And yet.
Reality is not a shonen manga. It does not hand out miracles simply because you refuse to give up.
No matter how desperately the cap girl's survival instinct screamed at her to keep going.
She was, at the end of the day, nothing more than a Cursed Child who had spent her entire life malnourished.
Prolonged starvation had hollowed out her stamina. The raw, searing agony of her bare foot hitting the pavement with every stride had begun to steal her speed, inch by inch.
Behind her, the two adult patrol officers were wheezing and panting — but the gap was closing.
"Run! Go on, keep running!"
The fat officer — jowls quivering, gut bouncing with every labored stride — finally closed the distance.
He wheezed between great gulping breaths, and a vicious grin split his face.
Thud.
A dull, heavy impact.
The already-frail cap girl lost her balance entirely and pitched forward.
Crack.
"Ngh..."
She let out a cry of pain and curled into herself, arms locked around the single precious thing she carried — the only food she had.
"The hell — you dare protect it?!"
The fat officer's rage doubled at the sight. He'd been chasing her for blocks, fury building with every step.
Now this little monster was down on the ground and still clutching the stolen goods for dear life? That was a challenge to his authority. An insult he couldn't let stand.
The rubber baton in his fist rose high.
"Red-eyed little freaks, thieving right here in my district!"
"I didn't steal it! I found it in a garbage bin!"
"Still mouthing off?! Looks like you won't learn your lesson until I teach it to you the hard way!"
The baton was already descending toward the girl's back — a back so thin it looked like nothing but bone wrapped in skin.
"Stop!"
A sharp cry, cracked with trembling fury, split the air.
A white figure came charging out of the shadows without a second's hesitation.
— The Holy Emperor.
In that moment, her mind was completely blank.
There was only one single thought left inside it.
This cannot happen again.
Never again.
I will not let another act of violence like this happen right in front of my eyes.
If she couldn't even save the one child standing directly before her — what right did she have to speak of saving this entire nation?
And so.
The Holy Emperor threw herself forward.
With absolute, unshaking resolve, she covered the little girl who had fallen to the ground — shielding her with her own body.
Smack.
A dull, brutal sound.
"Ngh..."
Even rubber. Even so — an adult male in the grip of furious, unchecked rage, swinging with every ounce of his strength.
For the Holy Emperor, who had grown up pampered and sheltered, who had never once strained herself with anything heavier than a silk fan —
The pain was unlike anything she had ever felt in her life.
Her entire body went rigid. Her vision flashed to black in an instant.
Cold sweat flooded her forehead.
And yet.
In the end — the Holy Emperor gritted her teeth against the fire blazing across her back, and wrenched her head up.
Those eyes of hers — usually so serene, so gentle, like still water — ignited.
— Pure, incandescent fury.
"What do you think you're doing?!"
"She is a person! She is a child!"
"Even if she stole something — even if she did something wrong — you do not get to do this to her!"
"Tokyo has laws!"
Her voice shook with pain. But beneath the tremor — that natural, bone-deep authority forged by years at the summit of power — it broke through.
It stopped both officers cold for a single instant.
The shock of what had just happened knocked them off balance.
But only for a moment.
After that brief flash of confusion — the thin veneer cracked, and something far uglier took its place.
Because — under the interference of Haimer's Divine Power.
No matter how much the Holy Emperor looked and sounded like a person of rank, to the eyes of these ordinary mortals, she was nothing. Just a well-dressed lunatic who had lost her mind.
"Ha? And who the hell are you?"
The fat officer recovered first.
He didn't recognize her. Not for a second.
To him, she was just some deranged woman who had appeared out of nowhere.
And so.
With absolute contempt, he hawked up a wad of phlegm and spat it at the ground. Then he leveled the same baton he'd just used to beat someone with — directly at the Holy Emperor's face.
"Nice clothes. That dress is pretty white, I'll give you that..."
"What — you this little freak's accomplice?"
"Or maybe..."
He looked her up and down. Then came the truly vile speculation.
"You're one of those weirdos who collects these little monsters? Heard some rich people are into that kind of thing. World's full of all types, I guess."
