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Everything had shrunk to a single, burning point of hatred.
There were no cameras here. No cheering crowds. Oh no, this wasn't a spectacle for the masses; it was an execution, a private war at the end of an entirely ruined city block. The air itself was thick with pulverized concrete and the ozone-tang of discharged energy.
All For One floated, a nightmare given form. His body was a grotesque tapestry of stolen power, muscle mass swollen to inhuman proportions, exposed conduits of raw energy pulsing across his flesh where a face should have been. A low, amused chuckle rumbled from him, a sound like grinding gravel.
"Is this the full extent of your righteous fury, All Might?" he taunted, his voice a distorted symphony. "You swing with the rage of a child who has just discovered the world is unfair. It's pathetic."
All Might, blood streaming from a gash on his brow, his iconic uniform torn and smoking, said nothing to the taunt. He was a piston of pure force, a blur of blue and red and gold as he dodged the demon lord's relentless attacks. He moved with the desperate, ground-eating strides of a man who knew this was his final race. Each smash of his fists was a localized earthquake, but All For One met them with a kaleidoscope of horrors.
A shield of vibrating air nullified a blow meant to shatter ribs. Whip-like tendrils of kinetic energy, ripped from some long-dead hero, lashed out, scoring deep furrows in the earth. He unleashed a blast of superheated plasma, forcing All Might to vault over it, the heat searing the air where he'd stood.
"You are a relic," All For One sneered, casually deflecting a punch that could level a skyscraper. "A brief, shining moment of order before the natural chaos resumes…Just like Nana Shimura was."
The name was a precisely aimed dagger. All Might's rhythm faltered for a microsecond. A flicker of raw, personal pain in the hero's blue eyes.
"Ah, there it is," All For One purred, savoring the wound. "The little boy who watched his teacher die. You might be wondering if she screamed? I remember the sound she made when my fist—"
"SHUT UP!" All Might roared, the sound tearing from his throat raw and primal. He surged forward, his speed blinding as his fist connected with All For One's chest in a blow that released a visible shockwave. The villain was thrown backward, crashing through the skeleton of a half-collapsed office building.
As all for one was sent flying, a manic grin stretched his youthful face; grey eyes gleaming with something close to satisfaction. The taunt had done its work. All Might was no longer a disciplined warrior; nor the stable symbol he beaconed himself to be. He was now a grieving pitiful student.
All Might closed the distance, not letting up as his attacks became fueled by blinding rage instead of focused power. He was playing into the monster's hands.
It was then a whimper cut through the chaos.
From the rubble of a collapsed parking garage, a hand; small, civilian; waved feebly. A young man, trapped under a slab of concrete, his face pale with terror and pain.
All Might's head snapped toward the sound. The binary code of a hero's life; save one, stop the many; flashed in his eyes. It was a fatal hesitation.
He thought he had evacuated everyone from the vicinity!
All For One erupted from the debris, his fleshly armor reassembling itself with horrifying speed. Then he raised a palm concentrated with swelling power, but he didn't aim for All Might…He aimed for the civilian.
"A hero's heart is his greatest weakness," he declared, his voice dripping with mock-pity. "Let me show you the cost of yours."
A massive, spear-like projection of hardened air materialized and shot toward the trapped young man. There was no time for strategy, no time for a calculated deflection. There was only instinct.
All Might moved.
In a burst of impossible speed, he placed himself between the spear and the civilian. He braced for impact, but the attack was a feint. The real blow came from below. As All Might focused forward, the ground beneath him erupted. A dozen barbed, metallic tendrils—a Quirk stolen from a villain who could manipulate rebar; shot upward like the jaws of a hellish trap.
They were meant to impale, to hold him fast.
…They did more.
One of the thickest tendrils, moving with piston-like force, slammed into All Might's lower abdomen; and impaled straight through it.
There was a wet, sickening tear.
The world froze. All Might's eyes bulged, a silent, shocked "O" forming on his lips. He looked down. The tendril retracted, and with it came a horrific, glistening cascade. His guts, pulverized and liberated from the flesh that had held them since he was born, spilled out into the open air, a grotesque waterfall of crimson and offal. The coppery stench of blood and viscera flooded his senses.
He didn't scream. The agony was too vast, too absolute for sound. He staggered, his hand instinctively clutching at the ruin of his torso, trying to hold the impossible inside. His power, One For All, flickered like a dying lightbulb. The vibrant steam of his empowered form guttered slightly, shrinking slightly from the devastating attack.
