A/N:

Inspired heavily by the Skyrim mod 'The Uchiha Clan', this story stems both from my desire for an OC story to exist in the Skyrim crossovers, and because I want to play around with the Sharingan.

I present to you a story that takes the universes of The Elder Scrolls and Naruto, mixes them together, and takes the concepts of both to (presumably) logical conclusions.

Try and stick with it, because I think you all will be rather pleased with the outcome.

Prologue

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

-Abraham Lincoln

When one is asked just what they would be willing to do for power, they would be likely to give many different, varied responses. Those born with power would be willing to do anything to get more. Those born righteous would only be willing to do that which is good to get power. Those born evil would be willing to do everything. But if one asked a weak man what he would be willing to do to get power, one would get the most interesting result.

The Masked man considered the answer of the dark-haired battle mage on the table below him. Mask had asked this man what he would be willing to do to get power, and the man had responded with 'Only what is necessary'. Where once this very man, who had been born weak and had had to work for every single thing he'd ever gained, would have said he was content with what paltry excuse he had for power was enough, now he was willing to do whatever was necessary to gain more. Nothing evidenced this more than the object which Mask removed from the Mage's coat, which hung from a rack several inches to their left. This container was filled with a very pale green liquid, and suspended within this liquid were the eyes of what had once been the single most powerful man on Nirn, but now was a rotting husk in the abandoned Naka Shrine. These very eyes would be that which would grant the Mage all the power he needed, and more, Mask knew from experience.

It was in an extended, nearly oppressive silence, that Mask gently placed the container on the table to the left, which itself had a vast amount of surgical equipment spread across it. Most of them scalpels and knives, others being anesthetics and drugs, and even a few scrolls to keep the man in the magical coma he had to stay in, lest Mask damage him irreparably.

It was as Mask put on a pair of surgeon's gloves and picked up a scalpel, that the surgeon thought on the story the nearly blind man below had gone to great lengths to explain in full.

His story had began, as did another, in Helgen. But unlike the story of the Dragonborn, who would find his place in Nord legends, the story of Markus Nil was far more personal, far more grounded. He awoke this morning, as he would many others, in bed with his lady wife, though unique to him would be the sounds of his infant screaming its head off, demanding milk, demanding a changed undergarment, or simple wailing its desire for attention.

Markus slowly rose to a seating position, his legs swinging out in front of him, landing softly on the chilled wooden floor. With a deep, exhausted sigh, he rubbed the bridge of his nose and tried to remove the sleep from his eyes, his child wailing the entire time.

"Do you have it?" His similarly exhausted wife asked from the other side of the bed.

"I do." Markus nodded, before he brushed his hand through his long, jet-black hair and stood up. It only took a few steps for his lean, muscular legs to make it from his bed to the baby's carriage, and the screaming half-elven child calmed down almost instantly after its father was sighted. "Hello, little one." Markus said lowly, but friendly, as he reached inside to pick the child up. "What is it you need now?" He did the usual ritual, checked its diaper and gave it some attention. His daughter slowly began to get rampant again, and Markus soon came to a conclusion. "You are hungry, aren't you?" He asked, "alright... Alright, calm down." He said softly, exiting the room and making his way to the stair case. He and his wife lived in a quaint two-story home in the out-of-the-way city of Helgen; with him being the unofficial magical adviser to the Jarl and a trusted source for work in the citys' guard, he certainly wasn't hurting for comfort.

However, his lifestyle shown in the spartan nature of his home. It had only what it needed, and the little more that it was afforded came from his wife. He ignored much of his furnishings, instead going straight for the kitchen, where he found a small potion his wife had had her friend make. For when she was too exhausted to feed the infant, this potion was the next best thing, and Markus didn't question it, as it made its effectiveness readily apparent when it quieted down the crying infant immediately after she began drinking.

"There we go." Said Markus, gently cooing his child, a small smile stretching across his face as he looked in to her eyes. Two deep, onyx orbs, inherited directly from her father, though the liquid gold sclera were certainly gifts from the elvish side of her family, no doubt. "There's a good girl." He said absently, as his daughter drank her fill, content that her needs were being met. Markus had once joked to his wife that little Rela could dominate even the Greybeards' voices with her shouts.

Soon, the infant was finished with her food and, after her father rocked her back to sleep, was brought back to her carriage to rest. Markus considered sleeping again, but by now he was far too awake, and was recalling details of the previous days, the most important being his promise to assist Rigna in the stables, as she was convinced one of her horses had been bewitched. He also had a few errands to run and a book to pick up, so he may as well start now, the sun was up.

"Ruma." He said softly, placing his hand on his wife's shoulder. "I am going to head out."

