CHAPTER ONE

The street had been cleared of life—whether by design or collateral consequence, it was hard to tell. Asphalt buckled from earlier blasts. The wrecks of cars sat in crumpled silhouettes, their skeletons still smoldering. Smoke rose in slow spirals, curling like question marks into a sky gone sick with chemical haze.

Gojo stood in the middle of it all, brushing at ash that never touched him, more out of habit than necessity—like the idea of being dirty offended him, even if the reality couldn’t reach him.

The Six Eyes gleamed—impossibly blue and iridescent with incalculable power. 

He was also profoundly bored.

“Getting tired of your party tricks,” he said to no one in particular, his tone offhanded, but just loud enough to carry.

A high-pitched ping cut through the air—metal meeting metal, or maybe something more metaphysical.

Then the ground behind him screamed.

A ripple tore through the earth as a distortion mine detonated—beneath space rather than within it. Concrete peeled back like skin pulled too tight. Streetlights bent at impossible angles. For a moment, the geometry of the block forgot what it was supposed to be.

Gojo didn’t turn around.

A second later, the mine collapsed inward, into a singularity—then reversed, regurgitating a broken mockery of the environment it consumed. Like reality trying to reassemble itself from memory.

Gojo sighed.

“You’re trying to get a reaction,” he said, hands tucked in his pockets as he rocked back on his heels. “Cute. I’ll play along… for now.”

From her perch on the rooftop, the woman raised an open hand. Five orbs floated above her palm, suspended in open defiance of gravity—and good taste. Each one pulsed with a distinct color, hinting at a different effect… probably.

“Hey, fuck face,” she called out, contempt obvious despite her voice modulator. “Think fast.”

She clenched her fist.

The orbs split as each one launched in a different direction, bouncing midair, adjusting course, then curving back toward him like guided thoughts instead of mere projectiles. One phased through a wreckage like it wasn’t there. Another flickered in and out of visibility, skipping frames like corrupted data in an old VHS.

Gojo lifted a single hand.

He traced the motion lazily. 

Flick.

The first orb veered off course mid-flight, then slammed into the pavement behind him, erupting in a burst of heat and sound that vaporized a twelve-foot stretch of concrete.

Flick.

Another burst in a flash of pale blue light. Frost spiderwebbed through the air itself, crystallizing moisture mid-flight. In seconds, a jagged glacier erupted outward, encasing trees, streetlamps, and a nearby car in shimmering ice, frozen in motion like a paused scene in a snow globe.

Gojo yawned.

The remaining orbs converged. One above, one to each side, forming a synchronized, triangulated kill box.

He didn’t move.

Infinity held.

The explosions occurred. In a purely technical sense, at least. But their effects met a barrier they couldn’t perceive—space itself stretched infinitely thin, cushioning their every intent until nothing could reach the man at the center.

When the haze cleared, he was still standing.

Exactly where he’d been.

Not a thread out of place.

“Physics,” Gojo muttered, “should really file a restraining order.”

Across the ruined block, the woman shrieked.

The voice modulator garbled it, turning rage into digital static. She launched herself into the air with a magnetic repulsor pulse, arcing toward him like a guided missile.

Gojo looked up. One glance. No effort.

The space between them thickened. Not visibly—but enough to slow her descent into a crawl. Mid-lunge. Mid-roar. Mid-failure.

Yet, she trembled in place with impotent rage, helpless to reach him.

Gojo cocked his head.

“I get it,” he said, conversationally. “You’re smart. Crazy smart… But not clever.”

He walked closer, boots crunching over the cracked ground.

“You’re like a child with a hammer, hitting the universe until it breaks the way you like.”

He leaned in.

Voice dropping to a whisper, just loud enough for her suspended form to hear.

“Do you want me to break you back?”

The woman shrieked again—desperate now. Wild.

Then she activated something.

Reality folded inward.

A tear split the air like silk being ripped. Gojo stepped back, head tilted to the side, as the woman’s body collapsed into a point and vanished, consumed by a spiraling vortex. A spatial grenade. Short-range. Not death—escape.

He raised an eyebrow.

“Still no cursed energy,” he murmured, “but not nothing either.”

He stood alone again.

The wind picked up, tugging at his hair. The silence that followed wasn’t peace—it was a pause, as if the city held its breath.

Gojo flexed his fingers.

The feedback from the earlier detonations still tingled faintly at the edge of his Infinity. Her bombs had gotten close. Closer than they should’ve.

“She’s not done,” he said aloud, tone more relaxed than wary. “And this place?”

His gaze swept the ruined street.

“It seems to like broken things.”

He turned and walked, eyes scanning the horizon.

Somewhere in this city, a lunatic in armor was building something worse.

And Gojo—Gojo was getting curious.