The night burned red.
The Nine-Tails towered over Konoha, its tails lashing like whips, each strike flattening houses and splitting streets. Fire leapt from roof to roof as civilians fled, dragging their children through the chaos. Shinobi fought in squads, shouting jutsu names, but the monster's roars swallowed every effort. Paper walls became smoke, tiled roofs became shards, and the village felt very small beneath a mountain of hate.
In the Uchiha compound, a newborn wailed in the ruins of a collapsed house. His parents lay still, blood mixing with the dust on the floor. The baby squirmed in his soot-stained blanket, crying as plaster rained from above, a tiny heartbeat in a world that had decided to end.
But his soul was not a newborn's. Inside that tiny body lived a man's mind—sharp, awake, and very aware of where he was.
This is Konoha. That roar—Kurama. The Nine-Tails attack. Of course. Out of all the days I could reincarnate into, it had to be this one. Seriously, karma?
Another beam creaked and fell. Heat eddied across the room. Somewhere, a woman screamed a name until her voice broke.
The air above the infant rippled.
[Critical Event Detected. Survival Probability: 0.7%]
[Emergency Protocol: Summon Authorization Granted]
[Target World: Jujutsu Kaisen]
[Designate: Satoru Gojo]
Blue light spiraled into the room, cutting through smoke and fire. A tall man stepped out as if through an ordinary door, hands in his pockets, white hair gleaming, a black blindfold covering his eyes. He stood there for one calm beat, taking in the ruin, and looked as if he'd walked into a quiet street instead of a warzone.
The baby's dark eyes widened.
No way. That's… Gojo Satoru. From Jujutsu Kaisen. The strongest sorcerer alive. My first summon is him? Jackpot!
Gojo crouched, smirk tugging at his lips as he reached down. "So this is the boss? Small. Loud." His mouth tilted higher. "But I've seen worse."
He scooped the child into one arm with a gentleness that didn't match the chaos around them. Ash brushed his coat. The baby's small fingers grabbed at the fabric like anchors.
Did he just call me his boss? I'm literally drooling on myself right now. Stay calm. Just… act like a baby. Yeah, giggle or something.
Ren giggled. On the rooftops, an ANBU team clocked the odd pair in a single confused heartbeat and moved on. To them, it looked like a stranger had grabbed a survivor.
The ground shook. Kurama's shadow fell across the street as its massive paw swung down. Tiles popped off roofs like teeth. A shockwave rattled loose boards into the air.
"Move!" an ANBU captain shouted. "Protect the civilians!"
Too late. The claw would crush everything.
Gojo shifted the baby against his chest and raised his hand casually, palm open.
The paw stopped.
Not blocked. Not deflected. It simply froze inches above his palm, unable to move closer. Dust and rubble curved away as though space itself had said no. The air hummed with a pitch the ear could not catch but the bones felt.
Masked faces turned in shock.
"What kind of jutsu is that?!"
"I don't sense chakra!"
Gojo tilted his head, smirk curling under the blindfold. "Sorry, big guy. Kid's off-limits."
Kurama snarled and whipped its tails, splitting the street into trenches. Fire and stone exploded in waves, hunks of beam and roof fanning outward like shrapnel.
Gojo didn't flinch. Every chunk of debris slid harmlessly aside, bending around him and the child in smooth arcs. The infant blinked through soot and fell silent, as if the universe had remembered to be gentle.
Infinity. I'm watching Infinity in real life. He's actually untouchable. Holy sht.*
Gojo rocked the infant lightly. "First rule of babysitting—set boundaries."
From the rubble, a wounded villager gasped, "He… he saved us…"
The ANBU captain barked, "Don't relax! Unknown entity! Treat with caution!"
A jonin with burned sleeves landed near the captain, eyes on Gojo and the fox. "Captain, I can't see any chakra flow. It's like reality around him is—"
"Less theory, more evacuations!" the captain snapped. "Clear Sector Five—now!"
Kurama's jaws opened, chakra condensing into a blinding sphere. A Tailed Beast Bomb swelled, brighter than fire, humming with annihilation. The street brightened to a false noon. Civilians screamed and covered their children. A boy in a doorway whispered, "Is this how the world ends?"
Gojo sighed. "Fine. I'll handle this one."
He flicked his fingers.
