Chapter 44: The King is Gone
Vincent slumped in the worn leather armchair beside Dante’s bed, the rhythmic hiss of the oxygen machine the only sound breaking the oppressive silence. The sterile scent of antiseptic warred with the lingering sweetness of decay beneath Dante’s bandages. Vincent’s gaze traced the stark lines of his brother’s face – pale, gaunt, etched with pain even in unconsciousness. The bandages were fresh, but dark stains already bloomed over the chest pad. He remembered the raw terror in Dante’s eye yesterday, the way it had only calmed when landing on Dabi. Vincent rubbed his temples. Patience, Hela had said. Molecule by molecule. It felt like watching a glacier form.
Suddenly, Dante’s remaining eye snapped open. Not wide with panic this time. It was sharp, lucid, and terrifyingly cold. Grey ice focused instantly on Vincent.
Vincent froze mid-rub. "Dante?"
Dante didn’t speak. His jaw clenched. A tremor ran through him, visible even beneath the sheet. Then, with a guttural groan that ripped from his chest, he pushed himself upright. Muscles corded in his neck, tendons standing out like cables. Bandages strained over his ruined chest. Fresh blood bloomed darkly on the dressing. Agony twisted his features, but he didn’t stop. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, bare feet hitting the cold floor. He swayed, gripping the mattress edge, knuckles white. His breathing was ragged, shallow gasps that sounded like tearing paper.
"Whoa! Fuck, Dante, stop!" Vincent surged forward, hands outstretched. "You’re gonna tear yourself apart!"
Dante’s head snapped towards him. That cold, assessing gaze pinned Vincent. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t recognition. It was pure, ancient fury banked behind a wall of terrifying control. He looked at Vincent like he was assessing an obstacle. Or prey.
Then, without a word, without a flicker of expression beyond that chilling focus, Dante Morningstar vanished. One second he was there, hunched and bleeding on the edge of the bed, the next – empty air. The oxygen prongs dangled uselessly.
Vincent stumbled back, heart hammering against his ribs. "Fuck! FUCK!" He whirled, bolting for the door, slamming it open so hard it bounced off the wall. He tore down the hallway, shouting, voice raw. "HELA! LILITH! DABI! ANYONE! HE’S GONE!"
The library doors flew open. Hela stood framed in the doorway, her obsidian eyes instantly sharp. Lilith and Dabi appeared behind her, faces taut with alarm. KJ and Xavier spilled out from another corridor, drawn by the commotion.
"What happened?" Hela’s voice cut through Vincent’s panic, low and resonant.
Vincent skidded to a halt, panting. "He woke up! Just… sat the fuck up, pushing through the pain like it was nothing. Looked at me…" Vincent shuddered, the memory of that cold gaze chilling him. "Then he fucking blinked out. Gone. Poof. Didn’t say shit. Just vanished!"
Hela’s expression didn’t change, but the air around her seemed to crackle with suppressed power. "Where?" The single word held the weight of millennia.
"How the fuck should I know?" Vincent ran a hand through his hair, frustration warring with fear. "He looked like death warmed over, Hela. He shouldn’t be able to stand, let alone fucking teleport! Where would he go? Back to…?" He trailed off, the implication hanging heavy.
Hela’s gaze turned inward, distant. "His rage has direction," she murmured, almost to herself. "He seeks an outlet. A target."
Dabi pushed forward, face pale but eyes blazing. "Who? Who would he go after?"
Hela met Dabi’s gaze. "The architect of his deepest humiliation. The one who delivered him to Lucifer’s tender mercies." Her voice dropped to a whisper that scraped the bones. "Cain."
The air in the Ninth Circle tasted like ash and despair. Dante materialized amidst jagged obsidian spires that clawed at a perpetually bruised sky. Sulfur choked his nostrils, thick and acrid, a welcome assault after the sterile stench of the medical suite. Agony screamed through his body with every breath, every heartbeat a hammer blow against his shattered ribs. The phantom agony of his missing wings was a constant, hollow ache. But beneath the physical torment, beneath the raw, festering terror Lucifer had carved into his soul, a cold, pure fury burned. It was the only thing holding him upright. The only thing that mattered.
He found Cain near the Lake of Frozen Screams. The traitor wasn’t hiding. He was overseeing the torment of a soul encased up to its neck in ice, its perpetual shriek echoing across the desolate plain. Cain, tall and arrogant in his dark armor, turned as Dante’s presence registered. His eyes widened, shock quickly morphing into smug contempt as he took in Dante’s ravaged state – the bandages, the pallor, the way he swayed slightly, breathing shallowly.
"Well, well," Cain drawled, a cruel smile twisting his lips. "Look what crawled out of the abyss. Still breathing, Morningstar? Lucifer must be losing his touch." He gestured dismissively. "Or did you finally crawl back to lick his boots?"