"I am—"
The naked insult sent the Holy Emperor shaking with rage. Her nails bit deep into the flesh of her palms as she instinctively moved to reveal who she was.
"I am the ruler of the Tokyo Area — "
The words rose to the tip of her tongue.
And then — jammed there.
Like a bone stuck in the throat.
Because she suddenly remembered what Haimer had said before — that to mortal eyes, her true identity was unreadable.
In that instant.
It was like a bucket of ice water poured directly over her head.
A feeling she had never once experienced in her life — a feeling of pure, disorienting absurdity — flooded through her.
So this is what it looks like.
This is who I become the moment I strip away the title of Holy Emperor. The moment I shed the shell of power. The moment I stand in this world as nothing more than an ordinary person.
Without that name.
Powerless.
Worthless.
Without even the standing to protect a single child.
"Get out of the way!"
"Stop obstructing law enforcement!"
"These red-eyed freaks deserve every beating they get! You keep interfering, you'll get the same!"
Seeing the Holy Emperor fall suddenly silent, the fat officer had clearly run out of patience entirely.
In this warped, broken society — a society perpetually haunted by the shadow of the Gastrea — hatred was the easiest release. Violence was the only universal language.
When the target was a Cursed Child.
Any atrocity could be crowned with the noble name of justice for humanity.
Killing was blameless. Brutality was righteous.
Humanity had long since lost its reverence for life.
Had lost, even, the right to call itself human.
"Out of the way!"
With a thunderous bellow.
The fat officer raised the black rubber baton high.
No holding back. Not even the faintest hesitation at the sight of a frail-looking woman kneeling before him.
The target: the Holy Emperor's head.
His eyes were merciless. Utterly without doubt.
If you're going to throw your goodwill away on a monster, then go find your conscience in hell.
A blow like that, landing cleanly — even if it didn't kill her, it would cripple her.
"Ngh..."
The cap girl — pinned beneath the Holy Emperor's shielding arms — caught a glimpse of what was happening through the gap between the older girl's forearms.
The red eyes hidden beneath the brim of her cap went wide.
She didn't understand why this impossibly beautiful young woman was trying to protect her.
But she knew — instinctively, with absolute certainty — that this one blow would be more than someone this delicate could survive.
She would bleed.
She would die.
Just like the stray dogs that had tried to shield her before — they always ended up as corpses, dragged away and dumped in garbage trucks.
No...
Please don't die because of me...
"Don't—"
The girl tried to push the Holy Emperor away.
But the Holy Emperor only held on tighter.
She pressed the girl's head firmly against her own chest — refusing to let her see the violence that was about to fall.
Then.
She closed her eyes.
And did not flinch.
The Holy Emperor could feel all of it.
She could even hear the murmuring of the bystanders gathered around them.
In this moment.
She felt an exhaustion she had no words for.
Not the exhaustion of the body.
But the hollow, groundless void that sets in when the last pillar holding you upright finally crumbles away.
Is this...
Is this the country I have governed all this time?
Is this the world I have sat in that chair for — year after year, pushing through illness, pushing through exhaustion, sacrificing everything — the world I have dreamed of protecting in the small hours of the night, countless times?
No love.
No compassion.
Not even the most basic shred of humanity remained.
Only naked malice. And instincts uglier than any animal's.
Suddenly.
Everything made sense.
If you did not cut away this rotting flesh entirely — if you did not tear down this already-tilting tower to its foundation — then no matter how many patches you applied, no matter how prettily you painted over the cracks —
This place would always be, in the end, nothing but a hell that devoured its own people.
If that was the truth.
If this world was already beyond all saving.
"Then..."
"This world... is truly beyond redemption..."
"This is the true face of humanity..."
"In that case..."
"Kami-sama."
"Bring down Your judgment."
"Even if it reduces everything to ash —"
"It is better than letting a hell like this continue to exist in the world of the living!"
If nothing is destroyed, nothing can be built anew.
If the rot has consumed the whole body — then let all of it burn.
Let it all be destroyed.
And so.
