Chapter 14: The Night He Lost Everything
The velvet hush of the private room pressed in, thick as the smoke curling from Dante’s forgotten cigarette. Dabi watched him, the usually composed Prince of Hell radiating a tension that vibrated the air between them. The scars around Dabi’s own eyes felt tight, a physical echo of the harrowing tour through the screaming, writhing layers of Inferno Dante had just subjected him to. He’d seen the endless loop of torment, the demons, the angels caught in damnation, the sheer, brutal eternity of it all. And Hawks’ chilling account of Dante’s past felt suddenly, terrifyingly real.
"Belial," Dabi rasped, the name slicing through the silence. His throat felt raw, though he hadn’t screamed. "That's the brother Hawks mentioned. The one who… vanished?"
Dante didn’t look up immediately. He traced a pattern on the obsidian tabletop with a claw-tipped finger, the metal rings glinting dully. When he finally met Dabi’s gaze, his eyes were chips of glacier ice, ancient and fathomless. "Most think him dead," he acknowledged, his voice a low rumble, devoid of its usual dangerous charm.
"But he’s not." It wasn’t a question. Dabi leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "He’s here. In… that?" He gestured vaguely towards the door, towards the remembered cacophony below.
"Inferno has many layers," Dante said cryptically. Then he sighed, a sound like stone grinding on stone. "What happened… it’s not a story for words. Hawks only caught the bloody aftermath."
"Show me." Dabi’s demand was blunt, driven by a morbid fascination and a strange, burgeoning connection forged in shared darkness. He needed to see the wound that had birthed this Hell. "You showed me your kingdom. Show me how it started. Show me Belial."
Dante’s gaze sharpened, piercing. "It’s bad, Dabi. Worse than Hawks could ever describe. Worse than anything down there." He gestured again towards the door. "It’s… visceral. Shattering. It broke me long before I built this place."
"I can handle it," Dabi stated flatly, the fire flickering in his own blue eyes a challenge. "I've seen my share of hells."
A humorless smirk touched Dante’s lips. "Not like this." He leaned forward, the air crackling with his power. "I can show you. Project the memories. But I can also… shield you. You’ll see it all. Every horrific detail. But you won’t feel it. Not the terror, not the guilt, not the soul-deep trauma. It will be… detached. Like watching the worst film ever made." He paused, his eyes searching Dabi’s. "I can weave that protection. Do you accept?"
The offer hung heavy. To witness pure atrocity without the crippling emotional fallout? It felt like a cheat, but a necessary one. Dabi nodded once, sharply. "Do it. Show me."
Dante didn’t hesitate. He reached across the small table, his hand surprisingly warm as it closed around Dabi’s scarred wrist. The contact sent a jolt through Dabi, not painful, but intensely intimate, a direct conduit. Dante’s eyes glowed, molten gold bleeding into the whites, and the plush room dissolved.
The First Flash:
Rough-hewn stone walls, oppressive darkness lit by guttering torches. The air reeked of sulfur and damp earth. Two figures stood before Dante, younger but bearing the same cruel architecture of bone and muscle as their brother. Damien, smirking. Belial, radiating cold disdain.
"Still playing rebel, brother?" Damien sneered, circling Dante who stood tense, defiant. "Father’s patience wears thin."
"I have a choice," Dante ground out, his voice younger, strained. "A right to choose my own path. For me. For Azazel. For the children."
Belial laughed, a sound like rocks cracking. "Choice? You were born to rule Hell’s legions, Dante. That is your purpose. Your only purpose. Defiance is weakness." He stepped closer, his shadow engulfing Dante. "You will regret this posturing."
"Fuck your purpose," Dante spat, fire flashing in his eyes. "And fuck you both."
