Fear is loud.
But silence?
Silence is worse.
The world held its breath as the black sun rose.
No warmth. No light. Only cold shadows stretching like claws across the ground.
Birds dropped from the sky. Machines stalled. Quirks sparked violently, then stopped.
The Age of Heroes paused—
—and the Clock of the Old World began to tick again.
Bakugo stared up from the U.A. training field.
"The hell is that…?"
He didn't finish.
Because time around him stuttered.
One second he was standing. The next, he blinked and found himself twelve minutes in the past, watching his own footsteps retrace.
"What the—?!" He gritted his teeth. "This again?!"
Others screamed.
Not from fear—but from disorientation.
Some saw flashes of their deaths.
Others glimpsed events that hadn't happened yet.
And one student—
—vanished mid-step.
Underground, Tartarus.
Emergency alarms blared.
But no guards moved.
Because there were none left.
Cells stood open. Yet no one walked free.
Instead, the inmates lay collapsed. Dust. Ash. Empty suits of flesh.
Only one remained untouched.
Tomura Shigaraki.
Still asleep.
Still dreaming.
And in that dream, he saw her.
Eri.
Walking backward through time, rewriting the moments of her pain. One step at a time.
Undoing.
Unmaking.
Unforgiving.
And when she passed through his memory, he felt something strange:
Peace.
Back at U.A.
Izuku ran through the courtyard.
Quirkless.
Again.
His connection to One for All flickered. Like static in a storm.
He stumbled. Fell to one knee.
"No—come on—Not now!"
He slammed his fist into the ground.
A sharp pain followed.
Then a voice.
"Power is not yours if it never belonged to this timeline."
Izuku looked up.
She stood on the fountain's edge. Hair long. White as moonlight. Eyes glowing with memories not yet lived.
Eri.
But not the one he remembered.
This Eri looked older. Sixteen. Maybe seventeen.
Wiser. Harder.
And behind her—
The Red Lady watched silently.
"Eri?" he asked, stunned.
She didn't smile.
Didn't blink.
Only whispered: "I came to warn you."
He stood slowly. "Warn me about what?"
"The Spiral," she said. "The event that starts when the Black Sun rises."
Izuku swallowed hard. "What's the Spiral?"
Her voice cracked.
"Your death."
Elsewhere, in a broken temple near Kyushu…
A man in a tattered priest's robe stepped from the rubble.
Scarred. Blind in one eye. His hands bled time, warping everything he touched.
He knelt beside a cracked altar and whispered a name.
"Akayami…"
The wind hissed.
The Red Lady appeared behind him.
"I knew you'd wake up, Prophet."
He didn't look back.
"I told them not to let her awaken. But they never listened."
"She rewrote the locks."
"She broke the wheel."
The Prophet wept.
"She remembers what no child should."
The Red Lady smiled.
"That's the point."
Back in the present.
Eri sat on a rooftop overlooking the city.
The real Eri. The young one. Eight years old.
Her legs dangled. Her bandages fluttered in the cold wind.
She wasn't alone.
A ghost sat beside her.
Not real—but familiar.
Sir Nighteye.
"I thought you were dead," she whispered.
"I am."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because you're not supposed to be."
She looked at him, confused.
He didn't answer. Just placed his ghostly hand over hers.
"You can still stop it."
"But how?"
"Rewrite yourself."
In the distance, bells rang.
Churches. Temples. Shrines.
All tolled at once.
Twelve.
The hour of the Spiral.
And in that moment, everyone in Japan forgot something.
Some forgot their birthdays.
Others forgot their loved ones.
Some forgot their own names.
And Eri?
Eri forgot who she was supposed to be.
She stood.
Eyes empty.
Hair floating.
And whispered the words that would shatter the world again.
"Rewind Me Again."
To be continued.