OVERLORD Transmigration

PREVIOUSLY:

*"By blood and byte we bind thee—"*

The rift screamed. The sky cracked. And far away, in two worlds ending, a dragon laughed.

The first thing he noticed was the taste of copper—warm, thick, pooling under his tongue. Izuku tried to swallow, but his throat wouldn't cooperate. His limbs felt like they'd been dipped in wet concrete, heavy and sluggish as he forced his eyes open. Above him, a ceiling fan spun lazily, its blades warped like melted plastic.

Something was wrong with the air. Not the smell—though that was off too, like burnt sugar and ozone—but the way it pressed against his skin, dense and humming, as if the atmosphere itself was charged with static. Izuku's fingers twitched against a rough fabric. A hospital gown? No, the texture was closer to burlap, scratchy against his wrists. He tried to sit up. His body responded two seconds too late, his muscles lagging behind his thoughts like a buffering video.

The room came into focus in jagged pieces. White walls, but not the sterile kind—this was the yellowed white of old paper, stained in places with long-dried streaks of something dark. A single window, its glass fractured in a spiderweb pattern, let in slanted light that didn't match any time of day he knew. Izuku's breath hitched. His forearm itched. He glanced down.

A sigil pulsed there, just beneath the skin—a twisting mark the color of a fresh bruise, spiraling from his wrist to his elbow. It didn't hurt. That was the worst part. It felt alive.

SUMMARY^1: Izuku wakes disoriented in an unfamiliar room with warped perception, heavy limbs, and charged air. His surroundings are decayed and off-kilter—stained walls, fractured glass, unnatural light. A pulsing, bruise-colored sigil coils up his forearm, unsettlingly alive yet painless.

Footsteps echoed outside the door. Not the crisp click of hospital shoes, but something heavier—boots, maybe, with a deliberate, uneven rhythm. Izuku's pulse jumped. He didn't know where he was. He didn't know *when* he was. But the instinct to run crackled down his spine all the same.

The door handle turned.

The door didn't creak—it *groaned*, like rusted metal forced to move after centuries. Izuku's fingers dug into the burlap sheets as the figure stepped through, silhouetted against the hallway's flickering torchlight. Not a doctor. Not even close.

The man—if it was a man—stood seven feet tall in segmented plate armor that looked grown rather than forged, its black surface veined with pulsing red lines. His helmet was wrong. Too many angles, too many jagged edges where a face should be, and when he spoke, his voice came out layered—three different tones scraping against each other. "Ah. The *stray* wakes."

Izuku's back hit the headboard. His tongue felt swollen. "Wh—where—?"

The armored figure tilted his head, the motion uncannily smooth. "Nazarick," he said, like it should mean something. When Izuku didn't react, the red veins in the armor flared brighter. "Fascinating. No recognition. No fear of the Tomb's name." He stepped closer, and the floorboards whimpered under his weight. "Tell me, boy. What do you remember?"

SUMMARY^1: A towering, armored figure with pulsating red-veined armor enters the room, his distorted voice referring to Izuku as a "stray." The man mentions "Nazarick" with expectation, but Izuku's confusion prompts scrutiny about his memories.

Fragments flashed behind Izuku's eyes—green hair, a notebook, explosions ringing in his ears—but they slithered away like smoke when he tried to grasp them. "I... don't..." His forearm burned suddenly, the sigil writhing under his skin.

The armored man lunged.

Izuku rolled off the bed just as a gauntleted fist cratered the mattress where his head had been. Feathers exploded into the air. He hit the floor shoulder-first, pain lancing up his collarbone, but his legs moved on their own, scrambling backward until his spine hit the wall.

"Interesting reflexes," the man mused, straightening. "For a *human*." He reached up and unclasped his helmet with a hiss of pressurized air.

Izuku's stomach dropped.

The face underneath wasn't human. Not with those slitted golden eyes, not with the too-sharp teeth bared in something between a smile and a snarl. The creature's skin was the color of old parchment, stretched tight over prominent cheekbones, and when he exhaled, the scent of embalming fluid washed over Izuku.

"You will call me Demiurge," the creature said, tapping one clawed finger against his temple. "And you will answer my questions, or I will peel the answers from your spine."

Something in Izuku's chest *twisted*. A pressure. A heat. His vision swam as the sigil on his arm ignited in violet fire, racing up to his shoulder. Demiurge's eyes widened a fraction—the first real emotion he'd shown.

The door burst inward.

SUMMARY^1: Izuku's fragmented memories slip away as the armored figure—now revealed as the inhuman "Demiurge"—attacks him. Midoriya narrowly dodges, but Demiurge corners him, threatening torture unless he answers questions. The sigil on Izuku's arm suddenly flares with violet fire, startling Demiurge just as the door violently bursts open.

A woman stood framed in the splintered doorway, her silhouette haloed by the torchlight behind her. She wasn't armored—not like Demiurge—but the way she held herself made the air crackle. Tall, lean, with platinum hair tied back in a severe braid that reached her waist. Her eyes weren't slitted like his, but they weren't human either—pupilless pools of liquid gold that fixed on Izuku with terrifying focus.

"Leave," she said.

Demiurge didn't move. His fingers flexed, claws scraping against his own gauntlet. "Albedo, this doesn't concern—"

The woman—Albedo—stepped forward. The floor didn't groan beneath her. It *silenced*, as if the wood itself feared making a sound. "I won't repeat myself."

Izuku's breath came in short, sharp gasps. The sigil on his arm flickered erratically, the violet flames licking at his collarbone. His skin wasn't burning—it was *singing*, resonating with something deep in his bones. Albedo's gaze flicked down to it, and for the first time, her expression shifted. Not surprise. Calculation.

Demiurge exhaled sharply through his nose. "Fine." He straightened, rolling his shoulders in a motion that made his armor ripple like living flesh. "But mark me—this isn't over."

When the door clicked shut behind him, the silence was worse. Albedo didn't move. She studied Izuku the way one might examine a specimen pinned to a board—dispassionate, curious, utterly devoid of warmth.

"You're not supposed to be here," she said finally.

SUMMARY^1: The platinum-haired woman Albedo interrupts Demiurge, commanding him to leave with undeniable authority. Her pupil-less golden eyes analyze Izuku’s flickering sigil with detached interest. After Demiurge reluctantly departs, she coldly observes Izuku, stating he doesn't belong there.

SUMMARY^2: Izuku wakes disoriented in a decayed room, marked by a strange sigil. Confronted by Demiurge, who questions him aggressively, Izuku narrowly escapes harm when Albedo interrupts and dismisses Demiurge. She examines Izuku's sigil and concludes he doesn't belong in Nazarick.

Izuku swallowed. His throat was sandpaper. "Where *is* here?"

Albedo tilted her head slightly. "Nazarick." She paused, watching his reaction. When none came, her lips pressed into a thin line. "You truly don't know."

Izuku shook his head.

The sigil pulsed again, brighter this time, casting jagged shadows across the walls. Albedo's nostrils flared. "Who activated the transfer?"

"I don't—I don't even know what that means!"

She moved faster than Izuku could blink, her fingers closing around his forearm where the mark burned hottest. Her touch was ice and iron. The sigil *screamed*. Izuku's vision whited out—a rush of fragmented images, a world of neon and skyscrapers, explosions tearing through concrete, a green-haired boy screaming at the sky—

Albedo released him abruptly. Izuku sagged against the wall, panting. Her golden eyes had darkened, swirling with something almost like... recognition?

"Impossible," she murmured.

The door burst open again—this time with enough force to rip it from its hinges. A girl stood there, smaller than Albedo but radiating twice the fury. Twin horns curled from her forehead, her crimson eyes blazing.

"Momonga wants him *now*," she snapped.

Albedo didn't look at her. "Not yet."

The girl—because despite the horns, she couldn't have been older than sixteen—snarled. "He *commanded* it!"

SUMMARY^1: When Izuku admits ignorance about Nazarick, Albedo interrogates him about the sigil’s activation. She forcibly triggers a vision of his past world—skyscrapers, explosions, a green-haired boy—before recoiling in disbelief. A furious horned girl interrupts, demanding Izuku’s immediate presence before Momonga, but Albedo refuses.

Izuku's fingers curled into fists. The sigil wasn't just burning now—it was *humming*, vibrating in time with his heartbeat. He didn't know what was happening. He didn't know why these people—creatures—were arguing over him. But one thing was clear: if Momonga wanted him, that was bad news.

Albedo exhaled through her nose. "Fine. But I'm coming with you."

The horned girl rolled her eyes but turned on her heel. Albedo gripped Izuku's arm again—not painfully, but with the certainty of someone who knew he wouldn't pull away.

