Chapter Text
The cloying scent of iron filled Izuku’s lungs. The silence that suffocated him was louder than any sound, the darkness of the cell feasting on his mind, pressing in around him.
He was slumped against the wall, metal chains around his ankles, his wrists. Rubbed raw, festering with infection, his skin ripe with fever. His rumpled shirt, once green and white, was stained brown with dried blood, ripped and torn.
The thick, iron door to the dungeon opened with a bang, the sound reverberating through the abyss Izuku was trapped in. He flinched, his head down, the clatter of footfalls nearing. Grimaced when the torch was brought close, held up to bathe him in light.
A breath of silence.
“Have you changed your mind yet?”
The same question Izuku was asked every single day.
Izuku gave the same answer he’d given 27 times before. Weak, terrified, the words scraping from his parched throat– so dry even an inhale was like a match striking across sand as he spoke. “No.”
A sigh of disdain. “His Majesty is getting impatient.”
Izuku’s body locked from the terror, his muscles freezing, knowing what was coming next. He turned his head towards the torch, peering up at the man standing in front of him. The head of the King’s council, Lord Ujiko. A round, squat little man with large eyes, devious and greedy. He’d been the right hand of the King for over a hundred years.
Izuku knew the steps of this routine like a dance.
The guards were not regular men. They were creatures, brought to life by dark magic, with long, gangly limbs and yellow eyes, crow faces and coal skin. Nomu, Lord Ujiko affectionately called them.
The Nomu opened the cell. Izuku’s chains were detached from the wall. And then he was hoisted up by each forearm, too weak to walk, his feet dragging along the floor as he was taken up those steps and past the dungeon door.
Where they were taking Izuku was far worse than the deepest dungeon cell in the entire kingdom. He was dragged through the purest absence of light this world knew, beneath the dungeons and through the deep stasis of the underground crypts. Farther and farther down, Izuku’s eyes opened wide and seeing nothing, the air cold as hoarfrost clinging to a dead land.
They soon approached the Three Gates of Tartarus.
The first of the gates was called Fear.
Doors of bronze, inlaid with the fear of ten thousand souls, the whispering cries penetrating the mind, shredding even the strongest psyches and crippling the bravest of warriors.
The second gates were called Loss.
Doors of silver, etched with the mourning and suffering of the ages. If one were to have made it through Fear, they would surely succumb to Loss. Those souls reached from the Underworld, grabbing and devouring to soothe their suffering, to taste mortal warmth and healing for even a moment.
Pathless, the darkness down here would consume any wandering soul before they even reached the first gate. There had been many attempts throughout history to destroy the magic hidden deep beneath the castle, within Tartarus, but none had succeeded. The only warrior who had ever gotten close had just made it to the final set of doors before he was defeated.
Izuku’s mind quivered, those two Gates behind them, easily traversed with the blessing the King had given, allowing them passage without trial.
And made from the wood of an ebony tree that had fed from the pool of dark magic itself, they approached the third and final gate: Sacrifice.
The wards of the ancients scrawled in amethyst glow across the surface, the darkness receding from the wretched evil of those devouring doors, which consumed even that absence of light. Sealed from any unwilling to pay the price.
They came to a stop, and Izuku already knew to expect it. The dagger that appeared, his hand forced forward by one of the Nomu holding him. Lord Ujiko pressed Izuku’s thumb down on the tip of the blade, crimson welling from his pale fingertip, before falling into the shallow basin to the side of the sealed gates.
Magics swirled, flaring the brightest crimson before burning purple, the ebony doors opening with a deep rumble. The ancient etching of the symbols across the wooden gates parted and allowed them entrance.
Izuku was dragged inside, his head down, catching sight of himself on the obsidian marble floors, the surface so smooth and polished Izuku could see his own reflection by the amethyst flames, burning in sconces around the perimeter of the room.
The darkest magic in their realm, All For One.
No more than a knuckle’s length deep, the swirling, violet pool of magic was both shallow, yet infinite. It thrummed in the air, alive, so loud in his mind he couldn’t hear his internal voice, his nose dripping hot blood onto the obsidian tiles.
The first time Izuku had been brought into this chamber, he had vomited and heaved uncontrollably from the overwhelming weight and presence of that ungodly power, the air itself a torment to breathe. But over the course of those 27 previous visits, Izuku had grown used to the raw feeling of this ancient abyss.
What he would never grow accustomed to was the feeling of it against his skin. The Nomu guards dragged Izuku up the obsidian steps, to the lip of the dais, and let him hang there, suspended above All For One, the terror ravaging every vein in his body.
The pool whispered and hissed, reaching for him, dancing amaranthines and violets. And when the Nomus let go, when Izuku plunged forward into the core of the energy itself, Izuku knew agony unlike any other living soul would ever know.
Shallow, yet endless.
Izuku was submerged completely, pulled under by ancient forces, into a sea of magenta and amethyst.
The torture.
The pain.
