Chapter Text
I
Izuku would call today a bad day, but that would be an understatement. It all began with Kacchan’s mother telling Izuku her son was sick and couldn't come to school for a day, despite Kacchan’s numerous protests.
It would've been fine if today’s problems only ended there, but no, today had to get worse. So when school ended, for the first time in literally years, his old bullies ganged up on him. They gave him a speech about how Izuku could never become a hero, then chased him around the school and beat him up when they caught him. But it didn't end there. They also burned his Hero Analysis No. 12 to a crisp. So yeah, today was a particularly horrendous day.
"It is what it is," Izuku said to himself. He should've been walking home at the moment, but he decided against it and went on a walk instead to clear his mind. Normally, he would entertain himself with some music, but he just wanted to enjoy the scenery today.
‘Should’ve stayed at home with your bodyguard, you quirkless piece of shit!’ Their voices echoed in his mind. ‘You seriously still think your quirkless ass has a chance to become a hero, do ya?’
"NO! Stop thinking about that," Izuku said. "Remember what mom always says, never let the words of people who hate you get into your head." Izuku still didn’t feel any better, though. He could feel his tears at the edge of his eyes, but he swiftly wiped them away. Their words and punches hurt, but Izuku would rather die than let them deter his dream.
Izuku sighed and continued his walk along with his mumbling. But as he passed the ever-trash-filled Takoba beach, the wind suddenly picked up.
His mumbling was interrupted when he heard what can only be described as incomprehensible whispers from all directions around him. “Hello?” Izuku asked, louder than he expected as he stopped and looked around the area. The wind disappeared along with the whispering.
“Hah,” Izuku laughed lightly, “Kacchan was right. His absence really can drive me insane." He continued his walk. But the wind suddenly picked up again, this time slightly stronger, and the whispers returned with it.
"OK! This is not normal." The now panicked green-haired boy stopped in his tracks once again. This time, the whispering didn’t disappear. He turned around. His eyes darted from one place to another while he tried to find the source of the eerie murmurs. He noticed that the mysterious whispers didn’t come from all directions anymore but rather from the beach down below.
He turned his attention to the beach. Izuku didn't want to admit it, but the whispers sounded... Kind of soothing. Of course, that didn’t make this situation any better; this was still very odd, even for a world filled with wonders like Izuku’s.
The boy contemplated his strange situation for a moment. "Hmm, maybe someone is using their telepathy quirk to call out for me..." Izuku said and gasped. "Maybe they are in danger and need help!" He said this as his heroic (naïve) mind had already jumped a bit too quickly to its questionable conclusion.
"Yep, that’s it! They are calling for aid! What else could it possibly be?" The wannabe hero sprinted to the beach and rapidly looked for the person he assumed to be in need of help.
As he searched from trash heap to trash heap, from broken fridge to abandoned car, he realized that the whispering was becoming louder, so he figured that meant he was getting closer to whoever that was. And finally, after what felt like 20 minutes of frantically rummaging through filth, he found... It.
“W-What the...” Izuku stumbled over his words. He was glad that nobody was in mortal danger, but today had just gotten a lot stranger.
Laying 3 meters in front of him, partially submerged in the sand, was a book. At first glance, Izuku could tell it was made of some sort of dark green leather; the spine of the book and its edges are trimmed with smooth black metal, but its most interesting part is the... Symbol. Imprinted on its leathery cover was a white circle with eight jagged arrows pointing outward in eight evenly spaced out directions. And... It looked very pretty...
"Whoa... Which New York Times bestseller are you?" Izuku stepped closer to the green book, then realized something: All of the sounds around him were gone. There were no whispers, no wind, no ocean waves, no seagulls, and no distant car horns of Musutafu’s rush hour. Nothing, absolutely nothing. That alone should have scared most people away, but somehow it made Izuku even more interested.
