The room is a stark, white wound, its light searing my eyes, its cold gnawing at my bones. My wrists are shredded, the straps cutting through skin to muscle, leaving raw, oozing gashes that don't bleed much anymore—my body's too drained to bother.
The table's hard, slick with sweat and dried blood, my back fused to it like I'm part of the metal. The air's sharp with antiseptic, stinging my lungs.
I'm thirteen, I think, but my body feels like it's crumbling, each breath grinding my ribs to dust.
Time's a haze, lost in the hum of the fluorescent light. My chest is a cage of pain, every heartbeat a dull thud against cracked bones.
My arms are numb, my fingers limp, like they've forgotten how to move. The light buzzes, a flat, endless drone that burrows into my skull. I don't sleep anymore—my body's too broken, my mind too frayed to rest.
The machine above me is a tangle of steel and needles, its points glinting like they're eager to cut deeper. I stare at it, eyes dry, too tired to blink.
It's a predator, waiting to tear into what's left of me. My quirk—Ghost Hands—sits heavy in my chest, a jagged weight, no longer mine. It's theirs, a tool they've twisted until it feels like broken glass inside me.
The door hisses, and my body twitches, the straps biting into open wounds. My stomach clenches, but there's nothing left to heave. My heart stumbles, weak, like it's giving up.
I don't want to look, but I do, because I have to know what's coming next.
The pain's routine now, a rhythm I can't escape.
Dr. Kuroda enters, his glasses reflecting the sterile light, his face blank as stone. I'm not a person to him—just meat, a thing to dissect.
He holds a syringe, thick and heavy, filled with black sludge that shifts like it's breathing. Behind him, All For One looms, a shadow that presses against my chest, making my quirk writhe, sharp and wrong, like it's chewing through my insides.
Kuroda's voice is flat, clinical. "Neural pathways collapsing. We'll push the quirk's limits to finalize integration."
I want to scream that I'm not a machine, but my throat's a ruin, scarred from screams that never mattered.
My lips are cracked, blood crusted, and my tongue's too dry to move. I stare at the syringe, my heart a faint stutter in my chest.
I clench my jaw, the only part of me that still obeys. My body's shaking, a weak tremor that rattles my broken bones. I'm scared, but it's distant, like fear belongs to someone else. I'm supposed to be strong, like Dad, but my body's a wreck, and I'm just a kid, too small for this pain.
Kuroda lifts the syringe, the black sludge glinting, promising ruin.
I don't move—can't move.
The needle pierces my neck, a dull stab through torn skin, and I choke out a sound, not a scream, just a rasp. The sludge spreads, heavy, like tar in my veins, grinding through my muscles, my bones. My quirk surges, Ghost Hands erupting from my chest, my arms, jagged and wild, slashing at the air, the table.
They're not hands—they're shards, tearing through me, each one a blade in my flesh. My ribs creak, my joints scream, like my body's splitting apart.
They're not mine, twisted by their poison, their machines. My vision dims, my head a pulsing ache, and I'm gasping, my lungs too weak to pull in air.
My body's breaking, bones grinding, skin splitting where the straps hold me. The hands smash the machine, sparks spitting, and Kuroda steps back, his face tight with irritation. I want to spit at him, but my mouth's empty, my strength gone.
The hands claw at nothing, and each slash is a crack in my chest, my mind, my everything. I'm too weak to stop them. I'm nothing.
"Yield," All For One says, his voice a cold spike, piercing my skull.
I try to fight, to hold onto something, but my body's a ruin, my mind a fraying thread. My breaths are shallow, my chest collapsing, and I'm slipping, falling apart under the weight of his will.
Another needle, this one in my sternum, and my body seizes, bones cracking, muscles tearing.
My vision splits, and I see fragments—Dad's face, blurred, Mom's hands, fading. They're gone before I can hold them, swallowed by the white room, the pain.
My body's a broken machine, limbs useless, skin shredded, quirk eating me alive.
My mind's a crumbling edge, and I'm falling. The fragments—Dad's voice, Mom's touch, a kid running in the grass—dissolve, eaten by the black sludge in my veins.
All For One's voice is a dry rasp, cutting through the fog. "You're mine."
