History Main / CastFromLifespan

*** The Black Mage job has the Transpose ability that sacrifices some of the user's HP in exchange for restoring a bit of MP. If the player's HP is too low, the skill can't be used.

* In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'' [[spoiler:Lysithea and Edelgard have two Crests due to experiments carried out by Those Who Slither in the Dark, which grant them incredible magical power and strength respectively. However, their lifespans are drastically reduced as the body simply can't handle that much power. In several of their endings they manage to find a way to remove the extra Crests and in doing so reclaim their lost time, but in others, they do indeed die young.]]

* In ''LightNovel/TheHiddenDungeonOnlyICanEnter'', Luna possesses an ability that allows her to dispel curses, but it brings her closer to death with every use in direct proportion to the strength of the curse being lifted. Noir uses magic to change the nature of the ability [[CastFromMoney to instead remove curses proportional to her finances.]]

->"We diviners shorten our own lifespans each time we choose to consciously look into the future. That is the true power of a diviner. Everything else is just a collection of useful little spells that can't be considered anything more than hat tricks."

* In ''Franchise/{{Castlevania}}'', use of the unsealed [[AncestralWeapon Vampire]] [[WhipItGood Killer]] by someone who is not a direct descendant of the [[BadassFamily Belmont clan]] will shorten their life. In the case of [[VideoGame/CastlevaniaBloodlines John Morris]], this resulted [[spoiler:in his wounds from his battle with {{Dracula}} not healing, culminating with his premature death. This trope is the entire reason he teaches his son Jonathan how to fight ''without'' the use of the Vampire Killer and refuses to tell him the means of how to unlock the whip's true power--[[MagicKnight the Lecarde family]]. ([[WellDoneSonGuy Jonathan is resentful of this at first]], [[CharacterDevelopment but comes to respect his old man's choice by the time of]] TheReveal).]] This is GameplayAndStorySegregation in ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaPortraitOfRuin Portrait of Ruin]]'', since the effects of such are well beyond the game's timespan.

* In ''LightNovel/DateALive'', when Kurumi Tokisaki uses her powers, she drains her "time" (represented by a clock in her left eye). She can replenish it by draining time from other people.

* In ''LightNovel/TheFamiliarOfZero'', a familiar with the Lifdrasir runes can transfer his or her life energy into a void wizard to power up his or her spells. Unfortunately, the life energy does not regenerate, so if this technique is done too many times, the familiar will die. Fortunately for Saito, his Gandalfr runes gave him extra life energy, allowing him to survive his final use of the technique in the series finale and still live a normal lifespan. His Lifdrasir runes are canceled afterwards.

* ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDXD'':

** In ''LightNovel/FateZero'', Matou Kariya makes up for a lifetime of never doing magic by having Crest Worms implanted into him so he can be a Master for the Fourth War. Downsides include physical effects similar to a stroke victim, tremendous physical pain whenever he uses magic, and having only one year left to live ''at best''. [[AbusiveParents Zouken]] only gives him a month by the time the Grail War actually starts [[spoiler:and a combination of injuries, overexertion from using his powers and fueling/controlling his Berserker, and mental trauma ends up seeing dead within days, and it would have been even shorter if not for Kirei healing him after he got [[KillItWithFire nearly burned to death]]]].

* In ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'', it is ultimately revealed that this is the fate of [[spoiler:the users of One for All should they already have Quirks. As it turns out, so many Quirks at once wrecks a Quirk user's life force. No one knew of it because most died at All for One's hands before they learned of it with only one user dying of natural causes learning so (and even then, he died at the age of 40). Why don't All Might and Izuku Midoriya suffer this? They were [[UnSorceror Quirkless]], thus their bodies can handle the power]].

* In ''LightNovel/TheHiddenDungeonOnlyICanEnter'', Luna possesses an ability that allows her to dispel curses, but it brings her closer to death with every use in direct proportion to the strength of the curse being lifted.

->'''Walt Stone:''' Sadie, I've thought of that. I've thought of everything. The curse can't be cured. It can only be slowed down if...if I avoid magic. That's why I got into talismans and amulets. They store magic in advance, so they don't require as much from the user. But it's only helped a little bit. I was born to do magic, so the curse progresses in me no matter what I do. Some days it's not so bad. Some days my whole body is in pain. When I do magic, it gets worse.\\
'''Sadie Kane:''' And the more you do...?\\
'''Walt Stone:''' ...The faster I die.
-->-- ''Literature/TheKaneChronicles'', about Walt Stone's Curse of [[{{UsefulNotes/Tutankhamun}} King Tut]]

* In ''Anime/DarkerThanBlack'', there was a contractor whose remuneration was aging each time she used her power. Another's was [[MerlinSickness aging backward]]; overusing it would cause her to remove herself from existence.

