The Third Ward CCG office was quiet. The kind of quiet that sits in the chest.
A First Class Investigator slammed a file on a junior's desk. The crack echoed.
"Forensics is losing its mind. Look."
The recruit opened the folder. Crime scene photos. A ghoul, half-embedded in brick. Its torso was a jagged sculpture of opaque crystal, glittering under the lights. A macabre art piece.
The stamp was bold, red: **UNKNOWN KAGUNE TYPE - PRIORITY INVESTIGATION. ATTRIBUTION: "GHOST" (PRELIMINARY).**
"No RC residue," the First Class said, rubbing his temples. "Not a trace. Something ate the ghoul's essence and left the shell. How do we make a quinque out of *that*?"
The recruit stared. This wasn't in the manual. His gut was ice.
---
Kaito moved through the 20th Ward's underbelly. The city's pulse was a low hum in his veins, a remnant of his last meal. His system interface glowed in his vision.
**[SYSTEM: Post-Assimilation Analysis Running…]**
**[Trait: Residual Crystallization - Stability: 42% (Volatile)]**
**[Assimilated Data: Electro-Conductive Koukaku Framework - Integration: 78%]**
**[RC Cell Concentration: SSS Threshold Exceeded - Containment: Nominal]**
*Nominal.* A fancy word for 'barely holding it together.'
His target wasn't a random thug. The ghoul surgeon, a sick Ukaku who called himself Suture, had a clinic in a condemned medical building. His specialty wasn't healing. It was seeing how much a human body could endure before the soul quit. Kaito knew the type. A tumor. Tumors needed cutting.
He paused under a leaking water tower. His past-life memories—wiki pages, character profiles—clashed with the sensory now. The smell of rust and old blood wasn't data. It was a taste. The single, fearful heartbeat inside the building wasn't a story beat. It was a dinner bell.
*He's experimenting on someone right now. Probably homeless. Low risk.*
*Good. He'll be distracted.*
The conflict was a dull ache. He wasn't a hero. He was a gardener. Pruning so the whole thing didn't burn. The logic was cold. Clean. So why did his human memories recoil?
"Tch." He pushed off the wall. *It's just nature. The strong devour the weak. Even the weak who prey on the weaker.*
He dropped into the alley behind the clinic. The back door was reinforced steel, frame rotten.
He didn't get to touch it.
Two figures melted from the shadows. Synchronized. Predatory grace that screamed military.
Aogiri Tree.
The one on the left was huge, shaved head, a Koukaku's armored shoulder. His voice was gravel. "You. Freak."
The one on the right was lean, sharp-eyed. Ukaku. "Our recruiter went missing. This was his sector. You see him?"
Kaito didn't answer. Two enforcers. Sent to investigate. Not big names. Not cannon fodder. Aogiri was paying attention. A complication.
The Koukaku took his silence as insult. "I said, you see him?" Concrete cracked under his step.
Kaito's kagune stirred under his skin. Restless. Hungry. It remembered the electrical ghoul's conductivity. It wanted to test it. "I see two dead men. You're in my way."
The Ukaku laughed, brittle. "Cocky little shit." His kagune erupted from his back—violet crystalline projectiles. "We'll drag your answers out of your ribs."
The Koukaku's kagune formed a jagged shield from his right arm, a brutish hammer from his left. "Move it."
The fight wasn't a dance. It was a brutal exchange.
Kaito launched himself at the wall. His kagune burst forth. Not a smooth whip or a solid blade. A chaotic, thrashing tentacle of dark red flesh, threaded with veins of crackling blue energy. It hit the brick. Where it touched, jagged, glass-like crystals *sprouted* and instantly *shattered*. The sound was breaking teeth.
**[Trait: Residual Crystallization - ACTIVATED]**
The Ukaku's volley shot through the shimmering dust. Kaito twisted, kagune lashing. It spasmed mid-motion. The tip hardened into a brittle crystal spear, snapping off as it deflected a projectile. The shard flew past the Koukaku's face, drawing a thin red line.
