prologue

🔥 Prologue – The Flame the Clan Forgot

Uchiha Kaizen | Age 6

Timeline: Three days before the Uchiha Massacre

Hidden Leaf Village – Uchiha District

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I was never meant to be remembered.

Not like Sasuke, the heir.

Not like Itachi, the genius.

Just a child born late, kept quiet, tucked between the shadows of more important names.

My parents served in the outer watch. No seat on the clan council. No legacy. Just patrols and silence. I was raised to follow—not to lead.

But the clan was crumbling. The tension in the village thickened like poison in the air.

And three nights before it all fell apart, my mother looked me in the eyes and said:

> "If something happens… hide. Don't trust anyone. Not even our own."

I didn't understand what she meant.

Until the night the flames came.

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It was quiet when the killing began.

No alarms. No warning.

Just the sound of steel on flesh, and a red glow in the sky.

I hid beneath the family shrine—just like she told me. I pressed my face to the cracks in the wood and watched as shadows danced outside.

One of them moved too gracefully. Too fast. Too... calm.

Itachi.

He wasn't my brother. He wasn't even someone I'd spoken to more than once. But I knew his face. Everyone in the clan did.

And I watched as he ended the lives of people who once smiled at me.

Not with rage.

With silence.

---

Then others came. Not clan. Not Leaf shinobi.

Root.

Masked. Efficient. Hunting survivors.

One of them found the shrine door. He opened it.

I didn't scream.

I just stared back with wide, red eyes.

> "A child. Tch. Orders are orders."

Steel flashed—

And darkness took me.

---

But not forever.

---

> [SYSTEM INITIALIZATION…]

Subject: Uchiha Kaizen

Vital Signs: Fading

Bloodline: Stabilizing…

Enhancement Grid Activated

> "You are not done. Not yet."

"The flame remembers you."

---

Six Years Later – Year 76 After Konoha's Founding

The world moved on.

Naruto Uzumaki trained in loud, clumsy bursts.

Sasuke grew with hatred in his veins.

The Uchiha were spoken of as a memory.

But I remained.

Alive. Forgotten. Watching from beyond the village's eyes.

And the system that awakened that night has grown with me—

One day, one skill point at a time.

---

> I am Uchiha Kaizen.

Not a prodigy. Not a hero. Not a brother to the dead.

I am the ember the fire missed.

And I will burn a better future from what remains.