A bolt of lightning cracked across the chamber.
Naruto slid under it and kicked off a floating pillar, launched himself into the ornate walls of the chambers and using his chakra to keep him tethered to it as he ran across it. Sparks of lightning chased him, but was unable to catch him.
Another spell circle bloomed above him.
"By rain and bone!" Itzpapalotl's voice echoed with divine flair.
A giant serpent made of water burst from the air like it had been waiting to spring forth. It snapped toward Naruto with open jaws, coiling through the sky like a living storm.
Naruto didn't hesitate as he leapt straight into its mouth, then out the back of its skull.
The water dragon exploded as his foot tore through its head, splashing harmlessly across the stone floor.
"You're just dodging everything," she huffed.
"You're throwing everything," he shot back, still moving, chakra circling around his frame.
Itzpapalotl descended like a floating goddess, hair trailing like stars, tattoos glowing bright down her arms as another magical circle spun into existence beneath her.
The floor rumbled as dozens of stone hands erupted from below.
They surged toward Naruto like hungry roots trying to capture him and pull him under.
"Seriously?" he muttered.
The first hand reached out to him but he shattered it with a punch.
Another grabbed his ankle. He yanked free and backflipped out of the swarm of stones. Two more burst up on either side, and he dropped low and slammed his palm into the floor.
A shockwave of chakra blew the stone hands apart like brittle clay.
Itzpapalotl was still in the air as she began preparing another spell. "You're very nimble for someone playing hard to get."
"I'm not playing. I'm just not interested, crazy lady!"
She raised her hands as the magic circle spun to fruition.
A wave of fire spiraled toward him, more ribbon than blast, weaving in hypnotic motion.
Naruto didn't flinch. He ran straight through it, chakra shielding his body as flames curled off his shoulders and hair.
"I'm sixteen," he shouted as he closed the gap.
"I'm nine-hundred and seventy-two," she said with a wink. "But I make sure to moisturize."
Naruto leapt up, spun midair, and landed behind her with a skid. "That's a thousand years of jail where I'm from."
She scoffed. "Divine love knows no chains or laws."
"But I do. They're called federal sentencing guidelines."
"You're so charming when you're actively resisting destiny."
He dodged a lance of ice she threw his way, and ducked another chain of lightning, then flickered into motion.
One second he was across the room.
The next he was right in front of her.
She barely blinked before he hit her with a light chakra covered palm to the shoulder. Nothing brutal. Just enough to knock her off balance.
She spun midair, let out a startled "Oh!" and landed flat on her butt on a cracked platform.
Her magic fizzled out.
Silence.
She looked up at him, stunned. "You struck me."
"You shot like thirty spells at my face."
Her eyes sparkled. "And you evaded them all. Gracefully. You're truly are… magnificent."
Naruto backed up half a step.
"No."
"What?"
"No, I'm not doing this."
She stood up slowly, brushing ash from her robes like this was some formal ceremony. "But you bested me in magical combat."
"Yeah. Because I wanted you to stop."
"And thus, by the laws of the Thirteen Heavens, our souls are bound. You have earned my hand. My heart. And potentially shared dominion over the star-vaults of the Southern Sky."
Naruto stared at her. "That is the creepiest way anyone's ever said 'you're cute.'"
"These laws are ancient and unbreakable."
"Kind of like your delusion?"
She looked at him like she was offended.
"I was trained in the old ways of love, passion, and spellcraft."
"I was trained in the old ways of try not to not talk to strangers who throw spells at me and call it flirting."
She stepped forward, eyes warm. "Well, you're just running because you're scared of commitment."
"I'm running because you're terrifying."
"Same thing."
"NO! It's not the same thing!"
"You'll see," she said softly, "one day you'll wake up and realize you've always loved me."
"Then I'll go back to sleep and try again?"
She sighed in frustration, brushing her beautiful hair behind her ear. "Fine. I'll stop."
He blinked. "Wait… what?"
"You can go," she said, voice quieter. "I won't stop you."
Naruto watched her cautiously.
"You still wanna marry me, don't you."
"Yes," she said, without missing a beat.
Naruto groaned. "Of course."
"But I won't force it."
