The mornings in Konoha began with the chorus of birds and the clatter of wooden sandals on dirt.
Children streamed toward the academy beneath the soft gold of dawn, their laughter weaving through the streets like wind through leaves.
For most, it was a place of dreams — of strength, recognition, and belonging.
For Onimaru, it was merely an observation chamber.
He sat by the window, crimson eyes half-lidded, sunlight cutting across his pale face. The lesson was about chakra theory — how spiritual and physical energy intertwined. He listened, yet his mind moved elsewhere, deconstructing the concept beneath the words.
'Chakra,' he thought. 'A convergence of body and spirit. Crude, yet efficient. A mirror to essence refinement—but without Gu to anchor it.'
The teacher, a middle-aged chūnin with weathered hands, spoke about teamwork and trust — how the shinobi way depended on unity.
"No one survives alone," the man said. "To be a ninja is to protect the one beside you."
Murmurs of agreement followed, bright and innocent. Onimaru's lips curved faintly. "Then," he whispered under his breath, "to stand above all… one must walk alone."
The girl sitting next to him, Renka, tilted her head. "Onimaru-kun? Did you say something?"
He turned his gaze to her, polite but distant. "Just thinking."
His tone was soft, but his eyes — calm,
bottomless — made her shiver. She turned away, clutching her pencil tighter.
A breeze slipped through the open window. The warmth of morning faded for an instant; even the sunlight dimmed. The teacher paused mid-sentence, frowning toward the sky.
It was nothing — a passing shadow. But later, as the class left for recess, the children whispered that the air felt colder whenever Onimaru stared too long.
A superstition.
Or perhaps, the world's quiet acknowledgment of something not meant to be here.
…
Evenings brought peace.
The house the brothers shared sat near the edge of the forest, where cicadas hummed and the air smelled faintly of pine.
Orochimaru had already begun studying under the Hokage's guidance. His mind was quicksilver — brilliant, restless, dangerous. He returned home late, carrying scrolls, herbs, and questions.
"Onimaru," he called one night, sliding open the shoji door. "Still awake, I see."
The younger boy was by the window again, surrounded by jars of insects. Fireflies drifted lazily within, their faint glow reflected in his red eyes.
"I'm studying their movement," he said, without looking up. "When threatened, their rhythm changes. If observed long enough, it changes again. It's almost… deliberate."
Orochimaru smiled faintly, sitting beside him. "You sound like me when I first dissected my first snake."
"I'm not dissecting," Onimaru replied. "I'm watching. The world speaks through patterns — if one listens long enough."
His voice carried no arrogance, only certainty.
Orochimaru rested his chin on his hand.
"You're strange, even for me," he murmured. "Sometimes, I think you were born with your eyes already open — not to this world, but another."
Onimaru tilted his head. "Perhaps."
Silence stretched between them. Then, softly, Onimaru asked, "Brother, what is it that you seek?"
Orochimaru's gaze sharpened, the fireflies' light dancing in his yellow eyes. "I want to uncover the truth of everything — to break the chain that binds us to death."
Onimaru turned to the window, watching the moon rise. "Truth is impermanent. Even if you pierce it, another veil lies beneath."
"Then what do you seek?" Orochimaru asked.
"To remain," he said simply.
That word lingered between them like a quiet prophecy.
Orochimaru frowned, uncertain whether to feel awe or unease. He didn't yet understand that his brother's "remaining" meant something far beyond mortality, beyond death.
…
Spring turned to summer, and the scent of wisteria filled the air.
Then, quietly, death came.
It began with a fever. A faint sickness that swept through the outskirts of the village — harmless to most, but merciless to those already frail.
Onimaru and Orochimaru's parents were among the latter. Their mothers cough grew heavier by the day, her hands trembled as she tried to light the evening lamp.
The healer visited twice. By the third time, he only bowed his head. Not long after, news of their fathers death in an ambush reached them pushing their mother over the edge of persistence.
The night they passed, the world felt muted. Even the cicadas fell silent, as if holding their breath.
