Jujutsu Kaisen: Tickless

Chapter 17: The Timeline That Screamed

Timeframe: Two days after Akira's containment.

Location: Global — Tokyo, Kyoto, Sendai, Osaka, and all known cursed hotspots.

It started in Shibuya.

A schoolgirl collapsed mid-step, coughing blood that turned to ash in her palms. Her heart stopped for five minutes — then restarted.

Doctors claimed "post-seizure shock." But when she woke up, she whispered:

"I burned alive... in a house I've never seen."

It spread like a ripple.

Kyoto: A jujutsu scout was found sobbing in a temple alley, repeating the name of a brother he never had.

Osaka: A street vendor was seen convulsing in his booth — later mumbling that he "choked on sand during a desert war."

Sendai: Three second-grade sorcerers died in their sleep — autopsies showed injuries they never sustained in this life. One had bite marks on their brainstem.

The world blinked—

—and started remembering what never happened.

Tokyo HQ – Command Hall

Gojō stared at the report wall — it now looked like a war room. Pins. Timelines. Fracture points.

"This isn't just a curse," Ijichi said. "It's not spreading like CE contamination. It's… cognitive. Chrono-memetic."

Shoko leaned in. "Victims are experiencing deaths from alternate timelines. Timelines where they died. Where the world ended."

Gojo's smile dropped.

Meanwhile: Somewhere Between Time

Kenjaku stood barefoot at the edge of the Anchor Womb, which now floated in a cursed spatial loop — a time-locked fragment of a failed Domain that never finished collapsing.

He spoke to no one. Or maybe to the womb.

"This is the gift of broken seconds," he said softly. "History unthreaded."

Then louder:

"Let time eat itself."

The Symptoms Escalated

Children spoke in ancient dialects

Cursed spirits emerged from people's shadows — ones not born of fear, but of forgotten lives

Non-sorcerers began using techniques in dreams

Temples melted. Clocks ran backwards. Graves unearthed themselves

It wasn't just Japan. Tibet. Mongolia. Sichuan. Cambodia.

Anyplace layered with veils of old timelines—they all screamed.

Momo Nishimiya (On Route to Tokyo)

The train shook. She stood, clinging to the handrails as a passenger across from her began aging in reverse, screaming until he was a fetus — then vanished in a shimmer of cursed energy.

Momo bit her tongue to keep from vomiting.

"He wasn't supposed to be here," she whispered.

Her phone buzzed. Kido's message:

"You're now his anchor."

Inside the Containment Cell

Akira stood face-to-face with one of his Echoes.

This one had Junko's eyes. Her voice. Her posture.

But it wasn't her.

"You left me behind," it said softly.

He didn't answer.

Another echo emerged. Then another. The room filled with them — each shaped by a second that never returned. One with burn marks. One that limped. One whose face was... Kenjaku's?

No.

It wore Kenjaku's face.

"How long before we all come back?" it asked.

Akira's hands trembled. Blood dripped from his nose.

"None of this is real," he whispered.

The one with Junko's voice smiled.

"Neither are you."

Tokyo Jujutsu High – Morgue, Underground Lab

Shoko leaned over an autopsy table, gloves stained crimson. Another body delivered from Kyoto — a second-grade sorcerer who died mid-sleep, body untouched, organs imploded.

"Third one this week," she muttered, scalpel poised. "No cursed signature. No external wounds. Just... rupture."

She made the first incision.

The lungs hissed. Not bled. Hissed.

She paused.

Steam rose from the body like fog in reverse — and from the inside of the chest cavity, a child's voice whispered.

"You let me die again."

Shoko backed up.

The voice came from the heart. She turned to the monitor — no vitals. No heartbeat. The brain was dead. The jaw had been sewn shut.

Then the mouth unsewed itself.

The corpse sat up.

Its eyes opened — but not the sorcerer's. These were Akira's eyes.

"We all remember her scream," it whispered. "But you only remember the blood."

Shoko's cursed scalpel slipped from her hand.

The corpse slumped back. Still. Dead. All vitals read zero again.

Silence.

Then a crack rang through the morgue.

The autopsy lights shattered.

All clocks on the wall spun backward, hands stuttering like panic attacks.

From the cold room, behind 20 body lockers, something knocked. Once. Twice. Three times.

A whisper from the shadows:

"Tell Akira... it's not just echoes anymore."

Shoko exhaled raggedly. Then lit a cigarette with shaking fingers.

"I need a drink," she muttered. "Or a fucking exorcism."