The ground was scorched black. The storm of chakra and fire had finally died down, leaving only silence and ruin. Amamiya Raizen had fallen somewhere beyond the smoke, bloodied and half-conscious, while the Nine Tails limped away toward the Land of Lightning.
From miles off, the allied clans watched the titans' final clash. Even from a distance, the battle between Susanoo and the beast had been impossible to miss—two monsters clawing the heavens apart.
"Has it… ended?"
Sarutobi Keigo's voice trembled. The old patriarch's gut told him something was wrong. He'd bet everything on the Nine Tails crushing Raizen, and when that happened, he planned to sweep in and crush the Konoha Alliance under the chaos. It was supposed to be clean. Simple.
But the fox was gone—running.
That single fact told him everything.
The Sarutobi Alliance's main camp had been leveled during the battle; tents were gone, food was ash, weapons twisted and blackened. If Raizen had lost, they might've scavenged victory from his corpse. But with the Nine Tails retreating, their "ally" was gone—and so was their hope.
In the forests nearby, another force moved through the shadows—Konoha Alliance squads circling behind the ruined Sarutobi camp. The exhausted survivors inside never even noticed.
"Patriarch, we're out of rations and half our kunai are warped from the heat," said a grim-faced Shimura veteran. "What's the plan now?"
Keigo opened his mouth to answer—then steel whistled through the air.
A kunai struck the ground between them. A burning tag hissed at the tail.
"Enemy attack!" someone shouted.
The explosion tore through the night, a blinding bloom of fire and dust. Dozens of figures surged from the trees—black shadows raining down from above. The sky lit with the glow of dozens more tags strapped to thrown blades.
"Detonations—scatter!"
Too late.
The world erupted in overlapping bursts of flame. Screams tore through the ranks. Half the camp was gone in an instant, and the rest ran like startled animals.
"Hold formation! Fall back to the ridge!" Keigo roared, forcing chakra into his lungs. "Anyone who can still move—defend!"
His command steadied a few, but before they could regroup, Konoha units burst from the surrounding woods, attacking from every direction. The surprise assault shredded what little order remained.
Blood sprayed. Smoke rolled.
The Sarutobi ninjas tried to rally, but it was like trying to rebuild a wall while it's collapsing on top of you.
"The Sarutobi Alliance is breaking!" a voice shouted from somewhere in the chaos.
Keigo could see it himself—his men dropping weapons, hands trembling, eyes wide with panic. The first to surrender was a young Chūnin barely old enough to shave. Then another. Then a dozen more.
"I surrender! Don't kill me!"
"I yield!"
Like falling dominoes, the panic spread until thousands were kneeling in the mud, clutching their heads, praying the enemy would spare them.
Less than thirty minutes ago, they'd been an army of four thousand. Now, they were a field of prisoners.
Keigo felt the weight of it hit him. His warriors weren't cowards—they were empty. They'd watched gods fight, watched the Nine Tails itself burned by black fire, and realized they were nothing.
That kind of despair eats through courage faster than fire through paper.
The last of the explosions faded. Silence crept back, broken only by the crackle of fire and the faint sobbing of the defeated.
Aburame Shō emerged from the smoke, his kikaichū buzzing softly around his arms. He stopped a few paces from Keigo.
"It's over," he said.
Keigo exhaled through his nose, the sound halfway between a sigh and a growl. He dropped his kunai.
"I know."
He knelt in the mud, hands open. "The Sarutobi Alliance… surrenders."
A heavy stillness followed. Then someone in the Konoha ranks shouted, "We won!"
Cheers erupted. After a year of endless war—after the Hyūga Alliance's forty-thousand strong invasion, the dead, the burned villages—the Konoha Alliance finally stood victorious. Seven thousand had died for it. But they'd won.
Above them, the clouds began to break, revealing pale light.
The prisoners were rounded up, their weapons gathered, their headbands torn off. The smell of smoke and blood hung thick, but for the first time in months, the wind carried something like relief.
The unit led by Amamiya Raizen never joined the victory march.
Because Raizen was missing.
When the Nine Tails fled, he vanished with it. The Amamiya clan searched the battlefield until dawn, combing through wreckage and ash—but there was no trace of him.
For the others, the war was over.
For them, it had just begun.