Bonus Chapter!

The first chapter of a future fic called The Wolves Will Eat You

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Story Warning: This story contains dark themes surrounding the fictitious religion Jashinism. There will be multiple depictions, both graphic and not, of blood, gore, sacrifice, ritual, self-harm, suffering, and death.

For the sake of the reader, each chapter will begin with short warnings of what the chapter will contain. Please heed those warnings.

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Kötü Kalp: The Written Word of Jashinism's Teachings

{Excerpt 01: From Tenets}

Tenet 8

Two Holy Days are observed; the birth and death of Jashin's human experience.

To celebrate The Birth, worshipers must participate in celebrations from sunrise to nightfall on the second day of April. This signifies our elation for our God to have been brought into this world to expound on the understanding of true suffering.

To celebrate The Death, worshipers must embed a needle in the palm of their most dominant hand from sunrise to nightfall on the twenty-eighth day of March. This signifies our small sacrifice in our understanding of when our God's human body had been found with thirty-five stakes driven into Their body, ending Their earthly inhabitance.

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Six-year-old Haruno Sakura swung her legs back and forth, back and forth, as she perched up on one of the fences that surrounded a nearby sheep farm. She giggled as they grazed on green grasses; they've been getting really big! It was going to be warmer in a few weeks and soon she couldn't wear her favorite green sweaters unless she wanted to be sweaty all the time, and that meant all the farms would be covered in wool stacks.

Her and all the other kids waited for the farmers to make wool piles so they could climb onto barn roofs and jump into them. They were chased off those properties all the time, but she could always hear the farmers laughing behind them.

A sheep bleated and a lamb pranced by her feet, and Sakura looked up into the bright blue sky and breathed in the crisp, Yugakure air. It would be her birthday in a couple days and Mama and Papa said they were going to take her down for a day at the coast! She was going to splash in the water, make lots of sand castles, and watch the fishers catch her favorite anchovies!

The same lamb passed by her feet again, and she watched as it sniffed at a broken part of the fence post.

"That's not food," Sakura frowned. She gasped when it started to squeeze itself through. "No, no, no—M-Mr. Farmer!"

She whipped her head up at the distant house. They probably couldn't hear her from so far out in the grazing pastures, but maybe if she yelled loud enough—

The lamb tumbled out the other side of the fence, shook itself off, and pranced across the path and into the wilderness.

"No! No, baby sheep! Come back!" Sakura threw her legs over the post and slid her way back onto the ground. Once her shoes flattened the grass and she caught her balance, she dashed into the woods. "Baby sheep! Mama says not t'go inta' the trees and your Mr. Farmer's gonna get mad!!"

The trees in Steam Country were nowhere near as thick as they were in the bordering country of Fire with their lighter woods and thinner trunks, but the land was uneven in its rocky terrain and staggering plateaus. The underbrush scratched against her already scabbed knees as she hopped over big rocks and skidded over dirt, and right when she could see that fluffy white behind, she pushed herself faster and faster and pitched herself forward.

Dust sprayed in her mouth and tiny pebbles dug into her skin through her shirt. She's lucky the lamb was a couple-week-old runt that was small enough to wrap her arms around as she rolled, landing on her back with a short oof as the animal sprawled on her front.

"Baa!" the lamb complained. Sakura sat up, shaking the hair out of her eyes and spitting a strand out of her mouth. The lamb shifted on her lap, its amber eyes bright and its rectangle pupils unsettling.

"You're very bad," she berated. "Your Mama an' Papa are gon' be very upset you ran away!" Her tongue stuck out. "You're very soft, but you're a bad baby!"

"Baa—a!"

Sakura huffed before she glanced around her. Maybe there weren't that many trees, but the ones around her were... tall. And she could see the mountain ranges in the distance. And she didn't recognize any of the bushes around her. And she didn't know what direction she came from.

Oh. She was lost.

Green eyes glared down at short curls of wool. She'd never been lost off-path before, especially since Mama told her to always watch her feet and Papa said that if she wanted to catch lizards, she had to be with him or another adult at all times. And it wasn't like she tried to get lost—what would've happened to the baby if she didn't go after it? Its Mama and Papa would be sad and so would Mr. Farmer if it didn't come back or was hurt by snakes or wolves or brown bears that her Papa told her weren't nice like her stuffed ones in her room.

But... But she'd find her way back to the farm! She would! She'd give the baby to Mr. Farmer and tell him it was a bad baby that went through the fence when it wasn't supposed to, and then she'd head back home all by herself because she was a big girl, and big girls were strong.

In the distance, something crunched.

Sakura tensed as the little lamb stretched out its neck to chomp on a patch of grass, unconcerned with the following sounds of shuffling rocks. She scrambled back as quickly as her feet could propel her and once she collided with a tree trunk, she frantically searched around her until her eyes landed on a bulk slowly making its way towards her.

