Pant... pant...
"Stop—stop there, you fucker!"
"I'll kill you!"
"Motherfucker, I said STOP!"
The words ripped from Kisaru's cracked throat, half-feral, half-dying. Each shout tore at the lining of his lungs, setting fire behind his ribs. His legs, half-dead from exhaustion, dragged through the burning, endless sands. Blood oozed steadily from the jagged gash across his side, staining the dunes in dark, spreading patches that the desert seemed eager to devour.
Above him, the sun hung like a vulture, bloated and cruel, vomiting its heat across the cursed land.
The wind howled mockingly — not cool, but scalding, a living thing that whispered in lost tongues, stirring the ashes of forgotten dead. Every breath Kisaru dragged into his lungs tasted like rust and regret.
The kunai trembled in his fist, the iron biting deep into his blood-slicked palm. In the shimmering distortion of the dunes, something moved — a blur, a shape too fast to comprehend.
Too late.
Cold steel pressed against his throat, slicing a shallow warning line across his skin.
Trembling, he turned his head.
And saw him.
Those golden eyes.
Eyes not of mercy or pity, but of judgment — dull and hollow, like the dying light of a diseased sun. Eyes that had watched too many men die to remember the count.
The man said something, a dry, broken whisper in a language Kisaru couldn't grasp — a tongue like wind scraping bone: "§•^^°€¥°^."
"Fuck," Kisaru thought, heart hammering in his ears. "Wind tongue... I should've learned it... I should've—"
But regrets were for men who had more than seconds left to live.
The golden-eyed man sneered, lips cracking at the corners, and tried again — this time in the thick, broken dialect Kisaru could barely make out:
"Uchiha... the desert bleeds today. Blood for blood. You fucker killed Jhinra. The skies can't save you."
Kisaru coughed a wet laugh, the sound brittle as shattered glass. Blood bubbled up in his throat, iron-salty and hot.
He squeezed the kunai tighter — not from hope, but sheer defiance.
A hiccuping, broken sound escaped him. He grinned, a ghastly mask of cracked lips and bloody teeth.
"K-kill me then, you fucking coward," Kisaru rasped, the words slurring, his voice scraping raw against his own throat. "Come on... what's the matter? Scared to take a dying man's last breath?"
He laughed — a ragged, awful sound that splintered into coughing fits, each spasm spraying flecks of blood onto the thirsty sand. His Sharingan spun lazily in his eye, a dying ember still trying to burn the night.
"You fucker... see you... see you in he—"
Shlick.
A whisper — a kiss of death.
The wind-infused blade slit his throat open with surgical cruelty.
Kisaru staggered — the world pitching sideways — as blood sprayed in a thick, steaming arc, soaking the golden sands.
The desert warped. The horizon bent. The light twisted into strange, impossible shapes.
Kisaru collapsed, the heat of the ground searing his dying flesh. The sky above bled into darkness, his own blood filling his mouth until it tasted like rusted coins and broken promises.
A single tear — hot, furious, helpless — slid from the corner of his spinning eye and disappeared into the red, blood-sodden ground.
---
But before death took him...
The memories came.
---
Not this cursed place.
Not this hell.
But home — the air cool and full of growing things. The smell of rain on stone, not blood on sand.
The Hidden Leaf.
He saw them — Nioshi and Yamapo — laughing, their idiot grins wide, eyes sparkling with dreams not yet broken.
'Yoshi, always reckless, always stealing dumplings from old Lady Konwa's stand, stuffing his cheeks like a squirrel while the old woman shouted curses after him.
And Yamapo, chasing him, waving a sandal in the air.
"You fucker! We're gonna get our asses kicked!" Yamapo howled.
Kisaru laughed until his sides hurt, the three of them sprinting down the tight alleys under an orange sky, the sun sinking low, a warm, forgiving fire.
Their secret spot — the cracked stone by the riverbank near the hitherlands. The three of them, carving their names into its surface with stolen kunai, the stone bleeding dust and promise.
