The battlefield twisted like wet paper under invisible fingers.
In an instant, both Kaguya and Sukuna simply were not there.
Those watching — from Mei Mei's crow feed to Radahn and Gojo in real space — saw only the faint red glow of the Malevolent Shrine for another heartbeat.
Then the shrine shivered. The cursed energy feeding it severed abruptly, and the structure collapsed in on itself like extinguished embers, until nothing remained of Sukuna's domain.
In its place floated something alien.
A perfect black sphere, three meters wide, hanging motionless above cracked concrete.
The light around it bent, drawn inward, as if it were too heavy for even photons to escape. The pressure it emitted was faint but wrong — not cursed energy, not chakra, but something in between and above.
Even battle-hardened sorcerers watching far away found themselves leaning unconsciously forward, deep in unspoken thought.
Inside… it was a different story.
The "floor" was nothing, the "sky" was nothing, yet they both were.
Here in Amenominaka's belly, Sukuna's breath was slow and sharp.
His expression wasn't the arrogant mask he wore outside.
This was the look of a predator who'd stepped into the wrong jungle.
His Malevolent Shrine was gone — not shattered by force, but unmade. Yet his own body felt no backlash. No torn brain tissue. No cursed core damage. It wasn't Domain Clash loss at all… because this wasn't a domain. It was something else. Something more.
More than just a domain.
A true, self-contained pocket dimension.
And worse… he could feel it gnawing at possibility itself.
Here, he realised with a slow acid drop in his gut, he couldn't expand his domain.
Not wouldn't — couldn't. It wasn't a matter of output; the rules were different. Sovereignty didn't exist for him here.
The first attack came from nowhere — a column of burning cold that wasn't cold, a concept given shape.
Sukuna twisted at the last heartbeat, the edge grazing one shoulder, but the second and third followed before the first was over, forcing him under an onslaught of nature-bending assaults.
The air pressed down on him in invisible weights that made his knees want to bend. This battlefield itself fought him with the same certainty as its creator.
Kaguya floated before him, immaculate and indifferent. Her black-and-white hair drifted, not in any wind, but with the currents of her own jutsu.
"You've lost."
It was not taunt nor scream — it was a verdict.
His grin was a wolf's in the dark.
And in the next instant, her torso and lower half drifted apart.
Sukuna's teeth flashed wider as the halves separated fully in the air. That cut had done it. The great pale witch was bisected.
But where was the blood? The ruptured flesh?
The two halves rotated lazily, suspended as if gravity wasn't invited here.
Her face did not even change.
"This slash of yours…" she said over the stillness, "…cuts reality?" Her voice didn't mock — she was genuinely weighing it.
"…But it's incomplete. It cannot hit what is not in reality. And here… I am nonexistent."
His eyes narrowed and flared wide in the same breath.
Of course.
A domain in which she determined the truths.
Reality as she allowed it.
He had been carving at a shadow, because her body in this place was only the idea of her.
But binding vows worked here differently.
Without hesitation, he formed one — not for speed or hit power, but to will an edge downward instead of across.
A cleave meant to pierce this place, not its image.
He made a binding vow , sacrificing his cleave in-order to get a single move which could crack a dimension.
The next moment,
His fingers blurred.
The sky above — or what counted for sky — shivered.
His blade fell not upon her, but upon the fabric of the realm.
The dimension's surface cracked.
The very canvas quaked, like a mirror spiderwebbing after a thrown stone. Kaguya's gaze sharpened faintly in visible intrigue.
"Fascinating," she said, as if grading a student's answer.
"You thought of that in the moment?"
But her voice was the only approval he'd get. Inside, Sukuna was not gloating.
That counter had cost him dearly.
To make a cleave that could wound this dimension, he had given up the normal shape of that ability entirely — and with it, the ace it represented outside.
But if he couldn't touch the ground , it wouldn't have worked.
Cracks widened.
For all her immense control, she could feel the wound in her world refusing to repair.
Push further, and she risked tearing the entire construct beyond retrieval.
With a faint narrowing of her eyes, she recalled the space.
The black sphere popped like a water droplet.
Sukuna tumbled out into cool night air, boots smashing into a real rooftop again.
His knees bent slightly on landing; he inhaled hard, drawing in greedy lungfuls of oxygen. Inside, gravity and pressure had been different — oppressive enough that one's own heartbeat felt heavier.
But his head jerked up instantly. The primal shock was instant: death loomed above.
Kaguya floated high against moonlight, arms spread in a gesture both regal and apocalyptic. In her hands condensed an orb of black so vast it eclipsed the rooftops — a sphere that seemed to swallow perspective itself.
It wasn't just darker than shadow; it was a hole punched in the idea of matter.
His instincts screamed the name before she spoke it.
"…Expansive Truth-Seeking Ball."
She let it grow, bigger than Sukuna had ever seen.
Bigger than some entire domains.
The air warped and pulled toward it; static crawled over the shattered roofs like ants before a storm.
Sukuna didn't dare test it head-on.
He bound his muscles, launched himself off one building to another, sprinting at full cursed-speed to get the kill zone behind him.
He risked one look back.
It was there.
Not high above anymore, not even a block back — it was in front of his face.
He had one breath.
"Fuc—"
And then nothing.
No deafening blast.
No cloud.
No luceferian conflagration.
Just absence.
Where Ryomen Sukuna had been — and where half of North Tokyo had sprawled — there was nothing at all. No buildings. No corpses. No rebar. Just smooth gouges down to underground reservoirs, where black water reflected the moon. The horizon had a sudden tooth missing.
Floating a few meters above the water… was something pitiful.
A misshapen, flickering remnant.
Torn mist shaped vaguely like what used to be Sukuna, but smeared, the essence itself disintegrating like wet paper ash.
Gojo appeared there in an instant.
The Six Eyes regarded the scene — his mouth curled with unbearable mischief.
A phone re-appeared in his hand.
Click.
The flash was rude and bright in Sukuna's single glaring eye.
Click-Click-Click-Click.
He switched to burst mode.
"Breaking news," Gojo said in singsong. "King of Curses has transformed into King of Shit-tas~. AHAHAHA."
"Omæ wa—!" Sukuna rasped, voice brittle in soul form.
His gaze skated to the sky where Kaguya still floated —
Gojo leaned in like gossiping.
"Stand proud, you're strong."
That stopped him.
That exact turn of phrase scratched at something inside the King of Curses. His remaining eye widened faintly.
Deja vu flickered in strange warmth — passing thoughts, uninvited:
'…Maybe it wasn't so bad after all. I lived and died as a curse.'
Gojo's grin tipped sideways in mock pity. "Oops. You can't stand."
Sukuna bared phantom teeth. "Fu—ck yo mam—"
He didn't finish.
His form tore apart into motes, fading upward, scattering like burnt snow on a high wind.
Gojo straightened, smile falling away in the quiet that followed.
He tilted his head back.
High in the east, thin golden rays stretched, painting the upper glass towers.
He turned to his left.
The sun crested shyly above Tokyo's wounds.
The battle was over.
The light climbed anyway.
The era — ended here.