The bomb's path twisted violently, dragged sideways as if the world itself refused its destination. It shot over the walls and detonated in the empty training fields. The explosion bloomed like a second dawn, a ring of light rising and collapsing. The shockwave rattled rooftops, broke weak glass, and threw a rain of dust into the air—but the village stood.
Shinobi froze in stunned silence.
"He… he redirected it."
Gojo smirked, patting the baby's back. "No fox is messing with us tonight."
Kurama lunged again, tails scything down. Gojo stepped aside with lazy ease. Each strike failed to touch him—as though the last inch of space refused to be crossed.
"Big claws," he murmured. "Bad manicure."
On the rooftops, ANBU traded hurried whispers.
"He's mocking the Nine-Tails…"
"What is he?"
"Focus!" the captain cut in. "Use the corridor!"
Gojo lifted his hand, and the street between two rows of burning houses became a clean passage—the flames drew back, beams toppled into neat stacks, glass fell as dust instead of knives. It didn't look like a jutsu. It looked like the world pretending to be polite.
"Move west!" the ANBU captain shouted, catching on. "He's keeping it open! Go!"
Families ran. A mother with scorched hair dragged two boys by the wrists; an old man leaned on a broken broom and limped stubbornly forward. A little girl in a torn green dress froze, staring up at the blindfolded man who stood perfectly calm with a baby in his arms while a monster howled overhead.
Gojo smiled gently. "It's safe. Trust me."
She bolted toward the shelter. Her father scooped her up midrun and didn't look back.
This… this is how rumors start, Ren thought, feeling the way people's fear tilted toward wonder. Good. Remember him. Forget me.
A golden flash tore across the battlefield. The Fourth Hokage appeared on a rooftop, cloak snapping in the burning wind, eyes sharp and terribly alive. He saw the fox, the stranger, the infant, and in that instant weighed more variables than most men could name. Then he vanished, teleporting toward his true task: binding the beast and saving the village.
Gojo chuckled, amused and appreciative. "Fast guy. I like him."
Three more tail strikes carved trenches where he had stood a heartbeat before; three times the air decided that here, he would not stand. Kurama's breath rolled over the village like furnace wind. Somewhere, a tower bell snapped its rope and fell in a single stomach-dropping clang.
Minato's sealing… it's building, Ren realized, feeling the tug in the air, the pressure of jutsu a child should not feel. This is the night Naruto's born. The night everything bends.
In the Hokage tower, Hiruzen Sarutobi stood at the window, pipe forgotten cold in his hand, watching the fox and the stranger with equal disbelief. "Report," he said softly.
"Unknown combatant intercepting the Nine-Tails," an ANBU replied, kneeling. "No chakra signatures. He appears to… distort space."
Hiruzen's fingers tightened. "Then give him room."
Back in the streets, panic found places to go. The corridor widened. A jonin with a shattered arm used his good hand to shepherd a cluster of civilians. "Stay in the path!" he shouted. "Don't touch the flames! Move!"
A beam gave way overhead. Gojo raised two fingers. "Red."
The beam skewed, as if embarrassed, and buried itself into a harmless patch of cobbles. The spray of chips powdered into dust and fell like gray snow around the escaping civilians.
A young chunin landed hard near Gojo and glanced down at the infant. "Sir—who—who are you?"
Gojo tilted his head. "Temporary childcare," he said brightly. "Allegiance: the small, loud one."
Ren very nearly laughed.
Kurama drew in another breath, chakra growing into a hateful star between fanged jaws. Gojo turned his hand, not to the sphere but to the space it wanted. The path bent. The tool obeyed the path. The explosion bloomed beyond the walls again, a flower of ruin opening where no one stood.
On a far rooftop, a masked figure with a single red eye watched the blindfolded man and the infant in his arms—and the way Konoha failed to crush either—and vanished into spiraling space.
Gojo planted his heel in the center of the street and lowered his voice, the playfulness smoothing into something flat and absolute. "Here's the line," he told the fox. "You don't cross it."
Kurama's claws raked down. They screeched against nothing and stopped—stopped because the last half-inch of reality had been set to infinite. The beast roared in frustration, tethered by Minato's jutsu, dragged by chains the eye couldn't see toward a fate it could not resist.
"Shelter gates!" the ANBU captain shouted hoarsely. "Last wave!"
