A/N This is where chapters will be getting long, so bear with me!

The sky was pale with early autumn light when Sakura's first true month of solitude began. The sun rose like a slow exhale, casting long, golden fingers across the rooftops of Konoha, too soft to warm her but too bright to ignore. Naruto was gone. Sasuke was gone. And the emptiness they left behind felt heavier than any of the weighted bands strapped to her limbs, tight around her wrists, biting into her calves, an ache that mirrored the one in her chest. She didn't speak of it, not to Tsunade, whose stern eyes watched too closely, nor to Guy, whose roaring encouragement only made the silence between breaths more deafening. And certainly not to the goddess who lived in her dreams, with her radiant calm and truths Sakura wasn't ready to say aloud. But every night, when the moon hung cold and round above the village, casting frost-tinted light on her windowpane, and her bones ached from the day's grind, she would feel it. Loneliness, subtle and persistent, was woven into her muscles like fatigue; quiet, heavy, and real. It lived in the spaces between her breaths. It bloomed in the silence of her apartment after training, when the walls didn't echo with laughter or arguments anymore. The quiet was a fog that clung to her skin like damp air after a storm, and no amount of chakra could push it back, and still, she trained, because if she paused, even for a moment, she feared the silence might start to speak.

Tsunade wasted no time. Sakura's days began before sunrise, the sterile scent of antiseptic already thick in her nose by the time she reached the lower chambers of the medical wing. The rooms were dimly lit and cold, stone floors echoing each careful footstep, every breath loud in the quiet like a violation. The walls were lined with scrolls and surgical tools, glinting faintly under chakra-light panels that cast long shadows over the field dummies waiting in rows, unmoving, yet grotesquely lifelike. Each dummy bore simulated wounds in various stages of severity: lacerated arteries, collapsing lungs, fractured spines. They were chakra-sensitive constructs designed to twitch, bleed, scream if the wrong move was made. Their rubberized skin split under her scalpel like flesh; their organs throbbed with artificial pulses that mimicked arrhythmic hearts or aneurysms seconds from bursting. One even mimicked a pregnant woman in hemorrhagic shock. Sakura's trembling hands hovered over her, a second too slow.

"Too late," the voice would say, flat and final. Tsunade didn't scold, she didn't have to. The red blinking light above the dummy's heart was punishment enough. Some mornings it was poison victims, foam at their lips, bodies arching in spasm. Sakura had to identify the toxin by the tint of the tongue, the texture of vomit, the chakra fluctuation patterns in the simulated blood. She had less than two minutes to stabilize, purge, and repair internal damage. If her chakra wavered for even a second, if her focus drifted from precision to panic, the dummies seized harder, blue skin paling until they "died." The worst part wasn't the failures. It was the seconds after, the silence of her hands hovering over cooling rubber flesh, the echo of her own harsh breathing, the cold sweat down her spine as she whispered apologies to something that couldn't hear, but still, she tried again. She didn't have it in her to give up, especially now that her team was gone.

Her fingers blistered from channeling chakra too sharply through them. Her nails cracked under surgical pressure. The strain of holding delicate chakra threads for minutes on end left her with headaches that bloomed behind her eyes, nausea curling in her gut. At night she washed her hands until they were raw, scrubbing the imagined feel of blood from her skin, even though none of it had been real. But every day, she got faster. Every day, more of them "lived." Tsunade said nothing for weeks, only watching from behind a barrier, arms crossed, eyes sharp. But one morning, after Sakura kept a multi-trauma dummy alive through three flatlines and a simulated heart puncture, Tsunade gave a single nod. Not praise. Not comfort. But acknowledgement, and it meant everything.

Tsunade introduced the Case Simulation Jutsu on the second day, her tone sharp and unyielding. "These are real failures," she said, pressing a scroll into Sakura's palms. "Mistakes that cost lives. You're going to fix them." The scrolls burned cold with stored chakra, threaded with memories of medical disasters long buried. Sakura's pulse quickened the moment her fingers curled around the parchment. The jutsu activated the moment she unsealed them, and the world around her shifted violently, colors dimmed, temperature dropped, and the sterile medical wing dissolved into thick silence and flickering half-light. She wasn't in a training room anymore. She was there, inside the moment the failure had happened. Each simulation was a full sensory recreation. She could smell scorched skin from lightning jutsu mishaps, taste the bitter metallic tang of blood in the air. Screams sometimes echoed in the distance, half-remembered voices of dying shinobi, their chakra signatures flickering like dying candle flames.

Her first case was a kunoichi impaled through the side by a serrated sword. The wound had collapsed one lung and torn her liver in three places. The medic who had tried to save her panicked, sealing the lung first, but bled the liver dry in the meantime. Sakura's hands hovered over the memory, trembling as the blood gushed hot and dark. She had to ignore the twitching body, the way the woman's eyes rolled in pain. There was no medic nearby to tell her what to do. Only failure waiting to repeat itself. She adjusted. Prioritized. Siphoned blood with chakra suction and sealed the hepatic tear with a technique Tsunade had drilled into her bones the day before. Her chakra pulsed with urgency, but her control was glass-smooth. She stabilized the lung second, timing the breath cycle by the subtle rise and fall of the chest. The woman lived, barely. The simulation dissolved, leaving Sakura on her knees, heart pounding. Sweat dripped from her brow. Her fingertips were ice. Tsunade handed her another scroll without a word.

