"What?! This presence..."
His low exclamation struck the mysterious realm like an ice-tempered stone, abruptly stirring a space that should have lain silent for eternity—
Air currents gathered into tiny vortices around him, carrying invisible patterns of chakra as they brushed against the suspended stalactites, scattering cold echoes across the ground.
When those pale purple eyes, closed for centuries upon centuries, snapped open, the "dust of ages" gathered on his lashes—in truth, the faint light of Space Stasis—flaked away.
Shadows of the entire Ninja World surged in the depths of his pupils: Konoha's Kage Rock shifted across them, Sunagakure's winds swept past with grains of sand, and even the outlines of tailed beasts curled up in the deep sea were clearly visible. Yet at the very center, a chakra mark that should have been shining had vanished into nothing.
The blood-colored mark on his forehead lit up in response.
It was no longer the faint mark it usually was, but a fresh wound seemingly slashed open by force—its bloody light burned so fiercely that it almost seared through the surrounding darkness, tinting even the corners of his eyes pale red.
His fingertips hovered in the void.
His knuckles turned bluish white with strain, and the pads of his fingers unconsciously rubbed against something, as though confirming that the mark had truly disappeared.
"A Sage-level—Six Paths-level—life-form has emerged in the Ninja World...?"
His voice was very low, carrying a trace of anticipation that even he failed to notice.
To him, this Ninja World had always been a carefully tended fishpond: from the spiral mark on Ashura's forehead a thousand years ago and the scarlet Sharingan in Indra's eyes to the fire-nature chakra pulsing within Konoha's new generation today, every being capable of stirring up a storm had been firmly enclosed in