Chapter 19: Black Zetsu's Thoughts
"After all, Nagato… you're still alive. And as long as you're alive, there's still hope."
Black Zetsu's voice slithered through the dim chamber like oil over stone. "But hope won't save us. We need to discuss something far more urgent."
Nagato's thin fingers curled on the armrest of his wheelchair. His gaze, cold and sunken, drifted to Konan, who gently pushed him toward the conference table. Though a replacement lower body had been fashioned for him, his muscles were frail and his chakra pathways unsteady. For now, he was a warlord confined to a chair—a god made fragile.
A rustle echoed as Zetsu unfurled a scroll across the table. The diagram was a series of concentric rings, like the growth lines of an ancient tree—only these rings marked death, not life.
"That cursed field is still spreading," Zetsu murmured. "Radiating outward. No sign of stopping. Based on its current rate, within one year this world will be swallowed whole—transformed into a frozen, silent grave."
He tapped the parchment with a clawed finger. "But we won't last that long. Once forty or fifty percent of the surface is consumed, the climate will collapse. Oceans will freeze. Forests will wither. Humanity will perish before the year ends."
The words hung in the room, heavy and airless.
Nagato's jaw clenched. "Are you certain this growth is limitless?"
Zetsu's half-white, half-black face tilted. "I'm not certain. But it has shown no sign of slowing. Even if it's not infinite, reaching half the planet is enough to doom us all. At its current size, it's already a walking calamity."
Obito stood apart, his head bowed, fists trembling. He didn't speak, but his silence was as loud as a scream. Zetsu's yellow eyes slid toward him—accusing, disdainful. A perfect plan had once been in motion: Akatsuki's slow infiltration, Madara's moonlit dream, a future of manufactured peace. Then Obito, and that lunatic Itachi, had turned the Night of Extermination into chaos. The monster born from their meddling—Uchiha Raizen—now threatened everything.
Nagato's breath rasped. In his mind bloomed a bleak image: being given a second chance at life only to discover the future already lost, like a starving man clutching a treasure map only to realize the treasure had already been stolen.
Damn Madara. Damn Obito.
The dream of peace was ash. The world would freeze before the Eye of the Moon could ever open.
Obito finally spoke, his voice low and hard. "Then there's only one path left—we destroy Raizen."
His words drew hollow stares.
Destroy Raizen? Everyone in the room knew the truth: none of them possessed the strength. Nagato's Rinnegan had failed once already. The monster devoured chakra like air—it would absorb every ninjutsu they hurled at it. Who could possibly kill a nightmare that fed on their power?
"This isn't just Akatsuki's burden anymore," Obito continued. "It's a world-ending catastrophe. Spread the news. Let every village know. Let them see this isn't Konoha's shame alone—it's the end of all nations."
It was less a solution than a desperate passing of blame. But what else could he do? To gamble on Raizen's power fading on its own—to hope for blindness or weakness—was suicide. The silence kept growing. To bet wrong meant annihilation.
Zetsu muttered, "Madara… even he might not stop this. He's old—no, wait…" A thought like lightning cracked through him. Even monsters die of age.
Yes. Raizen was still human, no matter how terrifying. One day his heart would falter, his body would decay. Even if he drained the tailed beasts dry and slew every shinobi alive, he would still wither and perish.
But would any of them live long enough to see that day?
Zetsu's mind churned. The tailed beasts would resurrect endlessly—if they could hide, bide their time in another dimension, they might outlast him. The problem was surviving the interim. If Raizen consumed the planet entire, nowhere on Earth would be safe.
His yellow eyes gleamed. Kamui. Obito's warped dimension—the perfect sanctuary. If they could safeguard the Gedo Statue and Nagato's Rinnegan within that pocket space, perhaps the dream wasn't dead after all.
"Kamui," Zetsu hissed aloud, the word like a serpent's whisper. "Hide everything within Kamui. The statue, the Rinnegan—everything essential to Mother's revival."
He straightened, turning to Obito with exaggerated deference. "Madara-sama… Nagato. Follow me. There is… a plan."
Obito narrowed his single Sharingan, suspicion flickering—but also a faint, desperate hope.
In the shadowed corner of the room, Konan's fingers tightened on Nagato's wheelchair handles. Her blue paper wings trembled almost imperceptibly. She watched these men—schemers and ghosts of a dying era—plotting survival, not salvation. And she felt the weight of it: the world's last embers of Will of Fire flickering against an endless dark.
Somewhere far beyond their walls, the silence crept wider, swallowing forest and mountain alike. The monster slept—or perhaps merely waited. And every heartbeat it consumed was another heartbeat closer to the end.