Kaguya's hand was only a few centimeters from the Black Stone. The devastating energy made the air around her warp and evaporate. Tsunade and the others' desperate efforts to stop her struck the barrier infused with the power of nothingness without so much as a meaningful ripple.
At that critical instant-
THUD!!!
A muffled boom rose from underground, not reaching them through their ears but reverberating directly through their bones. The entire battlefield shook violently. Even Kaguya faltered at the sudden tremor.
Then an indescribable "noise" began to permeate the air. It was not a sound, but more like ten thousand mutually contradictory laws of physics screaming at once. Several weaker shinobi dropped to their knees and vomited on the spot. Even Hashirama and Madara felt dizzy.
"The rules... are starting to collapse..." The reanimated Tobirama went pale. He could feel the forcibly opened breach in the rules slipping out of control.
Sure enough, the Pale Vortex in the sky began to churn violently. The energy of nothingness, which had been spreading steadily, turned savage, roiling like boiling asphalt. Countless twisted tendrils composed of pure "negation" reached out from within it. They thrashed without any pattern, tearing space into grotesque fragments wherever they passed-some places stretched into bizarre spirals, while others curled into impossible angles.
"Fall back! Everyone, fall back!" Hashirama roared. His golden Senjutsu Chakra formed a shield that barely blocked a sweeping tendril of nothingness. The instant the tendril touched it, the shield's edges began to unravel in defiance of reason-not shattering, but having their very "logic" erased.
Kaguya finally withdrew the hand she had extended toward the Black Stone. The ominous black markings on her body flickered violently, and gravity appeared in her half-black, half-white eyes for the first time. Even she dared not act rashly amid