Chapter 1: The Echo of a Hollow Soul
The world did not begin with a bang for Kaito Enma. It began with a rhythmic, wet thumping—a
pulse that didn't belong to him.
He was four years old, the age when most children manifest the spark that defines their future.
In the lower-middle-class suburbs of Musutafu, a quirk manifestation was usually a day of
celebration, a ticket to the grand lottery of heroism. But Kaito's arrival at that threshold was
marked by a chilling, quiet decay.
Kaito was a boy carved from pale glass and stagnant shadows. While the neighborhood
children raced through the streets, manifesting minor pyrokinesis or hardening skin, Kaito sat on
the porch, watching them with sunken, tired eyes. He was perpetually exhausted. A walk to the
kitchen left him breathless; a game of catch ended with him unconscious on the rug, his skin
turning a translucent, sickly blue.
His parents, Hiroshi and Mika, were good people. They were the kind of people who worked
extra shifts at the logistics firm just to buy Kaito the "premium" vitamins, thinking his lethargy
was a simple case of anemia. They loved him with a desperate, frantic intensity.
"He's just a late bloomer," Hiroshi would whisper at night, clutching a glass of cheap whiskey.
"His body is just preparing for something big. You'll see, Mika. He'll be a powerhouse."
But as the months bled into years, the "big thing" never came. Only the cold remained. Kaito
was always cold. To touch his hand was to feel the heat being pulled from your own skin, a
subtle, parasitic chill that left Mika shivering long after she tucked him into bed.
By age six, the "standard" doctors had given up. "Physiologically perfect," they said. "But his
caloric burn is impossible. Feed him more." They fed him until they were skipping meals
themselves, yet Kaito remained a skeleton draped in skin, his hair turning a premature, ghostly
reddish-white.
Driven by a fear that had finally outpaced their bank account, Hiroshi bypassed the government
hospitals. He sought out a man mentioned only in the rusted corners of the internet: Sato, the
Broker.
The Revelation of the Void
The "office" was a shipping container perched precariously on the edge of the Musutafu docks.
The air inside smelled of ozone, copper, and the rot of the sea.
Sato was a man who looked like he was made of nicotine and secrets. He didn't use needles or
EKG machines. He had a quirk called *Analytical Touch*. He sat Kaito on a rusted metal stool
and reached out, his yellowed fingers hovering over the boy's left palm.
"Let's see what's eating you, kid," Sato grunted.
The moment contact was made, Kaito felt a jolt of electricity. For a split second, the lights in the
container flickered and died. Sato's eyes rolled back in his head, showing only the whites. Then,
he snapped back, gasping for air as if he had been underwater, and scrambled away from Kaito
as if the boy were a ticking bomb.
"My God," Sato hissed, wiping a bead of cold sweat from his lip.
"What is it?" Hiroshi asked, his voice cracking. "A storage quirk? Is he a battery? Can he be a
Hero?"
Sato wiped his hand on a rag, his expression unreadable. "In a manner of speaking, yes. Your
son possesses a multi-slotted core. Five empty chambers, to be precise. He has the rare,
almost mythical ability to house quirks that do not belong to him. He is a vessel."
Sato looked at Hiroshi with a pity that felt like a death sentence. "A Hero? No. He's a biological
sinkhole. I'm naming it The Creeping Hunger."
Sato leaned forward, the dim yellow light catching the predatory glint in his eyes. "Your son has
five 'slots' built into his soul—empty chambers designed to anchor the quirks of others. But here
is the horror: those chambers are 'On' from the moment of birth. They are idling engines,
burning through his glucose, his fat, and his very nerves just to stay open. He's weak because
he's fighting a war every second just to keep his own soul from collapsing."
Mika's face lit up with a tragic, manic hope. "He can take quirks? Like a miracle? He could lead
the top-ten!"
"Listen to me!" Sato snapped. "He doesn't 'copy' them. To anchor a quirk into a slot, Kaito must
harvest the 'Quirk Factor' at the exact moment of the user's death. It is a biological hand-off that
requires a heart to stop. And when he takes the power, he takes the **Memories**. He will see
their life, their traumas, and their final screams. Every time he closes his eyes, he will be walking
through a graveyard of the people he has 'Grazed.' He isn't a Hero, Hiroshi. He's a predator who
hasn't learned how to hunt yet."
The Domestic Rot
The drive home was silent. The "standard" life Hiroshi and Mika had built shattered in that
shipping container.
The love didn't vanish instantly; it curdled. It turned into a slow-moving poison. Mika stopped
hugging Kaito. She couldn't help it—every time she looked at his left hand, she saw a mouth.
