The fall between realms didn't feel like falling. It felt like being rewritten.
Ichigo barely had time to breathe before the shift ended. One step he was surrounded by the humming gates of the Nexus, and the next, gravity gripped him like a chained beast. His knees nearly gave out under the sudden weight. The air burned with intensity—hot, electric, primal.
Gojo landed beside him, brushing dust off his blindfold as if he'd just stepped out of a hot spring.
"Okay," he said casually. "That's… heavier than expected."
Julius didn't land—he hovered down, gears spinning behind his back, absorbing the pressure like it was nothing more than a mild drizzle. "This realm isn't calibrated to human physics," he said, voice steady. "You're not standing on a planet. You're standing on a scar."
Ichigo stood slowly, blinking at the impossible sight before him.
There was no sky. Just endless blackness, with broken constellations hanging like shattered glass. A few flickering stars bled light across the horizon, but even they seemed hesitant, like ghosts too tired to shine. The ground was cracked obsidian, stretching for miles and speckled with chunks of broken moons.
It wasn't just lifeless. It was after-life—the grave of a universe.
"What is this place?" Ichigo asked.
Julius's gaze swept the landscape. "It was once Universe 7-A. A divergent timeline of your multiverse. This fragment was severed during the Fall of the Kaioshin. Time here doesn't flow. It loops. And one warrior has kept fighting through that loop for decades."
Ichigo turned sharply. "You're saying someone survived this?"
Julius nodded. "More than survived. He endured. But survival came with a cost. Time corrosion. Memory decay. A near-complete loss of reality calibration. He's no longer sure what's real. But make no mistake—he's still fighting."
As if summoned by the words, a thunderous pulse rippled across the skyless expanse.
A figure launched into the air miles away, trailing golden light and ki so dense the air caught fire in its wake. It collided with a floating landmass and shattered it into a thousand pieces.
Gojo whistled. "Found our guy."
They sprinted across the wasteland.
The closer they got, the more they felt it—not just the energy, but the will behind it. This wasn't just power. It was defiance incarnate. A refusal to stop, no matter how much pain it caused. No matter how meaningless the struggle had become.
When they finally reached the crater, the silence was deafening.
And then they saw him.
He stood with his back to them, breathing heavy, shoulders scorched, arms trembling. His gi was tattered and stained black with soot and blood. His hair was dark, unruly—not spiked in the Super Saiyan glow, not elevated into the divine shimmer of Ultra Instinct. Just raw and wild, flickering between sparks of transformation like his body didn't know what it wanted to be anymore.
He was staring at nothing.
Ichigo could see the madness in his stance—too still, too rigid. Like a beast that had been caged too long, even the open sky felt like another trap.
"Son Goku," Julius said gently.
The man didn't turn.
"I said—"
"I know my name!" Goku snapped, spinning around. His face was older than Ichigo expected. Lines cut deep by years of strain. His eyes were bloodshot. "I don't need ghosts to remind me!"
Ichigo raised both hands. "We're not ghosts. We're here to help."
"There's no help left," Goku muttered. "Not after I lost them. Not after I forgot them."
His voice cracked.
Julius stepped forward slowly, hands glowing with golden script. "You're not crazy, Goku. You're stuck in a loop. This world—this battlefield—is feeding off your energy. It's using you as a battery to stabilize this scar in time."
Goku flinched. "What do you know about it?"
"I've watched you fight the same battle hundreds of times. Against shadows of villains that no longer exist. Against echoes of gods erased from the tree of reality. You've been alone in this cage for what feels like centuries, and it's devouring you."
"I can't leave," Goku growled. "If I stop fighting, the whole thing collapses. Everything ends."
Ichigo stepped closer, blades slung behind his back. "And if you keep going, you end. You've forgotten your own family. You didn't even recognize us as real. You're not fighting anymore. You're drowning."
For a moment, Goku's energy flared defensively.
Then—
A guttural cry escaped his throat, and he launched at them.
Faster than light.
No warning.
Ichigo drew both blades just in time. Their clash exploded in golden light, shaking the crater. Goku moved like lightning on caffeine—feral, unpredictable. He didn't speak. He roared. Every punch felt like it had years of pain behind it. Years of silence.
Gojo blurred between strikes, hands glowing purple as he deflected one of Goku's energy blasts and redirected it into the sky.
"Hey, hey, chill!" he shouted. "We're on your side!"
Goku didn't hear him.
Julius activated a Chrono Glyph midair. "He's beyond reason. We need to reset his neural loop."
"Do it!" Ichigo shouted, dodging a brutal kick that shattered a hill behind him.
Julius slammed both palms to the ground. Gold light exploded outward, forming a perfect ring around Goku. Runes rose like pillars. And then—
[MEMORY ECHO ENGAGED: SUBJECT - SON GOKU (7G-ZETA)]
[ANCHOR POINTS DETECTED: CHI-CHI. GOHAN. VEGETA. BULMA. GOTEN.]
[REINTEGRATING LOST HUMANITY…]
Goku froze mid-punch.
Images danced around him in the air—laughing faces, meals shared, battles won side by side. The touch of his wife's hand. Gohan's first words. The day he taught Goten to fly. Vegeta calling him an idiot with just enough warmth to mean "brother."
Goku stumbled.
"I… forgot all of it," he whispered, eyes wide with horror. "I forgot who I was fighting for."
His knees buckled.
Julius caught him gently.
"Your fight isn't over," he said. "But you don't have to do it alone anymore."
Goku's aura shifted.
No longer chaotic.
Balanced.
He rose again slowly, breathing deep, eyes clearer than before. "You guys… you're real?"
Ichigo nodded. "Real as hell. And you're needed."
[CHRONO ANCHOR 2 OF 7 SECURED]
[SUBJECT: SON GOKU (7G-ZETA) SYNCHRONIZED]
[PRIMAL MEMORY TRANSCENDENCE UNLOCKED]
[RECALIBRATING PATHWAY…]
Julius looked up. "We've got another convergence incoming. Realm of Mages. Distorted London, Timeline #19."
Gojo turned toward the hills.
Someone was watching.
A lone figure in a red cloak, standing silently with a blade of pure light.
Not just watching. Waiting.
Her aura burned with regality. Her posture, flawless.
Saber.
But something was wrong.
Ichigo narrowed his eyes. "That doesn't look like any Saber I've seen."
"She's not," Julius said grimly. "She's not even a Servant anymore."
A ripple of mana thundered through the air like a heartbeat.
"She's a King."
And the ground beneath them began to crack again—not from Goku this time, but from something older. Something hungry.
Behind Saber, towering over her like a god made of shadow, loomed a shape stitched together with broken timelines and corrupted magic circuits. Its face was a mirror of humanity's worst choices.
"A corrupted Grail," Julius whispered.
Ichigo drew his blades.
Gojo tightened his blindfold.
Goku clenched his fists, aura igniting in golden arcs.
They didn't need to speak.
They knew what came next.