Orochimaru sat beside their futons until dawn, unmoving. His face was still, his hands pale and shaking. When the morning light finally touched their parents' faces, he let out a sound — soft, broken, and utterly human.
Onimaru stood near the doorway, watching. He understood what had happened — he understood loss — but the sensation inside him was strange. It was not sorrow, not grief, but a heavy quietness that pressed against his chest.
He watched the smoke from the funeral pyre twist into the sky. The villagers murmured condolences. Orochimaru wept silently, ashes staining his sleeves. Onimaru's crimson eyes reflected the flames — and within them, something ancient stirred.
'Even flesh and love returns to ash.' He thought. 'How fragile this cycle of birth and decay…and yet how complete.'
Orochimaru turned to him, eyes red. "You don't cry," he said hoarsely. "Why?"
Onimaru blinked slowly. "Tears do not preserve the dead."
"They honor them!" Orochimaru snapped.
"Honor," Onimaru murmured. "A fleeting comfort for the living. The dead are beyond it."
The older boy flinched. For a heartbeat, anger crossed his face — then it vanished, replaced by something darker. Curiosity. "Then what do you think death is?"
"An error," Onimaru said softly. "A temporary state. All things can be refined."
He didn't understand why those words came so naturally, nor from where. They simply were. A truth carved into the marrow of his soul from a life long forgotten.
Orochimaru looked back at the pyre. His gaze hardened.
"…then I'll fix it," he whispered. "If death is an error, I'll correct it."
From that night onward, he began spending more hours at the library, devouring scrolls on medicine, sealing, and spirits. The Hokage praised his brilliance. No one noticed the faint madness forming beneath it — the seed of obsession born from grief, and watered by a brother's eerie calm.
Onimaru watched him work late into the night, ink-stained hands trembling from exhaustion. Sometimes, he would bring water without a word. Sometimes, he would simply observe.
He did not stop him.
He only thought, quietly: 'So this is how the will to remain begins — in love, in loss, in longing.'
…
The following months passed like drifting leaves.
Yet something subtle changed around Onimaru.
When he walked through the academy halls, people spoke more softly. The teachers avoided standing too close. Once, during a chakra exercise, the candles in the room flickered and died — yet his flame alone burned steady.
The Hokage, hearing rumors, came to watch one day.
Hidden behind the shade of a tree, Hiruzen Sarutobi studied the pale boy as he practiced alone. His chakra control was extraordinary for his age — but there was something off about it. The flow seemed reversed, pulling energy inward rather than outward, as if he were absorbing more than he released.
Hiruzen frowned. "A talent… or a curse?"
He could sense an odd weight in the air around the child — not malicious, but unnatural. Space itself seemed quieter there. The grass barely swayed, even as the wind passed through.
The boy's red eyes opened. For an instant, they flicked toward Hiruzen's hiding place.
The Hokage stiffened.
Had the child sensed him? Impossible — even most jōnin couldn't. Yet for a moment, he felt seen. Exposed.
Then the boy looked away, returning to his silent practice.
Hiruzen exhaled slowly. "He's no ordinary child… just like his brother."
He turned and walked off, his robes whispering through the leaves. Behind him, Onimaru continued his exercises, the faint hum of energy distorting the air like heat over stone.
The world was beginning to notice him — though it could not yet name what he was.
…
Evenings grew shorter, and the scent of rain began to cling to the air.
Onimaru's days settled into rhythm: academy, home, meditation, silence. But within that stillness, his thoughts ripened like fruit — complex, layered, heavy.
He found himself drawn to meditation after class, sitting beneath the same great cedar near the forest's edge. His classmates often passed him there, whispering.
"Is he asleep?"
"No, he's weird. He just sits there all day."
"I heard his parents died."
"Maybe that's why he doesn't talk."
He didn't mind. Their words were like wind across stone — fleeting, unable to leave a mark.
But sometimes, he listened.
Not to them — but to the world itself.
