RAGE OF THE FALLEN: A DEVIL HUNTER STORY
PART 1: REVERIE & FURY
CHAPTER 4: CANTO IN RUINS
DISCLAIMER: This is a non-profit fan work based on Devil May Cry, a franchise owned by Capcom. While this story stays close to the game's canon and may resemble official material, it is entirely unofficial. All original DMC characters, settings, and core concepts belong to Capcom. However, all new characters, weapons, items, and concepts introduced in this story are my own original creations. This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Capcom or Adi Shankar in any way.
TRIGGER WARNING: This fanfiction contains themes of grief, emotional trauma, and loss. Please proceed with care—especially if you're in a vulnerable space. Your well-being comes first. It's okay to pause, skip, or come back when you're ready.
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INT. LIMINAL CORRIDOR — NIGHT
FADE IN:
Blackness gives way to dim light—the corridor stretches out before Dante, no longer the same stone hall behind him.
The architecture warps. The walls breathe faintly, like stone and sinew pressed into uneasy truce. Shadows slither along the seams where wall meets floor. The air is still—but thick, like stepping into an old cathedral that remembers every whisper.
On both sides of the corridor: doors.
Each is different. Some ornate, some plain. Some rotted. Some regal. One hums faintly. Another weeps softly.
Dante pauses.
The Tears of Erzulie glows faintly—no longer directional. It pulses now like a heartbeat, steady but unnerving.
His arm shifts slightly, weight balanced. The katar hums faintly against his wrist. Shoulders squared. Watchful.
DANTE:
(under his breath)
"…What the hell is this?"
He takes a cautious step forward. The corridor stretches with him—almost imperceptibly—too long for where he started. His boots don’t echo here. The space swallows sound.
One door creaks open on its own—a sliver of candlelight spills out.
Another door… breathes. In. Out.
Dante doesn’t stop. His grip on the Starpiercer tightens.
The further he walks, the more the corridor seems to change—like it’s not a place, but a layer, stretched thin over something alive.
Finally—
From one of the doors ahead—old oak, carved with flaking vines and a tarnished brass handle—a voice filters out, soft and brittle like crumbling parchment.
MILTON (O.S.):
“…Into this wild abyss, the womb of Nature… and perhaps her grave…”
Dante freezes. The voice coils through the air, familiar—not from memory, but from something he found. Something etched where it shouldn’t have been.
The door clicks. Just once.
Then swings open slowly, heavy on old hinges.
Candlelight flickers inside—low, warm, deceivingly calm.
Dante steps toward it, jaw set, the faint pulse of the amulet still tapping at his chest like a warning.
He crosses the threshold.
INT. THE STUDY – NIGHT
A massive gothic study, lit by flickering candelabras and shafts of silver moonlight pouring through lancet windows. Dust and shadow cling to every crevice. The atmosphere is heavy—like the air hasn’t been disturbed in centuries.
Floor-to-ceiling bookcases. An antique globe. A heavy oak desk from the 1600s sits just off-center—scratched but intact.
Seated at it: John Milton.
Pale, gaunt, with shoulder-length white hair, a sharp aquiline nose, dark heavy robes. Eyes clouded, unfocused—but still moving. His quill scratches across parchment as though guided by memory or force. He is blind, yet writes with precision.
Dante steps in, slowly.
CAMERA: Side pan tracking Dante from his left as he enters the study and moves along the room’s edge, cautious.
The room seems still—bookcases, an antique globe, an ornate oak desk at the far end. A man sits writing, his posture elegant but strained, one side angled unnaturally toward a wall shrouded in shadow.
Dante moves in carefully, shifting his angle—just enough to glimpse the far side of the man’s body.
Then—
A jolt of wrongness.
The left half of Milton’s torso is half-absorbed into the wall behind him. The stone twists into pulsing, semi-translucent flesh—reddish and glistening, textured like blistered skin. Veins pulse just beneath its surface. Here and there, faces sleep inside it, caught mid-scream or dream, eyes closed, some weeping blood and pus, others mouthing silently.
Milton’s other arm disappears into the mass—flesh fused to wall. The desk too—one leg sunken into the meat. Pages curl at the edges as if touched by breath.
CAMERA: Hold on Dante’s face—eyes narrowing, jaw tense.