"Walk," she ordered.

Izuku's legs moved before his brain could protest. The hallway outside was impossibly long, lined with flickering braziers that cast dancing shadows on the walls. The air smelled of old stone and something metallic—blood? No, something fouler.

As they rounded a corner, Izuku caught a glimpse of his reflection in a polished obsidian pillar.

His breath stopped.

The face staring back wasn't his.

It was older. Sharper. Green hair streaked with silver, eyes hardened by years he couldn't remember.

Albedo tightened her grip.

"Don't look," she said.

But it was too late.

SUMMARY^1: Albedo concedes to the horned girl’s demand but insists on accompanying Izuku to Momonga. As they traverse the unnaturally long hallway, Izuku glimpses an aged, unfamiliar version of himself in a reflection—older, silver-streaked hair, hardened eyes—before Albedo warns him not to look. The sigil pulses in sync with his accelerating panic.

The reflection winked at him. Izuku recoiled so violently his shoulder slammed into Albedo's armored pauldron, but the woman didn't so much as flinch. Her grip on his arm remained ironclad, steering him forward like a prisoner being marched to execution. The horned girl—Narberal, he'd heard Albedo hiss her name—snickered at his stumble, her clawed fingers tapping impatiently against the pommel of a dagger at her hip.

"You're slower than a goblin with its legs cut off," Narberal sneered.

Izuku's tongue felt like lead. The hallway stretched on, its architecture twisting in ways that defied physics—ceilings vaulted too high, corners meeting at impossible angles, doorways that seemed to breathe when no one was looking. His forearm throbbed where the sigil burned, its violet light casting their shadows long and jagged against the walls.

They passed a mural.

Izuku's steps faltered.

It depicted a skeletal figure wreathed in black flames, its outstretched hands cradling nine spheres—each containing a screaming face. One of them had green hair.

Albedo jerked him forward before he could look closer.

"Keep moving," she said.

Ahead, the corridor terminated in a pair of towering obsidian doors etched with runes that squirmed when stared at directly. Narberal pressed her palm to the center, and the symbols flared crimson before the doors parted with a sound like bones breaking.

The chamber beyond stole Izuku's breath.

SUMMARY^1: Narberal taunts Izuku as Albedo drags him through the shifting, impossible architecture of Nazarick. A mural depicting a skeletal figure holding nine screaming spheres—one with green hair—catches Izuku’s attention before Albedo forces him onward. The obsidian doors open to reveal a terrifying chamber beyond, their runes writhing under Narberal’s touch.

It was vast, domed, lit by floating orbs of sickly green light that cast no shadows. The floor was a mosaic of interlocking skulls, their hollow eye sockets following Izuku's every step. At the far end, atop a dais of blackened bone, sat a throne.

And on that throne—

"Momonga-sama," Albedo purred, releasing Izuku to sink into a bow so deep her braid brushed the floor.

The figure didn't move.

Clad in robes that seemed to drink the light, his skeletal fingers steepled under a chin that was, quite literally, bare bone, Momonga regarded Izuku with empty sockets that nonetheless burned with pinpricks of red fire. The air thickened, tasting of grave soil and static.

"Subject 9," Momonga intoned. His voice was wrong—layered, echoing, as if three people were speaking just out of sync.

Izuku's knees buckled.

The sigil on his arm detonated.

Violet fire raced up his shoulder, across his collarbones, down his spine—not burning, not quite, but carving something into his flesh with the precision of a scalpel. He screamed. The sound echoed weirdly, bouncing off walls that shouldn't have existed in a space this large.

Momonga tilted his head. "Fascinating."

Albedo stepped between them, her golden eyes flashing. "He's unstable. The transfer wasn't clean—"

"Irrelevant." Momonga rose from the throne in a rustle of fabric. His skeletal feet didn't touch the ground as he floated forward, the hem of his robes licking at the air like living shadows. "The Catalyst is active. That's all that matters."

SUMMARY^1: In the skull-littered throne room, Momonga—a robed skeletal figure—addresses Izuku as "Subject 9" before the sigil violently activates, searing patterns into his flesh without burning him. Albedo warns of instability from an unclean transfer, but Momonga dismisses her concerns, declaring the activation of "The Catalyst" as the only priority while floating toward Izuku.

SUMMARY^2: Albedo interrogates Izuku and forces a vision of his past world, unsettling her. After conflict with Narberal, Izuku is dragged through Nazarick’s shifting halls, glimpsing an older version of himself in a reflection. Brought before Momonga, Izuku is addressed as "Subject 9" before his sigil violently activates, prompting Momonga’s declaration about "The Catalyst."

Izuku gasped through the pain, his vision swimming. Catalyst? Transfer? None of this—

Momonga's hand—bone, just bone—closed around his throat.

The world inverted.

Izuku's stomach lurched as colors bled together, sound distorting into a single high-pitched whine. He saw—

—a laboratory, glass tubes bubbling with iridescent fluid—

—a woman with green hair screaming as machines whirred—

—a child's hand pressed against a viewing pane—

And then—

Impact.

Izuku hit pavement, rolling violently as something metallic screeched overhead. His lungs burned. His skin burned. His everything burned.

A car horn blared.

Izuku looked up, blinking against the glare of neon signs. Skyscrapers. Traffic. The smell of exhaust and fried food.

And a billboard looming overhead, displaying the grinning face of All Might with the words:

"UA HERO COURSE APPLICATIONS NOW OPEN!"

Izuku's breath hitched.

The sigil on his arm pulsed once—softly, almost reassuringly—before fading into his skin like a bruise healing.

Somewhere, far away, a dragon laughed.

The pavement scraped against Izuku’s palms as he pushed himself up, his muscles trembling like a bowstring pulled too tight. The city noise crashed over him—honking cars, chattering crowds, the distant hum of a news helicopter—all of it wrong. Too loud. Too bright. Too *normal*. His fingers curled against the concrete, nails biting into his skin just to ground himself. The last thing he remembered was bone fingers around his throat, a voice like a graveyard wind, and now—

SUMMARY^1: Momonga seizes Izuku by the throat, triggering a violent inversion of reality that hurls him into a vision of a lab, a screaming woman, and a child before he crashes onto a city street. Dazed and aching, he finds himself beneath an All Might billboard advertising UA applications, the sigil fading into his skin as distant laughter echoes. Overwhelmed by the sensory assault of urban noise and movement, Izuku clutches the pavement, disoriented by the abrupt shift from Nazarick’s horrors to apparent normalcy.

A sneaker scuffed the ground next to him.

“You good, man?”

Izuku jerked his head up. A teenager in a middle school uniform frowned down at him, one hand outstretched. Behind him, the UA billboard flickered, All Might’s smile pixelating for half a second before snapping back into place. Izuku’s throat worked.

“I—” His voice cracked. He swallowed, tried again. “What—what year is it?”

The boy blinked. “Uh. 20XX?” He said it like a question, like Izuku had just asked if water was wet.

Izuku’s stomach lurched. He knew that date. Knew it like the back of his hand—the year UA’s entrance exams were held, the year *he* was supposed to—

His reflection in the storefront window made him freeze.

Green hair. Freckles. Round cheeks.

*Eighteen again.*

The boy was saying something else, but the words blurred into static. Izuku’s fingers flew to his forearm, where the sigil had been—where it *should* have been—but his skin was unmarked. Smooth.

A hand clamped down on his shoulder.

Izuku whirled, heart hammering, expecting claws, expecting gold eyes—

“Kid,” a gruff voice said. “You’re blocking the crosswalk.”

A police officer. Human. Normal.

Izuku’s knees almost gave out.

The officer’s radio crackled. “—disturbance near Shibuya—possible villain attack—”

SUMMARY^1: A middle schooler interrupts Izuku’s disorientation, asking if he’s okay as the UA billboard glitches momentarily. Izuku’s panicked question about the year confirms he’s been thrown back to 20XX—the year of UA’s entrance exams. Spotting his younger reflection, he realizes he’s physically reverted to eighteen, his sigil gone. A police officer scolds him for blocking the crosswalk before a radio report hints at a villain attack nearby, grounding Izuku in the mundane reality of his original world.

Izuku didn’t wait. He stumbled forward, legs moving on autopilot, weaving through the crowd. His head spun. None of this made sense. That place—Nazarick, the throne, Momonga—had it been a dream? A hallucination? But the taste of copper was still in his mouth, the ghost of Albedo’s iron grip lingering on his arm.

A newspaper stand caught his eye.