The Second Flash:
The setting shifted violently. A cavernous chamber, slick with something dark and wet on the floor. Dante hung suspended by chains of cold, black iron wrapped around his wrists and ankles, stretched taut. His bare torso was a canvas of fresh cuts, deep bruises, and burns that smelled sickly sweet. Damien paced. Belial meticulously cleaned a hooked blade. Lucifer stood apart, observing with detached interest, his presence an icy weight.
"This obstinacy bores me, Dante," Lucifer murmured, his voice smooth venom.
Belial stepped forward. Without preamble, he drove the hooked blade deep into Dante’s shoulder muscle and twisted. Dante arched, a bitten-off scream tearing from his throat, muscles straining against the chains. Damien laughed, slamming a fist into Dante’s ribs. A sickening crack echoed.
"Break… me… all you want," Dante gasped, blood bubbling on his lips. "Won’t… change… anything."
Lucifer sighed theatrically. "Oh, I think it will. In fact, I have a surprise." A cruel smile touched his lips. "Something I believe you’re going to… love."
The heavy doors groaned open. Two lesser demons dragged in a figure, wings bound painfully behind him, feathers matted with filth and blood. Azazel. His beautiful face was swollen, one eye shut, but his remaining eye fixed on Dante, wide with terror and love.
"No…" Dante whispered, the sound ripped from his soul. "Azazel… no!" His defiance crumpled into raw panic.
Lucifer gestured lazily. "He’s been lamenting your absence."
Belial approached Azazel, his fingers tracing the arch of a magnificent, though battered, wing. Azazel flinched. "Such beauty," Belial mused. "Such… fragility." He gripped the primary feathers near the joint.
Then, with a grunt of effort, he pulled.
A wet, tearing screech echoed louder than Dante’s roar of denial. Azazel’s body convulsed, his scream a sound beyond agony. Muscle ripped. Bone cracked and splintered. Blood, impossibly bright crimson against the white feathers, sprayed in a horrific arc as Belial wrenched the entire wing free. He tossed the mangled limb aside like garbage, already reaching for the second.
Dante screamed, a raw, animal sound of utter despair. He thrashed against the chains, skin tearing, bones threatening to pop from joints. "STOP! PLEASE! STOP IT! AZAZEL! NO!"
Azazel’s second scream was weaker, choked, as Belial tore the other wing off. He collapsed, shuddering, a broken angel drowning in his own blood. Belial and Damien took turns then, boots slamming into ribs, blades slicing flesh. Dante’s pleas were constant, desperate, useless litanies. "Please… stop… Father… please… Azazel… hold on…"
Azazel’s remaining eye found Dante’s just as Belial drove a blade through his throat. A final, wet gasp. Then stillness. The light in his eye faded.
Dante went limp in the chains, head hanging, silent tears cutting paths through the grime and blood on his face. A broken thing.
"Show’s not over yet, son," Lucifer purred, utterly unmoved.
The doors opened again.
Two small figures, no more than children, were shoved into the chamber. Sera and Zaph, Dante's twin sons, their small wings fluttering in panic. They saw their father hanging, broken. Saw the bloody ruin that was Azazel. Pure terror etched their faces.
"Daddy!" Seraphine screamed, trying to dart towards him.
Belial moved with viper speed. He raised a massive, spiked mace. Zaph, protective instinct overriding his fear, threw himself in front of his sister.
THUD!
The sound was final. Crushing. Zaph’s small body crumpled instantly, skull shattered, life extinguished before he even hit the blood-slick floor.
"ZAPH!" Seraphine shrieked, the sound piercing the din. Panic seized him. His wings, still downy, flapped frantically as he tried to fly, to escape the nightmare.
Damien, grinning savagely, snatched a long, barbed spear from the wall. He hurled it with demonic force.
It caught Seraphine mid-air, punching through his tiny chest with a sickening wet crunch. The barbs hooked deep inside. He was suspended, pinned like a butterfly, several feet above the floor. Blood poured down his legs, pattering onto the stone.
