Shadow and Inifinity

A roaring silence succeeded the explosion of destruction. The battlefield—this wasteland, this ruined city under a rust-red moon—was no longer. Buildings had been devoured, the earth had split in half, and the sky bled black to red, as though reality itself were ripping apart at its seams.

On the edge of doom, Gojo Satoru trembled at his fingertips.

His Infinity, the very thing that had kept him untouchable, had been penetrated.

That had never occurred before.

Itachi Uchiha stood next to him with burning Mangekyō Sharingan like dying embers.

His instincts screamed at him this was not a fight they could afford to lose.

In front of them, Tenebris remained still.

The skin had chipped away like bread dough and reflected only a blank void. And deep in that abyss, something old stirred.

The entity raised a hand.

Reality screamed in response.

Inciting Incident Time Breaking/Fracturing

The world split, suddenly, into. Not like glass, like if existence itself had cracked into separate pieces.

Everyone felt it, Gojo, Itachi, like a tear in time, warping everything in the vicinity.

In one instant, Gojo witnessed the impossible.

He was back at Jujutsu High. Suguru Geto stood there smiling, not the Geto who had become his enemy, the friend he had lost.

For Itachi, the battlefield became something he figured he would never again witness.

He was home.

The Uchiha compound.

The smell of rain hung in the air, and for a breath, he saw Sasuke, a little boy once more, gazing up at him with wide, innocent eyes.

Their thoughts snapped back to earth.

This wasn't Genjutsu. It wasn't even an illusion.

Time itself had been fractured by Tenebris.

Gojo gritted his teeth. "Alright, that's new. I hate new."

Itachi observed the adversary with narrowed eyes.

When collided with it, he found it could bend the frame of time and perception, and that meant it would be more powerful than anything he had fought before.

Escalation: The Second Hunter Arrives

The air shifted.

Something else was coming.

A second figure emerged from the rift. Unlike Tenebris, this one wasn't unfinished just a fully realized humanoid figure bound in violet, spectral energy, its form sputtering between being and void. It had eyes aflame with an inverted Sharingan black sclera, red irises, and spiraling patterns that did not resemble anything in the Uchiha bloodline.

The Phantom Warden.

Gojo exhaled. "You have to be kidding me. Another one?"

Itachi immediately knew what this indicated. If Tenebris had been the Forgotten, then this new entity was something else entirely. A guardian. A warden of the abyss.

Tenebris raised a single hand, and the Phantom Warden obeyed.

Fast.

Before either Itachi or Gojo could move, the new figure was before them, a crackling spear of violet energy pointed menacingly at Gojo's heart.

Gojo made a last-minute flick of his wrist. Reversal: Red erupted outwards, crashing into the spear and propelling it, as well as the man himself, skidding backwards. It told special effects that uprooted the ground around them.

Fantastic chakra bloom distorted the air above him as the Totsuka Blade of Itachi's Susanoo lunged forth, finding no obstruction in the Phantom Warden's center.

The blade should have closed off everything it touched.

But the second she engaged, it phased through, as if hitting an illusion.

Itachi's mind raced. Not Genjutsu. Not a physical being.

The Phantom Warden didn't hearth.

Gojo landed beside him. "Well, that's annoying. Any ideas, genius?"

And Itachi's Sharingan tracked every movement. "It's a remnant. A ghost attached to this splintered reality."

Gojo rolled his shoulders. "So, I hit it hard enough, and we see what happens? "

The Phantom Warden held up a hand before Itachi could speak. A wave of purple energy blasted out.

Gojo wasn't even able to respond, his Infinity coming back up the moment the energy made contact with his barrier, but it just kept going.

It phased through.

For the first time in his life, Gojo had a fucking attack slip right through his technique.

The force slammed into his chest and sent him barreling through a kaleidoscope of shattered reality.

The Turning Point Where the Desperation Kicks In

Itachi didn't hesitate. He darted forward before the Warden could continue pressing its attack, letting loose a hail of fire, an Amaterasu flame searing the very air.

The black flames hit nothing. The Phantom Warden didn't lose a second, quickly disappearing before reappearing behind Itachi.

Suddenly it clicked in his mind.

It wasn't teleporting. It was two points in time existing at once.

Gojo suddenly reappeared in the air, flipping before landing next to Itachi, wiping blood from his mouth. "Alright, so let me guess. We can't hit it. And it can hit us."

Itachi nodded. So it exists outside of regular temporality." Which means"

Gojo's six eyes lit up behind his blindfold. "It's still constrained by causality."

Itachi gave the smallest nod. "If we can sever its connection to time itself, we can kill it."

Gojo cracked his knuckles. "Alright. I'll distort space." His grin sharpened. "You distort fate."

Itachi's Mangekyō flared. "Understood."

The Showdown Surpassing the Phantom Warden

The Phantom Warden made the first move. A lance of violet stimulation dashed at them, warping the air around.

In response, Gojo used the domain expansion hand gestures.

"Unlimited Void."

A moment later, Itachi's Susanoo charged forward, its Totsuka Blade glimmering—but this time, Itachi activated the Izanagi.

For just a moment, reality rewrote itself.

Overlapping with the rewritten moment was Gojo's domain, an impossibility. An intersection of absolute reality and destiny bending.

The Phantom Warden flickered, trapped in a paradox.

It was trapped.

Gojo's smirk widened. "Gotcha."

He shot his hand out, Hollow Purple sparking between his palms.

The whole world bent as if the energy burst out.

The Phantom Warden attempts to shift, and the time rejects it.

The attack landed.

A shockwave separated the battlefield, the Phantom Warden crying out in distorted echoes as its body folded in on itself.

