The air shifted before I even turned.
Like a heartbeat skipped inside reality.
When I faced him, the room seemed smaller—crushed under a pressure that hadn't been there a moment ago.
He stood in silence.
Hood drawn. Cloak unmoving. No smoke. No embers. Just heat.
Not the kind that warmed. The kind that accused.
Dante.
The Devil.
"I could smell your sins from far away," he whispered, voice soft as soot. "You've been burning long before I arrived."
I instinctively moved in front of Aaliah's containment unit, placing myself between her and him.
"You're too late," I said, eyes locked on his. "Apauex is gone. Whatever plan you had—it's over."
His head tilted slightly, like he was studying something that amused him.
"Gone?" he repeated. "No. He served his function. As will I."
My fists clenched as I drew the Nexus into my limbs. The energy sparked, crawling up my arms like coiled lightning waiting to strike.
"You're not walking out of here."
"I never planned to." His tone was almost wistful. "But you might."
He paused, then added, "Depending on what you confess."
"Confess?"
"Guilt is a door," he said, stepping closer. "You're the one holding the key."
"I'm not here for sermons."
"No," he said calmly. "You're here for absolution. But it doesn't work that way."
Then the flames began.
Not with sound.
With memory.
Heat rose—not on my skin, but behind my eyes. A slow burn curling through my chest.
The time I abandoned Booker.
The moment I let the Nexus take over.
The silence after Velo Hawk's death.
Chase's voice, broken, asking if I was still me.
I staggered slightly.
Dante's eyes didn't glow, but they saw everything.
"I don't punish," he whispered. "I illuminate."
He raised a hand, and from it sprouted a blade—not of steel, but of hellfire. It glowed violet and black, shaped like a mirror cracked down the middle.
I saw my reflection in it.
Older.
Hollow-eyed.
Alone.
"You think I'm afraid of you?" I snarled.
"No," he said softly. "You're afraid of what you'll be after her."
I lunged.
The room detonated in energy as I struck, the Nexus surging with raw force. The impact shattered the floor—but he wasn't there.
He had melted, reformed behind me in silence.
I spun, lashing out again with a burst of negative force.
He caught it.
With a single palm.
The energy distorted—twisted into the shape of a face. My face. Screaming. It burned into ash and drifted away.
"You can't fight me," he said. "Not while dragging that much guilt behind you."
"You don't get to define me."
"I don't have to," he murmured. "You've done it for me."
Hellfire bled from the cracks in the floor, coiling up the walls, filling the chamber with smoke that wasn't smoke—just memory. The lights flickered, then died, and the only illumination came from the burning pulse of Aaliah's containment.
"She's not yours to save," Dante said, circling me. "She was never yours."
"You don't know her."
"I don't need to. I know you. I know what you're willing to lose just to feel right."
"Shut up."
"She believed in you," he continued, "and now she's a battery. Do you think that's an accident? Do you think you weren't part of the cost?"
I roared and unleashed another blast. This one bent the air itself.
Dante stepped through it.
"You're not fighting me," he said. "You're fighting yourself."
He conjured a new figure in flame.
Booker.
Burned. Bleeding. Reaching out.
I froze.
"Don't," I whispered.
"You still see him that way, don't you?" Dante asked gently. "A wound that keeps proving you care."
I blinked. The illusion didn't move—it waited. Accusing. Judging.
I struck it hard. The fire shattered.
And the room grew hotter.
Dante raised his hand. "You carry your regrets like armor," he said, "but they were always kindling."
I dropped to one knee. My breath came shallow. My skin was glowing.
Not with Nexus energy.
With hellfire.
His fire.
It wrapped around me, clinging to every decision I hadn't made. Every word I hadn't said. Every person I'd failed.
I gritted my teeth.
"You think you've broken me," I said through clenched jaw. "But you've got it backward."
Dante's head tilted again. "Do I?"
"You're not feeding on my guilt," I said. "You're choking on it."
