Deep in the Consciousness Abyss, Ling felt like a piece of red-hot iron. Every breath—if a consciousness could breathe—brought searing pain and the taste of rust. That madman Obito's counterattack had come hard and fast. The gray torrent of laws carried still more vicious fragments—the darkest, most obsessive memories and emotions belonging to Obito Uchiha. Like countless poisoned daggers, they hammered relentlessly against his faltering defenses.
The Beacon's light flickered wildly. Its analysis, filtering, and reconstruction were approaching their limits, and it gave a faint, overwhelmed whine. The cooling aura from the Black Stone had also become intermittent, its protective membrane torn full of holes. Ling's core consciousness was like a lone boat in a storm, liable to be smashed apart by the next wave.
"I can't hold on... I really... can't hold on..." Despair began winding around his thoughts like cold vines. Order? An anchor? What did this little glimmer amount to before such vast, raging chaos and malice?
Just as his consciousness was about to sink completely into that icy gray expanse representing absolute "nothingness"-
In the real world, the Black Stone, which the two Tobirama Senjus had simultaneously located and begun infusing with space-time power, suddenly erupted with an unprecedented milky-white light, gentle yet impossible to ignore!
The light was not dazzling, but it carried a strange power that soothed every wound and connected the origins of all things. It rippled outward like water, brushing gently over every corner of the battlefield. Raging natural energy grew docile wherever the white light passed. Some of the fear and despair in the Allied Forces' ninja quietly faded, and even the pale vortex overhead seemed to falter ever so slightly in its rotation.
And the heart of that light shone directly upon the unconscious Ling, as well as the young