When his chakra circulated, it no longer followed the simple flow he had been taught. It spiraled deeper, folding in upon itself. The air would still, the insects would quiet, and for a breathless instant, the world seemed to pause.
In that silence, he felt as though he was reaching toward something forgotten — the faint memory of a buzzing insect, the echo of a will that refused to die.
'Spring Autumn Cocada…'
The words unrivaled. Then, pain. A flash behind his eyes as memory fled.
He pressed a hand to his chest, breathing deeply until the sensation faded.
Nearby, Orochimaru watched from the shadows. His brother's posture was calm, his expression unreadable — but the air around him shimmered faintly, like heat over a forge.
"You're changing," Orochimaru murmured. "Every day, a little more."
"Change is life," Onimaru said, eyes still closed.
"Or the beginning of something else."
Orochimaru stepped closer, kneeling beside him. "Tell me, brother — when you meditate, what do you see?"
Onimaru opened his eyes. "Everything moving toward stillness."
It was not an answer. Yet it was.
Orochimaru studied him for a long moment, then smiled faintly. "You and I, we'll both defy this world's laws one day. You seek stillness; I seek eternity. Perhaps they're the same thing."
Onimaru said nothing. But inside, a quiet thought stirred.
Eternity is not given. It is seized.
…
Weeks later, the academy assigned their first mission: tending the training grounds. It was simple work — trimming weeds, clearing debris, repairing targets.
Onimaru was paired with three others. They avoided eye contact, whispering among themselves. His silence unnerved them.
As they worked, a storm rolled in. The wind carried the scent of rain and ozone. When thunder cracked, one boy yelped, dropping his tools.
"Coward," muttered another.
"Quiet," Onimaru said softly.
They turned, startled by the authority in his tone. He was younger than most of them, yet the weight in his voice left no room for mockery.
"The storm doesn't fear you," he said. "So why should you fear it?"
Lightning flashed, illuminating his face — pale as bone, eyes glinting red beneath the clouds. For a heartbeat, the world seemed to still again. The storm's howl dulled, and even the rain hesitated before falling.
The boys stepped back unconsciously.
Onimaru tilted his head, as if testing something unseen. His chakra pulsed faintly — and the wind shifted around him, bending in unnatural patterns before returning to normal.
No one spoke for the rest of the assignment.
That night, rumors spread through the academy like wildfire. "Orochimaru's brother controls storms," they whispered. "He curses the wind." "He speaks and the world listens."
Onimaru paid it no mind. Yet, sometimes, when he looked into the mirror, he wondered if the whispers were merely superstition… or faint truth made visible.
Because deep within him, something was listening. Something vast and ancient — a fragment of the will that had once shaken heavens and devoured mountains — was slowly awakening.
…
Autumn arrived.
The air grew sharp, and the forest leaves bled crimson before falling. Orochimaru was gone more often now, working under the Hokage's tutelage. When he returned, his eyes gleamed with ambition and fatigue.
Onimaru, meanwhile, remained quiet. He trained, meditated, studied. He felt no rush — only inevitability. Power was not something to chase. It was something that gravitated toward him, like rivers drawn to the sea.
One night, he woke suddenly. The house was silent. Moonlight pooled across the tatami, silver and cold.
He stepped outside. The world was still. No wind, no sound. Even the leaves seemed frozen in midair.
For an instant, it felt as if time itself had forgotten to move.
Then — drip.
A single droplet of dew fell from the roof, striking the ground. The moment shattered. Sound returned, subtle and soft — the rustle of branches, the distant hoot of an owl.
Onimaru exhaled. His hand trembled faintly.
'Not yet,' he thought. 'The river of time resist… but it remembers.'
He looked toward the forest, where the faint silhouette of Orochimaru's favorite training ground rested beneath the moon.
"Brother," he whispered, "your path is toward defying death. Mine is toward bending existence itself."
The moon hung heavy behind drifting clouds.
He turned back toward the house, the faintest smile ghosting his lips — serene, unsettling, unknowable.