Gojo and the scorpion wasn't a clash—it was a one-sided storm. A beatdown, plain and simple. Shaula's monstrous pincers snapped, her stinger fired lances of light that could disintegrate armies, yet none of it landed. Not truly. Against Infinity, her fury washed off like rain on glass.
Normally, Gojo would've toyed with her. He would've smiled, made some snide comment, and dragged the fight out just to amuse himself. But this time was different. He wasn't fighting for fun.
He was fighting to save her.
To drag Shaula out of the cage she'd been locked in for four hundred lonely years. To free her from the curse Flugel had left behind. And maybe—just maybe—if he ever saw that smug bastard in the future, he'd plant a well-deserved red-infused punch across his face.
"—!"
Gojo's eyes widened.
The titanic scorpion's carapace began to glow red, her entire form radiating blinding brilliance. The swelling light at the tip of her tail stinger compressed—then fired. The blast wasn't just larger than anything she had unleashed before, it was overwhelmingly so.
For a fleeting instant, Gojo thought one thing:
Getting hit by that… would not be pretty.
The all-encompassing light surged toward him, slowed infinitely at the barrier of his technique. Yet even as the beam parted and wrapped around his body, its destructive wake erased the walls behind him, tearing a gaping corridor into the horizon. The sound itself seemed to vanish, space trembling as the beam scoured the distant sands until finally flickering out.
The impact was so intense that ripples traveled across the endless desert below, scattering the dunes into waves and flattening hordes of witchbeasts like mere insects beneath a storm.
Smoke engulfed the chamber.
Then, flicker— Gojo stepped out of the haze, sliding across the stone floor. He weaved beneath the shadow of an incoming pincer, his movements precise, unhurried. Pivoting sharply, he drove a hook glowing crimson—RED—into Shaula's side.
Impact.
The chamber quaked as her armored frame was hurled across the room, crashing through a jagged breach in the wall and vanishing into the desert far below.
Gojo followed her descent with his Six Eyes, tracking her until the tremor of her impact echoed back up. Shaula rose immediately, undaunted, and fell upon the nearest witchbeast. Her colossal pincers tore a fiery Centaur apart, shredding it like a child pulling the wings off a fly. Screeches echoed across the wasteland as more monsters converged.
Gojo's expression softened, just slightly.
"…I don't hear fighting from the tower anymore."
His gaze drifted upward, toward the unreachable peak of the Pleiades Watchtower. Clouds curled thick around its summit, cloaking the heavens themselves
"Did Subaru… actually pull it off? Did he beat Reid?"
The thought was absurd—and yet, for some reason, he believed it.
When he looked back down, Shaula was still rampaging. Still tearing, still mauling. But Gojo saw it, faint and hidden beneath the frenzy. A flicker. A trembling ember of the girl who had waited for her master to return.
"Shaula…" he whispered. "… So she is still in there. Barely—but I can see it."
Closing his eyes, he raised his hand. Cursed energy crackled over his fingertips, swirling into an ominous crimson glow.
"Now it's time for me to do my job."
Vermillion light spilled across the sands, searing everything within sight. The witchbeasts shrieked as gravity itself bent, the entire surrounding area collapsing in upon itself—imploding into a cavernous abyss. The Centaurs, the hordes, even Shaula herself were swallowed by the churning darkness, falling endlessly into the deep.
Gojo exhaled, dust scattering from his breath.
Then he turned back to the tower, towering higher than the clouds, its pinnacle hidden from mortal sight. His eyes narrowed with resolve.
"Alright, Shaula. Just wait a little longer. Keep chewing on those pests if you need to… I'll be right back."
Without hesitation, he stepped forward. His figure blurred, sprinting across the sands until he reached the gate of the Watchtower once more. He paused only briefly, eyes flicking toward the colossal exterior wall.
Not gonna climb the outside. There's no way Flugel didn't leave some failsafe for that.
