The beast's body crumpled with a sickening, visceral crunch——its mass folding in on itself like paper, contorted against the strange blend of sand and painted meadow.
Subaru blinked. There was no scream, no tension, not even a flinch.
No pain to register, no impact to brace for... it had simply happened. He'd died. Again. Not with fanfare, nor with meaning, but as if the world had quietly pressed reset before he could even process the loss.
And yet, here he stood. Breathing. Present. Returned. Not to the very beginning, thankfully, but closer. A mercy, perhaps——or just a twisted joke to whatever divine being was getting a kick out of his torment.
"…Huh." His voice came out thin, fragile, instantly swallowed by the desert air.
Then——
The ground trembled as fractures webbed outward beneath his feet. From the ruptures, they came: first one, then three, and then a full eruption. Bear-shaped, grotesque mabeasts exploded from beneath the soil. Petals of every color imaginable and gritty sand launched skyward as the horde burst forth in a flood of snarls and red-eyed hunger. Ten. Twenty. Hundreds. Their growls tore through the still air.
Subaru flinched back a half-step, his breath catching in his throat. "…Right," he muttered. "Those things…"
He had been so wrapped in the haze of return that he'd forgotten the immediate onslaught, the feral horde from last time.
His legs moved before his mind could even catch up.
Twisting low, he sprinted across the mixed terrain with everything he had.
Don't think. Don't stop.
The deafening pounding of paws behind him was wild, uncoordinated, and desperate. But he knew what to do this time, his legs surged with cursed energy, making each step sharper and more responsive. The uneven terrain no longer tripped him; his footfalls felt sure, deliberate, and deadly.
He had a head start—or at least, he thought he did.
"Ah...?!"
The air darkened as the moonlight dimmed above him. Subaru glanced up just in time to see a massive mabeast airborne mid-leap, plummeting toward him like a meteor.
Dropping low, Subaru compressed his legs as cursed energy snapped through his thighs.
The mabeast slammed down behind him, sending a shockwave of sand erupting into the air. It crashed directly into two others, sending a chaotic tangle of fur and limbs flipping wildly across the dunes.
"Yeah, okay, these things… definitely suicidal!"
Subaru quickly veered right further into the dunes, away from the Watchtower's cold, distant silhouette. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than being dogpiled in open space. He needed a route, an exit, a plan.
His eyes scanned the horizon until——
"Ghhk!"
A mabeast lunged from his flank. Subaru pivoted, dipped, and used its heavy skull as a springboard, planting his foot on its head to launch himself upward. Wind screamed past his ears. His landing was rough, but his forward momentum never stalled.
They were everywhere: flanking, corralling, and herding him from every direction imaginable.
"Shit—!"
A claw swiped——too fast to completely dodge. It sliced against his cursed reinforcement, not enough to draw blood, but jarring enough to spin him and stagger his footing.
Gritting his teeth, Subaru straightened mid-slide and tore back into an all-out sprint.
There are too many, and they are too fast together like this... focus! If I can get above them... just high enough... I might spot a path. A gap. Anything that doesn't involve getting eaten alive!
He crouched, flooding his legs with cursed energy as his muscles tensed. Timing was everything. He bent, preparing to leap——
A flicker at the edge of his vision made him hesitate. White. A sharp, wrong glint in the dark of the night. His heart clenched as a memory surfaced—the flash that had occurred just a second before his previous death.
Instinctively dropping his jump, he twisted his body backward in a violent, unnatural arch.
Air split wide open as a white projectile screamed overhead, missing him by inches and kissing his cheek with pure force, leaving a gash that oozed crimson down his face.
The ground behind him detonated. A column of sand, blood, and pulverized meat blasted skyward. The nearest mabeasts were simply eviscerated, their bodies removed into gorey mist before they even had time to fall.
Subaru didn't stop to process, nor to breathe. He ran straight into the fresh crater, weaving through the haze of gore and steam. Chunks of meat splattered against his legs as his chest burned, his ribs flaring with each ragged breath.
