Choso didn't wait for Uraume to heal. He whipped both arms sideways.
The beam sheared the concrete out from under Kenjaku's feet. Kenjaku vaulted back into the ash, and Choso went after him, daggers of hardened blood punching him through the air, throwing a flurry of strikes the second he landed.
Kenjaku wove through all of it, still smiling. He caught a hook, turned his hip into it, and drove a kick into Choso's chest that sent him crashing into the crater floor.
"He's distracted!" Panda dropped into Gorilla core. "Move!"
He charged down the slope. Kamo drew back another arrow.
Below, Uraume lowered her ruined hand. Reverse Cursed Technique steamed around the wound, flesh knitting itself shut. Their eyes narrowed.
"Ice Formation. Frost Calm."
Mist rolled out across the crater floor, and everything it touched went still — Panda locked mid-stride in a shell of ice, Kamo's bow frozen solid in his hands, Choso buried under a glacier before he'd even finished pushing himself up.
Uraume raised a hand. A spear of ice condensed in the air, pointed at Choso's frozen skull.
"Die."
Yuji hit the ice first — torn uniform, blood, both boots driving into Choso's chest hard enough to shatter the shell around him and send them both tumbling clear as the spear buried itself in empty ground.
Uraume lowered their hand, staring at the crater floor where Yuji had just saved the Death Painting.
"Sukuna's vessel," Uraume's voice was frigid, cutting through the ash. "who do you think that body belongs to?"
Yuji scrambled up, spitting blood from his mouth. He shot a confused, desperate glare at Choso.
"Are you on our side or what?!"
"I am your older brother!" Choso declared, completely deadpan despite the blood pouring from his face.
Yuji grimaced. "What?"
Above them, the wind shrieked.
Momo Nishimiya dove from the ash-choked clouds, her blonde hair whipping violently as she swung her broom in a massive arc. "Wind Scythe!"
A razor-sharp blade of pressurized air sheared toward Uraume's neck. Uraume didn't even blink. The monk casually raised a hand, and the wind simply shattered into a harmless breeze against a sudden, localized wall of ice.
"You're the only ones left who can move!" Momo shouted down at Yuji and Choso. "Buy time for Utahime-sensei!"
Uraume raised both hands to the sky. The moisture above the crater seized, hardening into icicles the size of buildings until they blotted out the light.
"I only need Sukuna's vessel." Her voice never rose. "The rest of you can die. Icefall."
The ice never fell.
Maki crashed into her blind side.
A boot caught Uraume clean across the jaw, snapping her head sideways. Above the crater, the frozen spears shuddered, then burst apart into snow.
Uraume skidded back, a hand already rising.
Ren was on her before she could move.
His fist slammed into her ribs. Ice burst apart beneath the impact, shards spraying across the crater as she was driven backward.
She caught herself, blood gathering at the corner of her mouth.
"You monkeys—"
Playful Cloud came down before she could finish.
Maki vaulted from a slab of twisted rebar and brought the staff down with both hands. Uraume caught it, the ground splitting beneath her boots. Ren stepped into the opening, his heel cracking against the side of her knee.
They never let up.
Every opening vanished before Uraume could take it. One strike flowed into the next until she was forced to defend instead of fight.
A few yards away, Kenjaku watched his vanguard come apart.
His smile remained.
Only his eyes changed.
They stopped following the exchange and settled where Ren would be before he got there.
"Fascinating."
His voice barely carried over the groan of breaking ice.
"Toji Zen'in's shadow... cast twice across my board."
Ren moved.
He slipped beneath a sweeping blade of ice, planted his foot, grabbed Maki by the shoulder, and threw them both thirty feet clear.
Behind them, Uraume staggered, dragging in a ragged breath as blood ran down her chin.
She raised a hand to counter.
Ren beat her to it.
He lifted his own hand toward the clouds. There was no technique to think through this time—no forging temperature, no blueprint. He only wanted to pierce, and he poured every last unit of cursed energy into that single thought.
The air behind him split open.
Blue ripples spread across the sky, multiplying until they formed a halo nearly forty feet wide above the crater.
Kenjaku's smile finally faltered.
Weapons emerged from every ripple—broadswords, iron lances, tungsten spikes, glaives—until hundreds of blades hung motionless overhead, every point aimed at the earth.
Ren lowered his hand.
The sky came down with it.
The first impact cracked across the crater like thunder. Kenjaku reacted at once, slamming both palms into the ground. A glacier-thick dome of ice erupted around him and Uraume, but the barrage tore into it immediately. Steel carved through frozen walls. Tungsten punched clean through. Cracks raced across the barrier before the first heartbeat had passed.
He didn't wait for it to fail. Cursed spirits flooded from the air around him—armored beetles, serpents, twisting masses of flesh—throwing themselves over the collapsing dome in a desperate second layer of defense.
It barely slowed the storm.
Blades tore through flesh. Ice shrieked as it split apart. The ground softened beneath the endless impacts until, at last, the barrage ended.
Ren's arm fell to his side as the ripples faded from the sky. Dust drifted through the silence.
The glacier was gone.
Another crater lay in its place, littered with twisted steel. Uraume knelt at its center, blood running from a dozen cuts. Beside her, Kenjaku stood with a lance buried in his shoulder. He gripped the shaft, pulled it free with a wet sound, and let it clatter to the ground.
"I see," he said, meeting Ren's eyes. "I underestimated the depth of your reserves."
Dark, oil-slick cursed energy gathered around his palm—Mahito's technique, Idle Transfiguration.
"No more delays."
As he was about to do something footsteps crossed the wreckage.
Snow parted around a blonde woman in a leather jacket, a skeletal snake shikigami draped lazily across her shoulders. She ignored the destruction completely and stopped in front of Kenjaku, a grin already spreading across her face.
Yuki Tsukumo.
"So," she said, breaking the silence, "what kind of girls are you into?"