All For One landed softly before him, the very picture of triumph. The man's head tilted, his white hair shuffling slightly. "And so the sun sets. I told you, All Might. You die just like she did. Broken. Beaten. Alone."
He raised a hand, energy coalescing for the final, annihilating strike. "A fitting end for a fool who believed in symbols."
All Might's vision swam. The pain was a white-hot universe. But in the heart of that agony, a final, cold ember of will sparked. His mentor's face flashed before him. Not in death, but in life; her smile, her belief.
"You are next, Toshinori. Good luck."
This was not how it ended.
He would not let this monster win!
All For One, confident in his victory, took a single, gloating step closer.
It was all the opening he needed.
With a final, soul-rending roar that tore what was left of his lungs, All Might channeled everything. Not 100%. Not 1,000,000%. Every spark of One For All, every memory, every hope, every life he had ever saved; he funneled it all into his right fist. He wasn't just punching with muscle. He was punching with the accumulated legacy of eight souls, with the future he would never see. He was going to go…beyond…
Focus Toshinori, FOCUS!!!
He let his knees buckle, using the last of his strength to launch himself upward from his kneeling position. It was an impossible angle, a move born of pure, desperate instinct.
"Goodbye, symbol o-"
"…PLUS UULTRRRRAAAAA!!!"
All For One saw the movement too late. The smirk was still etched on his smug face when All Might's fist, glowing with the intensity of a blue star, connected not with his chest, but with the center of his head.
There was no clean smash. There was a sound like a mountain being ground to dust.
The impact was… intimate. Horrific.
All For One's head did not just snap back. It deflated. The armored plating, the stolen tissue, the grotesque mockery of assimilated quirks; it all compressed inward with a wet, crunching finality, mashed into an unrecognizable pulp. The force traveled down his spine, shattering vertebrae with a series of sharp, internal cracks.
For a moment, the two titans were frozen in their final, terrible tableau: the hero with his insides on the outside, the villain with his outside crushed into his insides.
Then, All For One, his body still standing but staggering, spoke. It wasn't a voice. It was a wet, gurgling exhalation forced through ruined meat and shattered bone.
"N-Not… bad…"
He wobbled, a tree severed at the root, and then fell straight backward, hitting the ground with a definitive, heavy thud that sent up a small cloud of dust.
The silence that followed was more deafening than the battle.
All Might stood, swaying. He looked at his fist, then at the twitching, headless ruin of his greatest enemy. A wave of pure, unadulterated horror washed over him. This was not a victory. This was a slaughter. He had not just defeated evil; he had unmade a man in the most visceral way possible.
The exhaustion, held at bay by sheer will, finally claimed him. The light in his eyes faded. The mighty Symbol of Peace fell forward, face-first into the dirt, his life pooling around him in a wide, dark circle.
It was in that graveyard silence that Tsukauchi and his team arrived, their vehicles screeching to a halt. The detective's heart stopped at the scene: the apocalyptic destruction, the twitching form of All For One, and the still, broken form of his friend.
"TOSHINORI!" he screamed, sprinting forward. His training kicked in. "Medic! NOW! We need a whole damn hospital!"
The scene dissolved into controlled panic. Paramedics rushed to the fallen hero, their faces turning ashen at the sight of his injuries. As they carefully, so carefully, lifted him onto a stretcher, Tsukauchi was already on the radio, his voice cracking. "We have All Might! Critical! Catastrophic injury! We are inbound to Central Hospital! Clear the way! CLEAR THE WAY!"
At the hospital, the chaos was a contained storm. The operating room doors were a barrier between life and death.
Mirai Sasaki, best known as Sir Nighteye, All Might's sidekick, arrived just as the gurney was being rushed down the hall. He saw the pallor of death on Toshinori's face, saw the sheer volume of blood, and his eyes widened in horror, his pristine presence shattered immediately.
"Toshinori!" he yelled, his usual composure shattered. He tried to push past a nurse, his hand reaching out. "Let me through! I have to see him!"
Gran Torino, old and grim, was there. He didn't speak. He simply put a firm, unyielding hand on Nighteye's chest, stopping him. His eyes, old and tired, held a universe of sorrow.
"Let them work, Mirai," he said, his voice a low, gravelly whisper of defeat. "There's nothing you can do."