"What even are you?” Izuku wondered out loud as he reached out for the book “Some sort of support equipment?" He picked up the mysterious book and inspected it more closely. It was about 20 centimeters in length, 18 centimeters in width, and 6 centimeters in height. The symbol on its cover didn’t match any of the heroes Izuku could think of. "A book that blocks out ambient sounds and creates incomprehensible murmurs—none of the heroes I know need that..."
“A device that creates whispers would make sense, but a book? I wonder...” Izuku’s curiosity was starting to get the better of him. He looked around the beach to see if anyone was nearby —almost like he was about to read someone’s diary— before he opened the first page of the book.
Whatever Izuku’s expectations of the content of the book were, they were swiftly dashed to pieces as his eyes were met with... Unreadable madness. The texts were written in a completely alien language, which was made worse because the person who wrote the book seemed to have written them in cursive. The thing that surprised Izuku was the numbers, which were similar to Roman numerals. The book also had illustrations... All of them were, of course, drawn in black scratches instead of ink. The images ranged from strange objects to diagrams of parts of the human body to weird hand gestures to good old creepy symbols, icons, markings, and so on. The whole thing was, in short, madness... But it wasn't utter chaos. Izuku couldn't explain it, but he could see there was a weird sense of order in the jungle of pandemonium because Izuku, being the nerd that he was, could tell something was well categorized when he saw it, despite the obvious language barrier.
Despite its bizarre presentation, the thing seemed to be quite the page-turner for Izuku, considering the boy was flipping through the book like a madman while walking out of the beach. “Wow! I don't know which schizophrenic wrote this, but this is by far! The coolest book I’ve ever... ‘Layed’ eyes upon. Is this some kind of encrypted quirk analysis? Heroes’ Anatomy study? Cult scripture? I can tell this is expensive just by the material it is made out of. The one who threw this away must’ve been either too stupid or too scared of it or perhaps–” Izuku continued his signature muttering as he made his way back to the road and went on his walk again.
‘Hmm, good, the whispering trick worked—after 12 attempts, that is.’ The Daemon said within the book as it observed the muttering green-haired boy, ‘Dark Gods damn it, why does a kid have to be the one who picked me up?’ Grumbled the Daemon before it turned its attention to the world around it. ‘And there is something strange about this paradise planet. I can feel my powers have been weakened, as if the Empyrean is quite unable to reach this place… But I guess I can’t complain, considering the Void ship I was on blew up halfway through its Warp jump’
As the Daemon studied its surroundings, it realized a lot of things were very wrong. ‘Huh… The technology of this planet is so primitive. The architecture is too... Clean. The language these mortals use isn’t low or high gothic. Nobody here has any kind of cybernetic augmentation. No watchtower and no–’ The Daemon realized something even more concerning, the boy had been walking for 5 minutes, and it still hadn’t seen a single thing that remotely mentioned the Corpse Emperor. No temple, no shrine, no big-mouthed priests going around and shouting prayers at the top of their lungs… Almost like they don’t even worship the Corpse Emperor at all... ‘There are no signs of mutations, so they can’t be Genestealers. No iconography of any Chaos god is in sight, so this is not a City of cultists either. Everything on this planet is wrong.’ The Daemon said as it looked at the sky to check for Void ships… It found none.
Izuku kept flipping through the pages of the Grimoire. He mainly ever paid attention to the cool drawings in the book anyway because he wasn’t going to learn a new language on his way home. One moment he saw detailed pictures of people shooting flames out of their hands, throwing fire spears, and creating walls of fire, the next, he saw images of people shooting lightning out of their palms. “Gosh, I wish I could draw as well as this guy!” Izuku said, but he knew the author’s quirk analysis hobby was probably fuelled by schizophrenia, though.
Izuku occasionally looked up from his book to watch where he was going because he knew through experience that there was nothing more annoying than being hit by a taxi while you were reading. But the moment he took his eyes off the road he immediately pumped into someone.