He paused.
Then smiled faintly.
"Good," he said. "That means it's working."
Then I heard a whisper behind me.
"Why didn't you save me?"
I turned.
Aaliah.
Not real. Burning. Weeping.
Her voice cracked with pain. "Why did you let them use me?"
I struck it—reflexively. Too fast.
And hated myself for it.
The illusion vanished, but the damage remained. Inside me.
"You act fast when you're afraid," Dante said. "But never smart."
I looked up at him.
"Say one more thing—"
"Say what?" he interrupted. "That you failed her? That you're no savior, just a symptom? That the Nexus didn't change you, it revealed you?"
The fire rose.
I screamed—and let go.
Not of hope.
Of certainty.
I stopped trying to win and started to exist.
The Nexus inside me howled—and answered. Energy blasted outward in a pulse that broke the flaming floor, tearing open space. Dante stumbled back, robes flickering.
The fire—his fire—hesitated.
"You broke the loop," he said softly. "You chose the unknown."
I rose to my feet, burned, bruised—but grounded.
"You came here to feed," I said. "But I'm done giving."
Dante watched me quietly.
"Do you know what that means?" he asked.
"I do."
"You'll never stop burning."
"Then I'll burn for something."
He raised his blade. The flame surged behind him.
"This part always ends the same," he whispered.
I stepped forward, Nexus light crackling down my arms.
"Not this version."
Then I charged.
And the fire screamed with us.
Our clash sent waves rippling through the chamber, reality bending around the collision. I struck with raw force—chaos wrapped in instinct—and he met it with precision, with conviction sharpened into flame. Our powers tore at each other like two truths that couldn't coexist.
"You think uncertainty makes you dangerous?" he muttered as we exchanged blows. "It makes you vulnerable."
"I've been vulnerable since the beginning," I snapped, driving a fist of compressed gravity toward his chest.
He deflected with a flare of empathic flame shaped like me—hollow-eyed, cracked, burning.
"I only show you what's already inside," he said, voice low and sharp.
"And I only destroy what doesn't belong," I countered, and shattered the construct with a backhand of spatial distortion.
He stumbled slightly, and for the first time, his cloak smoldered—not reshaping, but fraying.
Still, he didn't yell. Didn't panic.
"You're unstable," he said. "And the Nexus is tired of waiting."
"You're wrong," I said, eyes glowing now, the ground beneath my feet fracturing with each breath. "I'm just not playing your game anymore."
He lowered his weapon slightly.
"Interesting," he murmured. "You're starting to sound like us."
"I'm nothing like you."
"Not yet," he said. "But the right fire doesn't consume—it refines."
He took one slow step back.
Then another.
The air cooled—not because the heat had vanished, but because he had chosen to stop feeding it.
He flicked his hand once, and the remaining flames spiraled inward into a single ember that hovered between us.
It pulsed.
One heartbeat.
Then it winked out.
Dante turned toward the far wall—toward nothing.
A tear in space opened in front of him, shaped like a keyhole.
He paused at its edge and said, without turning, "You'll burn again, Kaleb. Not because of what you are. But because of what you can't let go."
"Don't come back," I warned.
"Don't fall asleep," he replied. "Not in a place like this."
Then he vanished through the breach, and the room fell silent.
No flames.
No illusions.
Just my breath.
Ragged. Shallow.
Real.
My knees gave out first. My body followed.
I collapsed onto the scorched tile, chest heaving, the Nexus flickering inside me like a faulty star.
My hands wouldn't stop shaking.
Not from fear.
From release.
From everything I'd held back to survive this far.
I looked up—just once—at the containment glass behind me.
No movement.
No voice.
No return.
Aaliah was still silent.
Still trapped.
Still unreachable.
And I didn't know why.
I closed my eyes as the darkness swallowed the edges of my vision.
Somewhere deep inside the Nexus, something turned.
Watching.
Waiting.