"Fuck, man… You've gotta be...!"
Once more, a flash so blinding it didn't even feel real.
Clenching his jaw tight, Subaru threw himself to the side, launching into the air just before the blast reached him.
A split-second later, the ground beneath him ceased to exist as the white projectile struck with a concussive boom that swallowed the desert in raw violence.
The shockwave caught Subaru mid-air, flinging him like a ragdoll. Cursed energy surged through his limbs as he twisted mid-flight, aiming his chest toward the distant Watchtower, seemingly miles away, yet still the epicenter of this chaos.
White...
He didn't think; he merely braced, a natural reflex after everything he'd suffered. Subaru threw up his arms in a crossed guard, his cursed energy hardening around them like armor.
The blast struck with raw, crushing pressure that roared louder than his heartbeat and his thoughts.
And yet, for a single, fleeting second, he believed he had blocked it.
Then came the warmth. Then the unnatural cold.
A wet gurgle filled his throat.
He stumbled as he landed, his feet dragging through the sand.
His vision swam as he slowly looked down to find that there was practically nothing left. His forearms were completely blown off at the elbow, and beneath his chest was a perfect, basketball-sized hole boring straight through his torso.
"Gurhkk… guhr…"
He fell. His knees hit first, and then his body tipped forward like a falling statue.
His cheek met the sand with a dull thud, and his eyes dimmed, lips still twitching with words he couldn't finish.
I'll get through this… By myself… I'll prove to the world that I… That Natsuki Subaru… Ain't pathetic…
——————————————————————
With a sharp gasp, his body moved before thought caught up.
Pivoting hard, Subaru burst into a sprint——faster this time, already accelerating before the mabeasts could breach the surface. Dozens erupted from the earth behind him, snarling with claws gleaming in the pale light, but Subaru was already widening the distance.
"God, I get it... I reek of miasma, but it's literally everywhere in this place! This is rigged!" He clenched his jaw and kept running, his thoughts churning desperately to stitch together a plan. "Okay, okay—someone's sniping me with white-hot death beams from the Watchtower miles off. And the only reason I'm not paste already is dumb luck. So…"
He flinched, the visceral memory of his shredded arms and the gaping hole in his chest flashing in his mind.
"…Yeah. Not even gonna try blocking that again."
In the distance, a jagged stone ridge jutted out——tall enough to offer cover. Subaru veered toward it and slid behind the rock with a grunt, sand scraping against his back as he caught his breath.
Maybe he had a minute. Maybe.
Pressing his fingers to his temples, he forced himself to focus.
"What else can I even do...? Up close, whatever that white projectile is, it's literally unavoidable. Even at range, I have to get lucky. This is goddamn impossible…"
A groan slipped out as he clutched his head before his eyes suddenly sharpened.
"Well then... experiment time."
Vaulting to his feet, cursed energy crackling like electricity down his spine, he turned and sprinted away from the cover, charging straight toward the pack.
"I can return by...!"
Miasma swirled in response, and the air answered. It fed him——an unstable, volatile and addictive surge of power.
His body could hold together maybe four times; any more, and it would rip him apart from the inside... assuming he doesn't go insane before that.
"I can... return by...!" he declared again.
Every attempt was a dice roll, a hair-trigger away from oblivion.
Seething, violet cursed energy exploded around him, cracking the ground beneath his heels.
Dozens of bloodshot, starving eyes locked onto him in unison.
"I can return... by...!"
The words stuck. Perfect... that meant someone was listening! Whatever was shooting at him was sentient enough to comprehend words and possessed absurdly sharp senses.
White.
Again, it came. Subaru threw his hand forward to intercept.
"URGHH—!"
The impact struck like a battering ram. His reinforcement absorbed most of the force, but the remainder wrecked his insides.
He looked down at his hand: smoking, blackened, and burned nearly to the bone. But... he had blocked it.