Some simulations were worse. A child whose neck was crushed by rubble. A shinobi whose chakra coils had burst from an experimental jutsu. One had three seconds before brain death from massive hemorrhage, and Sakura's first attempt ended with him gasping in her arms before fading like static. She screamed when he disappeared. She slammed her fists into the floor. And then she tried again. These weren't training dummies. These were regrets. Failures branded into the archive of the medic-nin world. Sakura had to feel each one, had to confront the moment good intentions weren't enough. But something inside her began to shift. She didn't crumble anymore when the chest cavity split too wide. She didn't flinch when bone snapped under her hands. Her chakra stopped trembling. Her breath stayed steady. Her hands no longer belonged to a twelve-year-old girl trying to escape heartbreak and abandonment, they belonged to someone rebuilding broken lives from pieces others had given up on.

By the end of the week, Tsunade finally said, "You're learning faster than I expected." Sakura didn't answer. She was already opening the next scroll.

She was also given a forbidden scroll, The 17 Failures of Miotic Regeneration, its title etched in dark iron ink across brittle parchment that smelled faintly of scorched antiseptic and age. Tsunade handed it to her in silence, her expression unreadable, but her fingers lingered a moment longer than necessary on the scroll's seal. There was no explanation, no lecture, only a single sentence: "These are the cases that haunt me." When Sakura unrolled the scroll that night in her dim apartment, the room chilled. The chakra seal hissed softly as it released, and the text surged to life in a series of animated diagrams, pulsing ink and flickering chakra projections projected across the surface like a living autopsy.

The first case was a shinobi whose body had tried to regenerate bone faster than the surrounding tissue could adapt. The result was a crumbling lattice of malformed marrow bursting through skin, ribcages curling outward like broken fingers. Sakura gagged and slapped a hand over her mouth, her stomach twisting at the wet, meaty sound of collapsing vertebrae detailed in the scroll's notes. Her eyes stung with nausea, but she didn't look away. She kept reading. Case by case, chakra-magnified regeneration had turned from miracle to mutilation: Cells dividing too rapidly, failing to stop, splitting into tumors. Nervous systems misaligned by a fraction of a millimeter, condemning victims to screaming seizures until their brains went still. One patient dissolved from the inside when their healing chakra began consuming living flesh rather than repairing it. Sakura watched the animation in horror as pink-glowing tissue turned gray, then liquefied, the notes stating in cold detail: "Internal cannibalization via inverted regeneration command."

Her hands trembled as she traced the ink lines, trying to find the moment, any moment, where the process could have been stopped. 'How do you catch it before it spirals?' she asked herself. 'What warning signs? What chakra rhythm misfired?' She read the scroll cover to cover in a single night, forcing herself through every grotesque image and every failed solution. The diagrams etched themselves into her brain: sinew peeling from bone, brain cells exploding under pressure, chakra coils shriveling into ash. Her back ached from leaning over her desk, and her lips were dry from whispering the incantations and seals repeatedly to herself. But she didn't stop. Then she read it again. And again. By the third time through, she had stopped wincing. She no longer saw horror, she saw patterns. Possibilities. She began scribbling her own margin notes with shaking fingers, testing ideas. 'What if a double-lattice chakra net was overlaid during early-phase regeneration to suppress acceleration?' 'Could micro-pulse timing delay cellular replication until vascular fusion completes?' Her handwriting grew sharper with each hypothesis. Outside her window, dawn began to tint the sky peach-gold. Her body was stiff, her eyes bloodshot, but her mind was alive, buzzing with relentless determination and cautious awe. These were the limits Tsunade had pushed. These were the ledgers of lives lost and the abyss Sakura swore she would never allow herself to fall into. She looked down at her ink-stained fingers and whispered, voice hoarse, "I won't be the eighteenth failure."

Her affinity for Yin chakra was tested constantly, relentlessly. Tsunade didn't coddle her or offer reassurance. Instead, she handed Sakura live trials disguised in silence and told her to "figure it out before it's too late." On the sixth day, Sakura entered the training clinic to find three chakra dummies laid out on the stone slabs. They looked like patients, too lifelike, too still, each crafted with internal chakra systems mimicking those of poisoned shinobi. Their artificial skin was cool to the touch, pulsing with an eerie facsimile of blood flow. Each had been injected with a unique, invisible poison. There were no antidotes. No scrolls to reference. Only a heartbeat's worth of time and her own chakra control.

"You're not allowed to use your own poison knowledge," Tsunade warned flatly, arms folded as she leaned against the far wall. "You're to feel the imbalance. Read it with your chakra. Then correct it. Or they die." Sakura swallowed hard and crouched beside the first dummy. Her fingers hovered over its abdomen, her chakra gently flowing into its core like the first drop of ink into water. Her Yin chakra moved with caution, spiraling inward toward the distortion. The poison's signature was acidic, bubbling under the liver like molten venom. She adjusted her flow, pushing a calming counter-frequency, willing the energy to soothe, to untangle. The dummy's twitching slowed. Its breathing stabilized. A tiny smile pulled at the corner of her mouth, until the simulation coughed, convulsed, and went still. Flatline. Sakura froze, her own breath caught in her chest. Her chakra had overcorrected, she'd flushed too much, too fast. The artificial liver collapsed. She bowed her head, fists clenched tight enough to shake, but didn't let a single tear fall.

