My lungs felt like they were filled with steel wool.
Every breath was a jagged, scraping gasp. The world was a blurry watercolor painting of green and brown, smeared by the condensation clinging to the inside of my lenses. I tried to wipe them with my sleeve, but the fabric was soaked through with sweat and river water. It just smeared the fog around.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
My heart was beating too fast. It rattled against my ribs like a bird trapped in a shoebox.
"Focus!" the Clone-Tsunade shouted.
She launched. The air displaced around her, a sudden vacuum followed by a wall of pressure. She was a blur of blonde and green, coming in high for a heel drop.
On my shoulder, Tsuyuyu tightened her grip. She felt heavy, a wet, sticky backpack of anxiety.
"SYLVIE-CHAN! MOVE!" Tsuyuyu squealed, her voice vibrating against my collarbone.
I tried to move. I tried to channel the chakra to my legs to dodge. But as Tsuyuyu's chakra merged with mine—that slippery, cool slug energy mixing with my own exhausted reserves—something snagged.
It felt like a fish hook catching a submerged power line.
Something deep in the base of my skull unlocked.
It wasn't a migraine. Migraines throbbed. Migraines had a rhythm.
This was an excavation.
A white-hot pressure exploded behind my eyes. It felt like someone had taken a diamond-tipped drill and was boring out from the center of my brain, trying to push through the bone of my forehead.
CRACK.
I heard the sound inside my ears—wet cartilage popping.
"Wh-what's—" I gasped, clutching my head.
My chakra system didn't just flare; it screamed. The tenketsu around my eyes forced themselves open, tearing through the pathways that weren't meant to handle this load. The world turned white. The heat was unbearable.
The clone was inches away.
I looked up. I didn't mean to. My head snapped back as if pulled by a wire.
My mouth opened, but the voice that came out wasn't mine. It didn't belong to a tired teenage girl. It was deep. It was sleek. It carried the resonance of a command spoken in a dead court.
"STOP."
The air fractured.
For a single, terrifying microsecond, the fog on my glasses didn't matter. The world didn't look like a painting anymore. It looked like a schematic.
I saw the clone. I didn't just see her skin; I saw the lattice of chakra holding her together. I saw the grass blades as individual veins of green energy. I saw the birds in the trees as heat signatures.
But it was wrong. It wasn't clear. It was... broken.
The image shattered like a mirror struck by a hammer. The world became a kaleidoscope of jagged shards—fractal geometries repeating infinitely, slicing into my optic nerves. The veins around my temples felt like they were bursting, bulging against the skin like snakes.
CRACK. SHATTER.
Then, the light died.
"AH!"
The scream ripped out of my throat, raw and terrified.
My knees hit the dirt. The world was gone. No shapes. No light. Just a wall of agonizing, static-filled darkness.
"TSUNADE!" I clawed at my face, knocking my glasses off. My hands touched my eyes, and they felt hot—feverishly, dangerously hot. "I CAN'T—I CAN'T SEE! TSUNADE! TSUNADE!"
The Clone-Tsunade vanished instantly, dispelled not by a command, but by the sheer, chaotic pressure of the chakra blast that had just erupted from the girl.
The real Tsunade was there in a heartbeat.
She slid onto her knees in the grass, the smell of ozone and singed hair thick in the air. Her medic instincts took over before her conscious mind could even process the fear.
"I've got you," Tsunade said, her voice dropping to that low, steady hum she used for trauma patients. "Hands down, Sylvie. Let me see."
She grabbed Sylvie's wrists, gently forcing them away from her face. Sylvie was hyperventilating, her chest heaving in short, sobbing gasps, tears streaming down cheeks that were flushed a violent red.
Tsunade looked at the eyes.
She froze.
They weren't the pale, lavender-white of a normal Hyūga.
They looked like cracked marbles.
The irises were shattered, a web of white fissures running through a field of pale violet. The pupils were blown wide, trembling, trying to find light that wasn't there. The veins around her temples were swollen, pulsing with an angry, irregular rhythm, looking less like a bloodline limit and more like a infection.
This isn't a normal activation, Tsunade realized, a cold dread settling in her gut. This is a mutation. A forced evolution.
"I can't see!" Sylvie shrieked, thrashing in Tsunade's grip. "It's all black! Make it stop!"
"Shhh..." Tsunade whispered, pulling the girl's head against her chest, shielding those terrible, broken eyes from the light. "I'm here. Breathe."
She cradled Sylvie, rocking her slightly.
Internally, Tsunade's mind was racing faster than her heart.
The Hyūga, she thought, her eyes scanning the tree line for ANBU, for spies, for anyone. If they see this... if Hiashi sees this...
They wouldn't see a miracle. They wouldn't see a lost bloodline. They would see an impurity. A thief. A threat to the sanctity of their "perfect" eyes. The Main House killed for less than this. They caged their own family for less than this.
Training ends now, Tsunade decided, the iron door of the Hokage slamming shut in her mind. Konoha is not safe for this girl. Not with these eyes.
"Sylvie, it's okay," Tsunade murmured into the girl's sweaty hair. "Just... sleep."
Tsunade moved her hand to the base of Sylvie's neck. Two fingers charged with a precise, microscopic jolt of lightning chakra.
Zap.
She pinched the nerve cluster.
Sylvie gasped once, her body going rigid, and then she went limp. The sobbing stopped instantly, replaced by the heavy, ragged breathing of unconsciousness.
Tsunade held her for a moment longer, checking the pulse at her throat. It was racing, but stabilizing.
She let out a long sigh, the tension draining from her shoulders.
On her shoulder, a small, trembling weight shifted.
For the first time in weeks, Tsuyuyu had stopped bouncing. The slug was clinging to Tsunade's haori, her eye-stalks retracted in fear, peering over cautiously at the unconscious girl.
"Is... is Sylvie-chan okay...?" the slug whispered, her voice tiny and scared.
Tsunade reached up, patting Tsuyuyu's slimy head with a gentle, reassuring hand.
"She will be," Tsunade promised, though the words tasted like a lie. She looked down at Sylvie's face, peaceful now in sleep, hiding the fractured glass beneath her eyelids. "But things just got a lot more complicated."