"You may call this one the Demon Ancestor."
Ōtsutsuki Kaguya spoke softly, yet the moment those words left her lips, her presence shifted completely.
If the Kaguya Naruto once knew had been cold and noble, like a distant celestial princess, then the being before him now was something entirely different.
A ruler of the night.
Domineering. Absolute. Unrestrained.
Naruto frowned slightly.
"What exactly is going on?"
"Who are you?"
"Are you still Kaguya… or something else?"
"And the End of Era Calamity. Do you know what it is?"
He asked everything at once, his questions pressing forward without pause.
Kaguya covered her lips and let out a soft laugh.
"Little one, such impatience is rare for someone like you."
Under the soft glow of the palace, her figure appeared even more alluring, her smile carrying an almost dangerous charm.
But Naruto paid no attention to it. His focus remained fixed on the truth.
Seeing that he had regained his composure, Kaguya's teasing expression faded.
"Since you have already discovered this much, I suppose there is no need to hide it any longer."
She looked at him calmly.
"This one is known among those old existences as the Demon Ancestor. What you see now… can be considered a form of revival."
"I left behind a fragment of my will within my bloodline long ago. The chance of awakening was extremely small. Even I did not expect it to succeed."
"And that child, Uchiha Madara… he awakened part of my power within his own bloodline as well."
Naruto's eyes narrowed slightly.
Kaguya continued without pause.
"I am Kaguya, and I am also the Demon Ancestor. Right now, my consciousness is a fusion of the two. I am her, and she is me… though in the end, I am simply myself."
Her voice was calm, but the weight behind it was immense.
Naruto fell silent.
Revival after death. The preservation of will across eras.
Was this the power of a True God?
Or was this what it meant to approach eternity?
The thought alone was enough to shake even him.
The Demon Ancestor spoke at length after that.
She did not just speak of one life, but of many. Of brilliance, struggle, and countless cycles. Along the way, she revealed fragments of the truth behind the End of Era Calamity.
Compared to the vague words spoken by Ōtsutsuki Shiki before his death, her explanation was far more complete.
And far more terrifying.
The truth was simple.
This world resets.
Every one hundred thousand years, the entire era is restarted.
To be precise, every one hundred thousand and eight years.
For a Demigod, that span roughly matched the limit of their lifespan. It sounded vast, but on a cosmic scale, it was insignificant.
This secret was known only to True Gods.
Only they could retain their memories when the world reset.
Even then, they could not preserve their cultivation. Each time, they were forced to start again, rebuilding their strength from the beginning.
However, with memory came advantage. Each cycle allowed them to grow faster than before.
Even so, they could never escape the cycle itself.
Some of the strongest beings among the great races would pass down fragments of this truth to their successors, hoping that one day, someone might break through the limitations and stand on equal footing with a True God.
Only then would there be a chance to resist the End of Era Calamity.
And the Demon Ancestor had once been one of those who tried.
Her true identity was not Kaguya alone, but an ancient prodigy of the Ōtsutsuki Clan. In a distant era, she had broken through her limits and stepped into the realm of a True God.
From that point onward, she devoted herself to one goal.
To defy the cycle.
Her talent had been extraordinary, surpassing even figures like Ōtsutsuki Amaterasu-shiki. But becoming a True God was never just about talent. Luck, timing, and fate all played their roles.
And in the end, her downfall came from arrogance.
She had attempted to confront something beyond even the cycle itself.
"Her."
But she failed.
Because she provoked that existence, her very being was erased. Only through the preparations she made across multiple eras did a fragment of her manage to return.
Naruto remained silent for a long time.
"So this… is the End of Era Calamity."
His voice was low.
A cycle of one hundred thousand and eight years.
To individuals, it was eternity.
To civilizations, it was nothing more than a single revolution in the vast cosmos.
The shinobi world itself had likely existed far longer in terms of matter and structure, yet every living being within it had been trapped in this endless cycle.
Some forces had existed since the very beginning of each era, even carrying fragments of memory across resets.
The implications were terrifying.
Everything could be erased.
Everything could return.
All struggles, all victories, all destruction… meaningless in the face of a reset.
This was why beings like the Demon Ancestor sought to break free.
To achieve true eternity.
Because without it, all races were nothing more than illusions within an endless loop.
Even total annihilation meant nothing.
When the era restarted, everything would return to its original state.
And before the Demon Ancestor made her final attempt to confront that unknown existence, she had already prepared her escape.
Across several cycles, she had laid down the foundation for her revival.
A final path of retreat.
A chance to return.
However, she had not awakened in the very next era.
Only now had she finally returned.
Even she did not know how much time had passed. What she could confirm, however, was that this was no longer the era immediately following her fall, but one separated by an unknown number of cycles.
At some point in the distant past, several True Gods had descended and devised a grand plan.
They spread the truth of the End of Era Calamity across the entire universe.
Their goal was simple.
To test whether the combined power of all life in the universe could break the limits of the cycle.
It was an experiment.
A desperate one.
But the moment that truth was revealed, everything spiraled out of control.
Countless beings fell into madness.
Order across the universe collapsed almost overnight, and war erupted between all races. What followed was chaos on an unimaginable scale.
Some civilizations began developing terrifying weapons.
Weapons that surpassed the Demigod realm, yet still fell short of the True God level.
These creations carried immense destructive power, capable of devastating entire star regions.
And yet, they were meaningless.
They could not break the End of Era Calamity.
They could not even reach "Her."
All they accomplished was accelerating the destruction of the universe itself.
After witnessing the consequences, the True Gods abandoned this path.
Revealing such truths to those who had not reached a sufficient level did not bring hope.
It only brought ruin.
The experiment had failed.
The path of relying on the masses was proven to be unviable.
From then on, the True Gods turned their attention elsewhere.
During their long observation of countless worlds, they discovered something unusual about the shinobi world.
At first glance, its people seemed no different from others across the universe.
But over time, anomalies began to appear.
Certain individuals would emerge whose lives deviated completely from the norm.
Their growth, their choices, even their destinies were fundamentally different.
These individuals attracted the attention of the True Gods.
They were observed for countless years.
And eventually, the truth was uncovered.
Some of them possessed something called a system.
A power that did not belong to them.
A foreign mechanism that granted rapid growth and unimaginable advantages.
At first, such individuals seemed extraordinary.
But in the face of the End of Era Calamity, they were the most fragile of all.
When the cycle reset, the system disappeared.
And with it, everything they relied on vanished.
What remained was their true self.
And that was often… underwhelming.
It was as if they had been using something they were never meant to have.
Like cheating in a game.
And when detected, they were punished.
Stripped of everything.
Exposed for what they truly were.
There were, of course, rare exceptions.
A handful of individuals remained powerful even after losing their systems.
But even they could not escape the cycle.
In front of the End of Era Calamity, all beings were equal.
No one had ever broken it.
No one had ever escaped the endless reincarnation of eras.
The entire universe was like a game.
A closed system governed by unseen rules.
And the one who controlled it all…
They could only refer to as "Her."
...
Note:
I've decided to do a small chapter dump to compensate for the delay in uploads. I'll try to keep updates daily or at least semi-regular from now on until we finish the story here.
Also, this work is already complete on Patr/on. Head over there if you want to read it all at once!