Mount Myōboku, deep within the Sage Palace.
The Great Toad Sage's wrinkled old face had gone as white as a corpse.
His cloudy toad eyes were fixed on the stone crystal ball before him, his body trembling as if he were having a seizure.
Inside the crystal ball, the once-indistinct fog of prophecy had been smashed to pieces by a violent surge of golden energy.
Like a porcelain vase pierced straight through by a massive hammer, shattered into fragments across the floor.
"Impossible... impossible..."
The Great Toad Sage spat out a mouthful of slime reeking of grass. His huge eyelids drooped so heavily they nearly slid out of their sockets.
"The prophecy... the prophecy has been severed?!"
Beside him, Sage Fukasaku and Sage Shima were so terrified they nearly rolled off the stone platform.
As the oldest sages of Mount Myōboku, they had never seen their ancestor fly into such a rage in all their lives.
Nor had they ever witnessed the prophecy orb being shattered.
"Ancestor! Are you all right?!"
Fukasaku hurriedly hopped over, patting his ancestor's back hard with his little paws.
The ancestor's heart was pounding like a drum, the lump of fatty flesh on his chest jiggling violently.
"The heavens... have changed."
His deep, hoarse voice was like a muffled rumble squeezed from deep beneath the earth's crust, cracking the floor tiles throughout the Sage Palace.
"Just now, within that fog, I could not see any so-called Child of Peace at all."
"What I saw was a sea of blood."
"A monster standing atop Perfect Susanoo, carrying Scientific Ninja Tools in his hands, using gods as fertilizer!"
Sage Fukasaku's face instantly turned green, his glossy toad skin looking especially glaring.
"That brat called Uchiha Yoru?"
"Wasn't he doing his junk research in Iwagakure? How did he