Copyright Notice:
All rights to this story and its original characters belong to the author. Only the protagonist, Rayan, is inspired by an existing concept; all other elements are original creations.
Chapter 1: The Frozen Memory
The apartment was warm.
It was a gentle, lived-in warmth, woven from the scent of cinnamon and sweet bread his mother had just pulled from the oven, and the soft hum of the radiator fighting back the winter. Rayan, at six years old, was a small boy in a simple world, defined by the texture of the thick living room rug and the cadence of his mother's voice. He was on that rug now, meticulously stacking colorful wooden blocks into a teetering tower.
When it inevitably collapsed with a soft clatter, he laughed—a pure, bright sound that filled the small space. From the sofa, his mother watched him, her eyes overflowing with a quiet, profound affection.
"You are quite the little architect, habibi," she said, her voice a soft melody. "But towers need a strong foundation. Just like men."
Rayan looked up, his wide, hazel eyes bright with incomprehension but shining with love. He didn't know what a 'foundation' was, but he loved the way she said it. "I'm strong, Mama! I'm gonna build you a castle!"
She smiled, a full, warm smile that reached her eyes. "I know you are. You are my castle."
She lay back, sighing contentedly, and closed her eyes for just a moment. Outside the double-paned window, snow was falling in thick, silent flakes, coating the city in white. But inside, it was safe. It was warm.
And then, it wasn't.
It began as a peculiar tingle in Rayan's palms. A coldness, but not the pleasant cold of an ice pop. This was a sharp, biting cold, like needles, and it was coming from inside him. He looked down at his small hands. The wooden blocks he was holding were losing their color. A thin, spider-web-like layer of white frost was blooming across the painted wood.
Fear, sudden and icy in its own right, pricked at his heart. Something was wrong.
"Mama?" he whispered. His voice was small, laced with a tremor that hadn't been there seconds before.
Her eyes opened, the smile still lingering. "What is it, my love?"
"My... my hands are cold."
She was off the sofa in an instant, the maternal-alarm replacing her drowsiness. "Let me see."
She knelt before him on the rug, her warm hand reaching out to cup his.
The moment their skin touched, the power erupted.
It was not a loud explosion. It was the opposite. It was a sudden, terrifying hush. The warmth in the room was extinguished, sucked into the small vortex of cold emanating from the child. The smell of cinnamon and bread vanished, replaced by the sterile, sharp scent of mountain air.
His mother let out a choked cry—not of pain, but of impossible shock.
Rayan stared at her hand. The hand that brushed his hair, the hand that baked his bread, was now covered in a thick, opaque layer of white ice. It wasn't a surface-level frost; it was solid, crawling up her fingers, past her knuckles, encasing her wrist, freezing her hand in a rigid, claw-like gesture.
"Mama!" he cried, but his voice came out as a strangled puff of white vapor. Thick, plume-like steam billowed from his mouth and nose with every panicked breath.
The frost was spreading from him, racing across the fibers of the rug in intricate, fern-like patterns. The windows, moments ago showing the gentle snow, fogged over instantly and then froze solid from the inside, becoming opaque sheets of white. The temperature in the room plummeted catastrophically.
"Let go!" she cried, her voice high with terror. She wasn't angry; she was terrified. She tried to pull her hand back, but it was frozen fast to his small, blue-tinged palm.
His father burst into the room, drawn by the sound. He stopped dead at the doorway, his eyes wide with horror at the scene. His wife, on her knees, tears streaming down her face, her hand trapped in a block of ice held by their son. And his son, Rayan, sitting in the center of an expanding circle of white, tears freezing on his cheeks as they fell, steam rising from his small body as if he were made of dry ice.
"Rayan! Let her go! Let go of your mother!" his father shouted, his voice cracking.
But Rayan wasn't holding on. He was paralyzed by the terror in his mother's eyes—terror of him. And that fear, his own and hers, was feeding the power, making it colder, harder, more absolute.
It took what felt like an eternity for his father to have the presence of mind to grab a thick wool blanket from the chair, wrapping it around Rayan's hand, using the thick fabric as a barrier to break the frigid contact. The ice cracked with a sickening sound, and his mother fell backward, cradling her severely frostbitten hand, sobbing in silence.
Rayan didn't cry. He was beyond that.
He just sat there, in the middle of the ruined, frozen room, and stared at his hands. The hands that had been building a castle.
From that day on, the apartment was never quite as warm again. His mother's hand healed, but the puckered, discolored scars that snaked up her fingers remained. She never touched him with that hand again. Not out of malice, but out of an instinctive, flinching fear of the cold that lived inside her son.
Rayan learned to hide his hands. He learned to wear gloves, even indoors. He learned to stifle his laughter, to flatten his joy, because any strong emotion, good or bad, threatened to drop the temperature. He learned to be quiet, still, and contained.
Nine years later, standing at the massive, imposing gates of U.A. High, his gloved hands were, as always, cold in his pockets. He wasn't here to be a hero, not in the bright, shining way the others dreamed of. He wasn't here for fame or glory.
He was here to learn how to control the blizzard raging inside him. He was here to make sure he never, ever hurt anyone again. He was here, searching for a foundation.