The doors to the OR slammed shut with a final, echoing thud, sealing All Might inside. Nighteye slumped against the wall, sliding to the floor, his head in his hands. The long, silent vigil began, punctuated only by the frantic, muffled sounds of a battle being fought on the other side of the door…a battle they all knew, in their hearts, was already lost.
________________
1 Week later…
The sky over Tokyo was a slab of unpolished granite, and a cold, persistent drizzle fell like tears from the heavens. It was a weather pattern replicated across nearly half the globe, as if the planet itself was mourning. A week had passed, and the world had not really found itself to move on; it had simply frozen in a state of stunned, collective grief.
The funeral was not a single event but a global vigil. The main ceremony in Tokyo was a sea of black umbrellas stretching from the steps of the National Diet Building as far as the eye could see, a silent and somber mosaic of humanity. Millions more crowded public squares in every major city, their faces illuminated by giant screens, while families huddled in living rooms, the flickering light of televisions the only movement in the stifling atmosphere. The silence was a physical presence, very heavy and very suffocating.
At the epicenter, standing before a simple, towering podium, was the President of the Hero Public Safety Commission. Her usual armor of bureaucratic authority was gone, replaced by the raw, unvarnished grief of a leader staring into the abyss. The rustle of her notes echoed like a gunshot in the global hush.
"We gather here today," her voice, amplified across continents, was not the voice of a commander but of a mourner, thin and frayed at the edges despite composed, "under a sky that has lost its sun. We are here not to bury a man, but to lay to rest an idea. The idea that one being could hold back the darkness for us all."
Camera lenses panned slowly and painfully across the front rows. Japan's heroes, a pantheon of vibrant color and impossible power, were rendered in a monochrome of despair. A legion of black suits and dresses. Their faces were a gallery of shattered idols: Edgeshot, a master of composure, had his head bowed so low his silver hair formed a curtain over his face; Best Jeanist's impeccable fabric was crumpled, as disheveled as his spirit; Kamui Woods; a young upcoming hero; stood rigid, his wooden limbs looking brittle and dry.
Elsewhere…
In the cavernous, silent darkness of Might Tower, Sir Nighteye was a ghost haunting a tomb.
He had not had proper sleep for days. He sat on the cold polished floor with his back pressed against the colossal, empty desk that had once been the nerve center of global peace. His custom-tailored suit was a wrinkled ruin. His glasses lay a few feet away, one temple snapped, a casualty of a grief-stricken outburst. He had drawn his knees to his chest, his forehead pressed so hard against them a red mark was forming on his skin, a futile attempt to physically suppress the reality that was crushing him.
'All Might…'
A violent shudder wracked his frame. Slowly and mechanically, he raised his head. His eyes, sunken and surrounded by bruised-looking skin, fixed on the massive screen that dominated the far wall. It was broadcasting the funeral in chilling high definition. He was a spectator to his own heartbreak, a sentinel guarding a now empty office of his idol…and one true friend.
America…
In a sterile laboratory on I-Island, David Shield felt the foundations of his world collapse for the second time in a single year.
His workspace, once a temple of innovation buzzing with the energy of creating a better future, was now a crypt of dead dreams. His phone was propped against a beaker labeled 'High-Density Alloy Test #7-A'. On the screen, the Japanese President continued her eulogy. David's hand was clamped over his mouth, his knuckles white, as if he could physically force the agony back down his throat.
Months. It had only been a few months since he'd stood at a similar service in Metropolis. The memory was a fresh wound. The sight of the red cape draped over a simple casket. The world mourning the Man of Steel, their indomitable shield, their first and greatest global hero. He had been America's sun. And now, Japan's was extinguished, too.
"Papa?" A young voice called out.
Melissa's voice was a tiny, broken thing. She leaned into his side, her body trembling. He wrapped his arm around her, his own frame shaking uncontrollably.
"First Superman… now Uncle Might…" she whispered, the words muffled against his jacket. "What's happening to the world?"
His assistant, Samuel, a sturdy and dependable man, stood by the door, his face ashen. "Two pillars, David," Samuel said, his voice hollow. "In less than a year. The world can't stand without its pillars."
Back in Tokyo, the President's voice trembled with a forced steadiness. "He was more than the Symbol of Peace. He was the certainty in our tomorrow. He was the promise that no matter how dark the night, the dawn would always come. And with his passing… we must now learn to face the long, cold night alone."
