Midnight never came.
Not truly.
The clock stopped at 11:59:59—and stayed there.
Time refused to move forward.
And every second after that?
Became a lie.
Eri faced herself.
The older version. Ragged. Fractured. Face streaked with timelines.
Eyes that had cried through a hundred worlds.
"You're me," young Eri whispered.
Older Eri nodded slowly. "The version that tried to fix it all."
"…Did you?"
"No."
Silence.
Then the wind returned, harder. Reality around them buckled.
Buildings flickered. Roads cracked. The stars above stretched like pulled strings.
Young Eri stepped back, shaken. "Why are you here now?"
"Because this is the last moment left."Older Eri looked up. "After this… the Spiral devours everything."
Inside U.A.
The students gathered.
No alarms. No teachers.
Just instinct.
Mina clasped Sero's hand.
Kirishima tightened his grip on a sword he never remembered training with.
Todoroki held fire in one hand, ice in the other—neither obeyed him.
Midoriya stumbled in, drenched in cold sweat, whispering:"She's here. She's both here."
"Who?" Uraraka asked, voice brittle.
"The girl…" he said.
And then finished:
"…who broke time."
The school shook.
From nowhere—snow.
Then heat.
Then rain falling upward.
Then silence again.
Reality couldn't decide what to be.
Back on the rooftop…
Older Eri knelt down.
"You think you're doing good," she said, eyes hollow. "But you're undoing truth."
Young Eri flinched.
"But I saw the pain. I saw what they did to us. I saw how many people—how many heroes—died."
"I know," the older version said.
"I want to change it."
"You already did."
Young Eri blinked.
The sky shattered.
A thousand mirrors broke above them, reflecting different worlds.
One where Deku died during Kamino.
One where Aizawa vanished in middle school.
One where Bakugo led the League of Villains.
Each fracture bled sound.
Each showed her a truth she didn't want to see.
Midoriya saw it too.
From the courtyard.
So did Bakugo.
And Todoroki.
Everyone at U.A.
Because time wasn't personal anymore.
It was a shared hallucination.
A dying god gasping its last breath.
And in that breath—memories leaked.
Midoriya remembered conversations he never had.
Bakugo remembered a future where he sacrificed himself.
Todoroki saw a version of himself who never burned.
And all of them—
Remembered Eri.
And not the innocent girl.
But the one becoming something else.
Something old.
Something dangerous.
Back in Tartarus, Shigaraki sat up for the first time in weeks.
Eyes wide.
He laughed.
The sound echoed into nothing.
"They broke the lock," he whispered. "And now the Garden opens."
His hand lifted.
Not to destroy—
But to point.
Toward the sky.
Where a door now hovered.
Vast. Circular. Covered in ancient runes no one ever taught.
A door older than quirks.
Nezu stood alone in his office, sipping tea that no longer had taste.
He saw it too.
The Spiral forming.
A god-machine, ancient, waking behind the curtain of physics.
"We weren't supposed to reach this point," he whispered.
And behind him, a screen flickered.
A message blinked.
From a timeline that had already collapsed:
"STOP THE CHILD OR LOSE THE CORE."
He closed the laptop.
Too late now.
On the rooftop, the older Eri faded.
Time couldn't hold two versions anymore.
She looked at her younger self.
"Please…"
Young Eri nodded.
"I understand."
"Then rewind."
She turned to the edge.
"I can't."
Older Eri froze.
"What?"
Young Eri looked down at her own hands.
Cracks forming along her skin.
Golden light bleeding out.
"I went too far."
A tear slipped down her cheek.
"I already rewrote my own beginning."
And the world—
Shattered.
Everything went white.
Not light.Not death.
A white pause.
No up. No down.
And in that space, a single sound:
A heartbeat.
Then another.
Then thousands.
As timelines—collapsed together.
Bakugo blinked.
He was six again.
On a playground.
But Deku stood beside him—taller, stronger, smiling.
Todoroki woke in a forest. No scar. A woman whispered lullabies.
Uraraka saw a world where her parents were rich.
Mineta saw… nothing. Because he had never existed here.
And Eri—
Eri stood on a field of stars.
Alone.
Above her—
A throne of bone and gears.
And a voice, like thunder cracking backwards, said:
"Child of Rewind. You have trespassed into the Root Domain."
She raised her head.
Tears vanished in the starlight.
"I'm not sorry."
And the voice replied:
"Then prepare to pay in echoes."
To be continued.