So he entered through the front, boots echoing against the ancient stone. His gaze lifted upward, and he felt a twinge of despair at the spiral staircase awaiting him.
"…Damn. I'm gonna hate this part."
Still, his lips curled into a grin, his expression full of unshakable confidence as he set foot onto the first stair.
No hesitation. No doubt.
Only forward.
Gojo Satoru began his rapid ascent straight to the top of the tower.
———————————————————
The climb was long and arduous, even for him. By the halfway mark, Gojo found his own footsteps slowing, his breathing sharper, sweat clinging to his temples. For the first time in years, he realized he actually had to try just to keep pace. Shaula had been climbing these stairs for centuries—hell, he didn't envy her in the slightest even if she had never gone up to the very top before.
If Subaru had been the one to climb instead? Gojo smirked faintly through the burn in his lungs. The dude wouldn't even have been halfway before being gassed out and complaining.
Still, step by step, he forced himself higher. Until finally, he stood at the summit.
And what he saw stopped him dead.
"…No way."
His eyes widened, a rare flicker of disbelief cutting through his usual confidence. The sight before him wasn't just unexpected—it was absurd. Something nobody could've predicted. Not Subaru, no amount of planning could predict just who was laying before him.
A colossal being towered before him, its form clad in scales that shimmered like oceans of sapphire. Golden eyes burned through the chamber, pinning Gojo like an insect beneath glass. That gaze alone carried weight, a suffocating sense of majesty. His shoulders tightened. His breath caught. Infinity meant nothing here.
A figure every soul in this world knew by name.
"…Volcanica."
The Divine Dragon. The so-called guardian deity of Lugunica. The linchpin of the Royal Selection itself.
The creature's presence was overwhelming. Its scales gleamed like jewels forged in heaven's fire, sharper than any blade Gojo had ever laid eyes on. Four limbs ended in claws black as obsidian, gouging the stone beneath with casual menace. Two ivory horns arched from its head, divine and terrible. Its sheer size, while smaller than the watchtower, seemed to dwarf it from presence alone; wings folded, tail coiled, still its immensity warped the chamber.
And those golden eyes—eyes that had seen centuries pass, kingdoms rise and fall—were fixed entirely on him.
Gojo swallowed, clenching his fist to steady his breath. Even his technique want simply ignored by whatever it was. Infinity wasn't a shield. It wasn't even a joke here.
"…What do you… think…" His words caught, his throat tightening beneath the weight.
"…you're doing…?"
A single heartbeat later, the suffocating aura dissipated, like mist fading from the air. He inhaled sharply, breath rushing back into his lungs. His body screamed in relief.
But the dragon still hadn't spoken.
Gojo straightened, rolling his shoulders as if to brush off the pressure. His voice rang out, defiant, cocky as ever.
"Hey, shitty dragon! Why the hell did you make me a contender for the throne, huh?!" He jabbed a thumb at his chest out of plain annoyance. "I mean—seriously? I thought you were just some perverted dragon, but turns out the damn GOD of this world swings BOTH WAYS, huh?!"
"..."
The Divine Dragon didn't so much as blink. Its gaze remained fixed. Silent.
"…Hey—!"
"Thou, who hath reached the top of the tower. Step forth through the first floor, almighty petitioner."
The voice boomed, ancient and hollow, reverberating through stone and bone alike. It was grand, godlike—but wrong. It carried no cadence of will. No spark of personality. It was mechanical. Programmed.
"I, am Volcanica. In accordance with the ancient covenant, I ask the will of thee who hath reached the summit."
Gojo's expression darkened, Six Eyes narrowing as his usual grin faltered.
"…Tch. Am I getting ragebaited by a dragon?"
No response.
"…I am, huh?"
Again, silence. The same unblinking gaze.
Gojo tilted his head, his eyes drifting slowly down the length of the dragon's gargantuan frame. His Six Eyes probed, studied, dissected every detail. Until realization flickered across his face.
