The sea felt wrong tonight.
Not storming.
Not restless.
Wrong.
Mist clung to the surface in a heavy sheet, thick enough to smear the coastline of the Land of Water into a vague, pale bruise. The moon hid behind swollen clouds. Beneath the steady hush of waves, a pulsing pressure stirred—irregular, lopsided—like the ocean's heartbeat slipping out of rhythm.
Uzuhana Shiranai knew that feeling too well.
Nothing good ever followed it.
A contraction hit her hard enough to steal the air from her lungs. She bent over, one hand braced on her knee, the other clamped over her stomach as if she could hold the child inside for just a little longer.
"Not now," she hissed through clenched teeth. "Please, just not yet."
Her body didn't care.
She forced herself forward, half-running, half-stumbling across the dunes where soil faded into sand. The night air dried the sweat on her neck into a cold sheen. Far behind her, she could almost imagine Kirigakure glowing through the fog; distant, too bright, shrinking by the step.
Good.
Another contraction ripped upward from her spine. Uzuhana grunted and caught herself on a mound of sand, breath trembling. For a moment she saw stars—real ones, scattered above the clouded sky—and the illusion of peace almost made her laugh.
Then lightning flickered across the horizon.
Once.
Then again, brighter.
Not desert lightning.
Not natural.
She tasted chakra in the air—her own, yes, but threaded with something else. Older. Colder. Thrumming from the small, twisting body inside her.
"No," she whispered, horrified. "Not here."
The child was coming.
The storm followed.
The desert wind sharpened into a howl, dragging sand across her skin like thrown gravel. Uzuhana hunched against it. She had one destination left, one chance: Sunagakure—neutral ground, far from the purges, far from the men hunting her.
Far from the bloodline she carried.
Her legs shook when the next contraction hit. She dropped to her knees. Pain seized her spine and curled her forward.
The sky answered.
Lightning tore downward in branching white arcs. Sand lifted in trembling sheets. A heavy mist rolled outward from her body—mist, in the desert—spreading in slow coils that clung to her arms and throat like hungry fingers.
The baby's chakra flared again, wild and bright and frighteningly aware.
Lightning.
Water.
Storm Release.
She tried to brace herself, but her body betrayed her. A cry tore from her throat as another contraction hit with the force of a blade. The air hummed—high and thin, a pitch that scraped the nerves. Lightning converged above her, spiraling tighter, brighter.
The sand buckled beneath her.
Then everything broke at once.
A final, brutal contraction hit like a hammer. Her vision whited out. The sky cracked open in a roar of thunder, and a shockwave burst across the dunes, flattening the sand in a wide circle around her.
When the world settled, Uzuhana was slumped forward, shaking, drenched in sweat and fog.
A thin cry rose into the air.
She sucked in a ragged breath and looked down.
A child lay against her chest, tiny, pale as moonlight, wrapped in blood and static. His hair was white, impossibly so. His eyes were squeezed shut, but faint threads of lightning crawled lazily across his skin, curiosity without intention.
Uzuhana's breath hitched, breaking into a sob she didn't have the strength to muffle.
"You… you brought the storm," she whispered.
She pulled him close. His tiny fingers curled around her thumb— it felt strong, far too strong for a newborn.
The storm began to unravel overhead. Mist drifted back into the dark, and the lightning faded.
Uzuhana pressed her forehead against his.
"Arashiya," she breathed.
The name felt right. It settled into the air with weight.
A pulse of chakra rolled off him as if to answer—small, unfocused, but undeniably his.
There was something under all of it—something that wasn't hers, wasn't human, wasn't meant for this world.
Her voice shook as she held him tighter.
"For your sake," she whispered into the stillness, "let Suna take mercy on us."
It wasn't a prayer to any god.
It was a mother begging the world.
And the world stayed quiet. Uzuhana didn't know what to make of that.