Chapter Text
There was no rhythm in his chest.
That was the first thing that drifted through the fog of Izuku’s consciousness. Not a sound, but the profound, terrifying absence of one. No steady thrumming against his ribs. No heavy, reassuring pulse in his ears. There was only a vast, hollow quiet where his life was supposed to be.
He didn't breathe. He tried to, instinctively, gasping for air that his lungs simply refused to pull in. The mechanism was broken. The bellows were still. Yet, he was entirely, undeniably awake.
Am I dead? The thought didn't come with panic; it came with a dull, heavy numbness. Is this what it feels like after?
Izuku blinked, and the world rushed in with a violence that made his head spin.
The night wasn't dark. That was the second realization that fractured his understanding of reality. The forest canopy above him wasn’t a wall of blackness; it was rendered in sharp, hyper-clear shades of silver, deep monochrome blues, and stark, vibrant grays. He could see the individual ridges of the oak bark three stories above him. He could see the jagged edges of the pine needles cutting against a sky that looked far too bright to be midnight.
Slowly, agonizingly, Izuku pushed himself up from the damp earth. The dirt beneath his fingernails felt freezing, but he couldn't actually feel the cold—not the way he used to. His limbs moved with an eerie, frictionless fluidity. His body didn't feel like his. It felt lighter, dangerously efficient, stripped of the heavy weight of human exhaustion, yet completely alien.
A dream. It had to be a dream. A nightmare, or a manifestation of his mind trying to process an attack he couldn't quite recall.
His hand drifted up to his neck. His fingers brushed against his collarbone, tracing upward until they hit a wet, sticky patch on his skin.
Blood. Izuku’s breath caught—or rather, the mental imitation of a gasp stalled in his throat.
He looked down at his fingertips. In the unnatural, luminous light of the woods, the fluid on his hands looked dark, almost black. He touched his throat again, trembling fingers finding the source. Two distinct, neat punctures. The skin was torn, the flesh parted perfectly, looking suspiciously, horrifyingly like a bite mark.
But it didn't hurt.
There was no throbbing pain, no heat of an infection, no sting of raw nerve endings. There was only a dull, empty ache.
Before he could spiral into the panic clawing at the edges of his mind, the world got louder.
Too loud. A wave of sensory input slammed into his brain like a physical blow. He didn't just hear the forest; he was trapped inside it. A mile away, the frantic, rapid-fire heartbeat of a field mouse echoed in his ears like a tiny drum. Above him, the steady, rhythmic scraping of a beetle’s legs against wood sounded like grinding stones. He could hear the sap moving beneath the bark of the trees. He could hear the wind rustling leaves three ridges over, every single sound distinct, sharp, and overlapping until he had to press his hands over his ears to keep from screaming.
He squeezed his eyes shut, but the closing of his eyelids did nothing to dull the sharpness of the world.
And then, the numbness vanished, burned away by a sudden, violent agony that didn't originate from his neck, but from his throat.
It started as a scratch. A dry, rasping irritation that rapidly escalated into a fierce, localized heat. It felt like he had swallowed hot ash, a mild but persistent burning sensation that began at the back of his tongue and crawled down into his chest.
Izuku’s tongue darted out, instinctively trying to soothe the dryness of his mouth, but stopped when it brushed against the back of his upper lip.
He froze.
Slowly, carefully, he lifted a trembling hand and pushed his index finger into his mouth, feeling along the row of his teeth. His teeth had always been flat, unremarkable. But now. . .
His finger snagged on something sharp.
Izuku’s heart would have leaped into his throat if it were still beating. He traced the edge of his canine. It was longer. Slick, pointed, and slightly elongated, pressing uncomfortably against the sensitive flesh of his lower lip.
No. No, no, no. A ravenous, hollow ache opened up in the pit of his stomach. It wasn't the familiar, comforting rumble of hunger. He didn't want katsudon. He didn't want anything warm, or cooked, or normal. The thought of actual food made a sudden wave of oily nausea rise in his throat, forcing a dry, choking heave from his chest.
His gaze snapped toward the forest floor, his vision locking onto the faint, glowing trail of a small animal's heat signature in the brush.
A terrifying, foreign instinct flared to life inside his mind, drowning out his own voice. It wasn't a thought; it was a physical compulsion. A sudden, vicious urge to hunt. To find something with warm, rushing fluid beneath its skin. To trap it. To bite into soft, living flesh and drink until the burning in his throat finally, mercifully stopped.
Izuku stumbled backward, his back hitting the rough bark of a tree as he pulled his hands away from his mouth in absolute horror.
"What am I?" he tried to whisper, but the sound that left his lips was a low, desperate, unnatural rasp of a predator lost to the dark.