The Hollow was changing.
Not loudly. Not fast.
But like rain soaking into soil, it transformed in silence, feeding roots hidden below.
Zassō breathed.
And they breathed with him.
Morning in the Hidden High
Dew rose first, always. He moved like mist, barefoot, silent, face still tattooed in spirals of charcoal ash. His hands traced invisible glyphs in the air as he walked the perimeter. Not seals, rituals. He whispered nothing, and the trees whispered back. His gift was calm. Those near him forgot to worry.
Pebble awoke in her vine nest above, stretching like a cat. Her face was already painted, two yellow dots on her cheeks, and a zigzag across her forehead. She spoke to her stones before climbing down, each one named and placed at the forest edge. They were, according to her, "the sentinels."
Hako gathered river moss to steep for tea, mixed with specks of mushroom for clarity. He had taken to recording Zassō words, scribbling on bark and leaves. His writing made no sense to outsiders. Half-riddle, half-jutsu notes. He called them "Hash verses."
Ko had stopped carrying his blade. He spent his mornings beneath the fog, cross-legged, eyes closed, reliving pieces of memories the Hollow pulled from him at night. He didn't ask why anymore.
And Chime?
Chime just sat.
Still.
A cracked old war relic who'd finally found a place where silence didn't mean weakness.
The Second Scroll, Zassō didn't announce it. He didn't gather the Rootless and proclaim his next jutsu.
He simply began.
He sat beneath the Ash-Willow, a gnarled, black-barked tree deep in the Hollow whose trunk bore natural burn scars. It was the only tree that smoldered when it rained. Zassō called it "Old Ember."
He smoked deeper than usual that day, mixing rare brown cap mushrooms with oil of sun-bleached lotus, a combination said to "burn truth out of shadow."
He opened his journal of bark-paper.
He dipped a quill in mushroom-ink laced with powdered moth wings.
And he wrote:
Cloud Style: Scroll II, Ember Memory
The Theory
Memory wasn't stored in the brain alone.
That was what Zassō said.
"Memories live in the body," he explained one evening, the fire crackling as the Rootless gathered near. "In the bones. In breath. In scars you forgot how you got. In places your soul don't visit no more."
He looked at Pebble.
"You ever remember somethin' that didn't happen to you?"
She nodded. "Once I cried because a rock told me I used to be a woman who drowned."
"Exactly," Zassō grinned.
Scroll II was designed to ignite that.
To let someone burn back into their own forgotten truths.
Ember Memory - Technique Structure
The jutsu began with smoke, always smoke. The user must exhale three rings into the air, then speak the name of the subject, not the name they use now, but the name they were born with, or the name they first believed in.
This smoke enters the subject's lungs. They will not cough.
They will not fight.
Their body stills.
Their eyes cloud.
And for nine minutes, they relive a memory that was lost, stolen, repressed, or buried.
Not as an observer.
As the person they were.
And when they return?
They bring something back.
Not always clarity. Sometimes madness. Sometimes peace.
Always truth.
The First Trial
Zassō didn't test Ember Memory on Hako, or Dew, or Pebble.
He tested it on himself.
Alone, under the Ash-Willow.
The others watched from a distance.
He inhaled the triple-ring smoke.
He whispered: "Devonte Rhodes."
His earth name.
His before name.
The man who'd overdosed in a cracked apartment in Long Beach, staring at the ceiling fan spinning too slow to save him.
And for nine minutes, Zassō disappeared.
Not physically.
But spiritually.
His body remained seated, exhaling embers.
But in his mind, he walked again in sneakers, not sandals. Smelled asphalt. Heard sirens. Saw a body on the floor, his own, eyes glazed, blunt still lit.
He heard the neighbor whisper.
Felt his heart stop.
And saw, beneath the bed, a tiny green plant growing from a cracked tile.
It spoke to him.
"You done dying yet?"
He laughed.
And returned.
Zassō rose slow.
Eyes gleaming, not with tears, but recognition.
"I remember the moment my soul let go," he said. "And the vine that caught it before it fell."
The Rootless were silent.
Chime bowed.
Dew traced a spiral on his own chest.
Pebble placed a painted stone at Zassō s feet.
"You're real now," she said.
Zassō nodded. "Ember Memory don't lie. But it don't protect you either."
He burned the scroll's seal into a stone slab. No one was allowed to touch it unless they were ready to face everything they buried.
That became the first law of the Hollow, spoken aloud.
"The smoke can show you but it can't save you"
.
Life Continues
The Hollow grew by one more, Mira, a mute herbalist with chakra burns along her neck. She carried no weapons, only vials of sap and crushed bark. She claimed the fog led her here while fleeing a clan execution.
Ko built her a moss bed. Pebble painted her face. Dew held her hands while she screamed silently in her sleep.
The Hollow welcomed her.
No questions.
Only space.
That night, the Rootless sat around the fire.
Zassō leaned back on the stone, pipe in hand, scroll complete at his side.
"Smoke ain't about hiding," he said. "It's about softening the world. So you can touch the parts of yourself you thought were ash."
Dew lit a ritual flame.
Pebble hummed a song that had no words.
And the Hollow breathed in time with its people.
.
.Two Cloud Style scrolls now exist:
1. Vanishing Verse - Erases the user's presence from the enemy's mind, while echoing truth back at them.
2. Ember Memory - Forces a person to relive a forgotten or buried truth.