"Crushed… is that it?!"
"The Third Hokage is getting crushed…"
"This… this Uchiha Ren is too strong. There's no weakness at all."
Outside the barrier, the crowd had gone eerily quiet.
From clan heads like Hyūga Hiashi, Akimichi Chōza, Nara Shikaku, Yamanaka Inoichi, and Aburame Shibi…
…to ANBU, to jōnin, to ordinary shinobi who had rushed here in panic—
everyone was staring at the same scene with the same expression.
Disbelief.
Because inside that green, pyramid-shaped seal, the fight wasn't a fight anymore.
It was a one-sided execution.
Sarutobi Hiruzen—Hokage, "Professor," the so-called strongest of his era—had been driven back again and again, coughing blood, his body trembling under the pressure.
And Ren…
Ren hadn't moved from his spot for most of it.
When he finally did, it was only to end things faster.
Might Guy's thick brows drew tight.
"…He's really that strong."
Kakashi's gaze was conflicted, heavy, tangled with old ghosts.
"…The Third… is going to die."
And then—
the children.
Naruto. Sasuke. Hinata. Neji. Shikamaru…
Five- and six-year-old faces at the edge of the crowd, eyes wide and shaking.
They watched the man they'd been taught to revere—
the Hokage—
being beaten into the ground like a broken relic.
In an instant, something inside them cracked.
Not bone.
Belief.
Inside the seal, Ren took a slow breath and stepped forward.
His voice was calm—almost casual.
"Hiruzen Sarutobi… you're too weak."
He looked down at the old man with detached pity.
"Any last words?"
Hiruzen wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and forced himself up, legs unsteady. His eyes were full of rage… humiliation… and an unwillingness to accept reality.
"I… I'm not satisfied…"
He was shaking—not from fear, but from the sheer hatred of what this moment meant.
Today should've been a celebration.
A clean ending.
A "necessary sacrifice."
That was the story he'd rehearsed in his head all night.
And yet—
the ones who died were his people.
His elders.
His foundation.
His "shadow."
His clan's shinobi.
And now—
him.
Ren's voice didn't rise. It didn't need to.
"You want to talk about justice?"
He lifted his chin slightly.
"Do you deserve to face the White Fang?"
"Do you deserve to face the Fourth—Minato?"
"Do you deserve to face Hizashi Hyūga?"
"You—"
"Enough!"
Hiruzen snapped, cutting him off with a feral roar. His face twisted—not with dignity, but with the raw ugliness of a man cornered.
"As Hokage—I was never wrong!"
"The Will of Fire… you don't understand it!"
He glared through the seal at the watching shinobi, like he needed them to believe him—like if they believed hard enough, the world would rewrite itself.
"You disobedient, arrogant, rebellious people… you're the problem!"
He straightened his shredded robes with trembling fingers, forcing the last scraps of pride into his spine.
Then he laughed.
A sharp, broken laugh that sounded like madness trying to pass for courage.
"I lost."
"But one day… I'll take back everything that was stolen from me."
He raised his hands.
Fast seals—desperate seals—
and chakra surged like a drowning man's final thrash.
"Then… come die with me!"
"Reaper Death Seal!"
Black, ink-like chakra erupted from his body, carrying sealing formulas like crawling scars—rushing toward Ren in a violent flood.
For a split second, the spectators' hearts stopped.
That jutsu wasn't meant to win.
It was meant to drag the enemy into the grave.
But Ren's eyes shifted.
Scarlet.
A Mangekyō pattern spun into place—clean and cruel.
His voice cut through the moment like a knife.
"Time Reversal."
And reality snapped.
The sealing ink didn't just stop—
it flowed backward.
Like the world itself had decided Hiruzen never cast the jutsu at all.
In the span of a heartbeat, the Reverse Four Symbols Seal rewound into nothing—
back to the instant before Hiruzen's hands even finished forming the signs.
Hiruzen's mouth opened.
No sound came out.
His pupils trembled.
"…Your eyes… are beyond Mangekyō…"
That was what finally broke him.
Not the pain.
Not the humiliation.
Not even death.
It was the certainty that there was no path left—not even self-destruction.
Absolute despair.
Ren's expression cooled.
"Stubborn to the end."
A flash.
Steel sang.
Hiruzen's right arm spun away, blood spraying across the shattered ground.
Then another flash—
another limb.
Then another.
In a blink, his arms and legs were severed, scattered like discarded parts.
And finally—
a single, quiet arc.
Sarutobi Hiruzen's head lifted from his shoulders.
His eyes were still open when it fell.
Still full of refusal.
Still unable to accept that the era had ended.
Inside the seal, silence returned.
Outside the seal—
the entire square froze.
"Dead…"
"The Third Hokage… is dead…"
Some shinobi stood there with blank faces, as if their minds couldn't process the shape of the new world.
Others felt something drop in their chests—something heavy and final.
For people like the clan heads, Hiruzen's existence wasn't just political.
It was time itself.
A constant that had been there since their youth.
Now it was gone.
Just like that.
Might Guy exhaled, bitter.
"…So this is it."
Kakashi didn't speak.
His throat felt dry.
If Ren was right—if the Third truly had a hand in the White Fang's fall…
…then what was Kakashi supposed to do with that?
And the children—
Naruto. Sasuke. Hinata. Neji. Shikamaru…
They stared at the place where the Hokage fell.
And something inside their small hearts quietly, irreversibly, ended.
An era.
A belief.
A childhood shaped by one man's Will of Fire.
Gone.
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