The agony, shredding through every drop of blood.
Izuku screamed and thrashed and drowned. Again and again and again. Seeping into his lungs, in and out, his veins glowing purple.
His soul took shape in these waters, bright white, separating from his physical body, drowning above him. Cleaved from his flesh like meat from a bone.
There was no respite.
──────༺❁༻──────
By the time Izuku was pulled from the pool and deposited in front of the throne overlooking the room, the King had arrived.
Most days he came in later. After Izuku had already been submerged, until his mind was cracked open and his soul had been Cleaved from his body.
Izuku cowered, his forehead pressed to the tiles, that arcane power rolling off his body and skittering along the floor. He shivered and seethed, blinking jade eyes wide and unseeing, those purple veins glowing across every inch of his skin.
“I knew you would refuse,” the King mused.
The King stood, his form towering, imposing. Stepping away from the black throne he sat upon, one step at a time. He had been the king of this land for nine generations, and few knew exactly how he’d lived so long, how he’d ruled Styx with an iron fist for nearly two hundred years.
Izuku’s gaze was locked with his reflection, the eerie glow from up ahead, the purple flames dancing in the braziers around the room casting them in that incandescent light.
The black boots came to a stop a step in front of him. Izuku kept himself propped up on his forearms, pressing his forehead to that obsidian marble, bowing fully in front of his King.
“Freedom. Riches. Power. Anything you desire, all in exchange for marrying the Eos Crown Prince. Once your marriage is ordained, the Gate of Elysium will recognize you as Eos royalty, and you will take One For All and bring it to me.”
Izuku remained silent, his body already tensing.
“I have been more than patient, but I will not play this futile game any longer. So tell me. Will you accept?”
“No.”
“A heart of defiance,” King Zen Shigaraki stated, his voice smooth, ancient, powerful. “A spirit yet unbroken. Given time, I could bend you to my will. I have never feared patience. But I do not have the time to waste on you now, and I grow tired of this tedious process. So, I will ask one last time. Will you accept the pact?”
Even if Izuku was granted his freedom after stealing One For All– if he even succeeded– he knew he would never be free again.
“No,” Izuku whispered.
A flash of aggravation, a tightness to the King’s downturning mouth.
Izuku’s answer remained true to his heart. He couldn’t accept the pact. Because the Heavenly Grief had to be taken willingly, after all. A deal such as this, bound by the forces of the most ancient magics in their world, could not be forced if it were to truly seal Izuku to the King’s bidding.
The magical pact was one of truth and choice, and the conditions could not be imposed unless both parties had agreed.
So Izuku had to fully accept it of his own free will.
And he would not.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t be whittled down into accepting it. A tortured man’s agreement for survival was still true. Except Izuku’s mind had to remain intact, so it had made it significantly more difficult for the King to utilize All For One to its fullest potential. Even Cleaving Izuku’s soul, over and over each passing day, risked corrupting and destroying Izuku’s mind.
“Bring her in,” the King said, waving his hand in the direction of the ebony doors.
Another set of Nomu came in, the whisper of fabric against marble, the clumsy footsteps from being jerked along towards the dais— the steps leading up to that amethyst pool… it was another person.
This was new. This was not a familiar step in their dance. Izuku was supposed to be taken back to his cell to rot, one step closer to insanity, screaming and clawing at his skin as All For One shredded his veins, dissipating before repeating the next day.
“Izuku?”
Izuku’s head snapped up, craning his head violently until he spotted her.
His mother.
They had found her.
Izuku’s heart sank, twisting viciously, seeing his small, kind mother being dragged up the dais, towards the pool of All For One.
The agony, Izuku could handle. He didn’t have much to live for. A servant raised in the shadow of the hidden prince, who had always worn a golden mask carved into the shape of his hand. Izuku only had his mother to care for in the frozen tundra of their northern kingdom of Styx.
As a nursery maid who had helped raise Prince Tomura, she had often kept her head bowed and mouth shut. But she’d heard of the King’s plan through the stone walls of the palace late one night and ran to find her son.
Izuku had been woken in the middle of the night, his mother begging him to escape, to leave. There was a trade caravan departing for the western shore that very night, and his mother was friends with one of the wagons that could smuggle Izuku out.
Izuku hadn’t understood at the time why she’d wanted him to escape.
She’d always kept her secrets. Izuku still didn’t fully understand what was happening, why the King had chosen him. But he’d gone with his mother that night, Nomu hot on their trail. And he had beseeched the traders to take his mother instead. She’d cried and fought, not wanting to leave her son behind, but Izuku couldn’t let them take her.
Watching the trade caravan depart into the night, watching his mother cry as their paths were torn apart… and then later, when he’d returned to the palace, Izuku had been taken by the Nomu. Dragged down into Tartarus, into a hell unlike anything he could’ve ever imagined.