He flinched. Not from pain. From the weirdness. "What the hell is that?"
Kaito landed, kagune recoiling. The broken stump regrew, pulsing. The system warning flashed yellow. **[Stability: 38%]**
The Koukaku charged, shield first. A bulldozer. Kaito's kagune met the shield, not to push, but to *wrap*. The conductive veins glowed blue. On contact, Kaito released a controlled surge of stolen electrical energy.
Blue-white lightning jumped from his kagune to the metallic shield.
The big ghoul screamed. Not lethal. A violent, muscle-locking shock. His kagune flickered. Kaito yanked, using the wrap for leverage, and drove his foot into the ghoul's knee. The crunch was loud.
The Ukaku was smarter. He'd circled wide. As Kaito was engaged, he fired a concentrated cluster at Kaito's back.
Kaito's kagune reacted on instinct. It detached a large section—a sacrificial mass—to intercept. The biomass crystallized instantly into a rough, defensive wall.
*CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!*
The projectiles embedded themselves. Then, Kaito's kagune did something that made the Ukaku freeze.
The crystalline mass *dissolved*, absorbing the embedded projectiles, pulling them into its shifting substance. The Ukaku's own RC cells, his kagune's essence, were being consumed.
"He's… he's eating it. He's not natural!"
**[Assimilation Potential Detected: Standard Ukaku Biomass - Compatibility: Low]**
**[SYSTEM: Purge or Consume?]**
*Purge.* He didn't want this one's data. It was basic. Trash.
The consumed mass, now unstable and foreign, ejected from his main kagune. It shot back not as projectiles, but as a hail of half-formed, razor crystal shards.
The enforcer blocked with a quick wing. Useless. The anomalous crystals sheared through his own, peppering his chest and face. He fell back with a gurgle.
The Koukaku struggled to rise, leg twisted. He looked from his dying partner to Kaito, whose kagune rippled, shedding crystal flakes like dead skin. Horrifying. Unstable.
"Monster."
"You're just now figuring that out?" Kaito's voice was breathless. The fight, the volatility, drained him. The hunger rose, a sharp edge beneath his ribs. He walked toward the downed Koukaku.
The enforcer swung his hammer-head in a desperate, wide arc.
Kaito didn't dodge. He let it connect with his shoulder. The impact cracked bone. Pain flared, white-hot.
And his kagune *latched on*.
It coiled up the hammer-head like a predatory vine, its surface morphing into tiny, hungry mouths. It began to drain. To consume the Koukaku's RC cells directly.
The enforcer's eyes went wide. Horror deeper than death. The horror of being unmade. "N-no… stop… what are you—!"
His protest turned to a raw scream as his kagune visibly dulled, cracked, crumbled into grey ash. Kaito fed. The energy flowed in, stabilizing the chaos slightly. **[RC Cell Concentration: Replenished. Stability: 45%]**
He stood over the petrified ghoul, whose kagune was gone. A withered, atrophied stump on his shoulder. The man sobbed.
Kaito looked at him. Then at the dying Ukaku. He'd come to kill a surgeon. To clean a stain. He'd been intercepted. He'd left two more bodies, and a witness babbling about a crystal-eating monster.
*The balance.* The idea felt hollow. *I'm making more noise. Drawing more eyes.*
His kagune retracted, the last strange crystals dissolving into red mist. He turned his back on the sobbing Koukaku. Let him live. Let him tell his story. Let Aogiri know something worse was hunting their territory.
He vanished into the dark. He left behind two ghouls—one dead, one broken—and a scattering of opalescent crystal dust on the wet asphalt. It glimmered, completely devoid of RC.
---
Twenty minutes later. A black sedan sealed the alley.
