Flashback: The Day the Mist Took Everything
Kozan remembered the silence before the screams.
It was a day like any other—gray skies, sea winds, and the distant hum of waves. He had been eight years old, living on the outskirts of Kirigakure in a quiet home near the cliffs. His parents were simple—his father a net mender, his mother a teacher who never spoke about her bloodline.
They told him never to talk about chakra.
Never to show what he could do.
He remembered practicing jutsu in secret—tiny water bubbles, harmless illusions, little tricks he thought were fun.
He didn't know what it meant.
Until the Hunter-nin came.
---
There was no warning.
He returned from fishing one day to find his home on fire. His mother's screams were swallowed by the mist. His father's chakra vanished before he reached the door.
A masked figure stood on the roof.
"You are the child of a forbidden line," the voice said. "You will either be cleansed… or conditioned."
Kozan didn't understand. He ran. He kept running.
They caught him. Dragged him to a camp—bare walls, no names, only numbers. Other children were there. Some had eyes that glowed, some had markings on their skin. All of them were afraid.
That night, Kozan cried.
And for the first time in his life, the mist around the camp thickened until even the guards lost sight of the stars.
---
Days turned to weeks.
He learned silence.
He learned how to take beatings without reacting.
He learned how to pretend to be harmless.
Until one day, a guard tried to break him with a blade. He wanted Kozan to flinch. To show fear.
Kozan didn't move.
Instead, the guard fell, his mind crushed by an illusion Kozan didn't even know he could cast.
The others saw it. They whispered about him after that.
Not "child." Not "number."
They called him:
"The One Who Silenced the Fog."
---
Months later, he was transferred to the Academy.
Cleaned. Shaved. Masked.
They put a headband on him and told him he belonged to the village now.
But Kozan never forgot.
Not the smell of smoke on his mother's clothes.
Not the whisper of his father's voice on the wind.
Not the lie of the Mist.
And so he swore, even as a boy:
"I will change this place. I will kill its heart and give it a new one."
---
End of Flashback