Gojo Satoru had never known fear.

He had danced on the edge of death, taunted curses, laughed in the face of gods. He was untouchable—strong beyond measure, the honored one.

But when the Prison Realm snapped shut around you instead of him—when your eyes, fierce even in the face of inevitable doom, met his one last time before vanishing into darkness—Gojo felt it.

Fear.

It crawled into his veins like poison, made his breath shallow, his hands tremble.

Because for the first time, Gojo Satoru lost.

And it wasn’t to Kenjaku.

It was to you.

You—the one who had been his rival, his equal in battle, the only one who could keep up with him. The one who met his arrogance with your own, who challenged his every word, whose presence burned in his life like a star too bright to ignore.

And you were gone.

The silence left behind was deafening. His infinity flickered, unstable, his cursed energy surging and retreating in erratic pulses.

He should have been the one trapped.

He should have protected you.

A feral, unhinged growl ripped from his throat, raw and filled with a rage he had never felt before. The world blurred in red, his mind splintering between grief and fury. He wasn’t the strongest anymore. He was powerless.

And that? That was unacceptable.

The earth trembled as he stopped holding back.

Every battlefield was painted in carnage. Kenjaku's forces fell like insects, crushed under his wrath. His enemies whispered of a Gojo they had never seen before—one without restraint, without amusement, without mercy.

The honored one had become something else.

Something terrifying.

Days blurred into weeks. Weeks into months. And then—

"She’s coming back."

Gojo stopped breathing.

The words barely registered, the air in his lungs freezing over. He stood, motionless, his mind struggling to process what he had just heard.

You were alive.

You were coming back.