The wind stopped. The thunder fell silent.
The vast Valley of the End had been reduced to a bottomless mud pit.
The blinding, blood-red light faded, and shattered rocks and charred dust rained from the sky. The arm, severed at the shoulder, fell through the air and landed with a wet slap on the dried-up riverbed, right beside the Hidden Leaf forehead protector bearing that deep, old scratch.
Sasuke lay faceup in the muddy water.
His left shoulder ended in nothing. Blood poured out as though he had an endless supply, staining more than half his body red. His six-pointed star Rinnegan, which had always gazed down on everyone with cold arrogance, was now as dull as dusty gray glass. He could not even focus it.
Ten paces away, Naruto was hardly any better off.
His right arm had also been severed cleanly above the elbow, leaving flaps of flesh and ghastly white splinters of bone. He lay sprawled among the rubble like a torn burlap sack, coughing up mouthful after mouthful of bloody froth.
Neither of them had left himself a way out of that last wind and lightning strangulation.
Two pools of bright blood trickled down the sloping slabs of rock. The red was painfully vivid, the blood thick and clotted. At last, the two streams met in a crack in the stone and silently mingled.
Drip.
The clear sound of a water droplet echoed in their ears.
The ruined canyon before their eyes suddenly warped and dissolved. In its place appeared an endless expanse of pure-white water.
Following their mingled blood, their lingering chakra forcibly dragged them into this utterly still space of spiritual resonance.
Sasuke looked down at the left arm missing even from his spiritual body, his facial muscles twitching violently twice. He jerked his