The female ghoul—Kamishiro Rize—stood naked in her voluptuous body, lifting her slender arms high above her head. Her slightly raised face and parted lips allowed the warm blood, pouring down like water from a faucet, to spill entirely onto her pink tongue.
"Delicious."
Clutching a mass of already-deformed internal organs tightly in her hand, she squeezed out large amounts of blood, letting it spill over her fair skin. Blood splashed across every part of her body. As she drank deeply of the sweet blood, Rize let out an intoxicated sigh of enjoyment.
In the flickering, dimly lit environment, Rize—soaked head to toe in blood—gave off a bizarre, chilling beauty, both bloody and eerie.
Crack!
Step…
Suddenly, a crisp sound of bones snapping echoed through the darkness. Along with it came slow, heavy footsteps, steadily approaching Rize as she dined.
"So it seems the title of 'Binge Eater'…"
A deep, magnetic, and steady-sounding voice emerged from the darkness. As the owner of the voice gradually stepped out of the shadows and stopped beneath the dim lights, the evaluation was completed.
"…is not an exaggeration after all."
By the faint, colorful lights, one could see a man dressed in a pristine white suit, with a dark red shirt, a green vest, a purple tie patterned with red flowers, and green leather shoes.
He had short blond hair and a thick, heavyset build.
He wore a white hockey mask identical to the one worn by the killer Jason Voorhees in the horror film Friday the 13th.
After finishing his words, this "Jason" stared through the eyeholes of the hockey mask with bloodshot, crazed eyes, fixating on the graceful back before him as though it were a toy.
He was also a ghoul—a well-known one at that—and because he wore a hockey mask, he was known within the CCG as "Jason."
Thud…
A head dropped to the ground. In the increasingly tense and oppressive atmosphere, the sound shattered the silence.
Rize stopped her frenzied feeding. No expression could be seen on her face, but her bloodstained red lips parted as she spoke.
"I hate being disturbed while I'm eating."
Her tone was calm and indifferent. As she stopped feeding, Rize slowly stood up.
Jason slightly raised his chin as he watched her rise. The violence suppressed deep within him was on the verge of bursting out.
"Don't you know who I am?"
"I know. You're just a boring man who enjoys torturing others."
With her back turned to Jason—whose body was now steadily emitting a violent aura—Rize remained unhurried and composed.
"Hehe…" Hearing her assessment of him, Jason let out a dark chuckle and stated his purpose for coming. "Orders came down from above. I'm to capture you alive. But before that…"
Crack!
Jason raised one hand and pressed his thumb against his index finger, producing a crisp popping sound from his bones. Beneath the mask, the bloodshot veins in his eyes spread further as he tore away his facade of calm.
"One or two fingers, three or four arms, five or six legs."
Clang—
A heavy pair of iron pincers slammed into his palm, colliding with the iron finger guards he wore, producing a sharp sound. His eyes—filled with a desire for cruelty—locked onto Rize as he spoke savagely.
"Giving all of those to me wouldn't be a problem, would it?"
"A huge body, yet you like little toys. Do you enjoy playing house that much? How cute."
There was no mockery in Rize's tone, yet it was more than enough to make the target uncomfortable. She leisurely judged his behavior as childish—and even adorable.
To a grown man, however, it sounded like a piercing humiliation.
Whoosh!
With physical abilities far surpassing humans, ghouls could perform unbelievable feats. The instant after Rize finished speaking, Jason flashed behind her.
"Let me take everything from you!"
His body and words overlapped beside her ear. In that instant, his back erupted with a grotesque, rough-surfaced rinkaku, extending like vicious tentacles as they stabbed violently toward Rize.
Boom!
The ground shattered under the impact, dense smoke and dust exploding outward. Jason frowned—he felt no sensation of impact.
"Hm?"
At that moment of hesitation, a fierce counterattack arrived.
A blood-red rinkaku—sleeker and more refined than Jason's—pierced straight through the glass of a massive aquarium, shattering it instantly.
Crash—!
In an instant, all the water inside the huge tank poured down beside Jason. He instinctively raised his arms to block the rushing torrent.
As a result, his vision was obscured, preventing him from acting. Rize's agile figure glanced down at him from above before flashing away and vanishing.
"Give it back to me… that's mine…"
Recovering his senses, Jason lowered his head slightly and stared in disbelief. The iron pincers he used specifically for torture were gone, and his prey had escaped, sending him into a rage.
"Give it back to me!!"
At the highest point of the building, Rize looked down boredly at the bloodstained pincers in her hand, listening to his impotent roar with utter disdain.
Spending even a moment indulging a man like this was a waste of time. She would rather look for new reserves of food.
"I won't stay here with you…"
Before she could finish her bored remark, as she prepared to casually toss the pincers away, Rize's eyes suddenly widened. For no apparent reason, an intense sense of dread surged within her, and a chilling cold crept along her neck.
A thick, viscous killing intent directed specifically at ghouls spread through the air.
[Blood, blood, blood—yearning for blood.]
At the same time, a bloody song echoed in her ears, sung in duet by a magnetic male voice and a lively female voice.