"…Ah."
No body temperature. No pulse of heat. Nothing that suggested true life. Not dead, no… but unmoving. Stagnant. A being frozen in time, its essence locked away until it became little more than a living statue.
The voice resounded once more, identical in every syllable.
"Thou, who hath reached the top of the tower. Step forth through the first floor, almighty petitioner. I, am Volcanica. In accordance with the ancient covenant, I ask the will of thee who hath reached the summit."
Gojo groaned and smacked the side of his head with one hand.
"Ahhh, so that's it… You're on repeat." His grin returned, sharp and irreverent. "Really? The great dragon with memory loss? A literal god reduced to a broken record? I guess old age really does get to everyone huh."
He let his hand fall, sighing through his teeth.
"… Seems Crusch might've been onto something after all with what she was preaching about way back when I made my appearance."
--Third Trial "UNKNOWN" Begin.
———————————————————
"...But what is it? What do I have to do? Beat Volcanica, like we had to beat Reid?"
Gojo muttered aloud, his tone caught somewhere between curiosity and irritation. He really hoped that wasn't the case—if the grand trial of the Divine Dragon boiled down to just another slugfest, he'd rate this whole setup one star. Unoriginal. Lazy design. Zero replay value.
But that obviously wasn't the case.
His six eyes flicked away from the looming dragon and began sweeping the environment with meticulous detail. The space wasn't endless like the void of the second layer, nor confined like Reid's dueling arena. This was something different—a rooftop-like platform, open to the skies, capped in clouds. The arena's diameter spanned perhaps a hundred meters, with six smaller pillars evenly spaced along its perimeter. At the heart of it all was a mammoth central pillar—its presence undeniable, like an altar. And it was here that Volcanica crouched, its vast frame leaning against the structure, its golden eyes tracking Gojo with all the weight of a god's judgment.
The area felt deceptively large, but much of that space was swallowed whole by the dragon's sheer immensity. Its body filled the rooftop like a mountain come to life, breathing down on him in silence.
Gojo edged closer to the lip of the rooftop, peering down past the railing of stone. Unsurprisingly, all he found below was a rolling blanket of cloud—no horizon, no ground, nothing. A sea of white, cutting him off from the world beneath.
"As I thought... we're above the clouds." he muttered, his voice dry. "So scaling this thing from the outside would've been pointless anyway. Guess that thought earlier was trash."
Reinhard could probably pull it off though. Gojo grimaced. Of course he could.
He shook it off and tilted his head back toward the dragon's perch. The central pillar was the obvious focus, the core of the stage. It practically screamed importance. His instincts told him the answer wasn't in clashing with Volcanica head-on—it was in figuring out why the dragon guarded that pillar in the first place. The beast's repeated lines of dialogue weren't exactly Shakespearean hints, but they were still something.
"Thou, who hath reached the top of the tower. Step forth through the first floor, almighty petitioner."
Gojo clicked his tongue and tapped his foot impatiently. The words grated on him, more like a broken record than divine guidance. Still, they were the only clue he had.
He advanced toward the pillar.
"--!"
His eyes widened as infinity rippled, catching something he hadn't seen. The dragon's tail—immense and swift—had lashed out in less than a blink, colliding with the barrier that separated Gojo from everything else. The sheer speed of it startled him; it was uncannily fast, faster than something that massive should ever move.
But that alone was enough. The dragon wasn't completely dormant. It reacted when he neared the pillar. That meant something.
"I, am Volcanica. In accordance with the ancient covenant, I ask the will of thee who hath reached the summit."
The same words, the same hollow intonation. Gojo's patience frayed, but he pressed on. The dragon's tail lashed again, then again, each strike rebounding harmlessly against infinity—but each one heavy enough that Gojo knew they'd have turned him into paste if they'd actually landed. He ignored it and kept walking. One step. Two steps. Closer.