The headline screamed: *ALL MIGHT’S TEACHING DEBUT AT UA!*

Izuku’s breath hitched. That—that hadn’t happened yet. Or had it? His memories were a shattered mirror, fragments cutting whichever way he turned. He fumbled for his pocket, praying for a phone, a wallet, anything—

His fingers brushed paper.

A folded slip, crisp and white, tucked into his jeans like it had always been there. Izuku yanked it out, hands shaking as he unfolded it.

Two lines, written in a script that pulsed violet for half a second before fading:

*You are not where you belong.*

*Fix it.*

A bus roared past, its side panel plastered with UA’s logo. Izuku’s head snapped up. The answer was obvious. Painfully, stupidly obvious.

UA.

If anyone could help him unravel this—if anyone could tell him why his reflection had winked, why his bones still thrummed with something not entirely human—it’d be there.

Izuku took a step forward.

The pavement beneath his feet shimmered, just for a second, black as obsidian.

Somewhere, very quietly, a dragon laughed.

SUMMARY^1: Izuku staggers through the crowd, grappling with disbelief until a newspaper headline about All Might teaching at UA confirms the timeline’s divergence. Finding a cryptic note in his pocket ordering him to "fix" his displacement, he resolves to seek answers at UA. As he steps forward, the pavement briefly darkens, mirroring Nazarick’s influence, while distant laughter hints at unseen forces still watching.

SUMMARY^2: Izuku is violently ejected into a cityscape by Momonga’s actions, witnessing fragmented visions before landing under an All Might billboard. Confused by the modern setting, he confirms he’s reverted to eighteen and arrived in the year of UA’s entrance exams. After spotting proof of timeline divergence, he resolves to seek answers at UA while sensing lingering traces of Nazarick’s influence.

The first time it happened, Izuku was standing in line for UA’s entrance exam, palms sweating as he clutched his registration form. A sharp pain lanced through his skull—like a hot nail driven between his eyes—and suddenly, he wasn’t just Izuku anymore.

He was Momonga, too.

Skeletal fingers flexed within his flesh-and-blood ones. The weight of a crown he’d never worn pressed into his temples. And beneath his ribs, something cold and ancient stirred, whispering in a language that made his teeth ache. The boy ahead of him in line turned, frowning. “Dude, you okay? You’re, like… glowing.”

Izuku looked down. His veins pulsed violet under his skin.

The second time it happened, he was mid-exam, robots crumbling under his fists. His body moved with precision that wasn’t his own—each strike calculated, each dodge effortless. A voice that wasn’t a voice slithered through his mind: *Pathetic. You’re holding back.* Izuku’s fist connected with a zero-pointer’s chassis. Metal screamed. The impact should’ve shattered every bone in his arm. Instead, black flames licked up his wrist, devouring the recoil like it was nothing.

One For All? No. This wasn’t the stockpiled strength of heroes. This was something older. Hungrier.

SUMMARY^1: During UA’s entrance exam, Izuku experiences unsettling episodes where his body temporarily merges with Momonga’s consciousness, his veins glowing violet and his movements becoming unnaturally precise. In one instance, black flames consume the recoil of a punch that should have broken his arm, confirming the presence of a power far older and more ravenous than One For All.

The third time it happened, Recovery Girl’s office smelled of antiseptic and burnt sugar. She frowned at his X-rays, tapping the film where his humerus should’ve been spiderwebbed with fractures. “Young man,” she said slowly, “your bones are… reinforced.” Izuku’s pulse spiked. Reinforced how? With what? The answer hummed under his skin—a vibration like a plucked guitar string, resonating from the marrow out. He flexed his fingers. For half a second, they were bone. Just bone.

All Might found him retching behind the infirmary.

“Problem child,” he boomed, but his smile wavered when Izuku looked up. The shadows under the boy’s eyes were too deep, too violet. “You’re not… *feeling* One For All yet, are you?”

Izuku wiped his mouth. “No.” Lie. Truth. Both. The power in his veins wasn’t One For All—it was the *absence* of it, a hollow space where something else had taken root. Something with too many teeth.

The fourth time it happened, Aizawa’s capture scarf wrapped around his throat mid-spar. Izuku’s vision tunneled. The sigil on his arm—invisible to everyone but him—flared. His body moved without permission. His fingers *changed*, elongating, claws shearing through fabric like wet paper. Aizawa’s eyes widened, his Quirk flaring—but nothing happened. Because whatever Izuku had just done wasn’t a Quirk. It was biology. *Wrong* biology.

“Midoriya,” Aizawa hissed, “what the hell was that?”

Izuku’s claws retracted. His breath came in ragged gasps. “I don’t—I can’t—”

SUMMARY^1: Recovery Girl discovers Izuku’s unnaturally reinforced bones, while All Might grows suspicious of the shadows under his eyes and the absence of One For All’s signature energy. During a spar with Aizawa, Izuku’s body momentarily mutates, sprouting claws that shred the capture scarf—an ability Aizawa recognizes as non-Quirk in origin, leaving Izuku stammering in terrified confusion.

The fifth time it happened, he was alone. Mirrors lined the UA locker room, and Izuku stared at his reflection until his eyes ached. The boy in the glass stared back. Green hair. Freckles. Round cheeks. Normal. Human. Then his reflection smirked. A slow, deliberate curl of lips that Izuku hadn’t made. His mirror-self reached up, tapped his temple—where Momonga’s bony fingers had pressed—and mouthed: *Remember.*

The locker room door creaked.

Izuku whirled. Todoroki stood frozen in the doorway, his heterochromatic eyes locked on Izuku’s arm—where the sigil pulsed visibly for the first time in weeks, violet tendrils snaking toward his elbow.

“You’re bleeding,” Todoroki said flatly.

Izuku glanced down. Black ichor seeped from his pores, viscous and shimmering under the fluorescent lights. It didn’t hurt. That was the worst part. It felt like coming home.

Todoroki’s left side flared. “What are you?”

Izuku’s reflection laughed in the mirrors—a sound like grinding bones. He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Because the truth slithered in his gut, colder than Todoroki’s ice:

He wasn’t Izuku Midoriya anymore.

Not entirely.

And whatever was waking up inside him knew exactly what it was.

SUMMARY^1: Izuku’s reflection acts independently in the locker room, mocking him as black ichor bleeds from his pores—a phenomenon witnessed by Todoroki, who demands answers. The sigil on Izuku’s arm flares visibly, confirming his gradual transformation into something inhuman, while his reflection’s taunts and the painless bleeding suggest an inevitable, irreversible merging with Momonga’s essence.

SUMMARY^2: During UA’s entrance exam, Izuku’s body intermittently exhibits traits of Momonga’s consciousness, including unnatural precision and black flames. Recovery Girl and All Might notice his reinforced bones and missing One For All energy. Aizawa witnesses his claws shredding the capture scarf, recognizing their non-Quirk nature, while Todoroki sees black ichor bleeding from his pores. Izuku’s reflection mocks him as his sigil flares, signaling irreversible merging with Momonga.

The power coiled behind Izuku's ribs like a sleeping dragon—not the fire-breathing kind from storybooks, but something leaner, deadlier. A Night Fury, all sleek muscle and calculated stillness, its presence thrumming through his veins in a rhythm that matched the erratic pulse of the sigil on his forearm. He could almost feel the phantom weight of wings tucked against his spine, the whisper of scales beneath his skin.

Todoroki's flames crackled closer. "Answer me."

Izuku's breath hitched. How did you explain that your bones sang in a frequency no human throat could replicate? That when he closed his eyes, he saw through twin perspectives—one rooted in this fluorescent-lit locker room, the other in a throne room where the air tasted of grave dust? The dragon in his chest uncoiled, pressing against his ribs like a second heartbeat. Todoroki’s flames cast jagged shadows on the tile floor, but the real heat came from inside him—a banked fire waiting for the right word, the right moment, the right *need*.

His reflection in the mirrors wasn’t smirking anymore. It was changing.

Green hair darkened to onyx, freckles dissolving into smooth, scaled flesh. Pupils elongated—vertical slits like a cat’s, swallowing the green of his irises until only a thin emerald ring remained. Izuku’s fingers twitched. His nails weren’t nails anymore. They were claws, black as polished obsidian, curving over his fingertips with lethal precision.

Todoroki took a step back. “Midoriya—”

SUMMARY^1: As Todoroki demands answers, Izuku experiences a visceral transformation—his reflection shifting into a scaled, black-haired doppelgänger with vertical pupils, while his own nails lengthen into obsidian claws. The dragon-like power in his chest surges, intertwining his awareness with Momonga’s throne room, as Todoroki’s wariness escalates to outright alarm.

