Arrogance requires confidence. Confidence requires power. And power? Well, that I have in abundance.
...That's something Gojō said to me once.
の
け
者
22 — OUTCASTS
MOONLIGHT BLED THROUGH FLAME, threading itself between smoke and dust.
Three of Gojō's strikes had failed. Five, now. Seven. Sweat trickled down his neck, but he wouldn't stop, wouldn't slow down either.
Golden light traced his blade's edge with each swing, chakra flowing into steel. The sword sang through air, leaving trails of light as it did. Another strike — blocked in between hands that held small barriers. Another — dodged. Tenjin moved like water, precise steps that flowed into the next.
"For someone who claims to be poor with a blade," Tenjin said, deflecting another golden arc, "you're not entirely hopeless."
Gojō didn't waste breath responding.
The sword was just a channel, Naruto had seen, a way to push his powerful chakra outward all the while he kept his shroud up. That might be the reason he had stolen it. But had he always planned on fighting people who could wield barriers such as Tenjin's…? Sealing Fields? Was it just a safety measure, or a hint of something darker in nature?
Whatever it was, each swing left streams of light in its wake, filling the air with a network of golden threads. If Gojō could just land one clean hit—
Tenjin's counter came like lightning.
A cut in space.
Gojō barely twisted away from a barrier — sent flying and flattened in a way that made its edge sharp — and he undoubtedly felt the wind of the strike against his cheek. Too close. Tenjin's attacks were full of his own power, dark and cold, eating away at Gojō's golden trails where they neared.
"But not good enough," Tenjin continued, pressing forward. "You're reaching for things beyond your grasp."
Another exchange, faster now. Chakra parks flew where gold met shadow. Gojō's arms burned with effort, each block heavy enough to undoubtedly send tremors through his bones.
Gojō was good, yes — but Tenjin was clearly better, even more so without his shikigami.
"Not the first time," Gojō hissed.
"I admire that in you," Tenjin admitted. His blade — if the barrier he had shaped so could be called that — whirled, a dark arc that scattered Gojō's golden light. "You never did learn when to stay down. Even then, you'd keep coming back."
Steel rang against solid chakra. Gojō's feet slid against the floor as he absorbed another crushing blow. The golden chakra around his sword flickered, struggled, then flared brighter — defiant.
"But," Tenjin said. "Persistence alone is a small thing."
His next strike came from an impossible angle.
Even then, Gojō twisted out of the way, barely deflecting the rising blade-like barrier from his throat. And his following counter was pure instinct — no thought, no hesitation. Just golden light cutting through shadow.
A line of crimson bloomed across Tenjin's cheek, thin as a whisper. He didn't flinch, didn't raise a hand to the wound. Instead, his lips curved into something between a smile and a grimace.
"See?" he asked. "That is what I meant."
His hands moved through the air with fluid precision, tracing an invisible cross. The space before him crystallized into razor-edged barriers, forcing Gojō to drop and roll across the wrecked floor, trained reflexes taking over before conscious thought could catch up.
Light erupted beneath Tenjin's feet, and Gojō launched himself backward in a desperate arc. Another barrier, different from the others, pulsed with an energy that made Naruto's skin crawl. He didn't understand its properties, and couldn't begin to guess at its purpose, but every instinct screamed danger.
From his position, Naruto could see it.
Gojō's hands, usually steady as stone, had begun to tremble. It was the kind of subtle shake Naruto recognized from his own training sessions; when chakra and stamina were running dangerously low.
But this wasn't training, and that slight tremor spoke volumes about how the battle was turning.
Some of the barriers shimmered like heat waves rising from summer pavement, nearly invisible until they caught the light just right. Gojō's breathing had grown heavy, most of his exhales carrying a slight rasp. He was still moving with his characteristic grace, but there was an edge of desperation to his fury now.
"Once more. This was a decent showing, but only for someone who has not been trained formally," Tenjin said, his voice steady despite the blood trickling down his face. "You're reaching your limit, aren't you?"
Naruto couldn't help but notice his hypocrisy: for a man who seemed to have a deep-seated grudge against tradition, Tenjin often fell back on it.
Gojō's response was a sharp laugh that lost itself into the night. "Think this is my limit?"
Bravado was one thing. It couldn't hide the truth, not tonight.
Tenjin's barriers were everywhere in the air now, because even Gojō couldn't get rid of them all. It was a nonsensical, complex geometric web that left increasingly narrow paths for him to escape through. They reflected and refracted light, a disorienting maze of bent or flat surfaces, and gleaming edges.