The world suddenly erupted in bluish-white.
His six eyes flared, his breath hitching in his throat. This wasn't fire, nor any ordinary breath attack. It was annihilation made manifest, a torrent of purifying light that threatened to erase not his body, but his existence itself. Instinct screamed louder than thought, and Gojo vaulted backward, infinity tugging the very fabric of space to help him escape.
The rooftop where he'd stood a moment ago ceased to exist.
Stone, air, space itself—obliterated, dissolved into nothing by the dragon's luminous exhalation. If he'd hesitated, even a hair, all that would've been left was ashes of him.
He felt it in his veins. The raw truth of it.
This dragon wasn't just dangerous. It was divine.
"Thou, who hath reached the top of the tower. Step forth through the first floor, almighty petitioner."
Gojo's lips twisted. "Now it's ragebaiting me for real." he muttered. "Might actually have to punch this dragon across the face."
He promised himself exactly that.
His fists clenched. His body leaned forward, ready to close the distance again—until the air itself shifted.
"——!"
The dragon moved. For the first time, it moved.
Its massive frame uncoiled from the central pillar, wings unfolding with an elegance that made the sky itself seem too small to contain it. Even Gojo, unflappable as he was, froze in awe for half a second. The shimmering blue scales caught the light like jewels, and when the wings spread wide, they didn't even need to beat. The dragon simply rose. Floating effortlessly, carried not by muscle but by pure magic.
It circled the pillar like a predator, then dove.
The tail swept in a wide arc, cutting through the air with force enough to shear through mountains. Infinity held—but Gojo's eyes snapped wide as something else hit him.
A feeling. That same sensation that hit him when he couldn't see an attack coming, but his insane senses could.
Death.
Every nerve in his body screamed at once. Instinct overrode arrogance, and he hurled himself aside just as the space in front of him twisted unnaturally—constricting, compressing, then bursting outward in a violent rupture. Reality itself popped like a bubble.
If he hadn't moved, he would've been utterly erased from existence.
"—Tch!"
No time to gawk. He twisted space beneath his feet, holding himself aloft as he pivoted in midair to face what came next.
FWOOOOOM—!
The dragon's head slammed into him like a freight train. Infinity kept his body intact and unharmed, not that that meant it wasn't exactly uncomfortable being dragged along the head of a massive dragon. Gojo gritted his teeth, seized what purchase he could on the jewel-hard scales, and drove his fist downward in a savage hook, cursed energy swelling—RED—bursting at the knuckles.
The impact landed with an explosion of force, enough to obliterate anything short of an army.
It did nothing. Absolutely nothing.
The scales didn't so much as chip.
Gojo's grin twitched, teeth bared in wild, incredulous amusement.
"…You gotta be shitting me."
"I am Volcanica. In accordance with the ancient covenant, I ask the will of thee who hath reached the summit."
"Yeah—heard you the first time, Gramps!"
Gojo snarled, clinging stubbornly to the dragon's back. His fingers dug in, grazing the seam between those diamond-hard azure scales.
The reaction was immediate. Visceral.
The dragon roared. It wasn't a war cry, nor a bellow of rage. It was a reflex—a convulsion of rejection. The soundwave alone rattled Gojo's bones, flinging him from his perch like a ragdoll.
"Shit—!"
He caught himself mid-fall, Blue pulsing around his core, the attractive force yanking his body back down with crushing velocity until he slammed once more onto the beast's spine. Volcanica writhed with a groan, ithis immense wings unfurling to beat against the heavens. They spiraled higher, piercing the cloud layer, each lurch of the flight line tossing Gojo around like a loose passenger on a rollercoaster gone off the rails.
"Is this damn dragon… ticklish!?"
The absurdity almost made him laugh, even as the G-force tried to liquefy his organs. He loved a thrill ride—but not when the ride was trying to hurl him into the stratosphere.
Then, the scenery changed.
