The rain fell over the forest like a gray curtain that had no intention of lifting.
Team 10 advanced in a dispersed formation through the trees, their silhouettes blurred by the unceasing curtain of water.
Kagami led the way, his dark eyes scanning the terrain attentively. Behind him, Chōji walked on his left, his broad frame barely concealed among the trunks, breathing heavily because they had been moving non-stop for hours, his right hand resting on the provision bag he never let empty. Fugaku, still a child with a serious face and clenched jaw, covered the left flank with an alert posture, his hand on his kunai holster as if the metal could calm his nerves.
Noah walked at the squad's rear.
His legs were short. His strides were smaller than the others'. But he didn't fall behind. His green eyes watched the forest with an intensity that did not belong to a five-year-old child.
—It's raining too much…
His small feet sank into the mud with each step, and his soaked cloak clung to his shoulders like a second skin that weighed twice as much as it should.
The rain had been falling since the previous night. It wasn't a violent rain, not a downpour that would wash away roads and overflow rivers. It was worse than that. It was a persistent, constant rain that seeped into every fold of clothing. A rain that made the trees seem taller and the shadows deeper.
He pressed his lips together and didn't complain. After all, this wasn't his first mission at the front. He had already been fighting in this war for over two months.
—Maintain formation —Kagami said, his voice barely a whisper above the drumming of the rain—. The outpost is only ten kilometers away.
Noah blinked.
Water ran down his forehead, sliding toward his eyes, and when he closed them to clear them, something happened.
The world stopped.
—...sst... sst... sst...
The sound of the rain vanished. The weight of his cloak vanished. The smell of wet earth vanished. Everything vanished, and in its place remained a darkness so absolute that Noah wondered, for a moment, if he had gone blind.
But it wasn't blindness.
Noah recognized this state.
It was his Elder Blood in action. Again.
Noah felt his body turn to stone, his limbs stop responding, and his consciousness separate from his flesh like a bubble detaching from the riverbed. He couldn't control it. It was the second time it had happened—the first had been at the gadget museum, when Professor Deppler had activated that device and Noah had seen the disaster it would cause before it occurred—and both times had left him with the same feeling: that of being a spectator in his own body while something larger, something older, borrowed his eyes.
The darkness tore open.
Noah saw the same forest where he was walking. He saw his comrades—Fugaku, Chōji, Kagami—lying on the ground, their bodies inert, their faces relaxed as if they were asleep. He saw his own hand reaching out toward them, his fingers trying to grasp something they couldn't reach.
And then he heard that melody again.
—...sst... sst... sst...
It was a flute. He didn't recognize the song, but he recognized what it did. The notes coiled into his brain like snakes, tightening, loosening, whispering something into his mind.
The sound repeated, over and over, each time closer, each time louder, until he could hear nothing else. Not the rain. Not the wind. Not his own breathing. Only the flute. Only that melody that seemed to hypnotize him.
And then, the ground rose to meet him, and the vision faded.
---
—Nawaki!
Kagami's voice snapped him back to the present like a lash. Noah blinked, and the rain was hitting his face again, and the mud was sucking at his feet again, and his comrades were back on their feet, moving among the trees, alive.
—What's wrong with you? —Kagami stood before him, his hand on the child's shoulder, his eyes scanning his face for signs of injury or fatigue—. Why did you stop?
His tone was neutral, but his gaze was not. His dark eyes scrutinized the face of the five-year-old child he was carrying with him on a mission that no five-year-old child should be undertaking.
Noah opened his mouth.
He tried to find the words. He tried to articulate what he had just seen. But how to explain that he had seen the future? How to tell his instructor that his comrades were going to lose consciousness in a matter of minutes, perhaps? How to reveal that knowledge without revealing everything else?
—There's something… —he began, and his voice came out rougher than he expected.
Rain got into his mouth.
—It smells bad —he said finally, and he knew it was a poor excuse; a genius like Kagami wouldn't swallow such a clumsy evasion.
But before Kagami could respond, Noah felt something in the air.
The familiar sound of a flute suddenly began to play.
—Sst... sst... sst...
It was the same melody Noah had heard in his vision.
—Cover your ears! —Noah shouted, but his words came too late.
The music enveloped the group like a wave.
Chōji was the first to fall. His broad frame collapsed against a tree, his face relaxed into an expression of deep sleep. Then Fugaku, followed by Kagami, who resisted a few seconds longer and tried to activate his Sharingan, but his legs gave way before his eyes could change color.
Noah felt his eyelids grow heavy. His muscles losing strength and his mind beginning to blur.
The melody of the flute was a river dragging his consciousness away, note by note, second by second, pulling it toward the darkness of unconsciousness.
—That flute activates something already inside us…
He understood it in that instant. The melody wasn't the attack. The attack was the rain. They had been walking under it for hours, breathing it, letting it seep into their skin and lungs. And the flute was the key that opened the door that rain had been building inside them since the very first step.
—If I fall, we all die.
Noah concentrated what remained of his will and hurled it against his own brain like a stone against glass. His spiritual power contracted into an invisible needle and plunged into the center of his consciousness.
The jolt was violent.
His body arched on the mud. His teeth clenched so hard he thought they would break. His hands opened and closed uncontrollably. And in the midst of that convulsion, the fog in his brain tore like a wet veil.
His consciousness returned to his body. The melody of the flute continued to play—he could hear it, feel it writhing in his ears—but it was no longer a dragging river. It was a dripping faucet. An annoying noise. Nothing more.
He closed his eyes.
His body remained lying on the mud. His ragged breathing steadied until it resembled that of someone asleep. His muscles relaxed, and his face emptied of all visible emotion. But inside, his chakra began to move like a swarm of ants, coursing through every meridian, every channel, every pore where the poisoned rain had entered. Cleansing and purifying the numbing poison.