Two months of relentless effort had transformed the Blackwood Outpost. The palisade was whole, the gate was strong, and the longhouse was dry and secure. The men had even taken to calling the place "The Mire," a term of grim endearment for the home they were building with their own sweat and blood. But as the physical structure grew stronger, a new, more pressing vulnerability emerged: hunger.
Their initial rations were nearly gone, and the small garden plot, while promising, would not yield a meaningful harvest for months. The game in the immediate woods was scarce and small. They needed a larger, more reliable source of food if they were to survive the coming winter. The answer, as it was for all things in this place, lay in the Cursed Marshes.
"The marsh provides," Brandt said one evening, gesturing with a stick towards the vast swamp. "There are creatures in there, mire-boars and gator-lizards, big enough to feed us for a week. But they're armored, fast, and a damned sight meaner than any bandit."
Kaelen listened, his eyes reflecting the firelight. "Then we will hunt them," he stated simply. "Tomorrow at dawn. Brandt, you're with me. Bring Hake and Finn; their eyes are sharpest."
The Cursed Marshes were another world. A thick, humid canopy blocked out most of the sun, casting the world in a perpetual green twilight. The air was heavy, smelling of mud and sweet decay. Strange, fleshy-looking fungi glowed with a faint phosphorescence on the trunks of cypress-like trees, and the dark, brackish water bubbled in places with pockets of flammable gas.
Hake and Finn, the two designated trackers, moved with a hunter's caution. Kaelen's perception, however, was on another level entirely. His enhanced sight pierced the marsh's veil of secrecy. He noted the lingering heat signature of a recent trail, the displacement of water by a submerged animal, and the quiet energy of camouflaged life forms, guiding his men around unseen dangers with an assurance that left the veteran trackers unnerved.
After hours of tracking, they found their quarry. It was a gator-lizard, a creature nearly fifteen feet long, its body covered in thick, overlapping plates of bone-like armor that shone with a dull, oily sheen. It lay partially submerged near a murky pool, its yellow eyes watching them with a cold, reptilian intelligence.
"Gods' teeth," Finn breathed. "That hide will turn a spear, let alone an arrow."
"We need to hit the eye, or maybe the throat if it raises its head," Brandt whispered, nocking an arrow.
They tried for the better part of an hour. They maneuvered, trying to get a clear shot. Brandt loosed two arrows; one glanced off the creature's armored snout with a loud crack, the other vanished into the water. The gator-lizard was deceptively fast, turning to meet every threat, its armored head protecting its vulnerable neck. It was an impasse. The perfect food source was right there, but it was a living fortress they could not breach.
While Brandt and the others kept it distracted, Kaelen fell back behind a curtain of hanging moss, his mind racing. Brute force was failing. A normal projectile was useless. He needed something that could pierce the armor. Not through sharpness, but through a different principle entirely.
Heat.
The idea struck him with the force of a physical blow. The frustration of his nightly failures with the leaf exercise coalesced into a single, desperate thought. He needed to channel his chakra, his internal energy, into an object and super-heat it. He had failed to make a leaf stick, but perhaps the intensity of a life-or-death situation was the catalyst he needed.
He picked up a smooth, flat stone from the damp ground, about the size of his palm. Closing his eyes, he ignored the distant shouts of his men. He focused inward, seeking that familiar, coiled well of energy. This time, he didn't just push. He visualized. He remembered the diagrams from his old life—the flow of energy, the spin of particles. He drew the chakra up, but instead of letting it dissipate at his skin, he willed it to flow down his arm and into the stone.
His Sharingan flared to life behind his closed eyelids, allowing him to see the process internally. He saw the faint blue energy seeping into the rock. It was clumsy, inefficient, with most of it leaking away as useless heat, but some of it was taking hold. He then focused on the next step, the memory of a flame, the concept of fire. He molded the chakra, forcing a change in its nature.
The stone in his hand grew warm, then hot. He opened his eyes. The rock was glowing with a faint, dull red, like a dying coal. It wasn't enough.
"My lord, it's coming this way!" Hake yelled.
The pressure mounted. Kaelen gritted his teeth, pouring more of his will into the stone. The red glow brightened, shifting to a vibrant, angry orange. A low hum vibrated through his hand, and the air around the stone shimmered with intense heat.
He stepped out from behind the moss. The gator-lizard, having tired of the game, was charging towards Brandt. Its massive jaws were open, ready to snap him in two.
Time seemed to slow as Kaelen's Sharingan tracked the creature's path, calculating its velocity and predicting its next movement. He saw the slight dip of its head as it prepared to bite, exposing the softer joint where its neck met its shoulder for a fraction of a second.
That was his target.
With a sharp, whip-like flick of his wrist, he flung the glowing stone. It flew through the humid air, not a rock, but a miniature meteor. It struck the gator-lizard precisely in the vulnerable joint.
There was no explosion. There was only a sickening, sizzling hiss. The super-heated projectile didn't bounce off; it melted through. Armor, scale, and flesh vaporized in its path as it burned deep into the creature's body, searing through vital organs.
The gator-lizard let out a horrifying, high-pitched shriek that was abruptly cut short. Its charge faltered, and the massive beast crashed to the ground, twitching once before falling completely still.
Silence descended upon the marsh, broken only by the sizzling sound coming from the small, glowing hole in the creature's side.
Brandt, Hake, and Finn stared, their mouths agape. They looked from the dead monster to the uncanny wound, and then to their young lord. Kaelen stood calmly, his right hand slightly reddened, a thin wisp of smoke curling from his fingertips.
This was not Anima. This was not Aether. This was a new and terrible form of power.
Kaelen looked at the result, a cold satisfaction settling in his chest. He had done it. He had not only secured their survival for the next month, but he had forged his first weapon from nothing but a rock and his own will. He gave the technique its name, a secret kept in the silence of his mind.
Katon: Haijin Dan no Jutsu. Fire Style: Cinder Dart Jutsu.
The first building block of the Uchiha martial doctrine was now in place.