The arena below vanished. The six pillars that framed the battlefield were gone. His Six Eyes processed the data instantly—Volcanica had carried him beyond the apex. They had entered the true summit.
Gojo didn't hesitate. He sprang from the dragon's back, manipulating space to create a platform of air, descending gracefully to land with both feet planted on the pristine white stone.
Before him rose a monolith. A pillar stretching into infinity, its presence overwhelming even to his senses. But what caught his attention wasn't its height, but the markings etched into the base.
Handprints.
"…Handprints," Gojo murmured, the wind whipping his white hair. His eyes narrowed behind his blindfold, scanning the residual traces of mana—or whatever passed for it in this world—lingering in the stone.
He pointed a finger, ticking them off.
"…Reid."
"…Flugel."
"…Shaula."
"…And maybe someone else?"
He wasn't certain, but the history was palpable. A legacy etched into the bones of the world. It was thrilling—a testament to the strong who came before—but utterly unhelpful for surviving the creature currently blotting out the sun.
"Thou, who hath reached the top of the tower. Step forth through the first floor, almighty petitioner."
The voice rolled like thunder, shaking the very foundation of the tower. Gojo snapped his head up as the dragon descended in a slow, deliberate fall. Its colossal frame coiled, wings beating once, twice, before it landed squarely in front of him.
For a breath, he dared to hope it would kneel.
It didn't.
The maw opened. The world turned white.
A torrent of annihilation surged toward him—the same light that had nearly erased him earlier. It wasn't just heat; his eyes saw the truth. It was a rewriting of coordinates. A forced deletion of space.
Gojo reacted instantly. Hands clasped, fingers interlocking. Cursed energy flooded his circuits, Red igniting like a dying star in one hand, Blue collapsing like a black hole in the other.
"—Phase, paramita, pillars of light…"
The chant spilled from his lips, steady amidst the roaring wind.
The red sphere wavered, threatening to buckle under the dragon's pressure. But then, the blue singularity bloomed, dragging the very atmosphere into its hungry core.
The clash shifted. Space twisted. Opposites drew together. The ends of infinity snapped toward each other, colliding in the palm of his hand.
Gojo's grin broke across his face—feral, elated, the look of a man betting everything on a single card.
"—Infinity is infallible. Have a taste of the void, DRAGON!"
The collision birthed a virtual mass. A smear of violet across reality's canvas.
A flick of his index finger, simple, casual—and the world obeyed.
"Hollow Purple."
The orb screamed into existence, massive and merciless. It launched forward, a sphere of imaginary mass colliding head-on with the dragon's breath of erasure.
The impact made no sound. Sound required a medium, and for a split second, the air between them simply ceased to exist.
The white beam of coordinate deletion met the violet sphere of atomic destruction. They didn't explode; they negated. The dragon's breath tried to rewrite the space the Purple occupied, while the Purple deleted the matter of the breath itself.
The resulting backlash was a catastrophic implosion of mana and cursed energy. A plume of warped light and smoke erupted, rising like a mushroom cloud against the sea of stars.
Gojo skidded back, his heels carving trenches into the stone, his clothes flapping violently in the aftershock.
"…Seriously? It didn't even hit?"
He straightened up, dusting off his shoulder. He had been ready to drop a lecture on the physics of imaginary mass, but the dragon had rudely interrupted the lesson.
"I guess it was that space-tearing crap, huh? Purple and that breath just… cancelled each other out." His lips curved wider, but the humor didn't reach his eyes. They were cold, calculating. "What a damn monster."
Yet, even a monster had cracks.
Through the dissipating smoke, the Six Eyes caught a glimmer. An imperfection.
On the dragon's throat, amidst the flawless sapphire armor, sat a single white scale. It was inverted, jagged—a scar. A wound from a battle fought long ago, likely by the man whose handprint was on the pillar.
A weak point.