Milton stops writing.
He slowly turns his head—toward Dante, though his cloudy eyes never quite lock.
MILTON:
(calm, placid)
“Ah… Son of the Legendary Dark Knight. Your father was a refined man—of poetry… and punishment.”
Dante raises a brow.
DANTE:
(dryly, scanning the room)
“Yeah? Hell of a reading list. Not sure this one made the cut.”
CAMERA: Quick sweep behind Dante’s shoulder.
His gaze lingers briefly on a crossbow mounted low between shelves near the antique globe. Not in full view—but enough to catch his attention.
Milton gestures to a high-backed 15th-century carved chair—worn, regal, and heavy. Like something from an inquisitor’s court.
MILTON:
“Sit. We have… all the time in the world.”
DANTE:
(firm)
“I don’t."
(beat)
"I’m looking for someone. A woman—goes by Lady. You know where she is—so let’s skip the poetry.”
MILTON:
“But this is poetry, Son of Sparda. Every moment… every memory… a verse in an epic you cannot rewrite.”
CAMERA: Mid-shot on Dante. Behind him, just over his right shoulder, the chair sits near the tall lancet window. Quiet. Waiting. Ten feet of cold stone stretch between it and Milton’s desk.
Suddenly—the heavy chair groans to life, lurching sideways across the stone floor with a deep, scraping screech.
Before Dante can react, an unseen force slams into his chest. Deliberate.
It pushes him down into the seat. His arms strain against invisible weight.
The chair doesn’t stop. It jerks hard to the side, rotates sharply, then lunges toward the desk—stone screeching under its weight as it’s dragged forward with sudden force. Dante’s boots scrape against the floor. His shoulders lock. No time to brace. No room to fight back.
As it closes in, roots burst from the chair’s legs, carving deep gouges into the floor. The carved wood along the back twists and writhes—vines uncoiling fast, lashing around his arms, ankles, chest, and upper arms. His hands remain free, but the rest of him is locked down—gripped in a vice of living wood and pressure.
Living things. Soft like flesh. Tough as iron.
The vines cinch tight—wrapping his torso now. His breath hitches.
DANTE:
(grits his teeth)
“You gotta be kidding me—”
Milton doesn’t move. His quill scratches once more—then stops.
A faint smile creeps across his face. Too calm. Too knowing.
MILTON:
(contemplative, voice low)
“The womb is a remarkable creation…
Life is nurtured in it.
But no one ever stops to think—
it is also a grave.
The first place you begin…
may also be the first place you end.”
CAMERA: Wide overhead shot.
Now we see it in full: Dante and Milton sit side-by-side, inches apart—Milton’s body half-devoured by the wall of flesh.
The wall of flesh behind Milton pulses—slow and rhythmic, like a sleeping beast. A low hum begins to vibrate the room, just at the edge of hearing.
The faces in the wall twitch—lips mouthing words in silence. One eye cracks open, just for a second.
Milton dips his quill again. Writing resumes.
MILTON:
(softly, almost reverently)
“The mind is its own place…
and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell…
or a Hell of Heaven.”
CAMERA: Slow push in on Milton’s face—half-lost in the wall. His left cheek is now stretched thin, tethered to the flesh, his expression curiously serene.
He turns slightly toward Dante—though his blind eyes remain hazy, unfocused.
MILTON:
(voice rising subtly, unnatural cadence building)
“And the mind… oh, the mind… A kingdom and a crypt. It makes heaven. It makes hell. It makes lies taste like memory. Betrayal? No, Dante."
(beat)
"The mind betrays more often than the people around you ever will.”
Dante pulls against the vines—no give. His lips press into a hard line.
MILTON:
(smiling faintly)
“Tell me—do you truly ever trust yourself?”
A pause. The hum in the air deepens. A bass vibration crawls through the stone floor like distant thunder.
Milton barely reacts. He is still smiling.
MILTON:
“Do you know why Dante Alighieri wrote The Divine Comedy? And why your father loved it so much?”
As he speaks, his voice loses some of its gentility—the cadence twists, becomes sharper, too rhythmic, like a sermon unspooling into something darker.
CAMERA: Wide shot—Milton’s body is sinking.
The wall of flesh pulls at him now—tugging slowly, steadily. His left shoulder is already buried.
