The ink was still wet on the front page.
A boy's face stared back—young, hollow-eyed, bruised but eerily calm. Even the grainy black-and-white couldn't blur the void in his gaze. Beneath it, the headline screamed:
"PRODIGY OR PSYCHOPATH? SON OF PHILANTHROPIST ADOLF VOSS BUTCHERS FAMILY, SENTENCED TO 10 YEARS."
In the prison intake ward, the newspaper passed from hand to hand like scripture. Some inmates laughed. Others squinted with suspicion. A few simply looked away.
"He's just a kid," one muttered, thumbing a rosary made of chipped plastic. "What kind of kid does that?"
But kids don't paint dining rooms with jugular spray.Kids don't stare down a courtroom like they've already lived a hundred lifetimes.And kids sure as hell don't walk into a maximum-security facility like they belong there.
When Vale stepped into Cell B-17, he didn't flinch.Didn't blink.Didn't ask what came next.
He just stood there, bare feet cold against the concrete, shoulders relaxed, eyes scanning the shadows.
The cell was small. Four walls and a slot for food. No light except the dim buzz of a dying bulb overhead. The air smelled of rust, mold, and something older—like sweat soaked into stone.
But the shadows in that room weren't empty.They were waiting for him.
And they didn't wait long.
That night, the wolves came.
There were no words. No footsteps. Just the smell—sweat, bleach, and the sour reek of old rage—and then the hands.
They gripped him like meat. Calloused palms and tattooed forearms pressing him to the concrete, each finger a vice. The cold slap of skin on skin echoed in the dark. Someone giggled. Someone grunted. The cell reeked of anticipation.
A knee jammed into Vale's spine, pinning him like an animal. He couldn't move. Could barely breathe. His face pressed sideways against the floor, his cheek scraping against grime and dried blood.
Then a voice—slimy, deliberate—slithered near his ear.
"Little Devil," the man whispered. "We're just here to write your name."
The man straddling his chest had teeth like graveyard stones. Yellow. Cracked. His breath smelled like vinegar and rot. In his hand, a plastic spoon—the tip melted, sharpened by fire and hate.
Then came the first cut.
It wasn't clean. The spoon had no edge. It wasn't meant to slice—it was meant to dig. Tear. Scrape. The man pressed hard, and skin gave way with a sound like wet paper ripping.
Vale didn't scream.
He counted the strokes.
One… two… three…
The pain wasn't even the worst part. It was slow. Mocking. The spoon dragged across his ribs like a nail across old wood, drawing thin lines of blood that beaded and pooled, soaking into the waistband of his thin prison pants.
Four… five…
Someone laughed again. High-pitched. Nervous.
"Make it deeper, Caskey. The Warden wants to see it from the tower," another muttered, voice thick with sick amusement.
Vale's eyes didn't blink. His breathing was shallow, but his mind—
His mind was counting.
Seven… eight…
Then, something worse than pain.
Fingers. Greasy. Wandering.
A hand slid beneath his waistband.
"You tight, Devil?" the one behind him whispered, voice low and trembling with anticipation. "You ever felt a real man before?"
That was when the counting stopped.
A shift in the air.
Something old cracked in Vale's chest. Not bone. Not heart.
A silence. Still as death.
Vale jerked—just once—and the man holding his legs yelped as Vale's heel slammed into his nose, cartilage crunching with a wet snap. Blood sprayed.
The grip loosened.
Vale twisted—savage, desperate—and smashed his head backward into the kneecapper's jaw. Teeth flew. The man fell.
He was free.
But not safe.
The one with the spoon—Caskey—tried to stab again, screaming now, frothing, furious. But Vale was already moving.
He bit Caskey's wrist. Hard. Until blood and skin peeled away between his teeth. The spoon clattered. The man shrieked.
Vale tackled him. Mounted him.
And then—
He didn't stop.
He pounded Caskey's face with the base of his palm. Again. And again. And again. Blood sprayed like oil, thick and red and gurgling from the man's mouth. Teeth shattered. Bone gave way.
He kept going.
He didn't stop when Caskey stopped screaming.
He didn't stop when the man beneath him stopped twitching.
He didn't stop even when the cell was soaked in red.
Only when his fists slowed—when the sound of flesh hitting flesh faded into wet slaps and nothingness—did he rise.
Naked from the waist down. Blood and grime streaking his torso.
He stood over Caskey's corpse like a forgotten god—forgotten, yes, but awake.
The other two crawled to the walls, shaking, praying, pissing themselves.
Vale turned to them. Spoke softly.
"If you touch me again… I won't stop with your face."
He walked past them barefoot, dragging the spoon behind him. It scratched a line in the floor as he went. He didn't look back.
The guards came. They took him to solitary.
But they didn't touch him.
No one touched him again for a long time..
He stared at the wall, his face pale, his lips parted as though he might cry.
But he didn't.
Instead, the voice came.
Soft. Patient. Familiar.
"They want you broken," it whispered inside his head. "Let them build you instead."
The voice was not new.It had whispered to him during the trial.It had hummed through the silence of the courtroom.It had laughed when the gavel fell.
Dante.
That was its name. Or maybe just the name Vale had given it.
That night, with his back stuck to the floor by dried blood, Vale pressed his forehead to the concrete. Pain throbbed from his chest like a second heartbeat, but it grounded him.
It reminded him he was still alive.
His breath shook. His nails dug into his palms.And he remembered.
His mother's scream—sharp, ragged, unfinished.His father's body crumpling like paper.The warmth of blood that wasn't his.And the silence after. The kind of silence that echoes forever.
They'd buried the truth.
The courts. The lawyers. The media.Every lie was polished, rehearsed, expensive.And they worked.
The world forgot the truth.
But he didn't.
Vale curled tighter, jaw clenched, breath shallow.
"I swear…" he whispered, voice hoarse.
The rats paused, ears twitching. Even the flickering light stilled.
"Every hand that touched my family…"
"Every lie that buried me…"
"Every guard who laughed while I bled…"
The darkness pressed closer.
"I'll find you."
"I'll break you."
"And when I'm done…"
He opened his eyes. They didn't blink.They didn't waver.They just stared forward, calm and endless.
"Even the devil will beg for mercy."
From somewhere deeper than the cell, deeper than the prison itself, came the faintest echo of laughter.
"You're a child of rage, Vale. But rage won't save you. It will only bleed you dry."
Vale didn't respond.He didn't need to.
But the weight of it settled over him, heavy and suffocating. The mocking voice wasn't just Dante anymore. It was the prison, the world, the lies, and the power that crushed him. They wanted him broken, yes. But in this place, broken things are rebuilt. Turned into tools.
And Vale was going to be the sharpest tool of them all.
He let out a breath, low and even. There was a faint tremor in his chest, but he stilled it. His body was a battlefield, each injury a step closer to his metamorphosis.
They had hurt him. But they would regret it.
And in this darkness,
That was the night the Ashborn was born.
Not with a cry.
But with a vow.