* [[RealityWarper Robert]] from ''Manga/TheLawOfUeki'' has this. Each use of his ability cost him a year of lifespan.
* ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'':
** Tsunade's and Naruto's healing factor makes them age faster. Technically, they both involve making their cells regenerate faster, but since cells only have a limited number of regenerations, this means they will run out of regenerative cycles and start dying of old age sooner. As a result, Tsunade uses her HealingFactor only when ''not'' using it would shorten her lifespan rather more suddenly. And since Naruto is an Uzumaki, "sooner" for him likely involves being well over 70.
** Pain's most powerful attacks are also cast from lifespan. [[spoiler:He ends up expending all of it and dying by resurrecting the people of the village he just destroyed.]]
** This isn't as much of a problem for Naruto or Nagato since the Uzumaki clan have very long natural lifespans.
*** Tsunade herself is 1/4 Uzumaki, but when she lets down her youthful appearance genjutsu, she looks much older than her mid-50's, suggesting that she has been using her healing factor or other Cast From Life Span techniques to the point of aging faster even with the Uzumaki blood. How long a pure-blood Uzumaki could live is not actually stated, though it was enough to get them dubbed, "The Clan of Longevity".
** Turns out to be an InformedFlaw in Tsunade's case. [[spoiler:She's still shown to be alive in the series' epilogue when she'd be around 70 years old, and there's no indication that she's in poor health.]]
* ''Manga/OnePiece'':
** Body strain from Luffy's Gear Second shortens his lifespan. After the TimeSkip, Luffy seems to enter Gear Second for almost every attack, usually averting the consequences of the action by staying in this form for just enough time to launch the attack.
** He also was healed from ''uncurable'' poison. Cost? 10 years of his lifespan (and an estimated 2 days of torture by having the cells in his body destroyed by poison and healed in rapid succession) in exchange for boosting his survival rate from 0% to a measly 3%. (Luffy beat the poison in 20 hours instead of the estimated 2 days, did they mention that the survival was dependent on the will to live?)
** The Energy Steroids from the Fishman Island Arc temporarily double the user's strength at the cost of shortening their lifespan. The [[VillainOfTheWeek villains of the week]] take so many in their attempt to take over Fishman Island that they're all old men by the end of the arc. [[CurbStompBattle Bonus points for the steroids not remotely helping them fight the Straw Hats.]]
* ''Manga/ChronoCrusade'': Chrono is powered by Rosette's LifeEnergy, shortening her lifespan. Early on, she comments that she probably won't make it to age 30. [[spoiler:[[DownerEnding It leads to her death at the end of the anime. In the manga, it leads to her becoming an]] ill girl [[DownerEnding by the end, and she dies at age 24.]]]]

* In ''Manga/HibikisMagic'', the director of the Mage school has his lifespan exchanged for his magic.

* In ''Manga/ViolinistOfHameln,'' Flute and her mother can heal anyone but at the cost of their own lives. To compensate, they have extra-long lives.
* In ''Manga/NabariNoOu'', Yoite's Kira technique continually saps his [[LifeEnergy lifespan.]] By the beginning of the series, he only has 1 or 2 months left to live. [[spoiler: He dies from this in both [[DownerEnding the anime]] and the manga.]]
* Vash from ''Manga/{{Trigun}}'' has various inhuman powers including the ''hilariously'' powerful [[ArmCannon Angel Arm]] which can put a huge crater ''in the moon'' with only a single shot. Too bad every use of his powers costs him a portion of his lifespan as measured by the color of his hair: [[spoiler:human-form [[StarfishAliens Plants]]]] start out as blonde with their hair darkening as their internal power is spent. If it turns fully black, they die. By the time Knives is defeated in the manga, Vash's hair is [[DeadManWalking almost completely black]]. And this is after we're told that Vash could easily use his powers to regenerate all the [[http://images.wikia.com/sortinghatrp/images/e/e1/ShirtlessVash.jpg scars]] his body bears but chooses not to. He most likely knows this trope is in effect and doesn't use his powers for trivial purposes (as well as invoking BeAllMySinsRemembered by retaining them).
* Zearth from ''Manga/{{Bokurano}}'': to operate it, it costs the pilot [[spoiler:his or her ''entire'' lifespan.]]
* In ''VisualNovel/{{Kanon}}'', [[spoiler:Makoto]] is able to become human at the cost of her memories and her life.
* ''Manga/CheekyAngel'' the demon gives you the opposite of what you wish for then offers to trade 10 years of your life to undo the wish.