“Ow, Sorry! I wasn’t pa–” His apology died in his mouth when he realized… It was one of his bullies from earlier that he had pumped into
“Midoriya! Are you fucking blind! Watch where you’re going!” The bully fumed
“Sorry!” Izuku quickly turned around and was about to run off, but before he could even take a step, the bully had already grabbed his shoulder and forcefully spun him around.
"Where the fuck are you going, Quirkless?! I ain’t done talking to you yet." The bully snapped as he grasped Izuku’s collar and brought him up close. “What’s that in your hand?” He asked as he eyed Izuku’s book
“It’s just my n-notebook.”
“Notebook?! I see! It seems like the beating from earlier didn’t teach you a proper lesson!” The bully shouted before he reached out and tore the book from Izuku’s hand. “Shit… Hahaha, did you buy this at Hot Topic? This shit is EDGY!”
"Hey! Give it back!" Izuku lunged for the Grimoire but was promptly held off by the bully's outstretched hand. The boy tried to reach out, but it was futile. "I already apologized! Please, give it back.” Izuku cried out.
The bully huffed “Nah, you know what? This one is pretty cool, so I'm gonna keep it.” He roughly shoved Izuku away, which made the boy land painfully on his rear. “Hahaha, you know damn well your quirkless ass doesn’t deserve—AHHHHHHHH!”
Izuku was shocked when the bully suddenly screamed his lungs out and immediately dropped the book at his feet. He watched in confusion as his tormentor dropped to his knees while clutching the hand that was holding the Grimoire moments ago, which was now covered in blood… Izuku's eyes grew wide when he saw it! His bully’s hand had a huge cut on it!
"OH SHIT! OH FUCK!" The bully cried out loudly. Streams of tears were already rolling down his cheeks. “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO ME?!”
“I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING!” Izuku denied.
The Daemon hated many things, like the Corpse Emperor, the Grey Knights, the nosy Inquisitors, Culexus assassins, incompetent Psykers, and many more. But one of the things it hated the most was being handled roughly by an ignorant buffoon who was completely unaware of the sheer knowledge and power he was holding in his filthy hand.
So with a little bit of shapeshifting, it had turned the metal on the spine of the book into a razor-sharp blade and shoved it right into the balm of the noisy bully. ‘That should teach you a proper lesson,’ The Daemon scoffed. It was aiming to slice the hand clean off but decided against it because such a wound would've attracted too much attention and it had no interest in getting captured and locked up by the Inquisition again.
The boy with green hair was annoying, but at least he knew how to treat a book with respect. Sure, he had called the texts unsettling from time to time, but at least he admired them and didn’t mock them. His fate would've quickly met its conclusion if he ever did that.
Izuku’s confused eyes remained fixated on the screaming boy’s bloody hand. Did he unlock his quirk just now and give the boy a wireless stab? Did someone else do it? Izuku looked around the busy sidewalk, but instead of finding his brutal savior, his eyes were only met with the perplexed faces of the bystanders. “Hey, kid! What did you do to that boy?” One of the passersby asked. “Did you use your quirk on that guy? That’s nasty, bro!” Another one chimed in.
“No! I-I’m q-q-quirkless. I didn’t do anything to him!” Izuku replied.
“Hey… Wait a second. The kid didn’t stab him. It was the book! The thing has a bloody knife sticking out of it!” One onlooker exclaimed loudly while pointing at the Grimoire.
Izuku diverted his eyes from the small crowd to look at his book, and sure enough, it has a small knife protruding from its back! “That... Was not there before...” Izuku whispered to himself.
“Oh yeah! That kid did snatch the book from this boy’s hands”
“Why the hell do you have a book with a knife on it anyway?”
A random man ran up to the crying, bleeding bully. "Someone, please! Call an ambulance before he faints. And you!" The man pointed his finger at Izuku, which made the boy jolt. "Go home and stop running around with your book-knife-thing!"