"Try again," Tsunade said. No judgment. No comfort. Just command. The second dummy had a poison that mimicked frostbite from the inside out. As Sakura infused her chakra into the torso, she felt the way the energy resisted her touch, like chakra fibers frozen brittle and stiff. Her hands trembled. Her instincts screamed to melt it, push warmth in like sunlight breaking frost. But she paused. 'Too much warmth will rupture the coils,' she thought. 'Steady. Steady, not soft. Precise, like I'm threading a needle through ice.' She exhaled slowly and adjusted the polarity of her chakra modulation, letting her Yin energy unfold in a calm wave, coaxing the stiffness into motion. This time, the dummy's systems recovered. Breath evened. Heartbeat stabilized. Muscles unclenched. Tsunade gave a small nod. One success. By the time Sakura reached the third dummy, her reserves were low and her hands ached. This one had no obvious symptoms. No twitching, no convulsions, just a slow spiral of chakra decay radiating outward like rot beneath the skin. It was silent, insidious. Sakura shut her eyes and placed her palms flat to the chest, breathing in deep. 'Where is it hiding?' she whispered in her mind. 'Where's the lie? Where's the shadow?' The answer came in a jolt, her chakra brushed a single thread of foreign Yin energy tangled around the heart like a threadbare noose. Her hands moved on instinct. Delicate chakra scalpel. Reverse polarity. Dispel seal. Reinforce the original flow. Sweat beaded at her temple, but her fingers never wavered. The dummy gasped. Alive. She slumped back on her heels, her vision tunneling at the edges from chakra fatigue, but her heart thrummed with something raw and fierce. She had done it. Not all perfectly, but she had seen the chakra, felt the poisons with her own energy, and corrected them with no medicine, no crutch.

Sometimes she failed. Sometimes she watched the dummies seize, foam at the mouth, and die cold beneath her hands. But she studied every mistake. Journaled every chakra misstep. Dreamed about failure so she could dissect it by morning. There was no room for self-pity. Only progress. Her control deepened. Her chakra became scalpel, net, warmth, and needle. Her Yin affinity was no longer a trait, it was a tool. A weapon. A promise she carved into her own bones. 'I won't flinch from this again,' she whispered one night, hand pressed to her heart. 'Not from blood, not from death, not from myself.'

Each night, as the training hall dimmed to silence and Tsunade lit the chakra sensors with a flick of her fingers, Sakura knelt before the sealing mirror, sweat clinging to her brow, breath slow but uneven. Her hands hovered just above her knees, fingers twitching with the aftershocks of the day's endless trials, poison modulation, trauma sutures, raw chakra transference. She could feel it now, that heat at her brow, subtle as a candle's flicker. The seal.

Tsunade's voice was low, professional, but never cold. "Hold still." A pulse of chakra shimmered around the woman's hand as it hovered over Sakura's forehead, reading the minute shifts in the pattern etched beneath her skin. The result glowed faintly on a paper tag. 2.14%. Then, ten days later, 5.5%. On the final night, 8.33%. Each percentage meant a dozen hours of suppressed chakra, every droplet stored an act of perfect restraint. Sakura felt it building behind her skin, pressure like rising water behind a dam. Sometimes it gave her headaches. Sometimes nosebleeds. Once, her vision blurred so badly she trained blind for a day rather than stop. Tsunade watched her closely that night, silence pressing like lead between them. Then, after the final read, she spoke without ceremony, "Impressive. But don't get reckless." Her hand closed around Sakura's wrist, warm, grounded. "You'll burn yourself out."

Sakura swallowed hard, chest aching under the weight of quiet expectation. Her voice, when it came, was dry. "I won't stop."

"I'm not asking you to," Tsunade said. "I'm asking you to survive. Even goddesses need time to grow." Sakura didn't look up. But she nodded. Slowly. Because she could feel it too, the edge of something vast and holy blooming under her skin, and the price of reaching for it too soon.

Guy's arrival every dawn was heralded by clapping, thunderous enthusiasm, and immediate suffering. The moment the sun crested the Hokage Monument, his voice would pierce the air like a declaration of war. "GOOD MORNING, BLOOMING LOTUS!" he'd shout, as if volume itself was the key to power. Sakura, half-stretched and barely awake, never stood a chance. Before she could rub the sleep from her eyes, two-hundred-pound weights were slammed onto her wrists and ankles with the ceremonial finality of chains. They dug into her skin, cold and unrelenting, sending a jolt through her bones. The first few steps each morning felt like she was walking through wet cement, the strain shooting up her calves and locking her knees. But she didn't complain.

"Tiger Form Katas!" Guy bellowed, pointing dramatically to the open training field just beyond the stone path. "With grace! With rhythm! With youth!" The Tiger Form wasn't just about raw strikes or balance, it was about embodying motion that stalked and exploded all at once. Sakura's fingers curled into clawed fists as she lunged forward, spine coiling and snapping like a taut bowstring. Her breath came in bursts, each exhale fogging the morning air as she moved from stance to stance, weaving between aggression and control. Her soles scraped against dewy grass, already slick with sweat, and her wrists burned beneath the iron drag of the weights. By the second hour, her muscles trembled with exhaustion. Her arms screamed with lactic acid. Her legs buckled more than once, but she forced herself back up, teeth clenched so hard she tasted blood.

'Grace,' she reminded herself, though her limbs jerked and sagged from overuse. 'Rhythm.' Even as her timing wavered. 'Youth.' That one, she almost scoffed at. There was no youthful joy in this kind of agony. Only discipline. Only grit. But in that pain, something was forming. Her movements, rough as they were, began to echo the structure Guy demanded. Her shoulder rotations grew cleaner. Her footwork tighter. By the time the sun rose high enough to gild the training field in gold, she was still standing, shaking, breathless, blistered, but standing.

From the edge of the field, Guy's voice rose again, this time softer, but no less proud. "That's it, Sakura. Even under strain... you bloom."

Guy rotated daily focus: legs, back, arms, chest, abs - core was trained every day without mercy. His whistle blew before sunrise, always sharp and grating against the soft, sleepy mist that clung to the morning fields. Sakura would rise with sore shoulders and stiff ankles, wincing as she moved, but never complaining. Her body began to change. Mass replaced fragility. Calluses formed where her knuckles used to bleed. Her thighs thickened with slow, grinding strength. Her arms no longer trembled after the first hour. When she caught her reflection in the stream near their training field, eyes half-shadowed under sweat-soaked bangs, new muscle rippling along her shoulders, she didn't flinch at the bruises anymore. She wore them like medals.

