**Hidden Safehouse – Below Amegakure's Canal Network**
The *thrum* wouldn't stop.
It pulsed beneath my skin—a deep, gravitational ache resonating with every heartbeat. Konan hadn't spoken since the sewers. Her silence was heavier than the stone pressing down on us. Across the damp cellar, Jiraiya's scrolls lay unfurled, their ink glowing faintly in the gloom.
*"Hanzo didn't just kill them,"* she finally said, her voice flat. *"He dissected them. Studied their bones. Your clan."*
She pointed to a sketch in the scroll—a Kashiwagi skeleton, its marrow etched with crystalline lattices. **Gravity Drifters**, Jiraiya called them.
*Chakra pathways aren't just coils… they're fractures in reality itself.*
---
### **The Weight of Blood**
**Tsutako**, the orphanage's only medic-nin (barely a genin herself), pressed cold fingers to my wrist. Her diagnosis was blunt:
*"Your chakra network is tearing itself apart. Like paper under too much weight."*
**Kekkei Genkai Breakdown:**
- **Manifestation**: Gravity wells form around stress points (joints, organs)
- **Physical Toll**: Cellular collapse, internal bleeding, bone brittleness
- **Trigger**: *Emotional Surge* (Fear/Rage) or *Chakra Exhaustion*
I coughed—a splatter of black-tinged blood hit the floor. Konan flinched.
*"Why hide this?"* Her eyes were shards of amber ice.
---
### **Jiraiya's Legacy – And Warning**
The scrolls weren't just techniques. They were a **grave warning**.
**Entry: Year 3, Second War**
>*"Hanzo seeks to weaponize bloodlines. First the Kashiwagi… now the Uzumaki boy. He calls them 'Natural Calamities'. But they're children. Nagato's eyes… they weep when he sleeps."*
Konan's breath hitched at Nagato's name. Her fingers traced Jiraiya's frantic script:
>*"The only counter is controlled implosion—seal the fractures BEFORE they seal you. Fuinjutsu Array: Tenchi no Kōsoku (Heaven-Earth Restriction). Requires:"*
>1. A living anchor (Konan's paper affinity)
>2. Gravitational focus (Yuki's blood)
>3. A price.
---
### **The Anchor and The Storm**
Konan slammed her palm onto the scroll. *"You knew. When you touched these… you felt it."*
The array's price glared at us in blood-red ink:
>**"Sacrifice the Anchor's medium OR the Drifter's stability."**
**Option 1**: Konan loses her paper transformation forever.
**Option2**: My bloodline becomes permanently unstable—a walking black hole.
*"You let me believe we could save everyone,"* she whispered, paper flowers wilting in her hair. *"But we're just trading one death for another."*
---
### **Hanzo's Vultures Circle**
A tremor shook dust from the ceiling. Distant, wet *scrabbling* echoed in the pipes.
*Salamanders.* Hanzo's personal summons. They'd tracked the gravitational spike from my breakdown.
Konan didn't look at me. Her hands moved—folding, tearing, rebuilding a complex origami lattice around the glowing array.
*"Choose, Yuki."*
Her voice held no anger. Only rain, and resignation.
*"Your life? Or mine?"*
Outside, stone groaned as gravity bent.
---