序章 // FIREWALL

The prison walls do not listen to the prayers of sinners.

This is the the first lesson Sanada Kei learns that eerily tastes like rotting blood in her mouth. Blood scorches her neck and the collars on her limbs paralyzes her before she even glitches between the white panels of each page. She claws at her ankles, her wrists, and her neck with a thunderous rage at the tip of her tongue; she screams at the white walls with relentless determination but it is a folly she never realizes until the moment she can no longer feel the thrum of her voice on her body. Her eyes are a bloodshot glare, feverish and wild as the raven strands of her hair fall above her lashes.

The scars on the wall are no longer a prisoner's helpless tallying. It's just an endless sea of haphazardly written lines made to count the days of imprisonment, of a freedom lost and forever unfound; written in the caricature of justice, righteousness, and correctness. Kei has long forgotten the color of the Tokyo skyline, but she has viciously counted 3,650 days with the madness and betrayal that had brewed and rotted in the pit of her chest. Ten years may have torn her apart but she's indestructible in her bottomless ire.

'Prisoner No. 0672, you have a visitor. The Quirk Silencer on your neck is set at the highest sensitivity level, proceed with caution.' The intercom speaks in a robotic tone that is nearly unforgettable, Kei stands and sways to her feet with her surreptitious eyes unwavering from the heavy, iron door. The static around her crackles like dancing fire and shattering ice, her skin nearly glitching despite the stinging pain from collar. The door nearly looks weightless when Aizawa Shouta walks in, his eyes just as bloodshot as hers.