The moment Naruto and Kai stepped out of the vault, the Spiral changed.
The shifting vortex of debris and fractured memories grew still. The howling echoes silenced. The colors of the world dulled, bleeding into a monochrome void. A pressure descended — thick, suffocating, like a giant hand squeezing the life out of the land itself.
Naruto's system flickered in warning.
[Alert: Throne Executor Presence Confirmed.]
[Threat Level: Catastrophic.]
He barely had time to process the notification before the world in front of him cracked open.
A figure emerged.
It didn't step out so much as unfold from the cracks in space itself, as if reality was nothing more than a curtain it could push aside.
The Executor stood tall, draped in robes woven from living chakra threads. Its face was hidden behind a perfect white mask etched with runes — no eyes, no mouth, just a blank, impenetrable surface. Its hands were pale and thin, and in one of them it carried a glaive that hummed with suppressed energy.
Naruto's breath caught in his throat.
This was nothing like the Remnant they fought earlier.
The air around the Executor was wrong. Heavy. Every instinct in Naruto's body screamed at him to run, to hide, to submit.
Kai's hand went to her blade, but even she hesitated.
The Executor lifted its head — if it even had a head behind that mask — and spoke.
Its voice didn't come from its body. It came from everywhere, resonating inside Naruto's skull.
"Return the fragments."
Naruto gritted his teeth.
"No."
The air shattered with a soundless boom.
The Executor moved.
It didn't dash or lunge — one moment it was standing several meters away, and the next it was directly in front of them, its glaive sweeping through the space where Naruto's head had been.
Naruto dropped low, rolling across the fractured ground.
Kai attacked from the side, aiming for a quick disabling strike.
The Executor flicked a single finger.
A ripple of force knocked Kai aside like a ragdoll.
Naruto scrambled up, blood pounding in his ears.
This wasn't a battle they could win by trading blows.
[System Override: Emergency Combat Adaptation Initiated.]
Options flickered before his eyes — skill enhancements, temporary stat boosts, sacrificial gambits.
Naruto selected the only thing that gave them a chance.
[Skill: Phase Flicker Lv. 1 Activated.]
[Effect: Temporarily distort personal dimensional anchor — rapid short-range teleportation available.]
The world blurred.
Naruto reappeared behind the Executor, already driving a chakra-enhanced kunai at its back.
The Executor shifted.
Not turning — bending reality itself, as if space bowed to its will.
Naruto's strike missed by inches.
He grit his teeth and kept moving, weaving in and out of existence with bursts of Flicker. He wasn't trying to damage it — not yet. He was buying time.
Kai recovered quickly, rejoining him, blood dripping from her mouth but eyes blazing.
Together, they harried the Executor, striking and vanishing, forcing it to adjust, to expend energy maintaining dominance over the Spiral's fractured space.
But even as they fought, Naruto knew they couldn't win like this.
The Executor wasn't even trying yet.
It was waiting.
Testing.
Measuring.
Naruto's mind raced.
They needed an escape route — fast.
Kai must have realized it too, because she tapped her wristband twice in rapid succession, sending a silent signal.
A beacon ignited high above them — a flare of stabilized chakra.
In the distance, something answered.
A deep, resonating boom shook the Spiral. A rift tore open at the far edge — a gateway engineered by the Coreless engineers for extraction under catastrophic conditions.
Their way out.
Naruto nodded at Kai.
She nodded back.
They turned and sprinted.
The Executor didn't chase immediately. It tilted its masked head slightly, as if studying them, then slowly lifted one hand.
Chains of black lightning erupted from the ground.
They weren't real chains — not in the physical sense — but concepts of restraint made manifest by the Executor's will. They lashed out, snaring the environment itself, causing entire sections of the Spiral to collapse inward, blocking the escape route.
Naruto barely dodged one of the chains as it struck where he had been a heartbeat before.
Kai wasn't as lucky — a strand of black energy caught her ankle, dragging her down.
Naruto reversed course instantly.
Phase Flicker triggered again, warping him next to her.
Without hesitation, he severed the energy chain with a system-enhanced strike, ignoring the burning pain that shot up his arm as reality protested the act.
Kai gasped but pushed herself upright.
They couldn't afford mistakes.
The Executor was coming now, moving without urgency, knowing it controlled the battlefield.
Naruto grabbed Kai's hand and pulled her forward.
No time for hesitation.
The Spiral itself fought against them — gravity twisting, walls forming and collapsing, debris raining from the skies.
Naruto used every ounce of his system's temporary boosts to keep moving, dodging, weaving, slipping through gaps before they closed.
The gateway was getting closer.
Almost there.
The Executor raised its glaive.
A bolt of pure annihilation energy lanced toward them.
Naruto threw himself sideways, pulling Kai with him.
The bolt struck the ground behind them — and erased it.
Not exploded.
Erased.
Everything the energy touched simply ceased to exist.
Naruto's heart hammered.
If that had hit them, there wouldn't even be bodies left.
Kai staggered but didn't fall.
Naruto gritted his teeth.
One last push.
Together, they sprinted for the gateway.
The Executor didn't shout. Didn't rage. It simply reached — reality stretching, trying to pull them back into its grasp.
Naruto felt it like hooks sinking into his soul.
He poured every last shred of willpower into resisting, his system blaring critical warnings.
Kai did the same.
Step by step, they closed the distance.
The gateway flared, stabilizing just enough for a single jump.
Naruto shoved Kai through first, not hesitating.
He turned just as the Executor's glaive descended.
Time seemed to slow.
Naruto saw the weapon fall.
Saw the fracture lines split the air.
He threw himself forward.
The glaive grazed his back, a searing line of agony, but he hit the gateway's threshold and tumbled through.
The world behind him collapsed.
The last thing he saw was the Executor standing calmly amid the ruins, watching him escape.
Then darkness swallowed him.
Naruto crashed hard onto cold metal flooring.
Systems chirped.
[Extraction complete.]
[Warning: Critical injuries sustained.]
[Recommended: Immediate medical intervention.]
Pain flooded him.
Kai landed beside him, equally battered but alive.
She struggled to sit up, coughing.
Naruto forced his eyes open.
They were inside a Coreless safehouse — an emergency extraction bunker layered with thick anti-detection seals.
Engineers and medics rushed toward them.
Naruto let himself fall back against the floor, exhaustion hitting him like a wave.
They made it.
For now.
But the Executor would not forget.
And next time, it wouldn't let them escape.
Naruto closed his eyes briefly, gathering strength.
The war had just begun.
And he would not be the one to fall.
Not when the world needed breaking.
Not when the Throne still stood.