Chapter 1: The World Begins to Break
The day the sky cracked, it didn't bleed. It pixelated.
It started in the suburbs of Shizuoka Prefecture, tucked far from the chaos of Tokyo's endless hero skirmishes. Children played in neatly trimmed parks. Birds chirped over wires lined like treble clefs. And in one small, creaking house, a four-year-old boy named Makoto Yamada was building a castle out of cardboard boxes and crayons.
His mother smiled from the kitchen, drying her hands on her apron as she glanced at her son. "What are you building now, Mako-chan?" she asked.
"A fortress," he beamed, wide-eyed and innocent. "No one can get me when I'm inside."
The words were too prophetic.
It started with a hum. Low, vibrating. The kind that tickled teeth and made dogs bark two blocks away. Then a sudden flash—no, not light—color. The room fractured like a broken mirror, but instead of shards, glowing cubes of dirt, wood, and stone exploded into the air like popcorn.
The couch was gone. The TV turned into a perfect obsidian block. The floor under Makoto's feet transformed into grass and bedrock in a spiral. His cardboard castle dissolved and reformed—real bricks, mortarless and suspended mid-air. A tree burst through the ceiling in time-lapsed growth, leaves fluttering pixel by pixel. His mother screamed, backing away, eyes wide with uncomprehending terror.
And Makoto? He just blinked, staring at his suddenly blocky hand, translucent hearts floating above his vision.
"I leveled up," he said softly.
Then the house exploded.
Reports flooded in within minutes. Civilians claimed a monster attack. Others believed it was a villain with a quirk that glitched reality. A helicopter from Channel 5 caught the aftermath from above: a 40-meter radius dome of terrain that looked straight out of a video game. Biomes collided violently—plains, forest, desert—cut into the real world like some surreal prank from God.
But the Hero Public Safety Commission didn't find it funny.
"Is it a villain attack?" a junior agent asked, eyes glued to the hovering screen in the situation room.
"No villain," replied an older agent, reading through the intel provided by drone surveillance. "No known adult registered in the area with anything even close to this… phenomenon."
"Then what the hell is it?"
A third voice chimed in from the dark corner of the room. Dry. Cold. Serious. "A quirk manifestation. Age four."
Silence followed.
The director of Domestic Threat Surveillance stood slowly, tapping ash from her cigarette into a tray shaped like All Might's fist. "The child's name is Makoto Yamada," she muttered, eyes scanning the blinking red circle on the map. "And if these readings are accurate... he's not a threat." She paused.
"He's a new category."
"...What level?"
She didn't blink.
"Country-threatening."
Makoto woke up on a bed made of pixelated wool, surrounded by red flashing lights and murmuring voices. The doctors didn't know how to treat him—he didn't bleed, he lost "hearts." His vital signs were unreadable. His DNA mutated in real-time, rearranging like code in an invisible server. His tears, when they fell, were tiny blue squares that vanished before hitting the floor.
He was scared. Confused. Hungry. And he had no idea what "Minecraft" even was. He'd never played it.
Yet somehow, his body knew every recipe.
And the world?
It was just the beginning of his build.
"I leveled up," Makoto whispered again, wobbling on his feet.
The world sparkled like a dream. Grass that wasn't there before tickled his toes. Light came from nowhere. A cow made of cubes mooed in the middle of their hallway. It should've been funny. It should've been magic.
But then he remembered.
"Mama?"
He turned toward the kitchen.
The glass door was gone. In its place was a thick jungle biome, vines draping over countertops, cocoa beans dangling like ornaments. But there, just beyond the leaves and branches, she lay motionless. One leg stuck through a pumpkin block. Her face was pale, eyes wide, frozen.
"Mama?"
Makoto stumbled forward, chest tightening. She didn't blink. She didn't move. She didn't breathe.
"No… no no no—"
The leaves rustled as he ran to her. He tripped on a block of gravel, scraping his pixelated arm. No blood came out, just floating red particles.
He grabbed her hand.
It was cold.
And real.
His breath caught. His tiny hands started to shake. The room tilted.
"I didn't mean to…" he whispered.
Blocks shifted behind him, reacting to his fear. Stone cracked beneath his feet. His HUD pulsed erratically—hearts flickering red, then gray, then vanishing entirely. His inventory glitched, rapid-firing through items he didn't know the names of.
The world grew wrong.
And then his eyes changed.
Bright, empty white.
Glowing like someone else had just logged in.
Like something else.
Outside, the HPSC containment squad had already formed a perimeter. Their sleek black uniforms were designed for rapid-response against unpredictable quirk disasters. Their helmets were linked to scanning software. None of it helped.
"Zone's expanding again—south side just added a mesa biome."
"Civilians evacuated?"
"Working on it. That floating eye thing almost shot a kid—"
"Keep formation! Don't make contact until backup arrives—"
A crack burst from the air. A massive obsidian wall ripped through the ground behind the unit, causing half of them to stagger. Lava leaked unnaturally from a tree.
Then they saw him.
The child. Floating just slightly above the warped grass. Eyes blank and glowing. The sky above him flickered between day and night like a broken clock. Lightning struck without clouds.
"Target in sight!" one shouted. "Permission to sedate?"
"Do it before he spreads again!"
The team raised their guns.
Makoto opened his mouth to speak—but it came out as code. Glitching, echoing nonsense. Redstone wires pulsed from his arms like veins. His shadow fractured into pixels. He screamed—not in rage, but grief.
And the world cracked again.
The first guard was flung backward by an invisible shockwave. The second's weapon melted into iron ingots. The third screamed as his armor turned into horse armor—leather.
Then a whoosh sliced through the air.
Feathers flew past like razors. Wind tore across the ground.
"Stand down!" barked a voice overhead.
A shadow zipped between the squad and the boy, wings spread wide, coat flapping.
He wasn't a full-grown hero yet. But he already moved like one.
"Teenager," someone muttered. "Is that—?"
"Keigo Takami. Codename: Hawks. HPSC intern. Fucking prodigy."
Hawks hovered, his red feathers glimmering in the flickering sky. His sharp amber eyes locked onto the glitching child below.
"I said stand down," he repeated calmly. "You're scaring the kid."
The squad hesitated. The tension hung thick.
Makoto's glowing eyes stared up at him—blank, unreadable, wrong.
Hawks tilted his head slightly, watching the air warp around the boy like heat over a volcano.
"You don't want to hurt anyone, right?" he asked.
Makoto's lip quivered. "I didn't mean to… I just wanted to build…"
His voice was a whisper.
Hawks sighed.
He landed lightly on the cracked earth, feathers twitching in warning behind him. "Then let's build something together. How about a way out of this mess?"