Pro hero Hawks, standing at rigid attention in the front row, was a master of perception. His gaze was forward, but every one of his feathers was a sensor, feeding him a torrent of data. His focus was locked on the man beside him. Endeavor. The Flame Hero was a monument to suppressed cataclysm. His massive hands were clenched into fists so tight the muscles in his forearms stood out in corded relief. But it was his eyes that betrayed the true devastation. The competitive fire, the burning ambition that had defined him for decades, was utterly gone. In its place was a hollow, yawning void, a look of a man who had reached the summit of a mountain only to find it was the edge of a cliff. Hawks quickly averted his senses, a cold knot forming in his stomach.
This was worse than rage. This was a fundamental break.
The ceremony proceeded with the heavy, deliberate cadence of a death knell. A honor guard of the top ten heroes, their faces carved from stone, approached the simple, majestic oak casket. As six heroes; including a stone-faced Best Jeanist and a grim Gang Orca; lifted the casket onto their shoulders, Gran's mind fractured.
Among the audience was Gran Torino, his small, aged frame looking impossibly frail. His gnarled hands were squeezed so tightly around his wooden staff that the casing groaned in protest, threatening to buckle.
A scrawny, blond boy with a ridiculous, unwavering smile, determined to prove himself...
Nana's face, her smile bright but her eyes holding a universe of sorrow as she handed her successor over to him…
The same boy, now a man, standing tall as a skyscraper, laughing in the face of evil…
'You did her proud, Toshinori.' The thought was a shard of glass in the veteran hero's heart. 'You became everything she dreamed and more. But your time… your time was stolen. It was too soon. Far too soon.'
As the casket was carried slowly towards the waiting caisson, the President's gaze swept the crowd of heroes. It lingered, for a heart-wrenching moment, on the conspicuously empty space where Sir Nighteye, All Might's sidekick, should have been standing. A weary, almost imperceptible sigh escaped her lips, a silent acknowledgment of a fracture that ran deeper than the public could ever know.
__________________
Aftermath of the burial in the Capitol's grand hall was a masterpiece of silent agony. It was a gallery of the world's most powerful people, all rendered helpless. Hawks moved through the crowd, his usual easy grace replaced by a tense alertness. He found Endeavor standing alone before a floor-to-ceiling window, a colossal 195cm figure silhouetted against the rain-streaked panorama of a grieving city. The Number two hero's shoulders, usually a bastion of unshakable confidence, held a minute, telling tremor.
Hawks approached, the silence between them louder than any explosion. He heard it then, a low, guttural rasp, a confession meant for no one but the ghost in the room. Coming from Endeavor.
"…All for nothing… Every sacrifice… This… This hollow victory… This wasn't the way… This isn't how I was supposed to…"
Hawks's mind raced. The air was thick enough to choke on. He fell back on his oldest tool: deflecting gravity with levity. He forced a brittle, conversational tone.
"Well, look at the bright side, Endeavor-san. The top spot is officially yours. No more chasing a shadow. The view must be… different from up there."
…It was a catastrophic miscalculation.
Endeavor's head snapped around. The void in his eyes was instantly annihilated by a supernova of self-recrimination, rage, and a grief so profound it was physically painful to witness. The air around him warped, heat haze distorting the view of the city. The rain on the massive window pane sizzled and boiled away in a wide radius around his reflection, steam curling like phantom spirits. For a terrifying second, Hawks was certain the man would unleash a blast that would vaporize the entire hall, immolating himself and everyone in it in a final, fitting pyre of his own failure.
But then, with a visible, seismic effort that made the tendons in his neck stand out like cables, Endeavor wrestled the inferno back inside. He didn't shout. He didn't blast. He simply fixed Hawks with a look that was more devastating than any Quirk…a look of utter, absolute contempt, not for Hawks, but for the truth he represented.
"You understand nothing. No one can."
He turned on his heel and strode from the hall, his exit a vortex of silent, flamed fury that left the very air scorched and thin.
'All Might… you fool! Why did you leave this cursed crown to me?! Why did you make my life's work a monument to your death?!'
_________________
Back in the oppressive silence of Might Tower, Nighteye's meticulous control finally, completely, and irrevocably shattered.
Out of sheer dissociation, his mind got violently wrenched back, a week prior, to the sterile, beeping horror of the ICU.
1 week ago…
This was a high-definition nightmare. The smell of antiseptic and blood. The frantic, rhythmic hiss of the ventilator. All Might, his colossal frame reduced to a pale, broken thing swallowed by wires and tubes. The mountain of a man was now a valley of ruin.
