"After all... was everything before my eyes real, or an illusion?"
Uchiha Madara knew he could never get a complete answer. If all of this existed only within an illusion, then any answer given by that illusion would, at most, be something impossible to distinguish from the truth.
But what he feared most now was that everything before him was not an illusion, but real. If it was all real, then the sin of personally killing two Gold Saints was real as well, and the two outcomes shown by Forked Path Mirage were both real...
He had only two paths ahead of him. One was to sacrifice Athena for the people of the Zemuria Continent. The other was to retreat so Athena would not suffer, sealing the people of the Zemuria Continent, along with himself, forever in this garden—forever halted at the fourth checkpoint, unable to advance any further.
And what would be the consequence of remaining at the fourth checkpoint and advancing no farther?
The thread in Forked Path Mirage led from one outcome toward another chain of cause and effect. Uchiha Madara saw that the consequence of him and the others being sealed within this illusion, unable to leave, would be endless warfare across the Zemuria Continent. With the continent's strongest people all trapped in this illusion, Ouroboros would throw the entire continent into chaos, and no one would be capable of stopping them.
That was something even more terrifying.
Tears streaming down his face, Uchiha Madara raised his head!
"If this is my fate, then all I can do is face it head-on. I will challenge this fate. If it means Athena, reduced to a mortal, will grow old and die before my eyes, then... I am willing to bear that karma!"
Uchiha Madara began chanting an