“Don’t,” Obito blurted, and his voice broke with the urgency of it. “Rin, please don’t talk like that.”

He could see it vividly in his mind’s eye, blood bursting in fat bubbles from her Cupid’s bow lips, a gurgling rattle as the breath left her lungs, the wash of corpse-gray replacing the healthy pink of her. It turned his stomach to think of, but even worse, it shook something deep within him. Like some great beast flexing razor-sharp claws in its sleep, a whispering voice telling him, wordless, this way lies madness—lose her, and lose yourself. It felt like a swallow of ice-water, like looking into the blank eyes of a corpse.

Rin’s death was a precipice. It was doom, the doorway to unfathomable horror.

Obito gulped, shaking his head. “Rin, if anything, I’ll protect you so you’ll never have to. I’ll die protecting you, so just—just please stay safe.”