Dante didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. The cold fury radiating from him thickened the air, making the damned soul’s screams seem distant. He took a step forward. Pain lanced through him, sharp and blinding. He ignored it. Another step.
Cain’s smirk faltered slightly. He shifted his weight, hand drifting towards the sword at his hip. "Stay back, cripple. You’re not fit to stand before me."
Dante kept walking. Slowly. Deliberately. Each step a testament to sheer, unadulterated will overriding ruined flesh. The distance closed. Twenty paces. Ten. Five.
Cain drew his sword, black metal gleaming dully. "I warned you!" he snarled, swinging the blade in a vicious arc aimed at Dante’s neck.
Dante didn’t flinch. He didn’t dodge. He raised his bandaged forearm. The black blade struck the thick wrappings with a dull thunk. Bandages tore, revealing the raw, weeping flesh beneath. Bone grated against metal. Dante didn’t cry out. He didn’t even blink. His grey eye remained locked on Cain’s, colder than the frozen lake.
Cain’s eyes widened in genuine shock. He tried to pull the blade back. Dante’s other hand shot out, faster than pain should have allowed. Bandaged fingers, slick with fresh blood, clamped around Cain’s sword wrist with crushing force. Bones creaked.
Cain gasped, pain flashing across his face. "Let go, you bastard!"
Dante twisted. Hard. The sickening snap of Cain’s wrist echoed sharply. The sword clattered onto the obsidian rock. Cain screamed, high and ragged.
Before the scream fully escaped, Dante moved. A surge of infernal power, fueled by agony and rage, flared. Reality warped. The frozen screams, the obsidian spires, the sulfurous stench – vanished.
They reappeared in a cavern of living flame. Dante’s true Inferno. Not the club, but the heart of his domain. Walls pulsed like heated arteries, casting flickering, monstrous shadows. The air shimmered with unbearable heat, thick with the scent of ozone and burning stone. Molten rock flowed in sluggish rivers across the uneven floor. This was power made manifest. Dante’s power.
Cain stumbled, disoriented, clutching his broken wrist. His arrogance was gone, replaced by primal fear as he took in the hellish landscape. "Where…?"
Dante stood before him, silhouetted against the wall of fire. Bandages hung loose, revealing glimpses of blackened stumps and weeping wounds. Blood dripped steadily onto the scorched rock. He looked like death incarnate, fueled by fury. "Home," Dante rasped, his voice a ruin, yet carrying terrifying authority. "Where traitors burn."
He didn’t give Cain time to react. He lunged. Not with grace, but with brutal, animalistic force. He slammed into Cain, driving him backwards. They crashed onto the hot rock. Dante ignored the searing pain in his own skin, the agony screaming from his chest. He straddled Cain’s waist, pinning him down with knees that felt like shattered glass. His bandaged hands closed around Cain’s throat.
"Delivered me… to him," Dante hissed, squeezing. Veins stood out on his ruined forearms. Cain choked, eyes bulging, clawing uselessly at Dante’s wrists with his good hand. "Let him… break me." Dante leaned closer, his breath hot and ragged against Cain’s face. The cold fury in his eye was terrifying. "Thought… I was finished?"
Cain gagged, spittle flying. "Fuck… you… Morningstar!"
Dante’s lips peeled back in a feral snarl. He released Cain’s throat. Before Cain could gasp for air, Dante’s fist, wrapped in bloody bandages, slammed into his face. Bone crunched. Blood sprayed, hot and metallic against Dante’s knuckles. He hit him again. And again. Methodical. Brutal. Each blow a release, a hammer driving the violation back into the one who facilitated it. Cain’s struggles weakened, his face a ruined mask of blood and swelling flesh.
Dante stopped, breathing harshly, sweat mingling with blood on his brow. He looked down at the semi-conscious Cain beneath him. The cold fury hadn’t abated; it had found a new channel. The violation Lucifer inflicted wasn’t just physical. It was a theft of agency, of control. Dante needed to reclaim it. Utterly. Brutally. He needed to dominate, to inflict, to own.
With a grunt of effort, ignoring the shriek of protest from his own body, Dante hauled Cain’s limp form up. He slammed him face-first against the pulsating wall of flame. The heat was intense, singeing Cain’s clothes and hair instantly. Cain screamed, a raw sound of agony, as his cheek pressed against the searing stone.
Cain screamed, a raw sound of agony, as his cheek sizzled against the searing stone wall. The stench of burning flesh joined the ozone and brimstone. Dante held him pinned, the infernal rock branding Cain’s face, his own ruined body trembling with the effort, pain a white-hot counterpoint to the ice in his veins.
