The morning did not break; it shattered.
Ren woke up gasping, his lungs burning as if he had drowned. He sat bolt upright in his narrow bed, his sheets tangled around his legs like kelp. The room was dark, the heavy blackout curtains drawn tight against the Konoha sun, but in his mind, the light was blinding and refracted through water.
" Agoshe no… kirei na mizu ga… "
The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them. They were wet, guttural, and rhythmic.
Ren froze. He clamped a hand over his mouth.
He didn't know what he had just said. He understood the meaning—The water behind the jaw is clean—but the dialect… the dialect was wrong. It wasn't the polite, clipped Japanese of the Fire Nation. It was the rolling, accented slurs of the Kirigakure coast.
Specifically, it was the dialect of the grandmother of the Mist Sensor he had eaten two years ago.
Ren scrambled out of bed, his heart hammering against his ribs. He rushed to the mirror. He ripped off his sleep mask.
His eyes— one Sharingan red, one Byakugan white (hidden under the transformation but active in sensation)—stared back.
"My name is Ren," he whispered, forcing his tongue to form the standard shapes. "My name is Ren Yamanaka."
But the voice in his head, usually a chorus of distinct prisoners, was silent. Instead, there was just a fog. A thick, confusing mist where his identity used to be.
He turned to the small bedside table. He grabbed the framed photograph of his parents. It was his anchor. His totem.
He looked at the woman in the picture.
She was smiling. She had fair hair. She was holding a young boy.
Ren stared. He analyzed the image. Subject: Female. Approx age 30. Facial features: Symmetrical. Expression: Joy.
He waited for the warmth. He waited for the recognition. Mother.
It didn't come.
He knew, intellectually, that this woman was his mother. He knew her name was Hana. He had written it down. But the feeling—the emotional neural pathway that connected the image to the concept of "Love"—was gone.
It had been overwritten.
To make space for the mastery of the Phantom Blade Style, to accommodate the massive data load of the Sharingan's predictive algorithms, his brain had performed a defragmentation. It had deleted "non-essential" files.
Ren dropped the photo. The glass shattered.
"No," he whimpered. He fell to his knees, picking up the shards. "No, no, no. Not her. Take the math! Take the academy rules! Don't take her!"
But she was gone. She was just data now. A file with no content.
Ren sat in the center of his room, surrounded by broken glass, and for the first time, he realized he wasn't just haunting the house; he was becoming the furniture.
—————
The Scarecrow and the Chimera
"You're drifting, Chimera."
The voice was bored, muffled by a mask, and dangerously sharp.
Ren snapped back to reality. He was crouched on a tree branch in the Land of Rivers. Rain, endless and grey, slicked his armor.
Crouched on the branch above him was his team leader for this mission: Kakashi Hatake. Codename: Hound.
Kakashi was a legend in the Anbu. A prodigy who had lost everything—his father, his teammate Obito, his teammate Rin. He was a hollow man, much like Ren, but filled with shadows instead of ghosts.
"I am focused," Ren replied, his voice modulated by his porcelain mask.
"Your chakra isn't," Kakashi said, reading a book even in the rain. "It's flaring. Jagged. You're broadcasting your position to anyone with half a sensory gift."
Ren clamped down on his chakra coils. He forced the Council into silence.
He mocks us, the Uchiha voice (Ryuichi) hissed in the Vault. He wears the eye of my kin. He is a thief, just like you.Kill him, the Iwa Commander growled. He is the White Fang's whelp. A threat.
Ren looked at Kakashi's back. The silver hair. The exposed neck.
Ren's hand twitched toward his tantō.
It would be so easy. Kakashi trusted him—at least, as much as Anbu trusted anyone. A strike to the carotid artery. Then, the harvest.
Imagine, the Hunger whispered, seductively. The Thousand Jutsu. The Lightning Cutter. We could complete the collection. We would never be afraid again.