Every time Gojō dodged a barrier, his movements grew a fraction slower. Each strike he launched himself into carried less power than the last. It was like watching a water clock beginning to leak, the hydraulics still working but losing precision with each passing moment.
One wrong step, one miscalculation, and the barriers would do more than just draw blood.
"This very same pride will be your downfall," Tenjin said, his words carrying no malice, only certainty. "You could have walked away."
"And come with you, right?" Gojō hissed. "Hard pass."
Tenjin merely shrugged.
"You can't win this," he continued, voice steady. "Besides, I believe I've deciphered the Restriction you've placed upon yourself."
Gojō tilted his head, unimpressed. "Oh, yeah?"
"Oh, yeah." Tenjin's smile was a razor's edge. "You haven't used elemental release even once. My guess? The condition forbids it, at least while your shikigami are active. Maybe you hoped I'd misstep and waste energy expecting otherwise."
Gojō stayed silent, his stance taut with tension. Silence spoke loudly: a likely truth.
"Your shikigami, however," Tenjin went on, spreading his arms in mock generosity, "can wield elemental techniques. This, I have heard. Clever, if in a double-edged sort of way — it enhances their strength considerably, but weakens your own. If that is right. As for your great willingness to detonate them? I believe it means something, too. Either the delay between re-summoning them is shorter than I was led to believe, or they can only last for so long on their own."
Naruto watched, his instincts prickling. Something didn't add up. Tenjin's analysis was sharp, but not perfect — at least, not entirely. Gojō's flying shinigami, at least, could last for a good while, he was sure of it. Either Gojō had exploited some hidden trick then, or Tenjin was misjudging a few things. Whatever the truth was, Gojō was playing a game of his own. And he didn't answer, which, to the sort of man Tenjin seemed to be, was as good as assent.
Gojō closed his eyes for a second.
"You're right about one thing," he admitted.
Tenjin grinned. "Do tell—"
"I can't win without my shikigami."
Tenjin tilted his head after a pause. "You cannot win with them."
"Let's see."
To Naruto's horror, Gojō raised his hand and dismissed the wisp shikigami — the one that had been healing Ryūjin. The pale glow flickered once, then disappeared, leaving the older man vulnerable to Tenjin's technique… and still bleeding, although slower.
Ryūjin didn't show any outward reaction, aside from closing his eyes, and Naruto tensed. Had he expected it to happen at some point? What was Gojō thinking?
Tenjin's gaze narrowed. "A gamble? Or resignation?"
Gojō ignored him. He raised his hand, and his tone shifted, low and deliberate. "Monkey Business," he intoned, the air thrumming with his intent. "Form Six. Naki."
Spectral energy spiraled into being, taking shape in front of Gojō.
A wolf emerged, formed of smoke and shadows, eyes blazing like molten gold. It was enormous — easily twice the size of a real wolf — with a sleek, muscular frame and a tail that swirled into an ephemeral mist.
Its growl was low and guttural, and it echoed unnaturally. Something that came from everywhere at once.
Tenjin's expression remained unreadable, but Naruto thought he caught the faintest flicker of recognition.
"Had I not seen the nure-onna," Tenjin mused. "I would have believed this wolf to be one you use to paralyze foes. I do not believe you would apply the same powers to two of them, however. Now, will it be enough to save you…?"
Gojō only shrugged.
The wolf lunged, its massive form blurring into a streak of shadow and gold as it charged Tenjin.
The man's form flickered as he evaded, but the shadow was relentless, turning on a dime, faster than nearly anything Naruto had ever seen, and Gojō followed.
The wolf's jaws snapped shut on empty air as Tenjin twisted away, his hands already weaving new seals. A barrier erupted between him and the beast, but this one was different — it pulsed with angry red light before detonating outward in a shower of crystalline shards. The wolf dissipated into wisps of darkness, and Gojō barely managed to raise a shield of his own against the explosion.
"Clever," Tenjin said, not even winded. "But predictable."
His fingers splayed wide, and the air itself seemed to fracture. Dozens of smaller barriers materialized, each one humming with disruptive energy that made Naruto's teeth ache.
Gojō launched himself skyward, but Tenjin had anticipated this. The barriers shifted like a living thing, forming a dome overhead. As Gojō tried to change direction mid-leap, Tenjin clapped his hands together—
From Gojō's body, the wolf reformed out of shadow.
