The southeastern district of the Uchiha Compound, third alley.
The ordinary members of the branch family lived here. They had no fame or strength to speak of. Most of them couldn't even awaken the Three-Tomoe Sharingan. They scraped by on the meager resources allocated by the clan, and their lives were hardly better than those of ordinary villagers in Konoha.
Uchiha Makoto was thirty-two. His wife was named Uchiha Rise. They had a daughter named Uchiha Izumi.
She had just turned five that year.
At that moment, Makoto lay on his back on the steps outside his front door. A Kunai had pierced his throat, and blood flowed down the stone steps, gleaming dark red in the moonlight. His eyes were still open. His Sharingan—only a One-Tomoe Sharingan—had lost its light.
He had rushed outside to investigate as soon as he heard a noise beyond the courtyard wall.
Then an infiltrating Sunagakure ninja had slit his throat with a single stroke.
Rise hid in the storeroom behind the house, holding Izumi in her arms. She covered her daughter's mouth with one hand, desperately trying to keep her quiet. She was trembling too, shaking so hard her teeth chattered. But she didn't dare cry, call out, or even breathe loudly.
The house next door was already on fire.
Firelight flickered through the gaps in the paper windows, illuminating the storeroom in fits and starts. Footsteps sounded outside—not just one person's.
"Hiss—"
Someone kicked open the storeroom door.
Rise jerked her head up.
Two people stood in the doorway, one tall and one short. The tall one wore a Sunagakure mask and held a curved blade, blood still dripping from its edge. The shorter one wore the standard uniform of an Iwagakure Ninja, his hands forming seals as pale yellow Earth Release