The cave was cold.
Despite the thin fire Ayame had lit in a stone pit near the back, shadows crept along the walls like silent predators. The baby—still unnamed—lay swaddled in a blanket of stitched rags, eyes fluttering in his sleep, brows twitching as though plagued by restless dreams.
Ayame sat across from him, her knees drawn to her chest, sword resting at her side. Her Sharingan was deactivated, but her senses were razor-sharp. She didn't sleep. Not yet.
She couldn't.
She kept staring at the child.
It had been two days since she'd found him in the ruins of the border village. Two days of silence, save for the child's occasional cries and the crackling of the fire. Her body still ached from injuries she hadn't tended to properly, but her mind… her mind was tangled in something deeper.
He's not normal, she thought for the hundredth time.
The baby hadn't fed much. But despite his lack of sustenance, he seemed stronger. His chakra was shifting—growing, twisting, evolving—every hour. It frightened her. Excited her.
And it made her feel alive.
Outside, a cold wind howled through the trees, whistling through the cave's narrow entrance. The baby stirred and whimpered.
Ayame was beside him in an instant.
She lifted him from the bed of rags and cradled him close, pressing his head to her chest. "Shhh… I'm here. You're safe."
The wail that erupted from him wasn't just a cry of discomfort. It was deep, primal—filled with something ancient and aching. The sound didn't match his age. It didn't even sound human.
Ayame froze.
The cave trembled.
The shadows twisted.
The fire flickered violently as if responding to the infant's scream.
No… not just chakra… this is something else.
The baby's eyes flew open—and for a fraction of a second, she saw it.
A swirling ripple in the center of his pupils. Black, bottomless. Like a vortex. Like a void.
It was gone in an instant.
He blinked. His gaze settled on her. The tears stopped.
And he smiled.
Ayame's lips parted slightly. She wasn't the type to show shock—but this child, this thing, was warping her every instinct. Every shinobi sense she had screamed that this was no ordinary infant.
But she didn't back away.
She smiled back.
"…You're hungry," she said softly, brushing his cheek. "Not for milk. For power."
The baby cooed. She swore she saw amusement flicker in his eyes.
---
By the end of the week, Ayame had named him.
Sora.
It meant sky—the boundless heavens. A name for something uncontainable, something that would rise above the world's limits. She thought it poetic, even as she traced the scarred ground where he'd first appeared.
He responded to it too quickly for a child. Smiled when she said it. Reached for her voice. As if some part of him knew.
She didn't tell anyone.
No one could know.
---
In the months that followed, Ayame raised him alone.
She moved from cave to cave, small abandoned homes to secluded forests, never staying more than a few weeks in one place. With her status as a rogue Uchiha, she couldn't risk being tracked, even by her own clan—especially not by them.
And Sora… he grew too quickly.
By six months, he was crawling, pulling himself upright with an eerie grace. By nine, he was mimicking her gestures, copying hand signs he shouldn't have understood. His chakra wasn't just present—it was refined. Moving through his tenketsu as if his body had trained for years.
More than once, Ayame caught him staring into the air, reaching out toward invisible ripples—dimensional tears she couldn't see but felt.
Sometimes she found him sitting alone, watching the sky. Silent. Still.
Too still for a child.
---
One night, while camped in the roots of a giant tree deep in the Land of Fire, Ayame watched him as he slept.
Her fingers hovered just over the hilt of her tanto. She wasn't sure why. Instinct?
Or fear?
Sora… what are you becoming?
She remembered the moment she awakened her Mangekyō Sharingan. The first time she had to kill someone she loved. The pain. The madness.
She remembered looking in the mirror afterward and realizing she had changed.
But Sora… he hadn't killed anyone.
And still, he felt far less human than she ever had.
She clenched her fists.
Yet, even with all her fear, she couldn't bring herself to abandon him. Not now. Not ever.
---
The next morning, Sora spoke his first word.
Not "Mama." Not "Ayame."
He pointed to the sky and said:
"Swallow."
Ayame's breath caught in her throat.
"...What did you say?"
He pointed again.
A small bird flew overhead—a hawk. Sora raised his chubby hand toward it. His pupils rippled like water.
And then…
A black slit in the air opened—unnatural, like torn space. It yanked the bird mid-flight into its void, erasing it completely. Not a feather remained.
Ayame stood frozen, heart pounding.
Sora turned to her and smiled innocently.
---
That night, as Ayame rocked him to sleep, she whispered not lullabies—but warnings.
To him.
To herself.
"Never let them see what you are," she murmured. "Not until it's too late."
Sora closed his eyes.
And in the silence of the night, the orphan's wail echoed again—not in sorrow this time, but in hunger.