The screams in the afterlife had not stopped for days.
They echoed endlessly through the mist-shrouded realm of the dead, as though death itself were now rebelling against its own end.
Madara and Hashirama were the last truly powerful souls still remaining there.
The last ones still capable of protecting the others.
"Hey, Hashirama," Madara said in a rough voice. "Did you ever think we would end like this? Side by side against something that does not even have the courage to face us in open battle."
His gaze drifted through the gray mist.
"What even is this thing?"
Hashirama looked weak.
His breathing had become shallow, and his skin had already sunk in, as though something had been draining his essence piece by piece over the past few days.
A faint laugh escaped him.
"Ha… ha… no. I truly never thought so either."
His voice had grown quiet.
"I cannot protect the others for much longer. I can feel that my end is near."
Hashirama lifted his eyes to Madara.
"Promise me… that you will protect them for as long as you can. From this thing that is haunting the afterlife."
Mito and Kushina Uzumaki hurried to Hashirama's side.
"Lord First, please do not speak like that," Kushina said quickly.
Only a few days ago, she had still felt relieved when Minato had finally appeared in the afterlife as well.
But their reunion had lasted only hours.
Then that being had come — that monster with eleven tails that had sensed the Nine-Tails within Minato's soul.
And Minato had been devoured.
Mito looked at her husband.
Her eyes had grown dark, full of quiet understanding.
She knew that the last souls here would not survive much longer.
"My love," she said softly, "you have done enough. Soon, we too will be together again… inside that thing."
Her voice nearly broke.
"We cannot change it anymore."
At that exact moment, a tremendous roar thundered through the final remnants of the afterlife.
"FACE ME!"
The mists themselves trembled.
"Face me, and I will spare the last souls. Refuse me… and I will devour every last essence here and ascend on the path to godhood!"
Madara slowly straightened.
Despite his exhaustion, that old, unconquerable pride still burned in his eyes.
He held out a hand to Hashirama.
"Then come," he said. "That way I can at least give my little brother one more chance to go on living."
Hashirama looked at him for a long moment.
Then he placed a hand on Madara's shoulder and forced himself into one last, weak smile.
"Hey, old friend… then let us set out on our final journey."
Together, they stepped into the dense mist.
They walked side by side to sacrifice themselves for the last remaining souls of the afterlife.
For minutes, they pressed deeper and deeper into the ghostly gray until at last a gigantic being emerged from the fog before them.
It was monstrous.
It had six arms.
Three eyes.
White skin covered in black markings that looked like living curses.
Its presence alone made the afterlife tremble.
"Finally," the being said in a voice like the breaking of ancient graves. "The last two who still interest me."
Its three eyes glowed coldly.
"Now my feast will be completed, just as it was always your destiny."
Before either of them could react, its arms shot forward.
They seized Hashirama and Madara at the same time.
Then two agonized screams tore through the silence of the afterlife.
The being threw back its head and laughed.
"Ha… ha… ha… finally."
Its voice swelled, filled with insane delight.
"Now it is time for me to feed upon life itself."
Its six arms lifted toward the heavens.
"I will become a true Ōtsutsuki god."
The black markings on its skin began to pulse.
"I let them flourish for a thousand years. I had originally planned to harvest them later…"
Then its six arms reached into the air.
And with raw, impossible force, the being tore apart the boundary between life and death.
Two days had passed since the moon had broken apart completely.
A suffocating tension smothered Mount Myōboku. The Great Elder had seen the future — or at least enough of it to know that a monster would soon enter this world.
The toads were not the only ones who had come.
The slugs and the snakes had gathered as well, all of them assembled for their final stand.
And yet they all knew the same truth:
Their deaths were inevitable.
Fukasaku stood beside the Great Elder, staring silently into the distance.
Then he broke the silence.
"Why didn't you tell Jiraiya what was going to happen here?"
Gamamaru's ancient eyes remained fixed on the sky.
"Because only part of this world will survive if he remains near the foreign one," he said in a heavy voice. "If he were not close to her, she would only seek him out later."
A faint, almost weary sigh escaped him.
"His perverse nature has at least caused her to move her plans forward more quickly."
Fukasaku grimaced, but said nothing to that.
After a moment, Gamamaru asked:
"Are the children already near Uzushiogakure? So that at least our clan may survive this?"
Fukasaku lifted his gaze toward the rift slowly spreading through the air.
"Yes," he answered quietly. "All the children are near Uzushiogakure."
Then the mountains trembled.
A voice, so vast that even stone shook beneath it, rang across Myōboku.
"At last, I have returned to the realm of the living!"
A mad laugh followed.
"Ha ha ha… so many souls to reap. At last I will become a true god!"
Gamamaru's voice answered, old and heavy as a final judgment.
"Hagoromo. I thought we had an agreement. You take the dead — and leave the living in peace."
The air vibrated.
"Your mother would have been sealed again in thirteen years. Then you could finally have harvested her. Only because another being proved stronger than you do you now seek to devour everything."
His ancient eyes narrowed.
"In only a few days, she would have left our realm anyway."
In the next instant, a gigantic hand shot forward.
Hagoromo seized Gamamaru.
Before anyone could react, his soul and life force were ripped out with brutal force and devoured.
"I would never have honored that agreement," Hagoromo said coldly.
His voice no longer sounded like that of a sage.
But like that of a being that had long since passed beyond every boundary.
"It was my plan from the beginning to harvest all souls and prepare my ascent to godhood."
Black markings pulsed across his white skin.
"I veiled the end from your sight for all these years."
His smile widened.
"But she struck me with a blow that shattered even that veil."
Then hell broke loose.
From the depths of Mount Myōboku, only screams echoed as creatures died, their essence devoured, while even the nature around them twisted and withered.
Trees rotted away.
Stone split apart.
Life itself began to die.
Hagoromo threw back his head and laughed.
"Ha ha ha… now, my children — return to me."
He stretched out both arms.
And across the sky, eight enormous rays lit up, flying toward him from all directions.
"HA… HA… HA…!"
Hagoromo's form began to change yet again.
Two more eyes opened in his face.
Four additional arms burst from his body.
And behind him there now rose twelve colossal tails, writhing through the air like living shadows.
His shape was no longer that of a sage.
It had become something else.
Something that should never have existed.
"Finally…" Hagoromo said, his voice trembling with insane joy. "I am so close to godhood."
Slowly, he raised his head.
His gaze turned toward the distance.
Toward Konoha.
"So many delicious souls…"
A dark smile spread across his distorted face.
"And you…"
His voice sank lower.
Hungrier.
"In the end, I will devour you."
The air around him began to shimmer.
"Your essence will raise me to a new level — to a height that even beings like you could never hope to reach."
Then he began to move.
With every single step, the world trembled.
The earth quaked.
Forests collapsed into themselves.
Animals died before they could even understand what was approaching them.
His aura alone was enough to extinguish life.
And as he continued onward, a trail of dying nature and warped reality spread out behind him — as though the world itself could not endure his ascent.