"Wolfie, please don't come closer," she whispered. She clutched the lamb close to her chest. "Please? Please, Wolfie, please, please, please..."

The wolf crept into the streams of sunlight, bright beams of yellow white Sakura had only ever known the easy warmths of. Wolves she'd only seen as flashes through trees or shadows on cliffs when she could hear their howl-songs at night, but she'd never seen one close enough to pick out the pretty colors of their eyes. At least once a week Mama warned her: stay out of the woods, stay on the path, never venture into the dark on your own, or kurtlar seni yiyecek.

But... But what if this wolf was a good wolf? Its nose was wet like all the Akbash doggies the farmers' had, but its ears were pointed and its head was bent down low on the dirt. Its eyes—bright, bright yellow eyes—weren't big and didn't ask for lots of head pats, instead pinning her in place and froze all the blood around her bones.

She liked the farmers' doggies. She didn't like this one.

The wolf took another cautious step towards her and she whimpered. She hoped the lamb would run away fast if the wolf went after her first.

Kurtlar seni yiyecek.

"You're a good Wolfie, I know it. Mama says the Wolfies don't go after people 'less they go off the path. I was bad and I went off the path. 'm sorry." She sniffed. "I don't want to get eated. Please don't eat me."

Kurtlar seni yiyecek.

Her bottom lip wobbled. "But you're gonna eat me, huh?"

The wolf took another step, and something flung itself down into the space between the girl and the beast and screamed.

Sakura nearly ended up screaming herself at the sound—the tension in her throat building, building, building, caught—until she spotted the backs of two legs right in front of her face. The human feet were bundled in those special black shinobi sandals and when she looked up, up, up, there was a shiny kusarigama swinging at the hip with a metal skull at the end of the chain, and up, up, upper she saw a head of messy pale hair that shook as the scream got even louder.

The wolf reared back before turning tail and darting back through the underbrush from where it first emerged. A few seconds passed in the silent forest, the only noises being the shinobi catching their breath and the lamb nosing the ground, unconcerned at almost becoming dog food.

Sakura gulped. "U-Um..."

The shinobi turned around to glare down at her. He was a boy older than her but not old enough to have lost the baby fat in his cheeks, and his Yugakure hitai-ate was tied loosely around his neck for all to see. "What's the big idea, kid? Don't go into the forest or kurtlar seni yiyecek!"

She puffed out her cheeks. The wolves will eat you. She knew that, chanted that to herself the hundreds of times she ran into the forest—"But the baby!"

"Hah? What ba..." The boy trailed off once he finally noticed the lamb wrapped securely in her arms. A loud sigh burst out his mouth as he pushed a hand through his hair to stop the strands from tickling his forehead. "Lemme guess. The lamb, like, ran away or something and you went after it."

"Uhuh."

"And when you got into that forest you didn't know how deep you went until you got lost."

"Uhuh."

"Then you almost got eaten by a wolf."

Sakura bobbed her head. "Uhuh."

"Jeez," he sighed again. He bent down to pluck the lamb and tuck the offending animal under one of his arms. "Alright, alright, get your butt up. We gotta get you home. Where d'you live?"

"My house is green!"

"... Okay. Uh, is there anything around your house that's there and nowhere else?"

"Mm... uhuh! We live by the big cherry farms with the sourest cherries that make my face go like this when I eat them!" She scrunched up her face as much as she could, earning herself a huff of amusement from the shinobi. "But don't forget 'bout the seeds. Mama said you're not s'pposed to eat the seeds or else they'll grow in your tummy."

"Oh, the cherry farm with the orange scarecrow? What the hell was his name... Pump... Pumpkin Face?"

"Pumpkin Head!"

"Yeah, I know where that is. First, we're gonna drop the lamb back—" he jostled his arm a bit and earned himself a miffed BAAA for his troubles— "and then we'll get you back in one piece, kid." He held the top of her head with his free hand, turned her in one direction, and gently tossed her forward. "This way. Don't trip."

She had absolutely no idea which way they were going, but Mama told her not to talk to strangers unless they wore the metal headbands with the country's symbol in the center. Shinobi were very strong and were supposed to protect the citizens, she said, and the ones with the pendant were the ones to trust the most.

"I'm gonna be seven soon! That's a big girl number, and that means big girls don't trip." Sakura hopped over a rock as big as her foot for emphasis and looked up at him like it proved all her points in the world. It must have, since it made him laugh again. There's a silver chain around his neck, but whatever was at the end was tucked under his shirt and out of sight. "But when I'm bigger I'll be able to carry the baby sheep too! Mama's full Yuan and Papa's from Ishi, but Mama says I got enough Yuan t'carry the big big sheeps when I'mma grown up!"

