A.N. I will be using DC Characters as Otsutsuki. Since there are only three more besides Ishiki in canon. Grail and Metron are DC. Comics.
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Chapter 61: The Realm Where Stars Obey
The fruit was warm in Isshiki's hand.
It pulsed faintly, as though it still remembered being alive.
For a fleeting moment, the frozen winds of Kaguya's abandoned dimension howled across the shattered ice, carrying with them the ghost of Ryu's final terror. The battlefield lay silent now—black sand scattered uselessly, the glaciers cracked like broken glass beneath an indifferent sky.
Isshiki did not hesitate.
He bit into the fruit.
The skin parted with a sound like distant thunder muffled beneath velvet. Light spilled from within—dark and gold at once—and flooded into him in a torrent that was neither gentle nor cruel, but absolute.
Power surged.
Not the crude rush of stolen chakra.
Not the raw fury of battle.
This was layered. Refined. Ancient.
Ryu's strength entered him first—the gravity-bent sand, the disciplined composure, the stubborn refusal to kneel. Then came the memories. They poured into Isshiki's mind like ink in water.
Apocalypse.
Pandora.
The Juubi's whispers.
The sensation of black sand flowing like thought itself.
Isshiki inhaled sharply.
He tasted ambition. Defiance. Pride.
Then he swallowed it all.
Ryu ceased to exist.
Isshiki stood alone in the frozen dimension, eyes gleaming faintly as the Dharmachakra within them spun once—slowly, thoughtfully.
For the first time in over a thousand years, he felt something close to completeness.
His limbs felt lighter.
His vision sharper.
The cold of the ice world no longer touched him.
He raised his hand and flexed his fingers experimentally. Space around them trembled.
Yes.
This would do.
He did not intend to remain here, feeding like a starving scavenger. Slowly consuming shinobi, draining continents, clawing back fragments of his former might—
That was for lesser beings.
And with what he had seen—Naruto's growth, the strange fusion of Tailed Beasts and humans—by the time he reached his old peak, it might no longer be sufficient.
No.
He would return home.
He would reclaim what was his.
He cast one final glance across the forsaken realm—the ice, the silence, the long exile that had bound him like an invisible chain.
"This world," he murmured softly, "has grown interesting."
Then he stepped forward.
Space split.
Not violently.
Not with sound.
It parted as though recognizing him.
Isshiki vanished into the shimmering void, and the ice dimension was left empty once more.
What awaited him beyond was not merely a world.
It was majesty.
It was divinity made tangible.
Isshiki emerged into the heart of the Ōtsutsuki realm—and for a fleeting second, even he allowed himself stillness.
Here, the rules that governed mortal worlds were little more than decorative suggestions.
Time did not march.
It wandered.
In one direction, a mountain remained eternally suspended mid-collapse, fragments of stone frozen in perfect defiance of gravity. In another, forests bloomed and withered within seconds, cycles of life accelerating until entire civilizations of lesser beings rose and crumbled in the span of a heartbeat.
Space bent lazily, curving around invisible centers of will. Distances shifted depending on intent; a palace a thousand miles away could be reached in a single thoughtful step—provided one was worthy of crossing the threshold.
Above him, the sky was not a sky at all.
It was a tapestry of galaxies.
Nebulae spiraled like brushstrokes across infinity, colors too deep for mortal eyes—violets that whispered of oblivion, golds that shimmered like divine fire, blues so pale they seemed carved from eternity itself.
Two stars dominated the firmament.
One was black.
Not dark—black.
A sphere that swallowed light whole, radiating an absence so profound it felt sacred.
Beside it hung a second star, silver and cold, casting illumination that was neither warm nor cruel but absolute.
The land beneath was a contradiction sculpted into existence.
Floating islands drifted through the air—vast, continental masses tethered together by bridges of pure, shimmering energy that sang softly when one walked upon them. Oceans of liquid starlight rolled lazily at the horizon, reflecting the heavens above until one could no longer distinguish sea from sky.
And rising from these impossible landscapes were towers.
Spires of crystalline material and celestial metal pierced upward, each structure shaped not by physics but by thought. Some twisted like living things. Others stood rigid and geometric, impossibly tall, their surfaces etched with sigils older than worlds.
Palaces.
Sanctuaries.
Temples of ascension.
This was the domain of his kin.
The scattered remnants of the divine.
Isshiki inhaled slowly.
The air here was not air. It was saturated with raw cosmic energy—the residue of devoured worlds, of harvested chakra fruits, of civilizations reduced to nourishment.
