In a dimly lit bedroom of a modest apartment, morning light filtered through half-closed blinds, slicing the gloom into slivers of gold. A breeze slipped in through a cracked window, carrying with it the faint scent of concrete and rain.
Phos opened his eyes.
He was lying in a bed that didn't belong to him—in a world that didn't hum with the soft resonance of minerals or the shimmer of moonlight on crystalline shores. Instead, there was warmth. Too much warmth. A heartbeat. The weight of flesh pressing against sheets. The unfamiliar softness of skin that yielded instead of ringing out when touched.
The bed creaked under his shifting form as he sat up, his brows furrowing.
"This isn't right. This isn't… me."
The quiet felt wrong. The ever-present chorus of his old world was gone. In its place: dust, still air, and a human heartbeat thudding in his ears.
"Where… am I?" he whispered.
He scanned the room. It was cramped but lived-in, worn around the edges. Posters curled from age and neglect hung on the walls. Books were stacked in precarious towers beside a cluttered desk. A dusty computer loomed in the corner like a relic, flanked by a pile of unwashed clothes.
After a moment of silence, Phos got out of bed. Drawn by something unnameable, he crossed the room to a full-length mirror propped against the wall. And froze.
A stranger stared back at him.
A boy—thirteen, maybe fourteen—stood in the reflection. Pale. Gaunt. Eyes hollow with something more than just fatigue. His limbs were too soft, his frame too light, and his body… human. Completely, irreversibly human.
"I… I'm human?"
The words felt wrong in his mouth, like borrowing someone else's name.
In Phos's world, humans were little more than myths. Stories swallowed by time, lost in the divide between what was once and what would never be again. This couldn't be real.
Tentatively, he raised a hand to his cheek. The skin was warm. Pliable. Too easily marked. Gone was the hard gleam of mineral and the fine fractures that danced like constellations beneath his surface.
Then it hit him.
A tidal wave of memory—not his—crashed over him without warning. Images, voices, sensations surged through his mind. He staggered backward, clutching his head as borrowed pain, borrowed sorrow, borrowed life overwhelmed him.
This world… was a world of humans. A world where something called Quirks had emerged—gifts or curses that granted people superhuman abilities. Some quirks brought admiration. Others, fear. The powerful rose. The broken fell.
And in the shadows, villainy bloomed—born of resentment, greed, despair.
To hold back the tide, society had birthed something new: heroes. Symbols of justice trained to protect, to fight, to inspire. They became icons in a fragile balance between order and chaos.
But not everyone was granted a quirk. A portion of humanity—Quirkless—were left behind, powerless in a world that valued strength above all.
The boy whose body Phos now occupied had been one of them.
He'd once dreamed of becoming a hero.
Then came the catastrophe.
Years ago, the number one hero, All Might, clashed with the monstrous villain All For One in a battle that razed cities and echoed through history. Flames swallowed buildings. Streets cracked. Screams rose and were swallowed by silence.
Among the dead were the boy's parents.
With them went the last of his light.
He withdrew from school. From friends. From the world. Left adrift in grief, he locked himself away in this room and never came back out.
The flood of memory receded, leaving Phos standing motionless, hands lowered. His breath was shallow. His eyes unreadable.
The ache it left behind wasn't grief. Not truly. It wasn't even sympathy.
It was emptiness.
A familiar kind.
"So this world has pain too," he said quietly. "Maybe even more than mine."