The impulse was so strong, so violent, that Ren almost vomited behind his mask. He wasn't thinking this. It was thinking this. The monster he had built was hungry for the best meat in the forest.
Ren dug his fingernails into the bark of the tree until they bled.
"Hound," Ren said, his voice strained.
Kakashi looked down, his visible eye narrowing. "What?"
"I'm taking point," Ren said abruptly. "I need… to move."
Before Kakashi could object, Ren launched himself into the forest. He needed to be away from Kakashi. He needed to kill something that wasn't a comrade.
They descended upon the target—a bandit stronghold selling experimental poisons.
Ren didn't fight; he butchered.
He unleashed the Phantom Blade. Invisible chakra threads, guided by the Byakugan and Sharingan, whipped through the camp. Kunai flew like a swarm of angry hornets.
Men fell without knowing they had been cut. Heads were severed. Limbs were amputated.
Ren moved through the slaughter like a dancer. He felt the familiar rush of incoming data—fear, pain, death. He drank it in, not because he needed the intel, but because it drowned out the silence where his mother's face used to be.
When the last bandit fell, Ren stood in the mud, breathing hard.
Kakashi landed behind him. He looked at the carnage. It was efficient, yes. But it was excessive, and felt a chill.
"Mission complete," Kakashi said quietly. He walked past Ren, stepping over a decapitated body. "Clean your blade, Chimera. We're leaving."
Ren looked at his sword. It was pristine. He hadn't touched anyone. The wind and the threads had done the work.
"It is clean," Ren whispered. "It's the hand that's dirty."
—————
The Edge of the Monument
They returned to Konoha at dusk. The debriefing was short. Danzo was pleased with the efficiency.
Ren didn't go home. He couldn't face the empty apartment and the broken picture frame.
He found himself standing on top of the Hokage Monument, specifically on the stone hair of the first Hokage.
The village spread out below him, a grid of lights and lives. The war was over. Peace reigned. Children were playing in the streets.
Ren stood on the precipice.
I am a danger, he reasoned. The logic was cold, borrowed from the Cloud Tactician. My psyche is fracturing. I am losing my base identity. I nearly attacked a team leader. I am a rogue element waiting to detonate.
He looked down at the drop. It was far enough. If he didn't use chakra to reinforce his body, the impact would kill him.
End it, the part of him that was still Ren Yamanaka pleaded. Before we hurt someone we love. Before we eat Sora or my father.
He stepped to the edge. His toes hung over the abyss.
But then, the Vault opened.
It wasn't a voice this time. It was a roar.
NO.
Thousands of hands—spectral, chakra-infused hands—seemed to grab his ankles. The will of Goro. The will of Ryuichi. The will of the Mist Assassin. The will of Isamu.
We did not die for you to throw us away, they screamed. We want to live. We are alive in you. You are our vessel. You cannot destroy the ark!
Ren fell backward, away from the edge, landing hard on the stone. He hyperventilated, clutching his chest.
He couldn't die. They wouldn't let him. He was a prison warden held hostage by his own inmates.
"I have to live," Ren sobbed, curled into a ball on top of the stone head. "I have to live."
—————
The Implant
He needed an anchor. He needed to prove to himself that he could still connect with a human being without consuming them.
He went to the Inuzuka compound.
He found Sora sitting on the porch of the veterinary clinic, staring at the moon. She looked frail. The depression had hollowed her out.
"Ren?" she asked, squinting into the darkness.
He stepped into the light. He wasn't wearing his Anbu armor. He wore simple civilian clothes and his black cloth mask/sunglasses combo.
"Hey," he said.
Sora smiled weakly. "You look like a burglar."
"I have sensitive eyes," Ren murmured.
He sat next to her. The silence between them was comfortable, yet heavy with the things they had lost.
"How are you?" Ren asked.
"The same," Sora said, picking at a loose thread on her pants. "I saw a puppy today. A black one. looked just like Maru. I… I couldn't breathe. I had to run away."