The word dissolved into static as Izuku’s spine *arched*. Not painful. Not exactly. Just *inevitable*, like a snake shedding skin it had outgrown. His uniform ripped at the seams as new musculature rearranged beneath his flesh.

The sound that tore from Izuku’s throat wasn’t human. It wasn’t even *animal*—it was the shriek of splitting atoms, the howl of a dying star compressed into a single, devastating note. Plasma gathered in the back of his throat, searing his tongue with the taste of ozone and lightning, before erupting in a concentrated beam of violet-white fire. The locker room mirrors shattered instantly, molten glass spraying outward in a glittering arc. Todoroki barely raised an ice wall in time—the plasma carved through it like warm butter, leaving edges glowing cherry-red before the entire structure vaporized into steam.

Izuku’s body *moved*. Not the frantic, desperate motions of a boy who’d spent months breaking his bones to wield borrowed power—this was something *born* to speed. His limbs blurred, his stance shifting into something low, predatory, *feline*. He wasn’t running. He was *flowing*, each step a calculated pivot, his weight distributed perfectly between digitigrade legs that shouldn’t exist. The remnants of his UA uniform hung in tatters, revealing obsidian scales rippling along his spine, their edges catching the light like fractured night.

Todoroki’s next fireball never reached him.

SUMMARY^1: Izuku’s body undergoes a violent metamorphosis, his spine elongating as scales erupt across his skin and his stance shifts into a predator’s crouch. Unleashing a plasma breath attack that melts Todoroki’s defenses, he moves with inhuman precision, his digitigrade legs and obsidian-scaled form confirming the irreversible fusion of his humanity with Nazarick’s eldritch power.

Izuku *twisted* midair, his tail—*since when did he have a tail?*—lashing out to smack the flames aside like they were nothing more than bothersome insects. His pupils were thin vertical slits now, dilating wildly as they tracked Todoroki’s every micro-expression: the twitch of his left eyelid, the minute tremor in his right knee, the way his fingers spasmed around another ice spear. Prey instincts. Useless.

A voice—not his, never his—purred in the back of his skull: *Slow. So slow.*

Izuku’s claws flexed. They were longer now, curved like scimitars, their edges humming with barely-contained energy. He could *see* the heat radiating off Todoroki’s body in pulsing waves, could *smell* the adrenaline souring his sweat, could *taste* the electromagnetic crackle of his Quirk activating again. Everything was *bright*, *loud*, *too much*—

The door burst open.

Aizawa’s capture scarf lashed out, wrapping around Izuku’s throat in a chokehold that would’ve incapacitated any normal student. Izuku didn’t choke. He didn’t even *breathe*. His lungs were busy cycling something thicker than oxygen, something that made the plasma in his chest coil tighter, hotter. Aizawa’s eyes glowed red, his Quirk flaring—

Nothing happened.

Because whatever was happening to Izuku wasn’t a Quirk.

It was *evolution*.

Aizawa’s grip faltered for half a second. That was all Izuku needed. His tail whipped around, slamming the teacher into the lockers hard enough to dent metal. The scarf loosened—Izuku tore free with a snarl, his claws raking sparks across the tile as he skidded into a crouch. His vision pulsed with thermal overlays, his hearing picking up the rapid-fire thrum of three heartbeats (Todoroki’s galloping, Aizawa’s racing, his own—*wrong, wrong, too slow, why was it so slow?*).

Then—

A whisper of movement. A scent like winter mint and gunpowder.

Izuku spun, claws raised—

—and nearly gutted All Might in his skinny form.

The man’s sunken eyes widened, but he didn’t flinch. His skeletal fingers closed around Izuku’s wrist with surprising strength, his other hand pressing flat against the center of Izuku’s chest where the plasma burned hottest. “Easy, my boy,” he murmured, so low only Izuku could hear. “Breathe.”

Izuku *hissed*, the sound rattling unnaturally in his throat.

All Might’s grip tightened. “You’re *Midoriya Izuku*,” he said, each word deliberate. “You want to be a hero.”

The plasma stuttered.

Izuku’s claws retracted halfway, their obsidian sheen dulling. His pupils flickered—round, then slitted, then round again—as something *human* clawed its way back to the surface. The scales along his arms receded like tide pulling back from shore, leaving behind unmarked skin and the faintest tracery of violet veins.

All Might exhaled shakily. “There you are.”

Izuku’s knees buckled.

The last thing he saw before the darkness swallowed him was Todoroki’s horrified face—not reflected in the shattered mirrors, but in the obsidian sheen of his own claws. Then the world fractured into shards of sensation: the taste of copper thick on his tongue, the sting of Aizawa’s capture scarf still coiled around his throat like a noose, the frigid bite of All Might’s fingers digging into his wrist. Izuku was only flashes of reflected light in the darkness—a glint of fangs in a snarl he didn’t remember making, the afterimage of violet plasma searing his retinas, the fleeting gleam of scales as they melted back into flesh.

Consciousness returned in stutters. First, the smell—sterile, sharp, the tang of antiseptic overlaying something darker, earthier. Then sound: the rhythmic beep of a heart monitor, the rasp of his own uneven breaths, the murmur of voices just beyond the door. His fingers twitched against starched sheets. His claws were gone. His skin was human again.

The ceiling above him was white. Too white. The kind of white that made his eyes ache, that made the shadows in the corners seem darker by contrast. He tried to sit up. A hand—warm, calloused—pressed gently against his shoulder.

“Not yet.” All Might’s voice was softer than he’d ever heard.

Izuku floated in the dark. Not the suffocating black of unconsciousness—this was something else. A velvet abyss where his thoughts had weight, where memories flickered like bioluminescent fish darting just beyond reach. His body was gone. Or maybe it had expanded, dissolved into the nothingness around him until he was simultaneously everywhere and nowhere at all.

Voices seeped through the void in distorted ripples.

"—not a Quirk mutation." All Might's timbre strained under uncharacteristic tension. "You saw the scans."

A higher pitch, clipped and calculating. Nedzu. "Indeed! Fascinating, really—his cellular structure seems to be *rewriting itself* in real time." Paper rustled. "These results from last night compared to this morning's samples show a twelve percent increase in—well, I suppose we'd call it *non-human* biological matter."

Izuku's phantom lungs constricted. Non-human. The words echoed, sinking into him like stones in water.

"He's still Midoriya." All Might's voice sharpened. "We can't—"

"Of course he is!" Nedzu chirped. "But consider: his mitochondria now resemble those found in certain reptilian species. His bone density exceeds even yours at peak condition. And this—" A tapping sound, like claws against glass. "—this *organ* near his diaphragm wasn't present seventy-two hours ago. It appears to be generating plasma."

Silence. Then All Might's exhale, shaky as a man standing at a cliff's edge. "What are you suggesting?"

"Nothing so dramatic as expulsion, if that's your concern!" Nedzu's laugh was too bright for the darkness pressing against Izuku's senses. "But we must acknowledge that young Midoriya is undergoing *accelerated adaptation*. Whether by design or..."

"Or?"

"Or contamination." Nedzu's tone sobered. "Something *changed* him, All Might. Something old. Something powerful enough to overwrite human biology like it was mere suggestion."

The void pulsed. Izuku's fragmented awareness recoiled—not from fear, but from the *rightness* of Nedzu's words. He remembered violet fire in his veins, the way his spine had arched to accommodate new vertebrae, the taste of ozone when he'd—

"You're saying he's turning into whatever attacked him?" All Might's chair creaked violently.

"Oh no." Nedzu's voice dropped to a whisper. "I believe he's becoming something *entirely new*."

The darkness convulsed. Izuku's consciousness fractured—one thread clinging to the infirmary's murmured conversation, another yanked violently elsewhere.

*Elsewhere*:

A throne room of obsidian and bone. Momonga's skeletal fingers drumming against an armrest. Albedo's golden eyes fixed on a swirling portal that stank of wormholes and lightning.

"He's stabilizing," Momonga observed.

Albedo's claws flexed. "The Catalyst is integrating faster than projected."

"And the vessel?"

"Stronger than anticipated." A pause. "Shall I retrieve him?"

Momonga's hollow sockets flared crimson. "Not yet. Let him run. Let him *think* he's free." His laughter was the sound of a coffin lid sliding shut. "After all, dragons always return to their hoards."

Izuku's awareness snapped back to his body with the violence of a rubber band breaking. His eyes flew open—

—to All Might's gaunt face inches from his own, the man's skeletal fingers gripping the bedside rail hard enough to bend metal. Behind him, Nedzu perched on a stool, a tablet balanced precariously on his knees. Both fell silent mid-conversation.

Izuku's tongue felt swollen. "I heard you."