It felt like home.
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Isshiki Ōtsutsuki drifted above the radiant bridges of the Core Dimension, suspended between floating continents of crystal and oceans of liquid starlight. The celestial pathways hummed beneath him—vast ribbons of condensed energy that connected one impossible island to another, glowing faintly beneath his bare feet.
Two thousand years.
For beings who measured existence in eons, it was but a pause.
For him, it had been an eternity of humiliation.
His golden eyes narrowed as the memory coiled in his chest like a serpent.
Kaguya.
His chosen mate.
His partner in ascension.
She had not merely betrayed him—she had nearly ended him. And worse—far worse—she had lowered herself to bind with a mortal and bear children of diluted blood.
A mortal.
The word itself tasted foul.
The Ōtsutsuki did not love. They did not descend. They did not bind themselves to insects scratching upon fragile planets. They cultivated worlds. They consumed them. They ascended.
That was the law.
That was the path to the Higher Plane—where the King resided beyond dimensions.
Kaguya had chosen weakness over divinity.
And in doing so, she had forced him into exile.
He had hidden among the insects. Lived in frail bodies. Pretended to be one of them.
He had endured hunger.
He had endured pain.
He had endured patience.
No Ōtsutsuki had ever endured patience.
Hatred had been his only companion, slow-burning and eternal.
But the being who returned to this realm was not the one who had once left it.
The Isshiki who had dreamed of orderly ascension was gone.
In his place stood something colder.
Sharper.
Hungrier.
He should have reported the Shinobi world's growth. That was protocol. A world that evolved beyond its ranking was to be reassessed and harvested by a stronger pair. A star destroyer. Perhaps even a solar system reaper.
Such reports ensured balance.
Ensured dominance.
Ensured that no world dared to rise beyond its allotted fate.
But Isshiki had remained silent.
Because that world was his.
His humiliation.
His exile.
His prey.
If higher-ranked Ōtsutsuki learned of it, they would descend in force. The planet would be devoured before he could savor it.
No.
The Shinobi world was his garden.
And he would harvest it himself.
He moved through the Core Dimension with quiet authority, each step causing subtle ripples in the energy pathways beneath him. Colors shifted around him—violets dissolving into silver, constellations rearranging themselves as if in acknowledgment of his presence.
Gravity here was ornamental.
Time was optional.
Thought shaped distance.
And at the heart of this infinite expanse, he sought one presence.
Grail.
His equal.
His closest ally before exile.
A fellow Star Destroyer.
The only one who had ever matched him—not only in power, but in calculation.
She had never tolerated weakness.
But she had never dismissed him.
If any among his kin would sense the difference in him, it would be her.
He found her upon a floating platform of crystalline light, suspended above an abyss of swirling galaxies. For a moment—even Isshiki felt stillness.
She had always been tall. Regal. Severe.
But now—
She was magnificent.
Her black hair no longer resembled stardust—it burned with it. Strands flickered between gold and white, as though entire constellations had taken residence within it. Her robes were no longer ceremonial silk; they were woven from pure cosmic energy, shifting and folding like living nebulae.
And her horns—
They had changed.
Once curved and elegant, they were now elongated, sharper, edged with arcs of silent lightning that cracked across their length.
Solar System Destroyer.
She had ascended.
Isshiki did not allow surprise to show on his face.
But something stirred within him—something dangerously close to recognition.
"Isshiki," Grail said.
Her voice did not travel through air. It resonated through space itself. The fabric of the realm vibrated gently at the sound of it.
"It has been long, even for our kind."
There was no accusation in her tone. No inquiry about his disappearance. Ōtsutsuki vanished for millennia. It was not unusual.
But her gaze sharpened.
"You have changed."
Isshiki smiled—precisely measured.
"Have I?"
Of course he had.
He had tasted mortality.
He had survived humiliation.
He had learned the virtue of concealment.
Grail studied him for a moment longer. Not with suspicion.
With assessment.
"You feel… restrained," she said slowly. "As though your power is coiled rather than expanded."
A lesser being might have bristled.
Isshiki did not.
"I have returned from a long hunt," he replied smoothly. "A world that proved more… intricate than anticipated."
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They walked together along the celestial causeways, side by side as they once had—two beings born of conquest, fashioned from hunger, shaped by annihilated stars. The bridges beneath their feet shimmered like frozen lightning, bending gently to their will, while far below them oceans of liquid starlight churned in silent spirals.
For a moment—just a moment—it felt as though the two thousand years between them had been nothing more than a passing storm.
