⚜️ Saga 0: The Ash Years
📍 Location: Abandoned Safehouse – Bedroom Threshold & Dreamspace
🕯 Year: Late 2006 | Morning after Converged Anchor Contact
🎯 Focus: Wanda Maximoff / Jean Grey / Dante Sparda
🛡 Sin System Status: Claimed Intimacy — Emotional Fallout Initiating
☁ Rival Tier: TRUCE UNDER SCRUTINY
The fire had gone out, but their bodies hadn't moved.
Dante lay still in the middle of the tangled bed — Wanda curled against his chest, Jean draped along his right flank like a second heartbeat.
Snow filtered silver across the walls, gentle and mute.
The shared breath between them should've meant comfort.
It didn't.
▫▫▫
**Wanda woke first.**
She didn't stir much. She didn't want to lose the feeling of his warmth.
She just blinked — once — as the world returned softly.
And realized what her heart already knew.
Her hand slipped over the flat of her stomach again. Not curved. Not full.
But she remembered that feeling.
She looked up at Dante's sleeping face, at the softness in it no war had yet erased. Her voice escaped her lips—not a spell, not a spellcast.
Just… a name.
> "Lioré," she whispered.
The syllables fell like prayer.
Like finality.
A child not yet real.
A story not yet written.
But one she'd held in so many fractured futures, she'd stopped calling it fiction.
The child she'd already claimed.
The one she knew was his.
> [Sin System Emotional Surge — Future Anchor Thread Spoke Aloud]
> Wanda Maximoff → Sync: 83.0% → 85.4%
> Emotional Type: Naming / Generative Love / Silent Expectation
> Bond Imprint: Soft-Parental Projection Recorded
> Dante Anchor Drift Response: Subconscious Acknowledgment (Stabilizing)
Wanda kissed his jaw, eyes closed.
No tears.
Just belief.
She laid her forehead to his chest.
And whispered again, with almost reverence—
> "Lioré."
▫▫▫
Jean didn't wake.
She *dreamed.*
Soft at first — Dante's fingers brushing her wrist in some city made of pale marble and orange sun. He was speaking gently.
"Loved you before I knew I could," his voice whispered.
And her soul trembled. Light fluttered gently around her shoulders like emberdust.
He leaned in, his lips brushing her ear.
> "Jean…"
She smiled in her dream.
Waited.
And then—he said it again.
But not her name.
> "…Wanda."
In the dream, Jean's smile collapsed.
Not from rage.
But from *the heartbreak of being second in a moment meant to make her whole.*
Her breath staggered.
The Phoenix stirred.
> [Sin System Trauma Pulse: Emotional Misfire Detected Within Dreamplane]
> Jean Grey → Sync Level: 63.1% → 62.2%
> Emotional Type: Recognition / Resentment / Confused Claim Collapse
> Phoenix Behavior: Passive Escalation — Internal Clarity Demand
>
> ❖ Core Fault: "She knew it wasn't about the body. It was *the choice after the kiss.*"
Jean's eyes flicked open in Dante's arms.
She didn't move.
Her fingers curled near his collarbone.
Heat rose, but stopped at skin.
The Phoenix rage didn't ignite. It *listened.*
She didn't speak. Just stared at him while he slept.
And wondered:
> "Would you have said my name… if you'd still been awake?"
▫▫▫
Elsewhere in the safehouse, the air trembled.
Not magic.
Not fire.
Something deeper.
**Clarity forming too late.**
▫▫▫
> [Sin System Update: Dream-Naming Fracture Logged]
> ▶ Wanda Maximoff – 85.4%
> ▶ Jean Grey – 62.2%
> ▶ Dante Sparda – Emotional Integration Drift: 47.8% → 49.4%
>
> Event Chain Forecast: IMPENDING CLARITY CHECK
> Anchor Instability: Testing Threshold
> Rival Phase Status: Broken Stillness | Re-Emergence in 6–12 hrs
> Phase Danger: Elevated (Internal) — Not Combat, but *Emotional Overtuning*
And for Dante — still asleep — threads burned slightly at his sternum, not painful…
Just *calling.*
Different voices.
The one who *named the child he didn't remember conceiving.*
The one who *waited behind every war just to hear her name said rightly.*
He would soon wake between devotion and demand.
And even Dante Sparda… might not be ready.
Not this time.
_______