The instant that resolute, irreversible thought settled in the Holy Emperor's heart —
This world truly heard her prayer.
Or rather.
The God who had been waiting for precisely this moment finally received the answer he had been seeking.
Hmmmm——!
A piercing, absolute ringing tone.
Without any warning.
It flooded the entire world in an instant.
The commercial street — loud and clamorous only a heartbeat ago — plunged into a silence like death.
The fat officer's rubber baton hung frozen in the air, raised high — unable to fall so much as a millimeter further.
Because.
The God no longer hid Himself.
He had heard it.
That deathly resolve — the absolute will to die — rising from the deepest chamber of the Holy Emperor's soul.
And so.
The faint cognitive-distortion magic that had been cast over the Holy Emperor — already tenuous — shattered in an instant beneath the surge of Divine Will.
The veil dissolved.
And the silver-haired girl who had been kneeling on the filthy ground this whole time — arms wrapped tight around two dirty Cursed Children, refusing to let go even after taking a baton to the back —
Her true face was laid bare before every single pair of eyes in the street.
The face that had always been blurred and unreadable became, in the wash of crimson light flooding down from above, impossibly, unmistakably clear.
That iconic silver hair.
That flawless face — the one that had appeared on television screens without number.
That white ceremonial gown — now streaked with filth and mud, yet somehow only more breathtaking for it.
The bystanders went rigid.
Like they'd each been struck by lightning through the crown of the skull.
Their eyes looked about ready to fall out of their heads.
This...
This is — the Holy Emperor? The one who waves gracefully from the television every single day? The sacred, untouchable presence that embodies the highest authority of this entire region?
Kneeling in the mud?
And just now — that blow...
"She... she was hit?"
Someone — voice trembling like a leaf — broke the dead silence.
And then.
The panic detonated like water dropped into scalding oil.
"Oh God!"
"The Holy Emperor has been struck!"
"She's bleeding! The Holy Emperor is bleeding!"
"Are they insane?! Have those two officers completely lost their minds?!"
The very same bystanders who, only moments ago, had watched in cold indifference — some of them not even blinking at the violence — now leapt up as though someone had stepped on their tails.
Some screamed. Some covered their faces. Some fumbled frantically for their phones.
This was regicide.
This was a public-execution-level offense.
This was the kind of thing that brought down governments.
If the authorities came knocking, every single person who had been standing on this street tonight would be dragged into it. None of them could claim they weren't there.
"The police!"
"Call the police! Someone has attacked the Holy Emperor!"
Their sense of justice ignited on cue — suddenly, cheaply, abundantly.
As though shouting loud enough could wash away the sin of having stood by and watched without a word.
And as for the fat officer at the center of the storm.
Right now.
The color of his face had gone the deep, bruised purple-red of a man on the verge of a stroke.
Sweat poured from his forehead like a waterfall.
The rubber baton fell from his fingers with a sharp clang against the pavement.
He stared at the silver-haired girl before him, shaking violently.
That face...
He would know it if it had been reduced to ash. He had walked past the portrait hanging in the precinct lobby every single day of his career.
That face.
Was the face in that portrait.
"H-H-H-Holy..."
His teeth were chattering so hard he could barely form words.
Done.
Everything was done.
Assaulting the head of state.
This wasn't just losing his job.
This was losing his head.
His entire family dragged down with him.
The extreme terror curdled — as it always does — into extreme, frantic madness.
The ugly thrashing of a drowning man reaching for any piece of wreckage that might keep him afloat.
"It — it wasn't me!"
"I didn't know! I really didn't know!"
The fat officer stumbled two steps backward and sat down hard on the ground.
Then.
As if something had suddenly occurred to him, his trembling finger shot out — pointing directly at the cap girl still sheltered beneath the Holy Emperor's arms — and he screamed at the top of his lungs:
"It was her! It was this little monster!"
"This little bastard stole something!"
"I was enforcing the law! I was maintaining public order!"
"Holy Emperor — Your Highness — how could you shield a criminal?!"
"Right — I must have been deceived! I thought she was an accomplice..."
