The Valley of the End had been carved into a new continent of ruin. Mountains crumbled into slag, rivers ripped new channels, and the waterfall itself had been atomized into a glittering mist that never fully settled. A basin of shattered rock and scattered chakra lay where forest and falls once breathed.
Amid the smoking wreckage, the clash of blades continued — two titans locked in a duel that had already bent days into an eternity.
"Uchiha Style — Blade-Leap Flame!"
"Uchiha Style — Wind-Thunder Slash!"
Steel sang like rending weather. Uchiha Soren felt his sword shiver and fracture under the colossal impact; Madara's flame-fan's sickle snapped like brittle bone. The follow-through hurled Soren into space—he vanished, a flash of Flying Thunder God, and reappeared a short distance away to snatch breath.
His chest ached with the burning cost of Ascension Points spent. Four days of war had bled both men dry; ocular power and chakra reserves frayed to the breaking edge.
On the field, Uzumaki Mito had poured herself dry for him and collapsed; Kurama had been resealed and ferried away by ANBU through a network of Flying Thunder God markers. Soren pivoted back into the fight, every motion a calculus of exhaustion and opportunity.
Now—Madara was wounded, both combatants ragged, and the opening glared like an unveiled blade. The Seven-Tails had been leeched and sealed into an amber vessel; on paper, Soren's advantage read true: Nine-Tails plus Eternal Mangekyō, against Madara's Seven-Tails and Eternal ocular might. Yet the battle had locked, dead even—a cold worry gnawed at Soren.
Madara stood, blood and ash marking the splits on his face, and charged anew without a word.
Soren drew a new blade, and they traded strokes in a storm of chakra. His mind ticked—waiting for the one clean, fatal opening that his Tenchō Risshon might reveal.
"Uchiha Style — Wind-Cut Slash!" Soren cried, unleashing a wind-narrowed blade of chakra that glittered in the spiral of his Eternal eye.
Madara's fan — famed for reflecting bijū orbs — took the mark with a flinch. Both men noticed the oddity: the scar across the fan's surface was not simple wind; it bore a pattern of something more subtle, something that read like a cipher in nature.
"Wind Release — Great Breakthrough!" Madara roared. He exhaled a gale, and three boomerang Flying Thunder God kunai whistled toward Soren like cursed stars.
They moved too fast to be mere weapons; they were traps that failed to trigger. The battlefield held its breath. Each heartbeat might finish the world.
Soren felt a thrill under the strain. To pass Madara in a head-on test of will would be the absolute crown of an Uchiha. He steadied himself on the spine of that truth.
His Eternal Mangekyō spun cold and bright. He lunged—and in a blur the two exploded Great Fireball jutsu into the air, the firelight exposing their hungry faces.
Then, as if mocking history, lightning danced in his left hand.
"Chidori!"
The thousand-bird crackle surged; his speed snapped razor-sharp. In his right hand a swirling sphere condensed.
"Rasengan!"
Two signature ninjutsu—unseeded and raw—poured one into the other in a succession no mortals should have fused. The impact made Madara taste copper.
His Susanoo flared, blue steel bristling, trying to swallow the assault. Even that armor had to recoil; ocular strain writhed through Madara's gaze.
Soren vanished again by Flying Thunder God, panting. He had confirmed it: Madara's ocular reservoir was exhausted.
"Old man Madara — this is your final dance." Soren's voice was low, steady.
Madara smiled with that arrogant curl, blood in the corners of his mouth. He reached into a pouch and flung the last of his spare Sharingan—spent, bitter trophies—toward Soren like contempt in metal.
Soren answered with two final Flying Thunder God kunai, drew a sword never yet seen in this war, and advanced as if to remember every lesson he'd been taught and rewrite them. The blade found its mark; flesh yielded with a wet, decisive sound. Madara looked down, stunned, as the sword bit true through ribs and sinew, the blade staggering with the weight of the deed.
He sagged. The fan clattered free of numb fingers and fell.
Soren did not let his guard fall. Tenchō Risshon swept the blasted plain; not a grain of ash escaped scrutiny. In that white net of perception, a trick as old as Uchiha treachery flickered across Soren's senses—an illusion of death. He felt it too late.
A spectral, crushing pressure struck the center of his chest.
"A chakra-forged hand speared through
's chest—no blood, only a freezing shock that crushed his life force, as if his very heart had been seized."
Darkness swallowed him.
For a full breathless ten seconds there was nothing: no sight, no sound, only the cold absence of being. Then—Soren's eyes snapped open. One of his pair of Eternal pupils had dimmed to black; yet the Eternal pattern held enough to knit what fate had snapped.
He staggered to his feet. Madara still stood, defiant—but his defiance had thinned into a tired, bitter laugh.
"Why did you not run?" Soren managed, voice ragged.
"Run from a space-time jutsu? Don't be absurd." Madara's tone turned hollow and then oddly resigned. The old man admitted defeat in a whisper more than a cry.
"Uchiha Soren — you've won."
Madara offered his last sharingan as if it were the final coin of an empire, and Soren drove the blade through him again. This time there was no theatrical falter—Madara crumpled, truly fallen.
Soren stood beneath a blood-streaked sky. He hefted the broken Flame-Fan and roared—a long, triumphant sound that rolled across the valley and into the messenger hawks still fleeing with news.
"From this day forth, the shinobi world bows to me!"
His voice echoed, not as a mere boast but as a stake driven into history.
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