**(Yuki's POV – Lab Sigma, Sublevel 3)**
The air tastes like rust and ozone. Konan drags me through shattered containment doors, her breath ragged. Tsunade's seal over her heart flickers like a dying bulb. Every step sends agony through our bond—my unraveled ribs grating against phantom gravity, her cells burning toward light-speed decay.
*32 hours left.*
Ahead, Yahiko's team freezes.
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### **The Third Calamity**
Lab Sigma isn't a lab. It's a shrine to madness.
Hanging from pulsating chakra chains in the center is a woman—skeletal, hair white as ash. Her skin glistens with **crystalline gravity-drifts** like mine. But where my lattice scars are subtle, hers *bulge*, distorting the air around her into funhouse mirrors.
**Aunt Hikari Kashiwagi.**
Hanzo's voice crackles from hidden speakers:
*"Behold the Graviton Queen! Forced singularity pregnancy—twelve failed hybrids harvested from her womb. But *you*…"* His gaze feels physical, crushing. *"You, nephew, are the key. Her blood sings to yours. Merge with her… and Amegakure becomes a black hole to swallow all nations!"*
Nagato steps forward, Rinnegan blazing. *"Her chakra's not unstable. It's… *breeding*."*
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### **Yahiko's Choice**
"Cut the chains!" Yahiko orders, kunai raised. "Then we burn this place to—"
Hikari's eyes snap open.
**Not eyes.** Swirling event horizons.
A whisper tears through the lab:
*"Little… Crow…?"*
My childhood nickname. A memory flashes—her lifting me onto her shoulders to see Amegakure's festival lanterns. Before Hanzo. Before the cages.
Yahiko hesitates. His blade wavers.
Konan shoves past him, black paper swirling. *"She's not your aunt anymore, Yuki! She's a gravitational womb incubating *things*!"*
Hikari's distorted mouth curves. The chains *shatter* as she floats free.
*"Merge… with me… Crow… Become… Infinite…"*
---
### **Konan's Sacrifice**
Hikari's hand extends. Gravity *pulls*.
My feet leave the ground. Blood vessels burst in my eyes as micro-singularities in my cells resonate with hers. Across the lab, Nagato braces, Rinnegan portals flaring to contain the spatial distortion.
*"NO!"* Konan slams her palms onto the floor.
**Not paper. Not gravity.**
**Time.**
Her remaining lifespan *ignites*. Tsunade's seal vaporizes as entropic decay accelerates—not in her body, but *projected outward*.
The air yellows. Metal rusts to dust. Hikari's outstretched hand wrinkles, ages, cracks like dried clay.
*"What… are you…?"* Hikari rasps, recoiling.
Konan staggers, her hair bleaching white at the roots. *"His anchor."*
---
### **Nagato's Endgame**
As Hikari shrieks—a sound like bending spacetime—Nagato moves.
Not toward her. Toward *me*.
His Rinnegan drills into mine. *"You feel it, don't you? The *pull*."* Visions flood my mind:
- A moon eclipsed by a colossal Rinnegan.
- Infinite Tsukuyomi's light refracted *through a gravity lens*.
- Konan's paper wings unfolding across a warped world.
*"Your fused gravity can *shape* the Infinite Tsukuyomi,"* Nagato's voice scrapes my soul. *"Not a dream… a *controlled* reality. No war. No pain. Just… balance."*
He grips my arm—the one bleeding quantum foam. *"Help me cage the Juubi… and I'll undo Konan's decay."*
---
### **The Unraveling**
Hikari recovers.
With a scream that shatters glass, she *compresses* the space around Konan. Bones crack. Konan's time-dilation field collapses.
*"MINE!"* Hikari shrieks, dragging me through warped air.
Yahiko lunges—not at Hikari, but at Nagato. *"You're as mad as Hanzo!"*
Chaos.
Akatsuki scatters. Gravity wells bloom like toxic flowers.
Konan meets my eyes across the maelstrom. Her lips form silent words:
*"End it."*
I understand.
I stop fighting Hikari's pull.
Instead, I *embrace* her.
Hands gripping her brittle shoulders, I pour every destabilized singularity in my core into her graviton womb.
*"Let's be infinite… *together*, Aunt Hikari."*
---
### **Implosion**
Light vanishes. Sound ceases.
For one atom-splitting second, Hikari and I are one—a collapsing star.
Then…
**Silence.**
I kneel in rubble, Hikari's ashes coating my hands. The lab is gone. Only a perfect, half-sphere crater remains. Rain falls through where ceilings were.
Konan crawls to me. Her skin is paper-thin, hair fully white. Tsunade's seal is a scar.
*"Did we… win?"* she whispers.
I touch her face. My ribs are whole. My gravity… dormant.
*Hikari took it. Took it all.*
Across the crater, Nagato rises. His Rinnegan churns with something like hunger.
*"You sacrificed your bloodline… to save her."* Disbelief. *"A waste."*
Yahiko helps Konan stand. His eyes hold no forgiveness. Only grim acknowledgment.
*"Hanzo's fortress is crumbling. His elites flee."* Yahiko nods to Konan. *"Your war ends now. Ours begins."*
Konan leans into me. Her heartbeat is a fragile bird against my chest.
*"Not sacrifice,"* she breathes against my neck. *"Trade."*
Above, the rain washes away the ashes.
The Third Calamity is over.
The Akatsuki Era has begun.
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