Every time he reached for her, she remembered Sato's words: *A heart has to stop.*
The lower-middle-class stability they once enjoyed evaporated. Hiroshi, unable to face the
"monster" in the spare bedroom, began to drink heavily. He lost his job at the firm. The money
that should have gone to the mortgage went into black-market caloric supplements to keep
Kaito from "starving" his own organs.
"He's eating us," Hiroshi roared one night, the sound of a shattering plate echoing through the
thin walls. Kaito sat in the dark of his room, his knees pulled to his chest. "We're working
ourselves into the grave to feed a boy who's going to grow up and kill people!"
"He's our son!" Mika shrieked, but her voice lacked conviction. It was the sound of someone
trying to convince themselves they weren't afraid of the dark.
The arguments turned to violence. Kaito would lie awake, listening to the rhythmic *thud* of his
father's fist hitting the wall—or his mother. He began to hate the sound of heartbeats. His
parents' pulses were frantic, jagged things filled with resentment and fear. He felt like a curse.
He felt like a debt that could never be repaid.
To fund Kaito's survival, Hiroshi turned to the **Steel-Kite Gang**, a group of low-level enforcers
who dealt in high-interest blood money.
The debt grew. The house rotted. The love died.
The Night of the Red Snow
The blizzard outside was a screaming wall of white, but inside the Enma household, the air was
stagnant and heavy with the scent of cheap sake and unwashed terror. Kaito sat in the corner of
the darkened kitchen, his small frame trembling. His left hand—the one that felt like a hollow
void—was tucked deep into his oversized hoodie.
A thunderous boom shook the front door, followed by the screech of wood splinting against its
frame. Three men stepped into the narrow hallway, but only one mattered. He was a mountain
of a man, his shoulders so broad they seemed to scrape both sides of the corridor. He wore a
heavy leather duster that smelled of old iron and wet asphalt. His face was a mask of bored
cruelty.
"Hiroshi," the big man rumbled. The floorboards groaned under his weight. "You've been
ignoring my calls. That is a very expensive mistake."
Hiroshi scrambled to his feet, nearly knocking over his chair. "Goro! Please, I—I was just about
to call. The money is coming. I've reached out to my brother in Chiba. He's liquidating some
assets. I'll have the full amount, plus the interest, by Monday. I swear on my life!"
Goro stood perfectly still. He didn't look at the trembling man; he seemed to be looking through
him. He tilted his head slightly, as if listening to a distant melody.
"You swear on your life?" Goro asked softly. A terrifying smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"That's a pity. Because I can hear it, Hiroshi. Your heart is skipping like a panicked rabbit. The
rhythm is jagged. The blood is pumping too fast through your carotid. You're lying. There is no
brother in Chiba, and there is no money."
"I'm not lying!" Hiroshi shrieked, his voice cracking into a sob.
"I have a very special ear for truth," Goro said, stepping into the kitchen light. "My quirk lets me
hear the internal mechanics of a man. I can hear your lies in the way your valves flutter. And
right now? All I hear is the sound of a debt that will never be paid in yen."
In one fluid, terrifying motion, Goro reached out. His massive hand closed around Hiroshi's
throat with the sound of a vice tightening.
"Stop!" Mika screamed, lunging forward with a heavy ceramic lamp.
Goro didn't even turn his head. He swiped his free arm backward, a casual blow that carried the
force of a wrecking ball. Mika was thrown across the room, her head hitting the edge of the
stove with a sickening crack. She slumped to the floor, her heartbeat—the one Goro had been
mocking—stopping instantly.
"Mika!" Hiroshi choked out, but his voice was silenced by a final, brutal squeeze of Goro's
fingers. The light left Hiroshi's eyes, and Goro dropped the limp body like a bag of trash.
Kaito watched from the shadows. The world turned a brilliant, blinding red. The "Hunger" in his
left hand began to howl, but it was his right hand—the "normal" one—that balled into a fist.
"You monster!" Kaito shrieked, throwing himself at the giant.
Goro laughed, a deep, vibrating sound. "Look at this. The little ghost wants to play hero? You're
so thin I could snap you with two fingers, kid."
Goro reached down to swat Kaito away, but the boy was fueled by a manic, adrenaline-fused
rage. Kaito swung his right hand, a desperate, clumsy strike that Goro didn't even bother to
dodge. The man simply stood there, arrogant in his superior build, expecting the boy's fist to
bounce off his chest like a pebble.
But as Kaito swung, his foot slipped on a patch of spilled sake on the floor.
