[Boruto had heard about the horrors of war at the Kirigakure Exchange Meeting and in stories Naruto had told. He had even seen simulated battlefields and historical photographs.]
[But all that secondhand knowledge was laughably inadequate beside the real carnage before him, a hellscape that assaulted every sense.]
[Shikadai's face had gone deathly pale. He clamped a hand over his mouth, fighting the urge to vomit, but he could not stop trembling.]
[Shinki clenched his fists so hard his nails dug into his palms, his face ashen.]
[Even Yeto, usually so detached, showed a barely perceptible flicker of shock in her violet eyes. Her brows drew tight; clearly, the scene had exceeded anything she had prepared herself for.]
[Only Nameless stood quietly behind Boruto, her gaze sweeping calmly over the mountain of corpses and sea of blood.]
[No fear. No revulsion. Not even the slightest ripple of emotion.]
[Her beautiful eyes held only a deadened indifference, as though the bodies of comrades and enemies before her were nothing more than stones or dead trees by the roadside.]
[Perhaps scenes like this had long since become the backdrop of her life, seared so deeply into her memory that they had worn away every trace of shock and pity.]
["War... does it really kill this many people?" Boruto had vomited until he was almost spent. He struggled upright and wiped his face with his sleeve, his voice thick with tears and trembling with disbelief.]
[He looked at the body of a young Uchiha who might have been even younger than them. Shock and defiance were frozen on the boy's face, and the Kunai gripped in his hand had snapped.]
[Life was so cheap here, so easily crushed.]
[Shikadai took several deep breaths of the scorching air, heavy with the stench of blood,