Staggering back as the energy faded, something glinted in the dust: a single, silver-thin needle.
Subaru stared in shock. "…A needle? That's what carved a hole clean through me?"
It was absurd, but not entirely surprising.
He had seen Gojo crush stone with a flick of his finger; this was just that same brand of god-tier precision.
And whoever was pulling the trigger still had him locked in their sights.
The mabeasts surged forward again, rabid and relentless. But as they closed in——
Another white shot carved through the horde, vaporizing everything in a curtain of red mist. Subaru dropped low, diving through the bloody cloud and crawling back toward cover. His breath came in sharp bursts, cursed energy spitting and flaring across his battered arms.
"Whew… fuck… okay. Now what?"
His gaze swept across the barren desert. Nothing… nothing… until he caught a subtle shimmer——a faint ripple in space wavering like heat against stone.
"…Could that be where I came from? It's gotta be something," Subaru reasoned, rising cautiously. "Maybe it'll pull me out. Even if it resets me way back to the start, it beats taking another shot to the gut or having my head popped like a melon!"
The beasts had finally tracked his position and were approaching fast.
There was no time, so, he launched himself into the air. The rock formation behind him exploded from the recoil as he cleared a hundred meters in a flash, hurling toward the ripple.
Even Subaru was shocked at his own speed in that moment.
"Urghk—?!"
The ripple in front of him warped wide. Space twisted, bent, and then fractured. Subaru didn't pass through——he fell. Reality shattered like brittle glass. The stars spiraled, the sky folded inward, and then there was nothing.
There was no light, no sound, no sensation——only a distant, familiar voice whispering before the darkness swallowed him whole.
——————————————————————
"…et… up…"
The faint, muffled voice sounded as though it were submerged beneath deep water and wind.
"Hey, get up already... wanna forehead flick?"
Subaru jolted upright like a spring-loaded trap, his breath catching in his throat and his eyes wide with panic. His forehead stopped mere inches from colliding with a poised, bandaged face——held in place by a shimmering film of empty space.
Had it not been active, Subaru would have slammed straight into him.
"…Gojo?" Subaru rasped, blinking through the thick fog clouding his vision.
Staggering upright on stiff joints, he finally took stock of his surroundings... or rather, the total lack thereof.
Endless, formless, smothering black stretched in every direction. It was a void that swallowed the very concept of place, were they... in a cave?
Subaru's shoulders rose and fell with unsteady breaths as he grounded himself in the only familiar presence nearby: Satoru Gojo. White hair glowing faintly against the pitch black, bandages draped over his eyes.
"The one and only," Gojo replied casually.
He scratched the back of his head and squinted into the dark as if it personally offended him. "Though… not gonna lie, I'm a little confused how I ended up here with you considering I was just in a sandstorm. But hey, weird days happen."
Straightening up with a relaxed stretch, Gojo peered into the shadows. "Spooky place though. So, what exactly are you doing here, Subaru?"
Subaru didn't respond immediately. Brushing sand from his shirt, his movements were deliberately slow, his breath shallow, his eyes distant. It was a silence born of calculation rather than mere exhaustion.
"Doesn't matter…" he murmured.
Gojo arched a brow, his easy smile slipping slightly. "So Emilia was telling the truth, eh?" he said, his voice dipping lower. "You've been off lately. More than usual." There was no accusation in his tone—just a quiet observation layered with an uncharacteristic softness behind it.
"Y'know… even if I'm your teacher, I'm still your friend, idiot," Gojo added, his grin returning, albeit tempered. "So, I'm gonna help get us out of… wherever the hell this emo liminal cave nightmare is."
For a brief second, something flickered behind Subaru's eyes before he shook it off, addressing the immediate question on his mind.
"Can't you just teleport us?" he asked flatly.
Gojo snorted. "Teleportation?" Crossing his arms in an exaggerated gesture, he countered. "It's more like manipulating the space-time continuum at the molecular level through the Limitless, but yeah, same ballpark I guess."
