Raizo woke to the sound of his mother trying not to cry.
The house was quiet—too quiet for a morning in Uzushio. There was no clatter of bowls, no muttered curse from Riku as he stubbed his toe on the threshold, no distant laughter drifting in from the street. Only the soft creak of wood and the careful hitch of Akane's breath as she swallowed emotion back down.
Raizo lay still beneath his blanket, eyes open, staring at the ceiling.
The air felt different today.
Lighter—not calm, not normal, but softer around the edges, as if someone had wrapped the world's noise in cloth so it reached him only in dull echoes. The pressure behind his eyes was gone. His head didn't throb. The storm inside him hadn't vanished, but it was quieter, held gently beneath Mito's temporary seal.
He could feel her still.
Not sharply. Not the way he had when she first arrived. Just a steady weight beneath everything, like a deep drumbeat far below the village. Present. Watching. Waiting.
Raizo pushed himself upright.
The wind nudged the shutters once, tentative, then stilled as if asking permission. He pressed a hand over his chest.
His heartbeat felt bigger.
Not wrong.
Just wider, spreading farther than his ribs, like his blood no longer understood where his body ended and the world began.
He slipped from the bedding and padded barefoot to the door. When he slid it open, the living room came into view.
Akane sat at the low table, hands wrapped around a cup she hadn't touched. Her shoulders were stiff, her posture too controlled. Her eyes were red.
Riku stood near the doorway, arms folded, staring at nothing. His expression wasn't anger—not quite. It was something tighter. Like all the sharp edges inside him had turned inward.
They both looked up the moment Raizo stepped out.
Akane's face softened immediately.
"Raizo," she whispered. "Good morning, sweetheart."
Raizo took in the details the way he always did.
The slight tremor in her fingers. The muscle jumping in Riku's jaw. The air between them felt heavy but contained, like a storm sealed inside a jar.
He swallowed.
"Is it today?" he asked quietly.
No one had told him the day.
They hadn't needed to.
He could feel it.
Akane's eyes shimmered. She tried to smile. "Yes," she said softly. "Lady Mito wants to leave before midday. For the journey."
The word journey felt too big for the room.
Riku crossed the floor and knelt in front of him, one large hand resting gently on Raizo's shoulder. Up close, his father's chakra felt like bare rock—solid, unmoving, scraped raw by weather and time.
"How do you feel?" Riku asked.
Raizo thought about it carefully. "Less loud," he said. "But… too open."
Riku huffed a breath that wasn't quite a laugh. "That sounds about right."
There was a knock at the door.
Raizo felt it before he heard it. The mist outside wavered. The fragile sounds of morning—distant voices, a bucket being set down, a gull's cry—pulled inward like they were making space for something older.
Akane wiped at her eyes quickly and stood. Riku rose beside her and slid the door open.
Mito Uzumaki stood on the threshold, framed by pale mist.
Her hair was bound neatly, red streaked with silver. Her eyes—old, steady, and impossibly sharp—swept over the room in a single glance, measuring the damage the last few days had done.
"Good morning," she said.
Her voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. The house itself seemed to straighten when she spoke.
Akane bowed. "Welcome, Lady Mito."
Riku gave a shorter bow. "You said it had to be today."
"I did," Mito replied. "And it does. His coils are steadier than yesterday, but that will not last forever. We should move while the sea is calm."
Raizo stepped forward without being told.
Mito's gaze found him instantly.
"How is it inside your head this morning, child?" she asked.
He met her eyes. "Quieter," he said. "But… too big."
Something flickered in her expression—not pity, not displeasure. Something close to approval.
"That means you can still feel the edges," she said. "Good. Come sit."
They cleared space on the floor. Raizo sat cross-legged. Mito knelt in front of him, movements slow and deliberate, her cane resting against the floor like an anchor.
"This is not training," she said to Akane and Riku without looking back. "It is only a cushion for the road. He must arrive in the Leaf able to stand."
Akane's hands twisted in her robe. "Will it hurt him?"
Mito's lips thinned slightly. "Not if I am careful."
She placed two fingers lightly against Raizo's sternum.
