One image after another flashed through Uchiha Itama's mind.
A boy new to the Academy glanced at the lonely kid in the corner, then at his own friends, and walked over.
Not to befriend him, but to use him as a prop.
A second image.
A young man sprinted through the forest, straining for his life. His teammate stumbled and fell. The young man turned back, eyes wavering, pinched his teammate's nose and mouth, and smothered him.
A third image.
The same young man, now a trainee teacher at the Academy. He watched another trainee receive the students' and faculty's praise. Jealousy and resentment flooded his eyes.
The child and the youth overlapped.
They became one person.
Mizuki, standing at the lectern.
Itama understood.
That black haze was the darkness inside humans. Mizuki's was thicker than the others because his heart was darker.
"The first image was Mizuki meeting Iruka, even then with impure intent."
"The second was Mizuki killing a comrade during a mission."
"The third is now."
He dropped his gaze.
"Just now my left eye absorbed that black haze from Mizuki. Compared to yesterday, the only difference is that his haze had grown thicker."
"So there is a threshold."
"Only when it reaches that point does it trigger?"
He tested the thought.
A stab of pain shot through his right eye.
All the darkness his left eye had taken in gathered in the right, coiling tighter and tighter, black smoke boiling until the air itself seemed to seethe.
It compressed to a single point.
POP!
The point burst.
A vortex appeared.
It turned slowly.
Itama felt something profoundly strange inside it.
A faint, broken sound leaked from within.
His heart jolted.
The sound matched the eerie whisper from his dream days ago.
The vortex kept turning.
It did not fade.
Itama sensed it was incubating something.
After class, he hurried home.
He took up a mirror.
He stared at his reflection.
"Still three tomoe. No Mangekyo."
"But my left and right eyes each seem to have gained a special function."
His eyes flickered.
"So this is the power that thing gave me?"
His thoughts raced.
"Brother, dinner."
Sasuke's voice came from outside.
"All right, I am coming."
Itama left his room and sat at the table.
As usual, there were only three.
Mikoto noticed his odd state and asked, "Itama, what is wrong? Did something upset you?"
"Nothing."
He came back to himself and shook his head.
"I was thinking about ninjutsu."
"Good. If anything is wrong, tell me or your father. If the Academy is unpleasant, you do not have to go."
"It is fine. Nothing has happened there."
Mikoto nodded.
"I am done. Mother, I will rest in my room."
"All right."
She watched his back, worried.
Given the clan's strained ties with the elders, she feared he was being targeted at school.
Back in his room, Itama shut the windows and door and sat cross legged.
A wave of drowsiness rolled over him.
He forced himself onto the bed.
The same darkness as before filled his mind.
This time, the vortex was there too.
His pupils shrank.
From the spinning mouth, a tentacle thrust out, octopus-like, studded with suckers, grotesque and slick with black stained slime.
DRIP!
A bead of slime fell.
SIZZLE!
The ground around it corroded at once.
PLOP!
Something dropped out.
The tentacle snapped back into the vortex.
Itama waited, then stepped forward and picked it up.
A book.
Old, but intact.
Strangely, there was no writing anywhere, not on the cover, not on the pages within.
He frowned.
A deeper sleepiness swallowed him.