The sword wasn't supposed to whisper.
Naruto lay awake in the dark, his cheap wakizashi resting across his chest. The steel pulsed faintly—not with chakra, but something deeper. Something hungry.
"You hear it too, don't you?"
The voice in his skull no longer startled him. It had been there as long as he could remember, coiled around his thoughts like smoke.
Naruto ran a finger along the blade's edge. Blood welled, black in the moonlight.
The cut didn't hurt.
It sang.
---
Hokage's Office - Dawn
The Third Hokage stared at the latest report with bloodshot eyes.
"Explain this again."
The ANBU's mask did nothing to hide his trembling. "At 0300 hours, Subject's apartment exhibited spatial anomalies. Walls... *breathed*. Shadows formed structures matching his dream descriptions. Then at 0342—" A photograph slid across the desk: Naruto's window, where the glass had *melted* into perfect sword-shaped shards.
Hiruzen's pipe clattered to the floor. "The sword?"
"Still sheathed. Never touched the window."
A long silence. Then:
"Bring me Jiraiya."
---
Training Ground 7 - Noon
Naruto's blade moved through forms no six-year-old should know.
Sweat dripped onto sun-baked earth as he executed a vertical slash—
—and the air *split.
For less than a heartbeat, reality fractured along the cut. Trees beyond the practice dummy swayed as if sheared by an invisible blade. Leaves fell in perfect halves.
Naruto blinked. The world stitched itself back together.
Behind him, a toad croaked in alarm.
---
Uchiha Compound - Evening
Itachi found the drawings under Sasuke's bed.
Crude child's sketches of a black blade. A castle of bones. A figure with golden eyes.
The ink looked wrong. Too dark. Too... wet.
When Itachi touched the paper, his fingers came away stained red.
---
Forest of Death - Midnight
Orochimaru's smile stretched too wide as he watched from the trees.
The boy stood knee-deep in the river, swinging that pitiful wakizashi with terrifying precision. Each cut left afterimages in the air—phantom blades that lingered a second too long.
A snake slithered too close to the water's edge.
One such afterimage flickered.
The serpent's head plopped into the river, body still twitching.
Orochimaru's tongue darted out.
"Mine."
---
Naruto's Apartment - The Witching Hour
The wakizashi glowed cherry-red in the dark.
Not from heat. From something deeper. Something alive.
Naruto gripped the hilt, watching as the steel drank his dripping blood like rainwater.
"Soon," the voice promised.
Outside his window, storm clouds twisted into the shape of a grinning skull.
---
To Be Continued...