"Oh my god! So that's how he got the Rinnegan! Madara bided his time for all those years and only awakened it when he was practically at death's door!"
"Thank goodness he was old by then! Otherwise, with Madara in his prime wielding the Rinnegan, no one in the entire Shinobi World could have stopped him!"
"Poor Nagato... His entire life was a tragedy. He was doomed by their schemes from childhood!"
"From childhood to adulthood, he lived entirely within Madara and Black Zetsu's game. He was someone else's pawn from beginning to end!"
"It was all a script someone else had written in advance!"
Meanwhile, in Amegakure!
Nagato's face was deathly pale, his body trembling slightly.
Beside him, Konan gently raised her hand to support him as he teetered on the brink of an emotional breakdown, soothing him in a soft voice.
"Nagato, don't dwell on it."
"It's all in the past now."
"The Sky Screen has exposed the whole truth. From now on, we know everything. Black Zetsu will never use us again."
Nagato lowered his head, cold to his very core. His eyes brimmed with endless self-mockery and pain, and his voice was hoarse and broken.
"Rewrite the ending..."
"What a joke my life has been. It was a lie from the very beginning."
"If Madara hadn't chosen me..."
"My parents wouldn't have died such terrible deaths. I wouldn't have lost my home. Yahiko wouldn't have been driven to his death. The Akatsuki wouldn't have fallen into darkness, step by step."
"All the suffering in my life, every tragedy-it was all planned by someone else!"
Konan fell silent, a trace of lifeless despair creeping into her eyes as well.
This Shinobi World, filled with schemes, hatred, lies, and injustice, truly had rotted to its core. There wasn't