"Please pick up cheese from the general store." Murmured the tired altmer, "and don't forget my book."

Markus smiled, "of course. I'll be back." He said, before he got dressed in good, comfortable work-clothes – a pair of trousers and a well-worn miner's T-Shirt - and fetched his coat. The coat being a gift of his wife's creation, it was a thin, comfortable piece of clothing, that stretched past the back of his knees and came to just above his calves. It contained upon it an enchantment on it so that, no matter what elements it faced, be it extreme heat or the unending cold of Skyrim, he would always stay at the same temperature. Such magic was beyond the Nord, but he appreciated it nonetheless, and wore it nearly everywhere.

Exiting his home, Markus took in a deep breath of the freezing Skyrim air. Today was warmer than most others, but that helped little, because 'warmer' than below freezing still meant that it was freezing cold. That in mind, he wrapped his hands in gloves and strode out in to the road, noting with interest the sound of multiple approaching hooves and the turning of wooden wheels. He looked to Helgen's main gate and could see in the distance an approaching convoy, Imperials it looked like. He could almost feel the hatred in the air grow, while he personally cared not for Skyrim's civil war, many in Helgen worshiped the very ground that Ulfric Stormcloak walked upon.

"Torolf... What is that?" Markus asked as he passed his friend, pointing at the approaching Imperials. "Something going on?"

"You're damn right there's something going on." Said an obviously jubilant former-Imperial. "They did it!"

"Did what?" Markus wondered, pausing in his stride to listen to the man.

"They caught Ulfric Stormcloak!"

Now, much of the story had already been told, in some form or another. The dragons returned, Alduin attacked Helgen, the Dragonborn fled the town, no one survived. That, however, is not the story Mask had been told, and was not the story that was being focused upon; much as the Dragonborn's story was interesting, it was not the story of Markus Nil. Where the Dragonborn had escaped Helgen by the skin of his teeth, Markus had been gone already, and had subsequently missed those first six minutes in which three quarters of the town had perished. Be it through luck, divine intervention, or perhaps an ancient curse breaking through the barriers of fate, he had survived.

He would wish he hadn't.

There are a great many kinds of pain in the world. There is the subtle, slow, throbbing pain that accompanied injuries that were so low on the tiers of importance that one would forget about them as soon as they'd been recognized. There were sharp, stinging injuries of surprise that were similarly forgotten about in time. There were the continuous injuries that came with cuts and stabs, but after a month of recovery – or a few hours in the care of a mage – the intense, sharp pain would too dull in to nothingness. Then there was the blunt, continuous pain of physical trauma, of shock, of injuries to the head. This type of pain would not cease even after it was dealt with, sleep only made it worse, activity made it worse than sleep, and medicine or healing spells did little until they were finished.

Markus Nil felt that blunt trauma pain as he was slowly roused to consciousness. The back of his head hurt like he'd been punched by a drunk orc in Jorrvaskr. His body was sore, and he felt a few cuts had been carved in to his flesh, but what he noticed first above all of those things was the smell of fire. Or, perhaps to be more specific, the absence of it. Be it burnt wood, foliage, or – the Eight save him – flesh, he noticed the smell of it all before he noticed his own pain, because with the horribleness of the smell and the level of ambient heat around him, he knew that this was no small campfire or a the aftermath of a controlled burn to get rid of weeds: Something was wrong.

He forced himself to wake up completely, and when his eyes opened he noted immediately how dark the sky was. As opposed to the earlier, dingy gray, it was now stormy-black, and whatever sky behind the stormclouds was a deep red. Markus sat up quickly, making his head shriek in pain and his world go dizzy, he reached up to cradle his head and his hands came away bloody. He bit through the pain and tried to locate himself: Where was he? A moment of searching told him he hadn't made it a few steps out of the stables, but while he couldn't find what had hit him, he could find what was making the smell of fire.

Helgen, the entire city, was burnt to the ground. Ashes floated about the air like snow, coating anything and everything in an eery gray horror.

"Ruma!" He screamed, his voice barely rising over the thunder of the clouds, before he – throwing caution to the wind – ran straight through the destroyed gates and in to the incinerated city.

The heat of the burned city around him was oppressive, but his wife's rune was stronger, and he zipped his coat up tight and continued running, one sleeve over his mouth so as to keep his lungs from being burned too bad. He sprinted along the main road and after what felt like an eternity, found his home, and almost immediately fell in to despair: There was an enormous, gaping hole in its roof, and he could still see within it the last remaining remnants of the fire that had consumed the entire village. Worse still was his entire house had none of its old color, it was all black, burnt, and ashen.

