storm-bound child
—the storm is not kind. but it remembers—
The climb wasn’t meant for mortals.
The air grew cruel just past the treeline, the temperature dropping like a warning. Old roots twisted like gnarled hands across the path, and the rocks—slick with mist—threatened to throw Boruto down with every step. He was already bleeding when he reached the jagged ridge near the summit, his palms scraped raw, knees buckling beneath the thin weight of his soaked tunic.
But he didn’t stop. He hadn’t stopped since the dream. No—since the calling.
They’d told him, since birth, that he was blessed. Not quite mortal, not quite divine. That the Sun himself had once descended to walk among men, and for one fleeting spring, loved a woman so deeply the world bloomed brighter for it. That when she died, the sun wept fire into the sky.
And left his child behind.
Boruto.
Sunborn.
People bowed to him. Elders whispered his name like he was some unfinished scripture. Temple girls left gifts by his chamber doors. But Boruto never felt blessed. He felt… empty. Half-lit. Flickering. The sun never came to him.
There were signs, yes. Warmth when he cried. A hawk made of fire that circled above when he turned sixteen. But never words. Never presence. Never a father.
Only silence. Except—not always.
There was one shrine in the village temple no one went near. Tucked in the farthest alcove, blackened with soot and time. They called it the Storm Shrine. Warded it with charms. Said the god who watched from its altar was cold and cruel and unyielding. Said he cursed those who offered him their devotion. But Boruto did.
When he was small, he crept in with rice cakes and whispered prayers. When he was older, he left offerings of firewood and ink and the things he didn’t tell anyone he needed—guidance. Peace. Answers.
Sometimes, when he knelt, the wind would rise.
-___________________-
He reached the peak just as the storm cracked open.
The sky split with rage—silver and black, pulsing with fury—and the wind howled like a wounded animal. Boruto stood in the center of it all, arms spread, hair plastered to his face, throat raw from the climb.
He wasn’t sure what made him scream it, only that it tore out of him like truth:
“If I’m yours—then claim me!
If I’m not, then strike me down!”
The thunder answered.
Not from above. From within.
A sudden pain—blinding, white-hot—ripped through his chest, and Boruto collapsed. The earth spun sideways. The sky turned to bone.
And lightning fell.
He didn’t scream.
He saw everything.
Not in images, but in feeling: power, grief, silence, war, old rage blooming like bruises across the heavens. He saw a god weeping under a tree. A figure made of flame chasing shadows across a battlefield. A memory burned into time, of two hands—one golden, one blackened—reaching for each other and missing, again and again.
And beneath it all:
A gaze.
Sharp. Heavy. Watching.
When he opened his eyes, the pain was gone.
A hand rested against his cheek—cool, steady.
And before him stood Sasuke.
He was not like the statues. No divine armor. No weapon crackling with lightning. He stood barefoot in the storm, dark robes shifting like mist around him. His face—sharp and unreadable—was pale in the flickering light, glowing with eternal youth. One eye, violet like a lightning flash frozen in obsidian, stared into Boruto’s soul.
He looked at Boruto the way the storm looked at the sea: ancient. Knowing. Unmoved.
Boruto choked on breath. “You heard me.”
A beat of silence. Then—
“I have always heard you.”
His voice was like distant thunder. Steady. Final.
Boruto’s heart twisted. “Why didn’t you answer?”
Sasuke crouched before him, and Boruto couldn’t breathe. His presence—cold, not unkind—wrapped around him like a cloak. Sasuke reached out, touched the scar where the lightning had marked Boruto’s chest. It glowed, faintly blue-white.
“Because you weren’t asking the right question.”
Boruto swallowed. “Then—what is it? What’s the question?”
Sasuke’s gaze was unreadable. Not cruel. Not soft.
Just honest.
“You ask who you are. As if divinity is inheritance. As if power is love.
The sun gave you his fire. Your mother, her heart. But the storm…”
A pause. His hand hovered at Boruto’s jaw.
“The storm gave you voice.”
Boruto blinked and inhaled as if ready to speak, but Sasuke looked away. Toward the dark clouds.
“You look like him,” he said, so quiet it could’ve been the wind.
“Too much.”
Boruto’s throat closed.
No one ever said his father’s name. Not directly. No one dared.
But now he saw it—really saw it.
The way Sasuke looked at him, not with pity or reverence, but recognition.
He was not just a demigod.
He was the echo of something Sasuke had loved once.
Boruto’s voice cracked. “What… am I?”
The wind slowed. Sasuke’s hand moved, gently, to his hair—like a father grounding a wayward child. It was the first touch Boruto had ever known from something divine.
“Mine.”
And Boruto broke.
Not in pain. Not in fear.
He broke in relief.
In the feeling of being seen.
He pressed his forehead to the god’s shoulder and didn’t care that he was trembling. Sasuke didn’t embrace him. But he didn’t pull away, either.
They stayed like that as the clouds shifted overhead.
Boruto whispered, “Will you teach me?”
Sasuke nodded. “If you can bear it.”
A flick of his fingers, and lightning danced down the mountainside like a silver river.
“The storm is not kind,” Sasuke said. “But it remembers.
And so must you.”