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⚜️ Saga 0: The Ash Years
🗓️ Location: Northern Poland — Mutant Ruin Zone | Year: 2006
Characters: Dante, Jean Grey
Connection: Dream-cross trauma, awakening
Fire danced where it shouldn't—on waterlogged beams, on frostbitten stone, in the eyes of a girl too still to scream.
The farmhouse had collapsed sometime during the night. Soldiers now lay strewn across the field—some alive, all unresponsive. Their eyes were blown wide open, unblinking. Minds shattered. Thoughts stolen.
At the center of the psionic crater, Jean Grey stood barefoot in the snow. Her hair rose behind her in weightless strands, flame-licked and gold-drenched. The Phoenix was waking again—but this wasn't a battle.
This was a breakdown.
Not rage. Not vengeance. Just... too much.
✶
On a ridge above, Dante exhaled, frost curling from his breath like smoke through memory.
He watched the zone ripple—thermal mirage warps distorting the air. Her aura wasn't attacking. It was *mourning*.
> [Sin System: Soul Polarity Detected]
> Target: Jean Grey (Age: 20)
> ➤ Mutation: Omega-Level / Phoenix-Remnant Awakening
> ➤ Mental State: Dissociation | Memory Bleed | Fixation Seeking
> ➤ Affinity Ranking: High-Yandere (Flamebound)
> ➤ Bond Status: Dormant — 0.0% Synced
He began his descent.
Each footstep crunched through still-frozen flowers, shriveled by psionic combustion. The heat and cold overlapped unnaturally, elemental confusion rippling out from Jean's body in equal parts beauty and threat.
A voice echoed through the Sin Thread, dry and ancient:
> "This is a flame that does not forgive. You step into ashes that scream."
Dante murmured, "I've walked through worse."
✶
As he passed through the ring of unconscious minds, Jean turned without warning. Her eyes—gold and blood—locked on him.
"Don't come any closer!" the voice cracked. "I can't stop it."
"You don't need to," he answered. "That fire doesn't want permission. And neither do I."
She recoiled, visibly trembling. Energy snapped from her hands, wild arcs of psychic lightning flaring the chamber of silence around her.
"Do you even know what's inside me?" Jean whispered. "She—Phoenix—she hungers. She doesn't want noise or pain or faces. She wants to be *alone*. But now... I see you when I dream."
Her face twisted.
She didn't know those dreams weren't hers anymore.
✶
Dante didn't slow. The air warped. The Phoenix force surrounded him—and yet, it parted.
His intent was clear, steady. Not domination. Not appeal. Just presence.
"If you see me," Dante said, "then somewhere inside the fire... you know I'm real."
She gasped softly.
And then—unbidden—she remembered.
A dream stitched behind her thoughts. A collapsing world. Herself, aglow like a dying nova. A hand reaching through fire. His hand. Not to stop her, not to fight...
...but to *stay* with her, as everything else turned to dust.
He stood against the end of all things—for her.
> [System Update: Multiversal Memory Echo Crossed]
> Emotional Trigger: "Sacral Burn of Recognition"
> ➤ Bond Thread: Jean Grey — Synced 4.6%
✶
Jean blinked, breath shallow. "Then you're the one I saw... when everything broke."
Dante stepped into her flame gently, slowly—until they stood chest to chest. Embers curled along his coat, kissing the collar with heat. She didn't ignite him. She couldn't.
"You stayed," she whispered. "In every dream. Even when I wasn't human."
He murmured, "You never stopped being human. You just stopped being forgiven."
***Then she broke. Not violently. But utterly.***
Her hands trembled as she pressed her forehead against Dante's chest. Her flames twisted tighter to her skin, abandoning the world.
> [System Alert: Phoenix Bond Thread Active]
> ➤ Emotional Anchor: Recognition / Clarity / Need
> ➤ Temporary Flame-Stabilization Achieved
> ➤ Warning: Overlap with Wanda Maximoff Thread Registered
> Rival Thread Status: Conflict Level 1 — Escalating
✶
Inside her mind, the Phoenix curled tighter—molten wings wrapping around Jean's essence, whispering not in fury but in silence.
*He remembered you too.*
*A part of him always belonged to us.*
And Jean believed it.
She looked up at Dante, cheeks damp, power subdued. Her voice cracked with awe—and something darker.
"You were in those fragments. Even in my worst. You didn't run."
"No," he said with brutal simplicity. "Because you remembered how to come back."
She closed what little space there was between them—and kissed him.
Not to seduce.
To **claim**.
Fire roared across their skins—but it did not burn. Her lips were molten certainty. A trail of heat she marked across timelines.
Behind her eyes, Phoenix stirred.
> [Sin System Warning]
> ➤ Divergent Emotional Claim Detected
> ➤ Obsession Status: Activating — Dominance Type: Ascendant
> ➤ Rival Anchor (Wanda Maximoff): Phase Conflict Brewing
> ✅ Phoenix Host: Desire to Bind confirmed
Jean pulled away, slow, eyes burning like prophecy.
"You don't get to vanish again," she said.
And as the ashes stirred around them, power coiled beneath her words.
"I'll tear through dream and death before I let them have you."
> [New Soul-Bond Progress: 6.1%]
> Status: Claiming | Containment Impossible | Flames Entangled
✶
Dante pulled her gently into his arms. Not passion. Not pity.
But inevitability.
"You're not the only one dreaming, Jean."
—