* ''Franchise/{{Dragonball}}'':
** In addition to being CastFromHitPoints, the Tri-Beam is stated on its first use to shorten your lifespan even if it doesn't kill you. This is then completely forgotten about, as within ten episodes Tien feels free to use it for such mundane tasks as clearing a large amount of ice to find a Dragon Ball faster.
** In ''Manga/DragonBall'', every time King Piccolo spawns one of his sons, it drains his life force. He loses this weakness after wishing to have his youth restored.
** An interesting variant occurs in the Buu saga of ''Anime/DragonBallZ'': Goku is already dead, but has been allowed to return to the world of the living for 24 hours so he can spend the day with his friends and family. During the battle with Buu that begins on that day, Goku transforms into the new Super Saiyan 3 form... which is such a massive energy drain that it burns through all of Goku's allotted time on Earth, forcing him to return to Other World early.
** ''Anime/DragonBallSuper'' has Granolah, in a thirst for revenge, steal a set of weaker Dragon Balls in an attempt to wish to be the strongest in the universe. While the dragon isn't powerful enough to just create that much power for free, it does suggest the next best thing; by reducing Granolah's lifespan, he can immediately acquire all the strength he could have acquired in that time. Granolah agrees to these terms and trades 150 years of his life, giving him 3 years left to live. In response, the Heeters use the Dragon Balls themselves to use the exact same wish to make Gas even stronger. It turns out to take so much of his lifespan to accomplish that he starts dying of old age within hours.
* In ''LightNovel/TheFamiliarOfZero'', a familiar with the Lifdrasir runes can transfer his or her life energy into a void wizard to power up his or her spells. Unfortunately, the life energy does not regenerate, so if this technique is done too many times, the familiar will die. Fortunately for Saito, his Gandalfr runes gave him extra life energy, allowing him to survive his final use of the technique in the series finale and still live a normal lifespan. His Lifdrasir runes are canceled afterwards.
* In ''LightNovel/DateALive'', when Kurumi Tokisaki uses her powers, she drains her "time" (represented by a clock in her left eye). She can replenish it by draining time from other people.
* In ''Manga/FairyTail'', there are several types of powerful Magic that burn through the user's lifespan if overused.
** Angel's [[OurAngelsAreDifferent Angel Magic]] works by creating golden coins, each one representing a portion of her lifespan and a cost of "10". By creating and using a certain number of coins and cost, she can [[SummonMagic summon angels]] to fight on her behalf, but not only does this drain her lifespan with each use, if they're destroyed she suffers [[AgonyBeam extreme pain]]. She doesn't care at first, [[DeathSeeker and even relishes the idea of someday "dying and becoming an angel in Heaven"]], but overuse of her Magic and [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech Gray calling her out on her death wish and desire to throw her life]] eventually turns her "angels" into {{Eldritch Abomination}}s that try to consume her and Gray, and she's only saved by Gray destroying them and another ally "refunding" her lifespan. She starts being more careful after that and even seemingly figures out how to summon angels without using the coins.
** Ultear's ability to travel through time works this way. [[spoiler: However, using it results in her rapidly aging to become an old woman, and to add insult to injury, it takes her entire lifespan to go back one minute. Fortunately, that one minute is all that the rest of the cast needs to turn the ongoing predicament in their favour.]]
** Ever wondered why Makarov doesn't just nuke his enemies with Fairy Law all the time? [[spoiler: Turns out the price to pay for casting the spell is effectively this trope. The amount of lifespan one must pay using the spell is proportionate to the number of enemies eradicated. The larger the number of enemies are, the greater amount of life force is paid in exchange]]
* After Lucy's power increases in ''Manga/ElfenLied'', it becomes a variant of this (specifically, the use of her vectors causes her bodily entropy to increase at a rapid rate, basically resulting in her disintegrating with each use of her powers).
* ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDXD'':
