User blog comment:Miskos3/Fairy Tail 538: When the Flame Goes Out, Review/@comment-24053170-20170603054652/@comment-7418318-20170604061519

It could still be. If he really disappeared (until he inevitably is brought back in the epilogue at the latest), we'll probably see the same scene again, but from Natsu's perspective.

But if that scene does not come, yeah it's probably a fake-out.

Personally I hope he did disappear, because that would make this chatper's scene a good one, for the reasons Misk mentioned in his review... but if it's just Natsu charging off against Acnologia without saying a single word and needlessly making everyone else worry... I'll be pissed.

There is one alternative I just thought of now, that might also work out.

Natsu didn't disappear in a flash, but it is the usual slow dissolving we get to see so often over all genres. But Natsu didn't want to his friends watch him dissolve, so he ran away to "die". If that happened it could of course mean they might yet find him and somehow stop him from disappearing or at least have a few last words together.