Chapter 12: The Survivor’s Path

  Nine months of blood, fire, and silent graves.

  Following his skirmish at the border, Uchiha Ren was officially promoted to Chūnin. There was no celebration, no ceremony—just a curt announcement and a new set of missions. His name was quietly added to a new squad, and the grind began.

  Unlike his patrol days, these were high-risk operations: infiltration, assassination, supply route sabotage, and ambush recovery. Missions that blurred the line between survival and sacrifice.

  Each one tested him more than the last.

  At first, his team functioned well—four members with decent synergy. But fate was merciless.

  On their third mission, they encountered an elite ambush squad from Iwagakure. The terrain gave the enemy an edge. Ren's squad leader was the first to fall, crushed beneath a landslide ninjutsu. Ren barely escaped with two others.

  The survivors were reassigned and patched into another unit.

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  Two months later, during a siege diversion mission in the Thunder Forests, Ren’s new squad was wiped out. He emerged from the firestorm burned, bloodied, and barely alive. The only thing that saved him was his instinct—and the still-growing strength of his gene cultivation.

  By the sixth month, he'd gone through five different squads. Every one of them perished.

  He was beginning to feel cursed.

  The camp started whispering. “The lone Uchiha,” they called him. “Black-eyed death.” Not out of fear—but out of awe. And maybe a little superstition.

  But Ren wasn’t proud. He felt each name etched in his memory, each death like a ghost on his back. There were nights he’d stare at the heavens, Sharingan spinning in the dark, wondering if he’d become numb—or just stronger.

  His body bore the scars. One mission left him with a punctured lung. Another nearly severed his right arm. But he survived.

  And each time he healed, he trained harder.

  The Mortal Genesis Stage gave him extraordinary regeneration and strength. His reflexes now rivaled elite Jōnin. Still, he couldn't afford arrogance. The battlefield punished pride with death.

  One rainy night, after returning from a solo retrieval mission, he collapsed outside the medical tent—his body soaked in blood that wasn’t just his.

  “Still alive, huh?” one of the veteran medics muttered, stitching him up without emotion. “You’re too stubborn to die.”

  Ren said nothing.

  But inside, he made a vow.

  This war wouldn’t take him. Not until he had something worth dying for.

  And when he closed his eyes that night, his thoughts drifted not to the fallen…

  …but to Mikoto’s promise.

  A promise waiting on the other side of this nightmare.