Guy's Rotating Routine, passed to Sakura to use solo when he's away:

Core (Daily, No Exceptions):
100 V-ups
60 Russian Twists with a medicine scroll (20 lbs)
2-minute Dragon Hold
3 sets of Plank-to-Pushups
200 flutter kicks
3-minute Hanging Leg Raises (from chakra pole)

Legs (Day 1):
5x100 meter chakra-resisted sprints
3 sets of 20 weighted squats (with ankle and wrist weights)
100 step-ups on elevated stone platforms
3x15 Bulgarian split squats
2-minute wall sits (chakra suppressed)
80 firewalk toe taps across hot coal tiles

Butt and Calves (Day 2):
4x25 donkey kicks (with resistance bands)
3x20 hip thrusts against chakra resistance
150 calf raises on unstable terrain
Deep lunges across a full field length
3x30-second single-leg balance with eyes closed

Arms (Day 3):
4x15 bicep curls using water-filled gourds
5x10 tricep dips between stone pillars
2-minute wrist rotations holding Astra's dormant form
4 sets of chin-ups (no chakra assist)
100 knuckle pushups over hot stones

Back and Chest (Day 4):
3x20 bent-over scroll rows
100 chakra pulse pushups (flaring chakra between reps)
2 sets of 15 back arches holding weighted scrolls to her chest
3 sets of T-form superman holds
Chest compressions on ironwood blocks to strengthen pectorals and hand technique simultaneously

Her breath fogged the morning air. Her stomach was tight from fasting since last night, her limbs already sore from yesterday, but the routine had become sacred. Discipline, not motivation, moved her now.

Core, Daily. No Exceptions. She began with V-ups. Her back pressed against the earth, blades of grass poking her spine. She inhaled, then exhaled sharply, lifting arms and legs to meet in a sharp clench. One. Two. Her core burned by thirty, her lungs tightening. By eighty, the world around her blurred, and the sky above throbbed like a second heartbeat. She didn't stop. 'Pain is proof. Proof you're alive. Proof you're earning it.' Then came Russian Twists, clutching the sealed 20-lb medicine scroll to her chest. She twisted left and right, each turn a war against balance, against the shaking of her arms. Her breath came shallow now, sweat dripping down her temple as her obliques screamed. "Thirty... forty... fifty, don't collapse now." The Dragon Hold made her tremble. She balanced on her tailbone, arms and legs raised off the ground, every muscle engaged. Two minutes. That was the rule. Her whole body shook by the forty-five second mark. The timer jutsu flickered in her head like an internal metronome. Sekhmet's voice whispered: "Stillness is not weakness. It is control." She flowed into Plank-to-Pushups. Her palms pressed the earth, fingers splayed. She dropped, pressed, rose. Again. Again. Her elbows burned; her shoulders roared. Dirt worked into the skin of her palms. Her knuckles ached. Then came the flutter kicks, two hundred of them, fast and sharp, her legs slicing the air like twin blades. Breathe through it. Through the fire. Her eyes squeezed shut, sweat sliding into the corners. For Hanging Leg Raises, she summoned a chakra pole between two trees, shimmering faintly. Her hands latched onto it, and she hung like a lantern in the breeze. Her abs tensed as she lifted her legs again and again. Her shirt stuck to her back. Blisters formed on her palms. The pole swayed with her motion. She didn't fall.

Legs, Day 1. She marked a hundred-meter stretch across the clearing. The resistance seal on her thighs activated, working her body harder, along with a chakra band from Guy's scroll. The pressure collapsed down on her muscles like a vice. She sprinted anyway. Five times. Each time slower. Each time heavier. But she ran. Next came weighted squats. Three sets of twenty, ankle and wrist weights pressing like chains. She lowered slowly, deliberately, quads trembling, sweat pouring from her hairline. Her breath turned ragged, but she held her form. Always. Then she climbed the stone step-ups. The elevated slabs were uneven, carved by hand. Each step tested her balance and form. Her thighs felt swollen, pulsing. After fifty, her legs felt numb. She doubled down. 'You asked for strength. Then earn it.' Bulgarian split squats were hell. She braced one leg back on a stump, lowered her body, and rose. Her glutes and hamstrings cried out, but her face remained blank. Determined. Controlled. The wall sits came last, chakra suppressed. Her back pressed to the bark of an ancient tree, thighs parallel to the ground, knees screaming. The world narrowed to the shake of her legs and the thunder of her heart. Then... the firewalk. 80 rapid toe taps over a path of warm coals. She moved quickly, rhythmically, chakra dampened in her feet. The heat stung. Her soles burned. But she kept her pace, light, fierce, swift. No hesitation.

Butt and Calves, Day 2. She looped resistance bands, woven with her own chakra, around her thighs and began donkey kicks. Her hips worked through the resistance, each lift tightening her glutes, her breaths hot and short. Her ponytail swung with every movement. Hip thrusts against a chakra seal, she lay back on a boulder, fists clenched, and pulsed upward. Her lower back groaned. The seal fought back. She fought harder. She moved to calf raises on unstable terrain: a pile of rounded stones. One hundred fifty times, rising and falling, her balance always at risk, her ankles straining to keep her upright. Then deep lunges across the full field. Her steps dug trenches into the dirt. Her knees burned. Her breath rasped like sand in her throat. Finally: balance holds. One leg raised, eyes closed. Chakra still. Body swaying gently in the wind, like a reed holding firm against the river.

