Pain had a way of making everything clear.
Elias lay face-down in the dirt, wrists bound behind his back with iron wire that dug into his skin. The march had gone on for hours—no food, no water. Every stumble earned him a swift kick from the shinobi behind him.
They weren't Uchiha.
But they hated them.
He'd heard them whisper as they dragged him from the riverbank: "Send him to the elders… another tool for the war." "That eye—did you see it? That's no common bloodline."
They didn't know what he was.
Hell, he didn't know what he was.
But that didn't stop them from chaining him like an animal.
⸻
By dusk, they reached the outskirts of a ruined compound—half-buried in fog, shielded by trees and jagged rock formations. The banners hanging from the broken gate bore a symbol Elias didn't recognize: a four-pointed shuriken overlaid with a jagged crescent.
A nameless clan. Forgotten by history.
But not dead. Not yet.
Dozens of shinobi moved within the encampment. Hardened faces. Makeshift armor. No children. No elders visible. Only warriors.
"This is a clan on the brink," Elias thought. "They're not building—they're surviving. Barely."
They shoved him to the ground inside a tent. Lanterns flickered against the fabric. Shadows danced as voices argued nearby.
"…we can't trust an outsider."
"…that eye could be a weapon—something the Uchiha don't have."
"…desperation has made us weak. If we don't act soon, we'll vanish like the rest."
Elias sat in silence, his body aching.
But his mind… it was sharpening.
He wasn't panicking anymore. Not like the first day. Not like when he saw his reflection and screamed inside. That part of him—the one who clung to the idea that he'd wake up in a hospital, that this was all a dream—was dead.
This was his reality now.
A world where kindness got you killed. Where peace was a fable whispered to children—before those children were handed blades and told to die for clan pride.
"This isn't my world," Elias thought, "but if I don't learn how to live in it, I'll die before I understand why I was sent here."
The flap opened. Two figures entered—an older man with streaks of silver in his hair and a woman with a hawk-like gaze. Both wore robes stitched with fading versions of the clan's emblem.
"You fought like a shinobi," the woman said, circling him. "But you don't move like any clan we know."
Elias didn't answer.
"You spoke our language," the man added. "But your clothes, your mannerisms… foreign."
His eye burned faintly. The Jougan didn't like them. It pulsed, sensing their chakra—dense, tired, strained.
"I'm not your enemy," Elias finally said.
"You could be," the woman replied coldly. "That eye. It's no Sharingan. But it sees chakra. That alone is dangerous."
They were afraid of him. Or perhaps afraid of what he represented—an unknown. In a world of bitter alliances and generational blood feuds, the unknown was death.
"You want to overthrow the Uchiha," Elias said. "That's why you haven't killed me yet."
Silence.
The man's eyes narrowed. "Smart. But you're not in a position to bargain."
"No. But I'm also not your enemy," Elias said again. "That eye—call it a mutation, a blessing, a curse—I didn't ask for it. But if you're looking for a weapon… I'm still learning how to wield it."
That gave them pause.
"Sell the illusion of usefulness," Elias thought grimly. "Stay alive long enough to figure out the rules."
⸻
They didn't kill him.
Instead, they kept him under guard in a small tent with one blanket and a bowl of stale rice. He wasn't a prisoner. Not exactly. More like a dangerous stray animal—tolerated, but watched.
Days passed.
And for the first time since arriving in this world, Elias had a roof, food, and relative quiet.
He used it.
He watched the clan train. Listened to their strategy meetings. Studied how they moved, how they used chakra—how they talked about the Uchiha with such hatred that it could ignite the sky.
They were once proud, he learned. A border clan that resisted absorption. The Uchiha pushed them out of their ancestral land. Now, only fifty fighters remained. No children born in months. Hope was a ghost that haunted the fires.
They needed a miracle.
They were hoping he was one.
⸻
Elias knelt outside his tent one night, staring up at the stars.
The Jougan flared softly, casting faint blue light on the grass.
He still didn't know why he had been given this eye.
But here, beneath a broken moon, he began to understand something deeper:
He didn't need a reason to survive. He needed a choice.
He could wait for someone to rescue him.
Or…
He could become the storm that broke the cycle of this world.
He could learn the rules. Then rewrite them.
"This world eats the weak," he whispered to the wind. "But maybe I don't need to stay weak forever."
The Jougan pulsed again, as if agreeing.
