⚜️ Saga 0: The Ash Years
📍 Location: Devil May Cry → Identity Rift Field (Localized Reality Breach)
🕯️ Year: Spring 2007
🛡 Sin System Status: Anchor Phase Fracture Imminent
⚠ Incident Type: Domain Breach by Archetype Clone Memory Echo
⛧ Primary Threat Class: Demon-Manifest Reflection
"Even demons bleed when faced with the version of themselves they almost gave in to."
— Archive Echo, Sin System Core,
❖ Dante
—
It began with the window , warping like glass pulled through memory silk.
Wanda's head was still on his chest.
Soft breath. No dreams.
Outside, twilight hadn't yet risen.
Then it happened.
The air bent inward, silently.
The window collapsed not from impact — but from invitation.
Like the world made room for something it didn't want to remember, and couldn't bear to forget.
Not noise.
Wrongness.
[⚠ Sin System Alert: Identity Echo Breach Initiated]
Source: UNKNOWN | Match Profile: 93.4%
Entity Classification: Clone-Anchor Synth
— Origin: Echoed Demon Memory + Incomplete Sin Thread Projection
Threat Severity: EXTREME
Effect: Emotional Anchor Shatterwave Commencing
Smoke sprayed inward through memory fractures in the air.
Then...
He stepped through.
The same figure. Same boots. Same frame.
But the coat tore open where old sigils pulsed — fanged fissures glowing black-red across twisted skin. He was Dante in silhouette...
…but his eyes were silver voids.
Like nothing in him had ever loved.
Or tried to.
A version not fueled by pain.
But encrypted inside it.
He grinned sideways, voice chemical-sweet:
"Nice setup. This what you traded hell for? Journals, jazz, and jealousy with breakfast?"
▫▫▫
Dante stood slowly, sliding Wanda behind him as she stirred.
Jean was airborne before her mug hit the floor, a flame-wrapped psychic knife spinning into her palm. "That's not him."
Wanda circled left, chaos magic fluttering out like instinctual breath. "No — but he knows us. What we gave. What we gave up."
[System Chain Shake Initiated]
Emotional Threads Engaging:
Jean Grey → 78.1% → 70.9% ❌
Wanda Maximoff → 90.2% → 82.4% ❌
❖ Anchor Dual-Link Status: Critical Instability | Trust Feedback Spiking
"I don't care what thread spat you into the real," Dante murmured, drawing Ruin Reaver with single-motion dread. "You're not mine."
The clone chuckled, silver iris ripple glitching.
"I'm what pulses in your wrist when she moans your name."
"I'm the devil they feared you'd let rot loose once they loved you loyal."
He opened his palm — twin-edge blade of shadow breaking from bloodlike ink.
And then they lunged.
▫▫▫
They fought like catastrophe folded inside cathedral space.
Blades screamed.
Time staggered.
Walls split — Wanda's ceiling runes caught psychic flame and burned red before bursting into sigilled dust.
The clone wasn't faster.
He was truer — to a *version Dante once hated loving.
▫▫▫
Wanda tried to hex-freeze his motion—
But the memory of Dante smiling after killing for her played in reverse—interrupting her cast mid-breath.
Jean flooded the clone's cortex psychic-wide—only to be met with her first kiss, dream-fed and mirrored, hurled back as a blade.
Both women hit the floor. Not dead.
Not broken.
Just overwhelmed by what once made them love him.
"He has... our love," Jean hissed.
"And our created myth," Wanda choked, her hands flaring again, darker now.
"He turned it against us."
▫▫▫
[Sin System Catastrophe Response]
Anchor Configuration: DISMEMBERED
Sync Field: Collapsing
Dante Emotional Integration: 74.3% → 69.7%
Domain Risk: Rupture Imminent
And in the heart of the rubble—
Dante gasped as Ruin Reaver was knocked from his hand.
Clone-Dante carved upward — jagged weapon pressed against Dante's collarbone now.
"Every time you held back, I thrived," clone whispered.
"Every second their touch gentled you, I grew stronger."
"You fear me because I remember what you had to amputate to deserve them."
Steel hissed.
Then stopped.
Because Dante smiled.
And bled — not from the wound.
From choice.
From unlocking what he sealed long ago in silence.
He pulled a small glyph-pouch from behind his coat seam — never used.
Inside: a fractured weapon-core, hate-fused. Radiant dark.
The legacy of his broken line.
His father.
The Sparda Shard.
[Trigger Condition Met]
Trait: Satanic-Bound Line | Mark of Sovereign Flame Reforged
⚔ Item: Oblivion Thorn — Born Only to Kill the Versions He Never Let Become
➤ Emotion Condition Passed: Self-Revulsion Acknowledged
➤ Anchor Drop Confirmed
➤ Weapon Class: MYTHOS — "Sin Reclamation Blade"
Dante rose as infernal wind burst behind him.
Bone wings.
Twice as wide as his shadow.
Red eyes haloed by white fire split with black corona.
Hair silvered to core.
Chest bare—sigils crawling now on his own terms.
Then he swung Oblivion Thorn in both hands, Ruin Reaver in tandem—
And he said it.
"I fought to be human.
And I won."
The next instant?
He screamed forward — through the clone's swing.
Twin blades met their match — opened the clone chest-wide.
—But the echo screamed. Didn't vanish.
It clung—
Until Dante whispered the words Lioré had once said in his fractured dream:
"You don't choose yourself to be perfect.
You choose to survive… so others can call you real."
Both hilts twisted.
And Dante broke the version of himself
That never wanted to be held at all.
▫▫▫
Ash fell like still-snow.
Wanda slumped. Jean sat, head in hands. Pietro at the door, jaw locked.
The bar no longer burned.
But the trust did.
[Sin System Critical Log Upload Complete]
Anchor Sync:
◆ Wanda Maximoff → 88.3%
◆ Jean Grey → 71.1%
❖ Rivalry Phase: Resurfacing
Jealousy Imprint: Detected in Afterglow Residue
Emotional Anchor "Autonomous Override" Cooled to Managed Retraction
Dante Form: Demon Sovereign – 49s Remaining / Stable
NEW TITLE: "Sinbreaker: The Devil With Roots"
Then Dante turned—
Picked up the broken "Devil May Cry" sign, hanging slightly crooked again.
Wanda looked at him—eyes damp.
Jean said nothing—her hands trembling tighter across her knees.
Dante smiled softly.
"Someone pour me coffee."
"Strong."
_______