Arms, Day 3. She filled gourds with water, Guy's trick, and began her bicep curls. Her arms flexed and trembled. The water sloshed. Control. Precision. She hoisted herself between stone pillars for tricep dips. Her arms bore her weight fully. Her triceps flared with heat and pain. Then she lifted Astra's dormant form in both hands, its golden metal warm, her goddess's hum resting faintly against her skin, and began wrist rotations. Two minutes. The strain in her forearms was agonizing, but sacred. Chin-ups were raw, unforgiving. Four sets. No chakra. Her hands blistered. Her shoulders stretched like they'd split apart. Then: knuckle pushups over hot stones. Her skin burned. Her knuckles bruised. She didn't flinch. One hundred. No breaks. No whimpering.

Back and Chest, Day 4. She hoisted scroll rows, bent at the waist. Her back muscles rolled beneath her skin, her breath harsh and focused. Then: chakra pulse pushups. Every lift forced a pulse through her palms, each rep igniting the air beneath her hands. The ground scorched with rose-gold chakra. Back arches followed, weighted scrolls to her chest. Her spine lifted and curved, each motion deliberate and slow. She held superman poses, arms and legs raised in a perfect T. Her lower back screamed. Her neck stiffened. She held the pose. Finally: ironwood chest compressions. She pressed down with both hands on the ancient blocks, toughening her pectorals, palms, and fine chakra control. Each press was also a healer's strike, each motion pushing power from her core into her hands.

When she finished each, the sun was high and the air thick. Sakura stood in the stream, barefoot, face streaked with sweat and dirt. Her reflection wavered, but she didn't look away. Her arms were no longer soft. Her thighs thick with power. Her back, carved with lines of tension and strength. By the second week, she had copied every rep, every order, into her journal in looping ink. On days when Guy left for missions, his energy still echoed in the empty field, but it was her own voice she answered to now. Her mantra was different than his. "Not just strength. Precision. Control. Mercy." And when the pain came, deep, bruising, relentless, she met it with breath, with will, with a quiet defiance she no longer needed to name.

Along with this workout routine, Guy had implemented a diet for all of Sakura's training in mind. Sakura wrote it on a piece of paper to hang in her room.

★ Fasting Window: 8:00 PM – 12:00 PM (16 hours).
★ Eating Window: 12:00 PM – 8:00 PM (8 hours).
★ Hydration: Water with a pinch of salt and lemon during fasting hours to maintain electrolyte balance. Herbal teas allowed.

12:00 PM - First Meal (Post-Training Recovery)
High-protein, moderate-carb, anti-inflammatory

★ Miso-grilled salmon (rich in omega-3 and muscle-repair amino acids)
★ Soft-boiled eggs (natural biotin + healthy fats for skin regeneration)
★ Steamed spinach with sesame oil (iron + vitamin K for blood health)
★ Sweet potato mash with ginger (slow-digesting carbs and anti-inflammatory properties)
★ Warm green tea (chakra flow booster + mental focus)

4:00 PM - Mid-Meal (Rebuild & Sustain Energy)
Muscle support + gut healing

★ Bone broth stew with wild root vegetables (collagen + joint support)
★ Sakura mochi with flax & chia added into the paste (fiber and omega-3s)
★ Seaweed-wrapped tofu cubes (iodine + calcium to support chakra recovery)
★ Turmeric and honey tea (inflammation recovery and chakra circuit clarity)

7:45 PM - Final Meal (Light + Regenerative)
Repair + prep for dream-training

★ Grilled chicken liver or eel (iron, B12, and dense restorative nutrients)
★ Fermented daikon and kimchi (gut flora for immune and hormonal balance)
★ Millet porridge with crushed walnuts and dried berries (magnesium and antioxidants for sleep and nervous system support)
★ Warm chamomile-lavender infusion before bed

She then added her own bit to tailor specific needs onto the paper.

Goal - Food - Frequency

★ Chakra recovery - Lotus seeds, grilled eel, matcha with spirulina - 3x/week
★ Anti-fatigue - Shiso leaf, ginseng broth, purple yam - 2x/week
★ Muscle soreness - Black sesame paste, gelatin rice cakes - Post-intense leg/back days
★ Hormonal regulation - Flax seeds, miso soup, moringa powder - Daily in small doses

Extra Notes:

★ No processed sugar.
★ Minimal wheat and dairy unless fermented.
★ Almost all food is prepped fresh by hand.
★ Portable ration bars made from dried dates, protein powder, and herbal extracts are kept in her pouch but only used during missions.

Sundays - Recovery Prep (Evening)

★ Steep 3-day bone broth with medicinal herbs
★ Ferment daikon & radish for week's kimchi
★ Marinate salmon in miso + sakura vinegar
★ Batch steam sweet potatoes
★ Roast black sesame & flax seeds for mochi filling

Tuesdays - Chakra Cleansing Boost

★ Blend matcha with spirulina & ginseng powder into cubes for tea
★ Restock millet porridge jars (add moringa + dried berries)

Fridays - High-Intensity Mission Fuel

Make chakra ration bars:
★ Ingredients: dried dates, protein powder, flax seeds, crushed walnuts, honey, sakura extract, and a pinch of salt
★ Shape: compact cubes in petal molds
★ Storage: beeswax wrap sealed with chakra to prevent spoiling

Sakura makes something called: Homemade Chakra Ration Pills (for Emergency Missions). These are specialized herbal pills designed to act as both food and chakra stabilizers for 6–8 hours. Sakura refines the recipes herself with help from Tsunade's archives.

