The sky above fractured like a pane of glass. Beneath its shatter, the entire battlefield stilled, trembling beneath a pressure none could define—not chakra, not time-space, but something deeper. Something absolute.
Omega Rewrite roared, and the echo alone brought Kai to her knees. Her ears bled. Her mind warped. For a split second, she saw every version of herself—all of them dead, overwritten, looped, or simply forgotten by the whims of authors who never finished what they began.
Sasuke's Rinnegan bled as his Sharingan flickered through sequences that didn't belong to this timeline. "It's rewriting the memory of existence," he muttered. "We're standing in a memory that's being changed as we breathe."
Sakura staggered back. "How do we fight a concept?"
Naruto didn't hesitate. His body was glowing—imbued not just with chakra but the raw resistance of a soul that had rejected deletion. Kurama's remnants pulsed inside him, but something deeper now stirred. Something the Council had buried.
The Legacy Core.
His hand burst into gold chakra. The Rasengan formed again—but this time it pulsed with storylines—fragments of forgotten missions, friendships lost to canon, promises unfulfilled.
"I'm not just Naruto," he whispered. "I'm every story you left behind."
Omega Rewrite surged.
It didn't walk. It loaded. Like a corrupted program leaping through frames, dragging physics behind it like a tattered cloak. Its hand, a blade of raw plot-armor, slashed toward Naruto—and was caught.
By Kakashi.
Or…a version of him.
His body flickered, glitching between outfits and ages. "Yo," he said with a strained eye-smile. "Sorry I'm late. Took me a while to hack my way through the author's notes."
Naruto laughed. "You too, huh?"
Behind him, more appeared.
Jiraiya. Minato. Neji. Asuma. Even Itachi. They weren't ghosts. They weren't Edo Tensei.
They were restorations.
Pulled from fragments of what the Programmer called "backup narrative caches." Last-ditch echoes of plotlines deemed valuable but shelved during development. And they'd come back, not as pawns, but as wildcards.
"We don't have long," Jiraiya said. "This thing consumes coherence."
Minato stepped beside Naruto. "But you—somehow—you stabilized the Recode long enough to draw us out."
The Red Author snarled. "They're anomalies. Clean the slate!"
But the Programmer hesitated.
Something was…off.
The Final Patch scroll trembled. It began writing itself—adding code, restructuring the rules.
The Programmer's eyes narrowed. "Someone's tampering with the source."
Then came the laugh.
Low.
Mocking.
And all too familiar.
From the edge of the battlefield, a figure stepped forth from nothing.
His coat black, trimmed in red flames. His eyes twisted spirals of Sharingan and digitized script.
"You forgot me," he said.
Madara Uchiha.
Not resurrected.
Not rewritten.
But restored—from the final deleted cache.
"The original endgame," he said with a grin. "They wrote me off as a failed villain. A tool to usher in Kaguya. But I knew better."
He stepped past the stunned Red Author, ignoring him like a useless extra.
"The Recode is mine now."
He lifted a hand and punched the air.
Reality buckled.
The Programmer was flung back. Omega Rewrite turned—and for the first time, it hesitated.
Because Madara had changed.
He now pulsed with something darker—author's privilege.
Kai gasped. "He's got command code."
Sasuke's eye twitched. "That's impossible."
Madara's grin widened. "I absorbed the rights of my editors. Every retcon. Every rewrite. I became not just a villain—" he pointed at Naruto, "—but a rogue narrative thread given will."
Naruto's mind raced. "If he controls command code—he can override the Patch."
Madara didn't wait. He thrust his arm into the sky—and a new moon formed. Not the Infinite Tsukuyomi.
Something worse.
The Infinite Draft.
"None of your choices will matter," Madara said. "Every victory, retconned. Every death, redacted. You'll live forever—in development hell."
The moon's light spread.
Kakashi's image started to fade.
Minato screamed as his timeline began to blur.
Sakura clutched her chest. "He's…rewriting outcomes."
But Naruto—Naruto took a deep breath. And let go.
Of fear.
Of the system.
Of expectations.
His body shifted.
Kurama's chakra fused with the Legacy Core.
The mark on his stomach dissolved—and in its place formed a new seal. Not of the Sage. Not of the Fox.
But of a Blank Page.
The Programmer stared. "No…he's invoking…"
Naruto opened his eyes.
Glowing with raw storycraft.
"The Authorless Rewrite."
He lifted both hands, forming a Rasengan between them—spinning not with chakra, but with fragments of erased destinies. Hinata reaching for him. Sasuke turning back. Iruka's lessons. Every possible version of Naruto that never got the spotlight.
And he slammed it upward.
Into the Infinite Draft.
The moon cracked.
Madara's expression faltered.
Then—detonated.
A shockwave of ink and light burst outward. The battlefield reset. Everyone thrown back. Omega Rewrite roared and collapsed into pixels. The Final Patch scroll burned to ash.
When the dust cleared, only Naruto stood.
Breathing. Alive.
And for the first time since the war began—
Free.