Rain whispered across stone.
The mountain was gone.
Only a crater remained.Deep. Quiet. Blackened.
Ryuki sat at its edge.His cloak torn.His hands burned.His eye… cracked again.
Not shattered.
Not whole.
Somewhere in between.
The fragments were no longer whispering.
They were waiting.
Eri didn't speak.
She sat beside him, silent as ash.
The spiral mark on her forehead was gone.
But something lingered.
In her aura.Her eyes.Her silence.
She remembered everything.
Every timeline.Every death.Every version of him she'd seen fall.
And still, she stayed.
"I felt him leave," Ryuki finally said.
She nodded.
"But he left something behind."
Ryuki turned to her.
That's when she showed him.
Her hand.
The mark burned there again.Gold now.
Not red.Not cursed.Chosen.
Flash—Vision.
Not from Ryuki.
From her.
She stood on the battlefield.
Villages united.
Uchiha. Uzumaki. Hyuga. Senju.
All surrounding a single enemy:
Ryuki.
Except it wasn't him.
It was Tengoku.
Wearing Ryuki's face.
Laughing in his voice.
She screamed at them not to kill him.
They didn't listen.
The spiral in her hand exploded—
And time fractured again.
Back to now.
Eri gasped.
She looked up at him.
"There's… another spiral."
Ryuki froze.
"Seven?" he whispered.
She nodded.
"It was never just six. That was a lie."
"A seal."
His breath caught.
Then where—?
Somewhere far—beneath the sea.
An ancient temple stirred.
Not shinobi-built.Older.
A place even the Sage of Six Paths feared.
Inside—
A massive spiral spun slowly in the dark.
Seven rings.
Not drawn.
Alive.
A heartbeat echoed through the stone.
"The Eye must return."
Back in Konoha.
Tsunade met with Jiraiya in the Hokage's war room.
The ANBU captain placed a scroll on the table.
"Unsealed two hours ago. It bears the Uzumaki seal. And… something else."
Jiraiya unraveled it.
His eyes widened.
Seven spirals.
Burned into the parchment.
And a name.
A single word, ancient and lost.
He whispered it.
"…Kurashiki."
Tsunade's face paled.
"That's not a place."
"No."
Jiraiya closed the scroll slowly.
"It's a being."
Later that night.
Eri and Ryuki reached the edge of Fire Country.
The trees turned black with ash here.
Old chakra lingered.
Familiar.
Too familiar.
Ryuki stopped.
"This place…"
Eri looked around.
"It's where the first spiral was found."
He turned slowly.
Realized what she meant.
"This is where I died."
The first time.
Before reincarnation.
Before the eye.
Before everything.
The sky above them twisted.
No clouds.
No moon.
Just a ripple—like silk.
And from that ripple…
A spiral opened.
Not red.
Not gold.
Void.
From inside it stepped a figure.
Not Tengoku.
Not a clone.
Something older.
Taller than any man.
A body wrapped in broken time.
Seven eyes lined vertically down its face.
Each one spinning.
Eri stepped in front of Ryuki instinctively.
It spoke—not in sound.
In memory.
"You carry what belongs to me."
"The seventh must awaken."
"And the price… is her."
End of Chapter 131.