The nightmare always began the same way.
Kazuki found himself standing in a place that felt like home but looked like nothing he'd ever seen—a grand compound with traditional buildings arranged in perfect rows, their dark wood and white walls gleaming under moonlight. Paper lanterns swayed gently in a breeze that carried the scent of cherry blossoms and something else... something metallic that made his stomach clench.
In the dream, he was older—maybe seven or eight—but he moved with the uncertain steps of someone who belonged yet didn't belong. The compound was too quiet, too empty for a place that should have been filled with life. Windows stared down at him like hollow eyes, and shadows seemed to writhe in the corners of his vision.
Kazuki-kun.
The voice made him spin around, heart hammering against his ribs. A woman emerged from one of the buildings, her long dark hair flowing behind her like silk. She was beautiful in the way that made his chest ache with longing—kind eyes, gentle hands that reached for him with infinite love.
"Mother?" The word fell from his lips before he could stop it.
She smiled, but tears streamed down her cheeks. "My little mirror. You're safe. You have to stay safe."
"I don't understand—"
"Promise me." Her hands cupped his face, and he could smell jasmine in her hair, feel the tremor in her fingers. "Promise me you'll never come back here. Promise me you'll live."
The compound around them began to change, shadows deepening until they seemed alive. The metallic scent grew stronger, and now he could identify it—blood. So much blood that it painted the walls and pooled between the stones.
"Mother, what's happening?"
Her image flickered like a candle in wind. "He's coming. My brother is coming, and I can't... I can't protect you from what he has to do."
The sound of footsteps echoed through the compound, measured and deliberate. Each step sent a spike of terror through Kazuki's small body, though he didn't understand why. The woman—his mother—pressed something into his hands. A letter sealed with red wax.
"When you're ready," she whispered, "when you understand what you are, read this. But not before. Promise me."
"I promise, but—"
Pain exploded behind his eyes, a searing agony that felt like needles being driven into his brain. The world tilted sideways, colors bleeding together in a nauseating swirl. Through the haze, he caught glimpses of spinning tomoe, crimson wheels that turned with hypnotic precision.
Sharingan.
The word whispered itself through his mind, though he had no idea what it meant.
The footsteps were closer now, and with them came a presence that made every instinct scream for him to run. A figure emerged from the shadows—tall, wearing the clothes of Konoha shinobi, but wrong somehow. Everything about him was wrong.
Kazuki couldn't see his face clearly, but he caught glimpses—young features marked by an expression of absolute resolve and soul-deep anguish. The newcomer's eyes blazed with the same spinning patterns that brought pain, but these were different. More complex. More terrible.
"Itachi." His mother's voice was barely a whisper.
The young man's gaze swept over them both, lingering on Kazuki with an emotion too complicated to parse. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of a man forced to shoulder the world's grief.
"It's time, Mikoto. You know what has to happen."
"He's just a baby—"
"He's already gone. You made sure of that." The young man's voice softened slightly. "He'll be safe. That's what matters."
Kazuki tried to speak, to ask what they meant, but the pain in his head was overwhelming. The spinning red patterns filled his vision, and with them came flashes of things he didn't want to see—bodies on the ground, blood on walls, the compound he'd just been admiring transformed into a charnel house.
"No!" He tried to run toward his mother, but his legs wouldn't obey. "Don't leave me!"
She reached for him one last time, her fingers passing through him like mist. "Live, Kazuki. Live and be happy. Don't let the darkness take you like it's taking us."
The world exploded into crimson light.
Kazuki woke with a scream caught in his throat, his small body drenched in sweat despite the mountain's chill. His hands flew to his face, expecting to find blood, but there was nothing—just the rough texture of his sleeping mat and the familiar walls of his bedroom in Grandfather Keita's house.
The phantom pain lingered behind his eyes, a dull ache that pulsed in rhythm with his racing heartbeat. He pressed his palms against his temples, trying to make it stop, but the pressure only made it worse.
It was just a dream. Just another dream.
But even as he told himself this, he knew it was a lie. The dreams were getting stronger, more vivid, more real. And this one had felt different—less like a nightmare and more like a memory struggling to surface from depths he wasn't ready to explore.
"Kazuki?" Grandfather Keita's voice came softly from the doorway. "Another bad dream?"
The boy nodded, not trusting his voice. Keita crossed the small room and settled on the edge of the sleeping mat, his weathered hand finding Kazuki's forehead.
"You're burning up," the old man murmured with concern. "And your eyes..."
"What about my eyes?" Kazuki's voice came out as a croak.
Keita was quiet for a long moment, studying his face in the moonlight filtering through the window. "They look... different. Darker. Almost like there are shadows moving in them."
Kazuki scrambled to his feet and rushed to the small mirror mounted on the wall. In the dim light, he could barely make out his reflection, but what he saw made his breath catch. His eyes—normally a deep brown—seemed to shimmer with depths that hadn't been there before. And for just a moment, he could have sworn he saw a flicker of red in their darkness.