"Baka. We're brothers. Forever." Yoshi had grinned, punching Kisaru's arm with a knuckle calloused from training.
Even then, the world was sharp and hungry. But they were sharper. They believed they could outrun the coming darkness.
"If one of us falls," Yoshi had said, serious for once, "the other two will burn the fucking world down."
Blood for blood.
It had been a child's promise, foolish and sacred.
Kisaru squeezed his eyes shut against the memory, but it clung to him like a curse.
---
Then came Jhinra.
The mission outside Konoha — a simple patrol, no threats expected.
The ambush.
The way Jhinra's blade flashed, faster than thought.
The shocked gasp from Yoshi as steel punched through his chest — blood bubbling from his lips, his wild, stupid grin collapsing into terror.
Kisaru had caught him — blood soaking through his uniform, hot and wet and endless. His Sharingan had flared alive in that moment — power at last, yes — but too late, too late.
"Don't cry, dumbass," Yoshi had whispered, blood pooling between his teeth. "Blood for blood, brother... blood for blood..."
Kisaru screamed until his throat tore, but the desert swallowed the sound.
Weeks later, he found Jhinra — laughing, drinking, forgetting.
Kisaru slit his throat with a kunai sharpened on hatred, watched the life drain from his eyes.
He had kept the promise.
Blood for blood.
---
Back to the present.
Blood filled Kisaru's mouth, hot and suffocating.
The golden-eyed man stood over him — impassive, unmoved.
The desert around them stretched out like the belly of some dying beast — endless, cracked, and wrong. Black shapes twisted on the horizon, maybe dunes, maybe something worse.
Kisaru wanted to curse, to spit, to scream, but his body was failing, folding inward like burnt paper.
Only thoughts remained — rage, regret, hate, love — tangled together in the slow spiral toward death.
We don't kneel.
We don't die easy.
"Yoshi... Yamapo..." Kisaru thought, mind slipping into darkness. "Wait for me. I'll see you fuckers in hell..."
The desert wind swallowed his final thoughts, leaving nothing but blood and silence.
---
The golden-eyed man knelt, methodical as a butcher.
From his side pouch, he drew a black, leathery scroll — the kind crafted from human skin, stitched with sinew, inked with forbidden seals.
With no ceremony, he sawed Kisaru's head from his shoulders, swift and brutal. Blood gushed out, soaking the sand until it was a muddy pit.
He sealed the head inside the scroll with practiced, indifferent hands.
Then, from inside his cloak, he drew a bloodstained letter, scrawled a few jagged words across it, and tucked it in.
No prayer.
No forgiveness.
Only cold ritual.
He formed hand seals — fingers moving faster than thought — bit his thumb until blood welled, and slammed his palm into the sodden ground.
POOF.
A massive eagle exploded from the smoke — monstrous, feathers like scorched iron, eyes burning with alien intelligence.
It shrieked — a raw, blood-freezing sound that made the air itself vibrate.
The man strapped the scroll to its leg with brutal efficiency. The bird regarded him once — a silent oath passing between predator and master — and then with a storm of wings and blood, it ascended into the cruel, blazing sky.
The sands below shimmered and warped under its shadow.
---
The golden-eyed man watched until the eagle became a speck against the sun.
Then, almost reverently, he whispered to the corpses and the cursed desert:
"The fuse has been lit. Let souls burn again for pride. Let the greedy soil drink deep of our blood. Let our bones become monuments to forgotten wars."
He raised his face to the sun, teeth bared in a savage grin.
"My Lord is dead. The world is guilty."
"We will remind them."
Above him, the eagle shrieked again — a prophecy, a curse — as it vanished into the furnace of the horizon.
---
CNT — 2:25 AM — Kingdom of Wind. Unknown location
The sands drank greedily of the warriors' blood.
The sky, for a breathless moment, turned darker than the sun should allow.
Far, far away — across mountains and oceans — a boy called Raghoul stirred in his sleep, old nightmares clawing at the edges of his mind.
And the world, still half-asleep, did not yet know:
The age of peace was over.
---