He waved the thought away as if bored by the technicality.
"Anyway, two problems. One... I need a spatial anchor. A location to aim for. That's usually not an issue considering my brainpower, but…" He turned in a slow circle. "I got nothing. No landmarks, no coordinates, nada."
"And two?"
Gojo tilted his head, the bandages shifting over his face. "I need a mental lock on where I'm going. A concept. A thread to pull me through the spatial mess. But right now?" Gojo shrugged. "Feels like someone took that thread, then took some scissors and snipped it halfway."
Subaru's lips thinned as he looked down at his shaking hands, his fingers twitching with energy that hadn't quite settled since his return.
"So, in a less fancy, sciency way… we're stuck." Subaru deadpanningly concluded.
They walked in total, suffocating silence.
"Soooo…" Gojo broke the quiet after a long stretch, his tone forced light. "How's my favorite student been since that mess at the mansion?"
The question lingered like smoke. Subaru didn't answer at first, keeping a measured pace, the tension in his shoulders anchored as if he carried a weight no one else could see.
What do you think...? I've lost everything. My power. My reason. My pride.
"…Fine." The lie was smooth, practiced, and automatic.
Gojo didn't buy it. "Ah. Well if you say so~ hm?" He stopped mid-sentence, his head snapping forward as his body tensed.
Lifting a hand to halt Subaru, he sniffed the air, his nostrils twitching.
His voice dropped. "…Either someone's having one hell of a barbecue… or that's the smell of burning flesh."
"Burning…?" Subaru muttered, his brow furrowing.
Gojo crouched slightly, squinting at the path splitting ahead.
To the left, the acrid scent of charred smoke grew stronger to their enhanced senses, but to the right... there was a lack of.
Gojo's grin returned like a reflex. "Welp. Left it is!" he declared, taking a step toward the stench.
Subaru's hand snapped out, catching Gojo's sleeve. "Hell no!"
Gojo turned, puzzled.
"If we're trying to get out of here," Subaru growled, "why would we walk toward the burning corpse pile?"
Gojo frowned, sighing with melodramatic resignation.
"Mmm… you do have a point… Urghhh, fine."
Spinning on his heel like a sulking child, he circled around and headed down the right path instead.
——————————————————————
They walked on, and with every step forward, the pressure in the air thickened.
What began as a faint tinge on the back of the tongue only deepened until the stone walls looked as if they too, had started sweating.
"It's… quiet," Subaru muttered, his voice flat and swallowed by the heavy atmosphere.
He wiped a hand across his forehead. It was cold, yet his skin was slick with sweat, his heart fluttering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
Why is it so hot in here? No... it's not hot. It's freezing. Why am I sweating?
Beside him, Satoru Gojo remained silent. Normally, he would have filled the air with mindless chatter or complaints about dirt ruining his shoes. But now, his head was tilted slightly upward, his sky-blue eyes twitching rapidly behind his bandages.
To Gojo, the tunnel may well have been screaming.
Through the Six Eyes, the miasma manifested as an infinite, chaotic swarm of microscopic, jagged needles. Every particle of the purple haze was packed with dense, toxicity: pure, unadulterated malice, despair, and insanity.
With every breath, the Six Eyes absorbed and tried to process the poison.
A sharp, white-hot spike of pain jabbed directly behind Gojo's left temple. He winced, pressing a hand to his forehead. It was a sensation he had never experienced to such a degree——an agonizing headache as his brain began to lag.
"Gojo?" Subaru asked, his voice tight. "You okay?"
"Fine," Gojo replied, his tone clipped and too brief. "The air is just... heavy."
"Ah, so… I'm not the only one, huh?" Subaru muttered, narrowing his eyes into the gloom.
Every inhalation felt like trying to breathe through smoke.
It was irritating.
Why is he walking so close behind me?
The thought popped into Subaru's mind all of a sudden.
He's towering over me. He's always towering over me, watching the back of my neck. Is he waiting for me to trip? Waiting to show how pathetic I am so he can laugh?
