The tension was an ocean; every ripple was felt.
Even in the viewing room, Mei Mei's crow-feed wavered slightly from the overwhelming cursed and chakra pressure distorting the air around the battlefield.
The instant the invisible tension snapped… Kaguya was gone from sight.
To anyone without divine-tier senses, it looked like teleportation.
One heartbeat, the pale goddess stood beside Radahn; in the next, she was directly before Sukuna, her sleeves fluttering in the sudden displacement of air.
Sukuna's grin twitched — he hadn't seen her move.
That was never a good sign.
His eyes narrowed, and then — impact.
"Eighty Gods Vacuum Fist."
The air exploded.
Countless translucent purple fists — like phantoms of pure force — materialised and struck in instantaneous, relentless succession.
They left ghostly afterimages, the thump-thump-thump reverberating in the bones.
Sukuna tried to shift back, his four arms raising in sharp angles to guard.
But he was a fraction late — the first wave of punches drove into his ribs and chest, each one detonating with the crushing force of an invisible hammer.
Joints cracked audibly; one blow sent his head snapping sideways, the next twisted his torso unnaturally.
AUGH—!!
THUMP!
BLEH—!
Blood sprayed from his mouth, caught in the shockwave before hitting the ground.
He staggered, boots tearing cracks into the rooftop, then skidded back before forcing his centre of gravity down hard. Reverse Cursed Technique flared instantly — cracks in bone sealing, bruises repairing in seconds — the King of Curses wasting no time.
Without hesitation, Sukuna's right hand slashed sideways — not through flesh, but through space itself.
Razor-thin arcs of nothingness split the air, streaking toward Kaguya faster than supersonic rounds.
To the untrained eye, there was nothing to see.
To her Byakugan, each invisible slash was visible like countless threads in the wind.
Her hands twisted into a seal — heavy chakra barrier erupted before her, dome-like and dense. The first slash hit.
KRAK—!
Hairline fractures webbed across the barrier's surface. Then another. And another. Each impact left a shattering sound like breaking ice. Still… not one reached her smooth pale skin.
Sukuna clicked his teeth. "Tch."
They met in the center — her Eight Demon God Vacuum Fists hammering forward, his four arms unleashing a barrage of raw physical strikes and cursed energy pulses.
Each intersection detonated into a pulse of force.
Black Flashes sparked in the air like strobe lights at terminal velocity, the sound they left in their wake tearing across the district.
Both were driven back — only a few feet, but enough to reestablish space between titans.
Their eyes met for the briefest moment. Sukuna's gaze slid toward Radahn — still planted where he had been, massive arms crossed.
No movement to interfere, no amusement, no irritation. Just that immovable stare.
The King of Curses smirked. 'So you really are just watching.'
Sukuna's hands moved, fingers weaving into something old and ritualised.
His voice was a cold, ringing gong.
"Domain Expansion: Malevolent Shrine!"
The very air rippled — reality itself folding outward in an origami of carnage.
Buildings warped away into ruin; the slaughter-shrine loomed vast behind him, carved from his malice into stone and blood. The heart of the battlefield now sat inside a living cathedral of death.
Kaguya stood five meters from him, a sharp chill in her gaze.
She didn't move, didn't flinch.
Then it began.
Countless invisible slashes fanned out from the shrine — five per heartbeat. Stone, steel, the very ground around her — all shredded to ribbons.
Her barrier shattered on the seventh wave.
The moment it fell, her long white hair rippled once… then hardened instantly, each strand snapping into blade-sharp rigidity.
The invisible slashes met the hair like katana against katana — KLANG-KLANG-KLANG — each collision sending sparks of pure white across the red gloom of the shrine.
Her eyes didn't leave him once.
He lunged. Four blades of cursed energy ignited along his arms. He saw her hand rise, palm forward.
Something in him — honed battle instinct — screamed.
It was wrong.
Between one blink and the next, there was something there — a long, sleek pure-white spear, sharper than an idea, heavier than gravity.
It fired.
Sukuna's body moved in reflex. He avoided the core shot… but one arm wasn't so lucky.
The bone pierced it.
No sound from the wound — but the flesh began disintegrating instantly, cell by cell, like sugar melting in acid. Sukuna's eyes flared, Reverse Cursed Technique already surging — but nothing happened.
No regrowth. No healing. Only the spread of inevitable obliteration.
Growling, he seized the ruined limb with his remaining hand — and ripped it off at the shoulder.
"Arghh."
The severed arm turned to scattered ash before hitting the ground.
His thoughts were simple:
'This woman… is dangerous.'
She stood perfectly still, but now the sky behind her seemed to bristle.
Hundreds — hundreds — of those same white bone spears hovered in tight formation, each one aimed for a vital.
Sukuna's pupils constricted. 'Fuck me.'
Her voice was slow, head tilting with quiet inevitability.
"All-Killing Ash Bone."
The volley sang.
They came from all directions — spirals, straight shots, ricocheting off air with precision arcs. Sukuna twisted and dodged, the Malevolent Shrine's ceaseless slashes tearing into her launch trajectories and intercepting some of the projectiles. Still, several grazed him — one carving a strip of skin from his ribs, another searing across his thigh.
Any direct hit would have erased more than flesh.
Kaguya's movement became minimal; her barrier reformed instantly around her, denser than before.
Slashes whined and sparked against it, failing to connect.
Her voice, cold and slow:
"Domain expansion, hmm? I have something… similar."
Along the bridge of her nose, her third eye flared open — concentric ripples of power distorting the air.
Sukuna felt something he never felt. His Adam's apple shifted with a swallow.
'Again this mysterious energy... What the hell is this? It's mixed within the very world unlike cursed energy-'
The eye glimmered like a moon framed in eclipse.
Her voice fell into place like a guillotine.
"Amenominaka."
Everything folded.