Chapter 93 — "Ashes of Blood and Brother"
Dante's breath caught in his throat. He stared, unblinking, as the world became a blur of silence and red.
Leon's body collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, slumping into Dante's arms. There was a hole in his chest. A dark, gaping wound where life once pulsed. The heart—Leon's heart—was still warm, still trembling, but it was no longer inside him. It rested, cradled almost lovingly, in Michael's pale, blood-specked hand.
The youngest brother smiled.
His smile was soft. Beautiful. Angelic. But the world knew better. Dante knew better. That smile belonged to the Devil.
"I saved you," Michael said, as if it were nothing more than picking a flower from the garden. "He was going to hurt you. So I hurt him first. I saved your life, big brother."
Pride laced his voice. His chest was up. His eyes gleamed with innocent conviction.
But the silence broke.
It began with a whisper—raw and faint.
"Ahhhhhhhggg..."
Then it grew.
Louder. Deeper. Broken. Beyond what words could ever describe.
It was the sound of a soul being torn apart.
Dante began to cry. Not the kind of cry born from sadness, but the kind ripped from the soul when reality stabs too deep and too fast.
Tears fell in rivers down his cheeks, tracing the bloodstains as his body trembled, as he clutched Leon to his chest. His screams echoed —agony incarnate, despair made flesh. His body convulsed with grief so violent it seemed to shake the very earth beneath them.
Barry turned away.
Jay lowered his head.
Caitlin covered her mouth, tears slipping past her fingers.
Cisco cried without knowing why—only that his chest hurt and breathing felt wrong.
They watched a man break before them, and they could do nothing. Nothing at all.
Dante didn't speak.
He howled. A wounded animal in human form, a brother cradling the corpse of the man who once protected him. Who once forgave him. Who once held his hand as they ran through fields as children.
His hands shook violently as he pressed Leon's head to his chest, rocking slowly.
"I'm sorry..." he whispered, again and again, voice cracking under the weight of remorse. "I was supposed to save you... I was supposed to save you..."
And then—he laughed.
A sharp, piercing sound that silenced the room.
It wasn't joy. It wasn't relief. It was madness.
Dante lifted his head, blood coating his face like war paint, and laughed louder.
"You..." he said, looking at Michael through blurred eyes and trembling lips. "You said he was going to kill me..."
His voice cracked, thunderous with disbelief and fury.
"You said he was evil. That he wanted to hurt me..."
He stood, clutching Leon's lifeless body, then slowly laid him down on the cold ground like a sleeping child.
"You don't know what you've done..."
He pointed at Michael. "That hand you're so proud of? That hand was about to kill me. He stopped you. He saved me..."
Dante took a step forward, eyes wild with grief. "HE SAVED ME! And now he's gone. Because of you."
He looked up at the sky, eyes hollow. Then down at the ground, whispering to something beneath it.
"What should I do now?" he asked no one. "What's left for me?"
Michael blinked, confused. "Big brother... are you okay?"
Dante turned his gaze on him slowly. His expression was unreadable, but his voice was ice.
"I'm just trying to find a reason... a single reason... not to turn this entire planet to ash."
He took another step forward.
"But I can't find one."
And in that moment, the Void Force—the parasitic entity of emotion, rage, sorrow—awakened.
It responded not to commands, but to feeling. It bled from his skin in black smoke, crackling with energy. But this time, it didn't give him power.
It fed.
It began to devour his body, his flesh, his mind—like a serpent consuming its master. His skin cracked and peeled in black veins. Blood oozed from his eyes. His very soul was unraveling, atom by atom.
Dante didn't care.
"Let it eat me," he muttered.
Michael stepped forward. "Big brother... please don't cry. I saved you. Aren't you happy?"
Dante looked up.
And he moved.
In one flash—one heartbeat—Michael's smile faded.
Dante's hand wrapped around his wrist.
And then—
CRACK
Michael screamed.
His arm—the same arm still holding Leon's heart—was gone.
Torn from his body so fast, so violently, even time seemed to stop.
Michael fell to his knees, screaming in pain as blood sprayed like a fountain. Dante stared at him—expressionless, empty, ruined.
"You don't get to touch him," Dante whispered, voice like thunder buried in snow. "You don't ever touch him again."
He dropped the severed arm at Michael's feet.
The heart—Leon's heart—still pulsed once in the severed hand before finally falling still.
And then...
All was silent.
Except for Dante.
Who stood, a living corpse held together by sorrow and vengeance, staring down at his baby brother.
And behind him, Leon's body rested peacefully.
Eyes closed.
Tears—whose, no one would ever know—still glistening on his cheeks.
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