Nedzu's ears twitched. "Ah! Which part?"

"The part where I'm not human anymore." Izuku's voice cracked. He stared at his hands—normal, freckled, *wrong*. The sigil beneath his skin thrummed in time with his quickening pulse.

All Might's grip tightened. "You're *you*, my boy. Whatever else—"

"No." Izuku sat up too fast, IV lines tugging at his skin. The heart monitor shrieked. "You don't understand. I heard *them* too. They're waiting." His pupils dilated—slitted, just for a second. "They think I'll go back."

Nedzu's tail went very still. "And will you?"

Izuku's fingers curled into the sheets. The dragon in his chest stretched, whispering of power, of wings, of a throne that fit the shape of his bones better than any UA uniform ever could.

"I don't know," he lied.

Because the terrible truth—the one that turned his stomach—was that part of him *

The Ainz Ooal Gown's crest burned through the fabric of Izuku's borrowed hospital gown, its violet light seeping into the obsidian scales now permanently studding his forearms. Toshinori's grip on the bedside rail warped further as the sigil pulsed—once, twice—before sinking into Izuku's flesh like a brand meeting molten metal. The scent of charred linen filled the room, undercut by something darker, older: myrrh and burial spices, the perfume of a tomb unsealed after centuries. Nedzu's paw twitched toward the emergency call button but stilled when the crest's edges blurred, its intricate runes dissolving into Izuku's scales as if they'd always belonged there.

"Fascinating!" Nedzu chirruped, though his whiskers trembled. "The symbology isn't just adhering—it's *integrating* at a cellular level!"

Toshinori's sunken eyes tracked the way Izuku's fingers spasmed, claws unsheathing reflexively as the crest's central eye snapped open—a third, vertical pupil that rolled wildly before fixing on Nedzu with predatory focus. The principal's cheerful facade cracked for half a second, his fur puffing as primal instincts screamed at him to *run*.

Izuku gasped. The voice that tore from his throat was layered—his own desperate rasp overlaid with Momonga's sepulchral baritone: "**The vessel stabilizes.**"

The heart monitor flatlined. Not from cardiac arrest, but because Izuku's pulse had *changed*—slowing to a deep, resonant thrum that vibrated the medical equipment into shutdown. Shadows pooled unnaturally around the bed, stretching toward him like worshippers prostrating before an altar. Toshinori recoiled when one brushed his wrist; it was viscous, alive, clinging to his skin with the tenacity of spilled ink.

Nedzu's tablet clattered to the floor. The screen displayed real-time scans of Izuku's torso—where his diaphragm should have been, a new organ pulsed with captured starlight, its violet tendrils weaving through his ribs in patterns that matched the crest's fractal geometry.

"All Might," Nedzu whispered, "that's—"

"—a dragon's heart." Toshinori finished hoarsely. He'd seen them before, in the vaults of I-Island's restricted archives—x-rays of creatures long extinct, their biology defying modern quirk theory. The similarities were undeniable: the secondary neural cluster forming along Izuku's spine, the obsidian scales replacing his dermal layer, the plasma gland now nesting where his stomach had been.

Izuku arched off the bed with a sound like shattering glass. His bones *moved* beneath his skin, elongating, reforging themselves into something that no longer fit the human template. The hospital gown disintegrated as wings burst from his shoulder blades—not feathered, not batlike, but something in between, their membrane threaded with luminous violet veins that pulsed in time with the crest's glow.

Nedzu's calculations spiraled behind his beady eyes. "The transformation isn't random. It's following an *archetype*."

Toshinori barely registered the words. His attention was fixed on Izuku's face—where freckles darkened into scale clusters, where his canines sharpened into fangs, where his once-round cheeks hollowed into the lethal angles of a predator. But his *eyes*—those were still Midoriya's. Wide. Green. Terrified.

"My boy." Toshinori reached out, ignoring the way Izuku's claws tore through sheets like tissue paper. "Fight it."

The plea hung between them—a lifeline thrown into stormy seas. For a heartbeat, Izuku's trembling fingers brushed Toshinori's, human warmth meeting scaled metamorphosis. Then the crest flared again, its central eye rolling back to fix on the ceiling with terrible understanding.

"**They're coming,**" Izuku whispered—and the walls of UA's infirmary dissolved into a kaleidoscope of impossible geometries, revealing for one nauseating second the obsidian spires of Nazarick looming in the distance, Albedo's golden gaze piercing through the veil.

Then—silence.

The infirmary door hissed open on pneumatic hinges, admitting a squat maintenance bot that whirred forward on treads, its clawed manipulators cradling a leather-bound tome thick with age. Nedzu's paws twitched as the bot deposited the book onto his lap with exaggerated care. The cover exhaled centuries of dust when he flipped it open—ancient leather cracking along the spine, pages yellowed to the color of old bruises.

Izuku's nostrils flared. The scent hit him like a physical blow: vellum and iron gall ink undercut by something sharper, wilder—dragon musk. His newly-sensitive pupils contracted to pinpricks as Nedzu carefully turned a page, revealing an illuminated manuscript depicting a Night Fury mid-plummet, its wings tucked tight against a streamlined body.

"Ah!" Nedzu's whiskers quivered with academic delight. "The Haddock bestiary—specifically, Book XII on *Dragon Subspecies: Night Fury.*" His claw traced a line of faded text written in an angular script that looked more like claw marks than letters. "Remarkable preservation, considering its age."

The book exhaled another cloud of dust when he turned the page—this one displaying anatomical sketches so precise they could’ve been lifted from a modern medical journal. Nedzu’s claws traced the illustration of a Night Fury’s thoracic cavity, where a glowing organ pulsed with captured starlight, its branching veins mirroring the fractal patterns now visible beneath Izuku’s scales. The principal’s beady eyes flicked between the ancient parchment and Izuku’s trembling form, calculating.

“Fascinating,” Nedzu murmured, tapping the pages.

The scent hit Nedzu first—burnt cinnamon and forge smoke. His nose twitched before his brain caught up, synapses firing as the olfactory memory surfaced: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III's personal stench, meticulously recorded in Viking archives alongside notes about his prosthetic foot and dragon-hide armor. Nedzu's claws dug into the bestiary's pages. Impossible. That lineage had been extinct for centuries.

Across the room, Izuku convulsed. His wings—still wet with embryonic fluid—flared outward, membranes catching the sterile light in a way that made Toshinori's breath hitch. For half a second, the shadows didn't match the boy's movements. They rippled independently, stretching toward the corners of the room like ink spilled across water, forming the unmistakable silhouette of a Night Fury mid-pounce.

Nedzu's tail lashed. "All Might. His scent."

Toshinori frowned, leaning closer—then recoiled as his enhanced senses registered it too. Beneath the hospital's antiseptic reek and the metallic tang of transformation, Izuku smelled like a blacksmith's apprentice: charcoal, steel filings, and something sweetly, unmistakably *Hiccup*. The realization hit like a sledgehammer—this wasn't just biological contamination. This was *reincarnation*.

Izuku's head snapped toward them, his pupils slitting to black-violet shards. When he spoke, two voices layered his words—one teenage and rasping, the other older, rougher, flavored with Berk's ancient dialect: "You're smelling *him*." His claws flexed, shredding mattress foam. "Hiccup's... imprint." The admission seemed dragged from him, as if the words burned his throat.

Toshinori's gaunt face paled further. "You remember?"

"Not *remember*." Izuku's wings twitched, scattering droplets of iridescent fluid. "*Know*. Like... like muscle memory." His hand—half-scaled now—lifted toward his face, tracing phantom contours of a jawline that wasn't his own. "Sometimes I reach for a tool belt that isn't there. Or expect my left foot to be... *wrong*." His voice broke on the last word, the way someone might speak of a missing limb they still felt itching.

The heart monitor, previously silent, suddenly blared to life—not with the steady beep of human rhythm, but a deep, resonant *thrum* that vibrated the equipment's casing. Nedzu's ears flattened against his skull. That sound was catalogued in UA's restricted archives: the pulse frequency of alpha-class dragons, last recorded during the Quirk Wars.

Izuku's crest flared again, its central pupil dilating as it fixed on Nedzu. "You have his book." The words dripped with a longing that didn't belong to an 18-year-old hero student. "The one Hiccup... *we*... wrote after..." His claws spasmed around empty air, mimicking the grip of a pen that hadn't existed for nine hundred years.

Nedzu's paws stilled on the bestiary. Of course. The marginalia in erratic, left-slanting script—notes about dragon flight mechanics penned by someone who'd *ridden* one—they weren't scholarly observations. They were memoirs. The principal's whiskers trembled. "You're not just *becoming* Toothless." His voice was uncharacteristically soft. "You *were* him."