And for the first time since arriving, Elias Harper felt something more than fear.
.
.
.
The training grounds of the clan were nothing more than a cleared patch of hard-packed dirt circled by dead trees and splintered logs. No grass. No markers. Just a history of scars etched into the earth by steel and blood.
"Sit. Breathe. Try not to explode."
Those were the first words his assigned "teacher" told him.
The man's name was Riku, tall and broad-shouldered, with tired eyes and a sword too large for someone still breathing. He didn't like Elias. Not out of personal hate, but out of habit. The same way a wolf regards an unfamiliar beast near its den.
"You say you can see chakra," Riku muttered. "Let's see if you can even mold it."
Elias sat cross-legged, fists on his knees, watching the fading afternoon light spill between the canopy overhead. His Jougan flickered faintly—only when he concentrated. He could see Riku's chakra network clearly: a pale blue map of flowing threads moving through the body.
But his own? That was a mystery.
Come on,I've seen Naruto. It's just breathing. Focus. Will it to move.
He inhaled slowly. Closed his eyes.
Tried to feel… something.
A warmth in his gut. A current beneath his skin. Something alive.
Nothing happened.
Riku grunted. "You're either a fraud or a fool."
Elias opened his eyes, frustrated. "It's not as simple as breathing and wishing."
"That's because it's not," Riku said sharply. "You're moving something older than your body—older than language. Chakra's a tool. It's a knife. Use it wrong, and it cuts you first."
Day Two.
Elias collapsed in the dirt, coughing up bile.
His chakra surged halfway through the exercise, then spiked out of control. His body spasmed. It felt like fire under his skin.
Riku didn't even flinch. "Again."
Day Four.
The first thread of chakra moved from his gut to his palm.
He nearly cried.
The Jougan pulsed faintly in response—as if proud. As if waiting for him to unlock something hidden.
"You're stubborn," Riku admitted that night by the fire. "I've seen better fail faster."
Elias didn't answer.
He was thinking about the voice from before—the one that brought him here.
"You should not exist here."
Yet he did.
The clan elders remained distant. He was watched, yes—but not welcomed. Some shinobi passed him in silence. Others whispered behind his back. They thought he was a gamble. A ticking bomb. Some wanted to kill him still, just to be safe.
Elias kept his head down.
But he listened.
At night, when the fires burned low, he walked the outer paths of the compound—feigning restlessness. In truth, he was observing.
Learning names. Listening to arguments. Watching the slow collapse of discipline from within.
They were desperate.
The Uchiha had pushed them back again last week, killing three of their elite scouts. Supplies were running low. Alliances were thinning.
And yet… they still planned to strike.
Soon.
A reckless gamble.
"They'd burn their own forest down if it meant choking the Uchiha on smoke," Elias thought.
Day Seven.
He began to mold chakra more freely. Riku taught him to channel it into his feet, stand on water for a few seconds. Then fall. Again and again.
He bled. Bruised. But learned.
He wasn't fast. He wasn't strong.
But he was determined.
And with the Jougan, he saw things the others didn't—chakra flares before they happened, intention written in flow. He was learning not just to use chakra…
But to read it like a second language.
At the edge of camp, there was an old shrine. Half-buried. Forgotten.
Inside it, Elias found something strange: a mural, cracked and faded. It depicted a battle from long ago—one side bearing Sharingan eyes, the other with glowing white ones.
But not Byakugan.
The art was crude, but Elias knew his eye when he saw it.
The Jougan.
It existed here. Before. Somehow.
He stared at it for a long time, until the shadows swallowed the image whole.
The shrine was silent.
Ancient roots coiled like sleeping serpents across the floor, splitting the foundation stones. Moss crept up the cracked mural walls, but the image still lingered.
Eyes.
Dozens of them.
One side of the wall showed warriors with twisted rage in their expressions, their eyes blood-red with a familiar three-tomoe pattern: the Sharingan. They stood atop a battlefield littered with bodies, crows flying overhead.
Opposite them were fewer figures—silent, calm. Their eyes were light blue. Faint halos surrounded their irises. Not Byakugan. Something else.
The Jougan.
He could feel it. His right eye tingled faintly as if in recognition, as if the blood in his veins knew the shape of this history before his mind could catch up.
Elias brushed a hand along the wall.
The inscription beneath the image was worn, but he traced its faded etchings.
