And then figures drifted out of the dark tunnels at the edges of the cave like ghosts. Adults. Men and women. The same ones who'd been stirring in the neighbouring cages: hunched old men with faces stuck in masks of despair; exhausted women in rags; men with empty, dead eyes. But now there wasn't even a spark of an animal will to survive in those eyes. Only emptiness. Deaf. Bottomless.
They walked quietly, soundlessly, their steps shuffling on stone. Soon a living, silent ring closed tight around the foot of the altar, staring at us, and at Hayashi, with unseeing gazes.
Hayashi slowly raised a hand. His cloak slid off his shoulders with a rustle and dropped onto the stones. He turned.
His face…
Mangled by a web of rough, glossy scars that crossed in a bizarre, insane pattern. Skin pulled tight in places, warped. But the worst of it was the eyes. Mad. Burning with a fanatical, cold fire that had nothing human left in it.
He looked over the children frozen in terror on the altar, then let his gaze slide across the limp crowd below. On lips twisted by a scar, something like a smile flickered.
Hayashi raised both hands as if speaking to the cave's darkness itself.
"We begin the Great Sacrifice!"
His voice, hoarse and piercing like a night bird's cry, filled the space and bounced off the walls in a ghastly echo.
"Let the souls and blood of the innocent and the spent fill the altar, call down the mercy of Jashin-sama! In the name of the Great One!"
The final words sounded like a sentence.
At his barely noticeable nod, the uniformed ninja sprang forward. Not towards us, the children. Towards the adults. Towards the silent, will-less ring of slaves.
In their hands, blades flashed, axes, serrated knives.
And it began…
Silent. Terrible. Methodical.
This was not a fight. It was slaughter. A herd. The will-less people didn't even try to defend themselves, didn't try to run. They stood, staring stupidly into emptiness, while they were hacked, cut, stabbed.
There were almost no screams, only the dull impacts of steel on flesh, wet sucking sounds, the heavy thud of bodies falling.
Blood, dark, almost black in the dim torchlight, poured in streams, pooling into sticky puddles and running down the altar stones towards our bare feet. Its smell, fresh and suffocating, mixed with the ancient stink, turning the air into something unbearable.
The children on the altar broke into hysteria. Some screamed, some sobbed, some fainted.
I stood there with my nails digging into my palms, feeling the world narrow to this butchery, to Hayashi's mad eyes, to the sticky warmth creeping towards my feet. My stomach tightened into a knot, but there was nothing to vomit, only bile, bitter and burning.
"Ritual… blood… the cult of Jashin… souls…"
My thoughts tangled as I tried to connect scraps of knowledge. Dark techniques? A summoning? Something ancient, forbidden. Pagan madness seasoned with chakra? It didn't matter. One thing mattered: we were the next stage. But for what?
Hayashi watched the bloody orgy with the cold, calculating gaze of a fanatic. His mangled face showed neither pleasure nor disgust. Only concentration. He watched the slaves' blood spread through grooves in the stone at the base of the altar, forming complex, ominous patterns. Then his eyes narrowed. His lips twisted in a grimace of dissatisfaction.
"Not enough!" His voice, sharp as a whip, cut through even the sounds of the killing. "Not enough souls! There isn't enough blood for the awakening! Increase the flow! Kill the vessels!"
Hayashi's command hung in the air, heavy and final, like a guillotine. "Vessels." That was what he called us, the children. Not people, vessels, for something unimaginably horrible. An icy wave rolled down my spine, replacing raw terror with the pure, animal certainty of an ending close at hand. One of the ninja, that same nasty, short one, was already turning towards us, his eyes, small and piggish, scanning the trembling cluster of children on the blood-smeared altar. In his hand, replacing the club, an axe flashed, its broad blade dulled with dried blood.
"No. No-no-no."
The thought hammered in my temples, merging with the frantic thudding of that tiny heart somewhere in my throat. He chose a target. His gaze slid over the crying children pressed together and… stopped on me. For a moment something like dull hunter's pleasure flickered in his eyes, as if he'd found the weakest prey. He stepped forward; his heavy boot slapped into a sticky puddle at the base of the altar, and warm blood splashed my bare legs. The smell, metallic, cloying, unbearable, hit me in the face. Everything inside me shrank into a knot of icy horror. Instinct screamed: run. But where? A stone platform surrounded by shinobi with bloodied weapons. A trap.