Veins from the wall latch to his arm like hungry roots.
MILTON:
(smiling faintly)
“To prove you could walk through Hell… and still outrun your transgressions."
(beat)
Because Sparda believed stories could rewrite fate, that if he named his sons after salvation… ”
(his voice lowers slightly)
“Maybe they’d never learn their power was made from the—”
(his tone drops here—warping, guttural, reverent… almost feral)
“ …filth of a forgotten war.”
The faces in the wall begin to stir.
Not screaming—but whispering, eyes flickering open, mouths forming soundless prayers or curses.
Milton’s smile widens. Too wide.
From deep in his throat, a wet, squelching laugh bubbles up—distorted, inhuman.
It gargles and clicks, like something dragging breath through pulped lungs.
Suddenly, the wall yanks hard—Milton’s spine twists unnaturally as the meat of the wall absorbs him up to the jaw.
His final eye rolls back as his face distorts, smiling even as it stretches and sinks into the mass.
The quill clatters to the floor.
The faces once asleep begin to move.
Blistered pustules along the fleshy surface inflate and rupture, revealing eyes, twisted mouths, or dripping, malformed limbs. They twitch, sniff, and lock onto Dante.
The chair vines pulse, tightening instinctively, but Dante’s shoulder shifts.
His hand is already at his side.
He fires off three rounds—each one hits a waking face square in the eye.
Black ichor sprays, but the wall doesn’t flinch—it twitches, and the damage closes like wet clay.
DANTE:
(low, irritated)
“Of course. Forgot this place doesn’t hand out unlimited ammo.”
With some effort, he twists his wrist just enough to reholster the pistol at his hip. Not smooth—but muscle memory makes it work.
His grip tightens around the katar. It ignites—energy flaring across the outer dial. Eight of the twelve glyphs glow.
Dante catches it this time. Realization hits.
DANTE:
(grim mutter)
“Damn… missed that earlier.”
The vine at his right arm snaps with a hiss—thick and sinewed, like cutting into something still alive.
He lunges—slower than expected.
A fractional lag, subtle—but he feels it. A pull in his back.
The dial now shows seven lights.
He carves through another vine coiled at his ankle.
A limb rips from the wall—fleshy, warped, clawed at the end—it swipes past his head.
The faces are moaning now—not in words, but in hungry, wet groans, sniffing and snapping, like newborns starved for movement.
Two more symbols vanish from the dial.
He feels it—the Devil Sword Dante pulling at his back, its weight returning, like the room itself wants to anchor him in place.
DANTE:
(strained, under his breath)
“This is getting harder by the second.”
He twists and slices the last vine wrapped around his arm.
The chair collapses behind him in splinters and tangled roots as he staggers to his feet—just in time to see the wall lunge inward, fleshy limbs slamming into the stone where he stood seconds before.
Dante pivots hard left, diving low—his shoulder slamming into the edge of a tall, dust-caked floor-to-ceiling bookcase. One of the shelves above him buckles with a dry snap.
As he shifts upright, something catches his eye—low, tucked in the shadows between the base of the bookcase, a toppled globe, and a cracked marble bust… the crossbow.
Its surface isn’t dusty. The etched metal glows faintly—like it’s been holding its breath.
He drives forward, slipping past a thrashing tendril, and yanks the weapon from its resting place.
A low hum blooms from its core as his fingers wrap around the grip—the weapon responds.
A thin needle jabs the base of his palm—quick, surgical.
A trace of blood vanishes into the weapon’s core.
The glyphs along the dial flicker—once.
The crossbow unfolds with a crisp metallic snap, limbs extending like drawn wings.
Its shape shifts subtly—rebalancing to his grip.
(SCREEN FREEZE — RED SEMI-OPAQUE BACKGROUND)
A rotating model of the crossbow appears — sleek, almost bone-like in frame, with etched alchemical glyphs running from grip to tip. The arms are folded back like bladed wings, elegant yet brutal. Twin dials, just beneath the core, rotate in opposite directions—one outer ring with twelve symbols, and a smaller tri-glyph inner dial, all glowing softly.
