Prologue: Shadow and Desire
A world of glass, concrete, and cold logic never anticipated his arrival. He was an unwelcome noise in a finely tuned mechanism—a glitch demanding immediate correction. His birth passed unnoticed by those rushing through schedules, building careers beneath the gray skies of the metropolis, birthing and dying by statistics. He was a mistake that, inexplicably, persisted.
He didn't live—he observed. Gliding like a shadow along the fringes of their orderly existence, he learned to see not faces, but patterns of habits, weaknesses, and the gnawing fears that eroded souls. The world was a book of vulnerabilities laid bare, and he mastered reading it.
The first incision in that book came when he was eleven. A brief scuffle on a dusty rooftop, a shove, a scream cut short by a fall. The boy who had mocked him became the first page. The police deemed it an accident. He knew the truth. It was the beginning.
Not the last. One became two, then ten, then a hundred. He became an artist in a realm of shadows and silence, each stroke a life severed. He honed himself into a surgical instrument: no traces, no DNA threads, a phantom eluding cameras. He became an urban myth, a nightmare whispered among FBI and Interpol rookies. Codename: "Cascade." A man hunted for twenty years, leaving only empty spaces where he'd just been. A monster in human guise, forged by the city itself.
But even monsters need air. He found refuge where light never reached and the world's sounds faded. And when the world outside his door fell silent, another world flickered to life on an old, glowing screen. A world brimming with vivid colors, thunderous techniques, and unbreakable bonds. The world of "Naruto."
He watched, absorbing every detail. The arcs, the characters, their tragedies and triumphs, the intricate plot twists, the hierarchy of power. He knew them all. And deep within his black, coiled heart, devoid of pity or love, a strange, burning dream took root.
If only I were born there...
In a world where strength is currency, not a curse. Where one needn't hide their essence behind a mask of normalcy. Where killing openly is permissible if you're strong enough. A world devoid of the metropolis's false morality.
He lived in two parallel realities: by day—a hunter in the concrete jungle; by night—a spectator of a foreign, yet alluring saga.
The night of reckoning came unexpectedly. He embarked on his usual hunt in the cold bowels of the subway. Chose a target—a random woman appearing lonely and fragile under the lamplight. Approached silently, like creeping smoke. The knife's blade caught the reflection of her wide, terror-filled eyes.
The strike never came.
A flash. Blinding white light flooded the tunnel. Dozens of armored silhouettes, rifles, red laser dots dancing on his chest.
"Target 'Cascade' located! Engage! Repeat: target confirmed!" barked a stern voice through a nearby operative's headset.
He froze. Not from fear. More from recognition, the understanding that the game was over. A corner of his mouth twitched into a cold smirk.
"So, you finally found me. At last."
His fingers tightened around the knife's hilt—a final gesture before the inevitable. He had no intention of fighting. It was pointless. Instead, he looked up. Not at the agents, but through the station's ceiling, upward, toward a sky he'd never truly seen. Beyond this gray world that had rejected him.
And in that final moment, as dozens of triggers were pulled, a single thought pulsed through his fading consciousness:
Let the next life be different. No masks. No weakness. In a world where I can be myself. I want to live in the world of Naruto.
A volley. The roar of gunfire shattered the subway's silence. Dozens of impacts tearing through flesh. His body collapsed onto the cold concrete. The sounds ceased. Darkness fell.
Consciousness drifted into oblivion... but did not vanish entirely. It became something else—pressing, damp, strangely warm. The pain was there, but not from bullets. Different. New. He was suffocating. His tiny, unfamiliar lungs gasped for air. New air.
Blurred images, sounds as if from underwater. Gentle hands, scents. And a voice, muffled and tender:
"Congratulations, it's a boy..."
The body was foreign, weak, helpless. But within, deep inside this new, tiny being, pulsed an old, familiar thought, now amplified by reality:
I'm in a new world. I'm free.
And in that moment, his eyes—not blue, not brown, but bright crimson, the color of fresh blood—opened for the first time, gazing upon the unfamiliar sky of the shinobi world.