Tenjin blinked, but reacted fast enough. He snapped his fingers, and the barrier exploded outward in a blast of raw force, although less than the one right before because of this prematureness. The wolf was thrown back, twisting in midair, but it landed on its feet with impossible grace, growling low and feral.
It meant that Gojō was relatively unharmed. And he didn't miss a beat. He was already moving, weaving through smoke and fire with sharp focus. Unrelenting, his movements showcased a perfect synchronicity with the wolf.
But Tenjin's barriers kept coming, each one a piece worth studying on its own — some detonating on impact, others crackling with energy that distorted the air around them.
Although he seemed slightly worn himself, it seemed Tenjin hadn't lied before: he could go at this for a while.
Naruto's stomach twisted as he watched. Tenjin was gaining the upper hand, even now.
"You cannot keep this up for much longer, Gojō," Tenjin called, his voice carrying over the chaos. He traced a symbol in the air, and another barrier snapped into place, this one glowing faintly with intricate seals. "That thing cannot save you. The moment you lose momentum—"
"Why don't you use it, then?" Gojō asked, nearly snarling now. "That Sealing Field technique of yours?"
"It simply won't be needed."
The wolf lunged again, but Tenjin was ready.
He thrust both hands outward, summoning a cascade of smaller barriers that shifted around it. The shadow smashed into them, snarling as its conjurer did, but each time it broke through one, two more appeared to take its place.
Gojō was there in an instant, weaving between some barriers with impossible precision, and shattering the rest. He struck at Tenjin with his golden blade, but Tenjin deflected the strike, and with a burst of light and force, he shattered his own barrier and sent Gojō skidding back.
Naruto's heart raced. Gojō wasn't faltering — not yet — but Tenjin's strategy was ruthless. He wasn't just defending; he was dismantling Gojō's offense piece by piece.
"You're becoming predictable," Tenjin said, his voice steady, but his eyes burned with intensity. "You. What a shame."
Another explosion erupted, the shockwave throwing Gojō off balance for a split second. That was all Tenjin needed. He pressed the advantage, conjuring a field of shards that lashed out in every direction.
Gojō's response was a grunt of effort as he contorted his body, managing to avoid the worst of it. But Naruto saw blood bloom across his shoulder, his leg. His landing was less than graceful, and his next barrier — a yellowish thing of condensed chakra Naruto didn't know — lacked Gojō's usual precision.
Tenjin didn't press his advantage immediately.
Instead, he began a slow, deliberate series of hand movements that made the air feel heavy, wrong somehow. "The barrier masters of old, I will admit," he said, voice eerily calm, "were right about some matters."
The ground beneath Gojō's feet rippled like water. He leaped away, but the distortion followed, growing larger by the second and forcing him to cut corners. Catching the wolf and entrapping it.
And, inevitably, one of the edged barriers caught Gojō's hamstring.
"They knew that to truly master barriers—" Tenjin's next movement sent a cascade of explosions ripping through the air, forcing Gojō into an increasingly narrow space "—one must understand that everything is connected. Everything can be broken apart and reformed."
Things spiraled from there, quickly.
Gojō's movements took on a frenzied grace — desperation replacing technique, pain transformed into pure survival instinct.
Each dodge, each desperate leap, only drew him deeper into Tenjin's web of disruption barriers, invisible threads waiting to snare their prey.
His breath escaped in ragged bursts that spoke of more than just physical exhaustion, and the slight tremor in his hands became a visible shake that traveled through his body like spreading cracks in glass.
And then, a rough landing.
Naruto's throat closed around a useless warning he knew would come too late anyway. He could only watch as Gojō's wounded leg finally betrayed him, buckling like a card bridge, and giving way to the inevitable.
Tenjin's hands came together with the finality of an executioner's blade—
The temperature dropped.
No, it plummeted. As though winter itself had awakened beneath their feet. Naruto's caught breath turned to diamond dust in his lungs, that he exhaled painfully, in air that felt thick enough to swim through.
The world had changed, certainly, but the strangest thing was the look on Tenjin's face. That brief flicker of something almost like recognition, followed by a narrowing of his eyes. This wasn't his doing.
The mist came alive like something half-remembered, half-dreamed. It didn't creep or flow but poured upward from the ground itself, and it told Naruto all he needed to know.
Then the fog parted, like curtains drawn back by invisible hands.
