The battlefield lay in ruins.

Chunks of scorched earth floated midair, suspended by residual chakra from the Ten-Tails' rampage. Screams echoed faintly in the distance, drowned beneath the oppressive silence that had descended. Everyone, shinobi, Edo Tensei, summoned beasts, froze as the Ten-Tails reared back, trembling violently.

Madara's cloak fluttered as he floated before it, a cruel smirk curling his lips.

"This time," he said, "there will be no vessel but me."

The Ten-Tails roared. Not in resistance, but submission.

With one swift motion, Madara extended both arms. Dark chakra coiled around him in ribbons, forming a funnel that drew the Ten-Tails inward. Its colossal form warped, compressed, and spiraled into Madara's body like a reversed explosion.

The sky turned black.

An eerie stillness followed, then an eruption.

Madara's body exploded with power. Bones realigned, his muscles restructured, skin shimmered like obsidian. Horns sprouted from his head, his hair lengthened into wild locks, and his single Rinnegan pulsed violently.

He had become the Jinchūriki of the Ten-Tails.

"Sage Mode…" Hashirama murmured, watching from afar. "No… something beyond."

Madara opened his eyes. The very air around him twisted. Gravity bent toward him like a god demanding worship.

"Now… let's see you stop this."He looked toward Sasuke and Naruto.

But before anyone could respond, the wind shifted.

A pulse of chakra spread across the battlefield, not from Madara, but from behind.

It was quiet at first. Subtle.

Then it built, layer upon layer, until the ground itself vibrated.

A beam of white light erupted from a fissure near the ruined battlefield's center, splitting the clouds in half. The Ten-Tails' energy trembled in response.

Out of the light stepped a single man.

Kakashi Hatake.

But not as they remembered.

His chakra was no longer shinobi-like. It wasn't even human. It was a radiant maelstrom, heavy with raw power, and the unyielding will of a soul that had consumed the Sage of Six Paths himself.

Black robes adorned with glowing red spirals trailed behind him. The Genesis Seal on his hand was open, now shaped like a complete wheel with six rotating rings.

Both of Kakashi's eyes now bore the Rinnegan, not the standard pale purple, but a deeper hue infused with six tomoe that slowly orbited each ripple. Within those eyes pulsed not just Hagoromo's power, but every ability Kakashi had ever mastered.

His Eternal Mangekyō techniques, Kamui, Kotoamatsukami, Shukujitsu, and Tensei, had been fused into the Rinnegan's matrix, creating a new class of ocular power: one that could bend space, time, mind, and soul.

When the tomoe aligned, the eyes shimmered with silver light, the Devourer's Rinnegan, a reflection of both divine legacy and evolution through force of will.

"That chakra…and those eyes…"Madara narrowed his eyes.

Kakashi looked at him, unblinking.

"You've become a god," Kakashi said. "Let's see how a god dies."

Gasps echoed across the battlefield. Even the reanimated shinobi, who had long forgotten fear, stood motionless. The very essence of the world seemed to bend toward Kakashi. Birds stopped mid-flight. Wind stilled. The Ten-Tails Jinchūriki, Madara Uchiha, felt the skin along his arms prickle.

"That's… Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto stepped back beside Sasuke, his eyes wide in shock.

"Yes. And he has become something else." Sasuke's Mangekyō whirled.

Kakashi stepped forward. Each footfall left glowing sigils burned into the earth, slowly fading after he passed. The power around him wasn't oppressive, but it demanded reverence. A gravity not of weight, but of meaning. Of origin.

"Hatake…" Madara growled. "What have you done?"

"I found the source," Kakashi said softly. "Then I consumed it."

"What nonsense are you speaking about ?" Madara's lip curled.

Kakashi slowly raised his right hand.

The swirling Genesis Seal on his palm pulsed once, releasing a breath of light.

Then

Crack.

A sound like glass breaking echoed, though nothing was visibly shattered.

Kakashi exhaled.

"That was the limiter," he muttered.

From his back, six black rods of chakra emerged, similar to Truth-Seeking staff segments, but each bore a different sigil. They rotated like satellites around him. His body glowed faintly gold.

Madara launched the first strike, hurling dozens of chakra rods, each carrying a gravitational seal meant to bind and tear.

Kakashi didn't move.

As the rods approached, they froze mid-air, then unraveled into tiny black motes, disintegrating into nothingness. The laws that governed them, gravity, form, and intention, were being rewritten in real time.

