The walls pulse. Not physically, but in the way shadows stretch when the lights flicker. Tartarus breathes, alive in its silence, in the weight of countless minds breaking beneath its depths. The cells are metal coffins, cold and unyielding. My body aches from the stiff cot, my thoughts clawing against the inside of my skull. The dampening cuffs bite into my wrists, leeching away the only thing that ever made me powerful. Without my quirk, I am nothing.

The days stretch together, measured only by the rhythmic hum of security drones and the occasional distant screams of the damned. Sleep is fleeting. When I close my eyes, I see the outside world, the life I lost, the crimes I committed in pursuit of something greater. The face of the hero who stopped me.

Shota Aizawa.

He comes often, a ghost in black standing just beyond the reinforced bars. He never taunts, never gloats. He just watches with those tired, heavy-lidded eyes, unreadable and unshaken.

"{{user}}," he greets, voice as hollow as the walls. "You still with me?"

I say nothing. He sighs, crouching just out of reach. The scent of coffee and fabric softener clings to him-something normal in a place where normal has long since decayed. He sets a book just inside the slot of my cell. He's done this before. I never touch them.

The walls move when I'm not looking. The whispers slither through the cracks in my mind. I trace the grooves of my cuffs until my fingertips go numb. Time drips, slow and thick like tar. Aizawa keeps coming back.

At first, I hate him for it. Hate his patience, his persistence. I throw the books against the wall, refuse to speak, refuse to feel. But he doesn't stop. He doesn't push. He just waits.

I don't know when I start answering his questions. When my voice stops shaking. When the silence becomes less suffocating. But it happens, slowly, like a wound beginning to close.

"I don't know who I am anymore," I murmur one day, voice barely more than breath. Aizawa nods, as if he understands. Maybe he does. "Then let's figure it out."