⚜️ Saga 0: The Ash Years
🗓️ Year: 2000 — Brooklyn, New York
The rain painted greasy rainbows on the cracked sidewalk beneath a flickering neon sign that buzzed "OPEN", half-lit and drowning in its own static. The late-night heartbeat of Brooklyn echoed with distant sirens, a dog barking into alley rot, and that low, perpetual hum of a city too proud to sleep.
Inside a rundown bar tucked between a pawn shop and a boarded-up massage clinic, the air reeked of old whiskey, cheap tobacco, and something older still—something that lingered between spilled blood and memory.
Behind the bar stood a man carved from shadow and slow fury.
Dante looked thirty on a good day, or infinite on a bad one. Broad-shouldered and long-limbed, he wore a battered black field coat over dark jeans and scuffed combat boots that had outlasted multiple centuries. Not classically handsome—more like dangerously sculpted. Eyes a depthless vermillion, almost black unless they caught the light just right… or unless he was ready to kill. Stubble darkened a sharp jawline, and his black hair hung just past his ears, damp from the rain.
His presence made rooms colder. His silence filled them louder than gunfire.
On his hip hung a strange weapon—a blackened blade sheathed in ribbed leather, fused with demonic etchings visible only to those who'd danced near Death. It wasn't a sword exactly; more a modular relic built from shadowsteel and blood-bonded bone, once part of a greater weapon now lost across timelines:
"Ruin Reaver" — a weapon that grew heavier the more sin its wielder carried.
An ancient revolver rested under his coat—six chambers carved with runes from seven hells.
"Redshift", it was called. Smoke-jacketed rounds that bent through time and bone, each shot a conversation with fate.
Between coin flips, Dante read nothing, stared at no one, and waited for people who never came on purpose.
Just two regulars shared space on cracked vinyl stools, shielding themselves in bottles. One muttered something incoherent. The bartender—a waxy-cheeked specter of a man with knobby hands and thousand-yard eyes—wiped glasses as if he'd been doing it since Prohibition.
To the others, Dante looked tired. Normal.
but no one noticed the faint sigil etched just behind his collarbone—a scar that pulsed when sin thickened in the air.
That was how he liked it.
[Sin System: Partial Mode Online]
Integration Percentage: 0.4%
Task Directive: "Consume the forgotten."
Output: Apathy / Restless Curiosity
Reward Pending: Soul Thread - "Wrath Echo" Fragment (1/7)
The voice in his head spoke like thunder through a drainpipe—female, half-human, half-seraphic, yet dirtied by something infernal underneath.
He didn't answer it. He never did.
A bell above the door jangled. A man stepped in—lean, rain-slicked, eyes too gold for mortal biology. Something about him churned the air. The regulars flinched. One pretended to fumble for his wallet. But no one looked up.
"You're early," Dante muttered, voice serrated from disuse—more knife than greeting.
The man said nothing. He brushed past, leaving a trail of wet footprints toward the hallway behind the bar.
Dante slid over a tarnished brass key, not meeting his eyes.
"Downstairs. Don't touch anything alive."
The bartender didn't blink. Just refilled a shot.
🕳️ Beneath the Bar
The stairs led into stone—a basement not on any blueprints. Its walls bore scratch marks, salt lines, and sigils burned into brick. Chains lay still, stained with old black crust that once had names.
The demon sat across the metal table. Thin, twitching. Skin gray with rot. Hunger in its teeth, but none in its eyes. A parasite failing to hold its form.
Dante summoned a flicker of blue hellfire to his palm. Slow-burning. Lazily cruel.
He didn't ask questions. The language of pain was older than speech.
The creature gagged up a tendril of tar. Dante caught it before it hit the table. His hand closed—a pressure drop, a flash of hollow wind.
Pop.
A trace of black sin coiled upward before vanishing into Dante's skin.
"Not much left of you," he said flatly, like chiseling stone.
"Poor choice of host."
The demon blinked unevenly, eyes fizzing. "You feel wrong."
Dante's grin was pleasant and predatory. "So do you."
He ended the rest quickly. Fire, then silence. A silver thread hovered, twisting—then melted into his chest as the System's reward bloomed cold and hot at once.
[System Update]
Sin Integration: +0.1%
Emotional Output: Mild Wrath
Reward Unlocked: "Shadow Stitch" (Skill Acquired — Dormant)
Back upstairs, Dante rinsed his hands at the cracked porcelain sink, red curling into a whirlpool below. The bartender didn't ask questions. Just offered a smoke.
"Another ghost?" he asked, voice all gravel and dry sarcasm.
"Some aren't worth haunting," Dante murmured, lighting up.
"Keep this up, you'll outlive the curses in these walls."
He exhaled. "Not if they catch me bored."
☁️ Interludes Between Ash
The years bled forward.
In 2001, he burned down a soulmarket beneath an abandoned church after fighting 12 shadow-walkers with brass halos.
In 2003, he sealed a time loop in Queens after arguing with a schizophrenic Watcher variant who mistook him for anti-canon.
In 2005, he cleansed a subway tunnel infected with the mark of Asz-Saek, a helllord who spoke solely in regret.
No news covered him, No cameras caught him. But echoes always remembered.
The System grew louder and Clearer.
[Sin Integration: 7%]
— Emotional Context: Denial, Restless Duty
— Stage 0 Status: Locked
— Awaiting Trigger: "An anchor for wrath and love."
One spring night, mid-dream, the name came across his subconscious like a knife in silk.
Wanda Maximoff and her twin Pietro.
Running away from Danger.
The girl bent reality when she cried.
He ignored it. Mostly, Until the ache returned, crawling across his ribs from the inside out like an extra heartbeat.
[Affinity Detected: Wanda Maximoff / Pietro Maximoff]
Anchor Probability: High
System Response: "Emotional Lockseed Forming"
Status: Event Convergence Incoming.
In sleep, fire-haired ghosts whispered across his dreams.
Eyes like dying stars.
Names he didn't remember.
Love he hadn't earned.
Dante stepped from the bar one final time.
His coat snapped in the wind. The city glared back—*daring him to chase fate.
This time, he wasn't drifting.
He was being pulled