Death Paradox 💥BAKUDEKU💥

STRENGTH

Strength

✧༺✦✮✦༻✧

Izuku

Chapter 1

It was jarring—how effortlessly reality could shift, like flipping a page in a storybook only to find yourself in a completely different tale. Izuku Midoriya stood in the common room of the U.A. dorms, and everything about it felt distant yet uncomfortably close. The walls, lined with posters and photos, hummed with an energy he had once known intimately. The sofas were scattered about, draped with blankets and the occasional textbook left open as if waiting for one of the students to return. The morning sunlight spilled in through the tall windows, pooling in golden patches on the carpet, illuminating the easy smiles of his classmates as they chatted and laughed, utterly carefree.

It should have felt like coming home. It didn't.

The normalcy of it was almost oppressive, like an itch beneath his skin he couldn't reach. Two months—was that all it had been? Two months in a world where magic bent reality, curses could tear apart lives, and survival was a precarious balance Izuku had barely managed to keep. That world had been brutal, beautiful, terrifying—and now it was gone. As if it never were.

Because no two parallel worlds would ever whisper to one another, no matter how loud the echoes. That world—where dragons soared above snow-choked peaks, where cursed blades whispered secrets in the dark, where a human, berserker, and dragon had died at the mercy of the magic of that world. It was sealed away like a dream slipping through cupped hands. No trace of it here. No proof it had ever happened.

Here, quirks blooming in vibrant, chaotic bursts just outside the window, the courtyard alive with students honing their powers. Flames sparked, trails of lightning crackled, the air hummed with raw potential. Yet it all felt... muted. Quieter, simpler than the arcane fury he'd come to know.

Izuku's steps were heavy as he wandered absentmindedly through the dorm. His hand trailed along the back of a sofa, over the cool surface of the table in the communal area. The smell of fresh pancakes mingled with something baking in the oven—a far cry from the acrid smoke of dragon fire or the sharp tang of cold steel. His eyes flicked to the bulletin board pinned with colorful reminders: Movie Night, Friday! Don't forget to clean the fridge! Momo's birthday party next Saturday! It was all so normal it felt wrong.

His quirk—it pulsed faintly at his fingertips, like it too didn't belong here. He curled his hands into fists, shoving them into his pockets, but the sensation lingered. Foreign.

It didn't matter how familiar the setting was, it truly wasn't home, not for him, and not for Katsuki. The warmth of the sunlight, the quiet buzz of students moving around upstairs, the flicker of a news broadcast on the TV—it all felt... hollow. Like looking through a window at something he could never touch again.

The scars he carried didn't belong here. The memories—of freezing winds that cut through him like knives, of magic that burned and consumed, of faces etched into his soul that were gone now, scattered across another reality—none of it belonged in this world of quirks and heroes and mundane problems. But they were part of him now, whether this parallel acknowledged them or not. The ache of loss, sharp and relentless, whispered to him with every step he took. They're gone. They're gone. They're gone.

Izuku stopped by the staircase, his eyes unfocused as voices drifted over from the kitchen. The sound of laughter—loud and carefree—echoed around him, too light for the weight pressing on his chest. He blinked, his throat tight as he tried to ground himself in the now, in the here. But the hollow ache in his chest wouldn't let go. The void left by the faces he had lost in that other world threatened to swallow him whole.