Base Components:
★ Lotus seed extract (chakra focus + endocrine support)
★ Dehydrated millet flour (sustained release energy)
★ Dried spirulina and matcha powder (mental clarity + chakra balance)
★ Black sesame paste (nervous system support + internal energy)
★ Honey + sakura leaf oil (anti-inflammatory + chakra soothing)

Process:
★ Powder all dried components.
★ Mix paste ingredients over gentle chakra heat.
★ Mold into marble-sized pills, dry under chakra-light.
★ Wrap each in beeswax paper, sealed with a thread of chakra.

Carried in an engraved stone vial from Sekhmet's realm, stored in a mission pouch.

Next Guy led her to a room before suddenly tying a blindfold around her eyes. The blindfold was snug against her skin, tied with deliberate pressure behind her head, Guy-sensei's old green sash, rough from years of sun and sweat, its ends frayed like blades of grass weathered by time. Sakura could smell him in it, the scent of pine needles and chalky earth, something wild and electric that made her stomach tighten with nerves. Her breath came slow. Not from fear, but from the silence. The kind that pressed in around her like fog. No mission, no teammates, no safety net. Just her. The floor beneath her feet was cool stone, the air still except for the faint hum of chakra seals pulsing along the walls. She couldn't see the dojo, but she remembered it: the cracked beam to her left from Lee's last crash landing, the worn groove in the center tile where Guy stood every morning to meditate. She knew it like she knew the shape of her hands. But knowing meant nothing here. Not when her sight was gone.

She inhaled through her nose and lifted her arms into stance. Her weight shifted to the balls of her feet, then she moved. A single backflip first. Her spine arched, arms tight to her core, breath held at the apex. Her landing was clumsy. Ankles rolled, knees bent too deep. She gritted her teeth and reset. Again. And again. She fell the third time. Skinned her palm on the rough floor and caught the sting of blood in the air. It smelled sharp, like copper. But Guy didn't stop her. He didn't coddle or coach, not yet. He watched. Let her flounder. Because that was the point. She wasn't training her body alone. She was training trust. Not in him, not in some textbook, in herself. The next set added a cartwheel from a moving start. She had to listen to the creak of the wooden board before launching. No eyes. Only sound. Then came the balance drills, tight beams no wider than two fingers, suspended waist-high in the air. She'd heard them dragged into place, but without sight, they might as well have been blades. The first jump knocked the breath from her chest. She landed, barely, and her foot slipped off the edge. The jolt to her ribs when she hit the mat should have scared her. But instead, it woke something. A heat. A defiance.

That night, she dreamt of silence, not emptiness, but presence. Of her body slicing through the dark like wind over water, her pulse a metronome. The next day, she landed the jump. Not with grace. But with certainty. Her muscles began listening before her mind did. A twist here. A breath delayed there. She noticed the way her sweat pooled along her spine when her form broke, the way her stomach clenched just before misjudging a flip. Each failure carved her sharper. Guy eventually added movement. He stepped in silently, becoming an obstacle she had to feel rather than see. Her breath caught the first time she collided with him, his chest was solid, but his chakra presence was louder than thunder. From then on, she traced it. Learned the ebb of his movement, the shift of his weight in the air. She adjusted mid-move, twisting her wrist to graze past him instead of strike. He didn't say a word, but every time she dodged by inches, she could feel the approval in the stillness he left behind. By the end of the third week, she could complete an entire aerial sequence in blind silence, land within a five-inch space, and still feel the shape of the room around her, without once opening her eyes. But what mattered most wasn't the agility. It was what it unlocked in her mind: instinct layered over logic, raw sensitivity refining her chakra awareness until even Guy gave a rare nod of approval.

That night, after she washed the blood and chalk from her hands, he handed her a cloth of her own, light pink, the kanji for heart sewn into the center in green thread. It was soft in her fingers. New. Unused. Sakura blinked, touched the thread with one trembling fingertip, and whispered, "For me...?"

Guy's smile was small, proud. "You've begun to see without eyes. To move without doubt. This," he said, tapping the cloth, "is the symbol of your spirit, stronger than fear, steadier than sight. Wear it. Not to hide. But to remember." She slept with it beside her pillow, and in her dreams, she moved through shadows without fear. The blindfold was no longer a handicap. It was a teacher. And each fall had become a lesson in listening, in trusting, in reclaiming control, not by watching, but by feeling.

Guy had told her it was time to master the Eight Gates so they would never have a Lee repeat. She began with the First Gate alone, just as Guy instructed, the way one might approach an old wound they had learned to live with but never fully examined. The Gate of Opening, Kai Mon, was supposed to be the simplest, the least damaging, but mastering it without strain required precision bordering on reverence. For the first two weeks of the month, Sakura devoted herself entirely to its rhythm. Guy had her rise before the sun each morning, the world still blue and cold, and run barefoot to the training ring with nothing but her water flask and her weighted ankle wraps. Her task was singular: open Gate One, move, breathe, and close it with total control. She started slow. A single activation followed by one breath, one step, and immediate release. Then again. Then again. She focused on how the gate felt, how the chakra shifted in her limbs like a tide moving outward, sharp and fast and warm. The acceleration in her blood, the lightness in her tendons, the way her knees lifted higher than usual before she had to consciously bring herself back down. She paced those activations around long-distance sprints, leap-to-leap agility drills, high-speed kata repetitions. All of it under the specific burden of control. If she activated too quickly or held it too long, Guy would have her start again. If she lost even one beat of breath, she had to repeat the entire sequence, no matter how far she'd come. The chakra buzzed beneath her skin like something wild begging to be loosed. But she refused. She anchored herself in breath, posture, and inner stillness. Sweat slicked her back, pooled beneath her shoulder blades. Her calves ached by the end of each session, not from overuse but from resisting the temptation to go too far, too fast. She was not opening the gate to break limits. She was learning to dance with it. The two-week mark came not with a celebration but with a subtle shift: Guy no longer reminded her when to breathe. She did it herself. She didn't even think about it. Her body anticipated the gate like a muscle memory she'd carved into her bones.

