Chapter Text
The night sky was red again.
Not the warm red of sunset—no one remembered what that looked like anymore—but the sharp, metallic red of a wound that refused to close. Tokyo hadn’t seen a real sunrise in years. Cursed energy clotted the air so thickly that light had to fight its way through, and it always lost.
Yuuji pulled his hood lower, obscuring his face as he moved soundlessly across the fractured street. Concrete crunched beneath his boots, and somewhere far off, a curse howled—a long, low, hungry sound that seemed to vibrate inside his bones.
He didn’t flinch.
This was normal now.
He passed through a former residential block, now nothing but skeletal frames of buildings. Wind blew through busted windows, carrying scraps of paper and the smell of damp rot. Human footsteps had long vanished from this place; only curses walked here.
It was perfect for scavenging.
He slipped inside a half-collapsed corner store he saw the day before, flashlight off, senses awake. The shelves were overturned, the floor buried under debris—shattered glass, empty cans, broken plastic. Still, there were always surprise pockets of untouched supplies in a world this dead.
He crouched, prying open a rusted cabinet. His breath fogged the cold air, the only sign that he was still alive.
Still alive when so many weren’t.
His fingers brushed something metallic. A can. Two. Three. Maybe five. His heart tightened. Good. Enough for a few days.
But then a faint clicking sound echoed from behind him.
Yuuji exhaled through his nose. “Not now…”
He turned.
A curse slithered from the ceiling, limbs too long, skin folding wrong in too many places. Its eyes—if the black slits counted as eyes—widened the moment it saw him.
“The vessel…” it crooned, voice scratching like stone on stone.
Yuuji felt his shoulders tense beneath the worn fabric of his hoodie.
“I’m not in the mood.”
The curse lunged.
Yuuji’s fist met its face with a sickening crack. The creature’s head snapped back, body whipping into a shelf. Another curse dropped from above; he grabbed it mid-air and slammed it into the ground, dust rising.
The third one froze where it clung to a broken light fixture. Its gaze crawled over him.
“His scent…” it whispered, trembling with excitement or fear, Yuuji couldn’t tell. “It’s still there. Lord Suku—”
Yuuji crushed its skull before it could finish.
Silence.
Then dust again.
He waited for the air to clear before lifting his pack. His hands didn’t shake. They hadn’t shaken in years.
But his jaw tightened.
“No matter where I go,” he muttered to no one, “you damn monsters still sniff me out.”
He stepped back into the empty city.
⸻
The school barrier shimmered faintly as he approached. Once, Tokyo Jujutsu High had been a fortress of promise and discipline. Now it was simply a fortress. The old stone walls were patched with talismans and blood marks, stitched together with countless hours of work.
Tokyo Jujutsu High hummed with layered protections: Tengen’s ancient foundation, reinforced by Yaga’s cursed engineering, Choso’s blood reinforcement, and Yuuji’s raw cursed energy.
Over the years, the three of them had bent their lives around learning how to anchor and strengthen Tengen’s craft. It had taken months just to understand the basics. Years to execute it well.
Once, the barrier existed to hide the school.
Now it exists to allow it to survive.
Even curses who knew where the school stood crashed against its walls and dissolved like insects into flame.
It held.
Barely.
Yuuji pressed two fingers to the talisman-covered entrance arch. “Tengen, it’s me.”
The barrier gave a soft hum as it recognized him. It flickered—just briefly—then let him through.
Immediately, he felt the difference.
Inside was warmer. Softer. Human.
There were people clustered around makeshift fires: former students, elderly civilians, small families that had stumbled inside with nothing but desperation to guide them. Some nodded to Yuuji as he passed; some simply watched him with tired gratitude, like he was a familiar lighthouse in an endless storm.
He didn’t smile back even though he wanted to. Couldn’t.
Choso spotted him first from the courtyard, kneeling next to a busted water purifier. His long hair was tied back messily, and he had oil smudges on his cheek.
“You’re late,” his brother said quietly.
Yuuji dropped the pack into his hands. “Found enough for a week.”
Choso’s lips twitched. For him, that was a grin. “You’ve worked hard, brother.”
A door slid open behind them before Yuuji could say something.
Yaga stepped out, rubbing his temples. His once-imposing posture had bent slightly with years of burden. He looked older now—not because of time, but because of everything time had taken.
“Yuuji. We need to talk.” Long was forgotten the honorifics between them and all of them were on a first name basis, they needed the comfort.
Yuuji stiffened. “About what? I brought the food—”
“Not the food.” Yaga’s voice softened. “You.”
Yuuji exhaled sharply. “Not this again.”
“You haven’t slept.”
“I slept.”
“Three hours in the last forty-eight isn't sleep.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
Yuuji’s irritation flared. “Yaga, I said I’m—”
“Come inside.”
Yaga’s tone left no room for argument.
Inside the old faculty room, Shoko leaned over a cot, cleaning the burns on an unconscious man’s arm. She barely glanced up.
