The Toad Sage Arrives

Under the gray-white sky of the ice-and-snow dimension, Naruto and Sasuke were still catching their breath.

Kaguya Clan had been gone for less than a minute, but that minute seemed to have been stretched out. Naruto's wrist still hurt, Sasuke's arm was still bleeding, and neither of them spoke. They used this brief gap to recover their strength. The Sage of Six Paths' lingering shadow floated above them, its halo already so faint it was nearly transparent, like a sheet of rice paper soaked in water, ready to fall apart at any moment.

No one knew when Kaguya Clan would return.

But everyone knew she would.

The rift appeared without any warning.

It was not a black rift like Yomotsu Hirasaka, with sharp edges—it split in a cleaner way. As though someone had taken invisible scissors and snipped the fabric of space itself, leaving a smooth, neat cut without even the slightest excess Chakra fluctuation. Starting from where Kaguya Clan had vanished, the rift extended upward, downward, left, and right at once. In less than half a second, it outlined a massive rectangle large enough to swallow the entire ice field.

The ice began to fall.

Not collapse—fall. The patch of ice beneath Naruto's feet lost all support in an instant, like a dinner plate shoved off a table, taking his whole body down with it. His first reaction was to use Chakra to cling to the nearby ice wall, but the moment his Chakra touched it, he felt an enormous pull. It was not the wall pulling him in; the entire dimension was changing. Like a giant elevator plunging downward at high speed, the sensation of weightlessness beneath his feet made his stomach lurch.

Sasuke was falling beside him as well. His Rinnegan glowed in the darkness as he