That accident—that one clumsy stumble—changed everything. Instead of hitting Goro's chest,
Kaito fell forward, his weight shifting violently. His right hand didn't punch; it hooked upward, and
his fingers caught the edge of a heavy, cast-iron skillet that Mika had left sitting on the edge of
the counter near the stove.
The momentum of Kaito's fall, combined with his desperate strength, swung the heavy iron pan
in a lethal arc. Goro, who had been laughing, had his mouth open to mock the boy again. The
edge of the iron skillet caught him directly under the jaw with a sound like a hammer hitting a
stone.
The force was enough to snap Goro's head back, his tongue catching between his teeth, but the
true "accident" was behind him. As Goro stumbled back from the blow, his heavy duster caught
on the handle of the kerosene heater Hiroshi had left running to ward off the blizzard's chill.
The heater toppled.
Liquid fire splashed across Goro's legs and the floorboards soaked in spilled alcohol. Goro
roared in pain, the smell of burning leather and hair filling the room. He lunged for Kaito, his
hands outstretched to crush the boy, but the fire had already compromised the floor. The old
wood, rotten from years of neglect, gave way under Goro's massive weight.
As Goro fell through the floorboards into the crawlspace below, Kaito felt the Creeping Hunger
snap. His left hand acted on instinct, reaching out to "stabilize" himself. He didn't touch Goro,
but he touched the air that Goro was breathing as he fell—a thread of the man's essence, his
very quirk factor, was pulled into Kaito's void as Goro's heart stopped from the trauma of the fall
and the flames.
The apartment became a furnace in seconds. The fire raced up the curtains, feeding on the dry
wallpaper and Hiroshi's stacks of newspapers.
Kaito stood in the center of the inferno, the heat blistering his skin. But he didn't feel the pain.
His brain was exploding. For the first time, he could hear the fire. He could hear the way the
wood expanded before it snapped. He could hear the heartbeats of the two thugs outside the
front door as they scrambled away in terror.
He had Goro's quirk. He had the Sonar Pulse.
Kaito crawled through the thick, black smoke, his reddish-white hair singed, his eyes stinging.
He found the kitchen window and smashed the glass with the same iron skillet that had saved
his life. He tumbled out into the red-stained snow of the alleyway, the cold air hitting his lungs
like a serrated blade.
He looked back at the building. It was a pillar of fire against the black sky. To the neighbors, to
the police, and to the firefighters who would arrive too late, the Enma family was dead. Three
bodies would be recovered from the ruins.
Kaito Enma, the weak, sickly boy, was gone.
He stood up, his legs shaking, his right hand bruised and his left hand pulsing with a stolen
rhythm. He turned his back on the flames and walked into the blizzard, a ghost wandering the
streets of the Grey District, waiting for the man with the steady heartbeat to find him
The Saint of the Concrete Shadows
The rain in the Grey District was not a cleanser; it was a cold, acidic weight that turned the soot
of the slums into a slick, black sludge. Kaito Enma—or the hollowed-out remains of the boy who
bore that name—huddled in the crawlspace beneath the Takoba Bridge. He was six years old,
but his eyes were sunken pits of ancient grief, staring at a world that had suddenly become a
cacophony of ripples and vibrations.
His body was a furnace, radiating a faint, shimmering steam into the damp air. Inside, every cell
was screaming. The Sonar Pulse he had ripped from Goro's chest was idling at a frequency his
tiny frame couldn't support, burning through his muscles just to keep the "slot" from collapsing.
"Make it stop," Kaito whispered, his voice a dry, papery rasp. "Please... it's too loud."
But the sonar didn't stop. It mapped the bridge, the rats, the distant sirens, and the echo. In his
mind, he wasn't under a bridge; he was back in the kitchen. He could still feel the sickening tug
on his left arm, the way Goro's life-force had been unzipped like a garment and sucked into his
palm. The "Neural Ghosting" was a jagged blade in his brain, forcing him to see the fire through
a dead man's eyes.
"I'm a monster," Kaito sobbed, clutching his head. "I'm a monster. I ate him. I ate his soul."
"That is a very heavy burden for such a small set of shoulders."
Kaito's pulse spiked. His sonar mapped the intruder instantly—a slow, deep, terrifyingly steady
heartbeat. Thump. Thump. Thump. It sounded like a heavy drum being struck in a cathedral. It
was the only stable rhythm in a world of chaotic noise.
Kaito scrambled back, his heels scraping against the wet gravel. He reached out with his left
hand, the obsidian-like skin shimmering with a predatory purple hue. "Don't come near me! I'll
do it again! I'll eat you too!"
