"Easy now. No need to get violent."
Gojo caught the teapot, guided the spilled tea back inside, and set it on the table as if nothing had happened.
"Betty doesn't want to see you in the Forbidden Library ever again."
She glared at the cup and pot he'd touched like they were contaminated, her voice cold enough to frost glass.
Same as the previous loop. One flick of her wrist and the door behind him swung open, ready to expel him.
Unfortunately for her, what Betty couldn't manage last time, she couldn't manage now either.
"Alright, alright. Save your energy."
He waved a hand, gesturing for her to stop after what had clearly been several exhausting minutes of futile effort.
"I'll sit for a bit and then I'm gone."
Short of genuine combat, she had no real way to deal with him, and they both knew it.
Betty stared at the shameless intruder, her small face scrunching into something resembling a steamed bun.
Once she settled down, Gojo crossed to where she stood and dropped to the floor beside her, legs folded.
"Betty, there's actually something I wanted to ask your opinion on."
"Don't call me Betty. Call me Beatrice. You and I are nowhere near that familiar."
"Funny how I've heard that before." He grinned. "Anyway, doesn't matter."
He waved it off, then let the grin fall away.
"Betty."
His eyes found hers, and there was nothing playful left in them.
"Does any magic in this world allow time to flow backward?"
"Your knowledge is as short as your lifespan, human."
She lifted her chin, looking down at him with four centuries of superiority packed into that tiny frame.
"I don't know where you picked up such a rumor, but no magic in this world can reverse time."
"None?"
He repeated the word quietly.
Her knowledge wasn't something he doubted. That much had been clear from their very first meeting in the previous loop. As a Great Spirit, Betty's lifespan stretched beyond anything human. More than that, she was the "daughter" of the Witch of Greed, one of the legendary witches of old, and the sheer volume of what she'd learned dwarfed anything an ordinary person could accumulate in a lifetime.
And then there were the centuries spent here, in this library, with nothing but the books for company. She'd devoured them all. If Betty said it didn't exist, it probably didn't.
She read the hesitation on his face and took it for disbelief.
"The closest thing to what you're describing would be Yin Attribute magic," she said, tone flat. "But the most it can achieve is freezing an individual's time in place. Reversal is out of the question entirely. And even temporal stasis at that level would require a Great Spirit of Betty's caliber..."
Gojo listened to her speak, then went quiet for a moment.
"I'm not questioning what you've told me."
"But, Betty."
"Speaking from personal experience... I just went through a Time Reversal."
The words left his mouth.
And everything stopped.
The world around him froze, as if someone had pressed pause on reality itself.
But that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was what he felt inside his own body.
Inside his chest.
A hand.
A hand formed from some kind of black energy. A woman's hand, its fingers wrapped around his heart.
His Infinity had been active the entire time. Moments ago, he hadn't sensed a single trace of anything, not Cursed Energy, not Mana, nothing.
Yet here it was. Appearing from nowhere. Sudden, grotesque, impossible to predict.
What is this?
Fingers tightened around his heart.
There was no panic. Not a flicker of it.
Instead, the Six Eyes turned inward, dissecting the energy that formed the hand, trying to understand what it was.
Under that scrutiny, the hand of black energy clenched hard.
Slender fingers erupted with horrifying force, crushing down on the organ they held.
Agony tore through him.
His expression didn't change. Not even a twitch of the brow.
Domain Expansion.
No hesitation. He opened his Domain without a second thought.
He hadn't sensed how the enemy appeared or where it came from. But inside the Domain, anything hiding in the dark would have nowhere left to run.
A low hum split the air.
Cursed Energy exploded outward from his body like a tidal surge, reweaving the space around him into something new, something that answered only to his will. Within its boundaries, every ripple of energy, every wrinkle in the fabric of space lay bare before him.
But this time, the Domain's suppressive force couldn't fully engulf the black hand.
The Six Eyes locked onto the dark energy inside his chest. In the pale blue of his irises, countless fine threads of Cursed Energy reflected like circuitry, mapping the structure of the intruder.
What he saw was neither Cursed Energy nor Mana.
It was closer to pure, annihilating nothingness. Energy particles twisting and devouring themselves in a frenzy, yet somehow condensing with surgical precision into the shape of a hand, locked tight around his heart.
Not sorcery. Not magic.
Not any energy I've encountered.
More like... something driven by will. An anomalous force with intent behind it.
Cursed Energy surged through the Domain at his command, splitting into countless gossamer threads that coiled toward the black hand, probing, trying to unravel its composition.
The threads dissolved on contact. Like ice touching boiling water, they vanished without so much as a ripple.
Through the Six Eyes' absolute perception, he could feel what lived inside that dark energy. Madness. Obsession. And beneath it all, a grief so vast and heavy it pressed against his chest like a physical weight.
The hand reacted to his probing as though provoked.
Those slender fingers clenched.
Delicate as they looked, the force behind them was catastrophic.
His heart couldn't withstand it.
A wet, muffled crack.
The organ burst apart in the hand's grip, crushed to pulp.
"Hmph."
He'd been trying to stop it. Every tool at his disposal, thrown at that grip.
None of it worked. Not a single thing slowed it down.
All he could do was watch as his own heart was ground to nothing.
The Domain shattered.
Gojo grunted, and blood spilled from his lips.
In the same instant, the frozen world around him lurched back into motion.
...
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