My body convulses, bones splintering, flesh tearing, held together only by their will. My body's a shattered husk, my mind a void, and I break, letting go.
I'm not a boy, not a person—just a vessel, hollowed out, filled with All For One's will.
I'm his, a tool forged in pain.
With nothing left of me, I will follow his orders.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
(AFO POV)
It took weeks.
Weeks of precision. Of pain. Of persistence so methodical it bordered on surgical. Each day was a scalpel. Each hour, another incision. We did not break him all at once—that would have been too kind. Too quick. No, we peeled him apart slowly. Thoughtfully. Delicately. Layer by layer. Memory by memory. Until there was nothing left beneath but raw silence, bleeding out into the dark.
Until every flicker of rebellion drained from his eyes like the last drops from a dying flame.
Until even his name—Rei—lost all weight, all meaning. Just a sound. Just noise. Meaningless syllables echoing in a mind that no longer knew what they once signified.
And now, at long last… he is mine.
Utterly.
He's shattered—like glass ground underfoot. Like porcelain dropped from a height too great to survive. Like a soul burned down to embers and then snuffed out entirely. There is no resistance left in him. No self. Only a shape now. A frame. A vessel. Mine to mold.
Mine to command.
He kneels before me, motionless except for the steady rise and fall of his chest. Even that feels mechanical. Automated. His posture is loose, slack with submission, not from comfort but from defeat. The light in his gaze—the fire, the spirit, the boy—it's gone. There is nothing but a dull, empty fog behind those eyes.
His breathing is shallow. Hollow. Like a puppet between strings, hanging in midair, waiting for someone to make it dance.
I step forward, my footsteps echoing like thunder in the cold silence of the room. My presence swells, casting long shadows across the metal walls. The lights above buzz faintly—harsh, sterile, lifeless.
"I have great plans for you," I murmur, my voice low and deliberate, every word carefully chosen to reach whatever tattered remnants of his consciousness still remain. "You will become something this world has never seen before. A harbinger. A living reminder of their failure."
He doesn't move.
No blink. No twitch. Not even a breath of acknowledgment.
Not that he has the will to respond anymore.
Not after what we did to him.
The hum of machines surrounds us. A gentle, sinister lullaby. Monitors record his vitals, though the body they measure is only a shell now. Data streams across screens. Dr. Kuroda stands in the corner, jotting notes in silent reverence, as if observing a ritual more than a medical assessment.
Another measurement of silence. Another data point in the anatomy of ruin.
I study him.
Not a boy. Not anymore. That word is too soft, too warm. That thing was shed like a second skin—peeled away, scraped off, and discarded. Rei is gone.
What remains is something else entirely.
Something greater.
Something useful.
There's a beauty to ruin, if you know how to look for it. A cruel elegance. What stands before me now is a sculpture of suffering, carved by pain and time. A being reshaped by purpose.
"You've suffered," I whisper, my voice almost reverent, almost tender. "You've lost everything… but in that loss, you've become something precious."
He breathes out.
Not by choice. Just reflex. A muscle response, a remnant of a body still functioning out of habit.
I raise a gloved hand and rest it atop his head. Slow. Controlled. A gesture of ownership more than comfort.
He doesn't flinch. He doesn't pull away. He doesn't even blink.
He simply is.
"You are the storm I will send into their peace," I continue, voice curling like smoke through the air. "A myth reborn in silence. A whisper that will become a scream. They won't believe in you until it's too late."
And now… now it is time.
Time for the final stroke.
A name.
Something to erase what was and mark what is. A symbol. A warning.
"You are no longer Rei," I say, my tone low and absolute. "That boy is dead. The world buried him. And now… it will face what rose from his grave."
I lean in, close enough for my breath to ghost past his ear.
"From this day forward… you are Eidolon."
A phantom of the life they failed to protect. A shadow cast by their arrogance. A name that will slither through their nightmares and stain their hope with dread.
Dr. Kuroda writes it down without hesitation. Eidolon. The birth of something sacred and terrible. A ritual sealed with ink and silence.
And I?
I smile beneath the mask.
Let them mourn the boy.
Let them fear Eidolon.