The Truth of the Infinite Tsukuyomi

Madara's lips moved.

He wanted to ask, "Why," but no sound came from his throat. Not because Black Zetsu had sealed his vocal cords—his vocal cords were intact, his trachea unobstructed, his lungs still drawing in and expelling the blood-red air normally. But the connection between those organs and his brain had been severed. No—not severed, but taken over. Like a river's main channel being dug open into a new course, the current naturally abandoned its old direction and surged toward the newer, wider, deeper channel.

His body was being taken from him.

Not destroyed, not ruined, but claimed inch by inch by some older, more fundamental will that had lurked within him from the very beginning. Every muscle, every bone, every nerve, every cell—they were forgetting that Madara was their master, reclaiming a name far older than Madara, one that had existed thousands of years before he was born.

Madara's lips moved again. This time, a sound emerged.

"You—"

Only one word. As it squeezed out of his throat, it carried a hoarse sound, like a rusted iron gate being forced open. It was not an accusation, not rage, not even fear—it was the sound of a drowning man trying to seize his last straw. There was no strength to question in that voice, only a desperate, futile instinct to confirm whether he was still breathing.

Black Zetsu's face pressed against the back of his neck. Two pure white eyes stared at the back of Madara's head, and an expression slowly emerged upon that smooth, featureless, mask-like face.

It was not a smile.

A smile was too simple. Smiles belonged to the living—to creatures of flesh and blood, with sorrow and joy, hopes and disappointments. What lay upon Black Zetsu's face could not be called a smile. It was