He writhed, gasping, tiny hands scrabbling uselessly at the spear shaft impaling him. His wide, terrified eyes locked on Dante. "D-Daddy?!" he whimpered, his voice thick with blood. "H-hurts… Daddy… it hurts s-so much… make it stop… p-please…"
Something deep within Dante, something primal and buried beneath eons of celestial structure and control, finally… snapped.
A sound unlike anything Dabi had ever conceived ripped from Dante’s throat – a roar of pure, unadulterated rage and anguish that shook the very foundations of the chamber. An explosion of raw, black power erupted from him. The chains holding him shattered into molten shrapnel. His body twisted, contorted, expanding.
Where the tortured son of Lucifer had hung, now stood a towering nightmare. Obsidian scales rippled over corded muscle. Horns, massive and curved like sickles, erupted from his skull. His face elongated into a fanged maw. Eyes, burning with infernal fire, fixed on his tormentors. Demon Form.
Lucifer actually stumbled back a step, his mask of composure cracking into open shock. "By the Abyss…" Damien snarled, drawing back.
Belial, arrogant to the last, sneered at the monstrous apparition. "Pathetic theatrics, brother!" He lunged, swinging the bloody mace.
Dante – no, the Demon – moved faster than sight. One massive, clawed hand shot out, engulfing Belial’s head and upper torso. There was a sickening crunch, wet and final. Lucifer and Damien stared, frozen, as Belial’s legs crumpled, his head and chest reduced to pulp within the demon’s fist.
"He killed Belial!" Damien gasped, genuine terror in his voice.
Lucifer didn't hesitate. With a flick of his wrist, he and Damien vanished, abandoning the chamber, abandoning Belial’s remains, abandoning the dying child pinned to the air.
The massive demon roared again, a sound of purest, universe-rending fury. Black energy, hotter than suns and colder than the void, pulsed outwards in a shockwave. The stone walls melted, flowing like wax. The floor buckled and cracked open into fiery chasms. The very structure of the place dissolved and reformed into something new, something jagged and painful and hungry. Inferno. Born in a single, cataclysmic instant of apocalyptic rage.
Belial’s mangled corpse was swallowed by the forming chaos.
The towering demon form shrank rapidly, collapsing back into Dante’s familiar, battered shape. He staggered, the immense power drain leaving him hollow. His eyes, still burning with residual hellfire, fixed on his suspended child.
Sera still hung, impaled. Still breathing in shallow, wet gasps. Still bleeding. "Daddy…" he whispered, a tiny, broken sound.
Dante rushed to him, ignoring the impossible heat radiating from the newly formed rocks, the screams of damned souls already echoing in the nascent corridors. He gently, so gently, wrapped his hands around the spear shaft. "I’ve got you, Sera. Daddy’s here. Hold on… just hold on…"
With agonizing care, he pulled the barbed spear free. Sera screamed weakly, fresh blood soaking Dante’s arms as he gathered the tiny, broken body close.
He sank to the molten stone floor, cradling his son. He pressed his hands over the gaping chest wound, pouring every ounce of his considerable power, his ancient being, into the small form. Golden light flared, mingling with the hellish glow.
"Live, Sera," Dante begged, tears flowing freely now, mixing with Sera's blood. "Please… sweetheart… please… stay with me. Daddy’s here. Daddy’s fixing it. Please…"
He pushed harder. The light intensified. He felt the ragged edges of torn flesh, the splintered ribs, the shredded lung. He poured his life force, his grace, his soul into mending it.
Sera’s eyes fluttered open. He looked up at his father, a flicker of recognition. "H-hurts less… Daddy…" he murmured.
Hope, searing and desperate, flared in Dante’s chest. "That’s it, little love. That’s it. Stay with me." He doubled his efforts, the golden light becoming almost blinding.
But the wound… it was too deep. Too much vital essence had bled out. The tiny hand clutching Dante’s finger went slack. The flicker in Sera’s eyes dimmed, replaced by a glassy emptiness. The shallow breaths… stopped.
