Deep within the moon lay a core region completely sealed off from the outside world.
A figure lay quietly curled up at its center.
She had pale, ankle-length hair that seemed spun from solidified moonlight, fair skin, and eyes filled with emptiness.
She was Kaguya Otsutsuki, who had used her power to pacify a war-torn world and been revered as the "Rabbit Goddess."
After sensing a familiar presence, a spark of life gradually returned to Kaguya's eyes.
There was no confusion of someone newly awakened in them, only a fathomless coldness and indifference that seemed to pierce through the ages.
She tried to channel her ocular power through the powerful seal designed specifically to contain her, attempting to sense what was happening outside.
But she failed.
The seal's power was like an unbreakable cage, locking all her senses, chakra, and even fluctuations of consciousness firmly within this cramped space.
She could not clearly detect even the slightest flow of chakra outside. All she could vaguely sense were faint tremors in the moon's overall structure, and... just moments ago, a fleeting, familiar presence that had stirred ripples deep within her soul.
"Urashiki..."
Kaguya had sensed Urashiki Otsutsuki's chakra, however faint it was.
But to a being of her level, that connection between members of the same clan stood out like a firefly in the night, even through the seal.
Urashiki... that clansman who always loved to toy with time and treat hunting his prey as a game-had he come to this world too?
Kaguya tried to follow that fleeting presence, extending her senses to gather more information.
But the seal's power immediately tightened like icy shackles, mercilessly severing the "feelers" she tried to extend and forcing them back.
"..."
In the end, she could only give up.
Her pure yet hollow