The roar of battle was a symphony of desperation, a discordant clash that echoed in Subaru's very bones. He stood on the precipice, an unwilling spectator to a maelstrom he could barely comprehend, the scene a horrifying echo of past loops, of Reid and Satella locked in their own cataclysmic dance within the watchtower. Helplessness, heavy and suffocating, settled upon him as he watched Satoru struggle.
He knew, with a chilling certainty, the sheer bewilderment gripping Satoru.
Subaru had witnessed his white-haired friend falter before, seen the raw power unleashed against the likes of Reid Astrea and Regulus Corneas. But those were battles fought before the devastating fog of amnesia had descended, before Satoru had been stripped of his memories.
Even then, this... this was beyond comprehension.
For the entity inhabiting Suguru Geto's borrowed flesh was not merely a usurper, but a sorcerer of terrifying power in its own right. This revelation hung in the air, undeniable, amplified by Gojo's own unwavering declaration as the pinnacle of sorcerous might.
Subaru's gaze, stunned and transfixed, snapped to the unnatural phenomenon unfolding behind Kenjaku. A void, a black fissure, tore through reality, warping and splitting open with impossible violence. From its depths, a pair of clawed, silver hands, impossibly pristine, pried their way free, revealing the colossal form of a silver dragon.
It was a being of myth made manifest, a cursed spirit reshaped into the likeness of a titanic white Japanese dragon. Its bulging yellow eyes, ancient and malevolent, fixed upon Subaru in an instant, its cavernous maw snapping shut on empty air, a predatory instinct honed over millennia.
Subaru instinctively raised his arms, bracing for the inevitable. But before the beast could lunge, a familiar voice sliced through the chaos, sharp and clear.
"—Hey, you! That curse, don't underestimate it, and kick its ass! It's the 'Rainbow Dragon,' and its durability isn't too shabby—"
The words hung in the air, surreal, as Subaru's eyes flickered back to Gojo. Then, with a sudden, blinding acceleration, the two combatants became blurs of incandescent power once more, their frantic dance of destruction resuming.
Gojo's words echoed in his mind.
Not too shabby, huh?
The Rainbow Dragon moved first. A sound like grinding continents filled the air as its colossal body uncoiled, a spring-loaded serpent of cursed energy and opalescent scale. It didn't fly so much as it swam through the atmosphere, a gaping maw of freakishly humanoid-like teeth rushing Subaru, intent on swallowing him whole.
Impact.
Subaru's boots dug into the cracked stone, hands braced against the upper jaw.
The beast's sheer power threatened to crush him, the stench of ozone and decay flooding his senses. But he held. With a-roar of his own, cursed energy flared like a blue-black fire around his limbs.
He didn't just push out—he exploded from the dragon's mouth, skidding across the floor in a shower of sparks. The jaws snapped shut behind him with the force of a guillotine, missing him by inches.
Fast, but not too fast.
"W-What in the hell is th~at?!"
The voice, sharp and unfamiliar, sliced through the area. Subaru's head snapped towards a small girl with pigtails, her childish features twisted in a professional confusion that felt jarringly out of place.
"Who the hell are you—?"
"I can't control it at all..." Meili interrupted, her brows furrowed in frustration, ignoring his question entirely.
"Not in the slightest. What kind of Mabeast is that thing?"
Before he could answer, the Rainbow Dragon writhed, its body twisting into an impossible knot in the air. Then it plummeted, head tucked down like a comet of bone aimed to obliterate them both.
"Oh—crap!"
Meili shrieked, stumbling back.
Subaru moved. He scooped her into his arms, turning his body to meet the impact. He didn't block it; he absorbed it. His shoulder met the dragon's armored head with a intense—BOOM—that echoed through the broken plaza. The shockwave traveled up his spine, but he held his ground, his feet carving deep trenches in the stone as they were driven back ten feet. A faint, telltale ringing resonated against his arm.
Strong, but definitely not unbreakable.
He slung Meili onto his back in one fluid motion, her small hands instinctively clamping around his neck.
"What are y~ou gonna do about blonde little sis over there!?"
She yelled, pointing a trembling finger at the still, unconscious form of Rui Arneb lying amidst the debris.
"—Nothing..." Subaru's reply was ice.
"That monster doesn't deserve it."
Meili's eyes widened, the context lost on her, but the chilling finality in his tone was unmistakable.
No more time for talk.
