[The Western District: A Sepulchral Hell]
Draka was dying, but in the Western District, she did not scream. Instead, she exhaled a funereal whisper beneath a sky that was not black, but a suffocating, bruised grey—a celestial shroud draped heavily over the city's spires. The news of the "Purge" launched by King Baron had preceded us like a wildfire through dry hay; the royal orders intercepted by Skyro's spies had been explicit to the point of depravity: "Open every door, slaughter every suspect, and leave not one stone atop another until the blood of the 'Ghost' and his syndicate clogs the very sewers."
We had expected to find streets teeming with armored battalions, to hear the desperate shrieks of the hunted, and to see the orange glow of arson consuming the slums. But the reality that greeted us as we crossed the threshold of the Western Province was far more terrifying than open warfare. It was the silence. A physical, leaden silence, so absolute that the muffled thud of my own heartbeat echoed in my ears like the rhythmic pounding of distant war drums. I walked at the vanguard, my boots making no sound upon the rain-slicked asphalt. Behind me, Dan strode with a revolting swagger, inhaling the stagnant air with a predatory intoxication, as if he were catching the scent of a lavish banquet. Ryo, meanwhile, clutched his black shroud with a trembling hand, his golden eyes scanning the sidewalks with a primal, instinctive dread.
From a distance, the residential neighborhoods looked hauntingly "normal." The streetlamps still flickered with a warm glow; the heavy wooden doors stood open in a gesture of eerie welcome, and the windows emitted a soft, amber light that suggested a stable, domestic life. But there was no movement. No voices. Only the ghosts of light dancing over sidewalks stained with viscous, dark patches that were certainly not rainwater.
[The First House: The Banquet of the Marionette]
We stopped before an elegant two-story residence, its arched wooden door, adorned with ancient carvings, swung wide like a black maw waiting to swallow prey in the dark. I signaled for Ryo to stay behind me and slowly unsheathed the blade of "Sin." I felt the purple shimmer of the sword pulse against my palm, a warning against any ambush from Baron's troops. But what we found inside was not a military trap.
We entered the living room. The lights were fully ablaze, and the stone fireplace in the corner still held the final, dying embers of a fire. At the massive circular table in the center sat a "family." The father presided at the head, the mother beside him, and two young children—a boy and a girl—sat opposite them. They were all dressed in vibrant, clean clothes, as if posing for a formal portrait. Their hands were placed upon the table with exquisite politeness, their fingers curled around tea cups at mathematically perfect angles.
But the heads... there were no heads. There were only dark, hollowed-out "voids" atop the severed necks, stitched with steel wires so fine they were nearly invisible to the naked eye. Yet, my augmented sight perceived them as a demonic spider's web. The bodies had been "taxidermied" while alive, sewn into the chairs with transparent threads that pulled the skin taut, making it look as fragile as ancient papyrus. As for the missing faces, they had been replaced by mounds of dried roses and wild jasmine, stuffed into the open throats to emit a scent that was a sickening blend of sweet perfume and rotting death.
[Human Collapse: The King's Trauma]
Ryo collapsed to his knees, his golden blade striking the floor with a mournful ring. This was not a battle he knew how to fight, nor was it a war whose rules he understood; this was pure, unadulterated madness that transcended the comprehension of a youth raised in the shadows of the forest. A muffled, choked sound escaped him before he doubled over, vomiting onto the cold marble floor. His massive frame, which I had always taken pride in, trembled like a leaf in a gale. His golden eyes overflowed with a bewilderment and horror he had not even tasted in our bloodiest spars.
"Master... Ray..." Ryo whispered, his voice jagged and broken as he looked with despair at the small corpse of the child. The boy's hand had been stitched with micro-wires to force him to hold a piece of cake covered in dried blood. "What kind of monster... what devil could see 'art' in this?"
I looked at the corpses with a stagnant gaze. The rage in my chest was no longer a raging fire demanding swift vengeance; it had transformed into a permafrost, freezing my veins and granting me a lethal, clinical detachment. I felt the Eye of Sin throb beneath my eyelid with a terrifying heat, analyzing the trajectories of the red and white threads that bound the family together in a symphony of systematic agony. Jan was not merely killing them; he was "re-authoring" their humanity to serve his own sadistic aesthetic.
Suddenly, Dan erupted into laughter. It was a short, sharp laugh, overflowing with genuine delight and a sickly euphoria. "By the gods, Ray! Look at this surgical precision! He stitched the tendons of the fingers to hold the cup at an angle that defies gravity... this isn't common murder, you fool, this is high art that transcends human limits! Jan... you have surpassed every expectation, you magnificent lunatic!"
