For a moment, Annihilus thought the void of space had swallowed him whole.
He floated inside a boundless void, a hollow cosmos without stars.
A place where the horizon bent inward like an inverted universe.
And in the distance!or perhaps inches from his face. He saw space folded into itself, forming what resembled a black hole, or a wormhole,
The moment he tried to move, everything felt slowed, agonizingly slow. His arm twitched then stopped.
His breath halted, then crawled forward like a dying star.
His thoughts flowed, but his body lagged like a corrupted simulation.
'Why… can't I move properly?'
Even for a cosmic warlord who commanded the Negative Zone, this sensation was alien.
Unfamiliar and it felt WRONG.
Ordinary beings, mortals,lower gods, psions any one of them would have been instantly reduced to empty shells, their minds collapsing under the weight of infinite information.
Even Celestials would be forced to acknowledge this power of the boy.
But he was not ordinary either. He was Annihilus, he was the Endling and he wields the Cosmic Control Rod.
And it was glowing.
—————————————-
The staff in his grip throbbed with angry yellow light, like a star forced into a cage.
BOOM.
A pulse erupted from it which made the space tremble, time stuttered and for half a second he could move.
Then the void tightened again.
His limbs froze mid-motion.
BOOM.
Another pulse, another half-second of freedom.
The intervals were short, too short.
But they were increasing.
Each pulse pushed back the suffocating pressure of this impossible dimension, offsetting the cognitive overload and allowing him to see and not see the unlimited spectrum of knowledge crushing against his senses.
Annihilus realized the terrifying truth: He was seeing EVERYTHING. Everything that exists and everything that doesn't.
The truths behind atoms, emotions, space, death, time and simultaneously, he was seeing nothing.
Just empty void.
This duality was maddening.
This place… this domain… It was designed to break anything with awareness.
And the He Saw the cause of all this.
The architect of this impossible realm he was dragged into.
Gojo currently is floating above him, suspended in the void as if the space belonged to him alone… which it infact did.
His body still wreathed in crimson lightning, streaks coiling around him like serpents made of storms.
His hair burned bright red, spiked upward as raw heat poured off him in shimmering waves.
From his eyes, two vertical streams of scorching heat rose like pillars, rippling into infinity.
Gojo looked like a celestial executioner, forged from storms and silence.
And he smiled, a small, deliberate smile.
As if painting a cosmos into existence was simple, as if the 30-mile-wide pocket dimension he created was nothing more than a brushstroke.
'So this is what it feels like,' Gojo thought.
'Effortless, real and not a fluke. The Crimson Waste confirmed it. But still I haven't tried this outside that dimension. This domain is everything I imagined… and more.'
Gojo hadn't been able to properly observe his own domain when he was fight life and death against cytorrak but now he can fully inspect his creation.
——————————————
He Notices the Rod and Gojo tilted his head.
Annihilus was still thinking, perceiving, resisting and there was only one reason for that.
His eyes narrowed at the pulsing glow in the warlord's grip.
'Hooo… that rod definitely has to go.'
The Cosmic Control Rod was raging now, vibrating like it wanted to break itself apart in revolt against Gojo's domain.
So Gojo simply, increased the effect.
The air shuddered and Annihilus seized mid-breath, mid-thought and mid-pulse. His motion died instantly.
The Rod's next pulse was forced silent, muted and crushed.
And then Gojo Moved, or rather He was already moving towards Annihilus, it looked like Gojo dissolved into pure white light.
Like his body became an afterimage and then a smear across existence.
But that wasn't what happened.
Because suddenly, Annihilus suddenly felt a pulling force appeared behind him.
Gojo was there behind him already, there was arrival, no teleportation and no movement.
He was simply always there, as if the domain itself had placed him behind Annihilus.
Blue sparks drifted off his form, tiny motes that shimmered like fragments of newborn galaxies.
And for the first time since stepping into the Marvel Universe.
Gojo looked genuinely divine.
——————————-
The moment the phenomenon began, not even the Cosmic Control Rod registered it.
A soundless tremor rippled through the voidlike space, an occurrence so strange that even it failed to react.
A pair of hands human, impossibly strong were already gripping both of his wings.
'When… did he begin touching them?'
The thought came slow, dragged through honey-thick time. Ever since Gojo's Domain unfolded, only seven seconds had passed. Seven seconds… in which Gojo had already gone to work with terrifying efficiency. No hesitation. No wasted motion. No room for oxygen between thought and execution.
Blue energy surged around Gojo's hands, thick, weighty, dragging the void itself into spirals around his arms. He planted a foot between Annihilus' shoulder blades, the pressure alone strong enough to crater a continent in his current form.
