The shift happened when Kenji turned fifteen. While his peers were applying for UA High School's entrance exams, Kenji was sitting by his grandfather's bedside in a cramped hospital room. The old man's quirk was flickering, his body finally succumbing to the toll of decades of "data-diving."
"It's... finished," Takumi whispered, clutching Kenji's hand with surprising strength. "The Master Archive. In the basement... under the false floor... The 'Perfect Edition' of the Great Cycle. I've spent twenty years stitching it. Go... finish it for me."
Takumi passed away that night.
Grief is a heavy weight, but for Kenji, it was mixed with a desperate, frantic curiosity. Two days after the funeral, he returned to his grandfather's cluttered home. He moved the heavy mahogany desk, pried up the floorboards, and found the entrance to the Hidden Library.
It wasn't a library of books, but a sanctuary of glowing consoles and humming servers. At the center sat a rig that looked more like a cockpit than a gaming PC. A single monitor flickered in the dark.
[SYSTEM READY: INSTALLATION 99.9% COMPLETE]
[USER IDENTIFIED: BLOODLINE MATCH DETECTED]
Kenji sat in the chair. He saw the game his grandfather had been working on—a seamless, reconstructed world called The Age of Cinder. It was a brutal, dark fantasy world of knights and dying gods.
"For you, Gramps," Kenji muttered.
He didn't just play it. He lived it. For weeks, Kenji spent every waking hour in that basement, mastering the parries, the dodges, and the lore. He died a thousand deaths on screen, learning that every failure was just a data point. On the final night, as he struck down the "Soul of Cinder," the screen didn't roll credits. It turned white.