[ Third person POV ]
"Anyway, Dante, how do you want to play this? Your call," Mark said, casual but with an edge of seriousness underneath it.
Dante didn't answer right away. He let the silence stretch a beat longer than it needed to, mostly because he knew it would needle Mark a little, and turned the actual question over in his head. Storming the asylum solo and clearing it room by room was the simple option, and the boring one. He could have the whole building swept clean before sunrise without breaking a sweat, and there'd be nothing left to talk about afterward.
"Where's the fun in that, though," he said, mostly to himself.
"Can you get me onto the show's crew?" he asked. "Security. A bodyguard, something like that."
"I can try. Won't be quick. Why — what's the angle?"
"If I'm the one keeping those idiots breathing, I charge more for it. And they make decent bait while I'm at it."
Mark exhaled through his nose, the kind of sound that meant he wasn't surprised but wished he could be. "That's dark, even for you."
"It's efficient. There's a difference."
"I'll get you in. Give it a few days, use the time to get ready. I'll call when it's set."
"Sounds good," Dante said. "But once I'm in, I want this one solo. Figured I'd actually enjoy this job for once instead of babysitting you through it."
"Sure, sure. Talk later." The line went dead before Dante could get another word in.
He pulled the phone back and looked at it like it had personally wronged him. "Didn't even let me say bye. Rude." He tossed it back onto the cradle without looking. It landed dead center, the same way it always did.
-———————————
[ First person POV ]
Already got a job lined up. Didn't see that coming.
I dragged a hand back through my hair, already cycling through wardrobe options without meaning to. If Mark's read on the place held up, I wasn't dealing with one or two stray spirits, I was walking into something with numbers attached to it. Whatever I wore needed to pull double duty: enough range of motion to fight in, enough presence to make sure nobody mistook me for one of the crew.
The office didn't have much to look at. A desk, a chair, a stack of boxes I still hadn't gotten around to unpacking, and a window that doubled as the only mirror I'd bothered to set up so far. I caught my reflection in it and started pacing the length of the room without registering I'd started.
I'm already babysitting a TV crew dumb enough to think a popping radiator is a ghost. Might as well look the part while I'm at it.
I tapped my chin, running through the catalogue, leather held up better against claws than most fabrics, but a longcoat would catch on a blade mid-draw if I wasn't careful with the cut. I stopped in front of the window glass instead and just looked.
It still caught me off guard sometimes, seeing this face look back instead of the one I'd worn for twenty-eight years before it. Not a bad feeling. Just a reminder. I thought about the white void, the deal made there, the choice that put me in this body and under this name.
The smirk came on its own.
-———————————
**[ Flashback ]**
In a realm of endless white, a lone man stood amid the emptiness. Black hair. Sharp green eyes behind a pair of glasses. An unremarkable build under a plain T-shirt and loose pants, the kind of guy you'd pass on the street without a second look, except maybe for the hint of muscle suggesting there was more under the shirt than the shirt let on.
He turned in place, taking in a horizon that didn't exist. No walls. No floor he could actually see, though he was clearly standing on something solid enough to hold his weight. No sound. No source for the light, either, it simply was, even, flat, coming from every direction at once and none of them. He'd been staring at it long enough that his eyes had started to ache from the lack of anything to focus on.
Then he looked up, and his stomach dropped.
[ Image ]
Something was there. Not a shape so much as a presence the white had been bending around the entire time without him noticing, a figure built on a scale that made the word *tall* useless as a description. Its head had no face. Not in any sense he understood the word: smooth, dark, faintly reflective, the way obsidian looks polished into a shape and left blank where the features should sit. The rest of it, shoulders, chest, arms thick enough to look load-bearing in a structural sense, wasn't skin so much as a window into something. Deep indigo bled into violet across what should have been muscle, threaded through with points of light that didn't flicker so much as breathe, slow and steady, the way real stars did if a person watched long enough to notice the rhythm. Clouds of color moved beneath the surface, distinct from the points of light, drifting the way smoke drifts in still air. Fainter lines of brightness traced where tendon and muscle would sit on a human body, more structural than decorative, the way light catches the seams of something built rather than grown.
There was no shadow under it. No sound from it moving, even as it shifted its weight. Looking directly at it felt the way staring too long at the sun felt, except cold instead of bright, and somehow worse for it.
His mouth went dry. He took a slow breath, steadied himself as best a person could under the circumstances, and spoke anyway.
"Who... are you?"
The voice didn't come from a mouth it didn't have. It simply was, all around him, deep enough to feel in his chest before it registered as sound.
"I have been known by many names, across more ages than you'd believe," it said. "For now, you may call me Dream."
Something in that vast presence sharpened, the way a person's attention sharpens when they pick someone specific out of a crowd.
"And you. Nathan Thomas."
