His breath steadied, but the heaviness in his chest did not. The memories of his past life had settled like silt in deep water, slow, suffocating, impossible to ignore. And as they blended with the reality of his current circumstances, Ishiki couldn't help a bitter laugh.
How poetic.
Two different lives, two different worlds…Yet the theme was the same.
Isolation. Loneliness. Powerlessness.
"Reincarnation really didn't change anything, huh…" he murmured to himself, lips twisting into a humourless smile.
He was still an orphan.Still alone.Still trapped in a life painted in dull grays.
No family.No safety.No future.
Just the ceaseless monotony of survival.
If his first life had been a cage of fluorescent lights and exhaustion, this one was a battlefield of blood and fear.
Because here,In this era,Humans were fragile.Civilians even more so.
And he?He was the most fragile of them all.
Ishiki stepped outside the creaking wooden house and gazed across the small, scattered settlement he called home. A cluster of mismatched huts, crooked fences, and weary villagers moving like ghosts between chores.
This place was not even a village by shinobi standards.Just a tiny civilian pocket, barely a footnote on the map.
And its location could not have been worse.
It sat almost perfectly between two colossal forces:
The Senju Clan.The Uchiha Clan.
Living halfway between a forest fire and a lightning storm.
This was the Warring States Period, an age where every sunrise carried the scent of death, and every night echoed with screams too distant to identify.
Children grew up knowing battle more intimately than lullabies.Adults lived with the resignation of livestock awaiting slaughter.Peace was not a blessing; it was simply the pause before the next tragedy.
And this small village, caught in the crosshairs of two warring giants, was little more than an inconvenient obstacle on a battlefield.
Not valuable enough to conquer.Not strong enough to defend.Not far enough to be forgotten.
Just there, waiting to be trampled.
Ishiki had learned quickly that here, wars did not always come in grand armies or legendary clashes.
Sometimes, war came in the form of roaming patrols.Sometimes, through forced labour.Sometimes, through a soldier's whim.
And sometimes, through fate's cruellest coincidences.
His parents' deaths were the perfect example.
Not a heroic sacrifice.Not a destined battle.Not even a targeted attack.
Just… wrong place, wrong time.
A stupid argument in a marketplace between a Senju and a Uchiha over a mispriced vegetable or a piece of meat, neither side willing to back down because pride was the only currency that mattered.
One insult became two.Two became more than suddenly a jutsu directed towards them
A flare of chakra.A misfired fire jutsu.A wave of scorching heat.
And then,
Darkness.
Ishiki could still smell it if he let his mind linger: the acrid stench of burning wood, burning stalls, burning flesh. His tiny hand reaching out, trembling, as his parents, those two gentle, ordinary people, threw themselves over him.
A desperate, final act of love.
A meaningless one in the grand scheme of war.
They had been consumed instantly.He survived only because they used their bodies as shields.
The memory came to him with the clarity of a polished blade. Too sharp to forget, too painful to examine closely.
His breath hitched.
He pulled his gaze away from the village's horizon.
"Why… why do both of my lives always start with loss?"
The wind offered no answer.
In the weeks after losing his parents, Ishiki had drifted like a wandering shadow. No direction, no motivation, just survival. The small stash of coins his parents had saved kept him fed for a time, but each purchase eroded their memory further.
Eventually, even that ran out.
The small house they had left behind became both shelter and prison.
He was alive, yes, but only because death had not yet come for him. There was no strength to fight, no skill to flee, and no one to rely on.
In a world of chakra and bloodlines, of gods disguised as humans,
He was a civilian boy.
With no inheritance.No clan.No Kekkei Genkai.No training.No guidance.No safety net.
His reincarnated memories gave him perspective, but not power.
He knew this world, its dangers, its monsters, its tragedies.But that knowledge was useless when he could not take advantage of it.
He couldn't awaken the chakra on his own.He couldn't learn jutsu.He couldn't defend even against a stray kunai.
He was an observer locked behind glass, watching history unfold, unable to touch it.
No golden finger.No system.No cheat.No miraculous awakening.
Just a powerless reincarnated soul, trapped in a frail body in the deadliest era known to shinobi.
And he hated it.
His stomach growled violently, dragging him out of his thoughts.
"Haaah… seriously? Even starving now?"
His shoulders slumped.
The last of the savings was gone.Not a grain of rice remained in the kitchen.Not even a leftover vegetable.
He had reached the point every orphan in this era dreaded, the point where hunger became a louder enemy than war.
He pushed off the futon with a soft grunt and stood, feeling the weight of exhaustion in his limbs.
"Fine… river it is."
Fishing.
A task he barely understood, using a rod that was older than he was, hoping for even a single bite.
He grabbed the rod, slung it over his shoulder, and stepped outside. The dirt felt cold beneath his feet. The village echoed with subdued murmurs, the kind of quiet that came not from peace, but from collective fear.
Every villager carried the same expression:
Will we survive today?
Ishiki exhaled slowly.
"I need to survive too… even if it's just one more day."
With that simple, desperate resolve, he headed toward the river, the only place where he had even a small chance of earning his next meal.
Not for revenge.Not for ambition.Not for glory.
Just survival.
For now.