Gojo carried the baby into the underground shelter, where terrified civilians huddled shoulder to shoulder in cool stone corridors. The press of bodies eased away from him without knowing why; Infinity enforced personal space with perfect courtesy. He found a quiet alcove where the rock curved like a cradle, set the child on a folded blanket, and crouched.
The baby's tiny fingers clutched his coat and would not let go. His dark eyes gleamed—not with fear, but with focus that didn't belong on a face that young.
A chime echoed in Ren's mind, clear even beneath the muffled chaos above.
[Summon Contract Finalized.]
[Each summoned ally bears a hidden wish. They cannot voice it. Fulfill it, and their power will be yours.]
Ren's lips curled upward. For an infant, the expression was wrong—too sharp, too knowing, a shadow of the man who lived behind it.
Hidden wishes… and their power becomes mine. That's the deal, huh? Perfect.
Gojo chuckled quietly, tapping the child's hand with a knuckle. "Rest, little boss. I'll keep the sky from falling."
Above them, the battle tightened into threads. The corridors shook once, then twice. Cries rose and fell. And then a silence descended that was not peace but aftermath. Somewhere very near and very far, a newborn took his first breath and the Nine-Tails took a last hateful snarl before being bound to a future it didn't choose.
Hiruzen's shoulders slumped at the tower window. He set the cold pipe down very carefully and closed his eyes. "Minato…" he whispered, and let the prayer dissolve into the smoke that wasn't there.
Inside the shelter, families clung to one another. The little girl in the green dress peered around her mother's skirt at the blindfolded man and the baby in the alcove. When Gojo turned his head slightly in her direction, she flinched—and then he gave her that small, easy smile again. She tucked her face into her mother's side and decided, forever, that not all monsters were evil and not all saviors wore the village's symbol.
Ren watched the way people looked at Gojo—the fear, the awe, the gratitude they didn't know where to put. He watched the ANBU captain stand at the doorway and decide, with a single nod, that tonight this stranger was ally. He watched how denial and hope shone the same in exhausted eyes.
Let them wonder about him, Ren thought. Let them never learn to look at me.
A murmur spread through the shelter, a ripple of words that would become stories by morning.
"A blindfolded demon…"
"A white-haired sorcerer…"
"He walked through the Nine-Tails' fury with a baby in his arms, and nothing could touch them."
Someone else whispered, "Did you see how the fire wouldn't get close? Like it was afraid."
Another added, "He smiled at my daughter. She stopped crying. I think… I think he saved us."
Gojo sat back on his heels, fingers drumming lightly against his knee, listening to the rumor's first breath with open amusement. "Man," he said under his breath, "PR writes itself in this world."
Ren's hand, so small and useless a few minutes ago, relaxed on Gojo's coat.
Not useless, he corrected himself, the thought clean and deliberate. Not for long.
Above ground, shinobi began to count the living and the dead. The fires hissed themselves quiet, roofs collapsed into their own ash, and the night grew darker not because the flames ended but because the fear did.
Minato's seal held.
Konoha survived.
Wounded. Smaller. Different.
In the cool alcove, Gojo rose, dusted his coat, and glanced toward the stair as if he could see through rock. "Clean up's going to be annoying," he said cheerfully. "But hey—silver lining—nobody touched my hair."
Ren would have snorted if his lungs weren't still learning how to be lungs. Instead, he let his eyes close for the first time since the ceiling fell, and in that darkness saw something more than survival. He saw paths. He saw promises. He saw a word he hadn't chosen, emerging from other people's mouths like steam off cooling stone.
Eclipse? No. His mind tested the sound, rejected it, and filed the rumors away for later use. Names have power. Titles more. I'll pick the right ones when I can stand.
For now, he let the village name the man who could not be touched and the baby no one noticed.
For now, he accepted that an empire could start with a quiet breath in a stone alcove.
For now, he slept.
The shelter exhaled with him. Shinobi loosened grips on weapons. An ANBU leaned his masked head against the wall and, just for a heartbeat, closed his eyes.
The first rumor of a hidden order took shape in the spaces between tired words.
The story would change in the telling. It always did. Some would say the stranger was a demon. Some would say an angel. Some would swear the child in his arms glowed. Others would insist there was no child at all, only a man who laughed at a monster and made it obey. That was fine.
Truth would come later.
Power would come with it.
And somewhere, in a place only fate could see, a path opened from this night to a distant throne.
The beginning of an empire still in shadow.