Subaru bent his knees and launched himself skyward, a gravity-defying leap that carried them over the dragon's next snapping lunge. He landed with feather-light precision on the creature's broad, scaly back.
Instantly, a familiar, agonizing power surged up his arm. Blackened veins pulsed like living wires under his skin, erupting from his fist to coalesce into a blade of pure, solidified shadow—an onyx sword that drank the light around it. He swung, a vicious downward arc aimed to sever the beast's spine.
SCREEEEE—!
The sound of metal scraping diamond shrieked through the air. The blade, which could have cleaved lesser beasts in two, left only a shallow, smoking white line on the dragon's hide.
Subaru's eyes narrowed.
"Gojo-sensei wasn't lying huh..."
He kicked off, launching them back into the open air. Below, the dragon's spine snapped into a new orientation, its entire body reversing course in mid-air with impossible agility. It shot towards them, a missile of hungry jaws.
"Whoomph…!"
A wave of intoxicating power coursed through him. The pain in his arm intensified, but with it came a clarity, a cold purpose. The onyx sword in his hand pulsed, growing, thickening, morphing into a something more akin to a cleaver. He hooked it back, bracing for the collision.
"Hey—h~eeeey!! It's gonna eat us!!"
Meili screamed into his ear.
They were falling, the dragon rising to meet them.
"—I can Return by D—"
The whisper of the Taboo tasted like ash and lightning on his tongue. The miasma, the cursed energy, the raw, beautiful, terrible power surged. He cut the thought off.
"Hold on tight, kid!"
"You... whaAAAA—!!?
An obsidian platform materialized out of thin air beneath his feet, arresting their fall with a bone-jarring halt. He didn't pause. Knees bent, he shot off the platform like a cannonball, a sonic boom cracking the air behind him.
He wasn't a man anymore; he was a lethal corkscrew of motion. He pirouetted around the dragon's snapping maw, the momentum of his spin channeling directly into the massive black blade. Time seemed to crawl as he brought the sword around, not in a chop, but a deep, guiding slice along it's body.
There was no screech this time. Only the wet, tearing sound of something immense being unmade. The blade carved through scale, muscle, and bone, tracing a single, perfect, black line from the creature's head to its tail.
They landed, skidding to a halt in a spray of gravel.
For a moment, the two bisected halves of the Rainbow Dragon hung suspended in the air. Then, gravity reasserted its brutal claim. The massive body plummeted, crashing into the ground with the force of a meteor, erupting in a geyser of dust and fading cursed energy. It did not move again.
"Urh..." Meili groaned from his back, her face pale.
"I feel si~ck..."
A shuddering breath escaped Subaru's lips as he carefully slid Meili from his back onto the cracked, trembling pavement. He turned, his body a tight coil of tension, and wiped a smear of grime from his cheek.
"...Probably better sick than dragon food, don't you think?"
His voice was a low rasp, nearly lost to the cacophony of the battle raging nearby.
Meili hugged her arms, a childish gesture that didn't quite fit the grim set of her mouth.
"...Well, obvi~ously..."
Subaru's brow furrowed, his gaze still locked on the distant blurs of motion.
"Why are you even here? I saw Gojo-sensei bring you, but... what's the point?"
She swayed on her heels, scuffing a loose bit of rubble with her shoe.
"Weeell~ we had a… disagreement. Calling it a 'fight' is de~finitely being generous."
Her mind was a storm.
Gojo, the man who had effortlessly ended the life of Elsa, her sister.
Gojo, the man who had helped slay the pinnacle of Mabeasts that she couldn't even think about controlling.
To seek revenge against him was like a raindrop trying to fight the ocean. Utterly, hopelessly pointless.
A deafening explosion ripped through the air, forcing them both to flinch. The very ground bucked beneath them.
Subaru instinctively shielded Meili with an arm as his gaze was riveted back to the fight. It wasn't a duel; it was a symphony of destruction. A blur of white and a shadow of black, clashing with forces that tore reality at the seams.
And then, as suddenly as it began, the chaotic dance ceased.
The silence that followed was heavier, more terrifying than the noise.
Standing in the center of a fresh crater, the man wearing Geto Suguru's face seemed utterly serene. He didn't hurry. With a languid grace, he allowed the cursed tool in his hand to be swallowed by the grotesque, purple-fleshed curse clinging to his shoulder. Then, he clasped his hands together, fingers interlacing in a simple, placid gesture.
A cold dread, sharp and sudden as a shard of ice, pierced Subaru's gut.
