Coyotl's blood hit the floor like a bad omen.
The war god froze.
A breath passed.
Then he screamed. It wasn't merely rage, nor was it just pain.
It was the pride of a God being brought low by a mortal.
The throne room cracked under the weight of his rage. Wind blasted outward and flame torches on the walls were snuffed out, reignited, and then pulled violently toward him as if the room itself bowed to his will.
Red fire burst from Coyotl's back.
Not chakra. Not simply natural energy.
Something else. Something divine in nature.
The god of war shed his mortal shell like it was a mere inconvenience. His body twisted upward, limbs elongating, armor of bone and fire blooming across his arms, shoulders, and chest.
Red-orange flames surged from his skull, rising like a warbanner licked by chaotic lightning.
His eyes which were once human, now split into vertical slits burning green and molten gold. A mark pulsed on his chest, glowing with the same furious heat as the sun and the air screamed as if in pain.
Naruto stepped back, one hand raised to shield his face as the eruption of energy consumed the throne and half the chamber. Pillars cracked. The floor broke apart like dried earth under a quake.
Coyotl hovered now in the air above him. He was no longer a man, but a angry God, wreathed in fire.
His voice was no longer stone on steel, it was the roar of a thousand battlefield drums and dying suns.
"You dare to mock a god?"
Naruto said nothing, and he didn't need to.
His breathing was even, and his posture was steady.
He looked up, calm as the eye of a storm as he assessed the current battle.
Coyotl's flames surged. The throne behind him melted, slag dripping in twisted rivers. The walls cracked and groaned under the pressure of his energy, which spiraled out like a cyclone of divine chaos.
Naruto's blonde hair fluttered in the wind.
But he didn't dare move.
He closed his eyes and felt the energy in the air. It was so wild and suffocating as it touched his skin.
And he let more of it in and balanced it with his chakra.
It was like a natural flow as his body drank in the pressure of the world.
His mind sharpened, and his breath slowed again, syncing to a deeper rhythm.
His heartbeat aligned with the pull of the earth, the whisper in the stone, the trembling in the torches.
When his eyes opened, they burned with clarity and divine focus.
Coyotl noticed immediately.
"You dare reach for that which you do not comprehend?"
He raised his clawed hand and with a growl, a sphere of flame condensed into his palm. Dense and volatile as it churned with streaks of black and red like a bleeding sun. He launched it with a casual flick of his wrist.
"I will teach you the folly of your arrogance, mortal!"
The air itself cracked.
Naruto dashed left, avoiding the blast as it smashed into the stone and erupted with fire and force spiraling outward in a flash.
Naruto flipped backward, sliding across the broken floor.
But Coyotl didn't dare let up.
He appeared in front of him instantly, backhand wreathed in godfire. Naruto crossed his arms just in time.
The impact sent him flying but he twisted midair, rebounding off a wall, and landing low.
He dashed forward again, but Coyotl was ready for him this time.
He ducked under a burning claw, stepped into Coyotl's reach, and drove a palm into his side.
Coyotl snarled, spun, and unleashed a wide arc of flame. Naruto jumped over it, flipped, and landed behind him, only for Coyotl to spin again, hurling a spear of red energy.
Naruto raised a hand and braced.
The blast hit him square on.
But it didn't break him.
He slid back, digging his feet into the floor, chakra bracing his body.
He coughed once.
Then smiled.
Coyotl floated higher, fury dripping from his voice.
"You are not supposed to stand against me!"
Naruto's reply was calm, almost gentle.
"Didn't I tell you once before? I'm not too good at doing what I'm supposed to do."
He shot forward again, and this time Coyotl blinked.
Naruto moved in tune with the world. His footsteps cracked the ground, not from force, but precision. His strikes came faster now and sharper.
He landed a hit across Coyotl's jaw and the god reeled back in pain.
Another to his abdomen.
Coyotl roared and slammed both fists down, sending fire exploding in all directions trying to snuff Naruto out.
But Naruto danced through it.
His body moved like water, and the tides of the battle had changed drastically.
Coyotl was no longer overpowering, now he struggled to match the blonde boy.
Every wild blast, every claw strike, every shockwave he sent out. Naruto met them head-on with flowing chakra-enhanced movement and pinpoint counterstrikes.
Coyotl howled, enraged.
"You are but a mortal!"
Naruto ducked under a swipe and drove his elbow into Coyotl's chin.
"I know! Stings doesn't it that you're getting your ass kicked by one?" he said.