For a moment, silence.

Then the entity disintegrated into a spiraling void, disappearing into nothingness.

Gojo exhaled. "Whew. That was"

A hand grasped his throat.

Tenebris moved.

Instantly. Without a sound.

Gojo's eyes widened. His Infinity didn't activate.

In the span of just moments, Gojo Satoru was touched.

The abyssal shape of Tenebris towered above him, tendrils of darkness writhing out from its figure.

And then, it spoke.

"The Forgotten do not die."

The world imploded, and the sky shattered, exposing an infinite void beyond.

Everything turned black.

Tenebris held Gojo by the throat, and it was burning.

The force behind the touch seemed like a whole universe squeezing into him, his now unscathed body buckling in a way that made gravity seem to have altered.

His mind tried to make sense of what had just happened.

It had touched him.

Not fazed through him.

Not circumvented Infinity with tricks or illusions.

It had breached his technique completely, like in a place that never even had defenses to begin with.

Gojo Satoru was vulnerable for the first time in his life.

His normal cocky grin was missing.

Itachi took action decisively.

His Susanoo exploded to life, phantasmal energy raging around him as its blade slashed toward Tenebris' arm, but the instant the blade connected with its abyssal flesh, it simply disappeared.

Not blocked. Not dodged. Deleted.

As if no attack had ever been attempted in the first place.

Itachi's eyes narrowed. "Tch."

Gojo had struggled, his Six Eyes pouring over the distortions around Tenebris, but what he saw did not make sense.

Tenebris was not constrained by space. It wasn't bound by time.

It was an absence.

A hole where the reality is supposed to be.

"The strongest sorcerer?" Gojo's ears rang with Tenebris' voice, deeper than existence itself. It wasn't only speaking; it was rewriting reality with every word.

"No. You are just the best star in a dying sky."

Gojo gritted his teeth. "Sorry to break it to you, but I don't just die that easily."

And his infinite aura flared, warping the distance between himself and Tenebris.

The air itself folded in on itself, wanting to ungrip his grip on this.

In that brief moment, Gojo was able to move an infinitesimal amount.

But then.

The voids of Tenebris' eyes blinked.

And so, Gojo's Limitless ability went out.

Gone.

As if it never, ever existed.

Gojo's breath hitched. He had already lost connection to Limitless.

For the first time since he'd awoken, his Six Eyes were normal.

And that was terrifying.

The Crimson Flash

Itachi didn't hesitate.

The instant he saw Gojo have a moment's hesitation, he leapt into motion, his mind calculating at the speed of light.

Susanoo wasn't enough. Ninjutsu wasn't enough. Genjutsu would have no effect on something beyond existence.

That left only one option.

Itachi closed his eyes.

Then he opened them, his left Mangekyō throbbing with finality.

Izanami.

Reality flashed.

Just before Tenebris could completely crush Gojo's throat, time looped.

Gojo was no longer held in its grasp.

Instead, his chest heaving, they stood next to Itachi, delivered from the grasp of the abyss.

"What the hell?" Gojo said softly, but Itachi didn't reply.

Tenebris staggered slightly.

Not because it had been injured but because something had shifted.

"You… impose fate upon me?" Tenebris' voice echoed, its shape shifting wildly.

Itachi didn't blink. "Yes."

The Uchiha's Forbidden Technique: Izanami.

A power so horrible, it could ensnare an enemy in a loop of their inescapable fate, forcing them to relive it until their destiny was remade.

But there was a cost.

His vision blurred. The cost of Izanami was his left eye, which would go blind.

Gojo noticed immediately. "Wait, you"

Itachi didn't waver. "Gojo. Move."

Gojo felt it too late.

In an instant, Tenebris' abyssal cloak flared outward, escaping the loop.

In one step, it ripped reality apart and was an inch away from Itachi.

Itachi was already reacting, his Susanoo getting its shield up, but Tenebris just reached in and phase-shifted right through.

Its hand was on Itachi's chest.

And the body of the Uchiha collapsed inward.

But for a fleeting moment, Itachi sensed all fade away.

No sound. No light. Just pure nothingness.

The Arrival of the Third

But then.

A white lightning fill of pure white particles opened up the entire battlefield.

Then one other player showed up.

Tenebris jerked back, a form of nothingness splitting and crackling as the new being stepped between them.

A silhouette draped in gleaming, silver-colored armor, six arms outstretched, with each arm clutching a distinct weapon: sword, scepter, bow, gauntlet, chain, and spear.

Gojo's eyes sharpened.

Itachi coughed, his body growing stable, though the remnants of the void energy still latched to him.

The new arrival spoke in a cool but strong voice.

"I had hoped to never have to awaken."

"But here you are, First of the Forgotten.

It was the first time Tenebris had not spoken.

Then the abyssal presence slowly drew back a little.

Like it knew this warrior.

Gojo raised an eyebrow. "Well, now I'm curious. Who the hell are you?"

The silver knight turned slowly, its helm bright in the broken sky.

"I am Solarius."

"Final of the Eternal Watchers. Keeper of the Threshold."

Itachi squinted his other eye. "Another guardian?"

Solarius nodded. "No. The last one."

The sky shuddered.

"One more thing," Tenebris said, in a lower tone.

"Ah … you're still living, old thing."

Gojo cracked his knuckles. "Cool entrance and all, but are we here to fight, or are you just here to give us exposition? "

Solarius faced them both.

"You know nothing, sorcerer. This is no battle."

"It's the beginning of the end."

And then.

The moon was shattered.

The battlefield tore apart.

And something more than that started to awaken from the abyss.