Trembling, Nighteye had approached the bedside. He had reached out, his hand hovering over All Might's cold, limp one. Despite their estrangement, despite the bitter words and their previous argument, he had to know. He had to see if there was a single, possible future where his friend lived. He activated Foresight.
What he saw was not darkness. It was not a void. It was… a screaming, blinding, nonsensical static. A horrid, formless whiteness, like the scream of a dying star translated into light. It was a future that could not be, a path that led nowhere. It was the Quirk's way of saying the subject had no future left to see. A panic, cold and sharp as a surgeon's scalpel, pierced his heart.
And then, a miracle that felt like a fresh torture happened.
All Might's eyes fluttered open. The brilliant, electric blue was faded, clouded with pain and morphine, but a flicker of awareness remained. He turned his head a fraction, the movement an epic struggle.
"Mirai…" he breathed, the name a ghost of its former, booming glory. He saw the golden sheen just fading from Nighteye's eyes. His own widened slightly in understanding. "Did you… use your Foresight… on me?"
"Don't speak, Toshinori!" Nighteye insisted, his voice a desperate, cracking thing. He wanted to grab him, to shake him, to pour his own life force into him. "Save your strength! The doctors said—!"
"It's… all right." A weak, bloody smile touched his cracked lips. It was a smile of absolute, heartbreaking acceptance. Then his body was wracked by a violent, wet cough, splattering the inside of his clear oxygen mask with fresh, shocking crimson.
"Toshinori, easy, damn you!" Gran Torino barked from the foot of the bed, his voice thick with tears he would never shed in public.
"Stop this!" Tsukauchi pleaded, gripping the bed rail, his knuckles white. "This isn't a joke you can laugh off! Stop it right now!"
Nighteye spun, a cry for the medics on his lips, but All Might's hand, with an impossible, final reserve of strength, closed around his wrist. The grip was feather-light, but its intent was an unbreakable chain.
"Did… I…?" All Might whispered, his eyes desperate, clinging to a single, vital piece of knowledge, the only thing that mattered. "All For One…?"
Nighteye leaned close, his tears now falling freely, spotting the starched white hospital sheet. "Yes," he choked out, the word a sob. "You did it, Toshinori. He's gone. You won. You saved everyone."
A profound, immeasurable peace settled over All Might's broken features. The lines of pain and burden smoothed away, leaving behind the face of the young man Nighteye had first met. The tension left his body. "Good…" he breathed, the word a sigh of release.
"I'm… sorry, Mirai. You were right… I should have… been smarter. I should have… listened." He took a shallow, rattling breath, the sound of stones grinding together. "But… I have… no regrets. I avenged… Nana…" His eyes started to drift closed, the long fight finally over. "I'm… just… sorry… to leave… you with… the mess…"
The smile that remained on his face was one of pure, unburdened relief. The smile of a man who had done his duty and could finally, finally rest.
"Toshinori? TOSHINORI!" Tsukauchi yelled, shaking his shoulder gently, his voice cracking with desperation. "This isn't funny! Come on!"
The heart monitor, which had been beeping a frantic, weak rhythm, let out a long, continuous, and deafening tone.
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE——
The sound was a physical blow. It sucked the light, the hope, and the very air from the room. Sir Nighteye, the unflappable seer, the man who always had a plan, felt his legs dissolve. He collapsed to his knees on the cold, sterile floor, the relentless, flatline scream boring into his skull, the official, medical sound of the end of the world.
In the present, in the profound dark of the tower, the memory faded, leaving only the ache. The disheveled man on the floor hugged his knees tighter, a single, broken whisper escaping into the consuming silence, a confession to a ghost.
"I should have tried harder… I should have stopped you… I'm sorry."
On the giant screen, the funeral was ending. The crowds were slowly, reluctantly dispersing, leaving behind a world that felt colder, darker, and terrifyingly vulnerable.
________________
In his I-Island lab, David finally broke, his sobs those of a man who had now lost two brothers, two symbols, two suns. The unthinkable had happened twice. The Symbols of Peace were gone. And in the deepening twilight they left behind, the shadows had begun to stir, and the long, terrifying night was no longer a possibility. It was here.
He can't believe it.
"All…Might…"
Melissa looked at her broken father with sadness and concern, knowing how much that one word meant to him, to them, to…everyone.
"Papa?"
