Chapter Text
Innocence floated above them, laughing with a bright, crystalline joy that contrasted cruelly with the carnage below. The floating spires of Mount Gulg glittered beneath his radiant wings, and the blinding ocean of Light poured from him in waves that seemed to swallow the sky itself.
At the front of the charge stood his nemesis, the Warrior of Darkness: Izazu Izazalu, a Dwarf with wild green curls and bright eyes that always seemed to shine with a hidden fire. His shield flashed as he deflected blow after blow, and his sword carved through beams of searing Light with a stubbornness that surprised even Innocence. The companions behind him fought with desperate determination, each one pushing themselves as far as their bodies allowed, but Izazu bore the heaviest weight. Every breath from him came strained and shallow, and Izazu knew, deep down, why.
The Light inside him was too much.
Sin Eaters dissolved into aether as they fell, their cries drowned out by the roar of clashing magic. Innocence reformed again and again, gathering Light with every movement, his voice ringing like burning glass as he unleashed more waves of brilliance that would have obliterated anyone but these heroes who dared to defy him.
***
Circling high above them, Feo Ul hovered in her Titania form, weaving protective magic around the massive talos that carried the party upward. Her wings shimmered with frantic energy, each beat pushing her harder as she struggled to shield them from the radiance pouring down like falling stars.
She watched Izazu’s movements carefully, sensing through the remnants of their old bond how much he strained under the pressure. He had taken in too much Light already. Her stomach tightened with dread each time he staggered, and every time his blade faltered she lifted her hand, ready to intervene. She knew the precautions they had taken would never withstand something like this. They had hoped, desperately, but hope was rarely enough against a flood.
The final clash burst across the mountain like a silent explosion. Izazu’s blade pierced Innocence’s core, and the resulting surge of aether washed over the battlefield, tearing apart the Lightwarden’s form in a shower of dissolving brilliance. The white-scorched sky flickered, dimmed, and slowly began to break open, revealing the faint and trembling stars hidden behind it for so long.
Izazu collapsed. Feo Ul dove without hesitation, catching him before he hit the ground.
His skin shimmered with a dangerous glow. His breath was shallow, ragged. His eyes, bright even now, tried to focus on her face.
“Feo… Ul…? Did… we win?” She could not answer him. She only held him tighter, wings trembling with fear and exhaustion, and carried him away from the ruins of Mount Gulg as quickly as she could. The stars above seemed to watch silently as she brought him home.
***
Feo Ul laid him gently upon the moss of Il Mheg, the cool air carrying the first true night breezes in decades. Izazu looked up at the sky as though seeing it for the very first time. He described the stars to her in a soft, wavering voice, pointing out shapes that didn’t truly exist but were beautiful enough that she pretended to see them too.
She stayed by him, every second weighed with dread, listening to the slow decline of his breathing. Even as the Light burned him from within, his eyes remained gentle, fixed on the sky he had fought so hard to restore.
He never surrendered to the Light.
No new Lightwarden rose from his body.
But when the last breath left him, the world fell quiet.
Her Sapling was gone.
***
Feo Ul carried him into Il Mheg’s palace with the care one uses for a fading dream. She shaped a crystal coffin with magic that strained against the grief in her chest, its polished surface smooth as clear water, its edges outlined by silver vines that glowed faintly in the dark. She placed Izazu inside, arranging him as if he were merely resting from a long battle, his hands folded around his sword, his face peaceful and still.
The fae of Il Mheg visited him daily. Pixies left garlands of shimmering petals. Nu Mou offered charms and whispered prayers. Even the amaro bowed their heads in silent respect. But Feo Ul felt none of it. She moved through the palace like a figure carved from pale glass, her light dimmed to the faintest embers. The spark of mischief and life that once defined her seemed to have dissolved with the Light of the final battle.
Every night she returned to the coffin, touching the cold glass, whispering stories or promises that never found an answer. The halls felt too large, too quiet, and the throne behind her felt like a weight she could no longer bear.
***
Feo Ul wasn’t sure how long it had actually been, but the day everything changed was in spring. As she sat in her throne, listening to the sounds of her realm, something flickered deep inside her chest. It was faint — a tiny vibration, like the distant ringing of a bell — but it sent her head snapping upward. She pressed a hand over her heart, closing her eyes until she felt it again.