Izuku's answering smile was all sharp edges—too many teeth, too much knowing. "Not *were*." The shadows at his feet pooled unnaturally, forming the shape of a crouching dragon. "*Am*." His newly-fanged mouth twisted around the next words like they tasted of bile: "And so is *he*."

Toshinori's head whipped toward the window. Outside, where UA's courtyard should've been visible, the sky *rippled*, revealing a flash of obsidian spires before snapping back to normalcy. Nedzu's calculator-quick mind made the connection first: "Momonga." The principal's fur bristled. "You're saying he's—"

"The Red Death." Izuku's wings mantled, their leading edges gleaming like forged metal. "Resurrected. *Angrier*." His claws scraped the bedside rail, leaving molten grooves. "And he's not the only one coming back."

The revelation hung in the air like a suspended blade. Toshinori's fingers twitched toward his withered side—an old hero's instinct to protect, even when facing mythologies made flesh. Nedzu, ever practical, was already flipping through the bestiary to a dog-eared page depicting the Red Death's cavernous maw.

Izuku exhaled a laugh that wasn't his own—a sound like wind through dragon wings. "You don't ask a hurricane for its family tree," he murmured, watching Nedzu's claws freeze mid-page turn. The bestiary's parchment crackled under his grip, revealing an inked genealogy chart titled *Haddock Lineage: Dragon Kin*. Izuku's pulse stuttered. There, halfway down the yellowed page, inked in iron gall and what smelled suspiciously like dried blood: *Inko Midoriya (née Haddock), 20th gen. emigrant branch.*

Toshinori's breath hitched. "Your mother—"

"—never mentioned the axe scars," Izuku finished, his voice layered with centuries of quiet shame. His claws—*Hiccup's claws, Toothless's claws, who even owned them anymore?*—traced the empty space where his mother's portrait should've been. Someone had torn it out violently, leaving only parchment teeth marks and the ghost of her freckles imprinted on the opposite page.

The maintenance bot whirred suddenly, extending a manipulator to deposit a small object into Izuku's palm. Cold metal met scaled flesh—a tarnished pendant shaped like a dragon's fang, its surface etched with Norse runes that glowed violet when his blood dripped onto them. Izuku's breath caught. He'd seen this before, in flashes between transformations: his mother clutching it during thunderstorms, whispering *"Þetta reddast"* like a prayer. The runes weren't decorative. Up close, they resolved into coordinates—latitude and longitude burned into the metal with dragonfire precision.

Nedzu's nose twitched. "Ah! The family sigil!" His claw tapped the bestiary's margin notes where Hiccup's frantic scribbles described *"the tooth-marked compass—only Haddock blood wakes it."* The principal's beady eyes darted between the pendant and Izuku's transforming hands. "Fascinating adaptation—your scales are forming in *exactly* the same pattern as Toothless's ventral plating!"

Izuku barely heard him. The pendant's heat intensified, its glow synchronizing with the crest pulsing beneath his sternum. His reflection in the polished metal wasn't teenage Izuku or even dragon-scaled Izuku—it was a green-eyed woman with wild curls and axe callouses, her lips moving in silent warning. Then the vision shattered as the pendant *clicked* open, revealing a miniature portrait of Inko Midoriya cradling a newborn—except the baby in her arms had violet-veined skin and slitted pupils.

Toshinori made a wounded noise. "She knew."

Izuku's claws closed around the pendant. Of course she knew. The midnight lullabies in Old Norse, the way she'd stiffen whenever All Might's dragon-slaying exploits aired on TV, even the ridiculous "family quirk" story about levitating small objects—all lies woven to hide the truth coiling in his DNA. His transformation hadn't started in Nazarick. It had been hibernating in his marrow since conception, waiting for Momonga's crest to flip the switch.

The clock above UA's infirmary door didn't tick. It *unwound*—gears grinding backward as the minute hand dissolved into pixelated static before reforming ninety years earlier. Nedzu's pocket watch followed suit, its casing cracking open to reveal mechanical entrails rearranging themselves with audible clicks, like a lock surrendering to a thief's tools. The year displayed on Recovery Girl's computer monitor stuttered—2089 flickering beneath a phantom overlay of 2197—before settling into an impossible hybrid: *2089/2197*, the slash between them oozing black ichor that smelled of corrupted code.

Izuku's wings twitched as spacetime hiccuped around them. The infirmary walls *breathed*, plaster exhaling into transparency for three heartbeats—long enough to reveal Nazarick's obsidian towers looming where UA's gymnasium should be, their spires stabbing through a sky now split down the middle: one half choked with smog from Musutafu's factories, the other filled with unfamiliar constellations that pulsed like fresh bruises. The air tasted of burnt ozone and something older—the metallic tang of a worldline forcibly sutured.

Nedzu's calculator clattered to the floor, its display scrolling endless nines. "Fascinating!" His voice was too sharp, too loud for the tomb-quiet room. "The temporal merger isn't just affecting chronological markers—it's rewriting *causality* itself!" His claws tapped the bestiary's now-mutating pages, where ink bled upward against gravity to form new paragraphs about events that hadn't happened yet—including one chilling line: *The Catalyst's descent triggers Yggdrasil's corruption (see: 2197 fall of Aincrad).*

Toshinori coughed blood onto his sleeve—but the splatter *changed* midair, morphing from the familiar crimson to a shimmering violet-black that matched Izuku's scales. He stared at the stain with dawning horror. "This isn't... my blood." The admission tasted like copper and grave dirt. "It's *his.*"

Izuku knew without asking. Momonga's ichor, seeping through the seams of stitched-together timelines. His own claws dug into the pendant as its runes reconfigured—no longer showing coordinates, but a countdown in glowing Norse numerals: *9 days until convergence.* The numbers pulsed in time with the crest beneath his sternum, each throb sending fresh agony through his transforming bones.

Outside, the screaming started.

Not human screams—not entirely. These were layered, *wrong*, like audio tracks from different eras playing simultaneously. Izuku's enhanced hearing parsed them: Present-day UA students shrieking about "monster attacks" overlaid with 2197 voices shouting about "NPCs going rogue" and worst of all—a third thread, guttural and ancient, snarling in a language that made his fangs ache. *Draconic.*

The window shattered inward. Not from impact, but because the glass *remembered* it had already been broken in 2197 by a dragon's tail. Shards hovered midair, refracting impossible scenes—Izuku saw his own face in one, aged thirty years and scarred by war; in another, Momonga's skeletal fingers clutching a staff that wasn't a staff but *All Might's spine*, polished and enchanted.

Then the PA system crackled to life, Aizawa's voice warping into dual timbres—his usual exhausted drawl interlaced with the reedy panic of his 2197 counterpart: "*All faculty—code Black Fury. I repeat—*" Static swallowed the rest, resolving into a new voice that dripped with honeyed malice: "*Subject Nine has entered the playing field.*"

Albedo's chuckle echoed through the speakers before they exploded in a shower of sparks.

Nedzu's fur stood on end. "They're not just merging timelines." His claws clutched the mutating bestiary tighter. "They're *mining* them—plundering causality for strategic advantage." The page he'd been reading now showed an illustration of Izuku mid-transformation—except the artist had drawn Momonga's skeletal fingers emerging from his ribcage.

The pain wasn't sharp. That's what terrified him most.

It was a slow, insistent *unfolding*—like origami reversing itself, each crease in his flesh parting to make room for something older. Izuku's ribs cracked with the sound of parchment tearing, his sternum splitting vertically as violet light spilled from the widening fissure. Inside, where his heart should've been pounding, a skeletal finger emerged instead—bone polished to an obsidian sheen, its knuckles too many, its joints bending in ways that made Todoroki retch.

"Midoriya—"

Izuku couldn't answer. His jaw unhinged with a wet *pop*, his scream distorting into a sound no human throat could reproduce—half dragon-roar, half death rattle. The skeletal fingers multiplied, branching through his thoracic cavity like roots through wet soil, each phalange sheathed in glowing runes that matched Momonga's staff. His scales reacted violently, edges curling upward like metal filings drawn to a magnet, reforming around the invading bones in grotesque armor.

Aizawa's capture scarf lashed out again—and *stuck*, glued to Izuku's transforming flesh by strands of black ichor that pulsed in time with Nazarick's heartbeat. The teacher gagged as the liquid crawled up the fabric toward his wrists, whispering in a language that turned his veins momentarily translucent.

