The battlefield had gone quiet—but not peaceful.
Pieces of the shattered Black Sun drifted like obsidian meteors through a sky that no longer followed rules. The ground beneath the heroes' feet shimmered between realities—cracked Konoha one second, the Hyperbolic Time Chamber the next, and then a broken palace of the Soul Society, all within breaths.
Julius was the first to move. He hovered slightly above the others, golden runes still orbiting his body like a protective halo. His eyes weren't tired anymore.
They were focused.
"This place isn't done unraveling," he said. "Madara was only a gatekeeper. Not the source."
Naruto, still wrapped in a half-formed cloak of Kurama's chakra, growled. "You're telling me that monster wasn't the real boss?"
"No," Julius said. "He was the failsafe."
Gojo walked across floating fragments of space like stepping stones. His blindfold was gone now, revealing eyes glowing with impossible calculation. He looked toward a rising spiral of light far off in the distance, where gravity bent inward and time fluttered like a broken heartbeat.
"That... is the Core," Gojo said.
They all turned.
And saw it.
The Original Multiverse Core.
It wasn't a place. It wasn't even a structure. It was concept made manifest—an ever-shifting nexus of every timeline, world, and fate that had ever existed... and every one that had been erased.
Around it spun pieces of lost legends.
Captain America's broken shield.
A fragment of Ryuk's Death Note.
The skeletal remains of a Titan.
Zamasu's half-fused body, petrified in silent agony.
Every dead possibility given one last orbit before vanishing forever.
Goku stepped forward, his aura dimming to a steady silver as he lowered his guard. "That thing… it's alive."
Vegeta snorted. "Of course it is. Only something alive could hate that much."
The closer they moved, the less reality made sense.
Words lost meaning.
Sound became color.
Even memory began to fray.
Naruto turned to say something—but his mouth moved, and instead of speech, the air around him shimmered into a scene from his childhood. A memory, being overwritten in real-time.
Gojo reached out and stopped it with a flick of his fingers.
"I won't let it rewrite who you are," he said quietly.
Ichigo unsheathed Zangetsu again. "Then we're running out of time."
"No," Julius said. "We've already run out. We're walking on borrowed existence now."
From the Core, a voice spoke—not with sound, but with finality.
You are not welcome.
The entire space shook.
Suddenly, the spiral lit up—and from it, something descended.
Not a person.
Not a creature.
But a convergence.
A figure formed from the skeletons of dead timelines. Each part of it was made of lost history: an arm formed from an erased Hokage, a leg made of a forgotten Saiyan, a chest that bore the seal of Soul Reapers long gone.
It had no face—only a mirror.
A reflection of whoever looked at it.
Naruto saw himself failing to save Sasuke.
Goku saw himself holding Gohan's broken body.
Ichigo saw himself never becoming a substitute shinigami, living an empty, normal life.
Vegeta saw nothing—because his worst fear had always been being forgotten entirely.
The creature raised its hand.
And the world bent.
It wasn't attacking.
It was reformatting.
Trying to replace them with their worst versions.
Gojo didn't hesitate.
He dropped into a new stance and clapped his hands together.
"Infinite Void: Zero Compression."
The Domain shattered the mirror's effect.
For a moment, just one, the reflection flickered.
Julius took that chance.
He summoned every rune from every page of his grimoire and cast a time freeze—but this time not on the creature.
On them.
Freezing his allies for 0.01 seconds while he moved at max speed.
He launched himself at the entity, and in that infinitesimal moment, cast a spell forged from a timeline that had never existed:
Temporal Redemption.
It struck the Core-being in the center.
It didn't destroy it.
But it forced it to change.
The mirror became a screen.
And they saw something none of them were ready for.
The beginning.
The true beginning.
A council.
Made up of three beings.
One wore a cloak of infinite eyes. The Watcher.
Another held a staff made of pure algorithm. The Editor.
And the last… wore a mask split between black and white.
The Author.
They sat around the Original Core, writing and rewriting reality. Creating worlds, heroes, villains, and then—erasing them.
Because not every story was allowed to survive.
"We were created," Julius whispered. "Not born. Every single one of us."
The being in front of them—the Mirror Entity—was the Refusal. A fragment of reality that escaped the Author's editing. A virus born from forgotten heroes and deleted fates.
And now it wanted to overwrite everything.
Not out of malice.
But out of loneliness.
It reached toward them.
Not with violence.
But desperation.
Naruto took a step forward.
"Wait," he said. "You don't want to destroy us. You want to be us."
The Mirror paused.
Then trembled.
Because it was true.
It had never lived a life. It had only been unlived lives.
Goku lowered his fists. "You don't have to replace us to matter."
Gojo nodded. "You just have to choose who you want to be."
The Core shivered.
Then a new light bloomed behind them.
A gateway—different from all others. Not a timeline. Not a dimension.
A choice.
"Let it go," Julius whispered. "Come with us."
The Mirror flickered again.
And this time… it reached back.
The Core began to collapse—not in violence, but in resolution.
It had served its purpose.
As it fell away, the battlefield reformed beneath their feet.
Solid. Real. Peaceful.
The heroes stood together—breathing, bleeding, alive.
The Mirror-being took shape beside them. Smaller now. Human. Still faceless, but whole.
Julius turned to the others.
"This isn't the end," he said. "This was the reset."
Goku chuckled. "Then what now?"
Gojo smirked. "Now we teach a new friend what it means to live."