The wind off the sea carried salt, storm, and the scent of strangers.
On the volcanic shores of Tsuma Isle, a place forgotten by the great Hidden Villages, a boy crouched with a spyglass in hand. He tracked the sails. Not merchant ships. Not fishermen. These were masked, foreign—creeping in like rot under bark.
Daigo watched them with a scholar's eye and a soldier's silence. His bones were still small, his hands too soft to wield a blade. But already, he understood what arrival meant. Ships meant more than trade. They meant change. They meant control.
Behind him, his family gathered kelp in silence. His mother, the hunter Aika, was storm-blooded and broad-shouldered, known to wrestle mountain cats for sport. His fathers—gentle, quiet Sho and sharp-eyed Jin—worked with hands hardened by glass and fire.
Sho squinted toward the horizon. "They come in threes now. Convoys."
"A warship behind the cargo," Jin muttered, his jaw tight.
"Pirates don't need convoys," Aika said. "The High Council does."
Daigo turned toward them. "Are they dangerous?"
Jin knelt beside him, brushing grit from Daigo's sleeve. "They are. Not with kunai. With scrolls. With systems."
Sho crouched too, voice gentle. "You see how they circle the reef? Not too fast. Not too close. They're waiting for us to invite them."
Daigo frowned. "Then don't invite them."
Aika let out a dry laugh. "If only it were that simple, little hawk."
Tsuma Isle was too small to matter, and too skilled to ignore. The clans here didn't breed bloodlines. They crafted them. Lenses that could trace chakra signatures. Tools that revealed genjutsu. They sold clarity to those with power.
The High Council noticed.
A para-governmental force that claimed to bring order and unity to the fractured shinobi world, the High Council didn't control the Five Great Nations directly. They didn't need to. They moved through minor provinces and border territories, through doctrine, trade seals, and scrolls. They didn't conquer with war. They conquered with policy.
Their goal was simple: standardize chakra. Regulate bloodlines. Suppress instability.
And they had begun with Tsuma.
A man named Kaien Ferren led the first delegation. He had soft words, a sharp smile, and a gaze that lingered too long on Daigo.
"You're sharp," Ferren said, crouching beside the boy at market. "You like numbers?"
"I like knowing things," Daigo answered.
"Then let me show you everything."
That night, Daigo read until his eyes ached. Words from their tongue. Ideas wrapped in foreign logic. His mother watched the candlelight under his door and said nothing.
A school was built in less than a season. Pale walls, marked scrolls, and instructors with blank masks etched with sealing lines. The High Council didn't conquer with fire or kunai. It arrived with textbooks and trade seals. They replaced clan elders with enforcers, and markets with chakra-script currency. Tsuma Isle didn't fall in battle—it was rewritten, one lesson at a time.
Daigo excelled. He studied anatomy, chakra theory, foreign currencies, and law. He learned their rules. He played their game.
Until they began rewriting his life.
"One father. One mother. No deviation."
"Love outside your assigned bond? A disorder."
Daigo said nothing. But something in him turned to steel.
Then his father Jin vanished.
They said he had been reassigned.
But his family knew better.
Sho collapsed into a chair, hands trembling. "They took him. They took him in the night."
"I told him not to speak during the council," Aika whispered, pacing, rage thick in her throat. "I told him."
Daigo stood in the doorway, breath short. "We—we can go find him. Right?"
Sho looked up, eyes rimmed red. "He's gone, Daigo. We won't find him."
"He wouldn't just leave!" Daigo shouted. "He wouldn't! He—he was here yesterday!"
Aika knelt before him, gripping his shoulders hard. "He fought for us. Do you hear me? He stood up. And the High Council hates men who don't bow."
"So we fight them back!" Daigo screamed, voice cracking
.
Sho rose, touching Daigo's face gently. "No. Not yet. Not like this."
"Then how? How do we stop them?"
Aika looked him in the eye. "You learn. You get smarter than all of them. And when you strike, you don't miss."
Daigo did not cry. He adapted.
He watched classmates disappear for speaking too freely. He kept his thoughts folded sharp and hidden deep. He waited. Until Lau, his closest friend, came to him with trembling hands.
"The instructor... he wants me to let him 'correct' me."
Daigo listened. Promised help. Went to Ferren.
Ferren smiled. "This is the price of order."
Daigo wanted to burn him.
But he waited.
He spoke to a navy shinobi—Lieutenant Aminata, a Kiri defector. She taught him how sailors handled monsters in uniform.
"No noise. No mercy. And when you're done, make sure they can't use chakra again."
That night, it was done.
The instructor disappeared.
And Daigo? He passed his test.
Not to go to the High Council's heart.
He was sent to Yuki Province—a fractured territory where shinobi clans warred in silence, where rebellion brewed behind cold smiles.
He was to be an Accountant.
A spy with a ledger.
A mask with a pulse.
On the day of his departure, his mother met him at the docks. Her hair was tied in the old way. Her eyes were harder than steel.
Sho stood beside her, weathered and quiet, a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.
"You came," Daigo said, surprised by the tightness in his throat.
"Of course we did," Aika said. "We weren't going to let them take both our son and our goodbye."
Sho stepped forward, holding out something wrapped in cloth. It was Daigo's spyglass.
"You used this to see them first," Sho said. "Now use it to see everything."
Aika leaned in close, voice like gravel. "Do not forget who you are. Do not forget what they took. Even if you wear their mask."
Daigo took the spyglass. Nodded.
"I remember. I'll remember everything. And one day... I'll make them remember too."
Aika gripped his face, pressing her forehead to his. "Go, then. Go become the storm."
And with that, he turned to the ship with red sails.
He looked back once.
Then never again.