More hair flopped over the shinobi's forehead and he pushed it back. Wasn't he annoyed that his hair wouldn't listen?

"Yeah?"

"Yeah!" she parroted excitedly. "And when I can carry big sheeps that means I'm strong, and when I'm strong that means I can follow the bones." When her head raised, a flutter of pink hair swayed around her face. "Do you know 'bout the bones?"

"'Course I know," he answered. Any natural born in Steam Country knew about the bones in the hidden ghost town, home to a single shrine and uninhabited for over a hundred years. The town was in the country, somewhere, said to only be accessed by Their hand-picked worshipers, whomever they may be. It was one of the country's best kept secrets right beside the truth about the country's roots in religion.

(The people never talk, so the outsiders never learn that children are told bedtime stories about skeletons in the windows and the lingering scent of iron in the air.)

Sakura smiled. "I like the stories 'bout the skel-tons," she said. He did, too. "But I think Mama's telling them wrong."

"How come?"

The ones about the skeletons were the most famous ones; at one point or another believers had dreamt of white bone against a pitch black backdrop, had been shown pristine skulls with empty eyes and sharp edges, and were told how to break each one cleanly and quickly and beautifully. But walking, waking skeletons weren't real—

"I saw a skel-ton once," the little girl said. "Mama was working in her work room, Papa was out, I was coloring with crayons, and the skel-ton was in the backyard. It was real big and wore a pretty kimono, and-and the head looked like a daddy sheep with big horns!"

The shinobi sort of... stopped, and glanced down at her. Curious. Confused. They were only a little bit away from the main path now and the trees had begun to thin out and to be honest, he was getting tired of carrying around the lamb, but, "You saw a skeleton wearing a kimono? And it's head was a ram skull? Did it... with black horns?"

"Uhuh. And it looked like the swirly desserts at Matsu-san's bakery."

"Was there anything else weird about the skull? Scars? Breaks? Symbols?"

Sakura nodded at the last question and pointed to the middle of her own forehead. "It was on the skull right here! The circle with the upside down triangle in really bright red! I told Mama, but she said it wasn't nice to make things up." She pouted. "But I wasn't making up. S'not nice to tell lies."

(He doesn't tell her he'd seen it too. Once, a couple years back when he'd chalked it up to a couple of his dumbass classmates. He hadn't seen the ram skull skeleton again after that.)

The main path peeked out at them from the start of the treeline, and Sakura hurried to breach the full sunlight. Up and down the old cobbled path she looked, the one that snaked through Yugakure and around all the farms surrounding the village, and hurried farther down the path to point at the spot on the fence she'd been sitting on earlier.

"The baby sheep got by right here!" she pointed. The shinobi wandered over and squatted down with a sigh.

"Yeah, the fence looks pretty busted. Hold this for a sec," he said. He handed over the lamb, a task that Sakura jumped to with only a bit of stumbling. By the time she'd looped one arm under its stomach and the other under its shoulders and through its front legs to hold a hand against its neck, the shinobi had whipped out a shiny knife from the pouch on his thigh and was fiddling with the loose fence post.

She stretched her neck to peer over fluffy white wool. "Dont'cha need nails? An' hammers?"

"Ain't my fence, ain't my problem."

"But you're fixin' it."

"Temporarily."

"What's that?"

"Means it'll be enough to keep the lamb from leaving again. Now shut up," he said as he cocked his head at the definitely lamb-sized gap the broken post made. Sakura pouted. What a meanie.

He held the wood plank parallel to the ground and against the vertical post it had once been attached to and slammed the kunai through the spot where the nail used to be. "Perfect."

Sakura was decidedly unimpressed. "That's gonna work?"

"It's good enough." He took the lamb back and deposited it on the other side of the fence. It collapsed in a heap, a bewildered baa-a-a bursting from its mouth as it staggered back onto its hooves and trotted off to where most of the herd was grazing together, not once glancing back at its saviors. "Ungrateful bastard," he grumbled. "Shoulda left—"

Something blunt butted into the side of his stomach. When he looked down, the brat's front bangs were mussed and she held an offending fist close to her face. Not that the fist was anything close to offensive when getting hit by it felt like getting whacked with a bag of marshmallows.

"Don't say bad words!"

He leaned over her, a more-than-provoking grin twisting his lips. "Or what?"

"Or! Or!" Sakura puffed out her cheeks and bunched her fists at her sides. "Or when I'm big and a shinobi and strong I'mma kick your butt!"