His gaze snapped to Gojo-sensei. The strongest sorcerer alive was frozen, a trickle of blood tracing a path from his cheek and downward. But it wasn't the wound that held Subaru's attention. It was the look in those impossibly blue eyes—a flicker of genuine, stark disbelief.
A slow, chilling smile stretched across Geto's stolen features, a smile that promised not victory, but annihilation.
The words echoed in the sudden, dead quiet, seeming to warp the very air around him.
"—Domain Expansion..."
————————————————————————
"—Womb Profusion."
The world froze.
The domain materialized not as a mere space, but as a grotesque monument to a thousand tortured souls.
A totem-esque tower of squamous, cursed visages, each contorted in a silent, eternal scream, merged and melded into a single, pulsating monolith. Branches, thick and gnarled like the skeletal fingers of a monstrous tree, erupted from their fused flesh, tearing through the void.
This abomination didn't just appear; it surged from behind Kenjaku, a sickening, primal force unleashed, its very existence an affront to sanity.
For a fraction of a second—so fleeting it barely existed—Gojo Satoru's mind, honed to perfection by the Six Eyes, accelerated beyond human limits. The crushing weight of infinity bent to his will as time itself splintered under the encroaching Domain Expansion—a death sentence for anyone caught within.
But Gojo wasn't just anyone.
A choice.
Two paths...
Kill.
Keep fighting. Try until the end against the man who wore his face—the bastard who had twisted Suguru's corpse into a puppet. The thrill of battle still surged through Gojo's veins, Black Flash resonating in his bones, blood singing for revenge.
Or...
Save.
The unconscious girl, as well as Meili. The stranger—Subaru—unsure if he had any defensive capabilities to combat a Domain's sure-hit effect.
Protecting them wouldn't change the world. But that had never been the point.
A whisper cut through the static of his thoughts.
"Protect weaklings, Satoru."
Suguru's voice. Clear. Unyielding.
"That's why we have these powers."
Gojo's teeth clenched. His cursed energy pulsed—not in anger, but in resolve.
The decision was already made.
Because saving them?
That's what Suguru Geto would've wanted.
So that's what Satoru Gojo must do.
————————————————————————
The air crackled with a silence that screamed louder than any explosion. Time, a fickle mistress, had already played its hand. Gojo, the strongest of them all, a phantom in the fray, had vanished. He'd snatched the unconscious blonde child, Rui Arneb, a desperate gamble, and with a wrenching tear in reality, warped them both away.
Warping with more than just himself was a concession Gojo loathed. The mental toll was a heavy cloak, a burden he usually shed. But here, now, there was no alternative.
Subaru's eyes snapped wide, a primal instinct flaring. Cursed energy surged within him, a desperate, unbidden call to arms against the unseen threat.
But it wasn't his energy that erupted. It was Gojo's. A torrent of raw, untamed power burst from his corporeal form, a blinding wave that engulfed everything within a two-meter radius. Subaru, Rui, Meili, and Gojo himself were consumed by this spectral tide of cursed energy.
He'd never needed this technique. He'd never even been taught this. To unleash it, intertwined with the lives of others... the very thought was a violation of his training, a desperate improvisation born of sheer necessity.
"Falling Blossoming Emotion—"
The words, a whispered incantation, were ripped from Gojo's lips as a secret art, an anti-domain technique passed down through the hallowed bloodlines of the Jujutsu world, met its brutal counterpoint.
Right then, in that suspended breath, Kenjaku's Domain Expansion descended. It wasn't a gentle embrace; it was a suffocating fist, crushing everything in its path with the relentless certainty of a sure-hit effect, the apex of ultimate techniques.
BOOOOOOM—!!!
The world imploded. The hastily erected curtain of Kenjaku's malevolence buckled under an impossible, sudden surge of gravity. Buildings that had merely swayed now groaned, their skeletal remains plummeting earthward under the crushing weight. The already fractured ground, a scarred testament to previous brutality, tore open further, warping into grotesque new shapes.
Everything was annihilated, everything crushed.
Except them.
"Gojo-sensei!!"
Subaru's voice, ragged with disbelief, pierced the unnatural quiet. His eyes, wide with a shock that bordered on trauma, were fixed not on the flattened landscape, but on the trembling silhouette of Satoru Gojo. The anomaly, the inexplicable survival, was his first and only thought.
Meili, a statue carved from fear, could offer no sound, no understanding. Her gaze was locked onto the quivering form of Gojo, a wall against the encroaching chaos, a shield for their fragile existence.