He rose from the depths as though the floor were nothing but the surface of a bottomless lake, this figure who brought the very essence of water with him — every drop of it, whether it fell from his sodden clothes or from his long red hair.
"We have you now," Ryūjin said.
His face held the same calm as a wave approaching shore, and his hands were weaving through seals already, as inexorable as the tide—
Hands.
The realization struck Naruto like lightning, but before he could process it, Ryūjin's technique bloomed into being. His palm struck the earth with enough force to send tremors through the metal beneath, and the mist recoiled like a living thing, revealing the intricate combination of foggy symbols that hung there. They spread until they formed a perfect circle around the battlefield.
Tenjin's eyes narrowed further, even as a shroud of blue grew around him. "A Sealing Field?" The words carried slightly more academic interest than concern, as though he were critiquing a student's technique. "You?"
Ryūjin didn't answer. And Gojō's only response was a smile that spoke of blood and victory, his teeth stained crimson in the ethereal light — he had something to do with it too, Naruto was sure of it.
"No." Tenjin's head tilted, analyzing. "Of course not. It's incomplete. You think this will hold me?"
Ryūjin's expression shifted just barely — not quite a smile, but the ghost of one, like ripples on dark water. "No."
The mist responded to some unspoken command, condensing and transforming. Following Tenjin. And at the same time, more arms of water rose. They struck at Tenjin from three vectors simultaneously, a coordinated assault that spoke of years of mastery compressed into seconds.
Tenjin's barriers materialized like sheets of glass in the air, but they might as well have been trying to stop the tide. The water simply flowed around them, through them, reforming on the other side with cruel efficiency.
"Flowing Moon, indeed," Tenjin said, and for the first time, something like genuine appreciation crossed his features.
"You're right," Ryūjin said, "about this barrier. I had to cut corners. And I had help. Never managed to do this much on my own. But I never meant for it to contain you. It was only meant to amplify."
The mist parted further, and the truth of Ryūjin's technique revealed itself. Where his arms should have ended in stumps, flowing constructs of living water had taken their place — and knowing the technique, not mere prosthetics, but extensions of his very being.
"Use it, you bastard!" Gojō's voice thundered across the battlefield, raw with fury. "Tenjin! Use your Sealing Field!"
The water responded before Tenjin did, another arm of liquid light erupting from beneath his feet with the speed of a striking serpent. Tenjin evaded, but the disruption barriers he'd positioned with such care were dissolving like sugar in rain, their energy bleeding into an atmosphere already saturated with Ryūjin's chakra.
Where the Flowing Moon technique intersected with the dissipating barriers, the water transformed — taking on an inner light that spoke of power barely contained, like starlight trapped beneath ice.
Each time Tenjin evaded one of Ryūjin's liquid constructs, two more shapes emerged from the mist like hungry serpents. They drove him back with inexorable force, his barriers flickering into existence with increasing strain — the first cracks appearing in his incredible defense.
"Why would I bother?" Tenjin's voice carried an edge of calculation beneath its usual calm. "Whatever game you're playing, I have no intention of being your willing participant."
"You're a damned coward!" Gojō shouted. "Tenjin!"
Naruto had no idea if Gojō was bluffing, and perhaps he was slightly scared of the answer, in truth.
Through the mayhem, Ryūjin stood unmoved, an anchor point in a storm. Only his water hands danced, and they did so in precise, fluid gestures, conducting a symphony of destruction.
In a fleeting moment, Tenjin's eyes locked with Ryūjin's. Contempt flashed across his face as his hands formed the seal to detonate his technique at full power.
Naruto's heart stopped as he remembered the exploding seal still etched into Ryūjin's skin. No—!
But when Tenjin's hands completed their motion, nothing happened.
In that frozen instant of realization, a water arm crashed into him with devastating force, launching him skyward.
"I understand now—" Tenjin began, but Gojō's voice cut through, raw and triumphant.
"The healing was never meant for his arms! I did all I could to restore his technique and suppress yours. Your arrogance was exactly what I needed — needed you to write him off!" Blood flecked his grin as his hands flashed through signs. "Mountain's core sleeps. Six arms awaken might."
The meaning struck Naruto a heartbeat too late, his attention scattered by the chaos unfolding around him.
And despite his injured leg, Gojō leaped.
He soared impossibly high, a golden streak igniting the heavens, far above Ryūjin's writhing water arms and Tenjin himself. Light erupted from his bloodied hands, and the sky itself seemed to catch fire.