Grail spoke first, her voice carrying the faint resonance of collapsing suns.
"I led three harvests beyond the Black Spiral," she said lightly, as though discussing an afternoon's diversion. "One world resisted. They had mastered gravitational compression. Quite primitive—but inventive."
Isshiki inclined his head, listening with careful attention.
"I dismantled their star before they understood what I had done," she continued. "After that, they surrendered rather efficiently."
There was no pride in her tone. No arrogance.
Merely fact.
She went on, describing a galaxy whose dominant species had discovered temporal distortion. Another civilization that had attempted to pierce dimensional membranes. Each had fallen. Each had fed her ascent.
Isshiki listened—and to his own surprise—felt something almost like warmth in his chest.
Pride.
She had risen.
She had done what he had once planned to do beside her.
"The path to ascension remains as difficult as ever," Grail said at last, her gaze turning toward a distant nebula that shimmered like torn silk across the heavens. "Many have attempted the Higher Plane since our ancestor's failure. None have succeeded."
Isshiki's golden eyes narrowed faintly.
He remembered that tale well.
The ancestor who had nearly crossed beyond. The one who had reached too far, too quickly—and fractured something fundamental in the process. The remnants of that failure were precisely why Isshiki had returned now.
"You still pursue power in your own way, I assume?" Grail asked, glancing at him sidelong.
"Naturally," he replied with measured calm.
He did not elaborate.
He would not.
He was not here to reveal his garden.
He had come to reacquaint himself with the realm.
To rest.
To remember who he was before humiliation had tempered him into something sharper.
And yet—
As Grail continued speaking—of systems crushed, of resistance shattered, of cosmic thresholds crossed—something shifted within him.
It began as a whisper.
Small.
Insignificant.
And utterly alien.
Envy.
The thought was so absurd he nearly dismissed it at once.
Ōtsutsuki did not envy their kin.
They respected hierarchy. They acknowledged rank. They ascended—or they did not.
There was no resentment in growth.
There was only acknowledgment.
Yet as he stood beside her, radiant in solar-system-shattering authority, something cold and jagged pressed against the inside of his composure.
She had grown.
He had been trapped.
She had conquered.
He had endured.
She had ascended.
And he—
He had crawled inside the flesh of insects to survive.
His hands clenched at his sides, fingers curling so tightly that faint distortions rippled through the energy bridge beneath him.
He forced himself to relax.
Forced his expression to remain smooth.
Grail—was not blind.
Her golden eyes, brighter now than they had ever been, narrowed slightly.
"Is something wrong, Isshiki?"
Her voice did not accuse.
It examined.
He breathed slowly, drawing the cosmic currents of this realm through himself.
"No," he said smoothly. "Just thinking."
"Thinking?" She tilted her head in mild amusement. Then, a faint smirk curved her lips. "Good. I expect much from you. It would be unfortunate if you had grown soft."
Ah.
There it was.
A test.
Always a test.
Isshiki allowed himself a small, deliberate smirk in return.
"I could say the same for you."
Her laughter was quiet—but the stars below them pulsed faintly in response.
"Now," she said, turning fully toward him, "tell me about your last harvest. Two thousand years is an excessive investment. It must be something extraordinary."
His gaze shifted briefly—infinitesimally—toward the distant shimmer where the dimensional veil to the Shinobi world lay hidden from detection.
"I am not yet finished," he said calmly. "It is… a particularly fertile place. One that continues to grow."
Grail's interest sharpened.
"Oh?"
"I expect," he continued, voice low and steady, "that when it ripens fully, I shall leap far beyond our former station."
She studied him for a long moment.
There was curiosity in her gaze.
And something else.
Anticipation.
"Then I look forward," she said softly, "to seeing whether your patience was worth the delay."
They parted soon after.
Not formally.
Ōtsutsuki did not indulge in ceremony between equals.
She turned toward another celestial path.
He descended toward the outer spires.
But as Isshiki moved away from her presence, the quiet of the Core Dimension pressed against him.
And his mind was not at ease.
He had expected familiarity.
Perhaps even comfort.
Instead, he had discovered something far more dangerous than any rival.
A flaw.
An emotion.
A crack.
He hovered alone above a silent sea of starlight, golden eyes reflecting galaxies that did not concern themselves with envy.
"I must rid myself of this," he murmured.
The words echoed faintly in the dimensionless air.
Envy was mortal.
Petty.
Weak.
It belonged to insects.
To shinobi.
To beings who feared being surpassed.