** Issei compromises his lifespan several times. He's first warned he cost himself some time when [[spoiler:[[YinYangBomb incorporating a fragment of]] Divine Dividing into Boosted Gear]], and later costs himself 99% of his lifespan by activating [[DangerousForbiddenTechnique Juggernaut Drive]] the first time. [[spoiler:He eventually uses what life he has left to defend Ophis. He's rewarded for the HeroicSacrifice by being resurrected in a new body that can handle the strain of his abilities without sending him to an early grave which also restores the lifespan he lost from his previous actions.]]
** Siegfried wields the sword Gram, which decreases the lifespan of anyone who wields it carelessly like he does, and it hurts him even more than usual because he is part dragon and it is a dragonslaying sword with an anti-dragon aura. When Kiba kills him and claims Gram, he trains to master it so he can wield it without it hurting him.
* ''Anime/TenchiMuyo'': During Tenchi's closing narration of the first movie (''Tenchi Muyo! in Love''), he explains that his mother, Achika, died because the Juraian power that would've sustained her life was passed onto him, during his birth. She passed away only several years later.
* In the manga ''Manga/MagicalGirlSite,'' whenever a magical girl uses her stick, her lifespan is shortened. As such, whenever a character goes overboard with their stick, expect a rather messy PsychicNosebleed to occur. One of the magical girls has used her powers so much, she has the internal organs of a ''70-year-old!''
* Inverted with [[CreepyChild Loco]] from ''Manga/{{MAR}}'' who uses powerful darkness [=ÄRM=] which operate at the cost of de-aging her. While actually 32 years old, she appears to be about 10 at her first appearance and ends up de-aged all the way to being a baby in the finale. Oddly the possibility of using this "negative" effect to prolong her lifespan is never addressed and she consistently [[CursedWithAwesome treats it like a bad thing]].
* In ''Anime/MacrossDelta'', the [[HumanAliens Windermerians]] have superior physical and sensory abilities compared to the other "Children of the [[{{Precursors}} Protoculture]]", but they pay for it with an incredibly short lifespan (only thirty to thirty-five years); they basically "burn out" much quicker than other species.
* ''Manga/MakenKi'': Blood Pointer allows the user to empower themselves [[KiManipulation by drawing "Element"]] from the surrounding environment and, if need be, from the user's own raw emotion. But it also causes them gradually [[BloodFromTheMouth succumb to sickness]] with each use, and can eventually result in their death. It's said to be the curse of [[spoiler: Yabiko Himegami]]'s bloodline and the Oyama Family are his direct descendants.
* In ''Manga/HunterXHunter'', Kurapika learns how to activate his [[SuperMode Emperor Time]] ability at will instead of only when under large emotional stress, but it will remove one hour from his lifespan for each second it's used in this way.
* Chise from ''Manga/TheAncientMagusBride'' is a Sleigh Beggy, a rare, powerful mages with a drastically shortened lifespan.
* In ''Manga/GakuenAlice'' there are four possible "forms" of [[MagicAndPower Alice]] manifestation, one of which (the Limited) would deteriorate its wielder's body as it is used, and would eventually kill the person if overused.
* In ''Manga/TalentlessNana'', Michiru Inukai has the "Talent" of healing any external injuries like cuts and punctures via WoundLicking. It drains her lifespan and overusing the talent can lead to physical exhaustion or in the most extreme cases, [[spoiler:death, where it turns into a SacrificialRevivalSpell instead.]]
* In the NotSafeForWork manga ''Manga/TheWitchesOfAdamas'', the protagonist has a condition called Adamas Syndrome, which causes him to ejaculate rose diamonds worth 5 million yen. However, each time he ejaculates he loses a year of his lifespan, and several witches are after him for the diamonds.
* In ''LightNovel/TheHiddenDungeonOnlyICanEnter'', Luna possesses an ability that allows her to dispel curses, but it brings her closer to death with every use in direct proportion to the strength of the curse being lifted.
* In ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'', it is ultimately revealed that this is the fate of [[spoiler:the users of One for All should they already have Quirks. As it turns out, so many Quirks at once wrecks a Quirk user's life force. No one knew of it because most died at All for One's hands before they learned of it with only one user dying of natural causes learning so. Why don't All Might and Izuku Midoriya suffer this? They're Quirkless, thus their bodies can handle the power.]]

