Piercing the Heart, Ten-Tails!

Outside the Kamui Space. Battlefield.

Kakashi had just been expelled from that gray void. Before his knees had fully steadied, a black figure rushed out of the twisted spatial rift.

Obito.

He was even faster than before, so fast that even the Sharingan could only catch a blurry afterimage. The wound at his waist and abdomen was still bleeding, and the blood at the corner of his mouth had not been wiped away, but his eye—that Mangekyō Sharingan—burned with an almost mad, utterly desperate resolve.

He charged straight at Kakashi.

His right hand was held together like a blade as it stabbed for Kakashi's throat. No intangibility, no Black Receivers, no Kunai. He wanted to nail Kakashi to this blood-soaked ground in the most primitive, most brutal way possible.

Kakashi's left eye contracted sharply.

His body reacted faster than his mind—he twisted aside, leaned back, and instinctively gathered Lightning Blade in his right hand. Blue-white electricity danced in his palm with a sharp crackle, illuminating Obito's face, carved by three scars.

Obito's Sharingan reflected that mass of lightning.

He did not dodge.

Kakashi's pupils abruptly widened—he realized something, but it was already too late to stop. Obito was too fast, and they were too close. His body was still leaning back to evade, while Lightning Blade had already thrust forward on instinct.

As though they had rehearsed it countless times.

Lightning Blade pierced through Obito's chest.

Blue lightning exploded beneath grayish-white skin. Blood burst from the wound, splattering Kakashi's face. It was warm blood, carrying the heat of a living person, running down Kakashi's cheeks and dripping onto his flak jacket, onto the broken stones, blooming into dark red flowers beneath the moonlight.

Kakashi's eyes went wide.

In that ordinary black left eye, a raw, naked terror surged forth—one he