Dante froze. The healing light sputtered and died.
He stared down at the small, still face. "Sera?" he whispered. He shook him gently. "Sera? Baby?" Louder. "SERA!" A roar that shook the newborn Hell. He gathered the small body impossibly closer, rocking back and forth. "No… no, no, no, NO! NOT YOU TOO! PLEASE!"
He pressed his forehead against Sera’s, shoulders shaking with silent, violent sobs that wracked his broken body. Azazel gone. Zaph gone. Now Sera. Gone. The last light extinguished. He held the cooling body of his child, utterly alone amidst the screaming foundations of the Hell he had just created. The rage was gone, replaced by a void deeper than any abyss, colder than the space between stars. Pure, shattering desolation.
He threw his head back and screamed again. Not a roar of rage this time, but the agonized, soul-rending wail of a being who had lost everything, forever. The sound echoed through the infant Inferno, a lament that would never truly fade.
The echo of his own shattered scream lingered in the newborn Hell’s scorched air, clinging like the coppery scent of his child’s blood drying on his skin. Dante didn’t move. He cradled Sera’s small, lifeless form, the weight anchoring him to the molten rock floor, a counterpoint to the vast, aching hollow consuming him from within. Azazel’s torn wings lay nearby, a macabre monument; Zaph’s crumpled body was already half-swallowed by the shifting, groaning geography of his grief-made-manifest. It was done. Everything was gone. He almost welcomed the crushing numbness descending like a shroud.
Then he felt it. Not grief. Not rage. A presence. Alive. Where only corpses and damnation should reside. It pulsed beneath the bedrock, faint but undeniable, a discordant note in the symphony of agony he’d composed. Belial? But he’d crushed him. Pulped him. His fist clenched reflexively, phantom bone and viscera slick against his palm. The sensation intensified, a thorn digging into his awareness. Anger, cold and precise, began to crystallize in the void of his despair. Impossible. He focused, pouring his will down through the searing layers of stone, seeking the source. There. Not dead. Trapped. Embedded within the very fabric of the Hell forged from his anguish. His eyes snapped open, burning like coals rekindled. The numbness shattered.
In a violent twist of space and sulfurous air, Dante vanished from the chamber of loss, reappearing instantly within the deepest, darkest fissure of his own creation. The air here wasn't just hot; it was corrosive, searing the lungs, thick with the screams condensed into a physical miasma. Jagged obsidian spires pierced upwards, glowing with internal heat. Below, rivers of molten rock churned sluggishly, dotted with islands of sharp, black glass. It was agony made landscape. And on one of those glass islands, partially submerged in the lava, struggling weakly against the viscous flow that held him like tar… was Belial.
He was broken. Dante saw that immediately. His body was a ruin of burns, fractures, and weeping sores where the corrosive atmosphere ate at his demonic flesh. One arm was missing below the elbow, the stump charred black. But he was alive. Conscious. Eyes, burning with defiance and pain, locked onto Dante. "B-Brother," Belial rasped, his voice a ruined thing, bubbling with fluid. "Feeling… inventive?" A weak, bloody cough racked him.
Dante stood at the fissure’s edge, silhouetted against the hellish glow. The cold fury solidified. He didn’t speak. He simply descended, boots crunching on the glassy shards, radiating power that made the very air crackle. He reached the semi-submerged Belial, grabbed a handful of singed hair, and hauled him bodily from the clinging lava. Skin sizzled. Belial screamed, a raw, animal sound that echoed Dante’s own earlier torment.
"Why?" Dante’s voice was low, a tremor of contained violence running through it. He slammed Belial’s head against the jagged glass, splitting his brow open. Blood, thick and dark, welled instantly. "Why Azazel? He never hurt you. Never challenged you."
Belial spat a gob of blood and phlegm, grinning through broken teeth. "Fuck… your… angel whore. Sanctimonious… prick."
