The notebook exploded in a flash of heat and smoke.
Izuku blinked.
'Wait. What?'
His vision swam. The world tilted sideways for half a second, then snapped back into focus with brutal clarity.
He was staring at his own hand.
Small. Scarred. Shaking.
'Oh. Oh no.'
The smell of burnt paper hit him. Bitter. Chemical. The edges of his hero analysis notebook were still smoking as it sailed past his head and out the open window.
"You really think they'll let a quirkless loser into U.A.?"
Bakugou's voice.
Izuku turned his head slowly.
Katsuki Bakugou. Blonde. Angry. Palms crackling with residual nitroglycerin sweat.
'Holy shit. I'm in My Hero Academia.'
The thought arrived with perfect, horrifying certainty.
He wasn't supposed to be here.
He was supposed to be—where? Home? Work? The memory was already fading like smoke through his fingers.
All he knew was that thirty seconds ago, he'd been *someone else.*
And now he was Izuku Midoriya.
Fourteen years old. Quirkless. Powerless.
Except.
Except he could feel *something* coiled in his chest. Cold. Vast. Patient.
Something that didn't belong to this body.
"Oi. Deku."
Bakugou stepped closer, his signature sneer plastered across his face. Two other students flanked him—extras whose names Izuku didn't even bother trying to remember.
'Seriously? Are we doing the bully scene right now?'
He looked at Bakugou.
Not with fear.
With the kind of mild irritation you'd reserve for a stranger walking too slowly in front of you at the grocery store.
"If you really want to be a hero that bad, there actually might be another way."
Bakugou leaned in, grinning like he'd just told the world's funniest joke.
"Just pray you'll be born with a quirk in your next life, and take a swan dive off the roof."
Silence.
The two lackeys laughed nervously.
Izuku just stared.
'Did this man-child really just tell a middle schooler to kill himself?'
His face remained blank.
No tears. No shaking. No stammering apology.
Bakugou's grin faltered.
"What? You deaf now, Deku?"
Izuku turned away without a word.
He walked toward the door.
The classroom went silent.
Even Bakugou seemed caught off guard.
"Hey! I'm talking to you—"
"I'm getting my notebook."
His voice came out flat. Disinterested.
He didn't look back.
***
The koi pond was behind the school building, tucked between the gym and the old equipment shed.
Izuku found his notebook floating face-down in the water, pages bloated and ruined.
He crouched at the edge and fished it out.
Water dripped through his fingers. The ink had bled into illegible smears.
'Great. Ten months of hero analysis, gone.'
He squeezed the cover, and murky pond water dribbled out.
That's when he felt it.
A pull.
Not physical. Deeper than that.
It was like standing next to a freezer with the door open. A bone-deep cold that didn't come from the air.
He looked down into the water.
Three koi fish floated belly-up near the algae-covered rocks. Dead for days, judging by the pale, bloated skin.
Dozens of drowned insects littered the surface.
And he could *feel* them.
Not see. Not hear.
*Feel.*
They were hollow. Empty. Waiting.
'No way.'
His heart started pounding.
He'd read enough isekai trash to know what this was.
'No way. No fucking way.'
He knelt at the water's edge and stretched his hand toward the largest koi fish.
The cold presence in his chest stirred.
It wasn't asking permission.
It was *awake.*
Izuku whispered the word before he even realized he was speaking.
"Arise."
***
The temperature dropped ten degrees in an instant.
The water rippled.
The dead fish twitched.
Then it *moved.*
Not like a living creature.
Like a puppet with invisible strings.
Its body lifted out of the water, suspended in midair, dripping black ichor that evaporated into smoke before it hit the ground.
Its eyes glowed a faint, sickly blue.
Izuku's breath caught.
'Holy shit. It actually worked.'
The fish hovered in front of him, weightless and wrong.
A shadow.
A soldier.
His soldier.
And then the pain hit.
***
It started in his fingertips.
A burning cold that shot up his wrist, through his forearm, and into his shoulder like someone had injected liquid nitrogen directly into his veins.
His bones *screamed.*
Izuku gasped.
The shadow fish flickered and dissolved into black mist.
His arm buckled.
*Crack.*
The sound was wet. Sickening.
He collapsed onto his side, clutching his right forearm as white-hot agony tore through his nervous system.
'Ohhhhh my god—'
His vision blurred.
He could feel it now.
The power.
The Shadow Monarch's authority.
It was *massive.*
And his body—this weak, fourteen-year-old, quirkless body—couldn't handle even a fraction of it.
Raising one dead fish had fractured his radius.
'Okay. Okay. New plan.'
He forced himself to sit up, cradling his broken arm against his chest.
Sweat dripped down his face.
His hand was already swelling.
'I need to get stronger. Way stronger.'
Not quirk training.
Physical training.
If his body was the vessel, he needed to forge it into something that could contain this power without shattering like glass.
He looked down at his trembling, useless arm.
Then he smiled.
It hurt.
But for the first time since waking up in this world, he felt something other than confusion.
He felt *possibility.*
'Alright, Izuku. Time to hit the gym.'
He stood, wobbling slightly, and started walking toward the school nurse's office.
Behind him, the koi pond was perfectly still.
But the cold presence in his chest was still there.
Waiting.
Hungry.
TO BE CONTINUED