Gojo Satoru had just started to enjoy the quiet.
A rare win.
Feet kicked up on the window ledge of an admin office he technically wasn't allowed in, half a bag of spicy rice crackers in his lap, and his blindfold tugged halfway down so one eye could squint at the glowing Tokyo skyline.
He popped a cracker into his mouth and chewed lazily.
"Not bad," he mumbled, crunching. "Almost peaceful."
Then it hit him.
A flicker—no, a rupture.
Not explosive. Not loud. Just… wrong. Like the world had blinked and something had stepped through during the half-second no one was watching.
He sat up, foot slipping off the desk with a soft thud. The bag of crackers toppled to the floor.
The pulse hadn't come from cursed energy. Not exactly. It hadn't been fueled by fear, hate, or any of the messy emotions that gave curses their teeth.
But it hadn't been normal, either.
He tilted his head.
That wasn't just strong.
It was foreign.
He sighed dramatically and stood up, brushing crumbs from his lap.
"Can't even snack in peace anymore," he muttered, already gone.
He streaked across the night like a whisper in a hurricane, air bending around him as he moved—faster than light should tolerate, faster than anything had the right to be. His coat snapped behind him like a cape he definitely didn't need but absolutely wore on purpose.
The sensation led him east—rural, empty forest east. The kind of east where old people lived quietly, young people left quickly, and no cursed activity ever made the news.
Which made it the perfect place for something unnatural to be born.
He landed gently on a rain-slick road that hadn't seen traffic in months, maybe years. Trees arched over both sides, and in the middle of the cracked asphalt—
"Oh?" Gojo said, his voice lifting like a curious child peeking into a forbidden drawer. "Well, you're new."
There it floated.
A perfect black sphere, small enough to cradle in both hands but radiating an aura that brushed his senses like gravity trying to hold its breath. Thin golden rings rotated around it, moving too slowly to be random. Purposeful. Controlled. Beautiful, if he were being honest.
He crouched, elbows on knees, and gave it a once-over.
No cursed energy. No malice. No decay. No trace of the usual filth that soaked into cursed wombs or tainted relics.
But there was power.
Clean. Dense. Still humming faintly in the air like the aftermath of lightning.
Gojo whistled low and slow. "You're definitely not one of ours."
He touched the road with one gloved hand and frowned.
Blood.
Fresh.
Not a little, either. Enough to paint someone's ribs, maybe soak into the back of their shirt. There were drag marks. Struggles. Someone had bled here—and not in a graceful, cinematic way. The pain must've been real.
But they'd survived.
Because he didn't see a body.
And the pulse he'd felt back in Tokyo hadn't been an attack. It had been an act of desperation.
A burst of something unshaped, uncontrolled. A defensive response.
Gojo rose to his full height, hands slipping into his coat pockets. "So… not a curse. Not a tool. Not a technique. Just some scared little somebody screaming for their life and tearing a hole in the sky while doing it."
He chuckled. "I respect that."
Still, there was tension pulling at the back of his neck.
Someone had used this. Or become this. Without knowing what they were doing. Without training. Without anyone noticing until it was already done.
He looked at the orb again.
It didn't react.
Didn't float toward him. Didn't glow. Just hung there, still and perfect and patient.
A lot like him, once.
His fingers curled slightly in his pockets.
What worried him wasn't the presence of the orb. It was the fact that someone had made it—triggered it—and left it hanging in the world like a question with no punctuation.
Gojo sighed again, louder this time, like it might chase away the uncertainty. "Yaga's gonna hate this."
He pulled out his phone, stared at it, then put it away.
The elders would overreact. He could already hear it.
"Contain it!"
"Exorcise the anomaly!"
"Destroy the threat!"
No thanks.
This wasn't a threat.
Not yet.
But it was something new.
And Gojo Satoru, strongest sorcerer alive, didn't believe in killing questions before they had a chance to speak.
He turned in place, scanning the forest with his Six Eyes. No trace of the person who'd been here. No cursed signature to follow. Only residue.
Which meant whoever they were… they were alone, confused, and possibly bleeding out in the woods right now.
He smirked.
"Well," he said to the orb, "if you're listening, mystery kid… congratulations. You got my attention."
The sphere pulsed.
Not visibly. Not dramatically. Just enough for him to notice.
The pressure shifted. The air tilted. A soft breath of something that didn't belong in the jujutsu world whispered along his senses.
Gojo grinned wide behind his blindfold.
"You're gonna be fun."
And then, in a breath of wind and folding space, he was gone.