The world within the blood-red barrier shattered along with the composure of the Konoha shinobi. A wet, hacking sound, horribly out of place, ripped through the tense silence.
"Guh‑guh… splatter…"
All eyes snapped from the horrific scene in the purple pentagon to the four Renjiro clones maintaining their protective dome. One of them was bent double, crimson blood spraying from its mouth onto the shimmering red floor of the barrier.
The clones, which had been statues of concentration for most of the battle, were now trembling.
The image of their captain's ruthless, masterful slaughter was burned into their minds, but this was a more immediate, visceral terror.
"What's wrong? Was there a hidden attack?" a panicked voice cried out from the ranks.
Before anyone could process the question, the other three clones convulsed in unison. More blood, dark and arterial, erupted from their lips in ragged coughs. They stumbled, their knees buckling, their hands losing the seals that sustained the barrier.
The brilliant, life-saving crimson light of the Crimson Ray Formation flickered erratically, like a dying star, before dissolving into nothingness with a sound like a shattered glass sigh. The four clones didn't vanish in a purposeful puff of smoke; they seemed to unravel, dissolving into misty, blood-tinged vapour that was snatched away by the valley's wind.
"What happened???" Arata yelled, his voice cracking with a fear he hadn't felt even when surrounded by three hundred enemies.
The last clone, its form already half-transparent, looked at him with fading, pain-glazed eyes that mirrored the Sharingan of its original. "Something… is wrong…" it gasped, its voice a distorted echo. "Like… really wrong…" And then it was gone.
"Did Renjiro dispel them?" someone asked, a desperate hope in their voice.
"No!" Akira's voice was sharp, her own Sharingan fixed on the pentagon barrier.
"Look! He's down! He's on the ground! And there's… some kind of purple vapour everywhere!"
The reality of their situation crashed down upon them. Their protector had fallen. Their shield was gone. Arata's mind, reeling from the clones' gruesome demise, snapped into a command mode born of desperation.
"The barrier! We need to break the main barrier! NOW!" he roared. With a collective surge of chakra and terror, the thirty Konoha shinobi flickered forward, hurling themselves at the shimmering purple walls of the pentagon, their attacks—fireballs, lightning jutsus, physical strikes—uselessly absorbed by the immensely powerful seal.
From their vantage point, the three fuinjutsu masters watched the Konoha squad's futile efforts. Ogata, Toma, and Hiro were no longer frustrated commanders. They were victors surveying their prize.
Ogata, the picture of Kumo stoicism, was now laughing, a full, maniacal sound that was utterly alien to his usual controlled demeanour. It was the laugh of a man who had gambled everything on a single, horrific throw of the dice and won.
They gazed down at Renjiro's form, which was visible through the thinning vapour, writhing on the ground in unnatural, spasmodic contortions. Occasional, violent coughs wracked his body, each one spraying more of his own blood into the pool rapidly forming beneath him.
"You might be a fuinjutsu genius, boy," Ogata's voice boomed, dripping with contemptuous triumph, "but we have been mastering this art long before you were even conceived."
Toma's voice, cold and lecturing, cut through Ogata's laughter. "What you are experiencing is the 'Desert Tempest Bane Seal,' a forbidden technique. It is channelling the death-cursed seals we placed upon every one of those shinobi you so efficiently slaughtered. Their bodies are the fuel, the furnace. Their collective demise is the power that now seeks to seal your own existence."
Hiro, the pragmatist, actually grinned, a rare and unsettling sight. There was a palpable relief in his posture. The mission, the immense cost, was about to be worth it. "It is a kin to Konoha's Reaper Death Seal," he explained, almost proudly, "but far more… efficient. Why trade one soul for another when you can use three hundred already-spent lives as the currency? Their bodies are the ink, their deaths the brushstroke that will write the sealing of your soul."
Meanwhile, Renjiro was adrift in an ocean of agony. Lucidity was a distant shore. The only constants were the pain and the coppery taste of blood flooding his mouth. His body was not his own; it was a puppet jerking on strings of pure torment.