Her chakra flowed into him—warm, slow, impossibly vast. It didn't push. It didn't force. It smoothed, settling the storm just enough that the world's edges dulled.
The distant heartbeats. The layered emotions outside. They stepped back a pace.
Raizo exhaled without realizing he'd been holding his breath.
"Better?" Mito asked.
He nodded. "It doesn't shout as much."
"This seal will fade in a few days," she told his parents. "It dampens the worst of the overload and slows his expansion during travel. Nothing more."
Akane looked like her knees might give out in relief. "Thank you," she whispered.
Riku bowed deeper than before. "…You have our gratitude."
Mito rose. "Pack his essentials. Clothes. Small keepsakes. I was granted only two escort days away from Konoha. I cannot linger."
Two days.
Raizo turned the number over in his mind.
Two days between here and a place he had never seen, with a woman who felt like chains and mountains and quiet thunder.
Akane moved first, bustling with too-bright focus. She folded his clothes into a small cloth bundle. She added a seashell Hina had once forced into his hands—so you remember the good crabs—and a length of red string he liked to twist while thinking.
Riku added a small, dull-edged training kunai. After a pause, he tucked a folded sealing tag beside it.
"For emergencies," he said.
Raizo watched, stomach twisted into knots too complicated for a seven-year-old to untangle.
He was leaving.
Not someday.
Now.
When the bundle was ready, Akane set it beside him carefully, like it might break if she moved too fast.
"Raizo," she said softly. "Come here."
He stepped into her arms without hesitation.
She held him tightly, ribs aching, heart pounding against his ear. Fear. Love. Something sharp and aching she didn't have words for.
"I don't want this," she whispered into his hair. "But I want you alive more than I want you near."
His throat burned.
"I'll come back," he said. "I promise."
She pulled back enough to cup his face. "Listen to Lady Mito. Eat when she tells you. Rest when she tells you. Don't pretend you're fine when you're not."
Her voice broke.
"And if you're scared… remember we are still here."
Riku stepped in next. He knelt and rested his forehead against Raizo's.
For a moment, Raizo felt only him—solid, unmoving, like standing on stone.
"You are my son," Riku said quietly. "Not Uzushio's property. Not a weapon."
He breathed in slowly. "You will go. You will learn. You will come home."
Raizo nodded. "I'll come home."
"Good."
The door slammed open.
"RAIZO!"
Hina burst in like a thrown rock, hair wild, cheeks flushed. She skidded and nearly fell before catching herself.
Her eyes were already wet.
"You were gonna leave without me?!"
Raizo blinked. "I wasn't—"
"You were!" she insisted. "And you're really going."
She stared at the bundle, then at him. Her face crumpled.
"I was going to say goodbye," Raizo said softly.
She sniffed hard. "You're not allowed to go get strong somewhere else without me. That's illegal."
"I don't think—"
"ILLEGAL."
He almost smiled.
"I'll come back," he told her. "So you can brag."
She leaned forward and gently knocked her forehead against his.
"You better," she muttered. "Or I'll tell everyone you cried and were bad at knots."
"I am bad at knots."
"Exactly."
She turned to Mito and pointed. "If anything bad happens to him, I'll bite you."
Mito raised an eyebrow. "I will keep that in mind."
Hina fled, shoulders shaking.
When it was time, the village watched quietly.
No shouting. No spectacle.
Just eyes holding worry, pride, sorrow.
At the gate, an elder spoke. "Do you take responsibility for what he becomes?"
"I do," Mito said.
"And if Konoha uses him?"
"Then they will find I still know how to bite."
The gate opened.
Raizo hesitated.
Mito's hand settled on his shoulder. "Step forward, child. The village does not end here."
He breathed.
Salt. Fog. Goodbye.
He stepped.
The mist recoiled. The seals hummed.
Uzushio fell behind him.
Later, on the cliff path, something stirred deep inside his blood—old, vast, not fox, not woman.
"A dragon," he whispered.
Mito's eyes sharpened. "We will examine that."
They walked on.
Raizo tightened his grip on the bundle.
"I can breathe under it," he said.
Mito faced forward. "Then walk."
And he did.
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