A soul-echo.
A sliver of him.
Not here, not now, but somewhere beyond.
The failed ritual had left its mark. It had not saved him, but it had tethered a part of her to whatever path his soul chose next. Feo Ul returned to the coffin one final time. She rested her hand on the glass and whispered a soft, trembling promise. “I’m going to find you. However long it takes. My darling Sapling.”
She removed the crown of Titania from her brow, its glow foreign to her now, and placed it gently upon the coffin above his hands. Il Mheg would choose a new ruler. Her place was no longer here. Feo Ul walked across her realm, her steps slow but resolute, until she reached the furthest boundary where the land dissolved into drifting mist. She felt the faint tug of the echo and moved toward it without hesitation.
She stepped into the space between worlds.
***
The veiled lands between worlds stretched around Feo Ul like drifting currents of half-formed thought, each fragment of possibility glowing faintly with aetheric life. Even here, in the strange places where realms bled into one another, she could draw breath without pain. The familiar pulse of aether hummed through her like blood through a vein, answering her magic and sustaining her dwindling reserves as she followed the faint soul-echo she had coaxed into being the night Izazu died.
But as the echo grew stronger, leading her toward a particular fold in the drifting fabric of creation, Feo Ul felt something else: a steady thinning, a slow, unsettling silence ahead of her.
She paused once, testing the edge of the fold with a spark of glamour. The spell flickered, then sputtered outright.
The space before her tasted barren, like stepping toward a field of ash where a forest should have stood. No ambient aether drifted in the currents. No invisible winds of magic moved through the void. Only a hollow stillness greeted her, empty and cold. Feo Ul frowned, pressing a hand over her sternum. Her own aether swirled quietly beneath her palm, but without an outside flow to replenish or answer it, the sensation was strangely claustrophobic — like breathing in a sealed room.
“I dislike this already,” she murmured, though her voice held more worry than irritation. “Sapling, wherever you’ve landed… it is far poorer in magic than any realm has right to be.”
She could have turned back. She could have waited, rested, gathered strength. But the echo pulsed again, strong enough to make her vision blur for a heartbeat, as if the soul she sought had cried out in fear.
Feo Ul stepped forward.
The moment she crossed the threshold, the full weight of the world hit her.
Her wings faltered.
Her breath hitched sharply as though she had plunged into freezing water.
Aether, normally drifting everywhere like invisible mist, simply wasn’t there. The world felt dry and echoing, full of strange energies she didn’t recognize — muddled, rigid, and painfully artificial things that twisted the fabric of life in ways her senses couldn’t easily parse. She sank to one knee, clutching her chest. “So little… how does this world survive with so little…?”
Her personal reserves thrummed uneasily. She had power left, enough to last decades if she rationed it, but here in this aether-starved world she felt suddenly mortal, acutely aware that every spell cast, every barrier raised, would drain her with nothing to refill the well.
But the echo called to her again, steady and bright, like a lantern shining across a barren plain.
Feo Ul forced herself upright, steadied her wings, and followed.
The path wound through an unfamiliar city of towering metal and humming lights, each step guided by the echo’s gentle pull. The world’s strange energy signatures, Quirks, as she would later learn, flickered around her like distorted shadows, impossible to read and uncomfortable to touch. They were powerful, yes, but brittle and unnaturally shaped, as though life itself had been forced into molds that did not match its nature.
But then the echo flared sharply, so close it nearly knocked her off course.
Feo Ul turned, drifted through a narrow corridor, passed through a wall in a shimmer of strained magic, and found herself inside a small, brightly lit medical office.
And the moment she saw the child sitting on the exam table, her knees nearly gave out a second time, not from the aether starvation, not from exhaustion, but from the shock of recognition.
The soul was unmistakable. Smaller, quieter, fragile as a new leaf.
Her Sapling.
***
Izuku Midoriya sat hunched on the examination table, green curls drooping over his red-rimmed eyes, his little hands twisted in the hem of his shirt as though trying to hold himself together. His mother hovered nearby, a shaking hand pressed over her mouth.
