The world snapped into brutal focus. Pain shot through Muzan's body—sharp and immediate against the fading warmth of the dream.
He lay on cold stone. The air reeked of blood and carried the muffled gasps of the dying.
People were trapped in grotesque cocoons of bark and root, their bodies shriveling as the ancient tree drained them.
At the chamber's center, the madman stood in rapturous ecstasy. Grey hair wild, purple eyes wide and unblinking, fixed on the withered tree.
From its central branch, an otherworldly light pulsed. It drew the lingering life force from the sacrificial circles—a river of shimmering chakra flowing into the forming fruit.
"Ten years of devotion, of sacred offerings!" the man whispered, voice trembling. "A thousand lives, a symphony of screams to nourish the earth, to awaken this divine seed! Can you feel it? The convergence! Lord Jashin's promise made real!"
The forming fruit was unlike anything of this world. It shimmered with light that seemed to absorb the cavern's gloom rather than dispel it. Its surface swirled with colors that hurt to look at—deep violets, blinding golds, and a red so deep it resembled a beating heart. It pulsed rhythmically, a terrible, beautiful counterpoint to the fading heartbeats around them.
A desperate, primal instinct cut through Muzan's pain and grief. "Genzo died for nothing. I was born to die. This... this is not for him."
The madman's back was turned, arms outstretched in worship. His guard was down.
Summoning strength he shouldn't have had, Muzan moved. He dragged his emaciated body across rough stone.
Every inch was agony—fire in his muscles, screaming in his joints. He crawled like a broken insect toward the central platform. The madman was chanting now, a low, guttural mantra to his god.
Muzan reached the base of the ancient tree. The roots throbbed with stolen life. With a final, silent plea—not to any god, but to Genzo's memory, to the ghost of the mother he never knew, to his own stolen future—he reached up. His skeletal fingers brushed the swirling skin of the fruit. It was warm, vibrating with impossible power.
He pulled.
It came away with a soft, sighing sound—like a soul leaving a body.
The madman's chanting stopped.
Time froze. Muzan knelt at the root, holding the pulsating fruit in both hands. The madman slowly turned, his expression melting from rapture to confusion to dawning horror.
"No..." The word was breathless, disbelieving. Then it exploded into a scream. "NO! YOU WRETCHED, FILTHY MAGGOT! THAT IS NOT FOR YOU! IT IS LORD JASHIN'S BOUNTY! MY BOUNTY!"
There was no time for thought. Muzan brought the fruit to his lips and bit.
It was an explosion. A supernova detonating inside his mouth, down his throat, flooding every cell. Agony and ecstasy intertwined—pain that felt like being unmade and remade atom by atom, coupled with a rush of vitality so intense it was terrifying.
Colors and sounds he couldn't comprehend roared through his skull. He felt his brittle bones vibrating, his stagnant blood turning to fire, his dying heart seizing before hammering with a thunderous new rhythm.
"YOU DARE?! YOU DARE CONSUME DIVINITY?!" the madman shrieked. His fury transformed into something cold and focused. He raised a hand. "You will regurgitate every drop! You will spill every ounce of that sacred power in a river of your own blood! BLOOD RELEASE: DIVINE RETRIBUTION!"
The air thickened. Muzan convulsed as the fruit's energy ravaged him, and he felt a new, horrible sensation. The blood inside his veins turned against him.
It felt as if a thousand hooks had been set inside his arteries, all pulled in different directions. His body arched off the ground. He could feel his blood trying to burst from his pores, to tear from his throat.
The madman's face became a mask of concentrated malice, his purple eyes glowing faintly. "A gift from Lord Jashin! The sacred art to punish the unworthy! To turn the very essence of life against the living! Feel it, thief! Feel your sanctified blood betray you!"
Muzan tried to scream, but no sound came—his diaphragm was paralyzed. His vision swam, turning red at the edges.
Then something shifted inside him.
The chakra fruit's power, still integrating with his cells, recognized the assault. It reacted. The blood that had been tearing itself free suddenly reversed course, but it didn't return to normal. It multiplied.
Muzan's body began to swell.
"What—" The madman's eyes widened.
Muzan's skin stretched tight, veins bulging across every visible inch of flesh. His emaciated frame expanded like a waterskin filled past capacity. The blood inside him wasn't just multiplying—it was churning, boiling, building pressure no mortal body could contain.
"No... NO! CONTAIN IT! SEAL IT BACK!" The madman's hands flew through desperate seals, but it was too late.
The chakra fruit had given Muzan more than power. It had given him too much power.
His body couldn't process it, couldn't channel it, couldn't hold it. The chakra sought release through every avenue available.
Muzan's eyes rolled back. His mouth opened in a silent scream that built and built until—
BOOM!
The explosion was cataclysmic.
Muzan's body detonated in a sphere of pressurized blood and raw chakra that expanded at impossible speed. The shockwave hit the madman first, catching him mid-seal. His expression froze for one eternal instant before the crimson tide slammed into him.
His body disintegrated.
