The first thing Gojo Satoru noticed was that the world had stopped breathing.
He stood atop a crumbling rooftop in Shinjuku, the air thick with smoke and the scent of cursed energy. Buildings below twisted unnaturally, some looping endlessly in mid-collapse. A semi-truck on the street below crashed into a wall—reversed—then crashed again. And again. It was caught in a rewind loop.
His Six Eyes flickered, calculating every inch of distortion.
"This isn't a domain," he muttered.
He'd seen curses powerful enough to warp space. He'd made domains that froze time inside them. But this wasn't that. This wasn't even sorcery. Something else was happening.
Gojo clenched his fists and felt the strange resistance in the air. Like moving through jelly. No—not just the air. Reality itself was thickening.
Then it cracked.
Not metaphorically. The sky actually cracked.
A jagged fissure stretched across the sky like broken glass. Through it, he saw another world—towers spiraling into the clouds, strange beasts frozen mid-leap, a boy with wild red hair standing in defiance against a demon twice his size. The scene shimmered, then blinked out like a dying television.
Gojo took a step back, then another. His instincts screamed. His cursed energy surged.
A presence emerged behind him.
No cursed aura. No trace of life. Just pressure. Dense and ancient.
He turned.
A man stood on the rooftop across from him, hovering inches above the surface without movement. Cloaked in golden robes, gears turning slowly around his back like a broken halo. His eyes were unreadable—a swirl of ancient time and cold purpose.
Julius Novachrono had arrived.
Gojo raised an eyebrow. "You're not from around here."
"No," Julius said, voice calm but heavy with something deeper. "Neither are the things that are coming."
Gojo tilted his head, scanning him. "You're not a curse. Not a sorcerer either. But you're reading on my senses like a collapsed sun."
Julius stepped forward, floating effortlessly. "This world is a fragment. It's been compromised by something that doesn't belong. I need your help."
Gojo smirked. "Right. Interdimensional time wizard shows up on my rooftop asking for help. And here I thought today was going to be boring."
He extended his hand, lazy but deliberate. A ripple of Limitless energy pulsed outward.
Julius didn't flinch.
Gojo's grin widened. "You're interesting."
Then the rooftop imploded.
Something struck down from above—a black bolt of gravity and madness. It tore through the building like paper, splitting space itself. Julius reacted first, weaving a golden spiral of time that slowed the blast for a fraction of a second. It was enough.
He grabbed Gojo mid-air and launched them backward just before the entire block vanished into a void.
They landed on a floating fragment of concrete, suspended hundreds of meters above the city. Below them, the ground was gone.
A figure floated in the center of the void.
Not human.
Not curse.
It had the face of a man but the eyes of the void. Rinnegan spiraling endlessly. A red armor cloak that pulsed with chakra unfamiliar to this world. Hair like obsidian flame.
Madara Uchiha turned slowly, gazing at the two of them with something close to amusement.
"You are not of this branch," he said, voice echoing in every direction.
Gojo narrowed his eyes. "Is that supposed to mean something?"
Julius didn't answer. He was already forming a layered construct of time behind his back—glyphs spinning, preparing the system for emergency protocol.
Madara raised one hand.
The sky folded inward.
Gravity increased tenfold.
Gojo pushed off instantly, his Infinity warping the pull around him. He launched forward, blue cursed energy surging in a spiral as he aimed a direct strike at the anomaly's core.
Madara didn't move. A ripple of Limbo clones burst from his back, unseen but undeniable.
Gojo struck one.
It vanished.
He blinked.
Madara smiled.
Julius activated the Chrono-System.
[SYNC: GOJO SATORU — TEMPORARY ALLIANCE ESTABLISHED]
[COMBINED FUNCTION UNLOCKED: CHRONO-INFINITY BARRIER]
[DURATION: 22 SECONDS]
[TARGET: MADARA UCHIHA]
"Now," Julius whispered.
Gojo felt the connection snap into place. For a moment, he could see time. Not just the movement of objects, but the flow itself. The idea of before and after.
He channeled Infinity with that knowledge.
They moved together.
Time froze around Madara.
Gojo's hand reached his chest.
Impact.
But instead of exploding backward, Madara smiled.
[ALERT: TEMPORAL DISTORTION REVERSAL DETECTED]
[WARNING: SUBJECT IS USING UNKNOWN TECHNIQUE TO COUNTER SYSTEM FLOW]
"I've walked through time longer than you've existed," Madara said quietly. "Your tricks are borrowed. Mine are earned."
He raised his hand and released an ocean of black flames—Amaterasu woven into chakra forged from the Sage of Six Paths. The sky caught fire.
Julius pulled Gojo back. "We're not ready."
Gojo growled. "I had him."
"No. We never had him. Not yet."
Madara floated toward them, each step rewriting the sky.
"This realm will fall," he said.
And then he was gone.
Gojo clenched his jaw. "So… what the hell was that?"
Julius stared at the burning sky. "That was a piece of something worse. And he's only the beginning."
Gojo turned, expression unreadable. "You said you needed help. I'm in. But you better start talking fast, old man."
[NEW OBJECTIVE: Assemble Chrono Anchors – 1 of 7 Located]
[Next Target: Ichigo Kurosaki]
[Location: Bleeding Nexus – Fragmented Earth #47]
[Estimated Collapse in: 72 Hours]
Far away, across infinite folds of the shattered multiverse, a boy with orange hair clutched a broken blade.
And the war of eternity was just getting started.