**NNT — 18:37 — Rōran Ruins – Dragon Vein Convergence Point**
The ground beneath Raghoul's feet wasn't sand anymore—it was glass, molten and twisted, still bubbling from the hellfire of his rebirth. Every step he took sent spider webs of cracks shooting across the surface, like fragile veins bursting under pressure. The air above him warped with heat waves, distorting the environment. The sky had gone dark, not the natural darkness of evening, but something wrong—like the world was indecisive, whether to pay reference, to go all out destroying this new entity, or to move on pretending none of it happened.
With each breath, was The smell of Gunsmoke everywhere. Christ, it felt like the wild west here, only as worse as you can imagine plus one more. The Vein's energy wasn't just flowing through him—it had rewritten him, cell by cell, turning his insides into something that shouldn't well... exist. His skin pulsed with veins of red-gold light, like magma flowing just beneath the surface. When he looked at his hands, they were shaking. Not from fear. From the sheer weight of what he'd become.
Then everything exploded.
Time didn't just stop—it shattered like a mirror. One second he was standing on melted glass in Rōran, the next he was being dragged through the cosmos or so he identified it as, consciousness scattered across dimensions to many to count that the digit to quantify it would be less than infinity but greater than all.
He was seeing these places.
This dimensions
The multiverse in it beautiful horror
A world where demons wore human faces and fed on mortals. He saw their claws ripping through mortals spirit, their teeth gnawing on sanity. The stench of sulfur and rotting flesh like he had never experienced before filled his nostrils until he wanted to vomit, but he had no body to vomit with.
A battlefield where gods butchered each other like animals. Norse, Greek, Japanese—all their pantheons locked in endless slaughter. His consciousness stood knee-deep in divine blood, watched Zeus's lightning cook Odin's ravens alive, saw Amaterasu's light dim as she choked on her own golden ichor. Their screams weren't human—they were the sound of Rage and ego being Justified and creation itself being tortured.
A sterile world of chrome and circuits where people uploaded their souls into machines, only to discover that digital immortality was just eternal loneliness wrapped in code. He saw their memories being compressed into data, emotions reduced to algorithms, humanity deleted line by line.
A broken continent where giants slept behind massive walls, their footsteps shaking the earth, their roars shattering windows for miles. He watched them tear through cities like paper, saw people being crushed underfoot like insects, heard children screaming as buildings collapsed on top of them.
Thousands more realities crashed through his mind. Millions. Each one a different flavor of horror, a unique way for existence to go wrong.
Then it stopped. The dimensional storm sucked back into his chest like water down a drain, settling into his core like a tumor made of pure possibility. He crashed back into his own body, knees hitting the glass with a crack that sent fresh pain shooting up his legs.
But the man who stood up wasn't the same one who'd arrived.
His mind was crystal clear now, sharp as a scalpel. The confusion, the uncertainty—all of it burned away. He knew exactly what the inferno had made him into.
The powers were there, waiting in his blood like loaded guns, He could rewind time by sixty seconds. Just once, just enough to dodge death if it came calling. Like having one extra life in a video game where losing meant actual extinction.
Reality was putty in his hands now. He could twist the laws of physics, bend matter to his will. Not create from nothing yet, but everything that existed? Fair game.
His cursed fire had evolved into something beyond destruction. This wasn't burning—this was erasure. Whatever these flames touched didn't just die, it stopped existing. Past, present, future—wiped clean.
Doorways of fire that could punch holes between dimensions. He could step from this world into any other as easily as walking between rooms.
His true form. Fifty feet of living apocalypse. Not a technique he activated, but what he actually was now. The human shape was just a mask.
And lurking beneath these gifts were shadows of more power, abilities still sleeping, waiting for the right moment to wake up and join the party.
But even with all this, Raghoul knew the truth. He was still small fish in an infinite ocean. Out there in the dimensional void were things that could snuff out galaxies like candles, beings who played with time like it was silly putty, entities that would look at his "ultimate power" and laugh.
He'd seen them during his memory awakening in the crypt —things that had no names because names were too small to contain them. Their thoughts could collapse universes. Their dreams could rewrite history. Their nightmares could turn paradise into purgatory with a whisper.
The memory of them still made his new, godlike power feel fragile.
But that was fine. He wasn't staying where he was.
Raghoul pushed himself to his feet, the chaotic energy around him settling into a controlled spiral of destruction. The plan formed in his mind like a battle strategy written in fire.
He would first take this world apart piece by piece. Every village would burn. Every Kage would kneel or die. Every clan, every bloodline, every tradition—all of it would serve him or be ground into dust. The shinobi world would become his personal army, whether they liked it or not.
Then use his new slaves to harvest the dimensions. Hell's Portals would open like wounds in reality, and his forces would pour through like a plague. They'd strip every world bare—technology, knowledge, life force, whatever could make him stronger.
After ascend beyond godhood. With each conquered dimension feeding his power, he'd grow until those nameless horrors in the void looked up at him with something approaching respect.
"Hahaha" By just imagining it he could help but laugh his voice booming through the desert.
He'd be the first to achieve true omnipotence through the marriage of cursed flame and cosmic energy, forged in the crucible of pure, undiluted ambition.
The sky above cracked like an eggshell, reality bending to acknowledge what had just been born in this wasteland. When he opened his eyes, they blazed with red-gold fire—not human eyes anymore, but the gaze of something beyond such petty limitations.
He gestured, and the ground responded. Flame erupted in a perfect circle around him, and from that ring rose spires of black glass and charred stone, growing like maggots from the earth itself. The structure took shape—a fortress, a throne room, a monument to his own magnificence. All of it born from the Dragon Vein's heart, all of it screaming his name.
Fortress Zero. The first stronghold of his empire.
As the dark citadel finished forming around him, Raghoul spoke. His voice rolled across the glass plains like thunder, each word a promise of ending.
"Let them sharpen their little knives.
Let them gather their armies.
Let them pray to their worthless gods."
His smile was the grin of a shark that had just tasted blood in the water. "The age of shinobi is over. Today, I begin the age of harvesting and destruction."
Above him, the clouds parted to reveal not sky, but the void between worlds—infinite darkness punctuated by dying stars. One of them flickered and went out as if responding to his declaration, its light snuffed forever.
Raghoul's laughter echoed across the ruins, a sound like breaking glass and burning churches.
This was only the beginning.