Chapter 13: Unsuspected Guest
The thrumming bassline of Dante’s latest siren song vibrated through the polished obsidian floors of Inferno, a seductive pulse that seemed to synchronize with the frantic beat of Dabi’s own heart. He leaned against the bar, nursing a whiskey that burned less than the memory of Dante’s murmured confession against his skin mere hours ago. I love you too, firecracker. The words echoed, a fragile warmth battling the club’s inherent chill. Around him, Dante’s siblings held court: Alan’s sharp eyes scanning the crowd, Sapphire’s laughter like shattering crystal, Vincent and Xavier a silent, imposing presence flanking Dante’s velvet throne-like booth. Dabi’s own crew clustered nearby – Shigaraki’s bored slouch, Toga’s manic energy as she bounced beside Hawks, Shoto’s quiet observation, Deku’s earnest chatter, Bakugo’s simmering impatience.
The air, thick with expensive cologne, spilled secrets, and the ever-present ozone tang clinging to Dante, suddenly shifted. A ripple went through the dense crowd near the main entrance, a subtle parting like prey sensing an apex predator. Toga froze mid-twirl, her wide crimson eyes fixing on something over Dabi’s shoulder. Her usual manic grin vanished, replaced by pure, unnerved fascination. "Ooh," she breathed, the sound barely audible over the music but cutting through Dabi’s thoughts.
He followed her gaze. The crowd seemed to instinctively widen a path. Standing framed in the arched doorway, haloed by the dim crimson emergency lights, was a figure that commanded silence even amidst the pounding rhythm. Tall, powerfully built, radiating an aura of ancient, brutal power. Pink hair, shockingly vibrant against the club’s dark tones, swept back from a face marked by four intense, golden eyes that scanned the room with unnerving focus. Four muscular arms rested easily at his sides, each adorned with intricate, swirling black tattoos that seemed to writhe in the flickering candlelight. He wore simple, dark clothes that did nothing to diminish his overwhelming presence; they looked like rags on a king. Sin incarnate walked into Inferno.
Hawks, leaning beside Dabi, stiffened. His golden wings, usually held with casual arrogance, snapped tight against his back. "Holy fucking shit," he hissed, the color draining from his face.
Dabi frowned, tearing his eyes away from the unsettling newcomer. "What? Who the hell is that?"
Hawks swallowed hard, his gaze locked on the pink-haired figure who was now moving with deliberate slowness through the parting crowd, his four eyes seemingly fixed on Dante’s booth. "That," Hawks whispered, voice tight with disbelief and dread, "is Sukuna."
The name landed like a physical blow. Dabi’s mind scrambled. Sukuna. Dante’s past, whispered about in fragments Dante himself rarely offered. A name heavy with finality. "Sukuna?" Dabi echoed, the whiskey souring in his stomach. "Why does that sound familiar?"
Hawks finally tore his eyes away, meeting Dabi’s with a look of pure, chilling certainty. "Because he’s one of Dante’s exes, Dabi. The big one. And he’s supposed to be fucking dead."
Ice flooded Dabi’s veins. He whipped his head back towards Dante’s booth. Dante hadn’t moved from his sprawl, one arm draped over the back of the crimson velvet, a crystal tumbler dangling loosely from his fingers. But every line of his body had gone utterly still. The lazy, predatory amusement that usually played on his lips was gone, replaced by a terrifying blankness. His crimson eyes, usually glowing embers, were wide, fixed unblinkingly on Sukuna’s approaching form. The glass in his hand cracked, a spiderweb fissure spreading silently under the pressure of his grip. Sapphire’s laughter died abruptly. Alan’s sharp gaze narrowed to slits. Vincent and Xavier shifted subtly, their postures shifting from relaxed vigilance to coiled readiness.
The music seemed to fade, replaced by the deafening thud of Dabi’s pulse in his ears. Sukuna moved with unhurried grace, the crowd melting away before him. His four eyes swept dismissively over Dante’s siblings, over Dabi’s frozen group, before locking solely onto Dante. A slow, knowing smirk curled Sukuna’s lips, revealing sharp canines. It wasn’t friendly. It was the smile of a hunter who’d finally cornered his prey.
He stopped directly before Dante’s booth, ignoring the palpable tension radiating from Alan, Sapphire, and the twins. The sheer force of his presence pressed down, a physical weight. The candles flickered violently, casting monstrous, dancing shadows from his multiple limbs.
"Dante," Sukuna rumbled. His voice was deep, resonant, layered with an ancient cadence that vibrated in Dabi’s bones. It held no warmth, only a chilling familiarity.
Dante didn’t flinch. He didn’t move. He stared up at Sukuna, the shattered glass still held forgotten in his hand. The Detroit swagger, the effortless charisma, had vanished, leaving behind something primal and raw. When he finally spoke, his voice was stripped bare, devoid of its usual grit, flat and cold as obsidian. "Sukuna."
A beat of silence stretched, thick enough to choke on. Sukuna’s smirk widened, predatory. "Surprised to see me?"
Dante’s knuckles whitened around the fractured glass. Crimson eyes burned with an intensity that promised annihilation. "You died." The words were a statement, devoid of inflection, yet carrying the weight of centuries of grief, rage, and betrayal.
Sukuna’s chuckle scraped the air like rusted metal. "Yeah, I died." He flexed lower arms tattooed with infernal geometries. "Some desperate kid found one of my fingers and swallowed it like a fucking vitamin." Golden eyes scanned Dante’s frozen siblings. "Brought me back screaming. I wore that brat’s skin like cheap leather until I tracked down the rest of my pieces." He shrugged, muscles rippling under thin fabric. "So here we are."