A young man in a crisp CCG uniform stepped out. Tall. Serious. Special Investigator Amon Koutarou adjusted his glasses. His gaze took in the scene. Methodical.
Forensics buzzed with tense confusion.
"Report." Amon's voice was formal. Level.
"Two ghouls, sir. One deceased, Ukaku. Cause of death… impalement by crystalline shards of unknown composition. The other… his kagune has been completely depleted. Atrophied. He's in shock. Repeats 'it ate it' and 'crystal ghost'."
Amon knelt by the dead Ukaku. He didn't flinch. His eyes fixed on the shards. Unlike any kagune residue. He picked one up with a gloved hand. Cool. Smooth. Utterly inert.
"RC scan?"
"Zero, sir. Just like the other one. The pachinko alley last week. The one fused to the wall in the Third Ward. It's impossible. Kagune matter *always* leaves trace RC resonance. Always."
Amon stood. He looked at the glittering dust. He connected the dots. Cold. Clinical speed. A dead Third Class investigator, no RC. An Aogiri recruiter, crystallized, no RC. Now this. A pattern. An anomaly.
"This was not a territorial dispute. This was an eradication. Precise. Efficient." He looked down the empty alley. "A ghoul that leaves no trace of itself… that consumes the essence of others. What manner of evil is this?"
His jaw tightened. Not random violence. A predator with a purpose. A new threat.
"File everything under 'Ghost'. Priority Alpha. I want every irregular incident, every zero-residue case, on my desk by morning."
"Yes, sir!"
Amon remained. Staring into the dark. The logic was clear. The duty obvious. This "Ghost" was a dangerous variable. An unknown. It had to be identified. Studied. Erased.
"This is the path I've chosen." A vow to the night. "I will eradicate this evil."
Far away, Kaito climbed the rusted fire escape of the condemned clinic. He felt a faint, cold prickle on his neck. Not fear. Recognition.
The game board had just felt a new piece drop onto it. A righteous, stubborn piece named Amon Koutarou.
He paused outside a shattered fourth-floor window. From inside: soft, frantic whimpers of a human. The calm, clinical humming of the ghoul surgeon.
The hunt wasn't over. It was just changing shape.
He slipped inside.
The room was dark, lit by a single surgical lamp. The air stank of antiseptic and copper. A human form was strapped to a gurney, trembling. Suture stood over them, his back to the window. He was humming. A children's tune. His tools gleamed on a tray.
Kaito's entrance was silent. A shift in the air.
Suture stopped humming. His shoulders stiffened. He didn't turn. "I'm with a patient. Appointment only."
"Your last appointment," Kaito said.
Suture turned slowly. He was smaller than expected. Wire-frame glasses. A neat goatee. He looked like a scholar, not a butcher. His eyes flickered over Kaito, assessing. No immediate kagune. No obvious threat. He smiled, thin and professional.
"Aogiri sent you? I pay my dues. Tell Big Madam there's no need for theatrics."
"Not Aogiri."
Suture's smile didn't drop. It tightened. His gaze dropped to Kaito's shoulder, where the fabric of his jacket was torn and dark with blood from the hammer strike. "You're hurt. I could fix that. For a price. A small sample of your tissue. Your kagune is… unusual, isn't it? I can smell the instability."
Kaito took a step forward. The system interface pulsed. **[Stability: 44%].** The fight had drained him, but the feeding had patched the worst. The hunger was still there, a low burn.
"You experiment on humans."
"I advance our understanding," Suture corrected, picking up a scalpel. He held it like a pen. "Their pain is temporary. The knowledge is eternal. You, of all beings, should appreciate that. You're a mutation. A deviation. Let me study you. We could learn so much."
The human on the gurney whimpered.
Kaito's kagune didn't erupt. It *seeped* out. A single, dark tendril, tipped with a shard of unstable crystal, slid from his lower back like a serpent. It didn't thrash. It poised.
