Chapter 85 — The Tower of Time
Soft, slanting sunlight poured through three great, jagged holes in the ceiling of the cavernous chamber, falling like golden threads across the ruins of the ancient tower. Grass and tenacious moss had grown between the broken tiles of the floor, and the air smelled faintly of dry sand, cold stone, and the strange, metallic hum of old chakra.
Naruto stirred, his eyelids fluttering open.
He was lying on the cold, polished floor of the tower, his body heavy and sluggish—like his entire chakra network had been pulled and twisted a thousand times before being forcefully returned to him. The residual energy of the temporal vortex still buzzed unpleasantly in his ears.
"Ugh… what… happened?" he groaned, sitting up slowly and holding his head.
The images flickered violently in his mind: the Dragon Vein's core, the blinding white light, Mitsutsuki Ōtsutsuki's cold, smiling face, and then… nothing but screaming chaos.
"Sasuke…?"
Naruto looked around, scanning the vast, circular chamber. The place was quiet—too quiet. The atmosphere felt wrong, ancient, and undisturbed. The only sound was the faint echo of the wind whistling through the cracks and fissures in the tower walls.
He pushed himself up, brushing dust from his clothes , and began walking through the long, shadowed corridor that led deeper into the structure.
"Tch, that bastard Sasuke must've landed somewhere else, probably still asleep. I gotta find him before—"
Then he stopped, his senses, amplified by years of battle, catching a faint anomaly.
A soft, distant voice drifted through the air. A melody.
Someone was singing.
It was gentle, carrying a tone of profound sadness, yet overlaid with a strangely familiar warmth. Naruto, utterly perplexed, followed the sound, stepping over fallen stones and through a broken, vine-choked archway until he saw her—
A girl with long, vibrant red hair, standing near a broken pillar, her back to the harsh desert light. The breeze moved gently through her hair, which seemed to glow under the sunlight that streamed from a high, shattered window.
She was humming a tune—low, ancient, and filled with unmistakable longing.
Naruto froze, the familiar resonance of the song momentarily overpowering his mission urgency.
"That song…" he muttered, recognizing the melody his mother, Kushina, sometimes hummed in his memory.
The girl turned slightly, noticing his sudden, heavy presence. Her eyes widened in alarm, and before Naruto could utter a word, she moved with shocking speed, darting away from the pillar. She sprinted down a connecting bridge and vanished through a doorway.
Naruto's hand hung in the air, his lips parting to call out and ask, Where the hell am I? but the moment was lost.
He blinked, still dazed, forcing himself to breathe.
"Sasuke… where the hell did you end up this time?"
Shaking his head, he ran to the doorway the girl had just used, but found it suddenly sealed shut—a heavy, wooden door with ancient locks thrown across it. Impossible. She just went through there.
Frustrated by the sudden, inexplicable obstacle, Naruto looked up. He spotted a massive, arched window high above—one of the three colossal holes in the chamber's roof.
He channeled chakra, leaping onto the crumbling wall. With a sharp grunt, he shattered the remaining fragments of glass and stone, climbing out of the chamber and into the clear, high daylight of Rōran.
He was now exposed, perched high above the ancient, winding bridges of the city, utterly lost. The urgent question remained: where—and when—was he?