The axe lifted, catching torchlight. The world shrank to that blunt edge, to the killer's bared grin. My brain, clinging desperately to the habit of analysis, made my body jerk left at the last instant, an instinctive dodge. Air whistled past my ear. The first blow missed; the axe struck the altar stone with a dull crack, throwing sparks and flecks of baked-on black grime.
"Made it!"
A moment of mad hope. But the nasty shinobi only gave a hoarse snort, not expecting resistance from a "vessel". He didn't bother to raise the axe again. He simply pivoted in place like a bear and delivered a short, terrifyingly simple horizontal swing. The blade, cold and inexorable, bit into my neck just below the jaw. Pain. Sharp, slicing, but strangely… distant. I heard a crunch like brushwood snapping. The world suddenly spun, losing its axis. I saw the cave's stone ceiling drifting upward, then the leaping torch shadows on the walls, then the blood-smeared altar stones, very close. And… my own body.
I saw the familiar little figure in rags on the blood-smeared altar. Headless. It swayed slowly, as if in slow motion, and collapsed onto the bloodied stones, raising a faint cloud of reddish spray.
"Damn it. That's… my body. Did I die?"
But even after a moment I was still thinking. Awareness was an icy, paralysing shock mixed with absurd relief. I felt no pain, only a deafening emptiness where my body should have been. And yet… my consciousness did not go out. It was tied… to what? To my head? To something else?
"Why am I still alive?"
My thoughts ricocheted in panic, slamming into a wall of not understanding. I tried to sense myself. Spatial perception was warped, like I was seeing the world through broken glass reflected in a funhouse mirror. But I felt… not a body, but a presence. And with a wild, primal effort of will, like a baby trying to move a hand for the first time, I tried to shift something towards where my body should have been.
On the altar the headless corpse twitched. Fingers clenched, scraping at the bloody stone.
"I… can…"
The discovery was staggering, and horrifying.
"So… even without a head… I can live."
A name surfaced from scraps of memory: Hidan. That madman, Jashin's servant from the anime. Was this his cult? Had I become… the same?
"Fine. I'm alive, and that's what matters. But what now? Stand up? I'm a half-naked, unarmed child. They're shinobi with monstrous speed and strength. The moment I get up, they'll tie me up. And then what? Chain me, wall me up in stone. For ever. No chance. An eternity in a stone coffin, in the dark, without movement…"
So I had to endure. Watch. Study. And wait, wait for my moment.
The plan was simple and ghastly: lie there, pretend to be another soulless body, survive this purge and wait until the cave emptied so I could run.
But while I was trying to grasp the monstrosity of my new state, the killing on the platform stopped. The last remaining child had passed out from fear, but even so his body stayed motionless.
Then the cult leader's cold voice rang out.
"Take the 'Gift'. Chop up the rest and throw them into the blood pool. Prepare for the next stage."
"Yes, Divine Messenger-sama!"
"You mean, chop them up?!"
The thought speared my mind with sharp, animal panic.
"I survived without a head… but if they chop the body into pieces and throw it into the blood pool, will my consciousness hold? Or will that be the real end?"
My strategy of endurance and camouflage instantly turned into guaranteed suicide.
"No! I can't! I won't let them!"
Fear of immediate destruction outweighed everything: fear of future torture, reasonable arguments, even caution. Any chance was better than a guaranteed death right now.
I saw one of the cultists hoist the unconscious child, the "Gift", and head towards the exit.
"They're taking him… alive! That means there's a chance!"
This wasn't a plan. Not calculation. It was the scream of life itself, tearing out of the depths of horror. My whole being, every ounce of my will to exist, focused into a single impulse: SCREAM.
"STO-O-OY-TE-E-E!"
The scream wasn't childish. It was alien, warped, as if it came not from a throat but from the core of my consciousness. It rang out loud, unnaturally booming, echoing off the cave's blood-stained walls. And in that same instant I hurled all my will into making myself stand.
On the altar the headless body jerked. With a convulsive, mechanical movement it rose, swaying like a marionette. Hands, with grotesque deftness, found my severed head and lifted it.
The face on the head was twisted into a grimace of horror, eyes wide, pupils pinprick. It turned towards the cultists.
Dead silence fell over the cave. Even the drip of blood seemed to stop. The cultists stood frozen, their blank masks cracking to reveal primal fear.
Even Hasanu, whose face had shown nothing but fanatical ecstasy, froze for a heartbeat.
Using that instant of shock, I forced the body to step forward. The head in its hands rasped, the sound wet and terrifyingly unnatural.
"I… ALSO… WANT… TO… LIVE!"