They returned to a world reborn, yet eerily unfamiliar. A place stitched together from shards of collapsed realities—rivers flowing with chakra and reiatsu, skies lit by ki-fueled auroras, trees rooted in the remnants of the Soul King's palace and Konoha's crumbled monuments. This was no longer any one world—it was a convergence realm.
And for now, it was home.
Naruto stood atop a ridge, overlooking the village that had started forming around the stabilized core zone. A hybrid settlement of multiversal survivors—Shinobi training beside Shinigami, Saiyans constructing gravity-tempered buildings, Quincy setting up defense wards alongside Jujutsu sorcerers. None of this should've worked. And yet, it did.
"This is the Restoration Epoch?" Naruto asked, a trace of disbelief in his voice.
Julius nodded beside him, flipping through pages of his restructured grimoire. "It's more than that. It's the chance every erased story begged for—one timeline made of many. But don't let the peace fool you. Something always slips through the cracks."
As if summoned by prophecy, alarms flared through the settlement.
A flicker in the air.
Then a rupture.
Not a portal.
A scar.
It tore open with a soundless howl—and from it emerged three figures cloaked in shimmering nullspace. Their footsteps burned the grass into concepts—color bled out of the world wherever they stepped.
Gojo, already waiting at the heart of the village, lowered his blindfold over his eyes again. "Didn't take long for the vultures to sniff out opportunity."
Ichigo appeared beside him, Zangetsu resting across his shoulders. "They don't smell like any timeline I've known. This is deeper."
Julius arrived just as the first figure spoke.
"You touched the Core," the voice said, layered in echoes. "You brought back what was meant to fade. Now Oblivion wants recompense."
The central invader lifted a hand—and the sky fractured again.
Not broken.
Undone.
From the void stepped entities with no true form—black silhouettes with shifting outlines, flickering between designs of characters long erased from fan memory. A Saiyan with a crescent eye. A mist ninja with a glowing book. A cursed spirit that looked half-Bleach, half-Fairy Tail.
They were mistakes.
Glitches.
Canon shadows.
Naruto stepped forward, his eyes sharpening to Sage Mode instantly. "These things… they're echoes of things that never made it past drafts."
Julius paled. "Rejected arcs."
"They're unstable," Gojo muttered. "And worse—they remember."
The three cloaked figures raised their arms, and the canon shadows charged, moving like corrupted memories—perfectly wrong.
Battle erupted.
Ichigo clashed with a Quincy who fought like a Taijutsu master. Goku blocked a Kamehameha that curved like a Rasengan. Even Madara, watching silently from a rooftop, narrowed his eyes at the twisted reflection of himself wearing Hokage robes and wielding a Zanpakutō.
"Reality is not a democracy," the lead invader spoke. "You don't get to vote stories back into existence. You broke the rules."
Julius gritted his teeth. "Then maybe it's time we wrote new ones."
And the grimoire flared.
This was not the same Julius who had been sealed before. His time-magic had evolved. He channeled not just hours or days—but possibilities. Each spell he cast now took power from a timeline that might have been, fueled by the potentialof stories never lived.
A single rune circled his wrist: a concept spell.
Chrono Thesis: Manuscript Defense Protocol.
The battlefield shifted into a living library.
Every attack became a page.
Every dodge, an edit.
And Julius? He was the pen.
Gojo opened a new domain—this one shaped like a storyboard. Panels floated around him, depicting outcomes before they happened. He controlled not time—but pacing. A narrative construct that made him untouchable so long as his chapter hadn't ended.
The invaders began to falter.
Their forms glitching.
But one of them smirked.
"You're fighting like protagonists," they said. "But you've forgotten one thing…"
From behind them, another scar opened.
But this one didn't flicker with rejection.
It glowed gold.
And from it…
A child stepped out.
No older than ten.
Wearing a cracked headband, a rusted Zanpakutō strapped to his back, and ki flickering around his feet like broken lightning.
The canon shadows paused.
The invaders… knelt.
Gojo's eyes widened.
Julius whispered, "It can't be…"
Naruto took a shaky step forward. "That kid…"
"He's the first one," the invader said.
"The original. The very first fusion character ever imagined… before anything else. Before lore. Before canon."
"The Template."
The child looked up—and his eyes glowed with every main character's spark ever dreamed.
Not evil.
Not good.
Just pure narrative energy.
And then…
He smiled.
The sky cracked again.
Not from a scar.
But from something else waking up.
Something older than all of them.
From beneath the world, the ground began to tremble.
And they all heard it—like pages flipping in reverse.
A book being reopened.
Not one they wrote.
But one someone else had closed long ago.