Perhaps Tenjin had been right about the elemental chakra, at least.
Naruto's breath caught as Gojō's Enkō manifested in its full, terrible glory: six colossal arms of pure power, each one rippling with muscle and wreathed in ethereal flames. Golden light shimmered along its edges like sunlight breaking through storm clouds, and when it roared, the sound resonated through bone and soul.
For the first time since their paths had crossed, wariness flickered across Tenjin's face.
His barriers rose nonetheless, but caught as he was within Ryūjin's mists, they were pale echoes of their former strength, like paper trying to hold back a flood.
And, of course, Tenjin was beset on all sides, trapped between fire and water.
What followed sheer brutality. Where Enkō's spectral arms met Ryūjin's water serpents, was a burst of steam. Steam that erupted at each point of contact. Steam that was no ordinary vapor. Steam that shimmered with intertwined gold and azure light, as though two brilliant forces had decided to dance.
Through this ethereal veil, their combined techniques moved with impossible synchronization, something born from the intersection of nightmare and reverie.
"Gojō!" Ryūjin's command cut through the chaos without looking back. "All of it! Now!"
The massive monkey spirit's response was a grin that spoke of violence older than man. Its six arms moved with brutal purpose, raw power complementing the liquid precision of Ryūjin's assault.
They struck as one entity — Enkō's overwhelming might merged with the impossible reach of the water arms, their combined force hammering Tenjin's defenses with the fury of primal beasts.
Blood painting his savage grin, Gojō called out: "Nowhere left for him to run! Say it, old man! Say the name!"
The answer came with a reluctant grin.
"…Just this once, then!" Ryūjin's voice cut through mist and shadow like winter wind, blending with Gojō's identical call: "Six Streams of Heaven!"
They had orchestrated this perfectly, Naruto realized with rising hope.
Tenjin seemingly tended to use himself as the main anchor point of his most dangerous barrier technique. And so, every movement of the two had been calculated, driving him to this precise point between them, forcing him to overextend if he tried to use his Sealing Field technique. Distance would dilute its power, turning his greatest weapon into something manageable. To Naruto at least, it was a masterclass in tactical positioning.
Gojō and Ryūjin's chakra synchronized with an almost audible click, water and light made form weaving together into something terrible and beautiful. The attack converged from every conceivable angle — water arms coiling like living chains while Enkō's massive hands descended like the judgment of heaven itself. Force incarnate, a true thunderclap that vanished fog in an explosive wave as their combined might finally shattered Tenjin's defenses. His barriers splintered like dreams of invincibility, and his roar of pain took even Naruto by surprise. In that crystalline moment of triumph, Naruto saw it reflected like twin mirrors: the fierce light in Ryūjin's eyes, the primal exultation in Gojō's blood-streaked grin. For one perfect heartbeat, they had done the impossible.
Then came the echo.
One pure note sliced through the chaos like winter's first breath — sharp, clean, absolute. A deer's hoof striking stone. Naruto's instincts screamed before his mind could process why, his eyes searching frantically for the source. In that heartbeat of desperate awareness, reality shifted.
Ryūjin's magnificent water arms, his perfect technique, simply... fell. Not a collapse, not a fade, but the simple, terrible surrender to gravity that marked the difference between art and mere water.
And Ryūjin stood frozen in his final seal, hands still raised in a conductor's pose, face caught in that moment of fierce triumph.
Then, with the dreadful simplicity of a paper being torn, his torso slid sideways.
Naruto's mind stuttered. Stopped. Refused to comprehend what his eyes were seeing. Time stretched like cold sludge, seconds becoming heartless eternities as understanding crept in with merciless slowness.
Ryūjin's body struck the ground in two perfect pieces.
The truth arrived in stages: first, the water at his feet darkening to crimson; then the airship's subtle shift. Reality crashed in with the force of a tidal wave.
"No," Naruto whispered, his voice breaking.
Gojō's scream was something primal, something that belonged in ancient forests where men had first learned fear. Tenjin's blue chakra rose and Enkō, the mighty six-armed guardian, simply ceased to exist, as if it had never been.
Naruto moved on pure instinct, chakra flooding his feet and right hand as he anchored himself and Shinpachi to the dying airship's hull to avoid falling. What he had witnessed before — the scattered flames and debris — now seemed like birthday candles compared to what followed.
The airship had been burning, before.
