⚜️ Saga 0: The Ash Years
📍 Location: Abandoned Safehouse, Slovakia
🕯 Winter 2006 | Post-Ritual Collision | Morning After
🎯 Characters: Dante Sparda, Jean Grey, Wanda Maximoff
🛡 Sin System Phase: Emotional Trial | Bond Drift Engagement – Controlled Equilibrium
Dawn crept in slow and frozen.
Not peaceful.
Honest.
The light spilled across the safehouse's floorboards like jagged scripture. Every gold line across stone caught shadows like relics of a night too heavy to forget.
Dante sat near the ash-choked hearth. Shirt still open. Coat packed beside him. His breath fogged faintly from the bite in the air.
This wasn't just tension.
This was consequence.
His hands hovered over the blade at his side—not drawn, just considered.
[Sin System — Anchor Core: Shell Recovery Mode | Integration Drift: 38.1%]
Emotional Status: Thread Tension Holding
Ritual Aftershock Logged
Observation Preference: — Suppression Active
Wanda Maximoff: 75.0%
Jean Grey: 48.5%
Rivalry State: Truce-under-Flame
The cellar was behind him now.
But the answers from last night still echoed, too loud to silence.
The Sin System hadn't given him peace.
It had given him choice.
And now?
That choice walked quietly toward him.
✦
He felt her before she spoke.
Jean.
Her hair wind-swept from sleepless dreams. A coat cinched half-tight. Flame were buring brightly in her pupils, but no flame in her expression.
There was only longing.
She stood just past the porch, backlit by snow. The light curled through her like she'd swallowed a sun and taught it how to whisper.
"Walk with me," she offered.
No demand.
He followed anyway.
Boots on new snow. Leather flexing around old scars.
He didn't hesitate.
They said nothing for a time.
Just walked past the runestone boundary — the edge of safety, the edge of silence.
Then Jean stopped.
Not in fear.
In offering.
Fire shimmered across her fingers — low-organic warmth. No Phoenix wings. No explosions.
Just truth.
"Come with me," she said gently. "Not to prove anything. Just to see why I burn."
[Sin System — Proximity Threshold Surpassed]
Jean Grey Proposed Aerial Trust Thread | System Override Approved
Anchor Response: Accepting | Voluntary Uplift Engaged
Emotional Index: 48.5% (+2.7)
Dante took her hand.
Not with hesitance.
Not with promise.
Just presence. And together—they lifted.
He didn't activate anything.
She carried him.
In kindness.
✦
Above the silver forests, wind lashing shy against their silhouettes, they floated.
Not like titans.
Like memory ghosts that had accidentally survived into morning.
Higher and higher into the blue curve of cold. No burden. No weight.
Only Jean's presence pulsing warm under her gloves. Her psychic cocoon wrapped around the cold and kept it soft.
She leaned into him midair. Her forehead brushing against his.
No kiss yet.
Just trust.
"You were peace before you were flame," she whispered. "Even when the world wasn't quiet, you were."
Dante didn't look away.
"You didn't have to carry fire to be seen," he murmured softly. "You just needed someone who wasn't scared of it."
She blinked. Her eyes shone brighter than the snowlight.
Then—Jean kissed him.
Not to claim.
To ask.
And he let the moment happen.
Because for once—he didn't see grief in her fire.
He saw her.
[System Update – Aerial Trust Phase Sustained]
Jean Grey: 48.5% → 51.2%
Anchor Drift: Stabilized | Resistance Suppressed
Emotional Echo: "Chosen in the Sky"
Bond Activity: Tactile-Sealed Synchronization
For the span of a few stolen hours, he didn't feel the war behind them.
Didn't feel Wanda's chaos-thread tensing against the wards.
Didn't remember ritual fire breaking beneath his ribs the night before.
He felt stillness.
Unsafe.
But real.
✦
They landed as afternoon snow hovered in waiting.
Jean didn't try to keep him.
Didn't ask what it meant.
As they touched ground, she whispered:
"That was all I ever wanted.
Not to be first but just not to be forgotten."
Dante bowed his head lower than usual.
Like recognition without answer.
And then… he left her there as he back toward the safehouse.
Back toward what his future was becoming, whether he liked it or not.
✦
Inside the house—
Wanda stood at the window.
Her expression was still.
Not passive.
Composed.
Aware.
Her chaos didn't rise. Didn't rattle jars or crack the wards.
Not yet.
But she turned away from the window before he fully crossed the threshold.
And walked back toward the cellar door.
She wasn't chasing him.
She was going deeper.
Because if Jean had shown him the sky—
She would show him what lay beneath.
[Sin System — Internal Alignment Notice]
Wanda Maximoff: 75.0%
Jean Grey: 51.2%
Dante Anchor Stability: 38.1%
Core Integration: Rising / Suspended
Rivalry State:
─ Tier 4: Truce Under Pressure
─ Upcoming Trigger Forecast: 93.2% Probability — Anchor Conflict Continues
The future didn't speak clearly now.
But Dante felt the fracture line forming.
Not catastrophic.
Just unignorable.
He had kissed the flame.
Now he'd have to touch the storm.
—