Chapter 2
He awoke to pressure, darkness, and a violent, involuntary gasp. Light assaulted his senses. He was being held, swaddled. A woman's exhausted, smiling face swam into view, framed by chestnut hair stuck to her sweaty forehead. "My son," she whispered, her voice hoarse but filled with love. "My little Itama."
*Itama?* The name echoed in his newborn mind. *Senju Itama? The brother who died young? The Warring Clans Era?* Panic, sharp and cold, cut through the infantile fog. He tried to speak, but only a wail emerged. The memories of Haruto—the modern shinobi knowledge, the techniques, the war—collided with the instinctual awareness of this new body. He was in the past, over half a century before his own birth, reborn as a child of the very clan he had served.