Dante’s shattered glass ground to powder in his fist. Blood-black ichor welled between his fingers, steaming. "Why are you here?" The Detroit rasp was stripped raw, a blade dragged over stone.
Sukuna’s gaze slid past Dante’s shoulder, locking onto Dabi leaning rigid against the bar. A slow, predatory grin split his face. "Cute upgrade, Morningstar. Finally traded up from—"
"Shut the fuck up," Dante snarled, rising fluidly, wings unfurling to cast jagged shadows. Crimson light bled from his irises, painting his cheekbones hellfire. "Tell me why you’re standing in my club breathing my air."
Silence swallowed the bassline. Patrons edged backward, glasses trembling on tables. Sukuna’s smirk vanished. "You remember Ezekiel?" Four hands curled into fists, knuckles cracking like gunshots.
Dante’s chin dipped once. "Yes."
"That sanctimonious prick tried recruiting us for his shiny heavenly death squad." Sukuna spat on the polished obsidian floor. The saliva sizzled, etching a tiny crater. "We told him to fuck off."
Vincent and Xavier shifted forward, a wall of muscle and menace. Sapphire paled, fingers twisting in Alan’s sleeve. Across the room, Dabi’s nails bit into his palms. Shigaraki’s dry chuckle cut the tension like a scalpel. "Heavenly hitmen? Fucking poetic."
Sukuna ignored him. "After we shot him down? My curse ate me alive." His voice dropped, gravel grinding bone. "You know the rest." A pause stretched, brittle. Toga’s breath hitched. "Anyway. Ezekiel sniffed me out." He scanned the vaulted ceiling as if expecting divine snipers. "They’re hunting me. Him. Castiel. Metatron."
Genuine confusion flickered across Dante’s face, erasing fury for a heartbeat. "Why hunt you?" He stepped closer, wings mantling. The ozone stench intensified, sharp as lightning. "And how the fuck did you leash that curse? This place should be a wasteland."
Sukuna’s laugh was short, harsh. "Leashed it? I fucking broke it." He tapped his temple, tattoos pulsing darkly. "Took centuries crammed inside that kid’s rotting meat suit. Simple." His upper left hand gestured dismissively. "As for them? They want to chain me with some binding spell. Takes control while letting me feel control." Golden eyes narrowed. "Doesn’t kill me. Just cages the monster."
Dante’s voice was ice sheathed in velvet. "Why?"
Sukuna leaned in, his breath smelling of char and grave soil. All four eyes burned into Dante’s. "They want me to carve out your heart, prince." He smiled, teeth glinting like knives. "Then your girls. Your precious siblings." The smile vanished. "Every last fucking drop of Morningstar blood."
Sukuna’s words hung in the suddenly frigid air of Inferno, a death sentence delivered with chilling nonchalance. Every last fucking drop of Morningstar blood. The pounding bass seemed to stutter, then die completely, choked by the suffocating pressure radiating from Dante’s still form. Crimson light, no longer just a glow but a searing emanation, bled freely from Dante’s widened eyes, painting stark, hellish shadows across his unnaturally blank face. He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. The silence stretched, thick as tar, broken only by the frantic hammering of Dabi’s own heart against his ribs and the faint, panicked whimper from Sapphire.
Dante stared at Sukuna. Not with the fury Dabi expected, the incandescent rage that usually preceded annihilation. This was deeper, colder. A glacial void where comprehension had momentarily shattered. His knuckles, clenched around the remnants of the shattered glass, were bone-white, blood-black ichor welling sluggishly around the embedded shards, steaming faintly. A minute crawled by, measured in the frantic pulse visible in Dante’s throat, in the subtle tremor threatening his wings.
Sukuna watched him, a predator observing the shockwave hit its mark. He shifted his weight, the movement fluid and unsettling with his extra limbs. A low, gravelly chuckle rasped from his throat. "Figured if anybody would want to know that, it’d be you, Morningstar." He tilted his head, those four golden eyes assessing Dante’s frozen state. "I know you don’t fuck around about your family."
The words penetrated Dante’s stillness like a physical blow. A shudder ran through him, violent enough to dislodge a shard of glass that clinked softly on the obsidian floor. The blankness in his eyes fractured, replaced by a surge of pure, unadulterated hellfire. The urge was primal, immediate, overwhelming: to rip the skies apart, to find Ezekiel, Castiel, Metatron, and rend them molecule from molecule, to bathe Heaven’s gates in shattered feathers and ichor. His wings flared, the leathery membranes trembling with the force of the impulse, crimson light flaring so brightly it momentarily drowned the club’s ambient glow. Shigaraki took an involuntary step back. Bakugo snarled, sparks popping on his palms.
But Dante didn’t move towards the door. Didn’t unleash the torrent of power crackling beneath his skin. The image of Sapphire’s terrified face, KJ’s rigid posture shielding her, Vincent and Xavier poised like stone sentinels, flickered behind his burning eyes. And Dabi. Dabi, leaning rigid against the bar, the warmth of his skin, the raw confession still echoing in the penthouse silence – Fuck, I love you – a fragile anchor in the rising inferno. Annihilation was a luxury he couldn't afford. Not yet. Not without a plan. Not without knowing the full scope of the trap. The crimson light in his eyes dimmed, banked but not extinguished, replaced by a terrifying, calculating coldness. He needed information. Leverage. He needed to understand Sukuna’s angle in delivering this warning.
He slowly, deliberately, unclenched his fist. The blood-black droplets splattered onto the dark floor, sizzling faintly. He took a deep breath, the air hissing through his teeth like steam escaping a pressure valve, thick with the scent of ozone and his own ichor. His gaze, razor-sharp now, swept past Sukuna, past his own frozen siblings, and locked onto Dabi. The intensity of it was a physical touch, claiming, possessive, and fiercely protective.