Dante and Jophiel passed through the grand gates of Saint Andrew Hospital, located in the very heart of Duraand.
Here, humans afflicted by the disease of corruption were treated, or at least, that's what people were led to believe if they still clung to hope.
Corruption often manifested through progressive blindness, devouring the senses and slowly pulling the victim into a world of shadows.
Yet as Dante walked calmly through the corridors beside Jophiel.
He could not help but notice how much the world had changed after decades of brutal struggle.
Now, they attempted to "save" the bearers, even the Awakened ones, if not cure them.
They locked them up, educated them... and in the end, forcibly conscripted them into the army, all under the polished lie of rehabilitation.
In the past, things had been simpler and far crueler, the corrupted were executed on sight, sometimes burned alive during public raids.
Fear dictated justice—because corruption, unlike the powers of light, knew no mercy.
At the reception desk, after long negotiations with secretaries, they were handed special suits.
Dante eyed the rigid, narrow garment with a hint of amusementt.
It resembled a hazmat suit used in nuclear incidents, except for the small crystal embedded at the wrist, housing a pearl of dazzling white.
A recent invention, supposedly blessed by light, intended to absorb the corrupted emanations temporarily.
— "Pathetic." Dante thought as he pulled on the suit with a grimace, stifling a chuckle.
He, who could absorb the energy of a black meteorite with bare hands without so much as flinching, found such a device almost insulting.
Silently, he congratulated himself on his own superiority, savoring a fleeting taste of arrogant pride he rarely allowed himself to display.
The duo crossed several wings until they reached a secluded section where "irreversible" patients were kept.
The rooms were numbered, without decorations, stripped of any trace of humanity.
When they finally stopped before one of them, Dante immediately felt an unusual tension coil inside him.
Behind that door was Annabelle. His mother. Or rather, what remained of her.
Upon entering, he saw a woman seated on a bed far too large for her frail frame.
Her once brown hair was now dull and matted; her skin, pale to the point of blending with the sheets.
But it was her eyes that struck him, two pitch-black voids, devoid of any spark of life.
— "How strange... I've never seen anything like it." He said to himself.
She seemed exhausted, worn down to the edges of existence.
As the door clicked softly shut behind them, Annabelle turned her head, tilting her ear.
— "Who's there ?" she asked in a hoarse, broken voice.
Jophiel immediately stepped forward, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder—a clumsy, tender gesture.
— "It's me, Mom. It's Jophiel," she answered with a smile Annabelle would never see. "I'm sorry I couldn't bring you any apple today."
She gave a slight, almost imperceptible smile, but her face tensed as she sensed another presence.
— "Don't worry about that, you work hard because of me." She frowned, growing wary. "You brought a friend with you ?"
Before Jophiel could respond, Dante felt an old, bitter tightness seize his chest.
He knew what it meant. Even blind, even hollowed out by illness, a mother could always recognize her child... and yet, she did not recognize him.
Worse still, she sensed something strange. Jophiel, visibly flustered, rushed to answer.
— "It's Dante, Mom... It's... it's Dante. He wanted to come to tell you some news."
A heavy silence fell, as if the name had plummeted into a bottomless pit.
Annabelle slowly nodded but said nothing more. Yet Dante could read the truth in her muteness.
She knew. He knew. Maybe she couldn't put it into words, but her maternal instinct had sounded an alarm, something inside Dante had changed beyond recognition.
A faint, bittersweet smile touched Dante's lips.
He stepped forward slowly, taking his mother's frail hand in his own, and the moment they touched, he understood immediately that something was horribly wrong.
The corruption inside her wasn't natural. It was deliberate.
The circulation of corrupted energy in his body is irregular compared to those exposed to dark energy.
— "There is only one option..."
Some black-hearted souls, for a handful of gold, willingly infected other through mutated animals.
Gently pulling up Annabelle's sleeve, Dante revealed a hideous bite mark — a rat bite — poorly healed.
— "They didn't think to treat the bite properly, they must have thought she also had bubonic plague."
His crimson eyes gleamed with tightly-reined fury.
He could feel his aura slipping free despite his efforts, an icy, sinister mist leaking from him.
Jophiel behind him kept shaking without knowing why.
— "Why I feel anxious ?" She wondered, staring at her trembling hand.
At that precise moment, the pearls attached to their wrists began flashing frantically, detecting the surge of corrupted energy Dante had unknowingly unleashed.
Realizing his mistake, he exhaled sharply in annoyance.
He had let his presence slip free too easily, saturating the crystals designed to neutralize minor leaks.
A feat, perhaps—but an unnecessary risk.
— "I should be more careful... My nexus is unstable."
Moments later, alerted nurses rushed down the hallway, pushing carts stacked with fresh medicine and replacement pearls.
— "We ask you to leave please." The nurse pushing the trolley request politely but coldly.
The nurses threw wary glances at Dante as they passed, whispering nervously among themselves.
— "This young man gives off a strange aura..."
— "Is this her son...?"
He simply returned their stares with an icy look, before turning his head away, disinterested.
— "If I had adapted my Nexus I could have absorbed her curse. I'm not good enough..."
Without another word, he and Jophiel exited the room, closing the door quietly behind them, leaving Annabelle to slip once again into the illusion of a peace she had long since lost.
— "It's a shame you couldn't even tell him the good news." Said Jophiel with a sigh.
Jophiel had a sad and tense expression, she didn't dare to glance at Dante because he gave off such bad vibes.
She had seen him angry for a long time, but this time he was really scary.
Dante said nothing. He didn't have to. But in his mind, a single thought burned :
He would find the ones who had done this. And he would erase them. One by one.