The sound of a sharp blade cutting through the air was brief and clean.
Black blade light swept past the side of Momoshiki's neck, as though skimming across water.
There was no excess resistance, no sluggish snagging. The blade sliced through his neck in one seamless, remarkably effortless motion.
"Urgh-"
An extremely brief syllable escaped Momoshiki Otsutsuki's mouth.
No one knew what he had wanted to say.
Momoshiki's eyes abruptly widened. The last glimmer in his pupils flickered violently for an instant, then went completely dark like an extinguished candle.
Those eyes, always filled with arrogance and defiance, now stared fixedly in Naraku's direction. The muscles at their corners twitched slightly with his final exertion.
But all the light in his eyes had faded.
His pupils lost focus, becoming utterly vacant.
"Rumble..."
A head rolled off his neck, bounced twice across the rubble, and finally came to rest on a flat stone slab, facing the sky.
Blood gushed from the severed neck, staining the ground red.
The headless body lay on its back where it had fallen. Its limbs twitched twice with the nerves' final reflexes, then became completely still.
Momoshiki Otsutsuki's chakra presence vanished entirely from the battlefield.
Naraku stood in his follow-through stance for several seconds, Kurikara's tip pointed at the ground.
He lowered his head and glanced at the head, its eyes still open in death. Momoshiki's eyes remained wide, reflecting a hollow light in the sunshine.
"As you wished!"
Naraku took one last look at those eyes, then withdrew his gaze.
He turned to face the direction he had come from.
At the very moment he turned, the figure rapidly approaching from afar rushed into his field of vision.
Ōtsutsuki Isshiki came sprinting toward him, covered in blood. The wound on his right leg gave his