Subaru clenched his fists in his pockets.
No. he wouldn't do that. He's my friend. He's... Gojo-sensei. But he doesn't even care about you. He's just using you because he has nowhere else to go but to leech off of you and pretend to be your teacher. He's a parasite that helped take Pride away.
"Hey, Subaru..." Gojo called out.
Subaru flinched violently, forcing his posture stiff as he kept walking. "What?"
"You're dragging your feet," Gojo said.
Through the fog of his overloading brain, Gojo's perception of Subaru was warping.
His constant trembling, his ragged breathing, and the thick stench of the Witch's scent radiating from his body were grating on his frayed nerves.
Why is he always so weak? I'm pushing through a literal mental assault to keep him safe, and he's just... shuffling along. He's a liability. A whiny brat looking at me like I owe him something.
"I'm not dragging my feet," Subaru spat, his tone unexpectedly sharp. "I'm walking. If you're in such a rush, go around me."
"I would," Gojo replied, his voice dropping into a dry, humorless register, "but you'd probably trip over a pebble and die if I wasn't watching your back. It's exhausting, honestly."
Subaru stopped dead in his tracks.
"Exhausting?" Subaru scoffed. "If it's so exhausting, why don't you just leave? Nobody asked you to come here."
"I came here because you ran off like a child throwing a tantrum," Gojo said, taking a step closer.
"I didn't throw a tantrum!" Subaru shouted, his voice cracking in raw, defensive fury. "I left because I actually have things to do! I don't have the luxury of sitting around pretending everything is fine while my friends are in danger, like a fake!"
"And what exactly can you do?" Gojo sneered. The white-hot agony behind his eyes flared, shattering his remaining self-control.
The words fed Subaru's deepest, most buried fear: the dread of being useless, of being a fraud.
"You're weak, Subaru," Gojo said, his voice dripping with cruel, condescending pity. "You're a normal human with no talent. A speck of dust. If I wasn't here, you'd be dead in five minutes. You need me. And it kills you, doesn't it? Knowing that you're entirely, utterly dependent on a 'fake' like me."
"Shut up..." Subaru growled. Shadows pooled behind him as the dark tendrils of the Authority of Pride reacted to his surging hatred.
"What did you say?" Gojo asked, taking another step forward as his towering frame blotted out the light.
"I said shut up!" Subaru screamed, the sound tearing at his throat.
The Authority of Pride manifested not as a shield, but as a writhing nest of black, thorny brambles beating with the wild pulse of Subaru's heart. They leaped up from the dank stone floor, tearing through the sandy mist like a thousand angry serpents.
"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Subaru screamed, his voice a raw, bleeding scrape.
The black spikes lunged.
Under normal circumstances, Gojo's automated Infinity barrier would have rendered him untouchable. But his brain had seized under the oppressiveness of the miasma.
Therefore, it was precisely why the Infinity flickered like a dying light bulb, failing to catch the attack——and the black spikes cut a clean, red line across Gojo's cheek.
Gojo didn't flinch. He didn't even seem aware of the pain. But the sight of his own blood dripping onto the purple-stained ground destroyed the last threads of his sanity.
There was no grace in his movement—only terrifying, physics-defying speed. In a fraction of a second, the distance vanished. Gojo's fist, laced with jagged pulses of blue cursed energy, slammed directly into Subaru's sternum.
The sickening sound of Subaru's ribs breaking echoed through the narrow tunnel. The blow threw him through the air, launching him into the stone wall with a thud, sending a shower of loose pebbles and dirt raining down on his head as he dropped to the ground, choking on a thick gush of dark blood.
Yet the pain didn't bring Subaru to his senses. The miasma in the air only fed on the pair and trauma, even as he keeled forward and vomited blood.
Look at him... he wants to kill you. He'd always wanted to do that.
"Is that… all you've got?" Subaru wheezed, forcing himself up to his knees.