"You handed me over," Dante rasped, his voice a shredded ruin scraped raw from screaming. He yanked Cain’s head back by the hair, peeling burnt skin off the stone with a sickening tear. "Like fucking chattel." He slammed Cain’s face into the wall again, harder. Another scream tore free, weaker this time. "Thought you could break me first, you cunt? Thought raping me made you powerful?"
Memories flooded Dante: Cain’s sneering face above him, the brutal invasion, the feeling of utter helplessness as Cain used him like a hole. Over and over, while Lucifer watched. Dante’s fist, a bloody mess of bandages and exposed knuckle bone, drove into Cain’s kidney. A grunt of agony. "Filled me with your fucking filth," Dante spat, twisting Cain’s broken arm viciously behind his back. Bones grated. "Then tossed me to the Devil like spoiled meat."
Dante hauled Cain away from the wall, the traitor’s cheek a ruined, blackened mess. He flung him onto the scorched ground. Cain scrambled backwards, fear finally eclipsing arrogance, one arm dangling uselessly, his face a mask of blood and char. "Lucifer… Lucifer commanded it!" Cain choked out, spitting blood. "I just… followed orders!"
"Bullshit!" Dante roared, the sound echoing in the fiery cavern. He kicked Cain hard in the ribs. Something cracked. "You enjoyed it. Felt big, didn't you? Fucking the Morningstar Prince? Getting him ready for Daddy?" Dante dropped onto Cain’s chest, ignoring the shriek of protest from his own shattered body. His knees pinned Cain’s arms. "Let’s see how big you feel now."
He ripped Cain’s armored pants open, the tough material tearing like parchment under his demonic strength. Cain’s flaccid cock lay exposed against his thigh. Dante seized it, his grip crushing. Cain shrieked, a high-pitched sound of pure terror. "No! Dante, please! Fuck! Don't!"
Dante’s raw, bleeding knuckles dug into Cain’s sternum as he leaned close, the stink of fear and burnt flesh thick between them. "Feeling powerful now, you traitorous fuck?" he hissed, his ruined voice scraping like gravel on bone. Cain’s flaccid cock felt pathetic in Dante’s crushing grip, a mockery of the violation he’d inflicted. "Thought filling me up made you a big man? Made you worthy of Lucifer’s scraps?"
Cain whimpered, blood bubbling from his split lips. "Please… Morningstar… mercy…"
"Mercy?" Dante barked a humorless laugh that tore at his own shattered ribs. "You think you deserve mercy after handing me over for that?" Memories surged – the cold stone floor of Lucifer’s dungeon, Cain’s rough hands pinning him, the brutal, humiliating penetration while the Devil watched. Rage, colder than the frozen screams of the Ninth Circle, washed over him. He released Cain’s cock and shoved himself off the broken traitor, staggering slightly as agony lanced through him. He needed more than just his own broken hands. He needed utter annihilation.
He lifted a trembling, bandaged hand, slick with Cain’s blood. A sharp, guttural command tore from his ravaged throat, echoing unnaturally in the fiery cavern. The very flames on the walls seemed to writhe and coalesce.
Cain, struggling to push himself up on his good arm, froze. His remaining eye widened in dawning horror as the molten rock nearby heaved. From the searing flow, a figure emerged – impossibly massive, easily nine feet tall, with skin like cracked obsidian that glowed with internal heat. Muscle coiled beneath the rocky hide, immense and terrifying. It had no eyes, just pits of swirling magma where its face should be. It radiated pure, brutal purpose.
Dante offered Cain a smile. It was the coldest thing Cain had ever seen, devoid of warmth, humor, or sanity. It was the smile of a predator savoring the kill. "Me?" Dante rasped, the smile never reaching his dead grey eye. "I’m not gonna do anything else to you, Cain." He gestured lazily towards the newly formed infernal brute. "But he will."
The brute, Malak, didn’t speak. It simply moved, the ground trembling beneath its steps. It reached down with hands like molten stone tongs, ignoring Cain’s shriek of pure terror. It flipped him onto his stomach with contemptuous ease, the motion snapping another rib. Cain’s ruined face scraped across the scorching rock.
"NO! DANTE! PLEASE!" Cain screamed, trying to crawl away, fingernails tearing on the hot stone. Malak’s massive hand clamped around Cain’s hips, lifting his lower half effortlessly. His torn pants offered no resistance. The brute positioned itself, a thick, obsidian pillar of cock, impossibly large and glowing faintly red-hot at the tip, pressing obscenely against Cain’s exposed hole.
"God, no! STOP! PLEASE, STOP!" Cain wailed, bucking wildly, uselessly. Malak simply pushed.
Cain’s scream wasn’t human. It ripped through the cavern, raw and endless, as the massive, burning intrusion tore him open. He felt himself split, flesh giving way with horrific, wet resistance. Malak sheathed itself to the hilt in one brutal thrust, the searing heat inside him beyond agony. He convulsed, vomiting blood onto the rock beneath him.