Suture's clinical fascination turned to cold fear. He saw the crystal. Heard the stories. "The Ghost. You're the one they're whispering about. The crystal ghost."
He threw the scalpel. A distraction. His Ukaku kagune burst from his shoulder blades—not for projectiles, but to propel him backward toward a side door. He was a surgeon, not a fighter. He knew when to cut and run.
Kaito's kagune lashed. It didn't aim for Suture. It struck the surgical lamp. The metal pole sheared. The heavy light unit crashed down, shattering, plunging the corner of the room into darkness. Suture stumbled, disoriented.
"You think you're righteous?" Suture hissed from the dark. "You're just another predator. A more efficient one! You consume your own kind! What does that make you?"
"The end of your research," Kaito said. He moved, not with blinding speed, but with a terrible, quiet certainty. He could hear Suture's frantic breathing. Smell his sudden, sour fear-sweat.
Suture fired a spray of crystals blindly into the dark. They pinged off metal and brick.
Kaito's kagune found him. It didn't pierce. It wrapped around his ankle. The conductive veins glowed a faint, warning blue.
Suture screamed as the current hit him. A jolt. Not enough to kill. Enough to paralyze. He collapsed, twitching.
Kaito walked over. Looked down. Suture stared up, glasses askew, his clinical detachment utterly shattered.
"Please," he gasped. "My work… it has value…"
Kaito's kagune tightened. The tiny mouths formed along its length. He felt the pull, the drain. Suture's Ukaku kagune, delicate and precise, began to grey and flake. Suture's screams died to a choked rattle. It wasn't just energy being taken. It was the very blueprint of his power. His identity.
**[Assimilation Potential Detected: Surgical-Grade Ukaku Biomass - Compatibility: Moderate]**
**[SYSTEM: Purge or Consume?]**
For a second, Kaito considered. The data on precise biological manipulation. It could be useful. Then he looked at the human, shivering on the gurney.
*Purge.*
The foreign biomass was ejected, splattering against the wall as inert, grey sludge.
Suture was alive. Barely. His kagune was gone. His life's work, his reason for being, stripped from him. He curled on the floor, weeping silently.
Kaito turned to the gurney. The human, a young man, stared at him with wide, tear-filled eyes. Kaito cut the straps with a crystal-shard claw. The man didn't move. Frozen in terror.
"Go," Kaito said, his voice flat. "Now."
The man scrambled off the gurney, fell, got up, and ran for the door. He didn't look back.
Kaito stood in the ruined clinic. The humming was gone. The whimpering was gone. Only Suture's ragged breaths remained.
He walked to the window. The city sprawled below. Aogiri knew his face now. The CCG had a name for him. Amon was on the scent. The balance was tipping. He was making waves. The predator in him didn't care. The human part calculated the odds.
The gamer part noted the new quest line: **\[Survive the Hunting Parties\].**
He dropped from the window, landing in a crouch in the alley below. He walked away, not running. Let them see. Let them come.
The crystal dust from his earlier fight was gone, collected by CCG forensics. But on a windowsill above, a single, tiny shard they'd missed caught the distant neon light. It glimmered. A ghost's calling card.
In his CCG office, Amon stared at the initial field report on his screen. The words "CRYSTAL GHOST" glared back. He opened a new file. He typed a title: **PROFILE: UNKNOWN GHOUL "GHOST" – ANALYSIS AND CONTAINMENT PROTOCOLS.**
He began to type. Point one: *Target demonstrates anomalous kagune properties, including crystalline formation and total RC cell assimilation/eradication of victim kagune…*
The hunt was officially open.
Kaito felt that prickle again. Stronger this time. It was the feeling of crosshairs settling between his shoulder blades. He smiled, a thin, sharp thing in the dark. The game was getting interesting.
He had a lot of work to do. The garden was full of weeds. And he was the only one with the right tools to cut them down. Let the hunters come. They'd learn what happened to things that got in a gardener's way.
The night swallowed him whole.