Only for it all to be for nothing.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry–” Inko cried to her son. “Please, let him go! Not my son– please–”
Izuku fought to raise his head, his emerald curls sour with blood, his skin leeched and pale, those purple veins glowing sharply across his exposed neck and arms, reaching towards his face. And he looked up at the King.
Many decades ago, the King had battled fiercely with that warrior from Eos, the only warrior to make it past two of Tartarus’ gates. In that great battle, the King had lost his eyes, the empty sockets covered by smooth skin. And yet, he still retained his sight somehow, even permanently disfigured.
“Let her go!” Izuku screamed, struggling against his own failing strength, against All For One.
Two Nomus holding his mother before the pool, a third stepping forward with a whip, its scaly, black skin rippling with muscle, that crow face warped and twisted as it awaited the King’s command.
At the first strike of the whip, Izuku cried, in ruins, tears streaming like violet lava down his freckled face. “No– no, stop!”
“You care more for the lives of others than your own,” the King said, pleased at Izuku’s response. “Accept the pact and she will not be harmed further. If you do not, I will not kill her– I will make death look like a mercy. She will be unrecognizable by the time I am finished.”
The whip snapped again, his mother getting closer to being dropped into the pool of All For One. Her cry of pain, of agony as blood began to drench the back of her servant dress…
“I agree!” Izuku screamed.
The King smiled slowly.
“I agree! I’ll take the pact!”
Izuku’s chest was heaving, that terror dropping his gaze from the King’s face to his boots. Izuku pressed his forehead to the obsidian marble once again, bowing as low as he could. “For my mother… I will take the Heavenly Grief. I will accept the pact. Don’t hurt her! I’ll do it!”
The King gave a lazy flick of his hand, and the Nomu with the whip retreated. Lord Ujiko stepped forward, his beady eyes shining with glee, like watching an experiment succeed. He was carrying a vial no bigger than Izuku’s thumb, glowing a liquid gold. The only warm light in the room bathed in the blood of ancients.
Nomu guards hauled Izuku up to his knees, sitting before that onyx throne the King stood in front of, looking at Izuku with a twisted smile. The same dagger that had been used to spill Izuku’s blood into the offering bowl at the Sacrifice gate was brought to the King, who took it, pointing the blade out towards his Head of Council.
Lord Ujiko bowed, nearly trembling with excitement as he undid the metal stopper of the vial. Izuku could do nothing but watch numbly, his mother’s sobs and cries for this all to stop bleeding deep into his heart.
He watched as Lord Ujiko poured the shimmering, golden liquid across the blade. But it was a magical poison, sinking into the honed, tempered silver and making the blade glow.
“The terms,” the King announced, studying the blade with those eyeless sockets, blind, yet all-seeing. “You will marry the Crown Prince of Eos. The Bakugo royal family has agreed to this union of kingdoms under the pretense of peace, but have stipulated that your marriage will not be ordained by One For All until Prince Katsuki has decided so.”
Izuku was suddenly hauled up by the Nomu on either side of him, standing so tall his feet couldn’t touch the ground.
“You have one year to bring One For All to me. You will not communicate in any way the terms of this pact or take any action that could compromise your mission. If this pact is broken, it will Cleave your soul. If you fail, your mother will be killed. Your body will die within three days, and your spirit will be tormented in All For One for the eternities.”
Izuku, suspended in the air by the Nomu, was so terrified he could hardly breathe, watching the King step closer, that blade humming with Heavenly Grief.
“Do you accept?” The King asked.
Izuku’s lips quivered, his heart beating as fast and fluttering as a rabbit’s, caught beneath an eagle’s talons. “On… one condition,” he somehow said.
Lord Ujiko’s expression twisted into a sneer, about to step forward, but the King cut him off with a mere wave of his hand.
“My mother lives. She will not be… she won’t be harmed at all by your hand, or any order you give… or any plan or– or scheme you implement. She’ll be taken care of… to my standards… and if she isn’t, this pact will break.”
The King turned his head towards Inko, bleeding from the lashes on her back, sobbing near the back of the room, towards the Sacrifice gates.
“Agreed.”
“Then I accept,” Izuku said.
Large Nomu hands held Izuku’s head firmly in place, craning his skull back until his neck was fully exposed.
Here in hell, Izuku had died 28 times already.
What was one more death?
The King savored every moment, drawing that blade across his bared throat, the liquid fire of the Heavenly Grief seeping directly into Izuku’s blood.
Izuku heaved and gurgled and choked, that golden magic stitching his skin shut behind it, sealing Izuku’s tongue.
And Izuku felt it– the pact. Binding him to the terms they’d just agreed upon. It spread like poison through his body, all the way down to his right arm. A distant cold settled in Izuku’s bones, the All For One in his veins licking through his blood, dancing with Heavenly Grief.
Though the wound was sealed, the dagger in the King’s hand dripped crimson with Izuku’s blood.
His consciousness began to fade, his eyes closing, head tipping to the side as he went boneless.
Lost in a sea of violet and gold.