Only then did he let her progress to Gate Two, Kyu Mon, the Gate of Healing. These last two weeks bit deeper. Gate Two wasn't just acceleration; it was regeneration, surging through her cells like sunlight forced into shadow. The first time she opened it again, her vision blurred with the rush of blood and chakra expanding into her extremities, veins bulging, the burn of heat curling along her shoulders and jaw. Her heart rate spiked violently. But this time, she didn't use it in a single explosive burst. She paced it. Held it for three seconds. Then closed. Waited. Opened. Moved. Closed again. At first, she struggled to hold it for more than a breath before her limbs locked or her balance faltered. But every mistake was a lesson, and every misstep a quiet promise to herself. She added movement gradually: rotations through Tiger Form katas with 200 lbs of resistance strapped to her wrists and ankles, backward flips through suspended hoops, rapid spin kicks while maintaining the gate's healing flow. At night, when her body cooled and the exertion left her drained, she sat in silence outside the barracks and gently activated Gate Two for exactly five seconds before releasing it, just to feel the shift. To imprint the sensation of just enough. The pain never left completely. The gate always demanded something. But she learned to hear its demand as a whisper instead of a scream. By the final days of the month, Sakura moved through the pacing rings with quiet mastery. She no longer grimaced at the pressure in her chest. Her gait remained even. Her transitions between activation and release were seamless. Where her steps had once stuttered with each chakra burst, now she flowed, controlled fire in motion. She was no longer just surviving the gates. She was starting to command them. Not with brute force, but with discipline, grace, and a deepening knowledge of her own body. When Guy nodded at her on the final day, the pride in his eyes silent but unmistakable, Sakura didn't need his words. She knew what she'd earned.

At night, when the physical world gave way to the space between dreaming and memory, Sakura's breath slowed into stillness, and her consciousness slipped free of the bruised, sweating shell left curled beneath her futon. She drifted like a leaf on a river, pulled inward to the place where thought met eternity. In the Realm of Awakening, the wind was always warm, but not the kind of heat that burned or scorched. It was a slow, radiant warmth that clung to the skin like sunlight through silk, full of presence. The earth beneath her bare feet shimmered like tempered glass, etched with ancient runes too fluid to read, pulsing in rhythm with her heartbeat. Sekhmet stood tall at the horizon's edge, where the sky bled into molten gold. Her arms were folded across her chest, violet war paint vivid against her rose-pink skin, lips set in calm severity. Astra hovered nearby, suspended midair in its base form, golden and gleaming like a living star, each edge humming with quiet power. It pulsed with divine intent, a beacon of demand and promise. The air between them shimmered with layered chakra, petals of flame and light twisting lazily around Sekhmet's silhouette. Her gaze was unreadable, neither cruel nor kind, but filled with something older than compassion. A test. A question. A vow.

Sakura's feet made no sound as she approached, but she felt every grain of the divine ground flex and mold beneath her soles, like it recognized her now. Like it remembered. Her skin tingled with chakra not her own, yet intimately familiar, and when she opened her mouth to speak, her voice was caught somewhere between reverence and resolve. "I'm ready," she said, not as a plea, but as a declaration. Her muscles still ached from the day's training, the ghost of pain echoing even here in her spirit-body. But her eyes did not waver.

Sekhmet's eyes narrowed slightly, then she nodded once. A slow, deliberate motion. "Then show me." The horizon split open behind her with a single breath, revealing the next battlefield carved from memory and fate, where Sakura would learn not just how to wield the divine, but how to become it. "You've learned all eight Purposeful Forms," Sekhmet's voice echoed softly in the dreamlike space, her glowing green eyes fixed on Sakura with a mixture of approval and relentless expectation. "But power means nothing if you wield it like a hammer every time." The words settled like a challenge, wrapping around Sakura's mind as the Realm of Awakening shimmered around them, a place both real and surreal, where focus sharpened and distractions faded. This was the beginning of true mastery, not just knowing each form, but commanding them with fluid grace. The War Form - Red Riot, came first. Astra shifted in her hands, molten and fierce, the air crackling with raw energy that bit at her skin like fire. At first, the axe's weight was a thunderous anchor, every swing heavy and unwieldy, muscles trembling under the strain. The smell of scorched earth filled her senses, mingling with the metallic tang of sweat. Each strike was a battle against herself, too slow, too wide, the power spilling beyond control like a storm she couldn't yet tame. Sekhmet watched silently, her gaze a steady flame as Sakura pushed through the ache that threatened to break her spirit. Night after night, she returned to this brutal dance, training until her limbs screamed, until the heat of battle burned in her veins even in the quiet dark. She learned to listen, to let the red fury temper her movements rather than consume them. Her strikes sharpened, her footwork tightened, and the axe became an extension of her will rather than a burden. By the end of two weeks, the Red Riot no longer weighed her down; instead, it flowed with her rhythm, fierce and precise, a wildfire she could wield with deadly intent.

