Tayuya's Audience and the Forged Top-Secret Scroll

Land of Rice Fields, border.

The dark, damp underground passage resembled the esophagus of some giant beast, thick with the earthy stench of soil and the pungent odor of chemical reagents.

"Gasp... gasp..."

Tayuya's lungs were like a broken bellows. Every breath brought searing pain and bloody foam. Her body dragged itself along the stone wall on sheer willpower alone, leaving a broken trail of dark red blood behind her.

Her consciousness had already blurred. The scene before her swayed, shattered, then reassembled into distorted patches of light and shadow.

Sakon and Ukon's miserable deaths, Kidomaru's final desperate roar, and that silver Barrier that had completely sealed off Moon Viewing Shrine, swallowing every sound and every trace of power... Those fragments of memory were like poisoned steel needles, repeatedly piercing her fraying nerves.

Yet above those terrifying memories was an even clearer, more absolute command, branded deep into her soul like a seal.

—Survive.

—Personally deliver the Scroll into Lord Orochimaru's hands!

It was her only obsession, the sole fuel driving her battered body to crawl this far.

She was Lord Orochimaru's most loyal subordinate, the only survivor of the Sound Four to escape alive! Carrying the blood debt of her comrades and Konoha's earth-shattering conspiracy, she had to complete this audience!

"Thud."

At last, when she saw the stone door carved with a three-headed snake totem at the end of the passage, Tayuya exhausted the last of her strength and collapsed headfirst onto the icy floor. The Scroll she had guarded so desperately in her arms rolled away beside her.

Darkness swallowed her whole like a freezing sea.

"Creak—"

The heavy stone door slid open without a sound.

Kabuto Yakushi adjusted the round glasses on the bridge of his nose. Their lenses reflected the dim phosphorescent flames along the