It wasn't a question. He hadn't said his name. The being simply already had it, the way a person already has their own reflection.
"So, Dream. What am I doing here? Where even *is* here?" His voice came out steadier than he expected, though his hands hadn't gotten the memo; they wouldn't stop shaking. "Last thing I remember, I was falling asleep in my own bed. Now I'm standing in front of whatever you are."
"This place has no name," Dream said. "It existed before the first thing capable of asking what it was called, and it will exist after the last. Its purpose has not changed in all that time. It is where souls come to be sent where they belong, what your kind calls Heaven, or Hell."
The light beneath its skin pulsed once, slow, like something breathing.
"Ordinarily I would judge you and move you along without delay. You are an exception."
"I'm supposed to be here?"
"You have a choice in front of you," Dream said. "And if you accept what I'm about to offer, I will give you what you need to see it through."
"What choice, exactly?"
"Two paths," it said. "The first: pass on, into what you call Heaven. You lived honestly. You hurt no one who didn't deserve it. You've earned the rest."
A pause settled before it continued.
"The second: aid me. There is a world that needs cleaning out, overrun by things that prey on the people living there. Accept, and I will grant you three wishes, along with the means to survive what's waiting for you."
He stared at it for a long moment, processing.
"You want me to go fight demons. Evil spirits. God knows what else." He let out a short, disbelieving breath. "I'm not built for that. I watch anime. I play video games. I've seen every horror movie ever made and I still sleep with a light on half the time. I'm lazy, man. Cautious, sure. But mostly lazy."
He dragged a hand down his face, already running the math even as he said it.
"And say I do survive it, what do I actually get out of it? Because you're talking about things that could keep me alive just to make dying look like a mercy. If I'm putting what's left of my existence on the line, I need a better reason than 'a giant space guy asked nicely.'"
He met what should have been its eyes, voice steadying as the question landed.
"So what's in it for me?"
Dream said nothing for a long moment. Then, without sound or visible effort, its massive frame folded inward, not shrinking so much as compressing, the way a held breath finally lets go, until it stood at his height, close enough now to register as a person instead of a weather event.
[ Image ]
It was still faceless. Still wrapped in that same shifting starfield instead of skin. But now it wore a suit. Black, cut close, the kind of tailoring that implied a measurement taken to the millimeter rather than off a rack, notched lapels, a single button, no visible seams catching the light the way cheaper fabric would. There was no logic to a being like this wearing clothing at all, and somehow that made the suit feel more deliberate rather than less, a choice rather than a habit. Smaller didn't make it less. If anything, standing this close sharpened the wrongness of it.
It began to circle him, hands folded behind its back, head tilted at an angle that suggested curiosity despite having nothing resembling eyes to be curious with. Each step landed without sound. After a full lap, it stopped directly in front of him again.
"What is it you truly want, Nathan?" Its tone had shifted, quieter, almost amused. "I understand the scope of what I'm asking. You'd be sent into a world thick with demons, spirits, and things with no equivalent where you came from. The danger is real. The cost, potentially, is everything you are. It's only reasonable you'd want something in return."
It tilted its head further.
"Succeed, and I will grant you a wish without limit. Ask for anything. All I require is that you accept, and that you live long enough to deliver."
He went quiet, turning it over. Already, somewhere underneath the fear, a colder part of his mind had started doing the actual work, sorting the offer the way a person sorts a contract before signing it, looking for the load-bearing clauses. Then he looked it dead in the place where its eyes should have been.
"If I'm doing this, I need the right tools. The right ability. The knowledge to actually survive it, not just stall the inevitable." His jaw tightened. "I already died once. Not doing it again, especially not somewhere worse than where I started."
Dream inclined its head, slow and deliberate.
"Reasonable. Once your three wishes are made, and once you leave this place, I will provide what you need to carry them out."
The light beneath its skin shifted again, settling.
"Now then, Nathan Thomas. Do you accept?"
He held the silence a moment longer than he needed to, not from doubt, but because some decisions deserved at least that much weight, then nodded, firm.
"Yes. I accept."
"Good." The word carried something almost like satisfaction. Dream raised a hand, three fingers extended, the stars across its knuckles brightening like something gathering charge.
"Your first wish."
He thought it through fast, the calculation already half-finished before Dream had stopped speaking. He wasn't interested in spending a decade clawing his way up the slow way, learning one discipline at a time while something with claws closed the distance. The first wish needed to remove the bottleneck entirely.
"I want a passive ability," he said. "Instant, complete mastery of anything related to combat. Every weapon, every martial art — anything I've ever seen in a show, a game, a movie, real or fictional. No training curve. I already know it the second I need it."
"Done." One finger folded down.
"Second wish."
"The Essence of Blank."
