Shadow and Inifinity

The crimson moon shattered.

Not like glass.

Not like stone.

But a ravenous hole that had dissolved its being, leaving nothing but a bloody space. Chunks of flame-hued starstone crashed down across the field, the reverberations echoing like the pounding of battle drums.

Gojo Satoru had barely comprehended the destruction before a gaping chunk of the shattered moon barreled toward them, wreathed in fire, swallowed by an ancient abyss.

"Well, that's a problem."

Gojo flicked his wrist. Even without Limitless, his raw speed and reflexes defied all comprehension.

He snatched up Itachi and Solarius, and in a flash of movement, they were gone as the meteor-sized debris slammed into the battlefield, shattering everything below it.

The aftermath shockwave was anything but normal.

It bore the energy of the void, an abyssal power that was Tenebris.

A force intended to obliterate existence itself.

Inciting Incident: The Real Horror Begins

Gojo returned to the crumbling ruins and dropped off Itachi. His body still felt wrong. Without Limitless, he was sensitive in ways he hadn't allowed since childhood.

That one last Sharingan in Itachi's eye burned with power as he got back to his feet. He had been unmoored from Izanami, and his vision was blurry, but his mind was like a razor.

Then it happened.

The void below them stirred.

Something stirred among the shattered battlefield.

It wasn't just a presence. It was a force, a lack of being, that was so pronounced that even Itachi's Sharingan could not fully perceive it.

Solarius clenched his fists.

"It is waking."

Gojo turned toward him. "Well, OK, so what the hell is it? "

Solarius exhaled slowly. For the first time, he seemed tense.

"Tenebris was the first of the Forgotten. But it is not the strongest."

"To that, which sits beneath this world." the fathomless primal darkness imprisoned here aeons hence."

Itachi's eyes narrowed. You're telling me that this isn't even the real fight? "

The answer came not from Solarius but from the void itself.

The ground split beneath them into pure darkness.

A titanic limb not flesh, not energy, but something in between crawled its way up, rending the last shreds of reality like paper.

Then the voice came.

A noise deeper than the abyss itself.

"I have slept long enough."

The battlefield devolved into chaos.

The New Enemy: The Harvester of Destiny

From the abyss, it emerged.

A titan, its body reading the thread of space and folding and bent into shape.

It was, for a moment, humanoid; the next, something completely inaccessible.

It had six infinite eyes at its core. Each a writhing ball of shadow and might, older than the idea of dying.

It wasn't just powerful.

It was beyond understanding.

It was also Erebus the Devourer of Fates.

Even Tenebris stepped back.

Six arms and a divine pulse of energy, Solarius squeezed his fists. "Damn it. It's awake."

Gojo sighed, stretching his neck. "Well, I suppose there's no turning back now."

Even through the haze, Itachi did not falter.

There was no fear in his eyes, just total concentration.

The First Clash: The Strength of a God

Erebus moved.

Not in haste, but with certainty.

Its mammoth hand, if one could even call it that, reached down to them.

Itachi reacted instantly. Susanoo burst into being, Totsuka Blade stretching up, gunning for the heart of Erebus.

The blade never made contact.

Instead it was consumed.

Not destroyed. Not deflected. Simply erased from existence.

Gojo's eyes widened. Not even concepts can survive against it.

Solarius acted next. With a flash of dazzling light, he launched himself forward, his six weapons striking all at once from every possible angle.

Each hit landed. Each strike was absolute.

And yet.

Nothing.

Erebus did not react.

It just raised one of its endless hands, and time itself warped.

Solarius froze completely in midair; his attacks fired off but never landed in a cycle that would never cease.

Gojo's mind raced. "Alright, so punching's out."

He turned to Itachi. "Got any bright ideas?"

Itachi exhaled slowly. Then he raised his hands.

Hand signs.

Too many to count.

And then the air shifted.

Itachi's Gamble: The Will of the Uchiha

"Forbidden Jutsu Kinjutsu: Eternal Eclipse."

The sky darkened yet more, and all of a sudden you could feel this any Sharingan user across all of time and space almost certainly did.

It was a technique deeply tied to Uchiha blood, so old that the mere attempt of legends to detail it failed.

The moon above them, after it shattered, had reassembled itself into something unnatural.

A burning black eclipse.

Itachi's body trembled. The price of this technique was the one of more than chakra, of a very soul.

"No future."

"No past."

"Only now."

As soon as the words left his mouth, Erebus stopped.

Not just in movement. In time.

Never in the past had the Devourer of Fates faltered.

Gojo felt it.

The shift.

The one, singular opening.

He didn't hesitate.

His fingers melded into the hand seal.

"Domain Expansion Hollow Prison."

A new domain opened up, creating a space in which no truth could be deleted.

Erebus' eyes twitched.

A smile broke out on Gojo's face, even though blood was dripping from his lips. "Alright, big guy. Let's see you break this."

Erebus focused on him for the first time.

The world trembled.

And the true battle began.

Trained on data until October 2023.

With Itachi finally free of the time loop, Solarius landed beside him. His silver armor had been cracked, but not his resolve.

"He has done the impossible," Solarius murmured.

"It has made Erebus err."

Itachi gasped, hardly able to remain standing. "Then we have one chance."

Gojo's blue eyes were twin burning stars.

Erebus lifted its hands again.

The whole battlefield crumbled into infinite nothingness.

And then.

It was the true beginning of the final battle for reality.