Chapter 2: His Reckoning

"I sense the summons of the end upon this threshold," Dante's voice a melodic cadence of calm amidst chaos, pierced the silence like a dagger, it's resonance laden with a weight beyond mortal comprehension.

Henry's eyes widened in disbelief. Though the man hasn't even seen this stranger on his doorstep yet his breath was caught within the ridges of his throat. 

"Who- who are you?" Henry's voice quivering like a fragile thread woven with desperation and somewhat disbelief.

The man hasn't even raised his hand to open the door because of the unknown fear he felt deep within. But somehow what he feared the most in this moment, came to pass right in front of him as the door to his humble abode creaked whilst it slowly began opening up on it's own.

What is happening? Why is this happening? 

Has the rumored ghosts in the abandoned valleys nearby has come to get him tonight? Will they make it painful for him? All these thoughts raced rampant in the poor man's head even before the door was fully open and he could even see what stood at his threshold tonight. 

Finally, what felt like an eternity of croaking and creaking, the old wooden panel came to a stop and what was outside could now be seen inside.

No words and no movements took place from either of them but somehow the spectral figure beheld in the eyes of this poor startled man, was now stood inside in the middle of the room and the doors to the only way out was long shut.

Dante's gaze, a swirling vortex of unfathomable depths, met Henry's dazed eyes, piercing through the mortal's confusions and uncertainties.

"I am but a harbinger of endings," Dante finally replied to the man's earlier asked inquiry.

Before Henry could further inquire the purpose of his visit, his voice was heard once more within the man's head, "And you, earth dweller, have beckoned me forth tonight." 

If his presence, his mere aura was not enough to give meaning to the nature of his visit, his words made it somewhat clear to the mortal as to who he was and what he was here for.

Henry. It was Henry who he was here for.

But the question that came to his mind was, he didn't do it yet. Then why was the angel of death already here to take him away?

Was he really the death's angel?

Little did he know, this man was far from what Henry could even fathom. 

Mortal Henry's heart quickened, a terrifying tremor coursing through his veins as realization dawned upon him like the first ray of sunshine. "No... I didn't mean..." his words falter mid sentence. 

Henry who, tonight, was so sure and adamant to end this misery he once called life, was now thinking if what the aura coming from this being in front of him was anything to go by, he perhaps should have suffered a little longer and waited for his end to come naturally then hanging himself in his house with no words left behind.

"Intents matters little in the grand design, dear mortal," Dante murmured with voice a lamentation woven with sorrows. "The end comes for all, regardless of intent or desire... Only, you have asked for it yourself."

With that heard, in the blink of an eye, Dante was stood within an inch's distance of Henry. If his presence was suffusing the room with an aura of solemnity before, it was now getting difficult for Henry to breathe.

The man recoiled and stepped back with his breath coming out in puffs as the cold in the room began to rise and the temperatures drop.

"Please... I- I change my mind." Henry kept faltering with his words and pleas came out with stutters. "Please show some mercy. I no longer wish to die."

"Once their mortal eyes have seen me, they rarely ever say anything else..."

"Please..." this mortal's plea also hung in the air, like many before him, with a desperate supplication to the indifferent forces that governed existence. 

Yet Dante remained unmoved, his gaze unyielding as he advanced, his power clear and immutable.

In a moment that stretched into eternity, Dante's hand was on Henry's cheek, it's touch a benediction and a curse, enough to stagnant the quiverings of the poor mortal as if he was in shock.

"As your final wish, you shall have a choice. Do you repent or concede?" 

When Dante heard no replies from the mortal, he decided to further his words, "Those who wish to repent for their deed with death, it is made excruciating for them. And those who concede their life, it is given with mercy. You are only given this choice because I see no sins in your ledger, mortal."

"C- Concede. I concede my life..." though trembling violently from within, Henry knew from the finality in those anomalous orbs, it was his time to go now, for He has come for him.

And with a swift and merciful motion, he released the man from the shackles of his suffering and letting the darkness embracing him in it's cold, unyielding embrace.

As the man's soul slipped silently into the abyss, Dante stood vigil. As always, He and he alone is the witness to the inexorable march of time and judgment. 

In the quiet aftermath of the night, he lingered, a solitary figure against the backdrop of eternity, his purpose unspoken yet undeniable. Upon poor Henry's threshold, one last time a figure stood, a sentinel of endings and testament of the immutable cycle of life and death. 

Silently he wondered an inquiry in his mind; something he should have voiced before he made the man become one with the oblivion. Dante wanted to know, what year in time of a mortal was this?