"Dad, where are we?"
Yūji looked around the cave, which held nothing but a pool and green light, and asked in confusion. He had imagined that the passage to the moon would be some magnificent teleportation array or a space-time rift, not a seemingly unremarkable pool.
Adult Naruto did not answer immediately. His gaze shifted from Big Yellow to his own clear reflection in the pool, and he fell silent for a moment. Then he looked up at Yūji and asked a question that sounded rather absurd:
"Yūji, if I told you that this pool before us... was the road to the moon, would you believe me?"
His voice echoed through the empty cave.
"The moon?"
Yūji repeated the word unconsciously and looked up almost on instinct.
All he saw was an uneven stone ceiling glowing green.
Only then did he remember that he was still deep inside a cave, with no view of the sky, let alone the moon. A trace of embarrassment crossed his face.
"Isn't the moon up in the sky?"
He scratched his head, looking at the bottomless pool before him, unable to connect it with the moon hanging far away in the heavens.
Adult Naruto had expected his son's reaction. He stood, swept his gaze over the pool, then looked toward the faint green lights deeper in the cave. His tone grew solemn and distant as he began recounting an ancient secret buried beneath the dust of history:
"This passage didn't form naturally. It came from the Sage of Six Paths."
At that name, Yūji's expression immediately turned solemn.
He had grown up hearing the legends of the Sage of Six Paths. He knew that the sage was the source of all chakra and ninjutsu in the Shinobi World, a nearly divine being.
Still, the