The pale white moon enlightened my path as I sped out of the forest, my body moving at blinding speeds, saying goodbye to the only home I had known since I woke up in this strange world.
My feet propelled me farther and farther, following a dirt trail. I had finally made it out of the forest.
Excitement bubbled under my skin, the scent of people—real people—drifting in on the night breeze. My eyes locked onto the silhouette of a rural, backwater town resting in the valley ahead.
Aokusa.
It looked like something plucked out of a forgotten photo album. Weathered rooftops. Dim lanterns. Silence hanging in the air like fog. A place too small to matter and too isolated to be missed.
It was the kind of place where everyone knew each other, and strangers didn't go unnoticed.
Which is why I didn't walk in through the front.
Instead, I slipped between the trees, circling the perimeter like a wolf stalking livestock. I moved in silence, my breath calm, my steps light. I clung to the shadows, ducking low as I scaled a short concrete fence and entered through the town's edge—where the lights didn't reach, where no one bothered to look.
I found shelter in an abandoned shed behind a half-collapsed greenhouse. The wooden slats were damp, the floor covered in dirt and broken tools. But it was shelter.
And I didn't need comfort.
I pried open a rotted trapdoor and discovered a narrow root cellar below. The air was stale and musty, but it would do. I slipped down into the pit, closed the door above me, and crouched in the dark.
No one had seen me.
No one would.
Up above, I could hear the world breathing. A crying infant. A kettle whistling. Faint voices murmuring in houses.
Someone coughed violently three houses down—wet, ragged, gasping for breath.
I grinned. Sick. Weak. Fragile.
It was nearing midnight. The town had gone still.
Crickets sang outside. A dog barked once, then fell silent.
I waited beneath the floorboards of that rotting shed, crouched low like a spider in its nest, until even the wind had stopped moving. Then, I rose.
I moved through the shadows, slipping between buildings like a whisper.
Then I saw it—her.
A young woman, alone, seated by her window. Maybe late teens. A fan hummed beside her as she flipped through a tattered notebook, scribbling. Studying. I couldn't tell. But she seemed focused. Dedicated. Isolated.
Perfect.
I circled the house, listening. No voices inside. No footsteps beyond hers.
I moved to the back window. Locked. No matter. I pressed two fingers against the glass—and it cracked with a delicate pop. I slipped in, soundless.
Her back was to me.
I could smell her fear before she even noticed me.
She turned slowly, her pen falling to the floor.
A soft gasp.
I didn't speak.
She blinked once. "Wh-who—?"
In a blur, I was behind her, one hand clamped around her mouth, the other cradling her skull like a delicate fruit I didn't want to bruise too soon.
I leaned in, my lips brushing her ear.
"Don't scream," I whispered. "I'm not here to kill you. Yet."
She trembled.
"Your blood," I said, "might be useful to me."
I had an amusing idea as I questioned kodai and Yuki, if we're not the same kind of creature what would happen. If I gave them my blood, unfortunately Yuki died and sucked all the fun out of it.
"What's your quirk?" I asked the girl suddenly my hand releasing slightly from her mouth
She didn't answer. I pressed harder. "Speak."
"Paper… manipulation," she gasped. "I—make it hard…sharp."
Interesting
I pricked my finger on my fang and pressed it to a shallow scratch I made on her neck. Just a taste. Just a drop. Much less than Yuki absorbed
The moment my blood touched her skin, her body convulsed.
It was subtle at first. A hitch in her breath. A twitch in her fingers. Then her veins blackened, spreading like cracks in porcelain. Her eyes rolled back, and a low growl—inhuman, guttural—rumbled from her throat.
I stepped back, watching with quiet curiosity as her body twisted. Her nails sharpened into claw-like points. Her skin paled. Her muscles pulsed under her flesh like something was writhing just beneath the surface.
Her quirk lashed out wildly. Sheets of paper ignited around her like a cyclone, no longer blades, but jagged, unnatural tendrils—shifting with no structure or precision, only violence. They sliced through her furniture. Shattered a lamp. Slashed across the ceiling like rabid animals fighting for release.
She screamed—but it wasn't a scream of fear.
It was hunger.
Her eyes snapped open—bloodshot, pupils shrunken, teeth bared. She wasn't the girl I'd seen by the window anymore. Her humanity had drowned beneath bloodlust.
She lunged at me.
I caught her mid-air, my hand wrapping around her throat, slamming her into the wall with bone-rattling force. She didn't even flinch.
She clawed at me, paper tendrils shrieking through the air, slicing across my arm and cheek. Pain licked across my skin—but I smiled.
"Fascinating."
She snarled like a feral dog, snapping her jaws an inch from my face.
"No thoughts," I said calmly, pinning her. "Just the hunger."
She thrashed violently, eyes wild, veins bulging. Her body wasn't hers anymore—it was mine. A puppet with its strings pulled by blood and madness.
Just like I had been.
"You'll kill everything in this house if I let you go," I said softly, brushing a blood-streaked strand of hair from her face. "Everyone you've ever known. Everyone who ever spoke your name."
She didn't respond. She couldn't.
Her mind was gone.
This was the cost of my blood. The truth of it. It didn't enhance quirks. It corrupted them. It twisted the soul to match the strength it gave.
She was reborn—and now she would consume the world around her if I allowed it.
But I didn't.
With a swift strike to the temple, I knocked her unconscious. Her body crumpled in a heap, paper retracting like dead leaves, her face twisted in something between agony and ecstasy.
I stood over her, flexing my bloodied fingers.
"Now we're getting somewhere."
I stared at her twitching body for a long moment, her chest heaving, mouth slack and smeared with drool and blood.
She wasn't asleep.
She was simmering—waiting—barely leashed by unconsciousness.
I crouched beside her, studying her face. There were still traces of who she used to be… but they were buried beneath something deeper. Something raw. Her humanity had been eaten alive by the mutation I'd triggered.
I had questions now. So many.
How long would she stay like this?
Would the hunger fade? Or grow?
Would her mind return?
Could I train this?
I dragged her limp form back to the shed, slipping through the shadows like death wearing borrowed skin. The town still slept. No one saw us.
Back beneath the rotted trapdoor, I chained her to a pipe using rusted steel cord I tore from an old garden reel. Her wrists bled where the metal bit, but she didn't flinch. Her head lolled, eyes twitching beneath their lids like she was dreaming of meat.
She was still changing. Her breathing was uneven, muscles twitching with unnatural spasms. The transformation wasn't instant. It was evolving.
I lit a single stolen candle and set it near her face, watching her skin pale further in its glow.
Then I sat, cross-legged across from her.
Waiting.
Studying.
I was no longer alone. I had my first subject.
Not a companion.
Not a disciple.
A weapon.
And through her, I'd learn the extent of what my blood could do—how it altered quirks, how it infected the mind, how it made people like me.
I could feel it—this was only the beginning.
From the corner, she stirred. Her eye cracked open, red and glowing faintly like embers beneath ash.
She didn't recognize me.
She didn't recognize anything.
Her chains rattled.
And for the first time in this strange new world, I laughed. A real genuine laugh