Blue light gathered above the recess for several seconds, gradually stabilizing. Naruto stepped forward to study the outline-it wasn't human. It was shorter than a human figure, rounded, like an animal curled up. The blue light traced its back and head, its tail curled beside it, its pointed ears standing upright. A fox.
Luffy tilted his head as he watched. "It's so small."
The fox's outline in the blue light stirred, turning its head toward Naruto. Naruto felt the nine-tails chakra surge inside him, as though something outside had given it a gentle push. He instinctively clenched his fists. His Chakra Cloak didn't appear, but the reaction was unmistakable. This blue fox had resonated somehow with the thing inside him.
Zoro stood beside the stone platform, looking down at the inscriptions on a stone pillar. "These characters aren't the same as the ones on the platform," he said. "The ones on the pillars are older, like they were here from the start. The ones on top were carved later."
Naruto noticed the difference Zoro had pointed out. Beneath the vines covering the four stone pillars, he could faintly make out original carvings blurred by weathering, their strokes rough and widely spaced. The markings on the platform's stone slab, by contrast, were dense and orderly, their color fresher and their edges sharp. They had clearly been carved recently. This top layer was what the woman in the red dress had repaired.
The fox in the blue light suddenly dispersed into dozens of points of light that drifted upward. They rose to roughly the height of a person above the stone platform and gathered again, this time forming a string of characters. The characters hovered in the air for over ten seconds, then scattered and reassembled, repeating the process three times. Each