The battlefield lay in a canyon of complex terrain.
The fighting here was not as earth-shattering as the battle between Hashirama and Madara, yet a bone-deep sorrow and oppression hung over it.
Sheer cliffs towered above jagged rocks.
A silver-white figure, swift as lightning, flitted through the battlefield like a phantom.
His blade was as fast and precise as ever. Every time he drew it, an enemy fell. No blood stained its edge, only a cold gleam.
It was Hatake Sakumo, once known as Konoha's White Fang.
His face remained stern, but his eyes seemed shrouded in ice that would never thaw. Deep within them lay an unspeakable weariness and desolation.
Even his jonin vest looked unusually pale beneath the faint light of the Pure Land.
Just moments earlier, he had driven back several enemies surrounding a Konoha chunin with an exquisitely executed arcing slash, then swept the chunin behind him into relative safety.
It should have been the most ordinary sight on a battlefield: the strong protecting the weak, comrades supporting one another.
Yet the air between Sakumo and the chunin he had rescued was unnaturally still.
The chunin was no longer young. His face was weathered and lined, his gaze evasive, with a trace of shame and fear he could barely conceal.
He dared not lift his head to look directly at Sakumo's back. His lips moved as though he wanted to say something, but all that finally emerged was a trembling, barely audible call:
"L-Lord Sakumo..."
That voice, that form of address, pierced Sakumo's heart like the sharpest needle, awakening the nightmare he had forcibly buried but never truly forgotten.
"I believe Jonin Hatake was wrong to abandon the mission to rescue me."
Those very words!
**Those words, spoken by the comrade he had risked his life