The city learned about Shinwa sideways.
Not through announcements.
Not through headlines.
Through hesitation.
On the west side, a man with a Quirk that let him harden his skin like stone stood frozen at the mouth of an alley. He had used it a hundred times—rush in, tank the hit, smash back harder. Tonight, though, he didn't move.
His skin began to gray anyway, instinct overriding thought.
"Why aren't you going?" his partner hissed.
The man swallowed. "I—heard something."
There was nothing there. Just shadow and damp concrete.
They turned around.
Later, neither of them could explain why.
Across town, a woman with a Threadline Quirk—ultra-fine fibers extruded from her fingertips—missed a bind she had never missed before. The threads wrapped too loose, the villain slipping free and crashing through a window.
Her hands shook as she reeled the fibers back in.
Get it together, she told herself.
But her mind kept replaying a clip she'd seen that morning. Blurry. Hooded. A group of men running instead of fighting.
No blood. No bodies.
Just fear.
Rumors didn't have a shape yet.
That made them worse.
Some said the vigilante never spoke.
Others said he warned people—gave them a chance.
A few swore he was bigger than before. Broader. Heavier.
No one could agree.
The lack of consistency let the stories spread without resistance.
In a cramped apartment, a teenage boy with a Sound Bloom Quirk sat cross-legged on his bed, earbuds in, trying to calm his pulse. His ability reacted to emotional spikes—fear made it explode outward, shattering glass and eardrums alike.
Tonight, he couldn't risk it.
His mother knocked on the door. "You okay?"
"Yeah," he lied.
He lowered the volume, slowed his breathing. But the thought crept in anyway.
What if he's real?
The sound bloomed.
The window cracked.
Heroes felt it too.
A patrol team responded to a low-level disturbance—three quirkless thieves and a malfunctioning drone. Routine. Boring.
Still, the leader raised a fist before they entered.
"Eyes open," she said.
"For what?" someone asked.
She hesitated. There was no answer that didn't sound foolish.
"…Anything."
They cleared the area without incident. But afterward, none of them joked. None of them relaxed.
A name went unspoken.
Shinwa watched the city from the edge of a rooftop, unaware of any of it.
He felt stronger. That part was undeniable.
Five months of movement, impact, recovery. Five months of controlled violence and restraint. His body responded more readily now—muscles engaging faster, balance correcting instinctively.
But there was no switch.
No surge.
No monstrous change.
Just a quiet, persistent density that followed him like a second gravity.
He flexed his hand, then clenched it.
Still human.
He exhaled and pulled the hood tighter, mask reflecting the city's broken lights back at itself. Tonight, he didn't move. He didn't hunt.
He watched.
Elsewhere, a villain with a Directional Leap Quirk misjudged a jump and shattered his ankle on landing. He lay there screaming, not in pain—but in fury.
"I felt him," he ranted later to anyone who would listen. "I swear I did."
No one had been there.
The media began to circle without committing.
A short segment on vigilante activity ran late at night. No names. No faces. Just speculation and expert commentary.
"It's likely exaggerated," one analyst said. "Urban myths form quickly."
"But the injuries are real," another countered. "And the pattern—"
They cut to commercial before finishing the sentence.
In a hospital hallway, a pro hero with a Probability Skew Quirk frowned at her tablet. Her ability nudged outcomes in her favor—minor, but reliable. Tonight, it misfired twice.
Coffee spilled.
An elevator jammed.
She stared at the wall, unsettled.
Probability didn't just fail.
Something was introducing noise.
By morning, the city had done what it always did.
It adapted.
People avoided certain routes.
Gangs shifted territories.
Heroes adjusted patrol times.
No one agreed on why.
That made the adaptation imperfect—and fear slipped through the cracks.
Shinwa returned home before dawn. He washed his hands, sat at the small table, and opened his notebook.
He didn't write about strength.
He wrote about reactions.
People run sooner.
Fights end faster.
No escalation required.
He paused, pen hovering.
I haven't changed, he thought.
But something else had.
He closed the notebook and leaned back, staring at the ceiling.
Across the city, in places Shinwa had never seen, people told the story differently.
Some painted him as a warning.
Some as a rumor.
Some as a shadow that punished excess.
None of them called him a hero.
None of them called him a monster.
Not yet.
The weight accumulated anyway—quiet, impartial, and patient.
Waiting for the world to decide what it believed.