Zander
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Chapter 125 – The Fall of Shadows
🕑 Added 2025-07-20 03:11:55 +0000 UTCChapter 125 – The Fall of Shadows
The battlefield smoldered with the aftermath of Konan’s final onslaught. Charred paper fluttered down like ash, blanketing the broken earth. The air was thick with smoke and silence. Only the faint hum of chakra and crackling embers remained.
Kakuzu limped from the center of the devastation, hunched over and coughing. Blood oozed from his seams, and his remaining Earth and Water hearts pulsed erratically within his body. Realizing the battle was beyond salvage, he snarled to himself.
“I’ll live. I always do.”
He plunged a hand into the ground. Earth chakra coursed through his arm as his remaining Earth Heart activated, softening the ground. He sank into the soil like a worm, vanishing beneath the surface. A tactical retreat. He would survive. He always found a way.
But Hajime was already moving.
He didn’t close his eyes. He didn’t need to. His mind stretched beyond the limits of sight. His psychic field rippled across the battlefield, scanning vibrations, chakra signatures, and intent. Deep below the surface, Hajime could sense the desperation of a man clinging to life.
Hajime raised one hand slowly, as if commanding the ground itself.
Warp energy flared around him, then focused sharply beneath the earth.
“Kakuzu,” he muttered.
With a snap of his fingers, a lance of psychic force surged downward, cutting through rock and soil with the precision of a scalpel. Deep underground, Kakuzu’s attempt to escape was halted abruptly.
His eyes widened as the pressure wrapped around him, crushing.
“No!”
His thoughts were silenced.
His Earth Heart shattered first, imploding from the inside. Then the Water Heart. The pressure didn’t relent. The very earth around Kakuzu collapsed inwards like a grave swallowing its victim.
Moments later, a geyser of soil burst upward on the surface, leaving only silence in its wake.
Kakuzu was gone.
High above, Konan faltered. Her paper wings twitched, folding in slowly. There was nothing left. Nothing she could do.
She knew.
She descended from the air, slow and solemn like falling leaves. Her feet touched the cracked ground softly. Her armor of paper peeled away, revealing her true form beneath, weary, resolute, but broken.
She walked toward Hajime, then stopped a few steps away.
Slowly, she dropped to her knees.
“I surrender,” she said, voice shaking. “Please… don’t kill Nagato.”
Her eyes were wide, filled with sorrow and fear. “He’s not a monster. He… believed he could save this world. Even when he was wrong. He’s all I have left.”
Hajime stood tall, his halo glowing faintly behind his head. He didn’t move for several seconds.
“I won’t kill him,” Hajime replied. “But he will be imprisoned. His Rinnegan… will be removed. Those eyes were never his to keep.”
Konan’s head lowered. “You would take his eyes…?”
“They don’t belong to him,” Hajime said. “They’re a danger in the wrong hands. You know that better than anyone.”
Her hands clenched against the ground. The fight had left her. Her wings dissipated completely. After a pause, she nodded slowly. “Then… let me be there when it happens.”
Hajime said nothing, then he sense the aura of black zetsu nearing nagato
He vanished.
A shimmer of gold and space folded around him as he reappeared far away, near the sealed crevice Konan had hidden Nagato in earlier.
But he wasn’t alone.
From the shadows, Black Zetsu emerged from the soil, slinking forward like an oily snake. His single yellow eye glowed with malevolence.
Zetsu stretched his pitch-black hand toward Nagato’s face.
“Finally…” he whispered. “The Rinnegan… With this, the plan can still be continued and mother be freed."
But just before his hand touched Nagato’s face, a flash of warp-light appeared beside him.
Hajime stood there, expression unreadable through his blue lens, one gauntlet hand already gripping Zetsu’s extended arm.
Zetsu’s eye widened. “Wha?”
CRACK!
Hajime crushed the arm in his grip.
Zetsu howled in pain.
Before he could retreat, Hajime’s other hand clamped down on the creature’s head. Psychic force flooded through his palm, paralyzing Zetsu completely.
“You’ve slithered long enough,” Hajime said coldly.
Zetsu struggled, tendrils flailing. “You don’t understand! I am the will of Kaguya! I’ve been guiding this world for centuries! I”
“You’re a parasite,” Hajime interrupted.
Golden light erupted from his palm. Zetsu’s body convulsed violently as warp-space and psychic flame consumed him. Not just his body, his essence, his soul, his corruption. Reduced to ash.
Zetsu screamed as he disintegrated, his voice echoing like a fading shadow.
Then there was silence.
Hajime stood over the unconscious Nagato. He looked down at him for a moment, then turned back as a ripple of chakra appeared behind him.
Konan and Itachi arrived. They had sensed Hajime’s sudden disappearance and followed.
Konan’s eyes widened at the sight.
All that remained of Black Zetsu was a pile of blackened dust slowly scattering in the breeze.
She looked at Hajime in disbelief.
“He… He was after the Rinnegan?” she whispered.
Hajime nodded. "He intended to take the rinnegan, they were the one who added rinnegan in nagato.”
Konan’s knees nearly buckled. She had known much, but not everything.
“I didn’t know… it was that far,” she whispered.
Hajime looked at Nagato again. “Now you understand why the Rinnegan is dangerous.”
Itachi stepped forward silently, placing a hand on Konan’s shoulder. “It’s over. Your path has reached its end. Don’t fight it anymore.”
Konan nodded faintly.
She walked to Nagato and knelt beside him, gently brushing his hair away from his pale face.
“Then let me be the one to wake him,” she said.
Hajime gave a single nod.
The war was over.
Comments
Austin Levy
So when is itachi gonna die?
