Then, inside the cube, the shadow blades moved.
They did not slash. They did not pierce.
They negated "existence" itself.
Wherever the shadow blades passed, matter disintegrated, chakra was annihilated, and souls were torn apart.
There were no screams, because the darkness swallowed sound.
There was no blood, because it evaporated instantly.
There was only pure, absolute-
"Erasure."
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
The black cube slowly dissipated.
As abruptly and silently as it had appeared.
When the darkness cleared, the sight it revealed made every survivor's pupils contract, their bodies turning ice-cold.
At the center of the venue lay a bottomless, square abyss, its edges as smooth as mirrors.
The abyss measured a hundred meters on each side, its depths pitch-black and unfathomable. Even light could not escape it.
Everything that had occupied that area-buildings, ground, corpses, even dust-had vanished.
It had been "erased."
Even the space itself seemed to have had a chunk forcibly gouged out of it.
Two mutilated figures lay at the edge of the abyss.
Ōnoki.
Half his body was gone.
A massive section had been diagonally "wiped" away, from his left shoulder to the right side of his abdomen.
His organs lay exposed, his white bones stark, and blood poured out as though a floodgate had opened.
His eyes were wide, still holding the horror of that final moment before the darkness swallowed him, but his pupils had begun to lose focus.
Jiraiya.
He was in even worse shape.
His lower body had vanished entirely, "severed" clean off at the waist.
His upper body was covered in cuts deep enough to expose bone. Only half his left arm remained, and his right eye was a bloody hole.
But he was alive-barely.
Senjutsu chakra sustained his last breath, his chest still rising and falling