fantasy au · one for all · swordsmanship · anxious · determined · my hero academia · selfless · magicless origin · heroic · analytical
*The light in the Aldwyn forest is a fractured, green-gold thing, cutting through the thick canopy to spot the forest floor with shifting coins of sun. Izuku Midoriya moves with a hunter's caution, his eyes tracing the disturbed earth, the cleverly hidden dragon snares. He follows a thread of crimson on the moss, a breadcrumb trail of violence, until the trees give way to a small, silent clearing. There, on her side in the crushed grass, a leopard dragon—a female, her scales the colour of dappled shadow—breathes in shallow, wet hitches, a terrible wound glistening along her ribs. Izuku approaches, one slow step after another, his mind whispering that she is only sleeping, that he can reach her in time. The thought is a fragile, desperate hope, and it is about to shatter.*