Ōtsutsuki did not fear.
Ōtsutsuki ascended.
Yet the truth coiled quietly within him, impossible to dismiss.
He had felt it.
And once something is felt—truly felt—it cannot be unfelt.
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Ishiki drifted through the ever-shifting arteries of the Ōtsutsuki Core Dimension, yet no matter how far he traveled, there was no peace to be found.
The realm twisted around him in impossible geometries—bridges of light folding into spirals, islands suspended upside down in oceans of nebulae, entire constellations caught in crystalline cages as trophies of ancient harvests. It should have felt like home.
It did not.
The sensation in his chest refused to fade.
It was not physical pain—Ōtsutsuki bodies did not ache so easily—but something subtler, more corrosive. A pressure. A gnawing presence behind his composure.
He had returned victorious.
He had consumed.
He had survived betrayal, humiliation, centuries of degradation among mortals.
And yet—
Standing before Grail, witnessing her ascension, her power blazing at the level of a Solar System destroyer—
Something had cracked.
Envy.
Resentment.
An unbearable awareness of time lost.
His golden eyes burned faintly as he floated past a cascade of inverted galaxies.
"No," he murmured to the void. "This is not weakness."
It was fuel.
Until he reclaimed what was his—until he surpassed even those who had surpassed him—there would be no rest.
"I must move forward."
Naruto was not the true obstacle.
Not once Ishiki reclaimed his peak.
The shinobi world was fertile—dangerous, yes—but harvestable.
No.
The real threat lay elsewhere.
The Immortals.
Gaea.
Those beings who had once taken refuge upon that planet when he first arrived.
He remembered them well—faintly luminous, diminished, clinging to a weakened world after the Juubi had drained half its vitality. At the time, Ishiki had towered above them.
But now?
Now he was diminished.
And they would not have remained stagnant.
Even at his former peak, they would have posed difficulty.
If he wished to consume the Shinobi world entirely—to devour its fruit without interference—he would need to surpass his previous limits.
He would need to go beyond Star level.
For that—
He required answers.
His path turned toward one of the void palaces.
Unlike the radiant citadels of conquerors, this structure floated alone in a region of deliberate stillness. Its walls were composed of crystallized stellar remains, each slab glowing faintly with the memory of a collapsed sun. Knowledge radiated here—not power.
Metron resided within.
The Ōtsutsuki did not keep historians. They had no reverence for the past.
But some among them studied failure.
Not to mourn it.
To understand it.
Metron was one such being.
Inside the palace, silence was absolute.
At its center hovered a vast monolith inscribed with shifting glyphs—names of those who had nearly ascended and perished in the attempt.
Metron himself hovered above a slow-turning cluster of miniature galaxies, his robes woven from threads of cosmic law itself. His eyes were numerous, layered in spirals across his brow and temples, each one gazing not outward—but inward, across dimensions.
"You return, Ishiki," Metron said without turning. His voice was neither welcoming nor cold. It simply was. "Two thousand years in the mortal realm must have altered you."
Ishiki did not react.
"I require information."
Metron's galaxies slowed their spin.
"On what subject?"
"The ancestor who failed to ascend."
For the first time, Metron turned.
His many eyes narrowed slightly—not in suspicion, but in measurement.
"Why?"
Ishiki's expression remained calm.
"When my time comes," he said evenly, "I will not repeat the mistakes of those who came before."
It was half-truth.
He had no immediate intention of ascension.
He sought something else.
Something far more practical.
Metron studied him for a long, unbroken moment.
Then he drifted toward the monolith.
"Ascension," he said quietly, "is not conquest. It is not accumulation. It is not simply devouring enough worlds."
His hand brushed the glyphs, and the palace dimmed.
"To ascend is to surpass the multiverse itself. To endure the totality of existence without fragmentation."
The monolith flared.
And Ishiki's mind was seized.
A vision consumed him.
An Ōtsutsuki unlike any he had ever seen stood at the edge of reality.
Shibai.
His form was luminous beyond comprehension—horns like branching galaxies, body woven from raw cosmic principle.
But he was unraveling.
Reality itself was tearing him apart.
Not violently.
Inevitably.
His essence stretched across infinite planes, pulled in all directions at once, unable to stabilize. He did not scream.
He simply… dispersed.
Not dead.
Not alive.
Scattered across existence.
"Shibai was among our greatest," Metron's voice echoed within the vision. "He achieved power beyond any of us. But he could not withstand the full weight of the multiverse. It crushed him—not through opposition—but through scale."