Across from them stood Dr. Tsubasa, a broad man with round goggles and a bristling mustache that twitched nervously. He cleared his throat, avoiding their eyes as he held the results.
“I’m very sorry,” he said, and even though he softened his tone, the words still struck with the heaviness of final judgment. “There is no detectable Quirk factor. Your son… he’s Quirkless.” Izuku’s breath hitched sharply. Inko let out a small cry. Dr. Tsubasa adjusted his goggles in a helpless, apologetic gesture. Feo Ul felt something inside herself snap.
She slowed time with barely a flicker of magic, the effort heavier than normal in this aether-dry realm, and moved to the boy’s side. She studied the room, the charts, the machines, the posters, absorbing their meaning in the space between heartbeats. “Quirks,” she murmured to herself. “This world’s strange, artificial way of pushing power where little should exist.” She felt the child’s despair like a cold wind across their tether.
She would not let him suffer that.
She let time resume, gently, so no one would notice, and stepped into view with a shimmer of faerie light that cost more aether than she liked, but the look in Izuku’s eyes when he saw her made every drop worth spending.
The doctor stumbled back, knocking a clipboard against the counter.
Inko gasped and clutched her chest.
Izuku froze, mouth open, tears still clinging to his lashes.
Feo Ul floated before him, wings spreading softly, her voice steady and warm. “I am your Quirk,” she said, letting each word fall with the weight of truth he needed. “Bound to you by a pact deeper than anything this world can measure.”
Dr. Tsubasa sputtered behind his mustache. “A— a— sentient—? But the scans— that isn’t— I don’t—”
Feo Ul raised a hand gently, not even bothering to look at him.
“Izuku Midoriya is not Quirkless,” she said, her tone letting no room for argument. “His power simply rests in me, and our bond is called Aetherpact.”
Izuku wiped his eyes, voice breaking with hope he barely dared trust. “S-so… I really… I really do have a Quirk?”
Feo Ul leaned closer, letting her glow brush softly against his cheek, her own heart swelling with something painfully tender. “Of course you do. I wouldn’t have come otherwise.”
***
Izuku woke earlier than usual, the soft morning light spilling through his curtains and warming his face. For a moment he lay still, blinking up at the ceiling, wondering if yesterday had been a dream, some wishful imagining born from heartbreak and exhaustion.
Then a small warm glow gathered above his pillow.
“Good morning, little Sapling,” Feo Ul murmured, stretching lazily in midair, her wings shimmering with a gentle pulse. “Up with you. You start your hero training today, I believe?”
Izuku sat upright so fast he nearly toppled off the bed. “It’s not hero training! It’s… it’s just school.”
Feo Ul tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Then you’ll simply be the most heroic student there.”
Izuku blushed, but his grin stretched all the way to his ears. The moment Inko dropped him off, the atmosphere in the small, brightly colored classroom changed. Preschoolers were not subtle creatures, and neither were their parents. Word had already spread.
A sentient Quirk.
A Quirk that could talk.
A Quirk that appeared in sparkles of glowing color.
By the time the first bell chimed, every teacher in the building had found an excuse to peek through the doorway, trying to catch a glimpse. Feo Ul perched primly on Izuku’s shoulder, pretending not to notice the teachers whispering to each other like startled birds.
“He really does have one,” a teacher murmured.
“A sentient support-type Quirk? At his age?”
“That’s… incredible.”
Feo Ul smirked, crossing her ankles delicately. “I should hope so.”
Izuku coughed softly and tugged at his sleeve. “F-Feo Ul… you shouldn’t brag…”
“But I am a remarkable discovery, Sapling,” she said. “And they should take appropriate delight in knowing me.”
“Please don’t make this weird,” he whispered.
“No promises.”
***
It was during recess that things changed.
The teachers stood together near the fence, still murmuring about Izuku’s Quirk. The younger kids watched him with wide curiosity, whispering questions he was too shy to answer. Feo Ul hovered near his head, commenting softly whenever a child asked something particularly strange. But a small group of older kids — maybe six or seven years old — lingered near the jungle gym, watching him with narrowed eyes. There was a way they whispered among themselves that Feo Ul instantly disliked.
Izuku didn’t notice at first. He simply followed the painted hopscotch path with gentle concentration, humming under his breath. Then one of the older boys called out.