"The woman in my dream," he said, turning back to his grandfather. "She called herself... she called herself Mother."
Keita's entire body went still. "What else do you remember?"
"A compound. Buildings with red roofs, just like in my other dreams. And there was a man—young, but sad. So sad it made everything hurt." Kazuki pressed his hands against his chest, where an echo of that devastating sorrow still lingered. "His name was Itachi. And his eyes... they were like mine, but more. They spun like wheels of fire."
The color drained from Keita's face. "Kazuki..."
"She knew him. Mother knew him. Called him brother, but not like a real brother. Like..." Kazuki struggled to find the words for concepts that felt too large for his child's vocabulary. "Like someone from her family. Her clan."
"What else?" Keita's voice was barely a whisper.
"Blood," Kazuki said simply. "So much blood. And she was crying because she knew what was going to happen. She gave me something—a letter—and made me promise to read it when I was ready. When I understood what I am."
Keita closed his eyes and took a shuddering breath. When he opened them again, there was a resignation there that made Kazuki's stomach clench with fear.
"Grandfather? What's wrong? Why do you look like that?"
For a long moment, the old man didn't respond. Then, slowly, he reached under his sleeping robes and withdrew something that made Kazuki's heart stop. A letter, sealed with red wax, exactly like the one from his dream.
"She didn't give this to you in a dream, little one," Keita said quietly. "She gave it to me, seven years ago, with instructions that I should give it to you when the time was right."
Kazuki stared at the letter, his hands trembling. "When the time was right for what?"
"For you to learn the truth about your heritage." Keita's voice grew heavy with sorrow. "For you to understand why your parents had to send you away. And for you to decide what kind of man you want to become with the knowledge of what was done to your family."
"My family?"
Keita stood slowly, the letter still clutched in his weathered hands. "Your name isn't just Kazuki, child. Your full name is Kazuki Uchiha. And you're not dreaming about some imaginary place—you're remembering the compound where you were born. The compound where almost everyone with your blood was murdered in a single night."
The words hit Kazuki like physical blows. "Murdered?"
"By your cousin Itachi, on the orders of men who feared what your clan might become." Keita's voice was matter-of-fact, but his eyes blazed with an old anger. "Your mother, Mikoto, was my student once. Brilliant, kind, and desperately in love with a man who was too proud for his own good. When she sensed what was coming, she sent you to me in secret. You're the only survivor of your generation, Kazuki. The only one who escaped that night."
Kazuki sank back onto his sleeping mat, the world spinning around him. Everything he thought he knew about himself was crumbling, replaced by something vast and terrible and entirely beyond his understanding.
"The pain in my eyes," he said faintly. "The red I see sometimes..."
"Your bloodline awakening," Keita confirmed. "The Sharingan—the copying eye that made your clan so feared and respected. It manifests during times of extreme emotional stress. The dreams, the memories surfacing... they're triggering the awakening process."
"I don't want it," Kazuki whispered. "I don't want any of it."
Keita knelt beside him, placing gentle hands on his shoulders. "I know, little one. But wanting and having are different things. The question now is what you'll do with what you've been given."
"What do you mean?"
"Your cousin Itachi walked a path of sacrifice and darkness, believing it was the only way to prevent a greater tragedy. Other Uchiha before him chose paths of hatred and revenge. But you..." Keita's grip tightened slightly. "You have the chance to choose something different. To honor your family's memory without being consumed by their fate."
Kazuki looked at the letter in his grandfather's hands, this tangible link to a mother he barely remembered and a past that felt like a half-remembered nightmare. "What does it say?"
"I don't know. She sealed it so that only Uchiha chakra could open it. But Kazuki..." Keita's voice grew urgent. "Before you read it, before you take that step into your family's legacy, I need you to understand something. Once you know the whole truth, there's no going back. You'll never again be just Kazuki of the mountain village. You'll be Kazuki Uchiha, last heir of a murdered clan, and there will be people who want to use you or kill you for that heritage."
The boy stared at the letter for a long time, feeling the weight of destiny pressing down on his small shoulders. In the distance, he could hear the wind picking up, whistling through the pines with a sound like voices calling his name.
When he looked up at his grandfather, his eyes held a resolve that seemed far too old for his young face. But in their depths, Keita caught a glimpse of something that made his blood run cold—a flicker of crimson that spun once before fading back to brown.
"I need to know," Kazuki said quietly. "I need to know who I really am."
As he reached for the letter, the moonlight streaming through the window seemed to deepen to the color of blood, and somewhere in the distance, a hawk cried out—not with the piercing call of freedom, but with a sound that spoke of loss, and legacy, and the terrible weight of inherited sin.
The seal on the letter began to glow as Kazuki's chakra touched it, and in that crimson light, the last innocent night of his childhood came to an end.