"What?" Madara blinked.

Kakashi answered by raising his finger.

"Concept Severance," he whispered.

He pointed at the sky.

Madara followed the motion, and saw his looming meteor descending. It was massive, a second version summoned in secret. Big enough to crush armies.

Kakashi flicked his finger.

The meteor, before it even touched the atmosphere, split apart at the concept level. Its "weight" ceased to exist. It fell as dust before it ever reached them.

"You're not human…" Madara's eyes trembled.

"Neither are you," Kakashi said as he lowered his hand.

And then he vanished.

In the span of a heartbeat, Kakashi crossed the battlefield and appeared in front of Madara, his hand forming a seal so strong even the Sage of Six Paths had only dreamed of it.

"Seal: Origin Spiral."

He struck Madara square in the chest.

The blast erupted, not outward, but inward. Madara's chakra folded, warped, and began to unravel from the center of his being. He screamed, slamming a Truth-Seeking Orb against Kakashi, forcing them apart.

Kakashi landed gracefully, unhurt.

Madara hunched, panting. His chest was smoking.

Naruto and Sasuke stared, stunned.

"That wasn't just ninjutsu… it was rewriting chakra at the source," Sasuke muttered

Kakashi raised his head.

He extended his hand again.

Madara raised his.

The two figures, Ten-Tails Jinchūriki and the Devourer of the Sage of Six Paths stood face to face.

The wind shifted.

Then they moved.

Both vanished in a flash of light, and…

BOOM!

The heavens split as their blows collided. Earth cracked for miles. The sky turned red from the backlash. Every shinobi, living and dead, was forced to the ground.

And above it all, the clash continued, one born of gods, and of the man who consumed one.

Naruto struggled to rise, pressing a hand to the cracked ground. "Sasuke! What the hell was that?"

"That… was the new apex." Sasuke pushed himself up, blood trickling from his temple.

They looked up in unison. High above, Kakashi and Madara were locked in combat. But this wasn't taijutsu or elemental warfare. This was something else entirely.

Each strike twisted the air. Colors bled from the sky, replaced by flashes of symbols and light. Time itself rippled around them, sometimes the two vanished for full seconds, only to reappear mid-clash with wounds already formed. Causality had begun to break.

"Is that what the world will become if either of them wins?"Hashirama, still kneeling some distance away, looked on in awe.

Minato appeared beside him. "That's no longer a fight between shinobi."

Suddenly, the air cracked open behind Naruto and Sasuke. A rift, thin, vertical, pulsing with white.

From within, a single hand stretched outward. Thin, pale, with elongated fingers.

"Another enemy?!" Sasuke turned instantly, his eyes glowing.

But the hand withdrew, and the rift sealed itself shut with a pop.

"What the hell was that?" Naruto frowned.

Far above, Kakashi faltered for the first time. His breath hitched. The Genesis Seal briefly dimmed.

Madara saw the hesitation. He lunged forward, launching an enormous rod of compressed truth-seeking energy.

Kakashi raised his palm again, but this time, the seal didn't respond immediately.

"Tch…"

He dodged instead, and for the first time, Madara landed a graze across Kakashi's ribs.

They skidded apart, breathing heavily.

Then

The clouds above parted violently.

A great light shone through. Not golden. Not divine. Something alien.

A presence watched.

And Kakashi felt it.

'Something has noticed me…'

He turned his head upward, just as the rift opened again.

Kakashi's body tensed. The Genesis Seal reacted instinctively, spinning faster, glowing brighter, like it recognized something beyond reality.

Even Madara paused, his Rinnegan narrowing at the sudden shift in the air.

A rift cracked open high above, spilling white light. But no one emerged.

Instead, a silhouette formed in the brilliance, shapeless, faceless, drifting in and out of existence. It had no eyes, no mouth, yet it watched. It judged.

Kakashi's pupils constricted.

It wasn't real.

It was not a being.

The will of the world itself was rebelling against what he had done.

By consuming Hagoromo's soul, completely, he had broken a law no mortal should even know existed. The afterlife twisted momentarily, showing him the consequences not through force… but through fear.

And then…

The rift was sealed.

The light vanished.

Only Kakashi remained, hovering silently in the sky, a god in human skin.

He exhaled shakily, and for a split second, something like uncertainty flickered in his eyes.

"Even now… the world flinches."

Then he turned toward Madara once more.