The Price of Bloodline

The tenth step after entering the passage—Bोरuto later thought it was probably the tenth, though he was no longer sure. In this place, the very concept of "steps" had become suspect, like trying to measure a dream with a ruler.

His feet touched the ground without a sound. He tried to exhale, but couldn't feel the air's usual warmth. He raised a hand to check where he was. Where was his hand?

He could still see, but there was nothing before him to look at. This wasn't darkness—darkness had at least some texture, a filling left behind by the absence of light. The "nothingness" here was more absolute. It wasn't even an absence. It was simply... not there. Like someone trying to describe a concept, only to find halfway through that the concept itself had been erased.

"Shiki." He called out in the depths of his consciousness.

The response came more slowly than usual, as though the signal had to cross some viscous medium. "I'm here."

"How are things on your end?"

"...I'm affected." Shiki's voice carried a rare hesitation. "My existence depends on your consciousness, but your consciousness is..."

"Fading?"

"Being assimilated," Shiki corrected. "Not disappearing, but being assimilated by this nothingness and becoming part of it."

Boruto stopped walking. Or at least, he thought he had—without any spatial reference, the line between "stopping" and "moving" was just as blurred. Naruto, Sarada, and Yamada should have been behind him. He called out, "Dad, are you still there?"

His voice didn't echo. It simply vanished, like a drop of water falling into dry sand and being instantly absorbed, leaving not even a trace of dampness.

Then Naruto's voice came from somewhere, its distance impossible to judge. It sounded strained with discomfort. "I'm here. This place..." He paused, apparently searching for