“You’re back early,” she muttered. “Good. I need more steri-strips.”
“I brought some,” Yuuji said, setting another small pouch on the table.
Shoko’s shoulders sagged with tired relief. “You’re a saint.”
Yaga cleared his throat. “Yuuji.”
Yuuji looked at him, jaw tight.
“You need to rest,” Yaga said firmly. “We all do, but especially you. You go out more than anyone. You fight more than anyone. You scout. You maintain the outer barrier with Tengen every morning and night. You cannot continue like this.”
Yuuji’s hands curled into fists.
“Then who will?” he snapped. “You? Shoko? My brother? They’re all relying on us—humans, sorcerers, everyone, you three need to stay here, I’m not. You want me to sit around? Pretend everything’s normal? We’re barely hanging on, Yaga! Nine years! Nine years of running, hiding, burying bodies, strengthening barriers every damn second of the day!”
His voice cracked.
“Nine years… and nothing. No progress. No plan. No hope. Something out there has to help us. Something has to exist. I can’t just—rest.”
The room went painfully quiet.
Shoko paused with her medical tools, gaze softening. Choso stepped in quietly, watching his brother with concern.
Yaga sighed.
“We are making progress,” he said gently. “It hasn’t happened quickly. Neither dramatically. But we’re keeping people alive, son. That matters.”
“It’s not enough,” Yuuji whispered. “Not when we know who’s out there.”
Who rules out there.
Sukuna’s existence pressed on them all like a suffocating fog.
Choso touched Yuuji’s shoulder. “Little brother… you’re carrying too much. But you shouldn’t have to, not alone.”
Yuuji pulled away, knowing they were right, but he needed the burden on himself. He didn’t know what to do without it.
“I’m not carrying enough.”
He turned and walked out before any of them could answer.
⸻
The warehouse greeted him with darkness and cold.
Yuuji slipped inside, closing the metal door behind him. The air smelled of old dust and older secrets. He turned on his small flashlight and swept the beam across crates stacked higher than his head.
He had searched this place a hundred times.
A thousand even.
For cursed tools. Scrolls. Objects. Anything.
And every night, he returned. Because doing nothing felt like dying. He had opened thousands and thousands of doors, for years, every night going deeper and deeper.
Tonight, he headed even deeper than usual—toward the forgotten far corner where even Shoko didn’t like to go because “the air feels weird,” in her words.
He slowed when he felt it.
A faint pressure.
Like the air thickened around him.
His skin prickled.
“What…?”
Hidden behind a row of crates was a wall he’d never noticed. Not a normal wall—one laced with an ancient barrier. It shimmered faintly under his flashlight like frost catching the light.
Yuuji reached out.
The instant his fingers touched it, the barrier collapsed without a sound.
Behind it stood a small stone pedestal.
On top of it: a smooth, black orb with veins of gold running through it like cracks of frozen lightning.
It pulsed once.
Yuuji’s breath hitched.
The air shifted. The orb flickered, reacting to his presence—no, to his cursed energy. Light crawled across the ground, forming a circle of sigils he didn’t recognize.
Then, from the center of that circle, the air folded in on itself.
A figure stepped out.
Tall. Thin. Dressed in flowing fabric that moved like water. Its face was hidden behind a mask of shifting geometric lines, constantly rearranging.
Yuuji stumbled backward, raising his fists.
“W-What are—?”
“Do not fear,” the being said, its voice layered like many speaking at once. “You have awakened me. Long have I waited.”
Yuuji swallowed hard. “For what?”
“For the traveler who seeks to change a broken fate.”
The orb on the pedestal pulsed again.
Yuuji’s heartbeat echoed in his ears.
“What… is this?” he whispered.
“A gate,” the being said. “A guide. A key. It goes by many names. But you may call it the Traveler’s Ally.”
The words sunk into Yuuji’s skin like cold water.
The being stepped closer.
Not in a threatening way—simply present.
“You carry despair,” it murmured. “Loss. Regret. Nine years of unanswered questions.”
Yuuji’s breath hitched.
“How do you know? Who are you?” he whispered.
“I can see it through your cursed energy, everything is right there. And I am a memory of an ancient era. A guardian of the path between times."
Its hand hovered over the orb.
“This artifact bends time. But only for those willing to pay the cost.”
Yuuji’s pulse spiked.
This couldn’t—
Time travel couldn’t—
“Cost?” he asked, voice thin.
“Something precious,” the being said, mask tilting. “No path can be rewritten freely. What you seek… demands sacrifice.”
The warehouse felt colder suddenly.
The world felt smaller.
Yuuji stared at the orb.
At the being.
At the possibility.
“Sacrifice something precious…”
The being nodded slowly.
Yuuji exhaled, the sound trembling.
“This is it,” he whispered. “This is our chance.”
The being’s mask glowed softly.
“Come back here where you are ready to change your fate.”