NOVEL WEB Chapter 8: CHAPTER 7 : “When Dreams Are Sharpened Like Blades”
⚜️ Saga 0: The Ash Years
🕯 Location: Unknown Dream Layer — Soul Nexus Realm
📅 Year: 2006 (Perception-layered)
📌 Cast: Wanda Maximoff, Jean Grey, [Echo: Dante Sparda]
🔮 System State: Dual Anchor Ricochet — Conflict Echelon Triggered
🛡 Status: LOVE / LOYALTY / OBLIVION
The dream began in silence.
Not peace. Not rest. Just… the pressure.
The kind that builds behind your sternum before something shatters.
Wanda stood in the kitchen again — barefoot against oakwood floors bathed in golden light. Cinnamon laced the air, mingling with drifting snow from windows never closed. Her breath fanned gently across her lips, and her heart mistook this for memory.
A hollow version of peace.
Somewhere nearby, a child laughed.
A memory she hadn't lived — yet missed like blood you've bled but never seen.
But today… there was something wrong.
Her hand drifted toward the wooden counter—and paused.
The photo frame had changed.
Where once was her hand in Dante's, mid-laugh before a window basked in dusklight… was now a flickering image. Blurred. Glitching. Her place melting into another—a woman with wildfire-red hair and gold-lit eyes. Fire trailing like breath behind her.
Jean Grey.
The light overhead blinked—out.
Then another.
Then twenty.
The child's laugh stilled like a heartbeat between dimensions.
A whisper slid sideways into her skull:
"You thought he'd stay yours because you saw the dream first."
Wanda turned as a door yawned open from nowhere, and there Jean stood.
No fire.
No armor.
Just a long white sleep-dress draped like a shroud, her feet bare against dreamdust. Her hair shimmered like a comet's tail. Despite the softness of her voice, crackling Phoenix energy shimmered faintly across her skin.
Her smile was ice.
"You don't belong here," Wanda said. Voice tight, Brittle.
"I was here before you," Jean replied.
And it wasn't arrogance.
It was certainty.
[Sin System Alert ⚠️]
Multi-Anchor Convergence Event
➤ Shared Dream Layer Established: SOUL-BIND NEXUS
➤ Emotional Conflict Detected: Anchor vs Flamebound Threads
❖ Status: Psychic-Dominance Engagement — Tier II, Regulated Only by Central Anchor (Dante)
RESOLUTION CANNOT OCCUR WITHOUT ESCALATION
▫▫▫
The walls shattered.
Reality peeled away like burnt parchment. The synthetic home collapsed into starlit silence, revealing the Astral Void beneath—a space where memory shaped terrain and belief sculpted matter.
Platforms solidified under their feet—formed from charred wedding rings, scorched cradles, melted photographs, haloed swords left embedded in stone.
Places that did not exist… but had emotionally happened.
A battlefield of fragments.
Jean stepped forward first. Around her shimmered visions stitched by tragedy:
—Her kissing Dante at the edge of Armageddon.
—Dante holding her hand .
—His voice in her mind: "Even stars don't scare me when you burn beside me."
These weren't projections.
These were claimed echoes.
Wanda's eyes didn't flinch. Her memories surged to meet the assault.
—Her child calling him Papa.
—His lips against her temple, whispering in Sokovian during a lullaby.
—Dante picking up a paint-stained child's drawing, smiling softly like a devil trying to deserve a heaven.
Their memories detonated into collision.
Both women stepped into offense armed not with magic—but feeling.
𝘌𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘴.
▫▫▫
Jean struck first. Not with flame—but memory invasion.
She threaded her voice into Wanda's mind:
"He told me love wasn't earned—it was endured. And he endured me."
Wanda reeled back—the Phoenix-force flaring in her mindscape—as alternate pasts blitzed through her skull. Jean's hands on Dante's face. His murmurs. His surrender.
"No," Wanda hissed. "You don't get to edit my love down to fiction."
She struck back.
Golden light erupted behind her, and with it came dreamshards seared into fists—
Dante reaching for her after battle.
Holding Wanda beneath snowfall.
Whispering, "I could burn it all down if it means keeping you warm."
The memory reverberated.
The void cracked.
[Sin System Surge Detected]
Emotional Weapons Engaged – Dream Thread Warfare Initiated
Wanda Maximoff: Obsession 51.2%
Jean Grey: Obsession 27.9%
Rival Bond Entanglement: Escalation Level–Moderate
WARNING: Anchor Thread Stability Under External Pressure
Their aura-glow clashed like bleeding gods.
Every word was a weapon. Every step, an accusation.
Jean's breath hit like frost-melt flame.
"You think he wants safety?" she hissed. "He's not a husband. He's a storm with a spine."
Wanda snarled, "And yet I'm the only one who never tried to clip his wings."
▫▫▫
Then—
Everything STILLED.
Floating amid their battle
—⸺a single island of silence.
Dante.
Not the real him. But a Dream-form.
Suspended between their colliding memories. Floating like smoke carved into a man—coat heavy, shoulders slouched as if disbelief sat too long in his ribs.
Red eyes looked up—
Not blank. But sad.
"None of this was supposed to end like this," Dream-Dante said quietly.
Wanda's rage faltered.
Jean's mask cracked.
"Then why are we fighting?" Wanda whispered.
Jean looked down. Her fingers trembled.
"Because I keep losing him."
Dream-Dante exhaled, but didn't vanish.
Instead, he reached out—not to one. But to both.
For one second… their dream-threads pulsed the same color.
Hope.
Then diverged. Each snapped to its bearer like soul-tethered blades.
▫▫▫
[Sin System Status Omega]
❖ Wanda Maximoff Sync: 51.2%
❖ Jean Grey Sync: 27.9%
❖ Rival Anchor Tension: High
🌀 Condition: Shared Anchor Overload – Resolution Postponed
🎯 Forecast: Thread Convergence Imminent
📍 Synchronization Node Unstable – Awaiting Exhale
The battlefield receded.
The kitchen returned—but broken, lights flickering, air cold.
Wanda stood with tears in her lashes.
Jean was gone.
But the smell of fire remained.
And the photo on the counter?
Still burned.
Still glitched.
Still undecided.
_____