Izuku's wings *buckled*, membranes sloughing away to reveal chitinous frameworks that rebuilt themselves with Momonga's necrotic magic—each new strut a fusion of dragon cartilage and overlord bone, the webbing between them now threaded with glowing violet veins that pulsed in discordant rhythm with his heart. His claws elongated further, their obsidian sheen fracturing to reveal hollow cores where Nazarick's death spells swirled like bottled lightning.

The worst was his face.

His jaw stretched forward with audible *creaks*, fangs multiplying in rows that belonged to neither dragon nor human—these were *Momonga's* teeth, needle-thin and endless, each one etched with tiny numerical runes counting down to an unknown catastrophe. His freckles darkened into necrotic pits, their centers boring deeper until they tunneled through his cheeks, exhaling puffs of grave dust.

"**You're mine now,**" his voice layered with Momonga's baritone as his skull reshaped itself—forehead bulging to accommodate twin sets of eyes, the new pair rolling wildly before focusing on Nedzu with pupil-less hunger. One set blinked vertically. The other horizontally.

All Might lunged, his emaciated fist connecting with Izuku's chest—and *sank in* up to the wrist, his arm swallowed by the same void-space where Momonga's fingers had taken root. The Symbol of Peace gasped as his flesh blackened, necrotic patterns spreading from contact points in fractal spirals that smelled of corrupted data.

Izuku's left hand—still partially human—grabbed All Might's wrist. His fingernails were gone, replaced by translucent claws that showed the bones beneath shifting between species like a zoetrope. "**Run,**" he rasped through dissolving lips.

Above them, the infirmary ceiling peeled away in layers, revealing not sky but the underside of Nazarick's ninth floor—its inverted gardens dripping with bioluminescent fungi that rained spores onto the gurneys. A tendril of Momonga's throne unspooled downward like a sentient umbilical cord, its tip bifurcating into surgical precision as it sought Izuku's exposed spine.

Todoroki's ice shattered before it made contact. The flames fared worse—they *bent*, arcing backward to engulf his own arm as Izuku's new eyes tracked the heat signatures with predatory focus.

"**Quirks won't work,**" Izuku's Momonga-voice gloated as his ribcage yawned wider, the skeletal fingers inside now cradling a pulsating violet core that resembled nothing so much as a fetal dragon wrapped in mummy gauze. "**Not when the system is rewriting itself.**"

The heart monitor flatlined—not with a beep, but with the sound of a guillotine dropping.

Nedzu's bestiary burst into black flames, its ashes reassembling midair into a new page that hovered before Izuku's mutated face. The illustration showed his current form—dragon and overlord fused in a nightmare chimera—but the caption underneath made his remaining human eye widen:

*Subject 9: Yggdrasil's Corruption Vector (Stage 1 of 9)*

Then the throne's tendril reached his spine—and the *download* began.

Nedzu's claws danced across the emergency console with a precision that bordered on desperation. The screen flickered, overlaying blueprints of UA's gymnasium with ghostly schematics of Nazarick's obsidian throne room—their architectures bleeding together at the edges like wet ink. "The convergence point," he muttered, tapping a junction where both structures' load-bearing walls intersected in the temporal overlay. "We must move him *there*."

Todoroki's ice-crusted sleeve dripped onto the keyboard. "That's suicide." His voice lacked its usual monotone—the words cracked like thin ice underfoot. "Look what he's *doing* to the air."

They all saw it. Where Izuku's talons scraped the floor, reality itself peeled upward in jagged strips, revealing pixelated voids beneath. Each breath he took—ragged, wet—exhaled motes of violet code that rewrote the infirmary's walls into tombstone-gray marble veined with pulsing mana lines.

All Might coughed another mouthful of ichor. "No choice." His skeletal fingers brushed Nedzu's paw—a silent transfer of trust. "Stabilize both... or lose both."

The principal's whiskers twitched. His calculations were already complete: a 43.6% chance the merger would stabilize Izuku's form, a 91.2% chance it would accelerate the timeline collapse, and a 0.0001% margin labeled *Dragonfall Contingency* in trembling script. Nedzu took a breath so deep his tiny ribs creaked. "Recovery Girl! Prep the mobile stasis unit—we're taking our patient on a field trip."

Izuku's body arched off the gurney as if hooked by invisible wires. His wings—now more bone than membrane—scythed through IV lines, sending glucose bags exploding in sticky showers. The skeletal fingers protruding from his chest *gestured*, and the infirmary door dissolved into swirling runes that reformed as a corridor stretching impossibly toward the gymnasium-Nazarick hybrid. Aizawa's capture scarf, still fused to Izuku's flesh, pulled taut like a leash as the transformation dragged him forward.

"Move!" Nedzu scampered ahead, his tail bristling as he navigated the shifting architecture. The hallway *bent* unnaturally, its ceiling dripping stalactites that weren't stone but crystallized experience points—glowing purple shards that hummed with the voices of long-dead players. Todoroki's left side flared instinctively, but the flames died midair, their heat siphoned into Izuku's crest like kindling fed to a black hole.

They passed Class 1-A's dormitory—or rather, where it *should've* been. The building flickered between its cheerful UA facade and a gothic nightmare spired with gargoyles, its windows alternating between neon *Welcome Home* signs and stained glass depictions of massacres. Kirishima's hardened face appeared briefly in one pane, his mouth moving in a silent scream before the image pixelated into Momonga's grinning skull.

Then—the gym.

Or what remained of it.

The basketball court had fused with Nazarick's grand arena, their floor plans overlapping in a Möbius strip of polished maple and bloodstained onyx. At the exact convergence point stood a single, shuddering basketball hoop—its backboard splitting down the middle to reveal Yggdrasil's roots writhing beneath. The air smelled of sweat and myrrh.

Izuku's body *jerked* toward the centerline, his mutations accelerating. His lech body fusing it's strength and body density/height into an anthropomorphic Night Fury body to make the new guild leader of Nazarick.

The sound wasn’t a scream anymore. It wasn’t even a roar. It was the universe *unspooling*—a wet, tearing noise like reality’s stitching coming loose, vibrating through Izuku’s newly elongated throat as his ribs cracked one final time. His sternum split like overripe fruit, violet light hemorrhaging from the fissure as Momonga’s skeletal fingers *pulled*, unfolding him from the inside out.

Nedzu’s stasis unit exploded before it got within ten feet. The shrapnel didn’t fall—it *floated*, caught in the gravitational anomaly swirling around Izuku’s half-transformed body. Scales rippled down his spine in waves, each one etching itself into his flesh with the precision of a tattoo needle dipped in liquid void. His wings, now fully skeletal, twitched with unnatural sentience, their joints clicking as they adjusted to the weight of unseen dimensions.

All Might lunged again, but his punch phased *through* Izuku’s chest—his arm emerging from the boy’s back clutching nothing but handfuls of black mist that dissolved into screaming faces. "Midoriya—*fight it!*"

Izuku’s remaining human eye rolled wildly, pupil dilating until the green iris was a mere sliver. His *other* eyes—Momonga’s eyes—remained fixed on the trembling basketball hoop. The backboard’s fracture pulsed like an open wound, Yggdrasil’s roots thrashing inside as if something were climbing *out*.

Then—*contact*.

The throne’s tendril speared into Izuku’s spine with a sound like a hundred bones snapping in unison. His jaw unhinged, but what poured out wasn’t plasma or screams—it was *data*, streams of glowing violet code that wrapped around his convulsing body like a cocoon. The sigil on his forearm detonated, its lines unraveling into chains that anchored him to the floor as his flesh *boiled*, muscles rearranging into something sleek, predatory, *efficient*.

Todoroki’s ice shattered mid-formation. "His *mass*—"

Izuku wasn’t growing. He was *compressing*, his humanoid form collapsing inward like a dying star, bones reforging into denser alloys, muscles tightening into coiled springs. His wings folded against his back, their membranes dissolving into shadow-stuff that clung to his new frame like a second skin. The obsidian scales darkened further, their edges sharpening until they caught the light like a blade’s edge.

Aizawa’s goggles cracked. "That’s not a Quirk," he whispered. "That’s a *patch*."

The code wrapping Izuku’s body flared brighter, resolving into lines of glowing text:

**[SYSTEM OVERRIDE: DRAGONFORGE PROTOCOL ENGAGED]**  

**[GUILD LEADER DESIGNATION TRANSFERRED: MOMONGA → SUBJECT 9]**  

**[WELCOME, LORD OF NAZARICK]**

Izuku’s fingers—no, *talons*—flexed. The air around them *screamed*.

Then he *moved*.

Not with One For All’s reckless speed, but with the terrifying precision of something that had calculated every variable before muscles even twitched. He blurred past All Might, his tail flicking out to tap the hero’s shoulder—a touch so light it shouldn’t have done anything.

