In the heart of the Leaf, the stone cracked again.
Not loudly.Not violently.
Just a thin fracture.Like the world taking a breath.
It ran across Naruto's name.
Only—That name was no longer there.
Scraped clean.Erased by time, or something stronger.
And from the crack—
A single golden thread pushed through.
Thin.Delicate.
But humming like thunder beneath the earth.
The six cloaked figures stood in the Hokage's office.
No names.
No introductions.
But Tsunade knew them.
Not their faces—Their presence.
Like echoes of stories never told.Or dreams forgotten before waking.
Menma stepped forward.
Unhooded.
His face was calm.
But his eyes—
They had Naruto's ache.
That soft, sharp sorrow for a world that never loved enough.
Tsunade didn't sit.
She didn't speak.
She just watched.
Waited.
Menma placed the scroll on her desk.
The one formed in the Temple Without Doors.
She opened it.
Words in no known script.
Yet she understood every one.
They weren't written in ink.
They were written in chakra.
Wounds stitched together.
A record of everything the world left behind.
Villages erased by war.
Children born with no names, no clans.
Shinobi who gave everything—And were buried under someone else's glory.
Tsunade's hands trembled.
"Why now?" she asked.
Menma answered without blinking.
"Because the seal is breaking."
"Because he's returning."
"And because the world will forget again if we let it."
Kakashi stepped beside her.
Eyes heavy.
He looked at Menma.
"You're not him."
"No."
"But you're carrying him."
Menma nodded.
Kakashi stepped back.
"…Then I'll follow."
Tsunade hesitated.
The world wasn't ready.
The villages weren't united.
The Five Kage weren't even speaking.
And the shinobi system…Still broken. Still bloody.
But deep beneath the Hokage Tower—
The spiral was glowing now.
Not gold.
Not red.
But both.
A hybrid of what was.And what could be.
Naruto was never about peace through power.
He was about hope through memory.
So Tsunade closed the scroll.
Looked the boy in the eyes.
And said the only thing she could:
"Then let's rethread the world."
Far away, in the Land of Snow—
A girl with white eyes felt it.
Dropped her tea.
Clutched her chest.
"Nii-san…?"
In the Sand, a puppet master dropped his tools.
Whispered, "No way…"
In Kiri, the mist paused.
Hung in the air like it remembered someone.
And in the desert—
A lone stone cracked open.
From beneath it, an old, worn jacket rose.
Orange.
Burned at the edges.
But whole.
And waiting.
That night, the moon turned slightly golden.
Only for a moment.
Only for those who remembered.
Because the Needle was returning.
Not as a weapon.
But as a stitch.
To pull the world back together.
Thread by thread.
Pain by pain.
Name by name.
End of Chapter 100 – The Needle Returns