Even now — even in this moment — he still genuinely believed that as long as the target was a Cursed Child, any level of violence against her was perfectly justifiable grounds for his own defense.
The full spectrum of human ugliness, on display for the world to see.
"H-Holy Emperor..."
"I — I deserve to die! I truly didn't know it was you!"
The fat officer had completely broken.
Heedless of the filthy puddles on the ground. Heedless of the stares of everyone around him. He dropped to both knees and began crawling — actually crawling — in the direction of the Holy Emperor.
As he went, he slapped himself across the face, again and again, with manic desperation.
Smack. Smack. Smack.
The sharp crack of each blow rang out across the dead-silent street with nauseating clarity.
In a matter of seconds, his face had swollen to the size and color of a pig's head.
"Please... have mercy!"
"I have an elderly mother and young children at home..."
"I was only maintaining public order..."
Maintaining public order. A misunderstanding.
The Holy Emperor remained exactly where she was — still kneeling in the mud.
One of her Cursed Children — the cap girl with the death-grip on her can of luncheon meat — was trembling violently at the sudden upheaval, burrowing instinctively deeper into the warmth of her arms.
She felt that thin, shaking little body against her chest.
Then she looked at the weeping, sniveling, pathetically unraveling officer in front of her.
And then at the crowd around them — the ones who had been watching in cold silence only moments ago, who now wore ashen expressions and averted eyes, some of them already beginning to call out hollow, performative cries of "the Holy Emperor must be so frightened" to anyone who would listen.
The Holy Emperor felt, suddenly.
Sick.
So it was this.
What they had always revered was never the law. Never morality.
Only power.
If she were not the Holy Emperor. If she did not wear this white gown that stood as the symbol of authority. If she did not have this face — elevated onto a pedestal by the media until it had become something approaching sacred —
Then that baton would have come down.
And not a single person in this crowd would have glanced up from their phone.
Maintaining public order?
A misunderstanding?
This isn't law enforcement.
This is — devouring people alive.
However.
More interesting to Haimer than the grotesque theater of these mortals —
He lowered his gaze slightly.
"By the name of God, I declare."
"Let the calamity begin."
Hum——
As the pulse of Haimer's Divine Will swept outward — lifting one final seal —
From this moment forward.
——
[God's Panel (Updating...)]
[True Name]: Haimer
[Race]: God (Conceptual Deity)
[Divine Name]: War / Weapons / Discord / Endings... (and 108 other hidden entries)
[Divine Authorities]: (... existing authorities omitted ...)
[New Authority Unlocked]:
Origin of Calamity:
Blood is the red carpet laid for the crowning. Screams are the cannon-fire of the coronation.
You are the seed from which all calamity blooms — the tolling of reason's death-knell — and you harbor a primal, unquenchable hunger for blood.
Every being that raises a blade and brings death unto others — their soul and flesh shall be claimed in your name, falling beneath your dominion and receiving your favor.
You may forcibly strip any being that harbors killing intent — or any creature the world designates as a bringer of chaos — of control over their own body, reducing them to tireless, thoughtless puppets of war. Or, even across distances of ten thousand li, you may cause the blood of traitors to boil and flow in reverse, turning the weapons in their own hands into instruments of their own execution.
——
BOOM BOOM BOOM——!!!
In a single, catastrophic instant.
The sky itself changed.
The Tokyo Area. The Japanese archipelago. The Americas across the vast ocean beyond.
In this one moment.
The very laws of the entire world were rewritten by force.
The sky began to crack apart.
The night sky — ordinarily a deep, impenetrable black studded with scattered stars — churned with boiling clouds that shifted into something ominous and dark crimson, like a sea of blood brought to a rolling boil.
And then.
Something emerged from the widening rift — something so utterly alien that every witness who laid eyes on it would carry the image to their graves. Something that shattered every rational safeguard the human mind possessed in a single glance.
It squeezed through that crack in the sky like a gate of flesh and blood unfurling from the deepest pits of hell.
It was.
An eyeball.
Vast beyond all description. Radiating a dark, pulsing crimson light.
It occupied half the entire sky.