“Hey! Midoriya!”
Izuku froze.
The older kids approached, tall enough to tower over him. Their leader had a smug tilt to his chin and a scratchy bandage across his cheek, as though he’d gotten himself into trouble recently.
“So this is the new Quirk everyone’s talking about,” he said, giving Feo Ul a once-over. “A glittery fairy? Seriously?”
“She’s not glittery…” Izuku murmured.
“She looks like something for babies,” another boy snickered. “Or girls.”
The leader leaned down until his face was close enough that Izuku could smell his breath. “If that’s your Quirk, then you must be a girl too, right?”
A small ripple of laughter followed. Izuku felt his cheeks flush hot. His throat tightened. Feo Ul slowly descended until she floated at eye level with the older boy, her wings going very still. “This is the best insult you can craft? Truly, your mind is a barren garden.”
The boy blinked. “...What?”
Feo Ul leaned closer. “If you intend to be cruel, at least be clever, child. Otherwise, you will embarrass yourself before you ever manage to embarrass him.”
Izuku tugged urgently at her arm. “Feo Ul, please don’t—”
She placed a tiny hand on his hair, soothing. “Do not fear, Sapling. I am educating him.”
One of the older boys snorted. “Wow, it even talks like a girl’s cartoon.”
Izuku felt a sick twist in his stomach. He wanted to speak up, to defend himself, but the words stuck behind his teeth. His breath came shallow, eyes stinging. Feo Ul saw it.
Her expression softened instantly. She drifted back to his side and placed a tiny hand on his cheek. “Look at me,” she said quietly. “Are you harmed?” He shook his head slowly, though his eyes glistened. “Then their words have no power,” she said. “Only the meaning you grant them.” The older kids scoffed and wandered away, muttering things they thought sounded clever but contained little real venom. They seemed unsettled, though — as if they weren’t entirely sure whether Feo Ul was a Quirk or a particularly small adult with wings.
When they were out of earshot, Izuku sniffed. “Why… why did they say that?” he asked, voice trembling. “Why does it matter if my Quirk looks… different?”
Feo Ul settled on his shoulder again, wings folding softly around him like a shawl of light.
“It matters only to people who do not understand power when it stands before them,” she said. “They see softness and mistake it for weakness. They see beauty and assume it is fragile.” She touched his cheek gently. “You and I will teach them otherwise.”
Izuku wiped his eyes, breathing a little deeper. “Really…?”
“Of course.” Her smile was warm, but there was steel beneath it. “You will show them the strength of someone who is kind. And when the time is right… you will show them more than that.”
Izuku nodded slowly, a glimmer of confidence settling into place.
Recess continued.
The other children returned to their games.
But Izuku walked a little taller now, Feo Ul glowing faintly beside him.
***
The next two years unfolded with a rhythm that felt strangely peaceful to Feo Ul, even within this aether-poor world. Izuku grew, little by little, into a boy who still startled easily but learned how to stand up straight after each stumble. She didn’t push him — she simply hovered beside him, steady and constant, offering sharp words when necessary and quiet warmth when nothing else would do.
Katsuki Bakugo — Katsuki, whose fierce grin had once been something Izuku chased after — drifted, slowly at first and then with an uncomfortable lurch, from friend to tormentor. It started with small things: eye rolls, scoffs, little shoves meant to test boundaries. His Quirk, a growing crackle of sparks in his palms, made him reckless and proud, and Izuku’s new “fairy quirk” had given Katsuki something he didn’t know how to process.
Feo Ul caught his intentions long before Izuku did.
One afternoon, when Katsuki tried to corner Izuku behind the schoolyard shed, Feo Ul shimmered into view between them, wings glowing with an annoyed luminescence.
“Your face,” she announced, “is far too smug for someone who has accomplished so little in life.”
Katsuki blinked. “What—?!”
“If you lay a single finger on my Sapling,” she continued, voice smooth as silk and twice as sharp, “I will turn you into shrubbery.”
Izuku gasped. “Feo Ul!”
She placed a tiny hand on her chest. “A respectable shrubbery. Perhaps with little flowers.”
Katsuki backed up two full steps. “Y-you can’t do that!”
