Chapter 57: “The Door Finally Opens”

The sky split without warning.

It was not lightning. It was not magic exploding. It was as if reality itself had been pulled apart, a long vertical tear opening above the city, stretching from cloud to cloud. On one side, the familiar blue of the human world trembled. On the other, something dark and wrong pressed through, leaking black mist and distorted light.

Gojo felt it before he saw it.

His chest burned. Not pain, but pressure. Like a hand closing around his heart.

“So… this is it,” he whispered.

Around him, alarms screamed. People pointed upward, panic spreading through the streets as shadows twisted where buildings stood. Lamp posts bent at impossible angles. The air grew heavy, cold, then unbearably hot all at once.

Spirit realms were overlapping.

“This is bad,” Arashi said, wind flickering around his feet as he struggled to stay grounded. “This is really bad.”

Raika’s hair crackled with uncontrolled sparks. “This level of distortion shouldn’t be possible. Not unless—”

Unless the seal was breaking.

A laugh echoed across the fractured sky.

Slow. Amused. Certain.

The black mist gathered, thickening until a figure stepped forward, boots touching nothing as if the air itself supported him. Tall. Cloaked in corrupted spirit energy. His eyes glowed a deep violet, sharp and knowing.

“Good evening,” he said. “Or is it morning? Time gets confusing when doors open.”

Hikami’s flames flared violently. “Rakhara.”

He bowed slightly, mockingly polite. “Fire Princess. Thunder Noble. Wind brute. Snow children. Flower maiden.”

His gaze settled on Gojo.

“And the key.”

The air screamed.

Behind Rakhara, something massive shifted. A crack spread across the sky, jagged and glowing with sickly light. From within it came a presence so heavy it made Gojo’s knees buckle.

The Evil God Fairy’s seal.

It wasn’t fully broken.

But it was no longer whole.

Black veins crawled across the裂, pulsing like a heartbeat.

Hiyori grabbed Gojo’s sleeve, trembling. “G-Gojo-kun… people—”

He looked down.

Cars had stopped mid-road, frozen in warped gravity. Civilians were trapped inside distorted space pockets, screaming silently as spirit pressure crushed around them. The overlap was tearing the world apart slowly, methodically.

Rakhara spread his arms. “Behold. The world that refused its god finally remembering fear.”

“Stop this,” Gojo said, voice shaking but loud. “This isn’t what you want.”

Rakhara smiled. “Oh, it is exactly what I want. The Evil God will awaken, and balance will be restored. Through control.”

“You’re killing people,” Gojo snapped.

“Not yet,” Rakhara replied calmly. “That depends on you.”

The pressure spiked.

Gojo cried out as power surged inside him, wild and violent. The Spirit God responded to the threat instinctively, light bursting from his body in unstable waves.

The裂 trembled.

“No!” Mizuki shouted. “If it resonates with the seal, it will accelerate the collapse!”

Gojo clenched his fists, forcing his breathing to slow. Images flooded his mind. The Spirit God’s core. Endless cycles. Previous vessels consumed by choice and regret.

“I can’t let it react,” he muttered.

He stepped forward.

Every fairy turned toward him.

“What are you doing?!” Arashi yelled.

Gojo closed his eyes.

Instead of pushing power outward, he pulled it inward, compressing it, grounding it the way Mizuki had taught him. The light around him dimmed, then stabilized, spreading outward in a controlled wave.

The裂 stopped growing.

The screams faded.

Trapped civilians fell back into normal space, collapsing but alive.

The overlap didn’t disappear.

But it stabilized.

Rakhara’s smile faded for the first time.

“…Interesting,” he said quietly.

Gojo opened his eyes, exhausted, sweat dripping down his face.

“I can hold it,” he said. “Not forever. But long enough.”

Hikami stared at him, shock and something like fear in her eyes. “Gojo… if you keep doing this—”

“I know,” he replied. “This isn’t sustainable.”

Rakhara laughed again, sharper this time. “You see? Even now, you protect a world that would never accept what you are.”

Gojo met his gaze.

“I’m not protecting the world,” he said. “I’m protecting people.”

Rakhara’s eyes narrowed. “You still think running away is an option?”

Gojo looked at the裂 in the sky. At the trembling seal. At the girls standing behind him, refusing to step back.

Then he shook his head.

“No,” he said softly. “It isn’t.”

He straightened, planting his feet firmly against the cracked ground.

“If this door opened because of me,” Gojo said, light flaring steadily from his body, “then I’ll be the one who closes it.”

Above them, the Evil God Fairy stirred.

And the final battle began moving forward.