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CHAPTER 105: To Protect, To Love

The city was a graveyard of forgotten dreams.
Steel skeletons of skyscrapers loomed in silent mourning, their glass eyes shattered, their concrete skin torn open by chaos. Fires no longer roared—they smoldered, like anger left too long to burn out on its own. The wind carried no birdsong, no life. Only ash. Only whispers.

And in the midst of it all, Izuku Midoriya walked.

Alone.

His boots dragged against the broken asphalt. His every step was a quiet testament to pain—bone-deep, soul-deep pain. Pain he didn’t allow himself to feel anymore.

His costume was barely recognizable, a shadow of the symbol he once aspired to become. The colors had faded, blood soaked through the seams, and his cape had long since been torn away, left behind in some battlefield he couldn’t remember anymore.

He didn’t look like a hero.
He didn’t feel like one either.

But that didn’t matter. Not anymore.

He had made a choice—to keep moving, to keep fighting, no matter how heavy the cost. And it was heavy. It sat on his shoulders like a corpse. The guilt, the fear, the loss—it consumed him, reshaped him. He barely remembered what it was like to be hugged without someone trembling in his arms. He couldn't recall the last time someone looked at him and smiled without sadness behind their eyes.

The people had stopped calling him a hero.
Now, they called him a shadow. A warning. A Nomu.

He knew the rumors.
"There's something out there."
"It fights the villains, but it’s no hero.”
"It's got glowing scars and eyes like lightning. Looks like it crawled out of hell."

Izuku didn’t correct them.
Maybe it was better that way. Maybe this was the only way to keep them safe.

Because what they didn’t see—what no one could see—was the war inside him. Every time he looked in a broken mirror or caught his reflection in a rain-slicked window, he questioned who was looking back. Was it still him? Or just the shell of a boy who used to believe in dreams?

The voices of the predecessors—his only company now—spoke softly in his mind, more gentle now, like parents mourning a child they couldn’t protect.

“Midoriya… rest. You’re not a weapon.”
“You’re breaking yourself.”
“This isn’t what we wanted for you.”

But he shut them out. He had to.

He looked to the horizon, where thunder gathered like judgment. Somewhere out there, All For One was still breathing. And somewhere, Tomura Shigaraki was still screaming behind his hatred.

Izuku clenched his fist. His arm trembled with the familiar surge of One For All, like lightning fighting to break free.

"If I must become the monster in the dark to keep the light alive… then that’s what I’ll be.”

His voice cracked. It was barely more than a whisper. But in the silence, it sounded like a vow carved into the bones of the earth.

Then he lowered his head, his green eyes flickering faintly beneath the grime and sorrow, and kept walking—toward whatever end awaited him.

---

By the time Izuku reached Kamino, the storm in the sky mirrored the one inside him.

Each step was agony. His legs quivered beneath him like they no longer believed in the path he walked. Blood trickled from his fingers. His breath came in short, jagged gasps—every inhale laced with copper and smoke. The air was heavy with memory. Kamino still reeked of the past—of loss, of battle, of broken promises.