— The eye of a God.
— The gavel of divine judgment.
The hemisphere of sky that should have been a moonlit night was swallowed whole by that dark crimson radiance.
Every neon sign, every car headlight, every streetlamp on the ground below — in that moment they were like fireflies trying to outshine the full moon. Against that tide of red light pouring down from above, they ceased to mean anything at all.
The entire Japanese archipelago was bathed in a suffocating, blood-red glow.
Even the moon — serene and white until a moment ago — dimmed and seemed to flinch, as though terrified of that vast eye, scrambling to bury itself in the depths of the cloud cover.
It was.
Majestic.
Terrifying.
Impossible to look at directly.
Like something from a higher dimension, peering through that crack with cold, total indifference at this tiny world — a world no larger than a petri dish — staring at the motes of dust on its surface, still tearing each other apart over desire, over survival, over hatred.
"Wh-what... what IS that?!"
"The sky — the sky just split open?!"
"AAAAAAGH! An eye! There's an EYE in the sky!"
Countless people craned their necks upward — and the moment their eyes found what was looking back at them, every higher function their brains possessed simply stopped. Only the most primordial, bone-deep terror remained.
On the streets of Tokyo.
The bystander who had only seconds ago been making a performative phone call to the police let the device slip from their fingers. It hit the pavement and shattered into pieces.
The fat officer — still in the middle of slapping himself across the face — froze, hand suspended in the air, jaw dropped wide enough to swallow a fist, every inch of him convulsing.
Phones fell. Cigarettes dropped, burning through trouser legs unnoticed. Minds went dark. Only the terror encoded in the deepest strata of human DNA continued to fire.
Chaos erupted.
Screams. Wailing. The percussion of cars losing control and slamming into each other — sound after sound, overlapping without end.
And yet.
The true horror had only just begun.
Because.
Beneath the gaze of that vast eye.
Something changed.
Something that humanity had always regarded as their natural enemy. Their nightmare. The source of their annihilation. Something in those creatures underwent a transformation that defied all comprehension.
The dark crimson divine eye hung there, still and silent, without joy or sorrow — and cast its red light without distinction upon every single corner of the earth below.
Through forests of steel and concrete. Through the rubble of ruined cities. Through underground shelters buried hundreds of meters beneath the surface. Through the crushing weight of the deepest ocean.
— Across the entire planet.
Every living creature that had been infected by the Gastrea Virus — every being that had long since transformed into a monster.
Whether Stage I insectoid Gastrea lurking in the sewers and scavenging from garbage heaps. Whether hulking Stage IV composite Gastrea prowling the wilderness. Or even those entities that loomed over entire regions — the Zodiac-class Gastrea, the collective designation for Stage V and beyond — monsters that had pushed every military force on the planet to the brink of collapse, the truly apocalyptic creatures that had once driven humanity to the edge of extinction.
Every single one of them.
Went rigid in the same instant.
As though someone had pressed the pause button on every monster in existence, all at once.
The frenzied slaughter stopped. The endless feeding stopped. The chaotic roaring — all of it — cut off clean.
The next second.
The most bone-chilling moment of all arrived.
"ROOOARRR——!!!"
"SHRIEEEEEEK——!!!"
Across every corner of the globe — hundreds of millions of Gastrea — simultaneously threw back their heads toward that vast eye in the sky, and released a single, unified cry that shook the heavens and split the earth.
It was —
Worship.
Those countless voices converged into a single wave of sound so physically real it dispersed the cloud cover and made the very ground tremble beneath it.
The rapturous frenzy of creation finally beholding its Creator.
Every Gastrea — grotesque and alien in form, some with dozens of compound eyes, some that had long since lost any visual organs at all —
Their eyes.
Lit up in unison. All of them displaying the exact same mark.
— An intricate, interlocking divine sigil.
The Divine Brand had been sealed.
Which meant — from this moment forward — the largest, most terrifying population of creatures on this planet, numbering in the hundreds of millions —
Was no longer a mindless horde of beasts.
They had become a Familia. Bound to a God.
— Haimer's private army.
____
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