I first realized they existed when I was four.
Not the monsters under the bed—those were child's play. I'm talking about the ones who stared through the window at night with eyes too human to be beasts, and too monstrous to be human. They watched me like I was a meal. A target. A prophecy waiting to rot.
I tried telling the adults. Tried warning them with my tiny voice and trembling hands. But kids imagine things, they said. Overactive imagination. Too many cartoons. Sleep paralysis. All the usual shit.
So I stopped talking. I bit my tongue and played brave.
Until that storm.
Thunder cracked the sky open like a ribcage, and lightning lit up the room white-blue. I remember that color. It's seared into my memory. That, and the way those four things tore into my father like hyenas on a corpse. They didn't just kill him. They made it slow. Surgical. Joyful.
He screamed until his lungs collapsed—and I screamed with him.
But the official report? Suicide.
Earl of Craventish.
Took his own life.
The lies came fast. The isolation came faster. People whispered. Looked at me with pity—or worse, disgust. I had testified against monsters that didn't exist. The family, the servants, those around me… thought that I have lost it.
And soon enough, I found myself locked in a white room with white walls and nothing but my fists and silence.
A facility, they called it. Confinement, more like it.
They fed me pills meant to rot my mind. They told me I was sick, deranged, unstable. "We're going to fix you, Young Lord."
Fuck that. They weren't fixing me—they were trying to erase me.
And my uncles? The bastards who stood at my father's funeral like grieving saints? They signed the papers. They paid the doctors. Took my title. Took my land. Took my wealth. Took all my possession.
All of them wanted me gone.
They should've killed me.
Because something inside me snapped. Something woke up.
Rage. Hatred. Memory sharper than any blade.
YAMADA – AGE SEVEN
DEVENHAIM PSYCHIATRIC INSTITUTE
The walls were always too white.
Sterile. Empty. Like no one was ever meant to live in them. Just ghosts in flesh. Just breathing corpses. And Yamada… he was just one of many. But the only one who still screamed at night.
The lights never turned off, only dimmed. A perpetual dusk in the ward. The silence was never real. You could hear crying. Dull thuds against walls padded with foam. Screeches that clawed into your spine from behind locked doors. Sometimes it was a nurse hitting someone too hard. Sometimes it was the someone trying to die before they got a chance to live.
Yamada sat on the floor of his room, knees to chest, back to the door, tracing the same jagged line on his wrist that he'd started carving with a loose staple a week ago. It wasn't deep. Not enough to bleed out. But it was something he could control. Something that hurt on his terms.
He was seven.
His father had been dead for three years. Murdered right in front of him. By monsters. But no one believed him.
"Suicide," the doctor said.
"Delusional," the nurse whispered.
"Monster," one of the older patients hissed, pressing his face against the glass of Yamada's door every morning.
They drugged him daily. He learned to hide the pills under his tongue and spit them out later into the broken sink. But sometimes they caught him, held him down. Needles in the neck. Chemical fire burning through his veins until he saw lights that weren't real.
He didn't dream anymore. Just existed. Breathing on autopilot. Eating tasteless food, puking it back out half the time. A caged animal that once used to be a boy.
The doctors loved writing in their stupid notebooks when he cried. Like it meant something.
"Subject displays acute paranoia and episodes of psychosis when questioned about his Father's death."
"Manic outbursts increasing during thunderstorms."
"Possible undiagnosed schizophrenia."
What they never wrote about were the bruises. The cold showers. The isolation chamber he was thrown into for noncompliance. That tiny black room with no windows and a vent that hissed like a snake. He once stayed in there for two days. He pissed himself. Screamed himself hoarse. Bit into his arm so hard he tore skin.
They didn't care. Not even the nurses.
He stopped talking after that.
There was a time he still hoped. The first year, maybe. He thought someone would come for him. Someone from his father's side, or even a lawyer or a social worker with eyes kind enough to notice something was off.
But all the visits stopped. The letters never came.
He was alone.
Even the shadows under the door refused to speak to him anymore.
YAMADA WOLFF – AGE NINE
Yamada stared at the ceiling, lips dry, eyes hollow. He hadn't moved in hours. The meds today made his head feel like static. The hallucinations came back too—hands crawling out from under the bed, whispers in the corner telling him to dig, dig, dig. But he didn't listen.
He was too tired to go crazy today.
The door creaked open. A tall man in a lab coat stepped in, flanked by two orderlies with gloves already on. Yamada didn't react.
"Young Lord," the doctor said slowly. "It's time for your therapy session. You've been… nonresponsive."
Yamada blinked.
"Do you remember what happened last week? You bit Nurse Macy."
He didn't respond.
"She needed six stitches."
Still nothing.
The doctor crouched, face now at eye-level. "You know what happens if you don't cooperate, right?"
Yamada's voice came out low, like gravel. "The box."
"That's right."
But the doctor didn't smile. No glee. Just apathy. Just procedure. Like Yamada was no different than the mop bucket in the hall or the chair he sat in. A thing. A failed subject.
Yamada stared at the man's glasses. His reflection looked smaller than he remembered.
Then the voices came back. Quiet at first. Familiar.
"It's not you who's broken. It's the world around you."
He twitched. The orderlies noticed. They moved.
"No. No—NO!" Yamada thrashed violently as they grabbed him. He bit one in the forearm, tasted blood. Got a punch to the side of the head for his effort. The stars came fast. The pain came faster.
They dragged him out screaming.
All the way back to the box.
YAMADA WOLFF – AGE TEN
The lower levels were where they kept the irreparables.
And now, Yamada was one of them.
Strapped to a chair, electrodes taped to his temples, his wrists and ankles bound. His teeth chattered uncontrollably—not from fear. From exhaustion. They were going to shock him again.