"——!"
A low groan escaped Gojo's lips. Blood, a stark crimson against his pale skin, trickled from his nose. His vision swam, faltering under the immense strain.
This... this is that gravity technique? Is he still… holding back? I don't feel Suguru's cursed technique…
Shit—shit shit, shit!
An indescribable pressure, unlike anything he had ever known, bore down on him. Until this moment, struggle had been an abstract concept, a foe he had never truly faced. Everything had come with ease, life a sun-drenched path.
But now, that same prodigious existence was being driven to its knees. The curtain of cursed energy, his desperate shield for them all, flickered and died, particularly around Gojo.
His legs, once pillars of unyielding strength, buckled beneath the impossibly, absurdly, crushing weight.
The strong exist to protect the weak—
————————————————————————
The sun was setting, painting the sky in fiery strokes of orange and purple.
Satoru Gojo lay sprawled on the grass of the training grounds, arms tucked behind his head, staring up at the darkening expanse. Suguru Geto sat beside him, nursing a can of coffee, his posture thoughtful as he watched the distant lights of Tokyo begin to twinkle with the falling sun.
"Man, that was a draaaaag...."
Satoru said, his voice laced with the casual arrogance of youth.
"Why do we even bother with the small fry? They're just… so weak. It's boring!!"
Suguru took a slow sip of his coffee, not looking at him.
"Jujutsu exists to protect the non-jujutsu users, Satoru..."
He said it quietly, like a mantra he was repeating to himself as much as to his friend.
"Yeah, yeah, the whole 'strong exist to protect the weak' spiel~" Satoru scoffed, waving a dismissive hand.
"It's just common sense. We're the strongest. So we do it. Simple as that!"
Suguru finally turned to him, and in the twilight, Satoru could see a flicker of something unsettled in his dark eyes. It was a shadow Satoru never had, a depth of thought he rarely bothered with.
"It's not simple Satoru..."
Suguru sighed, his voice earnest.
"It's a responsibility. I suppose like a marathon with no finish line. Sometimes… it feels like we're just bailing out an ocean with a bucket."
He looked down at his own hands, calloused and stained.
"The things we see, the 'gratitude' we receive from people who don't even know what they were saved from… Does it ever weigh on you?"
Satoru sat up, a rare moment of seriousness dawning on his face. He watched his best friend, his one and only equal. He saw the genuine conflict warring within him. For all his own talk of being the strongest, he knew, deep down, that Suguru was the one who gave their strength meaning. Satoru was the unshakeable power; Suguru was the unwavering purpose.
He reached out and lightly knocked his fist against Suguru's shoulder.
"Who cares if it's heavy?"
Satoru said, a grin slowly returning to his face, bright and utterly confident.
"We're carrying it together, aren't we?"
Suguru looked up, surprised.
"You and me..." Satoru continued, pointing a thumb at his own chest, then at Suguru.
"We're the strongest. Not 'I' am the strongest. 'We' are. So what if it's an ocean? We're a damn typhoon! Whatever burden there is, we split it. Fifty-fifty."
The shadow in Suguru's eyes receded, replaced by a soft light. A genuine, unguarded smile spread across his face—the kind Satoru would spend the rest of his life trying to see again.
"Heh... You don't think enough, Satoru."
Suguru said, but there was no bite to it, only affection.
"And you think way too much, Suguru!" Satoru shot back, laughing.
"Guess that's why it works, huh~"
Suguru's smile widened. He stood up, offering a hand to pull Satoru to his feet.
"Yeah. I guess it is."
————————————————————————
"KRRRGGHHH—!!"
The sound wasn't in the air; it was the air, groaning under a pressure that warped reality itself. The two-meter buffer of inviolable space—his last, faltering stand—buckled, shrinking inch by brutal inch. Gravity, malevolent and absolute, clawed at them, threatening to atomize them into the domain's suffocating darkness.
For the first time in his life, Gojo Satoru felt the cold, unfamiliar dread of defeat coiling in his gut.
—Until.
A second gravity. A second will. Pushing back.
His eyes, which had narrowed to slits of concentration, snapped wide open. The Six Eyes, capable of perceiving the flow of Cursed Energy down to the atomic level, were suddenly blind to this impossibility. He lurched his head toward the source—a figure stepping into the epicenter of the strain by his side.
Natsuki Subaru. Hands raised, palms outward, as if holding back the sky itself.
