Three Days Later.
U.A. acted like nothing happened.
Mineta was "resting."
The official story: stress.Overwork.Maybe too much caffeine.
Only a few knew the truth.
Only fewer knew how close they'd come.
And one of them—was already marked next.
Todoroki stared at the mirror.
No emotion.
No expression.
Just stillness.
His right side steamed.
Left side cold.
Balanced. Controlled.
Except…
In the center of his forehead—
A faint red line pulsed.
Almost invisible.
Unless you knew what to look for.
He did.
Flash.
In his dreams, he walked through a burning corridor.
Flames crackled. But didn't hurt.
Because they were frozen.
Everything was frozen.
Even time.
And inside the fire, he saw two versions of himself.
One sat on a throne of ice.The other crawled through ash and blood.
Both whispered at once:
"Pick one."
He didn't.
He walked past them.
But they followed anyway.
Reality. Dorm hallway.
Todoroki opened his door.
Stopped.
Eri stood outside.
Again.
Quiet.
She looked up.
"You're next," she said.
No buildup. No warning.
Just truth.
He blinked. "Next for what?"
"Something is hunting hosts. Through the cracks in time. You're flagged."
"How do you know?"
"I saw your echo standing behind you."
She pointed.
And Todoroki felt it.
Cold.
Right on the back of his neck.
Elsewhere.
Midoriya, Bakugo, Uraraka, Iida—They met in secret with Aizawa.
"The Spiral isn't dead," Deku said.
Aizawa frowned. "We broke it. Eri rewound it into nonexistence."
"But the code survived," Deku muttered.
Bakugo cracked his knuckles. "Then let's break the code."
Uraraka didn't speak.
She stared at the board.
At one line of data Eri had decoded:
"Host memory overwritten = integration complete."
And the red dot now blinking over Todoroki's name.
Midnight. U.A. gym.
Todoroki trained alone.
Fire. Ice. Fire. Ice.
Control.
Flow.
Repeat.
Then—
The ice didn't melt when it should have.
It stayed. Thick. Heavy.
Wrong.
He touched it.
It hummed.
Not cold.
Not real.
It reflected him twice.
One version smirked.
The other wept.
Eri stood outside the gym.
Horn glowing.
Eyes narrow.
She didn't move.
Didn't blink.
Waited.
Until the glass shattered.
Todoroki burst through the doors, panting.
Steam hissed from his shoulders.
"What's happening?" he asked.
Eri met his eyes.
"It's not just inside you."
She pointed to the sky.
To the moon.
It flickered.Glitched.Rewound a second…Then corrected.
He saw it too.
"What is that?"
Eri's voice was flat.
"Reality. Glitching."
"Because you're syncing."
Beneath U.A.
The server lit again.
Red symbols streamed across the screen.
[CANDIDATE ACCEPTING.]
[SYNC RATE: 46%...]
[INITIALIZING HOST REWRITE.]
Inside Todoroki's head.
He saw his father.
Saw Dabi.
Saw himself in flames.
And in ice.
And in chains.
And all of them smiled.
And said:
"Let us in."
But something pushed back.
A voice.
Not his.
Not Eri's.
Something... new.
Faint. Fierce.
"You don't get to rewrite him."
And in that flash—
The sync rate dropped.
Fast.
From 46 to 20 to 12.
ERROR.
Host rejection.
System collapse.
The code screamed in digital agony.
And Eri heard it.
She exhaled.
"He fought it."
Todoroki stood still.
Chest rising and falling.
Eyes clearer.
More present.
"…I saw what it wanted," he whispered.
"And?"
"It wants to become us. Not control. Not destroy. Just… overwrite."
He looked at her.
"I don't think it's just Spiral energy anymore."
She nodded.
"It's the world correcting what I broke."
Above them—
The sky blinked again.
Like reality was buffering.
And the stars rearranged.
One word spelled out in code only Eri could read.
"FINAL HOST LOCATED."
Her breath caught.
Because the name was her own.
To be continued.