My Red Eye flared with a pure hatred toward Dan. I felt a visceral urge to drive my sword through his throat to silence that laughter. "Shut your mouth, Dan, or I will make your head the next piece stitched into this filthy gallery." Dan stopped laughing abruptly, wiping a tear of amusement from his eye with a provocative shrug. "You don't appreciate beauty, Ray. You are a warrior living in a box, and that is why you will always be a mere 'tool' lacking the artistic soul possessed by the Asura."
[The Path of Horror: The Street of Pendulums]
We exited that house of roses and death only to discover that what we had seen was merely the "appetizer" for Jan's grand banquet. The main thoroughfare of the Western District had been entirely transformed into what could only be described as the "Street of Pendulums." Every house on both sides had its doors wide open, lights blazing as if the city were preparing for a festival. Through every window, one could see a completed scene of a family or a group of friends stitched into surreal poses; one was "reading" a book without a head, another "played" a violin with strings made from the nerves of his own severed arm.
But the true horror that paralyzed Ryo was found in the trees and the poles lining the road. The heads of the inhabitants—thousands of them—were not discarded in the dirt. They were suspended by transparent steel wires over the streets. They hung from the branches of trees and from power lines like "flesh bells," swaying slowly with the cold gusts of wind, colliding with one another to produce soft, thudding sounds that inspired madness.
Every taxidermied corpse inside the houses "held" a wire that extended from its severed hand, passing through the window to connect to the owner's head hanging outside. The scene was a complex geographical map of steel wire, clotted blood, and faces frozen in a mask of eternal terror. As for Baron's soldiers sent to "cleanse" the area? We found them in the dark corners, their skin expertly flayed and fashioned into a long, red "carpet" that stretched for hundreds of meters toward the center of the district.
I told myself with profound bitterness: Asura did not protect the kingdom from the 'Ghost'... Asura didn't care about Baron at all... they were merely organizing the priorities of slaughter, choosing who to kill first to become part of their canvas.
We walked with heavy steps, the sound of our feet on the "carpet of skin" sending shivers through the soul. Ryo was no longer vomiting; his body had turned dry from the shock, but he was silent—a terrifying silence that resembled the stillness before a star explodes. The boyish features I had tried so hard to preserve had vanished, replaced by the countenance of a King who had seen the end of the world and decided to become the end itself. His silver hair billowed wildly in the wind, and his golden eyes settled into a state of lethal coldness I had never seen in him.
"Master Ray," Ryo said, his voice deep and dark, unrecognizable from the one I knew. It carried a rasp from the abyss. "When we reach Jan... when I put my hands on his throat... do not kill him quickly. Please. I want him to taste with every cell in his body the texture of every wire he placed in these innocents. I want to make of him a 'doll' that neither dies nor lives."
I looked at him with the piercing sight of "Sin." Ryo was growing, but he was not growing toward the throne Arthur had dreamed of; he was growing in a dark, sepulchral direction. I realized then that vengeance was no longer a goal—it had become the only fuel that could move a King in a world ruled by the likes of Jan, Baron, and Dan.
[The Butcher's Den: The Skull of the Moon]
After hours of bitter walking through this "Museum of Death," we finally reached the Royal Headquarters of the Western District. It was a massive stone structure that defied the laws of architecture, surrounded by high, spiked walls. It was topped by a massive, white circular dome that resembled a giant skull staring at the heavens under the pale moonlight.
The place here was as quiet as a grave recently unearthed. There was no visible guard, no sound of soldiers, not even the bark of a dog. Only the sound of the hanging bodies outside knocking against each other, and the creaking of doors moved by the wind.
We stood before the massive bronze gates, which were coated in a thick layer of viscous, black blood, as if the building itself were a living entity bleeding from within. Dan stepped forward with wide strides, cracking his knuckles with a savage longing he could not hide. "I feel his unstable pulse... he is inside, putting the final touches on his grand opus. His mana reeeks of steel and gore."
I looked at Ryo, who slowly unsheathed his golden blade, its light illuminating his hardened features. Then I looked at Dan, the devil walking beside me, and then at the dark headquarters that housed the Third Seat. "Remember... we are here to hunt Jan, not to fall into his traps of moving threads. Nero and Skyro are waiting for news of the Third Head for the revolution to truly ignite in Draka."
I tightened my grip on the hilt of "Sin," feeling the energy flow through my veins with a suppressed fury that threatened to burst my arteries. "Ryo... stay behind me, and watch your back for the transparent wires. Dan... try not to kill us with a 'technical error' amidst your madness."
We pushed the heavy gates together, the sound of their rusted iron hinges resembling the final scream of a victim being slaughtered with a blunt blade. We entered the "Butcher's Den," where Jan resided, and where the bloodiest and most grotesque chapter of Draka's history was about to be written.