The Call Beyond Time
Moonlight filtered through the cracked window, casting fractured patterns across the worn tatami mats of Yuji Itadori’s modest apartment. The air hung heavy with the faint scent of incense and the distant hum of the city beyond. Outside, Tokyo’s neon veins pulsed with restless energy, yet inside this small sanctuary, stillness reigned—until an eerie disturbance shattered the silence.
Yuji’s eyes fluttered beneath closed lids, his breath steady in a meditative rhythm. At eighty-six, his body bore the marks of countless battles, but his countenance retained an unyielding vitality, as if time itself had spared him some secret grace. Yet tonight, his serenity fractured. A sudden shiver coursed through his spine, and the quiet was pierced by a voice that rolled through his consciousness like a tide from a distant, alien shore.
*“Yuji Itadori.”*
The summons was neither spoken aloud nor whispered; it unfolded within his mind, a presence so vast and incomprehensible that it seemed to encompass the very fabric of the cosmos. His body tensed, muscles coiling like a predator awakened from slumber. His fingers twitched, recalling the familiar weight of his blood manipulation, a power long…