"This is the proof!" Subaru's voice wasn't a shout, but a raw, grating proclamation that tore through the oppressive silence.
"Gojo-sensei... You still don't believe it, do you?! That you lost everything! That you forgot!"
Gojo's pupils contracted to pinpricks. The energy he sensed… it was impossible.
A thunderous, untamed wave of Cursed Energy erupted from Subaru, not honed or refined, but a chaotic maelstrom of raw, desperate power. It wrapped around Gojo's failing barrier, reinforcing it, fighting with it.
"Who else..." Subaru roared, his body trembling under the otherworldly strain.
"Could teach a worthless, talentless nobody… THIS?!"
He channeled it all—every ounce of pain, every death, every moment of despair—into a single, impossible feat. The same technique. The one Gojo himself should have been the sole master of.
Falling Blossoming Emotion—!!
CRACK—!
The very fabric of their combined techniques screamed as two forces continued fighting against the Domain Expansion. The ground beneath them splintered into a web of glass-like fissures.
"You pulled me from a hell you can't even remember!" Subaru's voice cracked, not with fear, but with a furious, heartbreaking conviction.
"Out of despair! Out of being a complete and utter FAILURE!!"
CRACK—!
"You told me I wasn't just a burden! You made me feel like I had WORTH!"
CRACK—!
Sweat carved paths through the grime on his face. His knuckles were white, his teeth clenched so hard it was a miracle they didn't shatter.
"You—"
He took a shuddering breath, his entire being focused into two final, desperate words.
"—ARE MY FRIEND!"
A gasp ripped from Gojo's throat, sharp and involuntary. His mind screamed at him. Deny it. Laugh it off. Call him a liar. It was the logical thing to do.
But as he stared into Subaru's eyes, he saw it. Not just conviction. He saw a shared history. He saw a bond forged in fires he couldn't remember, a loyalty so absolute it was bending the laws of jujutsu to help him.
He couldn't deny it. He couldn't.
Kenjaku's domain still pulsed around them, a prison of infinite mass. But the weight, the soul-crushing certainty of their demise, had been answered.
It wasn't enough to escape. But it was enough to survive.
And then—a slow clap.
The world was broken.
Kenjaku moved with deceptive ease across the shattered terrain, his footsteps light as he navigated the jagged ruins. Rubble rose like fractured teeth, slopes steep and treacherous—yet he traversed them effortlessly, as though gliding through a dream. At last, he came to a halt, hands resting idly behind his back, fingers laced together in careless poise.
The air thrummed with exhaustion and defiance. Before him, two warriors—one barely conscious on his knees, the other screaming into the silence.
"You truly are both incredible."
Kenjaku began, his voice smooth, almost admiring. And he meant it. That was the cruelest part.
His gaze flickered between them, a superior being studying wounded prey.
"However… your presence here is.... unnecessary."
He gestured lazily to the destruction around them.
"Your friends may perish, from all this anarchy with the Witch Cult. But their sacrifice if it does occur is... a necessity—for the evolution of this world. Magic. Jujutsu. Everything."
Gojo didn't respond. Couldn't. His breath came in ragged, shallow bursts, his body bowed under the weight of his limits.
Subaru, though—Subaru raged.
"What the hell does that even mean? How are you even meant to bring all that stuff from Earth to here?!"
Kenjaku only smiled, slow and indulgent. Then, with deliberate grace, he uncoiled one hand from behind his back and raised it—palm upturned, fingers splayed.
"My Domain Expansion has drained me… temporarily, a vast part of my arsenal is exhausted."
"But magic? That remains."
The air twisted. A whisper of cursed energy, not quite gone—repurposed, reshaped.
"—Lets say I burnt out Reversed Cursed Technique, but I still had the mana to use water magic, I could still heal."
His smile faded then, replaced by something colder.
"It apples here. So allow me to grant you all… a momentary reprieve, from this anarchy."
A pause. The wind stilled.
"—Though I must admit."
"This will leave even me rather fatigued."
Then—
"—Al Shamak."
From his palm erupted a void—a writhing, purple-black maw of spatial collapse. Reality shrieked as the distortion surged outward, swallowing light, sound, everything. It rolled like a tide, devouring the ground beneath them, creeping inward—inch by inexorable inch—until all that remained in view was Kenjaku himself, his silhouette framed against the abyss.
The last thing they heard was his voice, echoing through the infinite dark—
"Satoru Gojo… I suspect you especially will find this place… truly entertaining."
And then—there was nothing but darkness.