They called it behavioral realignment.
He called it torture.
But this time, when the button was pressed, something went wrong.
The lights flickered.
The walls distorted.
And Yamada saw something in the air—red, glowing symbols that hovered like ancient runes. His heart pounded. The pain hit, but he didn't scream. He saw—truly saw—for the first time.
The doctor's eyes widened. "What the hell—?"
Yamada's vision sharpened. The doctor's aura shifted. His true nature bled through the skin. Not human. Not entirely. Something darker, older.
And Yamada knew.
He wasn't insane.
They were trying to bury something in him.
Something powerful.
**
On my eleventh birthday, while I sat in that piss-reeking cell, she appeared—red eyes glowing like coals in the dark. Pale as a corpse. Smiling with a cake in her hand.
It tasted like ash and regret.
And it changed everything.
She taught me what I was. What we were. The Arata bloodline. The cursed sight. The inheritance of agony and revelation.
She told me I wasn't broken—I was awakened.
YAMADA WOLFF – AGE ELEVEN
His birthday came quietly. No cake. No visitors. Just the usual tray of gray food and cold water.
Until that night.
The cameras went static. The hallway lights shut down. And then… she appeared.
She stood outside his door, pale as moonlight, with long black hair and red irises that pulsed with power. In her hands—a lopsided cake, half-burned.
She opened the door without a key.
"Happy birthday, Yamada." She greeted, with a voice like silk draped over steel.
He stared. Mouth dry. She wasn't real. Couldn't be.
"You're not crazy." she continued, stepping closer. "You're cursed. Gifted. Chosen."
And just like that, he began to cry.
Real tears. Not from pain. Not from rage.
But from recognition.
She knelt, wiped his face with her thumb.
"Come with me, Yamada. Let me show you what they tried to destroy."
And for the first time in his life…
He said yes.
**
And now, standing here, blades flying, enemies snarling, bodies dropping—I still feel like I'm trapped in that illusion. A never-ending fucking dream stitched from someone else's nightmare. One I keep waking into.
But this part? This moment? This blood-slicked chaos?
This belongs to me.
I'm not the child they locked up. I'm the storm they tried to bottle.
And I will not lose to these fuckers.
"YAKEDO!" I roared, and the ground beneath me cracked. Fire appeared.
My veins surged black. My sclera bled red. The Arata Eyes snapped open, rings of crimson and black swirling like vortexes of hell.
Jutsu: Phase One – Retinal Burn.
The enemy closest to me staggered, clutching his head. The illusion slammed into his mind—ten thousand burning corpses screaming his name. He dropped, convulsing.
A blade sliced toward my ribs.
I ducked, grabbed the attacker's wrist, snapped it backward at a sick angle, and drove my knee into his gut. His vomit hit the ground before he did.
"KAZE RENDAN!" I shouted, launching into a five-hit aerial combo midair. Wind pressure from my feet cracked the asphalt as I twisted, heel-first, into the last guy's jaw. His body bounced once. Didn't get up.
"Ryosuke, behind you!" I barked.
Ryosuke spun and sliced clean through an incoming kunai, grinning like a lunatic. "Took your sweet-ass time, Yamachin!"
"You want a fucking hug while I'm at it?" I snapped, dodging another strike, slamming my fist into an assassin's sternum. He wheezed blood.
More were coming. Three fast. One teleporting through shadows. One holding puppet strings glimmering like spider silk.
They wanted blood.
They'd get a massacre.
Jutsu: Second Phase – Void Reversal.
The world shifted. I saw into them. Into the flickers of chakra, the cracks in their focus, the exact second their hearts skipped. I knew when they'd breathe. When they'd blink. When they'd fucking die.
My hands moved faster than thought. One Jutsu symbol. Then another. Then another.
"ZANKA: TENKAI!"
A wall of flame erupted behind me, forcing the shadow-stepper to phase too slow—he reappeared mid-air, confused, then caught my boot in his throat. Bones snapped.
They weren't ready for me.
They never were.
I don't care who sent them. I don't care what clan they bow to.
They'll all kneel eventually.
Because I'm Yamada Wolff.
And this is the part where I burn your world down.
**
"They were just here a moment ago—where the hell did they go? Were we attacked from behind?!" Ryosuke squawked, panicking. "Shit!"
"Calm down, will you? Your high-pitched screech is giving me a headache." I rubbed my temple. "It could be another ambush, but that still doesn't explain the complete disappearance. My eyes can't detect anything. Not even a trace of Sakura's Smoke Escape."
"Smoke Escape? Wait—could it be that stinky old man? He's not that frail, is he? Think he pulled a basic ninja trick?"
"I checked. Nothing. That's what's bugging me... dammit, I can't think straight!" I snapped, slamming my fist against the tree. People don't just vanish into thin air. Not without something. And Ryosuke wasn't helping… he kept yelling like the sky was falling.
Tch.
Wait.
Something clicked.
"Ryosuke. Look around us."
"Huh?"
"The rocks."
"The what?" My idiot friend blinked, scanned the area—and then, finally, I saw it. That familiar flicker in his eyes when his brain decided to start working. "Oh. Oh shit. Holy fuck, it really exists!"
"Yeah. The portal." I couldn't help but smirk, a little amused. "Right in the middle of the city. In a freaking pathway of a park. Hidden in plain sight, right between those three triangle-shaped rocks."
We were only kids, after all. There's still so much we didn't understand. But this? This was something big.
"You ready?" I asked.
Ryosuke gulped. "Uh-huh. Though I'm pretty sure we're about to break every bone in our bodies, Yamachin."
"There's a first time for everything."
I reached for his hand.
"On the count of three. Set—NOW!"