Like lovers singing together, yet the bloody melody did not merely reach her ears—it seeped deep into her mind.
She felt as though time itself had frozen, overwhelmed by a hideous killing intent and a fear of the unknown.
[Offer blood to the guillotine.]
It felt as though a cold, gleaming execution blade hung above her head, about to fall.
Not only Rize heard it—even Jason, raging below, heard it as well. The horrifying killing intent made his eyes widen as his body was stripped of its ability to move.
In a daze, both Rize and Jason seemed to witness a hallucination.
They found themselves in a foreign city of the nineteenth century, beneath a dim sky choked with the smoke characteristic of the First Industrial Revolution.
Their immobilized bodies were bound to a guillotine. A cold, expressionless executioner manipulated the ropes, preparing to carry out the sentence.
All around them stood the citizens of France. Rather than fear the imminent brutality, their faces were filled with fanatic excitement and anticipation.
As enemies of humanity, the two ghouls felt an unfamiliar terror rise within them.
[To sate the guillotine's hunger.]
As though guided by the duet, the frenzied, bloodthirsty crowd joined in a massive chorus.
"To sate the guillotine's hunger!!"
Thousands—tens of thousands—sang in perfect unison.
The song was deafening, yet it could not drown out the male and female voices, as though the grand chorus existed merely as accompaniment.
[We desire nothing else—only blood, blood, blood!]
As the executioner loosened the rope, the blade suspended above flashed with cold light and plunged down in Rize's splitting gaze.
Splurt! Splurt! Splurt! Splurt! Splurt! Splurt! Splurt! Splurt! Splurt! Splurt! Splurt! Splurt! Splurt! Splurt…
In reality, the motionless Rize and Jason had their heads suddenly severed from their necks. Scalding blood burst forth uncontrollably, finding release!
Not only that—within dozens of kilometers of the area, whether ghouls disguised as humans on the streets, feeding in dark alleys, or fighting CCG agents—
Without exception, all froze under the bewildered gazes of others, their eyes vacant with terror. The next second, their heads separated from their necks in unison.
In an instant, blood sprayed everywhere across a vast area.
On the streets, headless corpses continued to gush blood from their severed necks like fountains, leaving nearby pedestrians stunned.
Female students in school uniforms and adults alike were suddenly drenched in blood from head to toe.
And it did not stop there.
Shopping districts, bars, homes, dark corners, subways and stations, buses and taxis—every public and private space witnessed the same horrifying scene.
Those shocked by the brutal spectacle finally came to their senses, following instinctive terror.
"Ahhh!!"
"There are dead people!!"
"Eek!!"
"Help!!"
"…"
At the same moment, the city erupted into agonized screams. Decapitations occurred everywhere simultaneously, large and small alike.
At the sites of these chilling executions, within the collapsed headless corpses, transparent soul-forms—unseen by the fleeing, terrified humans—rose upright one after another.
Their eyes and expressions were frozen in the fear and blankness of their final moments.
Before they could react to their situation, changes occurred beneath them. Sticky, black-red shadows like congealed blood rapidly spread.
Snap! Snap! Snap!
Before the souls could respond, crimson skeletal arms burst from the shadows, instantly grabbing the terrified souls with violent impacts audible only to them.
Looking down, they saw themselves being dragged into the shadows by skeletal arms burning with red energy.
Like sinking into a man-eating swamp, the souls struggled desperately but helplessly, their faces filled with despair and terror.
They cast one final glance at their severed heads lying nearby and their headless bodies spilling rivers of blood.
All souls understood.
I'm dead. My head was suddenly severed.
Is this… hell?
Before their consciousness was completely swallowed by darkness, every ghoul soul shared the same thought.
Fear of the "unknown hell."
---
Meanwhile, atop an iron tower in Tokyo, a lonely figure sat at its peak, seated upon empty space supported by spiritual particles. His azure-blue eyes stared blankly into the endless black night sky.
"Blood, blood, blood—yearning for blood…"
Feeling the soul energy continuously accumulating within him, Raize's eyes were filled with longing for the past as he softly hummed the bloody song.
If he did not distract himself this way, he would feel sick—because the souls he absorbed were those of the ghouls he despised.
In addition, he could faintly hear Sei's gentle murmurs from within him. It was no illusion, but like a child talking in their sleep.
Even when responding to his song, the voice was ethereal and distant.
If any extraordinary being were present, they would tremble at the sight of Raize now.
From the perspective of higher existences, Raize—sitting cross-legged in the void—was overflowing with curse energy like a dark celestial body.
The cursed aura burned across the night sky, nearly filling it entirely, like another black sun in the darkness.
It did not radiate warmth, only curses and killing intent akin to death.
Even Fafnir, the giant dragon well-versed in the path of curses, would be stunned and shaken upon witnessing Raize in this state.
Like a cosmic black hole devouring all things, the divine domain curse named "Decapitation" spread wantonly above the city, releasing curse waves capable of exterminating all life.
After entering Eternal Destruction, it became necessary to gather so-called fuel—namely, soul energy.