The scroll resisted him.
Not magically—nothing so crude—but with the stubbornness of something that had outlived several owners and resented being handled by yet another set of hands. The paper crackled as Orochimaru unrolled it, fibers stiff with age, edges darkened where oils and blood had soaked in and dried again. The ink was dense, layered, corrected over itself. Someone had written this scroll the way one might bury a body: carefully, repeatedly, hoping depth would equal secrecy.
Orochimaru smiled despite himself.
If they won't teach me because they're afraid of me,
then I'll learn so much they'll finally have a reason.
The Forest of Death breathed around him.
Not wind—breath. Wet bark exhaled rot. Roots pressed upward beneath the soil as if listening. Insects clicked and fell silent in patterns too deliberate to be coincidence. This was a place where the village's chakra thinned, where the neat geometry of Konoha's rules lost coherence. Barriers weakened. Oversight dissolved. Things remembered what they had been before maps.
It was a good place to do something unforgivable.
Orochimaru bit his thumb.
The pain was sharp, clean. He liked that. He pressed his blooded hand to the ground and began the seal.
The mark burned—not just heat, but resistance, as though the earth itself objected to being asked this question again. The soil split anyway. Roots tore. Stone groaned. Something vast dragged itself upward through the wound in the world, displacing trees the way a careless god displaces ants.
Manda.
Scales the color of old bone and dried bile slid into the clearing. Yellow eyes lowered, pupils narrowing as they focused on the human standing there—small, pale, unbowed.
Orochimaru did not bow.
Manda noticed.
A long hiss spilled from the serpent's throat, amusement and irritation braided together. "So," Manda said, voice like stone grinding against stone, "you smell like graves and stolen ink."
"Flattering," Orochimaru replied, brushing dirt from his sleeves with deliberate calm. His heart was racing. He made no effort to hide it. Fear acknowledged was fear disarmed. "I was told you only answer to strength."
"I answer to appetite." Manda's tongue flicked, tasting the air around Orochimaru's head. "And you taste… unfinished."
Orochimaru's eyes gleamed. "Then you'll want to invest early."
For a moment, the forest held its breath.
It was impossible to tell whether Manda would laugh, strike, or swallow him whole. The difference between those outcomes felt academic.
Instead, the great snake settled. Coils folded in on themselves like a collapsing fortress, trees creaking as they were displaced. The ground trembled, then stilled.
"Listen well, Orochimaru," Manda hissed.
"No kotowaza," Orochimaru said, waving a dismissive hand. "I've had enough parables in that prison they call a school."
Manda's eyes narrowed further.
"My clutch is numbered in thousands—tens of thousands," the serpent said. "You are but a yakisoba noodle to me, little snake. You will sit and listen."
Orochimaru clicked his tongue, irritation flashing across his face—but he sat.
Good, he thought. Even humiliation is a kind of tuition.
"Before your villages," Manda began, "before your chakra diagrams and hand signs and neat little lies about balance—there was a serpent who learned patience."
Orochimaru stilled.
Not from reverence.
From recognition.
"She was not like me," Manda continued. "Too gentle. Too curious. She watched humans die and decided that was a problem worth solving."
"A foolish sentiment," Orochimaru murmured.
Manda's tongue snapped out, stopping a hair's breadth from Orochimaru's face. The air smelled of damp stone and old venom. "A productive one."
The forest leaned in.
"She learned their bodies. How they break. How they rot. How they can be persuaded to last longer if you understand the mechanisms." Manda's coils shifted, scales whispering against one another. "She did not steal humanity. She assembled it."
Orochimaru's breath slowed.
Medical ninjutsu without ninjutsu.
Longevity without seals.
Flesh as a system.
Interesting.
"And then," Manda said, "the moon spat out a coward."
Orochimaru looked up sharply.
"A pale thing with eyes like still water," Manda went on. "Not a god. Not a ruler. A deserter who carried chakra that did not belong to this dirt. Wherever he lingered, life bent wrong."
"An Ōtsutsuki," Orochimaru said softly, tasting the word as if it might dissolve.
Manda's head tilted. "You have better teachers than most."
"They didn't mean to," Orochimaru replied.
"The two of them hid," Manda continued. "He bound himself to flesh. She bound herself tighter still. They healed humans. Opened a little shop. Pretended fragility was a virtue."
The serpent's tone turned faintly mocking.
"They made rules. No summoning. No sky-calling. No true forms." His jaw flexed. "They thought stagnation was stability."
Orochimaru's fingers dug into the dirt.
And then?
"Chakra rebelled," Manda said simply. "It always does."
Children born wrong.
Bodies rejecting themselves.
Serpents where there should have been none.
The words were not spoken aloud, but Orochimaru saw them anyway—etched into bone, into bloodlines that refused to behave.
"The story breaks there," Manda finished. "Some say she was sealed. Some say he fled back to the moon. Some say they became monsters and were put down like pests."
Manda's eyes gleamed. "None of that matters."
Orochimaru swallowed. "What does?"
"That their blood did not vanish."
A pause.
"It diluted."
The word slid into place like a blade finding its sheath.
Orochimaru laughed softly.
Not cruelly. Not yet.
With delight.
"So that's it," he said. "A failed experiment."
Manda leaned closer, breath hot and damp, carrying the weight of ages. "A paused one."
The forest suddenly felt too small.
Orochimaru looked down at his hands—pale, steady, already restless with possibility.
"To return to the moon," he murmured, "they tried love."
His smile sharpened, cutting away the last trace of hesitation.
"I'll try something more reliable."
Manda's hiss this time was unmistakably pleased.
"Good," the great serpent said. "Then listen carefully, little snake."
And Orochimaru did.
Because some things are not taught.
They are remembered.