The Cosmic Rod twitched, sensing danger, but Annihilus realized instantly that if Gojo had gone for the Rod directly… the backlash would have been catastrophic. Even for him.
Gojo understood that too.
So he tore the wings instead, with a final, brutal wrench—
RRRIP—!
Both wings tore free.
A shockwave rippled through the void, bending the stars of the domain like cloth caught in a hurricane.
Before Annihilus could even register the pain, hell engulfed his back.
Gojo unleashed a point-blank blast of Red Heat vision, its repulsive force magnified by the crushing laws of his Domain. Red lightning boiled across Annihilus' exoskeleton, peeling layers off like molten metal. His jaw opened instinctively ready to scream.
But Gojo spun, faster than neural signals could travel, and punched.
Once.
Twice.
A dozen times.
To the throat, the chest, the ribs, the heart-node, every vital point that meant something to a being like Annihilus, each strike fracturing space with shockwaves that traveled in all directions at once. The void trembled and the heavenly bodies inside the Domain flickered like dying lanterns.
Gojo didn't stop.
With a flick of his fingers, he forced the full gravity of the Domain downward, pinning Annihilus like a stone beneath a collapsing sun.
He tried locking the Cosmic Rod in place but then, Annihilus' body jerked.
Slow and almost mechanical at first.
The Rod began vibrating, low and ominously.
And then it emitted… light.
But not the expected cosmic flare no, this was a layered distortion, like several different energies of the universe trying to manifest at once.
Gojo's eyes widened just a fraction.
"Now that shouldn't be possible…"
Appearing inches from Annihilus' face. Light bent unnaturally around him as he muttered:
"Cosmic anomalies… always so damn annoying."
A blade of compressed blue energy formed in Gojo's hand, it was crude, unstable, but lethal. He swung downward without restrain.
FLASH.
Every star in the Domain twinkled violently—
BANNNG—!
Gojo was already gone, re-materializing across the void, clicking his tongue.
"Tch. I missed."
Seeing the attack fail and Annihilus about to adapt, he raised his hand.
INFINITY TECHNIQUE: BLUE CERO "AZURE HOWL"
A spiraling beam of cerulean energy gathered, sucking in surrounding energy, distorting space like a collapsing singularity then it exploded forward, a cero-style imitation crafted through Gojo's manipulation of Infinity.
The wave of spatial energy slammed into Annihilus and for a moment Gojo smiled until the beam was suddenly erased.
'That bastard tanked it.'
Barely. The blast carved a canyon across his chest, singeing through multiple layers of cosmic armor.
He roared and surged forward with unnatural momentum.
For a split second… he caught Gojo off guard.
A spatial rupture formed behind the boy. Annihilus' doing. The beast appeared out of it, claws poised for a killing strike, Only for Gojo to pivot smoothly, redirecting the blow with one fingertip.
Then he whispered: "This is my Domain."
Blue sparks drifted from his skin like floating cinders again.
"Here… I am God."
He snapped his fingers.
The void imploded.
Annihilus was crushed, sliced, folded, stretched. It was as if every spatial concept was attacking him simultaneously. His body became a smear of cosmic debris before reforming again due to the power of the rod.
But…
Something changed.
The Cosmic Rod pulsed furiously again.
Annihilus' matter and authority twisted like liquid reality. He roared, slamming his own power into the very fabric of the Domain.
That was when Gojo felt it.
Cracks… hairline fractures spread through Gojo's realm.
Gojo's eyes widened in disbelief.
"You're, breaking it?"
Then, A soundless shockwave.
His Domain shattered like glass.
Gojo barely had time to process the impossible before something impaled him straight through the heart.
A cosmic spike, a long, gleaming spike.
Forged from pure annihilation force.
Gojo's breath hitched.
The red lightning flickered and his smile faded.
Annihilus emerged from the swirling chaos, wings regrowing in monstrous slow motion, Cosmic Rod blazing with unfathomable energy and Gojo was pinned like an insect.
For a moment, there was only the quiet hum of the cosmic spike buried in Gojo's heart.
A thin line of red lightning crawled along the wound, skittering across the spike like nervous insects. Gojo's vision blurred not from pain… but from the sudden distortion of Infinity itself. The attack didn't simply pierce him.
It bypassed.
It ignored the layers, ignored the vectors, ignored the concept of "distance" entirely.
A violation that kept on repeating itself whenever he fights this cosmic opponent's.
Gojo's eyes twitched.
"Well… that's new."