DESCRIPTION:
An alchemically engineered long-range weapon, forged during the forgotten war to hunt creatures that refused to die. Precise, silent, and devastating, The Covenant fires regenerative bolts formed from ambient matter and soul resonance—no physical ammo required. Its outer dial tracks energy output, depleting with each strike. The inner dial activates after a sustained attack chain, triggering Phantom Chain—a lethal, crowd-suppression technique designed to crush or rupture multiple targets at once.
Unlike brute force constructs, The Covenant rewards calculation: less volume, more precision.
The outer dial: fully lit. Twelve glyphs.
A translucent spear forms at the channeling groove—etched with faint alchemical lines, solidifying in a breath.
DANTE:
(low)
“Let’s see how you sing.”
Its surface convulses—blistered flesh swelling and splitting open.
Tendrils whip outward, fast and searching—each one laced with embedded human limbs: fingers twitching, jaws muttering silently, an eye here, a heel there—twisted in like someone wove bodies into the veins.
One slaps the ground beside Dante, dragging with it a half-formed ribcage, dangling from sinew.
Dante dives right. Rolls. Lands in a crouch.
He levels the crossbow, steady and low.
The bolt tears through the base of a tendril, where a disjointed arm sprouts—the whole limb spasms, then collapses into itself like tissue losing tension.
The dial flickers—still full. Barely touched.
Another tendril snakes forward—this one with a shoulder and head partially formed, the face still gnawing at air, eyes rolled white.
Dante fires. The bolt pierces the skull and anchors into the wall behind it.
The whole thing shudders, then slides down the surface, leaving a trail.
Tendrils lash outward—thick cords of flesh, twitching with bone shards, teeth, half-formed limbs.
Some drag fused torsos behind them like discarded cargo.
They slam into the stone floor, leaving wet, meaty craters.
Dante dodges clean, plants a knee, and fires—
A clean bolt to the center mass. One glyph dims.
Two more shots—through throat-flesh, through eye clusters.
Tendrils snap back, writhing. The wall buckles inward, reacting.
The outer dial holds strong. Only a few glyphs lost.
A pulse through the grip.
The crossbow vibrates—not violently, but deep.
Like something ancient waking up.
The inner dial completes a full rotation.
Three glyphs ignite—white-gold, searing and alive.
Something clicks—not sound, but certainty.
A signal, ancient and absolute.
(INNER DIAL FULL — PHANTOM CHAIN READY)
He doesn’t aim for the tendrils.
He aims for the core—a swollen, pulsing, vein-wrapped mass near the heart of the wall.
One spot—where all the tendrils converge.
The bolt screams through the air.
Mid-flight, it fractures—splitting cleanly into five radiant filaments, each one trailing alchemical glyphs that shift and rotate as they spin.
They strike in unison—anchoring into five critical points across the wall:
—an engorged eye socket,
—a half-skeletal face,
—a cluster of fused limbs,
—the gnashing jaw at a tendril’s root,
—and the mass of nerve endings at its core.
Phantom Chains whip outward from the centerpoint, snapping onto each embedded bolt like a net of living light.
The eye implodes, dragging part of the wall with it.
The skeletal face crumples inward, bone shattering.
The limb-cluster collapses like folding scaffolding.
The jaw detaches—slams across the chamber.
And the nerve core doesn’t just rupture—it unravels.
The chains recoil at once, tearing through the wall, pulling mass into mass.
The entire structure buckles inward.
Rib-like bone ridges collapse with a wet snap.
A deep, wet silence follows.
Then—the back wall splits open, as if something had been hiding behind a curtain made of meat.
Stone. Ancient. Vertical. Cracked.
A passageway. Leading upward.
Dante stands still, breath low, shoulders square.
The inner dial resets—three glyphs dim.
DANTE
(quietly, to the crossbow)
“Guess you’re sticking around.”
He steps forward. Toward the incline.
Just the sound of the crossbow folding slightly as it rests in his hand—alive, but at ease.
INT. FOYER CHAMBER — NIGHT
The narrow passage slopes gently upward before widening into a high chamber—foyer-like in shape, though faded with time.
The ceiling stretches above him in a tall vault.
Not ruined—just still. Untouched for too long.
Iron sconces line the curved walls, their flames long cold.
Dust hangs suspended in the air, drifting through a dull amber glow that seeps from hairline fractures in the stone high above.