Coyotl surged backward, panting. Fire flared again around his form. His energy coalesced into a dozen burning spears that hovered above him like a war halo.
He hurled them down in rapid succession and the chamber erupted in flame.
And through it Naruto burst forward.
He slammed his foot into Coyotl's stomach, flipping over his back, and landed another strike to the spine.
The god shrieked in pain.
Naruto landed lightly on the floor. His body hummed.
Coyotl turned slowly, smoke rising from his shoulders, eyes wide.
"You…"
Naruto looked up, eyes glowing faintly from within the shadow of his lashes.
"I don't need to be a god," he said quietly.
He raised his fist again, chakra coiled tight.
"I just need to win."
Coyotl screamed.
It was a sound so raw it tore the air in half.
It wasn't pain, it was rage. The scream of a god shamed. Of a warrior forced to bow.
The chamber couldn't contain it.
The ground split beneath him, veins of molten fire erupting from the cracks like liquid wrath. Flames exploded outward in a chaotic spiral, incinerating everything in a ten-foot radius. The ceiling above cracked, huge chunks of obsidian stone dropping and melting before they hit the floor.
The very air caught fire.
Coyotl's body surged with divine heat. Fire and light peeled off of him like the shedding skin of a star gone rabid.
His form grew sharper. Taller. His muscles flexed beneath armor made of light. Red flame bled from his crown like a mane. His claws elongated. And that eye which bled green and ringed with gold blazed like a second sun.
"You insult me," Coyotl roared. His voice echoed with a hundred ghostly versions of itself. "You shame my name in the very tower I was imprisoned in.."
He vanished.
Naruto braced instinctively.
But it was too late.
A fist like a meteor crashed into his side. His chakra flared in desperation, softening the blow just enough, but he was still launched across the battlefield. He tumbled through flame and smoke, smashed into a pillar, and collapsed in a crater of shattered tile.
Before he could move, Coyotl was on him again.
Another strike.
Naruto threw up an arm. The blow crashed against his forearm, and the ground behind him fractured from the redirected force. He twisted out of the way, but a second punch followed, then a third, then a spinning kick wrapped in fire.
Naruto coughed blood.
He backflipped away, landed awkwardly, sliding back as he barely managed to recover in a crouch.
"I need to end this soon." Naruto thought.
His chest rose and fell like a drumbeat on the edge of bursting.
Coyotl stalked through the fire and chaos toward him.
"Look at you," the god sneered. "Your mortality is finally showing."
Naruto didn't respond.
He was breathing. Slow. Focused.
Even with the blood in his throat.
Even with his body shaking.
He knelt low, fingertips brushing the ruined floor.
He reached again.
Not inward.
But outward.
Feel it.
The echo.
The breath of the land. The pull of the room. The low hum in the flame, beneath the violence.
His chakra stilled.
He exhaled.
And something shifted.
Subtle.
But real.
The energy around him no longer stung. It welcomed him. As if the world had waited for him to stop trying to dominate it and instead, to listen.
Coyotl's next strike came.
A blazing punch aimed for Naruto's head.
Naruto moved.
He didn't dodge but instead flowed around the strike.
The punch passed through a blur. Naruto was already behind him, elbowing him in the ribs and leaping back into the air.
Coyotl turned, confused.
Naruto landed silently. No wasted energy. His eyes gleamed faintly. The aura around him pulsed in soft waves.
The energy felt more refined and soothing than the first time he grasped it.
"You… what are you?" Coyotl hissed.
Naruto didn't speak. He shifted his stance and prepared to attack.
They collided again, but now Naruto met every swing with precision.
Coyotl threw fire.
Naruto ducked.
In anger he launched a barrage of burning spears.
Naruto weaved through them all.
Coyotl formed a molten whip of war flame and cracked it downward.
Naruto caught it and wrapped it around his bare hand.
The fire hissed against his skin, but his chakra flared in response. The natural energy of this world shielded his body from harm, making him more durable.
Coyotl's eye twitched.
"You should be dead."
Naruto exhaled, steam rising from his shoulders, and laughed.
"Everyone keeps saying that."
The war god growled and surged forward, faster than before.
He drove a flurry of punches at Naruto's core, each one meant to break bone and end his life.
But Naruto didn't retreat and instead advanced forward.
Every attack Coyotl threw, Naruto matched with a block, a redirection, a flash-step that put him inside the god's guard.
Coyotl roared and unleashed a blast point-blank to Naruto's chest.
Naruto was consumed in fire.
Then the fire split.
