"Go."
"Let these pitiful clay figures see what... true darkness really is."
Shengu Xuan's voice seemed to carry a tangible weight, pressing down over the battlefield, yet it was also like a key turning in a lock that had held something captive for hundreds of millions of years.
Then the entire world changed color.
The shinobi standing at the very front of the Allied Shinobi Forces, preparing to meet the charge of the white tsunami, watched as the shadows beneath their feet, stained red by the sunset, seethed like boiling water. Like some enormous beast coming to life, countless pitch-black maws leading into the unknown split open in their depths.
It was not Earth Release, not Space-Time Ninjutsu, and certainly not any known genjutsu.
The shadows themselves were moving.
The first to emerge were the lean [Ninja Soldiers], moving as swiftly as phantoms. They wore pitch-black, close-fitting armor, revealing only two pinpricks of scarlet light, like demonic eyes. They carried no kunai, only strangely shaped short blades and hooked claws that seemed forged from solidified shadows. They moved without a sound, forming the starkest, eeriest contrast with the pale clay figures surging toward them like a tide amid strange rustling noises.
Next came the [Troll Soldiers], as massive as small hills, each step making the earth tremble slightly. They carried enormous bone clubs studded with spikes, or had hands that transformed directly into pitch-black warhammers covered in vicious bone spikes. Dull roars rumbled from their throats, sounding less like something produced by vocal cords than layers of rock grinding up from deep underground.
Then came the fastest and most distorted of all, the [Alien Soldiers]. They had almost no fixed form. Some resembled pitch-black beetles with six jointed limbs; some dragged long tails covered in bone spikes; others were simply