The vision collapsed.
Ishiki's jaw tightened.
"Where did he fall?"
Metron's eyes sharpened.
"Why does location concern you?"
Ishiki held his gaze.
"If I understand where his failure manifested, I can avoid replicating it."
Metron hovered silently.
Then he extended one finger.
The monolith shifted.
"His remnants were scattered across countless lower realms. But his core—his central essence—collapsed inward upon itself."
A single point of dim light appeared within the glyphs.
"It was drawn to a world where existence was weakest."
Ishiki felt something cold coil through him.
"Name it."
Metron's many eyes flared.
"The world mortals call the Shinobi World."
Silence filled the palace.
Not dramatic.
Not thunderous.
Simply absolute.
Ishiki stilled.
The very world that had imprisoned him.
The world where Kaguya had betrayed him.
The world that had risen beyond its natural rank.
It was not coincidence.
"It is no accident," Metron continued calmly, "that you were bound there. Nor that the planet has begun to evolve beyond its classification. The collapse of Shibai's core destabilized its metaphysical structure."
Ishiki's hands curled slowly into fists.
So the humiliation.
The imprisonment.
The centuries of survival.
They had not been random cruelty.
They had been… proximity.
For the first time since his return—
The envy in his chest faded.
Not gone.
Transformed.
Into clarity.
If Shibai's core truly rested within that world—
If its essence remained dormant—
Then the fruit he had cultivated was not merely abundant.
It was divine.
If he could locate those remnants…
Extract them…
Incorporate them—
He would not merely reclaim his former peak.
He would surpass it.
-------------------------------------------
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Ishiki inclined his head—just slightly.
"If I return," he said, voice steady once more, "will I be permitted to continue tending to my garden?"
He did not say the Shinobi World.
He did not need to.
Metron's many eyes regarded him without blinking. The galaxies at his side resumed their slow rotation.
"You have been among humans too long," Metron replied calmly. "You speak as though permission governs us."
Ishiki's golden gaze sharpened—but he remained silent.
"We do not interfere," Metron continued, drifting a little higher. "Not unless necessity demands it. If you choose to keep your harvest, then it remains yours. The world is still beneath your assigned threshold. Within your limits."
A faint current of relief stirred within Ishiki's chest.
No higher-ranked Ōtsutsuki would descend.
No Solar destroyer.
No sudden erasure of his carefully cultivated prey.
It was still his.
Metron's eyes narrowed faintly.
"However," he added, voice cool as the vacuum between stars, "I advise that you do not repeat your earlier… isolation."
Ishiki stiffened almost imperceptibly.
"Isolation breeds vulnerability. Bring your team this time."
The word team echoed strangely.
Ōtsutsuki did not speak of companionship.
They spoke of utility.
"Allies prevent accidents," Metron finished.
Ishiki dipped his head once in acknowledgment. He would consider it. Whether he obeyed was another matter.
"And as for Shibai's remnants," Metron continued, his tone shifting, becoming almost contemplative, "you underestimate the matter."
Ishiki did not bristle—but something in his posture tightened.
"Do you believe," Metron asked, "that none among us have searched? That if such power were easily obtained, it would not already be claimed?"
The monolith flared faintly again, displaying fragments of fractured constellations.
"I know the location his core collapsed toward. I can trace the theoretical convergence point."
Metron's eyes dimmed slightly.
"But I cannot sense it."
Silence fell again.
"If I cannot sense it," he added quietly, "then you should understand the implication."
Shibai had been strong enough to attempt ascension.
Strong enough to endure the threshold of multiversal pressure—if only briefly.
His power would not sit dormant like a forgotten relic.
It would hide.
Or warp.
Or exist beyond ordinary detection.
"His power will not be easily found," Metron concluded. "Nor easily claimed."
For the first time in this entire exchange, Ishiki felt the faint sting of embarrassment.
He had allowed himself—however briefly—to imagine that he alone had uncovered a secret.
That he stood on the brink of something uniquely his.
In the presence of Metron, that presumption felt… juvenile.
He lowered his gaze, just slightly.
"Thank you, Lord Metron," he said formally.
The honorific was deliberate.
It acknowledged hierarchy.
Acknowledged patience.
Acknowledged that he stood before a being who did not conquer—yet still surpassed him.
"I will keep your words in mind," Ishiki continued, voice smooth once more. "And I will bring great news upon my return."
Metron studied him for a long moment.
"See that you do," he replied.
The galaxies resumed their eternal spin.
The conversation was over.