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Haruno Mebuki was in the middle of opening a new bag of soil when the front door rang. She wasn't expecting any visitors and whenever her little troublemaker came back home from her 'adventures' she always came in through the back, so when she tugged off her gardening gloves and crossed through the house to answer the front door, she was a little surprised to see a young teenage boy standing on her welcome mat as said little troublemaker hung from his side, one of his arms around her middle like she was a sack of potatoes.

"Is this yours?" he asked.

"I'm a big girl!" Sakura declared with the biggest, cutest pout on her face. "My legs work!"

"You're too short to keep up with me!"

"You're too tall t'be nice!"

Mebuki bit the inside of her cheek to hold down her laugh.

"She got lost in the woods," the boy told her as he finally let go. But Sakura lunged at him immediately and swung her tiny fists. He held her head and pushed her out of arm's reach. "There was a lamb that ran away and she went after it, but I was training in the area so I heard all the commotion."

"Sakura," Mebuki admonished. Sakura finally looked up to her mother with those big doe eyes and blushed. "You know you're not supposed to go into the woods or kurtlar seni yiyecek."

"But I didn' want the baby hurt," the six year old replied. "It went out the fence and it was all alone so I got it back. And the meanie helped!"

Mebuki sighed, exasperated, but she knew she was more amused than anything. Sakura never went out of her way to get into trouble and aside from the scrapes she got from playing around the farms with all the other kids, she was a smart little darling that liked drawing impaled skeletons and putting together jigsaw puzzles on the living room carpet.

And if she only went into the woods because she wanted to save an animal, then, well...

"Alright, you won't get into any trouble this time," she gave in. Before her daughter could cheer, however, "but you know we shouldn't call other people 'meanies'."

The boy grinned. Sakura was horrified.

"But he is!"

"Sakura."

The girl reluctantly turned towards the shinobi and looked up. "'M sorry I called you a meanie," she apologized mulishly. "Thank you for taking me back."

His magenta eyes shone with mirth as he tousled her hair, sending pink strands tangled and flying as she sputtered. "Just don't get into any trouble until you're able to kick my butt."

Sakura stomped a foot. "I will! One day I'mma kick your butt and you can't stop me!"

"Well for now, no one is kicking anyone else's butts in front of my house," Mebuki announced firmly as she ducked back inside for a moment, "meaning that you're done playing for the day—" Sakura nodded and stepped through the door— "and for you, young man—" Mebuki came back out the door with a white paper bag that she handed over. "I'd like to thank you for bringing my baby home safe and sound. Take some şöbiyet for the road."

"Whoa, sweet! Thanks, miss!" He opened the bag and shoved one of the pastries into his mouth. "Uh, have a nice day!"

Sakura popped out from behind her mother's legs and thrust out a hand to wave. "Bye bye, meanie!"

"Sakura!"

The shinobi laughed, bits of pistachio sticking to his bottom lip. "Stay outta the woods, Pinkie!"

And he was down the street before they knew it, his kusarigama swinging, his hitai-ate gleaming, his—Mebuki gasped quietly—his white gold necklace mostly hidden under his shirt.

She shook her head and shooed her daughter inside and followed her into the kitchen. She smiled as her little girl hoisted herself onto a kitchen stool and started to talk about her day, going way back from when she first decided she was going to hang out by one of the sheep farms for the day.

She listened as she picked up the green gold necklace on the table. The chain was thin and worn from keeping it close day after day for the past twenty or something years, but the pendant was just as polished and intact as the day she'd received it as her first blessing.

"—can't wait 'til I can carry big sheeps!" Sakura exclaims. "Just like you and Papa can!"

"We only carry the sheep if they've run off from the farms," Mebuki reminded her. One of her fingers traced the lines of the pendant, first the flipped triangle, then the circle encompassing it, before she clasped it around her neck and slipped it under her collar. "Oh! Your papa will be back from his merchant route tomorrow! Are you excited to go to the coast?"

Sakura smiled, toothy and free, as she jumped off the stool with stars in her eyes and clutched the material of her mother's white dress. Those eyes were so green—a green unlike both her own and Kizashi's. Somehow they were darker and richer and so full of promise that Mebuki just knew those eyes would come to mirror blood and iron and prayer.

She bent down and pressed a flurry of kisses on Sakura's pink cheeks. "I'm excited too! But for right now, will you help Mama take care of the garden?"

"Okay!"

"Thank you, baby." Mebuki pressed another kiss on her forehead and headed for the backyard.

(She doesn't see Sakura catching sight of pitch black horns disappearing behind the window pane.

She doesn't see Sakura running towards the window, popping it open, and leaning out.

No one's there.)

"Sakura!" she called as she tugged on her gardening gloves.

"Coming!"

(And she doesn't see the frown on her little troublemaker's face as she hopped back into the house, leaving behind an open window and the shadow of a ram skull looming amidst the sunlight pouring into the kitchen.)