Feo Ul smiled. It was not reassuring. “Children can be pruned. Consider this a warning.”
From that day on, Katsuki never tried to bully Izuku directly again. He still glowered and threw insults over his shoulder, but something in Feo Ul’s tone had sunk deep under his skin. He never admitted it, but he kept a cautious eye on every tree and bush for months.
***
Izuku, meanwhile, began carrying a small green notebook everywhere. “Hero Analysis — Volume One” he wrote on the cover with serious concentration. Feo Ul watched him scribble down observations about teachers, students, small-time neighborhood heroes, and even Katsuki’s explosions. She hovered over his shoulder, offering commentary that wandered between helpful, confusing, and biting.
“That man’s cape is too long,” she said once, pointing at a hero on TV. “He will trip during a dramatic moment and die of embarrassment.”
Izuku dutifully wrote: Note: capes dangerous in wind. (Coincidentally, that hero did just that a few days later, while meeting with some government official. They both fell down a long flight of stairs, and suffered multiple broken bones. Feo Ul laughed about it for weeks.)
“Pixton Hero Agency hires solely based on fashion,” she said another time, flipping through an online article. “Their safety protocols are imaginary.”
Izuku wrote: Check if ‘fashion-first hiring’ is a real thing???
And when she added, “That woman’s battle mask is held on by hope,” he almost choked laughing.
He didn’t fully understand all her commentary, but he began annotating his observations in a more critical way — learning to identify flaws, anticipate problems, and analyze people with an eye sharper than most adults.
***
Older kids still picked on him sometimes, because kids rarely understood nuance. They called him soft, weird, fairy-boy — any insult they could twist into a weapon. Izuku still felt each one like a small bruise, but he didn’t cry nearly as often. He had learned something else instead.
“Your opinions matter less than chalk drawings in the rain,” he told one boy who mocked him for drawing heroes during art time.
Another child made fun of his green hair; Izuku calmly replied, “At least mine doesn’t look like a dusty mop someone stepped on.”
Feo Ul, watching from a nearby bookshelf, clapped proudly. “Such progress.”
Izuku smiled shyly, but he also straightened a little, shoulders no longer curled in on themselves.
***
While he went to school, Feo Ul, who could teleport to him in a moment, spent much of her downtime perched atop Inko’s bookshelf, reading through legal practice manuals with intense curiosity. She flipped through them faster than any human could, absorbing civil rights protections, anti-discrimination clauses, educational regulations, and social expectation frameworks.
“Inko,” she said one evening, “your legal system is held together by optimism and glue.”
Inko blinked. “Feo Ul, sweetheart, maybe slow down—”
“Did you know children have rights?” Feo Ul said, flipping pages. “Fascinating. I intend to use these, aggressively.”
Inko paled slightly.
***
It happened on an ordinary afternoon, during a moment that should have been nothing special, in the middle of a school day that felt no different from any other.
Izuku was six years old. He heard the cries before he saw the chaos.
And Feo Ul, perched on his shoulder, felt the first deep pulse of aether roll through him like a breath finally taken.
***
Recess had been peaceful that day, the kind of easy midmorning warmth that made the playground feel bright and gentle. Izuku sat in the grass with two classmates, showing them the drawings he’d made of a neighborhood hero. The children listened with wide eyes, curious, impressed, and pleasantly oblivious to the larger dramas of their young world. Feo Ul hovered lazily above them, basking in a thin patch of sunlight. She looked half-asleep, wings flicking idly, but her attention was always sharp. She had learned quickly that this school required constant vigilance.
That was why she heard the cries even before Izuku did.
A short, sharp yelp. A second, pained and fearful. Then the heavy thump of someone being shoved against the dirt. Izuku jerked upright. “Did you hear that?” he asked, voice thin.
Feo Ul’s wings snapped open. “Trouble.” Izuku didn’t think. He just ran.
