The battlefield was ancient. Forgotten by war. It held no name. No monument. No chakra signatures. Only bones beneath the soil and the memory of what should never have been remembered.
David stood at its center.
He did not come to fight. He came to feel. Not the ground --- but the space between it. Not the sky --but the weight beneath it. He listened, not with eats -- but with a body forged to sense pressure without contact, essence without name.
He knelt slowly, placing his palm against the earth -- not to pull from it, but to surrender into it.
And it responded.
Not with chakra.
But with origin.
A thrum passed through the wind. Not a sound. A Recognition. It greeted David not as an intruder, but as a returning form -- something older than bloodlines and summonings. Something native to silence.
He closed his eyes.
[ "Before jutsu," he murmured, "there was this."]
And the land answered.
---
Kaien watched from the ridge.
He had tracked the man through three valleys, past the wreckage of villages and the edges of war. He had seen the reports. heard the rumors. The shinobi called him a god of slaughter. The Mist called him the weight that breaks before the strike. The children of dying clans whispered his name like a curse --- David.
But Kaien saw none of that.
He saw a man kneeling in a dead field. Breathing. And the world breathing with him.
Something inside Kaien stirred.
Not awe. Not fear.
He didn't know why his body moved. He just knew he had never stepped into something that felt more like home.
-----
David did not turn. He knew the boy was there.
[ "You've followed me for two days."]
Kaien froze.
[ "Why?']
Kaien opened his mouth, but there was no answer. Not yet.
David stood. He looked not at Kaien -- but through him, as if seeing not what he was, but what he might survive into becoming.
[ "You've seen chakra. You've seen what it does."]
Kaien nodded.
[ "And you want something else."]
This time, Kaien spoke. his voice was rough from silence, but steady.
[ "I want to stop running."]
David stepped forward once.
[ "Then stop."]
And in that moment -- no seal, no scroll, no flash of power --- Kaien felt everything shift.
The earth did not welcome him. It measured him. And it did not reject.
----
David pointed to the ground beside him.
[ "Sit. Watch. Don't ask."]
Kain obeyed. Not because he was told. But because he knew that if he left now, he would never understand why he was alive and they were not.
And so, without knowing, without ceremony, without even a name spoken ----
the first child of the path was chosen.
And the doctrine of origin began.
------
The morning came slowly, as if even the sun hesitated to rise over a field that had once buried so many nameless dead. Mist still lingered over the grass. Mist still lingered over the grass. The the chakra-rich haze of jutsu-born fog -- but a still, clean silence that held its place like folded memory.
David remained motionless.
Kaien sat beside him, silent, knees bruised, but unmoving. Hours had passed. Neither spoke. Neither shifted. Only breath moved between them.
Then, the world responded.
The wind cut left. The insects stopped. Kaien felt something in his chest -- like being pulled into a thought that had never been his. The pressure around David expanded. Not violently. Not even outward. It condensed.
It refined itself.
The grass around him bowed.
Kaien gasped -- but not in pain. In recognition.
[ 'What are you doing?" he whispered]
David did not open his eyes.
[ "Nothing," he said]
And Kaien understood. He wasn't witnessing power. He was witnessing alignment.
David's body was no longer pushing against the world. It was breathing with it. Not chakra. Not elemental flow. Something older. Simple. Real.
The air around him began to change temperature -- not from jutsu, but from the decision of space to follow intention.
Kaien leaned forward instinctively.
[ "Can I do that?"]
David opened his eyes. And the silence that followed was not rejection.
[ "Not yet."]
----
They moved for the first time that day -- slowly through the ruins of the field, where David placed his palm occasionally on stone, or branch, or bone.
[ "Chakra makes men reach," David said, not looking back. "This makes them return."]
Kaien furrowed his brow.
[ "Return to what?"]
David turned slightly.
[ "To the part of the world that didn't need to be controlled to be understood."]
-----
Later that day, David raised his hand ---- just once. No flourish. No seal.
And the mist that had been lingering across the trees folded inward, twisting lightly around his wrist --- not obeying him, but recognizing him.
He released it.
Kaien tried the same. His hand reached. his eyes narrowed.
Nothing moved.
David nodded once.
[ "Because you want it."]
Kaien blinked.
[ "isn't that the point?"]
David stepped forward and placed his fingers against Kaien's sternum -- barely a touch.
[ "Wanting bends the world outward," he said. "Understanding lets it fall inward."]
Kaien looked down. he didn't understand it fully --- but his breath slowed. His shoulders lowered. The tremor in his fingertips settled.
He would remember this moment. Forever.
----
That night, Kaien lit a fire. Not with flint. Not with chakra. With pressure, concentrated at the edge of his breath and spine. It flared, weakly --- but it burned.
David said nothing. But he nodded.
And so the first step had been taken.
----
Far above them, deep in the Hokage tower, Minato reviewed reports of unregistered chakra movements in the outer plains.
He paused.
[ "He's not building an army," Jiraiya muttered behind him. "But something's gathering."]
Minato didn't answer right away. He placed the report down, then looked at the map.
[ "No," he said finally. "Not an army."]
[ "He's teaching."]
----
Beneath the stars, Kaien slept. And David sat beside the blade that no longer demanded blood.
The path had opened. Not loudly. Not with banners or battle cries.
Just two bodies. Aligned with something the world forgot.