Death Five Times Over

Intro

Uchiha Madara was a brother of death. It was the thing that haunted his life from the moment he was born, the very night of the ubasute the famine had forced upon the clan. His mother had carried him longer than was normal but she had been strong once, determined to bid her ancestors a final farewell no matter the advanced stage of her pregnancy. He was born just before dawn, brought into this world in an abandoned shrine at the foot of the mountain of darkness. He hadn't made a sound when born, silent, solemn and dark-eyed as his grandparents had been when his parents had left them to die only hours before.

He had never known the first child of his parents, killed in battle the day he was conceived. He stood by as this specter took the lives of the rest of his family, one by one, next his mother, two more siblings, his father, and finally, his last brother. By the time Madara was twenty-four, his silent shadow had devoured his entire family and much of his clan, but he never felt alone with death beside him. It had been born into the world with him, dragging from his mother's womb her strength and leaving in its place a slow disease that would devour her in the years to come. He sometimes despised this monster, especially after Izuna was taken from him, but he was never able to fully reject it.

Death spoke with him not once or even twice, but five times in his years.