"Alright, shitty dragon…"
Gojo flicked his arm sideways. Vermillion light surged, cleaving a crescent through the air. The earth split apart, rubble erupting skyward to form a curtain of dust.
Hidden behind the debris, he moved.
Volcanica's presence was an ocean, a tsunami of mana that would drown an ordinary sorcerer. Compared to that, Gojo was a drop of water. Harder to see. Harder to track. Especially when the dragon's mind was running on a broken script.
The claws lashed out, sweeping arcs that shredded wind and stone, dispersing the dust storm in a heartbeat. But Gojo was already gone.
He blurred beneath the titan, sprinting past obsidian talons. The tail came next—slamming down like a guillotine.
It froze inches from his head. Infinity halted the kinetic energy instantly.
Gojo used the tail as a springboard. A surge of cursed energy propelled him skyward. He twisted midair, slipping between the colossal horns, and in the blink of an eye, he was airborne above Volcanica's snout.
The dragon stirred. Wings tensed. The mouth began to open again.
Gojo slid down the curve of the dragon's nose, cerulean eyes locking with the molten gold of the beast's iris.
The chill returned. That sensation of death brushing his spine. Space began to warp inside the dragon's throat—another breath was priming.
But he didn't move. Not this time.
His grin widened, wild and unshakable.
"Gotcha!"
Reversal: Red.
He didn't aim for destruction. He aimed for impact.
The cursed energy detonated point-blank, a concentrated blast of repulsive force hammering the white scale dead center.
The effect was instant.
Volcanica's body seized. A roar tore from its throat—not the hollow, robotic chant, but a raw, agonized sound of clarity. The breath attack fizzled out, the mana dispersing harmlessly. The titanic frame convulsed, wings buckling as the dragon crashed down onto the stone, stunned.
Gojo landed in a roll, sliding to one knee, chest heaving.
"Haah…"
Silence descended on the tower.
No swipe. No roar. No erasure of space.
Only the familiar, broken record.
"Thou, who hath reached the top of the tower. Step forth through the first floor, almighty petitioner."
Gojo exhaled, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders. For once, he welcomed the endless droning voice. If it meant no more bubbles of annihilation, he'd take it.
"I am Volcanica. In accordance with the ancient covenant, I ask the will of thee who hath reached the summit."
Gojo stood up, brushing the dust from his uniform. His gaze softened, losing its lethal edge as he looked at the senile god.
"…I ask. What is thy will?"
Gojo walked forward, looking up at the dragon. Finally, he had an answer to give.
———————————————————
Far below, Subaru dragged himself from the void of the third trial, every muscle screaming. His legs wobbled with each step down the endless stairs, body threatening collapse, but he pushed through. Somehow. Always somehow.
At last, he staggered into Shaula's quarters. Empty now, silent. The absence of her fiery presence only deepened the weight in the air.
"Huff... huff..."
He ignored the healing chamber. Ignored the gnawing pain that demanded rest. Instead, he staggered to the window, bracing himself against the frame with one trembling arm. His eyes lifted.
The clouds that had forever cloaked the tower's peak were breaking apart, torn open as though the heavens themselves had been split. Beyond them stretched a wide, endless blue—pure sky, unmarred by shadow. Sunlight poured down, radiant and unrestrained, washing the desert in molten gold.
For the first time since stepping into this cursed place, Subaru felt warmth that wasn't born of fire or pain.
His lips trembled. A sound burst from him—half-laugh, half-sob, unrefined, raw.
"Haah... aha... so, so you did it... Gojo-sensei..."
The words cracked, but the conviction behind them did not. His body wanted to collapse, to surrender, but his voice carried on.
"—You… rewrote the rules of the tower."
This was what it had all been for. Every trial. Every wound. Every death.
They had fought Reid Astrea, the Sword Saint who could split the world with his blade.
They had stood against Volcanica, the Divine Dragon, a being of covenant and eternity.
