The Bone Forest of the Dead materialized without warning, spreading across the landscape like a plague of ivory. Seiran's eyes—marked by the distinctive veins of his Byakugan—tracked its expansion with surgical precision, his expression carved from stone.
"Time's running out," he muttered, pulling a scroll from his pouch. "Tyrant Mode: Electromagnetic Sovereign won't last much longer. I need to end this."
White mist dispersed across his palm as he unrolled the seal. Kunai and shuriken appeared in the air around him, dozens of them, then hundreds, suspended by invisible threads of will. Blue lightning crackled between each blade, weaving them into a lattice of pure electrical force. The hum of building power filled the air.
Seiran raised his hand and swept it downward.
The ninja tools compressed, merged, and transformed into something far more terrible—a railgun of compressed chakra and metal. It fired with a sound like the sky splitting open. The electromagnetic discharge tore through the bone forest below, shattering spurs and pillars into white shards that rained down like snow.
But through his Byakugan's expanded vision, Seiran saw what he'd feared: no sign of Mari Kaguya.
"Teleported." His jaw clenched. "Of course."
The Dance of the Seedling Fern wasn't just an offense—it was a survival tool. Any bone spur in the forest served as an escape point. Mari could vanish and reappear anywhere his bone spikes touched earth.
Cold air rushed from behind.
Seiran didn't turn. The small silver snake coiled around him moved like quicksilver, expanding into a shield just as massive spiral bone erupted from the forest floor. Mari's lower body remained connected to the bone spur like a grotesque anchor as his arm—transformed into a twisted drill of calcified malice—slammed against the metal barrier.
The impact sent Seiran skidding forward through the air, his boots scraping nothing.
"You never learn," Seiran growled, suppressing the churning in his chest.
The silver shield rippled. A small metallic serpent broke free from its surface and slithered down the bone spur toward Mari's body.
Mari's pupils exploded with recognition. He disintegrated the bone spur with a pulse of chakra and dropped, vanishing back into his forest in the same breath.
Seiran tore open another scroll. More metal materialized. More railguns fired. More destruction.
But the bone forest grew. It healed. It spread like a living thing, reclaiming the gaps his attacks tore open.
"Buying time," Seiran whispered, his eyes narrowing. Every second, his Tyrant Mode burned precious chakra reserves. Every second he was slower, weaker. He glanced in the direction Anko had fled—toward safety, toward distance. "You should be clear by now."
He stopped holding back.
Chakra erupted from his core like a detonation. His right hand plunged toward the earth, and as he jerked it upward, the ground screamed.
A jungle of black metal erupted from below—massive, absolute, relentless. It swallowed trees whole, crushed bone spurs beneath its weight, and advanced like a living glacier. The white Bone Forest tried to counter, tried to grow, but every spike shattered the moment it touched the metal. The darkness was winning. The darkness was consuming everything.
Deep in the bone forest, Mari's body trembled.
"What is that?!"
He poured everything into his kekkei genkai, but it was like throwing sand at an avalanche. The metal jungle compressed tighter, grew denser, and advanced with horrifying speed toward his position. The gap closed. The walls pressed inward.
High above, Seiran's fists trembled. The effort had drained almost every metal particle within ten miles, compressing them until they were harder than diamond, harder than bone, harder than anything Mari's bloodline could produce.
But the cost was catastrophic.
His vision blurred. His body lurched sideways in mid-air like a puppet with cut strings.
"Damn it..." His voice cracked. "Running out of time..."
In the distance, Anko felt the earth shake. She spun around and froze.
A massive jungle of black metal was erupting from the ground, a column of absolute darkness colliding with the white bone forest. The contrast was stark, violent, and even from this distance, impossibly huge.
And suspended above it all, a tiny figure swayed.
"Seiran?" His name escaped her lips like a prayer.
Boom.
Thunder cracked across the gray sky. Seiran's face had gone chalk-white, his teeth gritted so hard his jaw trembled. He squeezed out the last reserves of his chakra, and the metal jungle surged forward, engulfing most of the bone forest now, closing in on its center like a fist.
Mari watched his world crumble.
Madness flooded through him—pure, ancient Kaguya madness. His eyes burst with crimson veins as he threw back his head and roared, a sound that was less human than beast.
"If I'm going down, you're coming WITH me! I'll bury you! I'll drag you into the grave!"
Abandoning defense entirely, he channeled every last drop of chakra into offense. The bone forest erupted upward in a frenzy, spikes multiplying, growing, launching toward Seiran like arrows from a thousand bows.
The metal jungle accelerated, racing to consume him before he could strike.
Mari was faster.
The bone spikes pierced through him first, impaling his body in a dozen places, staining white bone crimson. But he was already dead; he just hadn't stopped moving yet. His laughter was hysteria and nothing more.
"Hahaha! You die! You die WITH me!"
One massive spike found its mark.
Seiran's body convulsed. The small silver snakes around him flowed desperately to his vital areas, but there were too many spikes, too much pain. Blood ran freely, soaking into the bone forest below. The blue lightning arcing through his hair flickered and died.
Tyrant Mode: Electromagnetic Sovereign was finished.
He hung there in the sudden silence, pinned and bleeding, as the metal jungle finally swept up and through Mari's body. The Kaguya's corpse went rigid, then still, a cruel smile frozen on his dead face.
A thunderclap split the sky.
Seiran's head tilted upward, and the first raindrop fell on his cheek. Ice-cold. Gentle.
Then the second.
The rain came fierce and heavy, as if the sky itself had been waiting for the end. In moments, it was a downpour, sheets of water washing across the battlefield, carrying blood down the bone spurs and into the twisted metal below.
"It's raining," Seiran whispered, his voice barely audible.
His vision swam. He felt hands on him—warm hands—pulling him free from the spikes. Someone was carrying him, stumbling through the rain. He caught the faint scent of spring flowers beneath the metal and blood.
Anko.
In his final moment before darkness took him, he felt her arms around him, and the warmth of another person was enough.
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