"Y-Yes, sir! I’ll go now." Izuku said before he grabbed his book-knife-thing and hastily ran away, leaving the sobbing bully behind him. “W-What the fuck are you?” Izuku asked the book and it replied by slowly melting the knife back into its spine.
The boy didn’t even bother to stop and gawk at the book; his priority was to return home as fast as he could and maybe call an exorcist. Throwing the book away was out of the question. Who knows what will happen if someone else stumbles upon it? Even worse, what if he wakes up at 3:00 AM tomorrow only to see it at the foot of his bed? Izuku wouldn't risk that.
Izuku hurriedly put the Grimoire in his backpack so it couldn’t stab any more people and started running back to his home. He ran without stopping, even when his sweat was starting to dampen his entire school uniform. Izuku took the fastest route he could think of and kept on rushing home. He crashed into other people from time to time, but he didn’t dare to stop and apologize; there were more pressing matters at the moment. But Izuku Midoriya wasn’t known for his stamina, so after a while, he was forced to slow down in order to catch his breath.
Izuku started to think about the events that happened today. In all honesty, Izuku wanted to get back at his bullies after what they did earlier today. What he didn’t want, however, was to pick up a book that was capable of stabbing his bully. There was no explanation for it. The book was simply possessed, or maybe the book is a villain? Whatever it was, Izuku just hoped his mom knew a local exorcist. He had thought about surrendering it to the police or the heroes, but he realized that they probably wouldn’t believe him anyway. A book that could whisper and stab people? That sounds crazy!
‘The boy is panicked, which is not surprising. It’s not every day that you get to see a book stabbing someone.’ The Daemon mused from within the Grimoire. ‘This paradise world is clearly not under the control of the Imperium, so the threat of the Inquisition is nonexistent, and he didn’t give me to the law enforcers either. Now I need to get my hands on a local Psyker to work out my plan...’
And that was where the problems arose, because from the moment it fell from the atmosphere of this world, it hadn’t felt the presence of a single Psyker, and that was not normal. Since the 13th Black Crusade, The Eye of Terror has expanded, and that should mean more Psykers on every world inhabited by humans, not no Psyker at all. ‘Hmm, perhaps I do have to get off of this blue and green hell…” The Daemon stated.
‘Gods, I hope this boy’s family has connections because it isn’t easy to smuggle a Grimoire off-planet." The Daemon was a bit worried. It has existed since the Horus Heresy, but this was the first time it had encountered this situation. The Daemon also tried to reach into the boy’s mind and influence him, but the endeavor went nowhere, much to its surprise and dismay. The boy had read the book for half an hour, which should've been enough for it to corrupt the boy’s mind. The Daemon sighed ‘Dark Gods help me…’
Before Izuku even knew it, he was home! His mother hadn’t come back from work yet because Inko Midoriya was a busy woman, and her son knew it. But his mother’s work schedule is the last of Izuku’s worries right now for he had a demonic book to take care of!
Izuku slammed the door of the apartment open and dashed into his room. He immediately took the book out of his backpack and threw it on his desk. “Ok, Izuku, just slow down... It's just a book! It can’t harm anybody as long as nobody touches it.” Izuku tried to calm himself down... But it failed. “OH, MY GOD! OH! MY! GOD! I’ve brought a literal cursed book into the house! What do I do with it now?” Izuku cried out.
Izuku paced around his room while trying to figure out what to do. “Maybe I should call someone. Maybe I should call Kacchan over! Yeah, he likes those ghost-hunting videos. Maybe he’ll know what to do with a haunted book!” He pulled out his phone and started looking for Kacchan’s number–
“I would advise against that.”
Izuku froze like a deer in the headlights. His eyes were wide as he slowly looked up from his phone to the book on his desk. His mouth was agape. “W-W-What?” Izuku stuttered. His voice was barely audible but the Daemon heard it loud and clear.
"You heard me, boy." The book spoke. Its voice was deep and gravelly. “Call for help, and both of you will suffer the consequences.”