All Might *folded*, vomiting ichor as his body rejected the foreign timeline’s physics.

Izuku’s new voice, layered with Momonga’s baritone and something deeper—something *older*—echoed through the gymnasium-turned-throne-room:

"**You wanted a hero.**" His muzzle split into a grin too wide, too *sharp*. "**Let’s see if you can survive one.**"

The first plasma blast sheared the ceiling in half.

The second erased the doors.

The third—

—Todoroki barely dodged, his sleeve vaporizing as the beam grazed his arm, leaving edges *glitching*, flesh flickering between burned and untouched like a corrupted save file.

Nedzu’s tablet beeped frantically. The Dragonfall Contingency counter now read:

**[STAGE 2: 00:00:03]**

Izuku’s wings snapped open—and the world *broke*.

Izuku's claws sank into the warping gymnasium floor—not as submission, but as *ownership*. The obsidian scales rippling across his knuckles weren't Nazarick's conquest; they were *his* armor now, reforged in the furnace of his stubborn humanity. Momonga's consciousness coiled inside his skull like a parasite, whispering of eternal thrones and subjugation spells, but Izuku *bit down* on the voice until he tasted spectral blood.

"**You forget,**" Izuku snarled through lengthening fangs—and for the first time, the overlord's timbre fractured, revealing his own voice beneath. The plasma in his chest didn't burn at Momonga's command; it *pulsed* in time with his racing heart, green lightning crackling through the violet.

Aizawa's capture scarf, still fused to Izuku's forearm, twitched. Not from the teacher's control but because *Izuku* willed it. The fabric blackened at the edges as One For All's emerald energy surged through its fibers, overwriting Nazarick's corruption like sunlight burning off mist.

"*His* body," Recovery Girl whispered, gripping her cane as Izuku's spine straightened with audible *pops*, vertebrae reconfiguring from draconic arches back toward human alignment. The scales didn't vanish—they *adapted*, their edges softening into something closer to armored plating than monstrous hide.

Todoroki saw it first: the moment Izuku's vertical pupils flickered round again. Not from weakness—from *choice*. The plasma breath attack that should have melted UA's foundation stuttered, its trajectory diverting skyward as Izuku *wrenched* control from Momonga's grip with raw, teeth-gritted defiance.

Nedzu's ears perked. "Fascinating! The Guild Leader mantle is hierarchical by design—but Midoriya's *Quirk singularity* is disrupting the command chain!" His claws flew across the glitching tablet. "He's not resisting absorption... he's *hacking* it."

The throne's tendril spasmed inside Izuku's spine—once a conduit for Momonga's will, now a fraying rope in a tug-of-war. Izuku's laugh was a ragged, human thing as he grabbed the pulsating umbilical cord with both hands. "You wanted a perfect vessel?" Blood dripped from his reforming canines. "Should've picked someone *easier to break*."

Then he *pulled*.

The tendril snapped with a sound like shattering chandeliers. Momonga's scream echoed across timelines, but Izuku didn't waver—he was too busy *rebuilding himself*. His wings didn't retract; they *morphed*, membranes transmuting into a cloak of living shadow stitched with One For All's lightning. The obsidian claws remained, but their edges now crackled with dual energy—violet necromancy and emerald heroism entwined like DNA.

All Might's coughing fit stalled as Izuku turned toward him. The boy's eyes—still slitted, still glowing—held no conquest, only *recognition*. "Sorry... for worrying you," Izuku rasped, his voice stabilizing with each word. The sigil on his forearm wasn't gone; it had *mutated*, its eldritch runes now interlaced with kanji that read *英雄*—"hero."

Todoroki's ice spear clattered to the floor. "You're... you?"

Izuku flexed his hybridized hands—scaled knuckles, human fingernails—and grinned a grin that was all his own. "Mostly." He patted his chest, where the plasma core now pulsed green at its center. "Had to evict a squatter."

Above them, the rift to Nazarick didn't close. It *bent*, its edges crimped by Izuku's newfound authority. Albedo's furious shriek distorted into static as 2197's timeline recoiled from the anomaly—a Guild Leader who bowed to no script, no system, *no overlord*.

Nedzu's tail wagged. "Oh my. This changes *everything*."

Izuku took a step forward—not with Momonga's calculated menace, but with his own trademark stumble. The gymnasium floor solidified beneath his feet, reality itself sighing in relief as the dominant personality asserted itself.

"Okay," Izuku said, rolling his shoulders until the wings settled comfortably. He eyed the still-glitching Todoroki, then the recovering All Might, and finally the fascinated Nedzu. His smile was nervous, determined, *his*. "Who's up for saving the multiverse?"

The plasma in his chest flared *green*.

Momonga's scream, this time, was pure *fury*.

The scream wasn't Momonga's anymore. It wasn't even Izuku's. It was the sound of two broken things *splintering* together—a jagged fusion of bone-deep loneliness and white-knuckled heroism. Izuku's claws sank deeper into the rift between worlds, not to tear it wider, but to *stitch* it shut from both sides. His reflection in the glitching gymnasium floor wasn't monstrous or human—it was *both*, the scaled doppelgänger's vertical pupils flickering with the same wet shine as Izuku's round ones. 

"**You think merging will save you?**" Momonga's voice slithered through Izuku's molars, tasting of tomb dust and abandoned chat logs. "**I am your surrendered notebooks. Your empty lunch tables.**"

Izuku's answering grin was bloody. "And I'm the kid who *kept writing in them.*" He seized the tendril still twitching in his spine—not to rip it out, but to *rewire* it. Violet runes flared along his arm, but this time, One For All's lightning didn't fight them; it *synced*, green sparks threading through the necrotic script like vines through chainmail. 

The fusion hit like a supernova. Izuku's vision shattered into fractured memories: Momonga's skeletal fingers hovering over a logout button that would never work, Izuku's middle school desk with *Deku* carved into its surface, the throne room's echoing silence, Kacchan's laughter like broken glass. The pain was excruciating—not from the merging, but from the *recognition*. They'd both been drowning. Just in different voids.

"**They left us,**" Momonga whispered inside their shared skull, the words rattling with the weight of 2197's abandoned servers. 

Izuku's claws flexed. "So we'll *make them see us.*" His voice was layered now—part tremor, part echo—but the resolve was pure *Izuku*. The rift pulsed between them, its edges fraying into strands of golden light that smelled suspiciously like UA's cafeteria, like Recovery Girl's antiseptic, like Todoroki's frostbitten sleeve when he'd offered a hand instead of another ice spear. 

Nedzu's tablet beeped urgently. The Dragonfall Contingency screen flickered, then repainted itself in Izuku's messy kanji: **[PATCH NOTES: VER. HERO]** 

Aizawa's goggles slipped. "You're... *negotiating* with it?" 

"Not it." Izuku's wings—now neither fully membrane nor shadow—flared as the last of Momonga's resistance crumbled. "Him." The admission cost him; his ribs cracked again, but this time they reformed *different*, their structure hybridized like the overlapping floor plans of UA and Nazarick. Stronger. 

The plasma core in his chest stabilized, its violet fire now cradling a green sun at its center. Izuku exhaled, and the breath came out dual-toned—Momonga's baritone underneath his own. "We made a deal." 

Todoroki edged closer, his left side flickering uncertainly. "What kind of deal?" 

Izuku turned. His eyes were still slitted, but the way they crinkled at the corners was unbearably human. "That I'd fix *both* our shitty endings." 

Above them, the rift convulsed. Where there had been a bleeding wound in reality, now there was a *bridge*—its arches woven from strands of One For All's lightning and Yggdrasil's roots, its path leading not to conquest, but to something neither of them had dared voice: 

*Homecoming.*

Albedo's silhouette appeared at the other end, her manicured claws digging into the threshold. "My lord—!" 

"**Not your lord,**" Izuku-and-Momonga answered together, the fusion settling into their bones like a second heartbeat. "**Not anymore.**" 

The throne room's spires visible through the rift weren't crumbling—they were *changing*, their gothic spires softening into UA's familiar angles. Somewhere in the blurring architecture, a single green notebook tumbled through the void, its pages fanning open to show two sets of handwriting: 

One desperate, inky scribbles analyzing Quirks. 

The other, neat guild logs detailing raid strategies. 

Izuku reached for it. Momonga reached *with* him. 

The notebook burst into flames—not the hungry black of Nazarick's magic, but the brilliant gold of a phoenix down. 

Nedzu's tea cup shattered in his paws. "Oh dear. That's not a timeline convergence." His whiskers trembled. "That's a *fusion.*"