They had clawed, bled, and broken themselves to climb higher, higher, higher—
Originally, the climb had been nothing more than a selfish pursuit. A crutch for Subaru's fractured psyche, a way to prop up the part of him that had shattered again and again. The trials, the blood, the despair—he had endured them for himself, to chase after the pride he had lost, to grasp the proof that he still had worth.
That much hadn't changed. His goal of reclaiming that missing piece of his soul—Pride—still burned within him, relentless, unyielding. But even he knew, deep down, that this tower wasn't the place where that journey would end. The Books of the Dead could scar him, mold him, teach him—but they could not complete him. Not here.
And yet… somewhere along the way, that purpose had been eclipsed.
It had become something else. Something far larger than his own wounded pride.
To free her.
Shaula.
If the rules of the tower had shackled her, then tearing those rules apart should have broken the curse. No rules, no bindings. No bindings, no prison.
She should have been free to leave.
She should have been herself again.
That was the hope Subaru clung to with shaking hands.
That was the promise Gojo carried like steel in his chest.
But—
His smile faltered. The pit of his stomach twisted, a leaden weight pressing against his lungs. A tremor ran up his spine, one he couldn't dismiss as exhaustion.
Why, then—
Why, with the sky finally open above them, with victory right within reach—
—did his nerves scream like they were standing on the edge of a precipice?
———————————————————
Gojo trudged through the golden dunes, the desert wind tugging at his jacket. His hands were tucked lazily in his pockets, his breath calm and even. But beneath that composure, his chest was tight. His six eyes flickered, restless, scanning for what he already knew he'd find.
Soon, he would have Subaru. Soon, Shaula. Soon, they'd leave this cursed tower behind and never look back.
That was the plan.
CRACK—CRACK!
The sound of stone shearing and collapsing reached his ears. Quiet, distant, muffled to anyone else. But not him. Not Satoru Gojo. His sharp frown deepened.
He knew what lay beneath. He had buried it himself—buried her beneath mountains of stone and sand. Witchbeasts had swarmed to buy him time, to keep her occupied while he cleared the trial. It had worked. It was supposed to be over.
So why did his chest sink with unease?
A flicker of light answered him.
Gojo's eyes widened as a radiant beam carved through the air, striking infinity dead on. It clung to it, wrapping his body in brilliance, daring to crush him in pressure—before fracturing, shattering like foil into fragments of mana that bled into the desert wind.
He didn't flinch. But his voice was low, taut.
"…How is that possible…?"
The sands erupted.
From the ruins of the landslide, a colossal shadow surged upward, shattering rock with a single leap. Six crimson eyes gleamed like lanterns in the darkness, locking onto him. Chitin gleamed wet with blood—not her own. Witchbeasts. Pincers snapped, tail thrummed with killing intent.
Shaula.
Still the Scorpion.
Still bound.
Still not free.
Gojo stood unmoving, staring up at the monster that had once been the girl who worshiped Flugel, the very same who seemed to have no end to her loyalty. He could still feel it, faint but unmistakable—her presence, buried deep within the crimson haze.
"Why... why?" His voice cracked louder than he meant, a mix of anger and disbelief. "I can tell she's still in there—I literally feel it!"
His fists slid free of his pockets, clenching tight at his sides, blue sparks simmering faintly in his palms.
"--I gave her my word." he said, quieter now, jaw tightening. His grin was gone. His tone was steel.
"And when I give a promise... I keep it."
He raised his head, Six Eyes blazing like twin suns, narrowing on the monstrous figure tearing its way free of the sand.
"This little setback?" He exhaled, the desert air trembling with the faint pulse of his cursed energy.
"Nothing. We're still getting you back, Shaula."
The dunes groaned as her titanic frame descended, pincers gouging trenches in the earth, tail twitching with lethal rhythm.
Gojo's shoulders loosened. His stance shifted. His lips curved—calm, fierce, resolute.
The Final Curtain had risen.
The Finale—COMMENCE.