There's a difference between silence and stillness.
Konoha at night is silent. But never still.
Wind slips through rooftops. Shadows move even when the street is empty. Someone's always watching, reporting, thinking.
Stillness is different. Stillness is what I feel when I breathe into the ground and the ground breathes back.
We get called for a new mission two days after I log my first set of Pressure Notes.
Not high-risk. Not low-risk.
Just vague.
The kind of vague where Genma reads the scroll, makes a quiet "hm" sound, and then casually sharpens his senbon before telling us to pack for three days.
"Escort mission again?" Takkun asks, shoving snacks into his utility pouch.
"Scouting patrol," Genma says. "You're there to observe a forested zone and report changes in wildlife and terrain."
"So we're forest babysitters," I summarize.
"Essentially."
"Should we be worried?"
"Only if the trees start talking back."
Genma's humor, everybody.
We leave at dawn.
The forest lies northeast, close to the borders where Fire and Rain territories once clashed. There are ruins here—abandoned outposts, shrines swallowed by trees, places no one remembers building.
By noon we've passed three stone markers and a set of carved posts arranged in a circle. Damu swears they look like squirrel summoning totems. Takkun swears he saw one wink.
I walk with my hand near the ground.
Not because of traps.
Because of rhythm.
At camp that night, we set up near a small creek. The trees hum when the wind rolls through them. But beneath that, I feel it again.
Pressure. Layered. Deep.
I press my hand to a moss-covered rock. Pulse softly.
Crack. Pull. Hold.
The stone flexes. Not visibly—but in chakra response.
There's something buried beneath this forest. Not a seal. Not a person.
A system.
I don't say anything. Not yet.
Genma watches me. He always does.
Day two.
We map wildlife movement. Standard patterns. Until we find a clearing where the air feels wrong.
No wind.
No bugs.
No movement.
And in the center: another seal burned into a fallen tree trunk. Fainter than the last one. Cracked.
But I feel it. It hums in my teeth.
"Is that another anchor?" I whisper.
Genma nods slowly.
"How old do you think it is?"
He crouches next to it.
"Older than Konoha."
Cool cool cool.
Takkun circles the edge, senses nothing, then pokes it with a stick.
It fizzles. Pressure ripples. I instinctively brace—and the clearing shifts.
Subtle.
Like the air just inhaled.
I stagger back.
"Raika?" Damu says, eyes wide.
My hands are vibrating.
Not from fear.
From resonance.
The seal isn't reacting to chakra.
It's reacting to me.
We camp farther away that night. Takkun jokes about forest curses. Damu insists the moon winked at him.
I sit up late, staring at the blank scroll Genma gave me.
Pressure Notes – Page 2:
Two anchor formations detected within the week.
Reactivity to my chakra rhythm increasing.
Internal note: It doesn't feel like the seal is trying to activate. It feels like it's trying to align.
I don't know what I'm syncing with.
But I'm starting to wonder if I'm really the first.
Just before sleep, Genma drops a folded page near my foot. Old parchment. Half-sealed. Weathered.
On it: a diagram of chakra circulation—completely different from the Academy's.
Instead of a loop, it shows three points.
Crack. Pull. Hold.
"Where did you get this?" I ask.
He doesn't answer.
But he does say:
"Not all voids are empty."
Then he vanishes into the trees.
Leaving me with pressure in my hands and too many questions in my head.
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Every bit of support keeps the Void walking forward.
— void_chakra