Now it erupted into a maelstrom of flame and ruin, sheets of molten metal peeling away like flaming leaves. Ryūjin's presence, of course, had been more than just his strength in battle — he had been like a living seal, holding back the vessel's collapse through sheer force of will. With his death — and he was dead, Naruto was almost certain of it — that delicate balance shattered.
The ship was a dying star, a metal leviathan tearing itself apart in its death throes, hemorrhaging fire into the night sky.
And through this maelstrom of flame and ruin, Tenjin emerged like a demon stepping from hell's gates. Blood painted dark trails down his face, but he stood unbroken, wiping his mouth with the casual disdain of someone brushing away dust.
"There was no need for it," he said coldly.
Before Naruto could even begin to wonder what he was saying, from the shadows beyond Ryūjin's cooling corpse, two figures materialized.
First came the deer — though calling the yōkai such was like calling a hurricane a breeze. Its antlers rose like a crown of thorns against the fire-lit sky, steam rising from its hide like souls escaping flesh. Its eyes held the same promise as black holes: absolute, inevitable annihilation.
The man who followed made the monster seem gentle.
The blade that had bisected Ryūjin dissolved into reddened threads of wind, but the casualness of that dismissal only made it more terrifying. He stood wrapped in a thick cloak inscribed with seals, but it was his eyes that seized Naruto's attention — crimson irises burning with intent. Naruto's gaze skittered away like prey from a predator, instinct outrunning thought. With or without Shiori's words.
"You should have used your technique, if you didn't wish for me to intervene." The man's voice carried the weight of mountains grinding to dust. "What were you waiting for?"
Gojō stood immobile, chest heaving like a wounded animal's. Blood painted a macabre path down his leg as his eyes darted in desperate calculation — from the man to the monstrous deer, to Ryūjin's bisected form, to Tenjin, and back again.
He knew it, just like Naruto did.
Alone, against two monsters and whatever ungodly thing wore a deer's shape, he had nothing left. The mighty Gojō, Naruto realized, was cornered.
Tenjin ignored the rebuke, wiping blood from his chin with elegant disdain. To Naruto, there seemed to be growing tension in him, as silent as it was. "You're here," Tenjin said shortly. "And I can still sense an ally's chakra, no matter how unrecognizable the seals made it. Is it done? Is Nagato finally dead?"
Naruto's heart stuttered in his chest, denial and despair blending together.
The crimson-eyed man answered, his presence as oppressive as the deer's towering form behind him. "Yes. Oboro gave her life to power the Dead Demon Consuming Seal."
"...Call her by her name." Tenjin's words carried the weight of mountains as blood trickled from his lips. "Keishō." The name hung in the air like a death knell. His eyes, usually so controlled, blazed with an inferno of rage. "What does secrecy matter now that she lies dead? This was nonsensical madness. Why did she have to be sacrificed? And a seal? To contain, or kill Nagato?" A bitter laugh escaped him. "Were you too weak to kill him properly, or merely too afraid to even try?"
"You know better than to ask such foolish questions," the crimson-eyed man said, his voice as cold and sharp as frostbite. "You've seen what happens to those who underestimate him. The Sage's words were clear. The prophecy demanded this. Nagato had to be sealed this way — his soul, consumed by the most powerful seal of its kind. Nothing else would suffice."
A prophecy.
The word echoed in Naruto's mind, striking like a bell tolling doom. His breath caught, chest tightening as a chill of dread washed over him. Shiori's voice whispered from the recesses of his memory:
There are things in motion right now that I am not allowed to tell you. And apparently, things I'm afraid I don't understand either. Things that shouldn't be possible, yet somehow are.
This wasn't just a battle. It felt like a part of something far greater, a chain of events set in motion long before he was born, now spiraling toward its grim conclusion. And these two... whatever they were, stood as if the outcome had been decided ages ago.
The deer's antlers cast living shadows across the wrecked metal hull, shadows that moved with purpose, with hunger. A third human ally — at least — apparently waited somewhere nearby. The odds mounted like a rising tide.
Nagato was dead, Shinpachi was down, Gojō was faltering, Shiori was gone, and now Ryūjin—
Naruto's gaze fell to his body, lying between them all, blood spreading in a dark pool beneath him, a testament to how quickly things could end.
"The prophecy speaks of sacrifice," the crimson-eyed man said. "Of necessary ends. Oboro—" He caught himself, shadows dancing across his face. "No. In this much, perhaps we share understanding. Keishō understood this. Her death was not in vain."
