Naruto Uzumaki and his team chase the rogue ninja Mukade to the thousand-year-old desert ruins of Loran, where a dormant leyline erupts and hurls Naruto twenty years into the past. Stranded before the events of the main series even began, he meets a young Minato Namikaze and Sara, queen of Loran, while Mukade's scheme to seize the ruins' power follows him into the past as well. This light novel is the official novelization of the fourth Naruto Shippuden film.