That speck of light had pulsed inside Isshiki for three full days.
It did not hurt. It was just annoying. Like a mosquito buzzing relentlessly beside his ear, impossible to swat away, it tugged at his attention every moment, and he could not shake it off.
He stood on the Far Side of the Moon, scorched, cracked permafrost beneath his feet. Dense ranks of dark figures stood motionless around him like a dead forest. There was not a breath of wind. The deathly silence was frightening.
He lowered his head and stared at his chest. That faint golden glimmer brightened again, weak and inconspicuous, yet rooted deep, pulsing steadily without the slightest sign of fading.
"That light of yours... what exactly is it trying to do?"
He muttered to himself. Across the empty moon, only his own echo drifted.
No one answered.
He raised a hand. Thick black light surged from his palm and pressed hard against that golden speck, trying to crush the irritating thing out of existence.
But it did not work. The light slipped away like water, then gathered again an instant later, still pulsing in his chest, not diminished in the slightest.
Isshiki's brow furrowed.
In all his years, he had never seen anything so strange.
Shuo's light seemed to have taken root inside him. He could neither pull it out nor extinguish it. It simply pulsed there quietly, like a time bomb that refused to go off, wearing on him until his chest tightened.
"Interesting."
His lips twitched into a smile. Not one of amusement, but a chilling sneer, without a trace of warmth in his eyes.
He looked up at that blue planet, his gaze piercing the void and locking onto Konoha's direction.
The man named Shuo was there. Those glowing Fragments were there.