Dante’s fist connected with Belial’s jaw. Bone crunched. Teeth flew. He dragged him higher onto the glass, ignoring the shards slicing into his own palms. "And my sons?" The question ripped from him, a raw wound. "Zaph. Sera. Children. What threat were they?" He slammed Belial down again, grinding his face against the sharp points. "ANSWER ME!"
Belial choked, gasping, his defiance momentarily shattered by the brutal impact. "Orders…" he gurgled, blood bubbling from his lips. "Father… wanted… leverage… wanted you… broken…"
"Leverage?" Dante roared, the word igniting a fresh inferno. He straightened, hauling Belial up. He slammed a fist into his gut, then another, driving the air from his ruined lungs. "You tore them apart! For leverage?!" He lifted Belial completely off his feet, holding him suspended over the churning lava river. Heat blistered Belial’s back. "WHY START WITH THEM?!"
"Make… you… watch…" Belial wheezed, terror finally etching his face as the heat intensified. "Make… it hurt… worst… way… possible…"
Something in Dante snapped. The cold fury detonated into white-hot annihilation. He plummeted into Belial’s mind, not seeking answers anymore, only pain. Centuries of accumulated torment, techniques learned from the deepest pits, flooded his awareness. He unleashed them.
He flayed patches of skin with psychic barbs, dipped the exposed nerves in phantom acid. He shattered and re-set bones in impossible configurations, over and over. He conjured visions of Belial’s own failures, his deepest shames, amplified a thousandfold. He forced him to relive the moment of his own pulping, the crushing pressure, the splintering bone, endlessly. He peeled back layers of consciousness, exposing raw, screaming id to the corrosive hellscape. Time lost meaning in that glassy pit. Hours? Days? Eons? Only pain was real. Dante learned the intricate mechanisms of his Inferno, how to manipulate its very substance to heighten agony, to prolong suffering without granting the mercy of oblivion. The landscape itself became an instrument of torment, responding to his will, tightening around Belial like a vise lined with razors.
Belial screamed. He begged. He cursed. He dissolved into wordless, mindless shrieks that blended with the ambient wails of the damned. But through the fragmented agony, no new answers came. No grand conspiracy, no hidden motive. Just pettiness. Cruelty. Obedience to a monstrous father’s whim. The futility of it, the sheer, wasteful stupidity of the slaughter, was the final spark.
Dante dropped Belial’s broken, twitching form onto the glass. He didn’t look back. The void within him wasn't numb now; it was a howling vortex demanding to be filled. With blood. With destruction. He teleported.
He appeared on Aparat, a world of crystalline spires and serene waterways. He didn't speak. He simply unleashed. A wave of pure, obliterating force ripped outwards from him. The spires shattered like glass, collapsing into dust. The seas boiled instantly, vaporizing billions. The sky ripped open, raining fire. He moved like a plague, a walking extinction event. Cities evaporated. Continents cracked and sank. The planet’s core ignited, consuming it from within in a final, silent explosion of light and debris. He barely registered it. Gore apart world? It was dust.
He moved to the next cosmos. A cluster of nebulae, vibrant with nascent life. He tore through it, unraveling the fabric of space-time, collapsing stars into black holes that devoured entire solar systems. He shattered dimensions, realities bleeding into each other in chaotic, destructive bursts. He sought out worlds touched by celestial influence, realms where his siblings held sway, where his father’s shadow lingered. He didn't discriminate. Angels, demons, mortals – all were fuel for the howling void. He became a storm of annihilation, leaving only screaming voids and cooling debris in his wake. So many people. Gone.
Finally, inevitably, they came. His siblings. Not Lucifer, the architect, but the others: Sariel, her face etched with grief and horror; Ramiel, radiating defensive power; Cassiel, stoic but shaken. They materialized in the desolate expanse left after he’d unmade the Celestial Nexus, a place where cosmic ley lines had once pulsed.
