Naruto's universe shrank to a single sensation: annihilation.
The claw of red energy piercing him didn't burn or cut. It was a devouring cold, a force that dissolved existence itself. He could feel his consciousness fraying, the edges of his digital self dissolving into the red static that was the beast.
The system's flashing message was a death sentence in a language he now understood perfectly.
[SYSTEM... FAILURE... IMMINENT...]
The blue light of the Seal Core, his only hope, was dimming, choked by the corruption consuming him from within.
So... this is how it ends, he thought, a strange calm taking hold of him in the midst of the agony. I failed. I couldn't make it. And now... it's all over.
The pain faded, replaced by an icy void. Darkness began to creep into his peripheral vision, a final curtain falling on his mind.
But in that darkness, he felt something.
It wasn't power. It wasn't chakra. It was a pulse. A warm, distant beat that reverberated in the depths of his being, a vibration the corruption couldn't touch.
It was a connection.
In the abyss of his failure, he felt the surge of power that he himself had unleashed hundreds of miles away. He felt the strength that now burned in his comrades' veins.
Not as something that belonged to him, but as proof. The irrefutable proof that his sacrifice had not been in vain.
Sakura's face appeared in his mind, no longer with the doubt of the girl she had been, but with the steel determination of the kunoichi she was becoming. He saw her green eyes, filled with a confidence he had helped her find, and a gratitude that was a refuge in his storm.
Then, he saw Hinata's face. Her serene smile, her pearl-like eyes that no longer looked at the ground but faced the world with a lethal calm. He saw her unbreakable loyalty, a faith in him that had never wavered, not for a single second.
They were fighting. At that very moment, in the Forest of Death, they were fighting for him, for the team, for the promise they had made in the cave.
And the strength they were using was a piece of him. A piece of his pain, of his will, of his sacrifice.
For them...
The thought wasn't a strategy. It was a roar. A cry of pure will that rose from the ashes of his desperation.
I can't fail.
The corruption halted.
The claw of red energy piercing him was still there, but the process of annihilation froze. His consciousness, which had been on the verge of dissolving, found a foothold.
The will to protect them was that foothold.
The Kyubi "glitch" roared, a sound of pure frustration. It felt the resistance, the will that refused to be erased. The beast pushed harder, trying to consume the last vestige of his existence.
The pain returned, tenfold, an agony that threatened to shatter his soul. But now, the pain had a purpose.
Naruto gritted his mind's teeth. He ignored the claw impaling him. He ignored the red static consuming his vision.
He fixed his gaze on the flickering blue light of the Seal Core.
"YOU... WILL NOT... STOP ME!" he screamed, not with his voice, but with his soul.
With a final shriek of pure will, he pushed.
He pushed through the pain, through the corruption, through the claw that was splitting him in two. His mental hand, flickering and semi-dissolved, moved the final few inches.
And his fingers touched the surface of the blue sphere.
There was no explosion.
Instead, the mental landscape froze.
The glitch's roar was cut short. The hum of corruption fell silent. The entire world of his mind stopped in an instant of absolute calm.
The Seal's blue light pulsed once, a wave of serene energy expanding through his entire being.
And then, an avalanche of notifications from the Falna system filled his vision, no longer in warning red, but in a pure, restorative white.
[CONTACT WITH SYSTEM CORE ESTABLISHED.] [HOST EMERGENCY PROTOCOL OVERRIDDEN. INITIATING MANUAL RECALIBRATION.] [ANALYZING ANOMALOUS POWER SOURCE: KYUBI CHAKRA.] [CORRUPTED DATA STREAM DETECTED. INITIATING INTEGRATION PROTOCOL.] [RECALIBRATING KYUBI PROTOCOL...]
The claw of red energy piercing his chest dissolved, not into static, but into fine threads of red light that were absorbed toward his hand, toward the point of contact with the Seal.
[INTEGRATING ANOMALOUS POWER SOURCE INTO FALNA SYSTEM FRAMEWORK...]
The beast, the living glitch, stopped struggling. Its formless shape began to be pulled toward the Seal, as if it were a black hole of order. The monster wasn't destroyed; it was assimilated. Its chaotic energy was being rewritten, channeled, given a new structure.
[WARNING: INTEGRATION WILL RESULT IN FUNDAMENTAL CHANGES TO THE HOST'S SYSTEM.] [...PROCESSING...] [ERROR CONVERTED INTO ABILITY.]
The beast didn't disappear. With a final, silent roar, its red energy condensed, contracted, until it became an orb of furious but contained power, which retreated behind the now stable and shining blue barrier of the Seal.
It was no longer a virus. It was a battery.
And then, the system announced the reward.
[RECALIBRATION REWARD GRANTED.] [DEVELOPMENT ABILITY ACQUIRED: SEAL PACT]
[SEAL PACT (DEVELOPMENT ABILITY)] [PASSIVE EFFECT - WILL OF THE CONTAINER: The Seal now acts as a passive chakra filter. Grants a natural resistance to the influence of external chakras, such as high-level genjutsu or techniques that seek to manipulate the user's chakra network. The purity of the Kyubi's chakra, now integrated, repels impurities.] [ACTIVE EFFECT - CONTROLLED RELEASE (STAGE 1): Allows the user, through concentration, to establish a temporary pact with the sealed power. You can draw a small, stable amount of the Kyubi's chakra without losing control of your consciousness. This chakra envelops the user, drastically increasing all basic abilities temporarily. Prolonged use causes extreme exhaustion and can damage the user's body if the Stage 1 limit is exceeded. Requires total concentration to maintain stability.]
The notifications faded. The corrupted mental landscape of Konoha stabilized. The red and black textures disappeared, leaving a silent, empty version of his village.
The battle was over.
In the real world, the violent chakra emanating from Naruto abruptly subsided.
The bubbling red light that enveloped him, against which Tsunade and Shizune had been fighting with every ounce of their power, receded into his body as if it had never existed.
The change was so sudden that Tsunade, who was pushing with all her strength to contain the destructive energy, nearly lost her balance.
"What...?" she gasped, her face pale and covered in sweat. The effort of keeping him alive had brought her to the brink of collapse.
"Lady Tsunade! His pulse is stabilizing!" Shizune cried, tears of relief and exhaustion streaming down her cheeks. "The chakra... it's not consuming him anymore."
Naruto's arm was still mangled, a gruesome mass of broken flesh and bone, but the process of self-destruction had stopped. The skin was no longer smoking. The blood was no longer gushing uncontrollably.
And then, his eyes opened.
He was pale, incredibly weak, but he was conscious. His blue eyes, previously clouded with pain, now held a clarity neither of them had ever seen before.
With his vision still blurry, Naruto mentally summoned his status. The familiar blue panel appeared in his mind, now stable and clean. And there, in the Development Abilities section, he saw it.
[SEAL PACT]
It was real. He had done it.
Tsunade moved closer, exhausted and astonished. She let her hands fall to her sides, the green chakra of her medical jutsu finally dissipating.
She knelt beside him, her face a mixture of disbelief, relief, and a deep, unnerving curiosity.
"What... what have you done, brat?" her voice was a hoarse whisper, stripped of all its usual arrogance. "For a moment, I thought we'd lost you."
Naruto slowly turned his head toward her. A faint smile, yet one filled with a new and terrible calm, formed on his lips.
"I just..." his voice was barely a thread, but each word seemed weighted with the battle he had just won.
"...made a pact."