**Exhausted…**
So… so tired…
Her body felt like a slab of stone, her eyelids stitched shut with invisible thread. The blood-soaked girl lay on the ground, struggling to open her eyes as her small chest heaved violently.
Under the night sky, a sickly yellow crescent moon hung dimly, its light weak and suffocated.
The mist around her was so thick it felt solid. With every breath, the metallic stench of blood flooded her lungs, drowning her in a terrifying sense of suffocation.
**Where… am I?**
The unfamiliar scene jolted her mind awake.
She looked down.
Black and red filled her vision.
**Blood.**
So much blood.
The earth looked as if it had been plowed by some monstrous beast, the soil now a grotesque mixture of crimson and mud.
Scattered across the ground were mangled corpses—limbs torn apart, skulls shattered, organs spilled like peeled and diced fruit in a pool of gelatinous gore.
The girl's scalp prickled. This slaughterhouse of human remains was straight out of a nightmare. Just last night, she had been working overtime until dawn before collapsing into bed in her cramped, dingy apartment.
And now… this.
**Did I die?**
**Is this… hell?**
**Ugh… my head… it hurts!**
A searing pain erupted in her skull. Clutching her head, the girl—**Hikari**—curled into a ball, writhing amidst the corpses. It felt like a drill boring through her brain, memories flashing and vanishing like shards of broken glass.
When she opened her eyes again, her milky-white pupils flickered with faint streaks of gray.
Finally, the agony subsided, and Hikari pieced together the absurd truth.
She had **transmigrated**—or more accurately, **reincarnated**.
This body's name was **Kaguya Hikari**.
**Gender:** Female.
**Age:** 6 years old.
**Heritage:** A mix of the **Kaguya clan** from Kirigakure (the Village Hidden in the Mist) and the **Hyūga clan** from Konoha (the Village Hidden in the Leaves).
Her mother was a member of the Hyūga main family, captured during the Third Shinobi World War by Kiri-nin **Ao**, leading to the loss of the Byakugan. Later, she was saved by Hikari's father—a Kaguya clansman. The two fell in love, and Hikari was born.
She inherited her mother's **Byakugan**, but with a faint gray hue at the center of her pupils—hence her name: **Kaguya Hikari**.
**Hyūga? Kaguya?**
**…This is the Naruto world?**
**And the current timeline… the Kaguya Clan Massacre?**
Staring at her small, bloodstained hands, Hikari's mind reeled.
**This is insane.**
The memories flooding her mind shattered the worldview she had built over thirty years in her past life. Trembling, she pushed herself up, her muscles screaming as if she'd spent a year in the gym.
Staggering to her feet, the sea of corpses and blood made her dizzy—yet weirdly familiar.
A scene from early childhood, one that should have been hazy, now replayed itself in vivid detail.
Fighting back nausea, she reached into the blood-soaked clothes of a nearby corpse, rummaging until her fingers closed around a small white pill bottle.
The bottle was cold to the touch.
On its surface was a red circle with two crimson dots positioned symmetrically inside—the **symbol of the Kaguya clan**, representing **authority and balance**.
With practiced ease, she popped the cap open, and a brown pill the size of her thumb rolled into her palm.
**Gulp!**
She didn't bother counting. Tossing several into her mouth, she forced them down, the dry, chalky taste barely registering.
**Soldier Pills.**
The shinobi world's equivalent of **energy bars**, packed with nutrients to restore chakra. Normally reserved for adult clan members in battle, finding these here only confirmed the reality of her situation.
As she waited for the pills to take effect, Hikari took stock of her surroundings.
**According to her memories…**
Last night, the Kaguya clan had clashed with Kirigakure's ANBU forces.
As a **Byakugan-wielding scout**, she had joined the main force in their desperate breakout attempt—only to run into the ANBU Commander, **"Fang"**, and his elite squad.
The outcome was predictable.
Her parents, her clan—**all slaughtered**.
Hikari herself had been **stabbed through the chest** by an unknown ANBU operative.
**So… how am I alive?**
Running a hand over her unharmed chest, she frowned at the bloodied tear in her clothes.
**No matter.**
The **how** didn't matter. The real question was—**how does she survive now?**
She needed to **escape Kirigakure**.
**BOOM!**
A deafening explosion erupted in the east, followed by screams and flames—then silence.
**Was the battle still going?**
She was currently in the **Kaguya clan's eastern district**, surrounded by ANBU forces. Even if she broke through, she'd still be trapped inside Kirigakure's borders.
**Her enemies?** One of the **Five Great Shinobi Villages**.
**Her assets?**
- **Chakra reserves** comparable to a **chūnin**.
- **Basic Gentle Fist** training.
- The **Three Basic Academy Jutsu (E-rank)**.
- And… **the corpses around her**.
As the soldier pills fully dissolved, warmth spread through her limbs, chakra surging from her core.
She wasn't in a hurry to flee yet.
Without a way past the ANBU blockade, running was pointless. If she wanted to break through, **fighting was inevitable**.
First, she needed **more resources**.
Like a scavenging hyena, she began **looting the corpses**.
**Soldier pills. Shuriken. Explosive tags.**
Anything usable.
Among the dead were familiar faces—family, friends, neighbors—and masked ANBU operatives in standard flak jackets.
Most of the gear was either spent or ruined by blood and water jutsu, but she salvaged what she could.
As she worked, a dark chuckle escaped her lips.
**"Heh…"**
She felt like a **stray dog**, picking at scraps in a battlefield graveyard.
Finally, she spotted another body—an ANBU operative with a twisted leg, his mask bearing Kirigakure's **droplet symbol**.
Eagerly, she reached into his weapon pouch—
**Wait.**
The body was **still warm**.
Before she could react, a **hand clamped around her wrist**.
**"!!!"**
The "corpse" **jerked upright**, his bloodshot eyes locking onto hers as he slashed at her throat with a kunai.
Hikari barely dodged, feeling the blade graze her hair.
The ANBU operative—**still alive**—twisted his grip, driving the kunai toward her forehead.
**No time to think.**
Her gray pupils flashed with **desperation**.
With her free hand, she **stabbed back**.
Two survivors, crawling from a mountain of corpses, now **clashed in a death struggle**, kunai aimed at each other's vitals.
**THUNK.**
The kunai **buried itself into flesh**.
Blood dripped from a split forehead, painting a red line down a lifeless face.
Hikari's arm trembled, her weapon **just short of its mark**—
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