A man stepped out of the freezing downpour. He wore a grease-stained trench coat and a flat
cap that cast a shadow over eyes glowing like dying embers. He leaned on a staff made of
twisted, rusted rebar. He didn't look like a hero. He looked like a man who had survived a war
everyone else had forgotten.
"You're shivering, kid," the man said, his voice a deep baritone that seemed to ground the frantic
sonar in Kaito's head. "And you're steaming. If you keep burning your own life-force to fuel that
pulse, you won't last until the sun comes up."
The man sat down on a rusted crate, keeping a respectful distance. He reached into his coat
and pulled out a simple meat bun, still steaming in its wax paper. He set it on a dry patch of
concrete between them.
"I'm a monster," Kaito wailed, his voice cracking into a high-pitched shriek of pure trauma. "I feel
him! I felt his whole life slide into my arm! He killed my mom... he broke my dad's neck... and I
got so angry. I touched him and he just... he turned into dust! I can hear him now! I can hear his
secrets! I'm a cannibal!"
"The Broker was right. I'm a sinkhole. My parents died because of me. They were scared of me, and they were right. I'm agrave with a heartbeat!"
The man, Juro, didn't look away. He didn't show the revulsion Kaito's parents had shown, nor
the greed of the Broker. He simply watched the boy with a look of profound, aching recognition.
He didn't know the boy's name, or the specifics of the "Hunger," but he knew the scent of a soul
in freefall.
"You're not a monster, child," Juro said softly. "A monster enjoys the taste. You're just a vessel
that was never taught how to hold the sea."
"How can you even look at me?" Kaito whispered, gasping for air. "I killed a man. I consumed
him. I can feel his memories itching under my skin!"
"Because I've seen that look in the mirror every morning for forty years," Juro replied.
Kaito looked at the meat bun, then at the man's scarred arm. The honesty in Juro's voice acted
like a stabilizer. "Why are you here? Why are you talking to me?"
"I'm here because I see a version of myself that hasn't been completely destroyed yet," Juro
said, his expression hardening into something fierce and protective. "I see a boy who was given
a devil's bargain and is still crying because he has a soul left to lose. I won't let you become
what I've become. I won't let the world turn you into a villain just because you were born
hungry."
"I'll help you," Juro added, his voice a promise that echoed under the bridge.
Kaito looked up, his eyes wide and watery. "Why? You don't even know who I am. You don't
know what I've done."
Juro paused, looking out at the rain as if watching ghosts in the downpour. "Because I see
myself in you. And I don't want you to become like me. I don't want you to be a man who only
knows how to burn."
"What does that mean?" Kaito asked, his brow furrowed in confusion. "Become like you?
You're... you're helping me. Isn't that good?"
Juro's eyes flickered with a shadow of ancient regret. "Time will tell, kid. Time will tell."
He stood up, his rebar staff sparking as it hit the concrete. "Listen to me. The sirens are heading
toward the fire in the suburbs. The police, the heroes, the investigators—they are going to find
three bodies in those ashes. They are going to assume the Enma family is gone. They are going
to think you are dead."
Juro stepped closer, his shadow looming large against the bridge pillars. "Let them think it."
Kaito flinched. "Why? What are the reasons? If I'm dead, then... then I don't exist. I have no one.
Why should I stay a ghost?"
Kaito tried to stand, his small legs shaking like reeds in a storm. He wanted to ask
more—wanted to know why this stranger was willing to hide a killer, why he saw a reflection in a
skeletal child, and what "time" was supposed to tell him.
"If you go back, they will put you in a cage," Juro began, his voice dropping to a low, urgent
hum. "They will label you a danger and—"
But Kaito didn't hear the rest.
The world suddenly tilted. The high-pitched whine of the sonar in his brain reached a crescendo,
and the heat in his chest spiked one last time before his metabolic reserves finally hit zero. His
vision swirled into a blur of grey rain and orange embers.
"Wait..." Kaito croaked, reaching out with a trembling hand toward Juro's coat.
His knees buckled. The exhaustion that had been stalking him for years finally caught up,
dragging him down into a black, dreamless abyss. Before his head hit the gravel, he felt a pair
of strong, calloused arms catch him—arms that felt not like a predator's grip, but like a shield.
Juro looked down at the unconscious boy, the faint steam still rising from the child's skin.
"Sleep now, little ghost," Juro whispered, pulling his trench coat over the boy to shield him from
the rain. "Tomorrow, we begin to build a miracle."
END OF CHAPTER 1