"Dante! Stop this!" Sariel cried, her voice amplified across the void, trembling. "This isn't you! This rage… it consumes you!"
He turned, his form radiating chaotic energy, eyes burning with infernal fire. Ash and stardust clung to his clothes. "Consumes me?" His laugh was a harsh scrape. "It is me, sister. The only thing left after they took everything else." He gestured vaguely back towards the memory of Inferno, towards the memory of tiny bodies broken. "Where were you then? Where was your righteous defense when they ripped my children apart?"
Ramiel stepped forward, shields of pure light flaring. "We didn't know, Dante! Lucifer kept it hidden! We came as soon as we felt… this." He gestured at the swirling debris field of dead stars. "This is madness! You're becoming the very thing you raged against!"
"Am I?" Dante snarled. Energy crackled around his fists. "Or am I finally repaying the debt? With interest?" He moved, faster than light. A blast of pure negation slammed into Ramiel’s shields, shattering them, sending the archangel spinning back with a cry. Cassiel darted in, blades of condensed void energy flashing, but Dante batted them aside like gnats, a backhand strike sending Cassiel tumbling. Sariel unleashed a wave of celestial binding energy, threads of pure starlight seeking to contain him. He roared, tearing through them, the raw, untamed power of his grief-fueled rampage overwhelming their disciplined techniques. They fought him. Trying to get Dante out of it. It was brutal, desperate. Sariel took a blow meant to decapitate on her crossed forearms; the bones shattered audibly. Ramiel sacrificed a wing, intercepting a spear of black energy aimed at Cassiel's heart. They bled starlight and ichor. They weakened him through sheer attrition, through their refusal to strike to kill, through their anguished pleas cutting through the roar of his fury. "Remember Azazel!" Cassiel gasped, parrying a blow that cracked his celestial armor. "He wouldn't want this! Your sons wouldn't want this!" It took everything they had, pushing their ancient powers to the brink. Finally, staggering, bleeding, wings torn, they managed to weave a cage of fractured reality and desperate hope around the epicenter of his rage. He tore at it, roaring, but the combined, exhausted power of his siblings held, barely. It took a lot. But they did it. The vortex of destruction faltered. Exhaustion, deeper than physical, deeper than cosmic, crashed over him. The howling void inside sputtered and dimmed, leaving only the vast, cold emptiness of absolute loss. The power flickered out. He slumped within the shimmering cage, suddenly just Dante again, battered not by their blows, but by the sheer, soul-crushing weight of it all. The Prince of Hell looked… small. Broken.
The cage dissolved. Dabi, who had materialized silently at the periphery during the final moments, drawn by the psychic aftershocks, crossed the distance quickly. He moved past the wounded, weary archangels who simply watched, too drained to intervene. Dante didn't look up. He stared at his hands, still faintly glowing with residual power, hands that had unmade worlds. Hands that had failed to hold his children.
Dabi didn't hesitate. He stepped into Dante's space, ignoring the radiating heat and the scent of ozone and blood. He didn't speak platitudes. He simply reached out and wrapped his scarred arms around Dante’s broad, trembling frame. "You don't have to carry this alone, Dante," he murmured, his voice rough but steady against Dante's ear. "Not anymore."
The contact, the simple, solid warmth of it, shattered the last dam. A shudder wracked Dante's entire body, violent and uncontrollable. A choked sound escaped him, then another. The ancient entity, the destroyer of worlds, the architect of Hell, crumpled against the scarred human. His shoulders shook. A single, ragged sob tore free, then another, quickly becoming a flood. He didn't scream this time. He wept. Great, heaving, silent sobs that seemed ripped from the core of his being, tears cutting tracks through the grime and stardust on his face. He buried his face against Dabi's shoulder, clinging to him like a lifeline in the sudden, terrifying void of his own grief. Dabi held him tighter, anchoring him, offering no words, just the unyielding presence of shared understanding in the desolate silence of the ruined cosmos.