to do with chakra.
He wore no headband and had no allegiances.
He had not been in this world for long, but long enough to learn its scent.
This rain was not ordinary.
It was the same rain that had marked his arrival here.
He stared at the swirling mist, then at the kunoichi slumped lifelessly nearby, still clutching a sealed scroll.
Without a word, he turned and walked away.
His mission was complete.
The corpses could rot.
---
That night, far from both events, the Great Toad Sage stirred in his sleep.
A prophecy was coming.
Normally, such visions arrived in fragments, scattered across years.
But tonight, the dream was whole, heavy with the kind of certainty that demanded to be heard.
---
By morning, the unconscious boy from the forest had been moved to Konoha's hospital.
The Hokage's shinobi wasted no time running a background check.
The results brought no clarity, only caution.
The boy's chakra signature was… strange.
His presence carried a faint distortion, as if it were ethereal in a way.
Lady Tsunade, Fifth Hokage, received the report.
Ordinarily, she might have dismissed fuss as another foreigner, another mystery.
But due to the Nara clan's insistence, and the possibility of an unknown faction probing their borders, it forced her hand.
It was mainly because they thought that the boy had appeared too close to the Nara sacred forest; however, they let that information slip for now.
By the time she walked into the hospital room, the boy was awake, sitting by the window, his gaze fixed on the village outside.
When he noticed her, his eyes didn't widen with recognition or respect, only calculation.
He couldn't feel her presence.
No killing intent, no warmth, no threat.
Just… emptiness, which caused him to be wary for obvious reasons.
They regarded each other in silence until she spoke.
"You were found unconscious in the forest," she said.
Her tone was even, testing.
"I remember." He paused, then asked
"Where am I?"
"You don't remember where you came from?"
"I remember exactly where I came from," he replied.
"Nothing about where this is."
Tsunade's brow ticked upward.
'Not amnesia, then this saves time'
"You're in Konohagakure. The Village Hidden in the Leaf. Does that ring a bell?"
"What province?" he asked.
Her expression stiffened slightly.
"What country am I in?" he pressed.
She took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
"Let's start fresh, kid. What's your name?"
He turned to face her fully, his fingers absently rolling the ring on his left hand.
"Yuta," he said.
"Yuta Okkotsu."