It took about three breaths for that voice to dissipate completely within the hollow cavity. Not because it was loud, but because the cavity's geometry caused the sound to reflect repeatedly between the walls—the first reflection reached the crowd after an extremely brief interval from the direct sound, creating a faint repetition at the end of the syllable; the second reflection had already lost too much energy to form distinguishable syllables, leaving only a thin residue in the frequency spectrum; by the third reflection, it had essentially blended into the cavity's ambient noise, and only specially trained hearing could separate it from the thermal noise.
Kaguya Clan did not speak again after uttering those three words. She remained standing where she was, her feet still spaced as they had been when she landed. Her arms slowly drew in from their slightly spread position to rest at her sides, palms facing inward, fingertips pressed against the fabric along her thighs. Her gaze remained fixed in Naruto's direction, but the range of her vision had widened slightly—her peripheral sight could now simultaneously catch the rise and fall of Hashirama's right shoulder, the faint movement of Madara's left ring finger, the pulse in Sasuke's neck, and the density of human silhouettes concealed within the shadows near the distant bend in the corridor.
Hashirama was the first to react. After Kaguya Clan spoke, he took half a step forward, changing from someone standing near the front to the one standing at the very front. The distance between him and Kaguya Clan narrowed from roughly fifteen feet to fourteen. His hands naturally opened at his sides, palms facing forward, a universally recognized non-hostile posture in the Ninja World. His tone was calm, like the voice he had used in his youth when extending a hand