Markus didn't hesitate: He ran straight in, yelling for his wife and child as he did so. He prayed to the eight divines and the forbidden ninth that he wouldn't find any bodies, that they had made it out and were with the Imperials, or maybe in Riverwood or Whiterun. He had said a very long time ago that if something happened to him or to the village that Ruma was to go to Jorrvaskr, he had still had friends there who would recognize his seal, and would care for Ruma despite her race. Horrifyingly, Markus wondered if Ruma even remembered his instructions, or had his seal with her in the first place if she did.

"Ruma! Rela?! Where are you!?" He called out desperately; crashing through the door to his and his wife's room. He didn't hear the muffled sounds of voices distant outside, they weren't the sounds of a crying infant or a terrified elfmaiden, so they didn't even register to his panicked mind. He didn't care about the slow building pain behind his eyes either, the air was hot and the ashes were hotter, whatever it was it would pass. "Please! Answer me!" They weren't in their room, he tried the guest room and found the door was locked tight.

Markus remembered one of the earliest alteration spells he'd learned – one of the few alteration spells he'd learned – and called it to mind to increase the power in his muscles. With a loud roar and a powerful kick, the former battlemage destroyed the door to the guest room, but found that this had been the room that had been destroyed, there was no one in here.

"Rela! Daddy's here, call out to me child!" He cried desperately, before he mentally punched himself – Ruma was no fool, unlike him, she would know beforehand that heat rose, so why in Oblivion would she hide in the upper levels of the house?

These thoughts in mind, he hurried for the basement, not heeding the Imperial at his door, who called out for him to stop, that he was here to help. Markus didn't care for the Empire right now, he didn't care for the war, he didn't care about Ulfric Stormcloak or how in Oblivion the fires had started, the only thing he even remotely cared about was confirming that there weren't any charred corpses in his basement.

He stormed down stairs and in to the basement, and was frozen at what he saw: Two bodies, one tall and woman-shaped, one small and wrapped up in an infant's bundle. They both were burned almost past recognition, but Markus knew it was them, he knew it was his wife and he knew it was his child. Around the larger body's neck hung a small pendant, in the shape of an ancient fan. The colors had been bleached by flame, but he recognized it for what it was: His father's pendant that he'd given to her the night he'd proposed marriage.

He stumbled forward, his feet like lead, his blood thundering in his ears and his eyes practically on fire. He didn't hear the sounds of boots upstairs, nor did he care. He fell to his knees next to the two burnt, charred corpses, memories of his past flashing unbidden through his eyes. He remembered first meeting the elf, back during his days at the College of Winterhold, she had transferred in from the Mage's Guild in Cyrrodil, primarily for the better magical education, but also for the change in scenery. The fact that Winterhold had less of a politically charged climate helped, too, a great many people suspected her of ties to the Thalmor.

Slowly, almost disbelievingly, he reached forward and gently placed his hand on the face of the burnt husk that had been his wife. It visibly startled him when the bodies fell to ash and lost their form, they just burst and fell apart, like a sand castle being held together only by the surface tension of the dry, warm sand. Before he knew it, the corpses that had been both his wife and his child were piles of ash around his knees, the only thing left being the pendant that caught his fingers. He stared at the pendant, wide eyed and slack jawed.

It was like the damn burst at that very moment, the combination of the grief of losing his family, the rage at not being able to protect them, the shock that he was now covered in their ashes, and the horror that this had happened in one day, all welled up inside him and burst with a loud, intense roar. He shouted himself hoarse, not caring for the men in the room with him, not caring for the burning feeling in his eyes that was building to a crescendo, not caring for anything but the memories he could now never have. He saw red, he felt pressure build in his mind and around his eyes, anger, rage, sorrow, so many horrible emotions built up and burst from within as he cried, cursing the heavens.

And unbeknownst to everyone in the former city, a figure who stood at the summit of the mountain overlooking the city's burnt husk turned its blood red eyes to a single, specific building. It narrowed its eyes as the three jet black tomoe inside the red irides spun. It felt the power suddenly gushing out from the village, and though this power was soon silenced – no doubt from its possessor fainting due to the unfamiliar strain – the familiarity of it was what resonated with the figure.

It adjusted the ceramic mask it wore on its face and pulled the dark black fur hood tighter over its head. Silently remarking how interesting it was that, in the same day, the Dragons had returned, the Dragonborn had awoken, and an Uchiha had revealed himself. The figure turned and began walking down the other side of the mountain, having gotten what it needed, and making a mental note to watch this one. Perhaps he could succeed where the figure could only ever fail.

One thing was for certain, though: A new chapter was going to be written upon the pages of Tamriel History, and within it would be written the return of the Uchiha.