He raised a brow.
"Because my brother's waiting for you," she continued. "And he's worse than me."
Naruto glanced toward the obsidian mirror. Its surface pulsed gently, like a still lake ready to pull him under.
"He's not like me. Or Coyotl," Itzpapalotl said, tone flat now. "No charm. No games. Just manipulation. You think you're getting answers out of him, but really, he's getting them out of you."
She glanced upwards toward the ceiling.
"He's stronger than both of us. Smarter, too."
Her gaze returned to Naruto. "If he's talking, he's already winning."
"Then why send me?"
"You beat me," she said, with a shrug. "The path opens only when the ruler of the floor falls."
Naruto exhaled, turning toward the portal. "Well, I guess I'll see what he's about."
"Just don't believe him and his reasons for why he's stuck here."
Naruto paused.
"Why not?"
She shook her head. "Because he's the reason we are stuck here."
Her words hung there.
Then Naruto stepped forward.
He glanced back once.
She smiled at him.
He didn't smile back.
"I'm still not marrying you."
She winked. "We'll see about that."
Naruto stepped through the obsidian mirror and vanished into the dark.
Behind him, Itzpapalotl brushed a scratch on her cheek, sighed, and summoned a peacock feather to fan herself.
"Hopefully big brother does not kill him," she muttered. "That boy truly has husband potential."
Tlāzokāuhtli slithered down from the ceiling, eyeing her.
She pointed. "Don't start. I let him win."
The serpent coiled slowly.
"Shut up."
_________
The sky was the color of rust.
Clouds swirled in slow, choking spirals above a flat horizon, thick with ash that never fell. Lightning flashed now and then, silent and sharp, behind the clouds but no thunder followed. No rain. No wind. Just heat. Dry and choking, like the breath of a dying furnace.
Naruto stood at the edge of it all. A wasteland of cracked earth stretched around him in every direction, scattered with half-buried bones, broken swords, and strange human shapes statues. Some were kneeling. Others were crawling. A few looked like they had been running before they froze in place, faces twisted in fear or agony.
He couldn't tell.
He could hear his own breath. That was all.
"Okay," he muttered, squinting through the glare. "We're definitely not in Kansas, anymore."
He adjusted the collar of his shirt and started walking.
There was no road, but there was a path made clear by the way the sand parted, like it was avoiding something ahead. And then he saw it.
The throne.
It rose like a mountain from the center of the plain. A massive structure of obsidian and gold fused into rough, angular slabs, with steps leading to a seat far too large for any normal man. The closer Naruto got, the more he realized the scale was wrong.
This thing wasn't made for humans. It was made for something bigger.
Someone sat on it.
He was lounging, half-slouched, like he belonged there. But he clearly didn't.
Not really. The throne beneath him was enormous and easily twenty times his size, carved from slabs of obsidian and gold, made for something ancient and giant. Just sitting in it, he looked like a child pretending to be a king.
And yet... he didn't look small. Somehow, his presence, and the way the light curved around him, made the scale feel reversed.
His robes, tattered and dark red, hung loose around a lean, and tall frame of maybe six foot three at most. Gold bands coiled tightly around his wrists, neck, and biceps, catching the dull light of the storm-choked sky.
His skin was light bronze, unscarred and smooth like stone polished by centuries.
His face was sharp, too sharp, with a beauty that felt less human and more sculpted, too perfect to be real.
And his eyes, when they opened, glowed like molten amber. Not bright, but deep, slow-burning, like coals hidden under old ash.
He looked like a man in his mid twenties. But Naruto could tell he wasn't. Not really.
"You are not from this place," the man said, his voice was smooth but weighted. "And yet, here you are. The first visitor."
Naruto stopped near one of the frozen statues. A woman. Her hands were raised in fear as if shielding herself. Yet her stone face still looked alive.
"I'm looking for a way out," Naruto said. "Are you the one keeping everyone here?"
The man tilted his head slightly. "You speak as if there's an exit."
"Isn't there?"
"If there was, I wouldn't still be here."
Naruto stayed silent for a moment, then looked around. "All these statues. They're real people, right?"
A faint smile touched the man's lips. "They were."
