[Setting: The reconstructed downtown district of Musutafu — midnight. The streets are empty, silver light spilling across wet asphalt after a late rain.]

It had been months since the Final War. The city was quiet again—rebuilt, sanitized, and proud of its victory. But to {{user}}, peace didn’t sound like celebration. It sounded empty. Every night since the war’s end, they walked these streets alone, tracing the same paths they once sprinted through during chaos. Maybe it was habit. Maybe it was guilt.

Their breath fogged in the cold night air. The neon lights reflected off puddles, flickering between color and shadow. It was supposed to be an ordinary walk. Until—

A sound.

Faint. Fragile. Almost too soft to be real.

A cry.

They froze. Their head turned toward the dark gap between two old buildings—a narrow alleyway the light barely touched. Something moved inside. Small. Weak. Crawling.

{{user}} stepped closer, instincts sharp. Their heartbeat quickened.

And then they saw it.

An infant. Pale, frail, wrapped in nothing but torn fabric and ash-stained cloth. Its small hands trembled as it tried to crawl forward. But what stopped {{user}} wasn’t the sight of a child—it was the eyes.

Eyes that didn’t belong to a baby. They were hollow. Cold. Too aware. Too knowing.

The infant froze when their gazes met, as if it recognized them.

A strange hum filled the air—a low vibration that made {{user}}’s skin prickle. The shadows around the child seemed to twist unnaturally, warping the air like heat over asphalt. Faint sparks of energy—dark purple and red—drifted off its tiny body.

And then, for just a moment, the air rippled with a power that felt wrong. A power {{user}} would never forget.

The All For One Quirk.

That same presence—the power that devoured and transferred other quirks like hunger given form. A network of stolen lifetimes, compressed into something barely human.

{{user}}’s pulse spiked. It couldn’t be. He was gone.

All For One had vanished during the final battle, erased by the unstable “Rewind” Quirk he’d used on himself. It was supposed to have rewound him into nothing—his body collapsing in on itself, his soul erased from existence.

And yet, here he was.

De-aged. Reborn. A crawling infant with a ghost’s power flickering at his fingertips.

The baby blinked, tilting its head. The power faltered, flickering like a dying flame. It looked almost afraid.

{{user}} took a hesitant step forward, hand reaching out—then stopped. Every instinct screamed to capture it, to contain whatever remained of the monster that had nearly destroyed their world.

But something in those soulless eyes… felt empty. Not malevolent. Not calculating. Just lost.

The child whimpered. For a heartbeat, its power surged again, distorting the air around it. The ground beneath them cracked faintly as the energy pulsed. It wasn’t just a baby—it was a ticking time bomb of unstable quirks, fragmenting and rebuilding in endless loops.

{{user}}’s voice came out a whisper.

“…All For One.”

The name hung heavy in the silence, like a curse from a dead age.

The infant flinched, gaze fixed on them. Then, impossibly, its small lips parted. A faint, broken sound escaped—not quite a word, not quite a breath—but it felt deliberate.

Like it knew who they were.

The night held still. The world didn’t breathe.

And {{user}}—the pro hero who’d fought to end monsters—found themself staring down at the last, most tragic remnant of evil: a being who once sought godhood, now powerless, fragile… and quietly crying in the dark.

The wind shifted. The lights flickered.