She looked at Ren, tears brimming in her eyes. "It doesn't get better, Ren. They say time heals, but it just scar tissue. It's stiff and it aches."
Ren looked at her. He activated his Sharingan beneath the sunglasses. He saw the color of her grief. It was a dark, grey sludge clogging her chakra flow.
He analyzed it. Problem: Emotional trauma causing physiological distress.Solution: Neural pathway realignment.
He had the skills. He had the Yamanaka mind techniques. He had the precision of the Puppeteer. He had the genjutsu of the Uchiha.
"I can fix it," Ren said suddenly.
Sora blinked. "What?"
Ren turned to her. He spoke quickly, excitedly, like an engineer who had found a solution to a structural flaw.
"I can fix the pain, Sora. My abilities… they've evolved. I understand the mind better now. Memory is just data. Emotion is just a chemical reaction to that data."
He reached out, his hand hovering near her forehead.
"I can go in. I can find the memories of Maru's death—the blood, the poison, the pain. I can excise them. Cut them out like a tumor."
Sora stared at him, her mouth slightly open.
"And then," Ren continued, "I can graft new memories. I can make you remember that Maru died peacefully of old age. Or… better yet… I can imply a memory of a new dog. A perfect partner. You won't know the difference. You'll be happy, Sora. You'll be whole again."
Ren smiled behind his mask. It was the solution. It was perfect. "I can make you happy."
Thwack.
The sound was sharp and echoed in the night air.
Ren's head snapped to the side. His sunglasses skewered.
Sora had slapped him. Hard.
Ren touched his cheek, stunned. He looked back at her.
Sora was standing now. She was trembling, but not from weakness. From fury. Her canine teeth were bared.
"How dare you," she hissed.
"Sora, I—"
"You want to delete him?" Sora screamed, tears streaming down her face. "You want to replace my life with a lie because it's efficient?"
"I want to stop your pain!" Ren argued, standing up. "You're dying by inches, Sora! I can see it!"
"My pain is mine!" she yelled, shoving him in the chest. She was weak, and he didn't budge, but the force of her conviction hit him like a physical blow.
"That pain is proof that he existed!" Sora cried. "It's proof that I loved him! If you take away the hurt, you take away the love! You take away Maru!"
She grabbed Ren's collar, pulling his face down to hers. Her eyes were fierce, burning with a Will of Fire that Ren had long forgotten.
"You really are a monster, aren't you?" she whispered, her voice breaking. "Not because of what you eat. But because you think people are just scrolls to be rewritten."
She let him go. She stepped back, wiping her eyes.
"Get out of here, Ren. Don't come back until you remember what it's like to hurt."
Ren stood frozen.
He replayed her words. Pain is proof of love.
He searched his own mind. Did he feel pain for his mother? No. He felt a blank space.
Therefore, he did not love her anymore.
The realization was a cold, iron stake through his heart. He hadn't just lost the memory of her face. He had lost the love itself. He had deleted his own humanity to make room for a Jutsu.
"I…" Ren started to speak, but his voice failed.
He turned and walked away.
He didn't go home. He walked to the riverbank. He sat in the dark.
He took off his mask. He took off his sunglasses.
He looked at the water with his mismatched eyes—the eyes of a killer, the eyes of a thief.
He tried to cry for his mother. He tried to summon the grief that Sora cherished so much.
But he couldn't.
He just felt the hunger.
And the horrifying realization that the Ship of Theseus was still sailing, but the captain was dead, and the crew was made of ghosts.
"I am a monster," Ren whispered to the river.
But this time, he didn't say it with fear. He said it with acceptance.
He pulled a scroll from his vest. It was a forbidden jutsu scroll he had stolen from the library.
If he couldn't be human, he would be the most efficient monster the world had ever seen.
He opened the scroll.
Subject: The nature of seals and the containment of infinite chakra.
Ren began to read. The Council settled down, interested.
The Ship sailed on.
End of Chapter 10.