Just stale air, old stone, and light that doesn’t flicker—like a place paused in time.
One straight ahead. Two flanking it to the sides.
Tall. Sealed. Stone-heavy.
Each carved with faded geometric patterns, half-consumed by time.
The floor beneath him is strewn with scattered parchment, disassembled tomes, cracked spines, and frayed scrolls.
Not wreckage from a battle—just decay from silence.
He passes a leaning lectern. Its legs are cracked, but still standing.
A dry page crunches underfoot.
One sheet—not fluttering, just resting on the ground near the edge of a toppled table—catches his eye.
He crouches. Picks it up.
The parchment is weathered but intact. Edges curled. Corners faintly singed. A crude drawing spans its center. Two opposing forces clash. One smaller—breaking. The other larger—pressing forward, unified and brutal. At the heart of the larger force: a banner raised high. The symbol atop it is imperfect—ink smeared, lines broken.
But he knows it. The same insignia carved into the Starpiercer. Etched into The Covenant. Burned into every path he’s followed since this started.
He turns the parchment, and catches faint glyphs near the lower border—unfamiliar, too faded to translate, but unmistakable in shape.
He exhales once. Quiet. Grounded.
DANTE:
(low, under his breath)
“Forgotten war…”
The parchment bends in his hand. He hesitates, then folds it once and tucks it into his coat.
DANTE:
(quiet, to himself)
“Might be useful later.”
He shifts his stance—something solid catches the edge of his boot. He looks down.
Half-buried beneath parchment and scroll fragments, a worn leather sheath lies crooked in the dust. Long. Broad.
Its surface cracked from age, but the inner lining glints faintly—alchemically reinforced.
Dante crouches, brushes it off.
Fits the Starpiercer in—a snug, perfect lock. The blade seats like it remembers.
DANTE:
(quiet, nodding once)
“That’s more like it.”
He hooks it to his belt with one fluid motion.
The three doors remain ahead. Silent. Tall. Waiting.
Dante steps forward slowly, eyes sweeping left to right.
The left door: slightly misaligned in its frame. A thin coat of dust clings to the edges, untouched. The center: pristine. No cracks. No damage.
Something catches. A shift in angle. A flicker—light glancing off a groove at just the right angle.
There it is—barely etched into the upper third of the door. A shape almost lost to time. A triangle enclosed in a ring. A single line cutting clean through.
He stares at it. The lines are faint, aged, nearly erased.
But he knows that shape. Etched into Starpiercer and The Covenant. Raised high on the battle banner in the drawing he just pocketed.
DANTE:
(quiet)
“There you are.”
He reaches out, pressing his palm to the door’s cold surface. A moment of stillness.
Then—a mechanical click. Soft. Deep inside the wall.
The door doesn’t swing open. It rises. Stone grinds against stone, steady and slow, as the slab lifts into the arch above.
Beyond it—no room. No stairs. Just a narrow stretch of corridor, lit faintly by blue-gold lines beneath the stone. Maybe twenty paces.
Then—nothing. A void. Darkness spreads at the far end like an ink spill, wide and absolute.
He draws his pistols. Checks the mags. Swaps them. Last two. One each. No more reloads.
Starpiercer pulses low at his side. Nearly full charge.
The Covenant hums—fully charged. Glyphs steady.
He steps forward, cautious.
The corridor narrows as he moves.
The walls pulse faintly with blue-gold threads—the Bastille’s veil resonance.
But the deeper he goes, the dimmer they become—until even those traces fade behind him.
The light doesn’t flicker.
His boots make no sound now.
He stops just short of the edge.
The Covenant remains steady in his grip.
CAMERA: Wide shot from inside the void —Dante silhouetted at the threshold. Alone. Small. Unshaken.
CAMERA: Mid-shot, side view —We track him in profile as he takes a few more paces. He stops, the dark waiting just inches ahead.
CAMERA: Close-up on Dante’s face —jaw tight, eyes locked ahead. The blue-gold glow behind him fades into black.
DANTE:
(quiet, hard)
“You wanna break me? Try harder.”
He steps forward—into the dark.
FLASH — a ripple of distortion.
Perriot Malice. A warped grin. There. Then gone.
DANTE:
(Off-screen, unsettled)
“…Nell?”
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