The desert stretched endlessly before them, a wasteland of rust-colored sand and jagged remnants of cities long turned to dust.
Naruto adjusted the hood of his cloak, the silver embroidery glinting faintly under the twin suns overhead. His senses extended outward, feeling for the warp signatures the Coreless scouts had reported. Kai walked beside him, silent, her eyes scanning the horizon with deadly focus.
Behind them, a small strike team moved in tight formation — elite operatives handpicked for this mission. Each wore adaptive gear interwoven with null-field inhibitors. Each carried weapons tuned to breach Reality Locks.
Their target was moving fast, tearing across the desert in a storm of broken space and gravitational anomalies.
Kawaki.
A name that stirred conflicting emotions in Naruto's chest. A name he could no longer afford to treat with sentimentality.
[Mission Directive: Intercept and Neutralize Target Kawaki.]
[Secondary Directive: Retrieve Reality Anchor Fragments if available.]
[Threat Level: Cataclysmic.]
Naruto tightened his grip on the modified kunai strapped to his thigh. These weren't ordinary weapons. Each one was laced with code disruptors — designed to destabilize Throne constructs.
They reached the ridge overlooking the scar Kawaki had left behind.
The ground was shredded, twisted into unnatural spirals. Buildings hung mid-collapse, frozen between moments by some cruel temporal fracture. Pieces of the past and future flickered randomly — a child's toy turning into rusted scrap, then a bleeding heart, then ash.
Standing at the center of the chaos was Kawaki.
Or what was left of him.
Gone was the boy who once looked up to Naruto with fierce loyalty. In his place stood a figure cloaked in living shadows, his body overlaid with Throne sigils and arcane augmentations. His right arm had been replaced entirely — a mass of black metal and shifting bone, pulsing with corrupted chakra.
Naruto stepped forward, signaling his team to spread out and prepare suppression fields.
Kawaki turned, as if sensing him immediately.
Their gazes locked.
For a heartbeat, time seemed to stand still.
Memories crashed against Naruto's mind — a small boy stubbornly trying to copy his hand seals, a fierce protectiveness burning in Kawaki's eyes, late nights spent watching the stars and talking about freedom.
Kawaki smiled — a slow, terrible smile.
"Naruto," he said, voice distorted with layered echoes. "I was hoping you'd come."
Naruto said nothing.
Words wouldn't fix what had been broken.
Kawaki's right arm lifted. Reality itself buckled around him, space warping in concentric rings. Blades of crystallized possibility snapped into existence, orbiting him like a crown of annihilation.
The ground beneath Naruto's feet cracked, the weight of Kawaki's presence alone tearing at the seams of existence.
[Alert: Local Reality Degradation at 71%.]
[Warning: Prolonged Exposure May Result in System Core Instability.]
Naruto's mind sharpened.
No room for fear.
No room for hesitation.
He flickered forward, faster than sound, his modified kunai flashing in his hand.
The battle began.
Kai and the strike team moved in perfect synchronicity, laying down suppression fields and binding seals, trying to contain the warping effects around Kawaki. But the former protector of the village was no longer bound by human limitations.
Kawaki moved like a force of nature — teleporting between gravitational folds, shredding through sealing arrays with raw, uncontrolled power. A single swipe of his corrupted arm shattered two operatives into streams of data and blood.
Naruto met him head-on, kunai clashing against the crystalline blades. The shockwave from their collision flattened the dunes around them, sending sand and debris spiraling into the air.
"Still trying to save me?" Kawaki sneered, twisting under Naruto's guard and hurling him backward with a blast of kinetic distortion.
Naruto landed in a three-point stance, cloak whipping around him.
"I'm not here to save you," he said.
He dashed forward again, weaving complex patterns through the air with his kunai. Each strike wasn't aimed at Kawaki's body, but at the distortion fields he generated. Disrupting his control of space itself.
Kawaki laughed, a broken, hollow sound.
"You're too late, Naruto. I chose this. The Throne showed me the truth. Our world? A failed experiment. We're glitches in a simulation of gods. I embraced it."
Naruto gritted his teeth, focusing harder.
Kai managed to slip a binding chain around Kawaki's ankle, yanking him off-balance. One of the strike team members launched a gravity well grenade — a sphere of compressed anti-reality — detonating against Kawaki's midsection and forcing him to stagger.
Naruto seized the opening.
He unleashed the Rasengan — not the standard one, but a reconfigured version enhanced with raw Forge energy. The sphere crackled with unstable code.
He slammed it into Kawaki's chest.
The explosion tore a crater into the desert floor, sending both of them tumbling away.
Naruto rolled to his feet first, gasping for breath. His body screamed in protest. The Forge enhancements gave him power, but it came at a price. Every move strained his reconstructed soul.
Kawaki pulled himself from the wreckage, armor cracked, corrupted chakra leaking in visible streams.
His smile was gone.
Now there was only rage.
"You think you can kill me?" he snarled. "You think breaking me will fix anything?"
Naruto stared at him, breathing heavily.
"I'm not here to kill you," he said quietly. "I'm here to end the cycle."
For a moment, something flickered behind Kawaki's eyes.
Recognition.
Regret.
Pain.
Then it was gone.
Kawaki roared, the air around him imploding into a singularity.
Naruto braced himself, chakra flooding into his limbs.
The next clash would decide everything.
The ground trembled underfoot.
The stars above seemed to dim.
And somewhere, far beyond the desert, the Throne stirred, sensing the ripples of defiance.
Naruto charged, heart burning with an unbreakable resolve.
Not to destroy.
Not to save.
But to forge a new path — even if he had to shatter the heavens themselves to do it.