"The Eye That Sees Truth Beyond Chakra.
Cursed by Heaven.
Born to Balance the Beast of Blood."
Elias stood still, staring at those words.
Cursed by Heaven?
Balance… the Uchiha?
His eye pulsed in response to the carving, then flared.
Just then, he heard it—
Voices.
Not from the shrine. Outside. Low, tense.
Elias didn't move. He slipped into the shadows behind a shattered pillar, holding his breath. Chakra signatures pricked at the edge of his perception. His Jougan activated on instinct—highlighting the chakra of the two figures moving just outside the shrine, concealed by the treeline.
He crouched lower.
Two shinobi. Fast. Clean movements. Their chakra—sharp, heavy, like a storm behind a dam.
Uchiha.
"—we strike at dawn. The perimeter's weakest along the river. Their jutsu types are poorly coordinated."
"You sure the boy is still inside?"
"Confirmed. The elders think he's a tool. They've kept him close. If he's got that eye, we take him alive—if possible."
They're talking about me.
Elias's blood froze.
"We'll crush the compound from three angles. Burn what's left. No survivors."
The other one nodded. "We're due for a proper show of force. The Senju grow too bold. It'll remind them we're still in control of the border."
Their chakra flickered. One of them used a fire-style jutsu—only a spark to light a pipe. But Elias nearly flinched.
He stayed silent.
Waited for the chakra signatures to fade down the forest trail.
Only when the last ripple vanished did he breathe.
They're going to kill them all.
He ran.
Faster than he ever had in this world.
The minor clan's compound shimmered through the trees ahead like a ghost of broken stone and torn banners. The guards were surprised to see him sprinting, covered in sweat, eyes wide with alarm.
"I need to speak to the chieftain. Now."
They hesitated, but something in his voice—something real—cut through their suspicion.
Minutes later, he stood before Katsuro, the acting clan head. A scar split his lip. One eye was blind. The other sharp enough to see through lies.
Behind him stood Riku, arms folded.
"What's this about?" Katsuro asked. "You're not in a position to demand anything."
"I'm not demanding," Elias said, panting. "I'm trying to keep you alive."
Silence.
The fire in the center of the room crackled.
"Go on."
"I found a shrine in the woods. One your clan abandoned long ago. There's a mural there. A record of an old battle between Sharingan users and… others. With eyes like mine."
Katsuro narrowed his eye. "What do you mean—'like yours'?"
Elias didn't answer directly. He let the Jougan flare for just a moment. A quiet glow filled the tent.
Katsuro didn't flinch. But Riku did.
"The Uchiha were there," Elias continued. "Two of them. I listened from the shrine. They're planning to attack. At dawn. Three angles. They're going to burn this place to the ground."
The silence that followed was heavier than the grave.
"You're lying," Riku said sharply.
"No. He isn't," Katsuro said slowly, staring into the fire. "The Uchiha never forget."
Elias looked between them. "They know you're keeping me here. They think I'm a weapon. And they want me for themselves."
Riku grunted. "And why are you warning us? What do you gain?"
"I don't care about your politics," Elias replied. "I don't care who started what war. But if you die, I lose my only shelter in this world. My only chance to learn. I'm not doing this for you."
Katsuro laughed bitterly. "Honest. At least."
He rose, adjusting the armor at his side. "Then I suppose we owe you a little honesty in return."
Elias blinked. "What?"
"There's a reason the shrine was sealed. That eye of yours… it belongs to a bloodline that predates even the Hyuga. They called them Heaven's Watchers."
Elias's breath caught.
"They feared what they couldn't control. That eye… it doesn't just see chakra. It sees truth. And truth is poison in this world."
Riku shifted uneasily. "That's legend."
"It was legend," Katsuro said, staring at Elias's eye. "Until now."
The camp roared to life that night.
Elias stood by the outer wall, watching as shinobi armed themselves. The moon hung low and red. The air tasted like copper and fear.
But Elias wasn't afraid.
He should've been. The Uchiha were coming. Real killers. Trained by war and hate. A part of him—the old part—screamed to run, to vanish into the trees and never look back.
But something else burned brighter now.
Resolve.
Not revenge. Not yet.
But purpose.
If the Jougan was born to balance the beast of blood—then maybe he wasn't here by accident. Maybe this was his fight, whether he wanted it or not.
And maybe he could tip the scales.
Just a little.