Dante watched, leaning heavily against a pulsating wall of flame, his own pain momentarily forgotten, submerged beneath the icy satisfaction. He saw the sheer, incomprehensible terror in Cain’s one visible eye. The utter helplessness. The violation. Just like he’d felt.
Malak began to move. Slow, deliberate, grinding thrusts that drew fresh, guttural screams from Cain with each withdrawal and re-entry. The brute’s cock was a blunt instrument of destruction, stretching Cain obscenely, the heat scorching him internally. Blood and other fluids slicked the rock beneath Cain’s hips. He clawed at the ground, his broken wrist flopping uselessly, his pleas dissolving into wet, choking sobs.
"Fuck… it burns… it’s tearing me… please… make it stop…" Cain babbled, his voice shredded. "Kill me… just kill me… Dante… I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…"
Dante didn’t answer. He watched as Malak established a relentless, pounding rhythm. The brute’s massive hands gripped Cain’s hips, holding him impaled, lifting him slightly with each powerful upward thrust before slamming him back down onto that burning shaft. The wet, meaty slap of flesh meeting flesh, the grotesque squelch as the massive cock pistoned into the ruined passage, the crackle of burning skin around the edges of the entry point – it was a symphony of agony. Dante closed his eye, not in disgust, but to savor the sounds. Cain’s screams had become a continuous, high-pitched keen, punctuated by desperate, gurgling pleas for death every time Malak bottomed out inside him.
The hours blurred in the timeless hellscape. Dante remained, a silent, bleeding sentinel. He watched Cain break. Watched defiance shatter into abject terror, then dissolve into a broken, sobbing wreck. When Malak finally roared, a sound like boulders grinding, and slammed deep one final time, flooding Cain’s torn insides with searing infernal seed, Cain didn’t even scream. He just lay there, trembling violently, a low, animal whine escaping his ruined throat. Dark fluid, blood and other unnameable things, leaked steadily from his gaping, burned hole. Malak withdrew with a wet, sucking sound, leaving Cain collapsed, twitching, barely conscious in a pool of his own filth.
The brute melted back into the river of molten rock, its task complete.
Dante pushed himself off the wall. The cold fury hadn't diminished; it had crystallized. He limped towards Cain, each step a fresh agony he embraced. He knelt beside the ruined traitor. Not with care. With finality.
Cain stirred, his one eye rolling wildly until it focused on Dante. Not defiance. Not hate. Pure, unfiltered pleading. His voice was a shattered whisper. "Please… kill me… end it… mercy…"
Dante reached down, his bandaged fingers slick with his own blood and Cain’s, tracing the edge of the horrific burn on Cain’s face. "Mercy," Dante repeated softly, almost thoughtfully. Then his fingers dug in, clawing into the charred flesh. Cain shrieked, a weak, broken sound. Dante ripped a chunk of burnt skin away. "You showed me none." He leaned closer, his breath hot on Cain’s ear. "So you get none."
Slowly, methodically, Dante began. He used Cain’s own discarded sword, the black metal now cold. He didn’t rush. He carved. Small, precise cuts. Slicing tendons, peeling strips of unburnt skin, breaking the fingers on Cain’s good hand one by one. He worked around the massive internal damage Malak had inflicted, prolonging the agony. He talked, his voice a low, ragged monotone, recounting every humiliation Cain had heaped upon him, every moment of helplessness in Lucifer’s dungeon, the feel of Cain inside him, the sound of Lucifer’s approval.
Cain’s pleas became weaker. He stopped begging for mercy. Only for death. "Please… end it… Dante… kill me… I can’t… please…"
Dante paused, the tip of the blade resting against Cain’s throat. He looked into the traitor’s remaining eye, seeing only a hollowed-out shell of agony. The cold fury within him finally, truly, found its satisfaction. "Okay," Dante whispered.
He plunged the blade deep into Cain’s throat, just below the jaw. Not a clean kill. He twisted the blade, sawing slowly upwards, severing veins, arteries, cartilage. Blood gushed, hot and thick, over Dante’s hands, soaking the scorched rock. Cain’s body jerked violently, a final, wet gasp escaping the ruin of his windpipe. His eye stared, vacant, at the pulsing fiery ceiling.
Dante held the blade there, watching the light fade completely. He waited until the last tremor subsided. Then, with a grunt of effort, he wrenched the blade free. Silence descended, thick and absolute, broken only by the crackle of the flames and Dante’s own ragged breathing. He looked down at the mutilated corpse, at the pool of cooling blood mingling with other fluids.
Justice. Cold. Brutal. Complete. A fraction of the debt paid. He turned away, the black sword clattering to the stone, and vanished.