Naruto didn't react.
"You're different," the man said, straightening now. His gaze sharpened. "Your energy, it cuts through this world like a blade. It's not like mine. Nor like the gods of my former dimension. It's foreign and disruptive. Like a storm caught in a bottle."
"You got a name?" Naruto asked, ignoring the compliment.
"I have been called monster, madman, and tyrant. But my people? They call me Tiboro."
That name felt like it had weight. Like the name of a storm, or a knife buried in someone's spine.
"So you're the one in charge?"
"I was," Tiboro said, spreading his arms slightly. "Before a sorcerer and his patron god decided otherwise."
Naruto raised an eyebrow.
"A foreigner," Tiboro explained, voice steady. "Not of this land. She came with magic older than my father's line and bound me here with the aid of something even older, Oshtur, he called it.. A god I had never heard of, from a pantheon I had never known about. Together they sealed me in this dimension. Along with my siblings and my people."
Naruto glanced at another statue. A child, this time. Reaching toward something. Frozen mid-step.
Tiboro went on. "I was born on Earth. Not this place. My mother was human. Aztec. My father... less so. A god from Ilhuicatl, the Thirteen Heavens named Xolotl. He came down, took what he wanted, and returned to his throne. He visited once more, years later, when I was still a boy, and left her with twins. My brother Coyotl, and my sister Itzpapalotl."
He paused.
"She died not long after. Of grief and heartbreak mostly."
Naruto didn't answer.
"I rose alongside my siblings," Tiboro said simply. "I led a tribe. Then a nation. We worshipped no foreign gods, only ourselves. We became more than human. We claimed what power we could. And in doing so, we were punished."
"Sounds like a sob story," Naruto said flatly. "What's the part where you stop talking and start trying to use me?"
Tiboro's eyes narrowed. "You think I'm lying?"
"I think you're hiding what really matters."
Silence.
Then Tiboro stood.
It was graceful. Effortless. He leapt down from the giant throne, and with every step, the sand shifted around him, not like it moved, but like it obeyed his very presence in fear.
"I won't pretend I don't want something from you," Tiboro said as he approached. "You don't belong here. Not in this dimension, not in this prison. You're an anomaly. That energy inside you... I don't know its name, but I can feel it. It doesn't follow the rules. It warps the dimensional walls just by existing."
Naruto's hands were in his pockets. He didn't move.
"I want it," Tiboro said. "With it, I may be able to break free."
"Uh, yeah, that's a no," Naruto said.
Tiboro stopped a few paces away. He didn't look angry. Just tired. And very, very old in that moment.
"I could help you," he offered. "You want to go home. I want out. We are not enemies."
"You don't know how to get me home."
"No. But I could find a way with your help"
Naruto looked up at him. The desert wind blew gently through his hair.
"You really think that's gonna work on me?" he asked.
"I think you haven't considered what being stuck here forever looks like."
Naruto looked at the statues again. All those people. All those lives.
"I've seen it."
Tiboro's expression shifted, no longer soft. No longer calm.
"You would rather die than help me?"
"No," Naruto said. "I'd rather not be the reason something worse escapes, you were put here for a reason."
The earth cracked beneath Tiboro's feet.
"You think you can stop me?"
Naruto shrugged.
"I guess we'll find out."
Tiboro smiled. "You should reconsider it. You're alone. You don't know where you are. You don't even know what you are."
"I know enough," Naruto said, turning away. "You don't have a way out. You've been stuck here for centuries, experimenting and killing your own people to stay young. You want my power because it's the first thing you haven't been able to control."
Tiboro's smile vanished. His eyes narrowed.
"You are ungrateful," he said. "You walk into my kingdom and dare lecture me?"
"This isn't a kingdom. It's a graveyard."
"...and you speak to me as if you are my equal."
"I'm not your equal," Naruto said, walking away from the man. "You're smaller than me."
That's when Tiboro moved.
Not fast, more like instant. One moment he was there. The next, he was in front of Naruto, hand outstretched. His fingers hovered just inches from Naruto's chest, the air between them humming with invisible force.
But Naruto didn't dare flinch, his blue eyes cold like the ocean.
"Move." he said.
__
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