In the pure white space, golden patterns spread across the surface of the Humanity Stele like living creatures.
Hyuga Xiao stood where he was, his Tenseigan Prototype, gleaming with deep azure starlight, fixed firmly on the stele. The illusion had already faded, but those scenes—Hinata smiling as she pierced her own heart, Hong dissolving into specks of light before him, Tsunade destroying her own chakra pathways—remained branded deep into his consciousness.
"You rejected perfect solitude." The Stele Spirit's voice rang out again, less mechanical this time and tinged with complicated emotions. "You also rejected perfect control."
"Perfect?" Xiao's voice was as cold as iron from the depths of a glacier. "Turning the people I care about into puppets, or watching them die in front of me—what kind of perfection is that?"
"That is divine perfection," the Stele Spirit said calmly. "Strip away emotion, strip away bonds, strip away everything that could become a weakness. You will gain absolute power, absolute reason, absolute... eternity."
Xiao laughed.
There was no warmth in that smile, only an almost crazed stubbornness.
"The power I want is meant to protect what I want to protect." He raised his hand, and the Pact Stone fused from three fragments appeared in his palm, radiating light from the same source as the golden patterns on the stele. "If becoming a god means cutting those things away, then I would rather not become a god—or I'll forcefully bring them with me to godhood."
The Stele Spirit fell silent.
In the pure white space, only the low hum of the Pact Stone resonating with the inscription remained.
After a long while, the Stele Spirit finally spoke again. "Your will... has begun to contaminate the rules of the trial. The Humanity Stele has existed for a thousand years, yet it has