U.A. was quiet.
For once, not the quiet of tension.
Not dread.
But the kind that follows after a storm rips the world apart and leaves… calm.
Dust lingered in sunbeams cutting through shattered windows. Birds chirped like they didn't know the sky had bled.
And in the center courtyard, Eri stood barefoot in broken grass.
Alone.
Until she wasn't.
Deku reached her first.
He didn't speak.
Didn't need to.
He just knelt and took her hand—like before, like always—and Eri fell into his arms without a word.
For a heartbeat, she was a child again.
Just a girl.
Just Eri.
Elsewhere.
Sir Nighteye's grave returned.
But the name carved into it was… different.
The years changed. The story changed.
He never died in the Overhaul arc.
Because that arc… never happened.
But he still died.
Saving civilians in a hospital bombing. A new one. A different future.
A worse one, in some ways.
A better one, in others.
That's what Eri had learned.
Rewind didn't erase pain.
It just… shifted the direction it came from.
Bakugo sat on the rooftop, eyes toward the horizon.
He saw double for a second.
Two cities overlapping.
One where villains ruled the underworld.
Another where they were never born.
He blinked. It passed.
"Too many echoes," he muttered.
Behind him, Todoroki stood in silence.
Bakugo glanced back. "You remember it too?"
"Everything."
Todoroki lit a cigarette with his fingertip.
Took a drag.
He didn't smoke.
Not before.
But this version of him?
Maybe he did.
Inside the nurse's office.
Recovery Girl examined Eri.
Twice.
Three times.
"Her quirk is dormant," she said softly. "But not suppressed. Just… sleeping."
Aizawa raised an eyebrow. "Can it come back?"
"Only if she wills it. Or if something… wakes it."
"She rewound the Spiral," Aizawa muttered. "And chose to stop."
The silence held weight.
"She's a god," the old woman whispered. "Who chose to be human again."
That night, U.A. held no classes.
No drills.
Just breathing.
Students gathered in small circles.
Some laughed. Some cried. Some stared at stars that looked… new.
Because they were.
Constellations didn't line up anymore.
One extra star now shone in Orion's Belt.
Koda noticed it first.
Midnight called it beautiful.
No one remembered it being there yesterday.
But no one questioned it, either.
Eri sat with Deku on a bench.
Her head against his shoulder.
Neither spoke for a long time.
Until finally, she whispered:
"It's not over."
He didn't ask what she meant.
Because he already knew.
"I broke the Spiral," she said. "But it wasn't the only one."
His breath caught.
"There are more?"
"There's a Spiral inside every lie," she said. "Every 'what if.' Every 'maybe it could've been better.'"
He looked at her.
"…Then what do we do?"
She closed her eyes.
"We live with the truth."
Far away.
In a ruined lab beneath Jaku.
A red eye blinked open.
Old wires twitched.
And a voice—metal, splintered—spoke:
"Spiral event terminated. Alternate branch detected. Commencing restoration protocol."
The machine turned.
On the wall, a photograph of a young woman.
Holding a newborn.
A baby girl.
With a horn on her forehead.
The machine whispered:
"Project Re.Eri — Cycle 03 scheduled."
Back in U.A.
Eri slept in the nurse's office.
Peacefully.
But as the moonlight filtered through the curtains—
Her horn glowed faintly.
Once.
Then dimmed.
In her dream—
She walked a long, black road.
Alone.
And at the end, a woman waited.
Tall. Pale. Smiling.
The Red Lady.
But not hostile this time.
Just watching.
"You came back," she said.
Eri looked down.
At her own reflection.
It blinked back at her.
But the eyes weren't hers anymore.
They were… older.
Wiser.
Broken.
"Who am I now?" Eri whispered.
The Red Lady tilted her head.
"You're the girl who lived."
To be continued.