"H-He's really…gone."
________________
Meanwhile…
The air in the secret medical bay reeked of sterile, metallic chill, thick with the scent of antiseptic, ozone, and the coppery tang of old blood. It was a smell that spoke not of healing, but of desperate, blasphemous science. The only sounds were the frantic, irregular beeping of a dozen monitors and the wet, mechanical hiss of a ventilator forcing air into lungs that no longer had the will to breathe on their own.
Dr. Garaki stood over the operating table, his small, aged hands, usually so steady, trembled with a mixture of rage and profound dread. Before him lay the reason for his entire, long existence. His master… His god.
And he was a ruin.
This was not the elegant, imposing figure who commanded shadows and people with a whisper. This was a thing of meat and shattered bone. All For One's body was a landscape of catastrophic trauma, but the face… oh…the face was the true masterpiece of destruction.
The proud, defined features Garaki had served for over a century were gone. In their place was a horrifying, concave mask of pulverized flesh and bone. It was as if a divine hammer had struck the center, crushing his nose, his cheekbones, his brow ridge inward, compressing them into a single, gruesome crater. The skin was a mosaic of burst blood vessels and deep purple bruising, stretched taut over the unrecognizable topography beneath. One eye was sealed shut by swollen, fused tissue; the other was a milky, unseeing orb, staring into a void of its own. The ventilator's tube was shoved into what remained of his mouth, a grotesque parody of life.
'A face for a face.' Garaki thought, a fresh wave of hatred so pure it made his vision swim.
'That wretched, smiling BRUTE.'
All Might. The Symbol of Peace. The news of his death had been a symphony to Garaki's ears. He could rot in hell for all he cared. He could be forgotten, his legacy crumbling to dust as years would pass by.
But his master… the true Symbol of Power, of Fear… he could not be allowed to end like this. Not on his watch. Not after a century and a half of work.
"Stubborn, magnificent fool," Garaki muttered, his voice a dry rasp as he adjusted a dial on a machine pumping a custom cocktail of adrenaline and regenerative compounds into a ravaged artery. "You always had to take things to the absolute limit."
He worked with a frantic, precise energy. This was beyond any Nomu. This was damage on a fundamental level. The neural pathways were scrambled, the brain stem bruised, the very core of his master's being flickering like a candle in a hurricane. He had Quirks for this; a stolen Rapid Cellular Mitosis, a Hyper-Coagulation factor, a dozen others; but they were struggling, fighting a losing battle against the absolute finality All Might had wrought.
An alarm shrieked. A monitor displaying brain activity flatlined, the screen filling with a single, horrifying, horizontal green line.
BEEEEEEEEEEEE——
"No!" Garaki snarled, grabbing a set of charged paddles. "No, you do not get to leave! Not like this!"
He slammed the paddles onto his master's chest. The massive body convulsed, a puppet jerked by violent strings, then fell still. The line still remained flat.
He increased the voltage. "You have a successor to claim! An empire to rebuild! You are All For One! You do not die on an operating table!"
Another shock. Another sickening jolt…Nothing.
Garaki's shoulders slumped. The paddles clattered to the floor. The relentless, mocking tone of the flatline filled the room, a sound of absolute defeat. He leaned heavily on the table, his head hanging. A century and a half of loyalty, of dreams of a new world order, ending not with a bang, but with this sterile, electronic whine. He had failed. The Symbol of Peace had, in his final act, truly won.
He reached a trembling hand to begin the process of shutting off the life support. There was no point in prolonging this indignity.
And then he saw it.
A twitch.
It was infinitesimal. A mere tremor in the index finger of his master's right hand. So small it could have been a trick of the light, a final, random firing of a dying nerve.
Garaki froze, his breath catching in his throat. He stared, his entire world narrowing to that single hand.
Could it be…
It happened again. A deliberate, spasmodic curl of the finger, the nail scraping against the stainless steel table with a sound like a small key turning in a lock.
The flatline on the monitor stuttered. A single, weak blip appeared on the screen. Then another. A slow, thready, but undeniable rhythm began to reassert itself.
Garaki's head snapped up, his eyes wide behind his goggles, magnifying the hope and terror warring within them. He leaned closer, his voice a hushed, disbelieving whisper, laden with the weight of a salvation he had thought impossible.
"…Master?"
Chapter 2 (Sensation of despair) is already available on Patreon.com/Weeb Fanthom for as low as $1.