He was born in the fires of New Jersey's forgotten boroughs—places where even crime had given up. No one remembered his last name. Maybe he never had one. He answered with a single word:
Dante.
They called him that because everything burned around him.
His childhood was a cycle of abandoned shelters and juvenile cells. Wherever Dante went, accidents followed—freak combustions, gas leaks, spontaneous fires that charred playgrounds and apartment basements alike. At seven, he torched an entire block while sleepwalking. No one could prove it, but everyone knew.
The neighborhood whispered: "That boy is cursed."
But Dante wasn't cursed. He was angry.
And his anger had a temperature.
It started as heat. At ten, he melted a padlock with a glance. At twelve, his skin glowed during beatings from foster parents. By fifteen, he could walk into a fire and breathe like it was clean air.
His powers grew wild and unstable—rooted not in controlled combustion, but in a phenomenon far older: hellfire.
Not metaphorical. Not chemical.
A dimensionally-sourced energy that burned through truth and soul, not just flesh. It didn't just ignite—it judged.
The more hatred Dante felt, the hotter his fire became.
By sixteen, he'd turned his foster home into a crater. Three dead. No regrets.
He was arrested, thrown into one of Sentinel's black sites for volatile metahumans. They called it The Cradle—a name that sounded gentle, but wasn't. They fed him sedatives. Put him in cryo-stasis when they couldn't contain him. He slept for years, dreaming only of ash.
Until Mr. Magnetic found him.
Lucas Vance didn't break him out.
He invited him out—by unlocking Dante's cell and walking away without a word.
Dante followed.
Why? Because for the first time, someone wasn't afraid. Someone looked at the inferno inside him and said:
"Good. We'll need more heat."
Dante burned his name into the world after that. He became one of the Harbingers' most feared enforcers—part soldier, part executioner.
When he fights, the ground melts beneath him. The air twists. He leaves behind nothing but molten footprints and unrecognizable bodies.
He doesn't just wield fire. He summons it—from a plane beyond understanding. A furnace that exists between realms. One that speaks in screams and moves like a storm.
But he doesn't call it hell.
He calls it home.
Some believe Dante is barely tethered to humanity anymore—that the more he uses his power, the less of himself remains. And maybe that's true.
But to him, it doesn't matter.
He was forged in a world that gave him nothing but pain—and now, he's returning the favor.
Dante doesn't believe in salvation.
Only judgment.
And his fire is always hungry.