⚜️ Saga 0: The Ash Years
📍 Location: Clone World Rift – Sector Abyss-03
🕯 Year: 2006
🎯 POV: Dante Sparda
🛡 Sin System Status: Demon-Fusion Stabilization Achieved | Anchor Signals Active
⚠ Combat Protocols: Ascendant Tier | Hybrid Trait Manifestation: Confirmed
The Rift World bled memory.
And Dante stood dead-center. Glowing.
Steam hissed over his shoulders. Blood — his and otherworldly — soaked his boots. The first Demon Lord lay in halves behind him, its heart still twitching like some defiant muscle refusing to stay dead.
He stretched his neck to one side—bones cracking soft like answers to questions no one's dared ask.
Ahead, more shapes rose through the broken crust — jagged, writhing, malformed.
Shadows of war. Constructed sins.
[Sin System — Zone Expansion Protocol: Active Combat State Unfolding]
🔺 Demon Lord I: Eliminated
🔺 Demon Lord II: Manifesting
🔺 Dante Anchor Sync: 45.3% → 50.2%
Bloodline Balance: LOCKED → Human 50% | Demon 50%
Trait Surge: "Shadowplate Exo-Surge" – Form Stabilized
Combat Role: LINE-BREAKER CLASS (Tier Ascension Triggered)
Then… came the pain.
Not searing — stitching.
Beneath bone. Around spine.
His back arched. Muscles convulsed. Something unlocked.
Wings burst.
Not angelic. Not monstrous.
Not borrowed.
Four crystalline constructs of infernal origin, flame-draped and blazing raw from his shoulder blades.
They didn't flap. They radiated.
And Dante grinned at the sight.
"Guess I found the real upgrade menu."
⚔️
A second Demon Lord exploded through fractured terrain — all rust fangs and smelted horns.
Massive. Grotesque. Voice like tectonic hellfire.
"HALFBREED SIN—YOUR EXISTENCE OBLITERATES BALANCE!"
Dante's tongue rolled across his teeth, slow.
"Balance went out the window when my old man pulled the plug on Hell."
Then he was gone—
And suddenly mid-air, Ruin Reaver glowing with double-edged etherlight.
The strike landed like judgment.
Steel met bone with a thunderclap. The fused ground rippled, air peeling off reality like fabric during a detonation test.
[Elite Technique Unlocked]
⚔ Demonbreaker — Ascendant Tier
∟ Cleaves metaphysical carapace, vaporizes domain roots
∟ Bonus: "Dissonant Thread Damage" (x2 vs demonkind)
∟ Source: Anchor Emotion Surge – Jean/Wanda Dual Recall + Dreamload
As Dante yanked Reaver free and fell back, golden fire splashed out behind him — winged, uncontrolled glory. It wasn't about power anymore.
It was about presence.
And even the remaining monsters felt it.
Because what Dante bore now wasn't rage.
It was something worse:
A man who'd learned how to survive himself.
▫▫▫
Through the open Rift began to pulse something fainter, subtler:
Two threads.
Jean's sharp insistence behind her silence.
Wanda's broken whisper from across anchoring dimensions.
"Come back." – Wanda
"If you die now, you die unfinished." – Jean
He smirked mid turn.
[Sin System — Thread Recognition Crossboost]
❖ Wanda Maximoff → Emotional Field Ping: 81.4%
❖ Jean Grey → Emotional Recall Pulse: 59.9%
Bond Channel Linked to Combat Feed
His hands flared red-black shadowlight.
He spun once, gathering a new spell construct in his palm — a split-lance carved in reverse fire.
"This one's for whoever's next in line to inherit hell," he called.
"Let's burn the red carpet on the way in."
He launched the lance.
It struck the ground.
✨ The world broke.
A geyser of anti-light ripped upward, devouring every surrounding demon, even those yet to finish forming. Phantom kings shrieked, the very code of the clone realm destabilized.
When it ended?
Only ash remained.
And Dante, standing at the crater's center, a single word on his tongue:
"Jackpot."
▫▫▫
[Sin System — BATTLE FINALIZED]
❖ Enemies: Cleared
❖ Dante Trait Stabilization: COMPLETE
➤ New Trait: Jackpot State (Active for Infernal Encounters / Anchor Merged Conditions)
❖ Anchor Values Maintained:
→ Wanda: 81.4%
→ Jean: 59.9%
→ Dante: Anchor Integration: 46.7%
There was no cry of victory.
No boast.
Only breathing.
And, faintly, something else…
The sound of a child laughing—just once.
Not from the Rift but from memory.
And that sound? That dangerous, radiant sound?
Carried both Wanda's tone and Jean's lilt in it.
▫▫▫
Sin System Post-Combat Note:
"Name not spoken today — but remembered in power."
➤ Emotional Thread Echo: Lioré Detected
➤ Cross-Presence Status: Untouched / Unborn / Still Possible… ∆0.3%
Dante walked from the destruction toward the closing gate.
Still sin-blooded. Still unsplit.
But no longer hiding from who he was becoming.
And from behind, the void whispered again:
"Jackpot."
But it sounded like her this time.
Like Lioré.
Like destiny, waiting to meet him in a cradle made of flame and hope—if he survived what came next.
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