* In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'' [[spoiler:Lysithea and Edelgard have two Crests due to experiments carried out by those who slither in the dark, which grant them incredible magical power and strength respectively. However, their lifespans are drastically reduced as the body simply can't handle that much power. In several of their endings they manage to find a way to remove the extra Crests and in doing so reclaim their lost time, but in others, they do indeed die young.]]

* The Creator/RussellTDavies ''Franchise/DoctorWho'' short story, ''Doctor Who and the Time War'' says time was weaponized during the Time War''. Meaning The Doctor was aged a million years then back into a baby. It was also used to handwave The Doctor's inconsistent age.

* Late in ''Series/SamuraiSentaiShinkenger'', Shitari gives his second life [[note]]Each of the monsters in this series have two lives: one at normal size, and another as a giant.[[/note]] to allow a MonsterOfTheWeek to have an even more powerful third life. Of course, he seldom enters the fray, so he was in no real danger of losing his first life [[spoiler:until the crossover movie]].

* This is a fundamental tenet of the world of ''Anime/{{Maburaho}}'' -- every person has a certain number of times they can use magic, after which they turn to ash.

* In ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDXD'', Issei compromises his lifespan several times. He's first warned he cost himself some time when [[spoiler:[[YinYangBomb incorporating a fragment of]] Divine Dividing into Boosted Gear]], and later costs himself 99% of his lifespan by activating [[DangerousForbiddenTechnique Juggernaut Drive]] the first time. [[spoiler:He eventually uses what life he has left to defend Ophis. He's rewarded for the HeroicSacrifice by being resurrected in a new body that can handle the strain of his abilities without sending him to an early grave which also restores the lifespan he lost from his previous actions.]]

* ''Manga/ChronoCrusade'': Chrono is powered by Rosette's LifeEnergy, shortening her lifespan. Early on, she comments that she probably won't make it to age 30. [[spoiler:[[DownerEnding It leads to her death at the end of the anime. In the manga, it leads to her becoming an]] IllGirl [[DownerEnding by the end, and she dies at age 24.]]]]

** ''Anime/DragonBallSuper'' has Granolah, in a thirst for revenge, steal a set of weaker Dragon Balls in an attempt to wish to be the strongest in the universe. While the dragon isn't powerful enough to just create that much power for free, it does suggest the next best thing; by reducing Granolah's lifespan, he can immediately acquire all the strength he could have acquired in that time. Granolah agrees to these terms and trades 150 years of his life, giving him 3 years left to live.

* In the NotSafeForWork manga ''Adamasu no Majotachi'', the protagonist has a condition called Adamas Syndrome, which causes him to ejaculate rose diamonds worth 5 million yen. However, each time he ejaculates he loses a year of his lifespan, and several witches are after him for the diamonds.

** In ''LightNovel/FateZero'', Matou Kariya makes up for a lifetime of never doing magic by having Crest Worms implanted into him. Downsides include physical effects similar to a stroke victim, tremendous physical pain whenever he uses magic, and having only one year left to live.

** In ''Webcomic/IDreamOfAJeanieBottle'', a genie can die if they overuse their powers on a broad (read: "global") scale for too long, presumably at the behest of their master. It is heavily implied that the last known genie to suffer this fate was [[spoiler: Eva Braun.]]

* ComicBook/{{Sunspot}}'s power allows him to absorb energy from the sun and turn it into SuperStrength, flight, or energy beams. Then he contracted the M-Pox sickness, which sent his powers haywire: he can still use them, but he absorbs so much energy that it takes a huge tax on his body and chafes a few years off his lifespan (which is first shown with [[SkunkStripe a streak of his hair turning white prematurely]]).

* The Creator/RussellTDavis ''Franchise/DoctorWho'' short story, ''Doctor Who and the Time War'' says time was weaponized during the Time War''. Meaning The Doctor was aged a million years then back into a baby. It was also used to handwave The Doctor's inconsistent age.

* Both [[ComicBook/StarbrandAndNightmask Nightmask]] and [[ComicBook/Avengers2018 the most recent Starbrand]] have this. In the former case, it's an unusual variant in that he actually gets ''younger'' every time he uses his powers, thanks to the universe being 'broken' in the run-up to ''ComicBook/SecretWars2015''. In the latter case, it's implied that Starbrands burn out at a rate dependant on how much of their power they use - so, a standard fight won't do much, but a massive energy blast designed to counter potential planet busting Ghost Rider bombs will turn the current Starbrand from bratty child to young woman in one fell swoop.