Cocoon and Team 7

Light was still falling from the sky.

It was not sunlight, nor moonlight, but a blood-red, gentle radiance that had never appeared upon this land before—a light belonging neither to day nor night, warm as amniotic fluid. It poured from the moon's surface, from that enormous Nine-Tomoe Rinnegan, like an endless waterfall, soaking the entire world in a color suspended between dreams and death.

Naruto stood beneath Sasuke's Susanoo, looking up at that light.

The paths of the light reflected in his cross-shaped eyes—not straight lines, but slightly slanting arcs like fine rain, drawn along by some invisible force. The light fell upon the God Tree's vines, upon the white cocoons hanging from those vines, upon the earth already covered by the God Tree's roots, upon a world that no longer belonged to humankind.

Behind him, Sakura's hands were still pressed over Kakashi's left eye socket. Green medical chakra flickered in her palms like a lamp swaying in the wind. Kakashi's left eye was closed, while his right eye watched the cocoons in the sky—that normal black eye reflected the world's final nightmare.

No one spoke.

There was no sound left on the battlefield. No thunderous explosions of ninjutsu, no clashing weapons, no shouts, no screams, no running footsteps, no dying groans. Only minutes ago—or perhaps hours; time had already become hazy—those sounds had filled this land. But now, they had all vanished.

In their place was a new sound.

It was the sound of wind passing over countless white cocoons. The cocoons hung from the God Tree's vines, dangling from the nearest branches, from the farthest reaches of the sky, from every direction the eye could see. They swayed gently in the wind, brushing against one another and making faint, crisp sounds, like shells knocking together.

The sound was