Naruto emerged from it with his fist drawn back, his entire body wrapped in a light aura.
It felt like chakra, but was massively different in that it felt like the life of the world itself, whereas chakra was the life of your own body.
Coyotl's instincts screamed at him as he tried to guard Naruto's attack but he was too late.
Naruto struck with a single punch.
The space between his fist and Coyotl's chest folded.
And in that fold reality distorted.
It was like a flash of energy that detonated on impact.
Time stretched for a breath, then snapped back in place.
Coyotl was launched across the throne room, crashing through stone, smoke, and fire. He bounced twice, rolled, and slammed into a column that collapsed beneath his body.
Silence.
The war god coughed and blood ran down his chin in rivulets.
He looked up, dazed.
And saw Naruto standing at the center of the storm.
His eyes burning like a maelstrom of divinity.
The air stank of fire and blood.
Coyotl's body heaved in ragged, uneven breaths. His once divine form was scorched and cracked, pulsing with fractured energy. The red flames that had crowned his body now sputtered like dying embers, clinging to him out of sheer defiance. His fangs were bared, but his limbs shook. Every muscle in his body screamed rebellion. His pride had dragged him this far. But even that had limits.
And Naruto had found them.
The boy stood across from him, silent.
Energy laced through his skin in steady pulses. Not raging. Not burning. But alive, more alive than anything Coyotl had felt in centuries. His movements were quiet, precise. No wasted steps. His eyes shone with eerie focus, like a storm distilled into human form. The flow of the world moved and resided within him.
Coyotl spat blood. He staggered upright, growling, shoulders trembling. "You don't get to win," he hissed. "You are nothing but a mortal."
Naruto didn't flinch.
He didn't answer.
He just stepped forward.
Coyotl roared and launched himself forward in a final, reckless burst.
The floor buckled beneath his feet. Red flame flared again around his body as he gave one last desperate push. The war god's fist reeled back, aiming to shatter Naruto's skull.
But Naruto flowed through his intentions.
He gave a twist of the body and a pivot on the heel as Coyotl's fist passed harmlessly beside him.
And Naruto struck ruthlessly.
It was a palm to the ribs. A second to the throat. A low kick to the shin, disrupting Coyotl's stance. Then a brutal uppercut that snapped his head back.
Coyotl stumbled back and Naruto vanished again.
He reappeared behind him, fingers coiled with chakra, and slammed both fists into the god's back.
The force cracked the floor.
Coyotl dropped to his knees, coughing blood.
He turned, wild, clawed fingers swiping up to catch Naruto's face in desperation
But Naruto wasn't there.
He was already in the air.
Spinning.
And when he came down, it was like the heavens themselves lent weight to the blow.
His foot crashed into Coyotl's shoulder with bone-breaking power, sending the war god sprawling across the throne room, stone shattering beneath his form like glass under thunder.
The flame guttered out.
The light dimmed.
And Coyotl didn't rise.
He lay still, one arm crushed beneath him, his chest rising only shallowly. His hair clung to his face, matted with sweat and blood. One eye had swollen shut, the other stared skyward, dazed.
Naruto landed beside him.
He breathed slowed and measured, and in complete control.
The natural energy around him flowed gently, like wind through leaves. It accepted him now. The world accepted him.
And Coyotl felt it.
"I fought gods," the war god muttered, voice raw and more human. "Real gods. Creatures made of chaos and death. And none of them…"
He coughed, thick blood spilling from his lips.
"None of them scared me like you do."
Naruto said nothing.
Coyotl turned his head slightly. It took all the strength he had.
"There's no shame in losing to a force of nature," he rasped. "But tell me…"
His voice dropped.
"What even are you?"
Naruto met his gaze for a moment trying to process his response.
Because he didn't exactly know either.
"Just someone who's just trying to get back to his friends," he said plainly.
Coyotl's chest shuddered once, and then stilled. His head slumped. The light in his remaining eye dulled. Whether it was death or unconsciousness, Naruto couldn't tell. But it didn't matter.
The God of War was done.
The throne room was quiet again. The air trembled with fading energy, like a storm rolling away on tired winds. Rubble lay strewn in every direction, and scorched lines marked where their power had clashed.
Naruto wiped blood and sweat from his mouth and turned.
There was a doorway past the throne.
He didn't hesitate, he had to move forward.
The fight had ended, but he still had to meet Tiboro.
He only hoped whatever awaited him was no worse than what he already faced.
He stepped forward, leaving the broken god behind.
____
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