His small shoes slapped across the pavement as he sprinted toward the jungle gym. Several children had already backed away, forming a loose half-circle around the source of the shouting. And in the middle of it—
Katsuki Bakugo stood with a wild grin on his face, palms smoking from recent blasts. His two cronies flanked him like eager shadows, each wearing the smug expression of children who had convinced themselves they were untouchable. On the ground knelt a boy named Hori, small and pale, clutching his arm. Shards of ice scattered around him, melting in the dirt. His hand trembled — the remnants of his quirk’s defensive reflex — but he looked terrified. “See?” Katsuki crowed. “Told you ice is nothing! My explosions beat everything!”
One of his friends laughed. “Bakugo’s the best!”
Izuku felt something hot spark in his chest. Before he could think, he shoved himself between Katsuki and the whimpering Hori, arms outspread like a shield. “K-Kacchan, stop it!” he cried. “You’re hurting him!” Katsuki skidded to a halt, his grin freezing in place. The sight of Izuku standing there — tiny, shaking, with his arms spread wide — seemed to confuse him more than anything. Izuku trembled, but he held firm. “Hori wasn’t doing anything wrong,” Izuku said, voice shaking but loud enough to carry. “You can’t attack someone just because you want to prove you’re strong! That’s… that’s what villains do!”
The playground seemed to still. Even the breeze paused.
Katsuki blinked once. Then again. Something flickered in his expression — an abrupt, startled moment of clarity, as if someone had yanked a record needle across the vinyl in his brain. “Villain?” he repeated quietly, confusion twisting his face. “I’m not a villain.”
Izuku’s heart pounded so hard it hurt. “Then don’t act like one.”
Katsuki stared at him. Really stared. And for the first time in a long while, there was no smugness, no anger, no superiority. Only shock and something that looked uncomfortably like doubt.
Feo Ul, hovering nearby, raised a brow. “Interesting. Growth. Unexpected, but welcome.”
Izuku swallowed and turned toward Hori and the two other kids he’d glimpsed earlier — both bruised, one sniffling quietly.
He dropped to his knees. “Oh no, oh no, oh no, you’re hurt! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry! I don’t know what to do!” His hands shook violently. His breath came fast.
Feo Ul darted close, expression suddenly sharp. “Sapling, slow down—”
But Izuku didn’t hear her. He wanted to help so badly it burned inside him, a fierce, desperate need that pushed through his fear and panic. His heartbeat roared in his ears. Then something opened.
Not outside him — within.
A flash of light erupted around him, bright but gentle, like the first breath of dawn through a windowpane. The air shimmered. Magic crackled. Feo Ul’s eyes widened as she felt a surge of aether pulse through him like a heartbeat. When the light faded, Izuku was no longer kneeling in his school clothes. He wore long navy robes trimmed in gold, fabric flowing softly around his legs. His boots and gloves gleamed with small armored plates designed for movement and spellcraft. Upon his head sat a strange flat-topped cap, its edge marked by ancient runes he did not recognize but somehow understood. His notebook — once worn and soft-edged — now felt solid and heavy in his hand, wrapped in leather that thrummed with silent power. Arcane glyphs glowed faintly across its cover. Izuku gasped. “Wh-what…?”
Feo Ul whispered, awestruck. “Sapling… you manifested a Job.”
The notebook flipped open as if guiding him. His eyes fell on a page titled with characters he’d never seen before.
Succor.
The spell caught in his throat like a remembered song.
Izuku raised his hand. A gentle, rippling barrier spread outward, soft green and blue light washing across the injured children. The air hummed with quiet power. Cuts sealed. Bruises faded. Hori’s shaking eased. One of the younger kids blinked in wonder and let out a relieved sob.
The spell ended with a soft pulse.
Silence swept the playground.
Every child stared.
Even Katsuki’s mouth hung open, eyes wide in a mixture of shock and something that looked dangerously like awe.
Feo Ul floated close to Izuku’s ear, her voice full of breathless relief. “Oh, thank the stars,” she murmured. “You’re making aether. Fresh, bright, beautiful aether.” She closed her eyes for a moment, letting the wave of energy wash through her depleted reserves. “And I can finally breathe again.”
Izuku held the grimoire to his chest, robes fluttering faintly in the light breeze. Katsuki took one hesitant step forward. “Izuku… what… what did you just do?”
Izuku swallowed hard, heart thundering. “I… I think… I healed them.”
Feo Ul smiled, wings flaring with pride. “Yes, Sapling. You most certainly did.”