Cinders of a Lord

Embers

PROLOGUE

--

My name is Izuku Midoriya. I want to live. These were the words of the Ashen One, words he chanted throughout his journey, heard by all who saw him, and even as he burned alive to keep the First Flame going, even as all that remained of him were cinders, his mind still chanted.

My name is Izuku Midoriya. I want to live. I want to liveliveliveliveliveliveLIVELIVELIVELIVE! I WANT TO LIVE!

He awoke abruptly, on a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV line and heart rate monitor. Thinking this was an illusion, he forcefully removed the IV line and the wires hooking him up to the heart rate monitor. Ignoring the loud continuous beep that followed, he dashed out the door. "Hey! Stop!" A doctor called out, but he kept running.

Two security guards ran into his path.

They looked human.

"Oi kid! Stop running!" One of them used some sort of rubber-arm or limb extender Quirk, while another threw down water. He dodged the both of them. With the focus and speed of an Abyss Watcher, he vaulted over the limb that was coming to try and grab hold of him and he quickly cast a Combustion using his Pyromancy Flame, causing the water manipulator's Quirk to evaporate into steam, the fire alarm to go off, and for the sprinklers to start up, allowing him to escape under the cover of smoke.

"What the hell was that?!" "Shouldn't he be bedridden?!" He expected to run into a fog wall, a door, any entrance familiar to him, the Ashen One. Anything that would allow him to escape this insult of an illusion. Whoever made this illusion wishes to give me hope, let me have it, then wrench it away from me. No. I refuse that. Your plan won't work, whoever you are. Izuku chuckled as he ran down the stairs. Any moment now I'll find the exit. As I always do.

When he arrived at the ground floor, however, he stopped dead in his tracks. Standing in front of him was his mother, who was equally shocked. "I-Izuku?" He could hear them talking. "Isn't that the kid who tried to commit suicide?" "For him to run around like that..." Izuku, on the other hand, had his mouth open in shock, and it closed, and it opened again, like a bass on a wall.

"Y-You're alright?" Any moment now... this illusion will dissipate, and I will return to my duties as fuel for the First Flame. Any moment now. His mother took a step closer, and his mind was going haywire. Maybe... just maybe. No. This can't be real. What if it is? After all this time? No way.

The voices in his head were continuing to debate as his mother -- no, the illusion of his mother -- no, his mother -- SHUT UP. ... Okay. The voices quieted down, as Izuku began to process the possibilities. And it was only when he felt his mother's warmth as she went in to hug him that he realized this was real. He was alive again. Though was he ever alive to begin with? "....hey mom." He said weakly as he hugged her again.

--

"Are you... alright, Izuku?" He was in a coma for 10 months after his suicide attempt. 10 months in this world, while he spent eons back in Lordran until it became Lothric. "It's just good to be back, mom," he said as he prepared to eat the bowl of katsudon that she prepared for him when she returned for him. Although...

One bite in and he had to put his spoon down. It tasted like ash. "Izuku? Are you alright?" His mother, Inko, he remembered now, asked with worry. "I-It's fine. I just... don't have my sense of taste right about now."

Maybe it was because of all the violence he encountered, or the trauma-inducing smell of dung pie that rid of his sense of taste, one thing was for certain, he HAD no sense of taste there. He still has no sense of taste here.