He hates you because you see through him, because you know what an empty, pathetic fraud he is.
His left arm hung broken in three places, completely useless. Blood poured from his nose, eyes, and mouth, painting his face in a ghastly mask of blood.
But his one good eye burned wide and manic, that look on Gojo's face, imperfect, it was everything he wanted to see. "You're a damn monster, Gojo!"
"Shut up." Gojo whispered tonelessly.
The fabric of his blindfold slid down, exposing his eyes fully—horrifyingly wide, and utterly devoid of humanity.
Gojo raised his hand, pinching his fingers together. Immediately, the air itself screamed as a well of gravity took shape at his fingertips, sparking with a condensed bead of crimson light.
"Red." Gojo muttered.
Subaru thrust out his right arm, channeling every drop of his remaining soul into the Authority of Pride. "Prove me right, you gaping piece of shit!"
A vast, towering wave of black thorns shot up from the ground between them, forming a writhing wall of pure shadow.
It didn't matter.
The red spark shot from Gojo's fingertip. The repelling force of Red exploded outward with the magnitude of a missile strike. The deafening shockwave vaporized the purple mist and shattered Subaru's shadow wall into harmless black dust.
The surrounding stone of the cavern cracked into a spiderweb of fissures, raining rubble down upon the passage.
The blast hit Subaru head-on. Thrown back through the dust, his body scraped violently across the jagged floor until coming to rest in a crumpled, unnatural heap.
The tunnel fell silent, thick and suffocating, saved only by the sound of Gojo's ragged breathing.
Gojo stood in the middle of the clearing, his arm still raised as the crimson sparks faded. The wind died down, and the purple miasma slowly seeped back into the air, pooling around his boots like cold water.
Gradually, the manic frenzy in Gojo's mind stuttered and quieted. As the blinding rage subsided, a chilling reality crept through the cracks of his sanity. He blinked. His ears stopped ringing, and the heavy, dripping silence of the cavern took over.
He looked down at his trembling hand, then turned his gaze across the clearing.
The dust settled, revealing Subaru sprawled on the dirt. His clothes were torn, his body broken and twisted. His chest was caved in, rising and falling in shallow, desperate, wet hitches.
"Subaru...?" Gojo whispered, the name sounding foreign on his lips.
Though the miasma still pressed upon his mind, the sight of Subaru's shattered form drove a spike of cold panic straight through his chest.
Gojo stumbled forward on trembling legs and fell to his knees in the dirt beside him, his hands hovering over Subaru's body in helpless shock.
"Subaru, hey... stop it. Stop playing around..." Gojo muttered, his voice cracking as his arrogant facade shattered entirely.
Subaru could not answer; his lungs were far too full of blood to do so. With the last of his strength, he raised his head slightly and extended his bloodied fingers, weakly grasping Gojo's sleeve and leaving a crimson smear on the fabric.
As the shadow of death loomed over them, the madness of the miasma faded, leaving behind only a cold, heartbreaking clarity.
Subaru tried to speak, but the light in his eyes flickered, dimmed, and finally went out.
His hand slipped from Gojo's sleeve, falling limp into the dirt.
Gojo froze. Through the burning intensity of the Six Eyes, he stared at the lifeless body before him.
"No…" Gojo whispered. He grabbed Subaru by the shoulders, shaking him. "No, no, no! Subaru, wake up! I didn't... I didn't mean...!"
There was no reply. The body grew cold with alarming speed.
Realization struck Gojo like a gut punch, and the whispers of the miasma returned, mocking his despair.
You killed him. The only one who truly knew you. You have murdered him.
Gojo threw his head back and let out a raw, agonized scream——a sound of pure despair that echoed endlessly through the weeping throat of the earth.
Unbeknownst to Gojo, a heavy, familiar shadow began to gather around Subaru's body in the dark.
From the void, a cold, loving hand of darkness reached out, wrapping around Subaru's soul and pulling him gently away from the blood, away from the death... right back to the start once more.