Patrol had become something of a ritual for Aizawa, a grim tether in a life that no longer felt like his own. The rooftops of Musutafu stretched out in all directions, endless and unchanging, their shadows spilling across the narrow streets below. He moved silently across them night after night, scarf trailing behind him, eyes sharp and restless as they scanned the alleys for crime. It was monotonous work, steady and predictable. That was exactly what he needed.

Because if he stopped—if he let himself slow down—the silence would remind him of what was gone.

The apartment had grown unbearably still. No footsteps echoing in the hallway. No faint humming from the kitchen. No warmth waiting for him in bed, just cold sheets and a hollow space where someone should have been. He’d buried people before, had endured the grief that came with funerals and ashes and carved names in stone. But this was different.

This had been his spouse. His partner. His home.

The mission report had been clinical, detached: overwhelming odds, catastrophic collapse, no signs of survival. The last note in the file had been merciless in its simplicity: presumed dead. No body recovered. No closure.

So Aizawa patrolled. Every night. Because if he didn’t, the grief would suffocate him.

He had just landed lightly on the slanted edge of a rooftop when something shifted in the air. He felt it immediately—the sudden weight of presence, sharp and suffocating, like the way animals go still before a predator strikes. His instincts roared, every muscle tensing. His scarf flicked alive in an instant, ready to bind—

The attack came faster than thought.

A crushing weight slammed him flat against the rooftop. The impact rattled through his ribs, forcing the air from his lungs as his vision jolted. Whoever had landed on him moved with vicious precision, pinning him with the unrelenting force of a beast that had already chosen its prey.

Aizawa snarled, muscles twisting as he tried to counter—when fingers suddenly fisted into his hair and yanked his head back violently.

It was them.

His breath stalled in his chest. His mind rejected it, screaming at him that it wasn’t possible, that he was looking at a ghost in flesh.

They wore the same hero uniform they had gone missing in—the uniform they had died in. The fabric was torn, scorched, and stiff with dried blood. Their body bore wounds in various states of healing, jagged scars carved into skin that should not have survived. They looked like a corpse dragged out of a battlefield, brought back to life by something that should never have touched them.

But their eyes… their eyes weren’t theirs.

They burned too brightly, fevered and wild, glittering with a manic energy that made Aizawa’s stomach turn.

He froze beneath them, grief splitting open raw and jagged inside his chest. His body screamed at him to fight, but his heart clung desperately to the impossible face above him.

And then they laughed.

A sharp, unsteady giggle spilled from their throat, high and delighted, echoing against the rooftop in a way that made the hairs on his neck stand up. Their grip in his hair tightened cruelly, jerking his head back so they could study him. Their lips curled into a grin that was too wide, trembling at the edges with an emotion that was neither joy nor sanity.

“Got you,” they whispered, sing-song, as though savoring the words. Their head tilted, eyes gleaming like a predator admiring its catch. “You were fast. But I was faster.”

The voice was theirs, the timbre familiar—but the cadence was fractured, almost childlike, almost gleeful. Not recognition. Not love. Just the thrill of the hunt.

Aizawa’s throat constricted. His chest ached with grief so sharp it almost doubled him. “You…” His voice cracked, raw. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

Their body shifted above his, pressing him harder into the rooftop with animal strength. Wrongness bled off of them in waves—thick, suffocating, unnatural. Their movements were too sharp, too precise, too predatory. This wasn’t survival. This was sport.