The pain was not superficial.
It was not in his muscles or bones. It felt like it was emanating from the very core of his being, from a place deeper than his heart, as if his very soul were being slowly, meticulously unravelled and drawn out through his pores. It was a violation so profound it defied description—a metaphysical vivisection.
A muddled, half-formed thought struggled to the surface of his drowning consciousness. 'A curse seal? A juinjutsu? But… they never touched me… never got close…'
The logic was there, but it was slippery, impossible to hold onto. The pain was a white-hot fire that burned away coherence, leaving only raw, animal suffering.
He wanted it to stop. He begged his body to heal, for his Chakra Seinou to kick in and fight this invisible enemy. But there was nothing to heal. There was no wound to close, no poison to purge. This was an assault on a level his body didn't understand. His chakra, what little he could still access, was a wild, stormy sea within him, useless.
Driven by a final, desperate instinct for survival, he clawed at that storm. His eyes, screwed shut in pain, snapped open. The familiar tomoes of his Sharingan blurred, twisted, and reformed into the intricate, terrifying pattern of his Mangekyo.
He tried to summon it, to call upon the spectral silver armour of his Susanoo, to build a fortress around his soul. But the unstable chakra shattered against the demand. It was like trying to build a castle from shattering glass.
The energy flared and died, causing fresh waves of nauseating pain to crash over him. The Mangekyo sputtered, the pattern flickering uncontrollably.
He could hear voices, distorted and echoing as if from the end of a long tunnel. They were saying something… important. Words broke through the static of his agony. '…bodies… fuel…'
'Fuel…'
The word resonated with something primal deep within him. A survival instinct older than thought. Acting on pure, desperate reflex, a ring of ethereal, cold green fire sputtered to life around his writhing form. It was not the aggressive, devouring inferno he had wielded against the Raikage. This was weaker, a guttering candle flame compared to a bonfire. But as the faint green light touched the husk of a nearby Kumo shinobi—a corpse already drained grey and brittle by the seal—something incredible happened.
The moment the green flame made contact, it blazed. It was like throwing a match on a trail of gunpowder. The husk was instantly consumed, not with heat, but with a silent, cold fervour, and the green fire roared, growing in size and intensity, its glow cutting through the oppressive purple vapour.
On the cliff, the smug triumph of the three masters turned to an alert alarm. "What is that?!" Toma hissed.
"His strange fire! It's interacting with the sacrificial fuel!" Ogata snarled. "No matter! Pour more chakra into the seal! Drain the corpses faster! Overwhelm him!"
They redoubled their efforts, their hands flying through seals. Below, more corpses began to desiccate at an accelerated rate, crumbling into dust to feed the sealing ritual. But they failed to understand the fundamental nature of Renjiro's green flames. They weren't just consuming the chakra; they were devouring it. They were taking the very energy meant to power the soul-seal and absorbing it, converting it. And in doing so, they were creating a feedback loop.
The green flame, now a roaring circle of emerald light, began to spread, not just to the designated husks, but to corpses that were still whole, that still held chakra meant for the seal. It was a wildfire finding new fuel.
For Renjiro, the effect was immediate and electrifying. The excruciating pain, while still a vice around his soul, lessened by a fraction.
It was like a single gasp of air for a drowning man. The chakra being absorbed by the flames wasn't healing him, but it was starving the mechanism of his torture. The relief was minimal, but it was enough. Enough for a sliver of his brilliant, analytical mind to reengage.
The words of the fuinjutsu masters, previously just noise, now replayed in his head with crystal, horrifying clarity.
'…seal your own existence…'
'…use three hundred already-spent lives…'
'…their collective demise…'
His blood-soaked lips moved, forming a silent, terrified realisation.
'They're not trying to kill me.'
The green flames roared higher, feeding on the army he had slain.
'They're trying to seal my soul.'