The ancient tree caught the full brunt of the blast. Its trunk exploded into ten thousand splinters that shredded through the remaining root cocoons. The captives inside were obliterated, their suffering finally ended in an instant.
The cavern itself began to fail.
The blood-chakra wave crashed against the walls with the force of a tidal surge. Stone that had stood for centuries cracked, fractured, then shattered.
Massive chunks of ceiling broke free, plummeting down in deadly rain. Support pillars buckled and snapped.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
The tunnels collapsed one by one, their entrances swallowed by cascading rubble. Dust and debris filled the air in choking clouds.
The explosion's force didn't stop at the cavern. It tore upward, punching through layer after layer of earth and stone. Trees on the surface were ripped from their roots and flung aside. The ground formed a crater, then collapsed inward as the underground chambers gave way.
RUMBLE... CRASH... BOOM!
What had been a hidden temple complex became a sinkhole in seconds. Tons of earth and stone thundered into the void. The ancient tree, the tunnels, the madman, the victims—all buried beneath an avalanche of destruction.
Then, finally, silence.
The dust began to settle, drifting down like snow over a fresh grave. The forest was transformed—where solid ground had been, only a vast depression remained, a wound in the earth still smoking with heat. Scattered fires burned at its edges where the blast had ignited dry brush.
Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound.
Deep beneath the rubble, in a pocket of space that had somehow survived, something began to stir.
---
Time passed. How much was impossible to say.
Minutes? Hours? Days?
In absolute darkness, beneath countless tons of rubble, a mass of flesh twitched. Barely recognizable as having once been human—just pulped tissue and bone fragments, compressed and broken beyond recognition.
But it was alive.
Or becoming alive again.
A blood vessel formed. Just one, hairline thin, stretching across raw meat. Then another. And another. They grew at unreal speed, knitting through the destroyed tissue.
Bone fragments began to shift, pulled by invisible forces, arranging themselves into something resembling a skeleton.
Muscle fiber sprouted along the bone, layer upon microscopic layer. Tendons connected, pulling tight. Organs began to form from nothing, materializing in defiance of biology and physics. Seven hearts and five brains, continuously shifting positions.
The mass gained definition. Something like a torso. The suggestion of limbs. A skull, half-formed, with empty sockets that would become eyes.
Its newly formed fingers twitched.
BANG!
Stones scattered as a hand erupted from the ruins. Pristine—smooth, pale skin.
The nails were sharp, blackened like obsidian, elongated into predatory points.
The hand clenched, and stone crumbled like wet paper.
Then—
BOOM!
The entire section of rubble exploded outward. Bricks and broken timber launched into the air. A figure rose from the crater's center, silhouetted against the night sky.
Dust billowed around it, thick and choking. But through the swirling haze, two points of light gleamed.
Red. Crimson. Glowing.
Eyes.
As the dust settled, the figure became clearer. It was half-kneeling, hunched forward, head bowed. What remained of its clothing hung in tatters—barely more than strips of cloth clinging to a lean, muscular frame.
Its chest heaved violently, each breath a ragged gasp echoing in the crater. From deep in its throat came a low, guttural, bestial sound.
"Grrrhhhh... hraaahhhh..."
The figure's shoulders trembled. Hands splayed against the broken ground, fingers curled into claws that gouged furrows through stone.
Slowly, the head lifted.
The face was Muzan's—but changed. The yellow tinge that had colored his dying eyes was gone, replaced by pure, burning crimson. The whites were bloodshot, threaded with broken vessels.
Veins bulged across every exposed inch of skin—face, neck, arms—standing out in stark relief.
The mouth opened slightly, revealing teeth that had elongated into fangs. Saliva dripped from them.
Each breath was accompanied by a low growl rumbling in the chest.
The fingers flexed. The claws scraped against rock, leaving deep scratches. Power radiated from the figure—raw, uncontrolled, terrifying. The very air seemed to vibrate with it.
"ROARRR!!!"
The sound that erupted from Muzan's throat was primal, earth-shaking. It echoed across the crater, through the destroyed forest, into the night sky itself. Birds scattered from distant trees. Small animals fled in panic.
The figure that had been Muzan Kibutsuji swayed on its knees, head tilting back to face the moon. The crimson eyes reflected its pale light.
The chest continued to heave. The growls continued. The claws flexed and scraped.
Somewhere deep inside, buried beneath layers of transformation, a fragment of consciousness stirred.
"Genzo..."
But it was swallowed immediately by hunger. The hunger of a beast.
Muzan's eyes swept across the crater, seeing everything clearly in the dark. Every sense was heightened to impossible levels—the rustle of distant leaves, the scent of blood still soaked into the earth, the taste of ash on the air.
Unknown, primal power coursed through his body.
The moon hung overhead, pale and indifferent, casting its light on Muzan's face. It was beautiful. Beautiful to the point of seeming unreal.
In the ruins of an ancient temple, surrounded by the graves of a thousand victims, Muzan Kibutsuji slowly rose to his feet.