Midway through the month, Sekhmet shifted the challenge. The Healing Form - Merciful Bloom, unfurled around Astra, petals of rose-gold chakra radiating warmth and light. It was a stark contrast to the raw power of Red Riot, demanding softness and focus in equal measure. The scent of blooming sakura trees seemed to fill the dream realm, a gentle balm to the fierce intensity of her previous training. But this form tested not just her strength, but her patience and compassion. Sakura was tasked with weaving healing chakra through phantom wounds in rapid succession, switching forms fluidly while under pressure. The weight of responsibility pressed down on her chest as she moved from warrior to healer in an instant, petals glowing softly with each precise motion. Her breath came in shallow bursts, heart pounding as she learned to balance fury with mercy. The warmth of the healing petals seeped into her hands, a reminder that power could nurture as much as it could destroy. Through countless repetitions, she refined the delicate dance of attack and restoration, until Merciful Bloom flowed through her as naturally as her own heartbeat. Sekhmet's eyes never left her, steady and expectant. And as the month closed, Sakura stood transformed, not just stronger, but wiser, her hands capable of both shattering blows and gentle mending. The true mastery had begun.

Sekhmet's voice echoed like a drumbeat in the quiet expanse of the dream realm as she pushed Sakura beyond every limit she thought she had. "Layer your summons. Flow between forms without hesitation. Anticipate the battle before it even begins." The air itself seemed to pulse with tension, charged with the weight of expectation. Astra hovered beside her, shifting colors with each command; fiery red, gentle rose, glimmering gold, a living embodiment of the power Sakura must learn to command as one. The training was brutal and unyielding. Sekhmet forced Sakura to summon Astra not once, but multiple times in rapid succession, weaving its forms together seamlessly. Each shift demanded intense focus, lightning-fast reflexes, and perfect chakra control. The goddess' voice cut through the haze of exhaustion, sharp and guiding, her presence both a comforting anchor and a relentless taskmaster. Sweat slicked Sakura's brow, her muscles screamed, and her lungs burned with the effort, yet she refused to break. With every transition, from the devastating crush of War Form's red fury to the delicate, pulsing petals of Healing Form, Sakura felt Astra's power flow through her like a tempest held in balance. The axe's weight shifted in her grip, now heavy, now light, as if alive, testing her resolve. The cold kiss of the stone beneath her feet contrasted with the searing heat of the chakra radiating from the weapon, pulling her focus inward even as Sekhmet hurled phantom enemies at her, demanding flawless form switches on the fly. Her breath came fast, shallow, but steady, each inhale a tether to control, each exhale a release of doubt. The layered summoning wasn't just technique, it was a meditation in motion, a trial of body and spirit intertwined. The taste of iron filled her mouth, the ringing in her ears drowned out all but Sekhmet's sharp commands and Astra's hum of divine power. Time blurred, moments folding into each other as Sakura pushed herself to flow effortlessly, no wasted motion, no faltering grip.

Sekhmet's gaze bore into her, fierce and unyielding, yet beneath it lay a current of quiet pride. "This is your dance, Sakura. Make it fluid. Make it deadly. Make it yours." And as exhaustion threatened to shatter her, Sakura found a well of strength deeper than muscle or chakra, something eternal. She was not just wielding Astra; she was becoming its voice, its will, its unbreakable force.

Sekhmet's voice was calm but unyielding as she pressed the fragile scroll into Sakura's hands, its ink faded but its wisdom undiminished. The air around her seemed to still, heavy with the weight of ancient knowledge as Sakura's eyes traced the complex symbols describing the subtle manipulations required to refine chakra nature. "Wind first," Sekhmet instructed, "feel it flow, not as force, but as essence within you." Sakura closed her eyes and reached deep into her chakra reserves, sensing the faintest vibration, a whisper of the breeze stirred inside her, its intangible currents slicing gently through her very cells. She focused intently, molding her chakra like a sculptor shapes clay, an invisible, flowing thread guided by her will alone. With each practice session, the wind affinity sharpened, no longer a crude gust but a precise, elegant flow. She could feel her chakra slicing cleanly, cutting through leaves, the sound sharp and crisp, the sensation of air swirling about her fingertips. The faint rustle in the trees became a chorus to her effort, and her heartbeat slowed, steadied by the rhythmic pulse of controlled energy. Every breath deepened her connection, and the subtle thrill of mastering this element filled her with quiet confidence.

As the weeks passed, Sekhmet introduced fire affinity, its heat less obvious than its destructive potential. Sakura learned to temper her chakra, coaxing it to flicker and flare at her command rather than erupt uncontrollably. She conjured small spheres of flame, each orb a delicate balance of warmth and volatility, glowing against the twilight shadows like captured stars. Alongside these, she practiced a refined technique, Ignition Pulse, a controlled burst that could burn through barriers without consuming her own chakra reserves recklessly. Her hands tingled with heat; sweat slicked her brow as she coaxed the flames with deliberate intent, the air around her shimmering faintly with heat waves.

By the month's end, lightning affinity training began. It was the most elusive, requiring not just control but heightened sensitivity. The energy prickled beneath her skin like a thousand tiny needles, each flicker of chakra charged with volatile electricity. Sakura learned to channel this sharp, rapid current through her fingertips, feeling it surge and crackle in her veins without overwhelming her. Lightning's wild nature demanded respect, patience, and razor-sharp focus. Every movement hummed with static, her body alive with anticipation, balancing that fierce energy without allowing it to unravel her control. In these moments, her breath came shallow but steady, heart pounding in time with the pulse of her chakra. Sekhmet observed, her violet eyes narrowing thoughtfully, offering critiques and encouragement in equal measure. "Refine each nature within you," she said, "until they sing as one, wind's grace, fire's passion, lightning's precision. Only then will your power transcend mere force." Sakura's muscles ached, her mind burned with exhaustion, but beneath it all blossomed something new: the profound connection between her will and the elemental forces she commanded. The path ahead was long, but with each day's practice, she moved closer to mastering the divine dance of chakra nature itself.