The city dreamed in electric sighs.U.A. dreamed louder.
Floodlights carved the training grounds into slices of silver and shadow.Ground Gamma—an urban maze of steel skeletons, scaffolding, and glass that reflected motion like memory.
Aizawa stood with his scarf coiled and clipboard tucked under his arm, the posture of a man grading gravity."Night drills," he said. "Environmental unpredictability. Teams of three. Survival over victory."
Renya adjusted his gloves, not for comfort but for ritual habit—small motions that reminded muscle what restraint felt like.
He'd been placed with Kaminari and Tokoyami.
A strange mix:lightning and darkness and something in between pretending to be human.
They entered the simulated city through the west gate.Moonlight bounced off puddles like nervous laughter.
"Objective?" Kaminari asked, voice hushed but incapable of full silence.
"Locate the beacon before it resets," Tokoyami said, cloak stirring. "And avoid detection."
"Right," Kaminari said. "So—quiet time?"
Renya nodded. "Quiet is a tactic, not a virtue."
They moved—Kaminari ahead to scout, Tokoyami beside him, Renya walking like sound reconsidering its job.
Each step placed perfectly between heartbeats.
But after ten minutes, Renya noticed the air was wrong.
Not moving wrong. Listening wrong.
He stopped.Tokoyami turned, cloak folding like the wings of thought. "Something?"
"Yes," Renya said. "The world's pulse is early."
Tokoyami blinked. "That's… not a phrase I understand."
"It will be," Renya murmured.
The hum—usually faint, almost kind—had deepened.No longer rhythm, but tone.A low vibration threading through concrete, air ducts, the thin steel of scaffolds.Like a voice warming up.
Kaminari shouted from ahead, too loud for night. "Found the—!"
Static ate the rest.
Renya moved before decision finished forming.A flicker of light, then a minor explosion—nothing lethal, just enough to make the sky swallow sound.He reached Kaminari first—alive, bruised, tangled in wires that smelled like ozone and apology.
"Man—sorry—tripped a feedback node—"
"Don't talk," Renya said, scanning. The beacon was ten meters away, flickering weakly, signal light redder than regulation allowed.The hum pressed closer, under skin now.
Not his quirk. Not this world's.
He heard it:Exchange.
He froze.It wasn't external sound—no vibration, no voice, but the idea of one.A thought too fluent to be imagined.
Tokoyami noticed his stillness. "Problem?"
Renya said nothing.
The air darkened—not visibly, but conceptually—like color draining from a word.The square appeared beneath him, unbidden.Thin. Black. Absolute.
Exchange. Balance. Price.
Three syllables that felt like truths pretending to be options.
He clenched his jaw. "Not here," he whispered to no one. "Not now."
Kaminari looked up, confused. "Bro—who're you talking to?"
Renya didn't answer. He reached for the beacon and felt a pulse through the metal—one beat off his own heart. Then another, aligning.
The memory came—not sight, not sound, but temperature.Stone colder than mercy.Circles carved in ash.People kneeling, not in prayer, but debt.And him—standing above, bloodless, lawless, devoted to logic.
To gain form, offer form.To gain strength, offer weight.To remain, offer meaning.
He remembered none of their faces, but all of their silences.
The whisper slid through him, as calm as math:Balance has been neglected, Renya of the Lost Path.
He stepped back, breath shaking for the first time in years.Tokoyami's voice cut the fog. "You're pale."
"Memory," Renya said. "Ignore it."
He crushed the beacon in his hand—too hard, but it felt necessary.The hum stopped.
Aizawa's voice echoed through the loudspeaker: "Kurotsuki. Report."
"Beacon secured," Renya said, even though the shards said otherwise.
A pause. Then: "Return. Now."
He obeyed, because he needed distance from the whisper before it recognized obedience as invitation.
The debrief room felt smaller than usual.Aizawa leaned on the desk, eyes searching like knives without malice.
"You spaced out," he said. "No visible trigger."
Renya didn't lie; he edited. "Residual resonance. My quirk adapts to stimuli faster than I do."
Aizawa's expression didn't change. "Be careful. Adaptation without awareness is mutation."
"Yes, sensei."
He turned to leave.Aizawa added, almost softly: "Whatever you heard—it wasn't calling you. It was testing whether you'd answer."
Renya looked back. "Did I?"
"Not this time," Aizawa said.
The night air outside U.A. carried the chill of relief pretending to be peace.He walked home slower than usual, counting lampposts like prayers.Every other light flickered—pulse still following, softer now, like apology.
He let the rhythm run under his skin until it lost meaning.
When he reached the apartment, Aki was already asleep.The square under her bed glowed faintly—one slow heartbeat.
He stood in the doorway, watching. The hum matched hers, not his.He whispered, "Don't take from her."
The light dimmed, obedient.
He sat in the living room, cross-legged, eyes open but seeing memory again.
Exchange.Balance.Price.
He could almost see the old altar—the one made not of stone, but expectation.There had been no violence there. Only clarity.
He remembered standing in that circle, bleeding nothing, offering thought instead.The realization came too late to deny: his path had never been about destruction. It was about equilibrium.
He whispered, "What do you want now?"
Silence. Then—soft as breath—remembrance.
He laughed quietly. "So even gods of balance crave nostalgia."
The square shimmered once, then settled.
He stayed awake until the first train passed, counting every sound that wasn't a voice.
▪ The Commission — The Next Morning
Kurobane's monitor glowed a warning red.
Telemetry from U.A. showed spikes again—higher amplitude, deeper resonance.He ran the signature through archives older than the Quirk Era.
The database hesitated, then found a match.Pre-Emergence Energy Pattern 042 — Recorded in Kyoto, 205 Years Ago.Classification: Ritual Transfer Phenomenon.Notes: Behavioral resonance preceding mass transference. Subject classified as "Price Host."
He stared at the term. Price Host.The kind of phrase only scientists and priests could have agreed upon.
The system prompted: Forward to Oversight?
He didn't.
He highlighted the file, pressed delete, and confirmed twice.Some debts were paid in silence.
At U.A., Aizawa stood outside the faculty lounge, phone against his ear."Yes," he said. "He's stable. For now."
Pause."I don't need your protocols. I need you to stay out of his way."
He hung up before the voice could disagree.
Renya arrived at school like someone walking on cracked ice—steady, cautious, pretending the surface was thicker than it was.
Kaminari waved from across the courtyard, already smiling. "Hey! You good, bro?"
Renya nodded once. "Fine."
"You kinda zoned last night," Kaminari said. "Like, spooky-zoned. No judgment, though. We all got our weird."
Renya actually smiled. "Yours glows."
Kaminari laughed, relief audible. "Fair."
Uraraka passed by with a coffee and a yawn. "Don't burn anything before noon," she said to them both.
Renya watched her walk away, and for a moment, the whisper tried to measure her glow.
He shut it out.
He whispered, low enough for no one to hear, "We are not in that world anymore."
The square didn't answer.It didn't have to.
Because this time, the silence was listening.
And the whisper said nothing cruel, only logical:Everything that exists must be paid for.