Keishō? This time, the name struck something in Naruto's memory, a half-forgotten echo. And Gojō's reaction was immediate.
"Keishō?" he asked mutely. "Of the Uzumaki?"
They ignored him as if he were already dead.
"Where are the others?" Tenjin pressed, his words laced with restrained fury. "Who's the one remaining? Where is Ishii—"
"Honor the dead with their true names if you must," the crimson-eyed man cut through his words like a blade through silk. "But do not throw away others' own secrets as carelessly as you did your own."
Tenjin bristled, his composure cracking. "Where is Sakeme, then… Raimei?"
"Dead." Raimei's voice was a funeral bell. "Uzumaki Nagato claimed their life."
Darkness gathered in Tenjin's eyes. "I warned you he wouldn't—"
"Kyomu." The name — Tenjin's own designation — crashed like thunder.
"What?" The word was pure venom.
"Remember our purpose."
Fury blazed in Tenjin's eyes before being smothered by iron control, leaving behind only killing frost. It was a stark reminder that before becoming this, he had been legendary among the Sealweavers.
Gojō's laugh cut through the tension, sharp and poisonous. "And you spoke of freedom?" Contempt dripped from every word. "You've merely exchanged one chain for another."
"Do you tire of breathing, Gojō?" Tenjin's question carried death in its wake.
"Now," Raimei commanded, his gaze sweeping over Naruto and Shinpachi like an executioner's blade. At least, that was what Naruto thought he was doing — he was still avoiding the man's eyes. "The anti-summoning seal?" Raimei's voice held an edge. "Has it been applied?"
"Yes," Tenjin hissed, without looking at him. "On both. They're not going anywhere."
Raimei nodded. "Gen'ei is currently ensuring Keishō's work remains pure. Let us conclude this."
Naruto's fingers found his ink, though the gesture felt hollow. Gojō rose with a sound of pure agony—
Tenjin's head snapped upward, his gaze piercing the heavens like a spear.
Something about the sudden movement made Naruto's breath catch. He didn't want to look. No, he didn't want to look... but found himself tilting his head skyward anyway, compelled by a primal instinct. Around him, the others did the same, as if caught in the same invisible pull.
The sky shattered.
From its depths came a man, falling — no, plummeting — like a burning star. His eyes, red as fresh blood, seared into Naruto's memory. He had seen those eyes before, in Shiori's borrowed memories, of course. But, somehow, he thought this wasn't just it.
The figure slammed against the airship in a cataclysmic crash, metal groaning in protest as sparks and debris rained down like meteors.
Slowly, painfully, the other crimson-eyed man — who had to be Gen'ei — rose from the wreckage. Even in this wounded motion, there was a hint of lethal grace.
And then came rain, smothering the fires.
A sound.
A sound deeper than sound itself, a vibration that shook the world. The air grew thick, nearly hostile, alive with powerful intent. Naruto's lungs burned as though the atmosphere itself sought to crush him.
Above, the sky twisted and tore apart, a jagged wound in reality. From its depths, light poured forth — not golden, not white. But blinding purple, suffocating in its brilliance. The fog that cloaked the battlefield vanished in an instant, much like the fires had, leaving stark shadows in the rain, and unnerving clarity.
"...Ah," Tenjin said slowly. "Well. Don't say I never warned you."
Through the rift stepped a figure.
Nagato.
He was a storm given form, his red hair plastered to his face, damp with sweat or rain — or both. Light burned in his eyes, an aura glowing like molten silver, alive with fury barely contained. His tattered cloak moved against natural law, writhing like something alive. Raw chakra coiled around him, a leashed beast straining at its chains, promising obliteration.
His eyes found Ryūjin first, and what passed through his gaze as he watched the bisected corpse, as he tried to locate Shiori's chakra, transcended mere emotion. To Naruto, at least, it was indescribable.
For a moment, Nagato regarded Tenjin and the two crimson-eyed men silently, as though weighing their lives on an invisible scale. His gaze was cold, vast, and terrifying.
A smile finally touched his lips, devoid of warmth or mercy.
"Did you really think," he said, his voice impossibly calm, "that any seal in creation could bind me?"
i/MwmhBT : Nagato
i/MwsmoP : Extra — Tenjin: On Nagato, Who Holds His Fate
AN: No Annex this week...?
No worries, I've sent it to your physical mailbox.
Next chapter: Tempest