Something in Dream's posture shifted, interest, maybe, or the closest version of it available to a being shaped like a galaxy. "A fascinating choice. Limitless potential, boundless growth, ambitious, for a first move." A second finger folded.
"Done. Your third and final wish."
He let a small, confident smile show, the first real one since he'd arrived. "Essence of the Archmage."
A low sound rolled out of Dream, something close to a chuckle, if thunder could find the humor in something. "You continue to surprise me. That isn't a common occurrence." The last finger lowered. "Done. One thing remains before you go."
"Which is?"
Dream snapped its fingers. A shape appeared between them, a mannequin, roughly the height and build of an adult man, made from a single continuous material with no visible joints or seams. Matte black, the surface absorbing light rather than reflecting it, smooth enough that it could have passed for stone if stone came without texture. No face. No fingers, even just the suggestion of hands, blocked out and unfinished, like a sculpture stopped halfway through.
[ Image ]
"This will be your body," Dream said, circling it the way it had circled him minutes earlier. "You may change the shape of it, the race of it, anything you like. But if you intend to hunt what's waiting for you, it needs to be built for that, something that doesn't tire the way flesh tires, doesn't break the way flesh breaks. Something whose only function is to learn, to fight, and to keep alive the people who can't do either for themselves."
It stopped beside the blank form, hands folding behind its back again.
"How do you want it built? What race? What shape? Choose carefully, once your soul goes into this, there's no version of you that exists outside it again. This is permanent."
He studied the mannequin for a long moment before answering, walking a slow circle around it the way Dream had walked one around him.
"High Human," he said. "I don't want to stop being human. I'd rather be more of one."
The mannequin began to change. The transition didn't look like growth so much as construction, skin tone settling in first, even and uniform across the whole surface at once rather than spreading from a point; eyes forming next, followed by the structural framework of a nose, a mouth, ears, each detail resolving the way an image sharpens when a lens finally finds focus. The build thickened in stages, mass distributing itself across the frame with mechanical precision rather than the gradual asymmetry of actual human growth. The expression stayed blank throughout. Waiting.
By now, very little about this place could still surprise him. He'd stopped trying to make sense of it an hour, or maybe a lifetime ago.
"So I just describe what I want, and it changes?"
"That's right," Dream said. "This body belongs to you. What you make of it isn't my concern to weigh in on. If you wanted to walk out of here as a demon yourself, that would be your choice, not mine. My only stake in this is that you finish what you're being sent to do."
"Appreciate that." He meant it. There was something almost decent about a being this far beyond him still bothering to ask instead of deciding for him.
He turned back to the mannequin, already running through changes in his head, sorting them the way he'd sorted the wishes, not by what would look impressive, but by what would actually hold up against something trying to kill him.
Hours passed in that white nowhere, there was no sun to mark them by, just his own sense of time stretching thin and snapping back as he worked through one adjustment after another, checking proportions, testing the balance of mass across the frame the way an engineer tests load distribution before signing off on a build.
"There," he said finally, low and satisfied, looking over what he'd made.
The result didn't just resemble Dante Sparda, it exceeded the reference in every measurable way. Same snow-white hair, same piercing blue eyes, but taller through the frame by several inches, broader at the shoulder, every muscle group built with the kind of deliberate, almost architectural precision that only happens when the person designing it has unlimited time and zero biological constraints to work around. Proportionate in every sense, down to details he didn't feel the need to dwell on. The whole thing read as engineered rather than grown, purpose-built, the way a weapon is purpose-built, every line of it serving function before it served appearance.
He turned back to Dream.
"Got any ideas for a last name? Already settled on Dante for the first. No clue what to put after it."
Dream considered the question with what looked, for the first time, like genuine surprise that it had been asked at all.
"Solomon," it said, after a pause. "Demons remember that name poorly. He commanded them once, bent them to his will and put them to work building a temple, of all things. Most of what still crawls around down there would rather not hear it again."
"Solomon." He tested the weight of it out loud. "Dante Solomon." It fit better than expected. "Alright. From here on, Nathan Thomas doesn't exist anymore. I'm Dante Solomon."
"Then this is goodbye, I suppose," Dante said, offering a hand.
Dream took it. "For now. To you, this might be a decade before we speak again. Centuries, even. To me, it may only be a season." Something almost like warmth crept into its tone. "So no, not goodbye. A 'see you later,' at best. Good luck, Dante Solomon. The Slayer. The Doom of All Evil."
Dante huffed a laugh and cringed a bit. "Slayer. Doom of All Evil. You're really going for the cheesiest possible send-off, huh." He shook the offered hand anyway, firm. "Not gonna lie, though, 'Slayer' has a nice ring to it."
"What happens now?" he asked, letting go.
"This," Dream said, resting a hand against the side of Dante's head, "is where it begins."
Everything went black.
He woke up on a mattress in a house that had clearly stood empty for years. The ceiling carried a wide water stain spreading out from one corner, the plaster beneath it soft enough to flake at a touch. A dresser sat against the far wall, one drawer hanging open and empty. The air held the flat, particular smell of mildew that settles into a building once nobody's left to air it out. He looked down at himself first. New hands. New frame. He knew before he even reached the mirror that the transformation had taken.
The mirror itself was cracked clean across in a single line from corner to corner, but it still did the job. He stood in front of it for a long moment, just looking.
"Dang," he muttered. "I look amazing."
He was relieved, if nothing else, that Dream had spared him the indignity of starting over as a literal infant, the body in the glass was solidly in its twenties, mature, already in its prime. He was dressed, somehow, in a long red leather jacket, the kind cut for movement rather than warmth, paired with black leather pants, a fitted black shirt, and boots built with reinforced soles. Functional clothing, nothing decorative about the construction of it, though the overall effect read as deliberate anyway.
"Looks good," he admitted to the empty room. Then, sobering: "Alright. Admiring myself isn't getting anything done."
He counted off the list in his head. Study everything, every scrap of knowledge he now had access to, every memory of every fight scene and weapon and spell he'd ever half-paid attention to in his old life, all of it suddenly real and waiting to be sorted through. Get stronger, not gym-strong, not even professional-athlete-strong, but strong enough that nothing short of a mountain falling on him would be a problem.
"This isn't gonna be easy," he said, and laughed under his breath anyway.
**[ Flashback ends ]**
-——————————-
"Been a long time since then," he said, eyes back on his current reflection, the one earned, not granted. "Time really does move."
Twenty-some years had passed since that first morning in the abandoned house. He'd spent the first ten of them right there, never leaving, running drills against his own limits until those limits stopped existing in any practical sense. Hand-to-hand first, every style the wish had handed him laid out like a reference library, and he worked through them systematically rather than picking favorites, cataloguing which approaches solved which problems instead of committing to one identity. Weapons came after that, bladed, blunt, firearms, things that didn't have a proper category. Then the magic, slower going at first despite the wish behind it, because raw access to knowledge wasn't the same as the discipline to apply it cleanly. He cross-referenced everything against everything else, building the kind of internal map most people never get the chance to build because they don't have the luxury of a decade alone in an empty house with nothing else competing for their attention.
The phone had been the real turning point, found buried in a box near the end of that first year, sleek, plainly years ahead of anything on shelves anywhere in the world, loaded with enough supernatural knowledge to fill a library no human had ever been allowed into. He used it to study everything systematically: spirits, demons, vampires, werewolves, the long list of things that fed on people in the dark, cross-indexed by weakness, behavior pattern, and the specific conditions under which each one could actually be killed rather than just repelled. He didn't stop at understanding what they were. He wanted to know exactly how they broke.
The second decade had been about practice instead of theory. He left the house and went looking for the kind of experience no amount of reading could substitute for, real fights, real consequences, real people who needed help and didn't much care how he'd gotten the skills to give it. He prepared for everything he could imagine, up to and including the kind of catastrophe that wouldn't leave anything behind to bury. By the time those ten years were up, he wasn't just dangerous. He was finished, built in isolation, tested in the field, with nothing soft left in him and a body that had simply stopped registering most of what should have hurt.
Mark had come into the picture somewhere in there, a guy on the wrong end of a vengeful spirit's grudge, the kind of case that didn't take Dante more than an afternoon to close out from start to finish. What started as a job turned into something closer to a friendship neither of them had planned on. Dante stayed guarded about most of what he actually was, but let enough slip to keep Mark curious instead of suspicious. Back then, Mark was unremarkable in the most ordinary way possible, steady job, no girlfriend, a handful of friends he kept up with more out of habit than anything else.
They started traveling together not long after. It was Mark, somewhere on one of those long drives, who floated the idea that turned into everything: make it a business. Something real. People dealing with hauntings and possessions and things with teeth in the dark needed somewhere to go that wasn't a priest running on more faith than results. Dante hadn't been planning anything that organized, left to his own devices, he'd have kept taking jobs one at a time, indefinitely, without ever building toward anything larger, but the idea stuck with him anyway.
So they ran with it. And here he was.
[ Image ]
"Maybe something darker this time," he said, eyeing himself in the window glass. "Black reads scarier. Cooler, too, if we're being honest." A faint smirk. "I already look good. I want to look like something that shouldn't exist."
He turned away from the mirror and went looking for the outfit that would do it — something built to be intimidating and stylish in equal measure, the kind of look that didn't just say he was dangerous, but made sure nothing in that asylum forgot it.
==============
I hope you enjoyed it.
Now do me a favor… send me those power stones!
[ End of the Chapter ]