Chapter 1: Desecrating the Altar

The blizzard had abated. The moonlight, like the gaze of a reaper, lay pale and deathly over the ruins, plating the piled corpses with an unearthly silver sheen. The day's fighting had concluded, but a darker, more primal darkness, rooted deep in human nature, writhed silently under the cover of night.

Guths moved through the no-man's-land of crisscrossed battle lines like a hound lingering at the edge of life and death, followed silently by Kate and a few trusted veterans. For him, the "cleaning" duty had long transcended its military purpose, becoming a series of private rituals to sate his shadowy desires.

Nearby, the entrance to a half-collapsed basement gaped like the maw of a beast, from which issued stifled sobs and a few short, lewd chuckles. Guths raised a hand, and his party froze, becoming solidified shadows. He wasn't moving to stop it. Instead, he edged closer silently, like a connoisseur awaiting the start of a good show.

The scene inside was enough to shatter any soul that retained a shred of warmth.

Three or four Loran soldiers surrounded a surviving Rose female soldier. She had clearly been wounded and knocked unconscious during the day's assault and had just awoken. Her uniform was mostly torn away, revealing large expanses of skin as smooth as ivory, gleaming with a fragile light under the moon. She possessed a face that could be called a work of art, too pure for this filthy world. Her sapphire-blue eyes were wide with utter terror, tears continuously carving tracks through the grime on her cheeks. One of her legs was twisted at an unnatural angle; the pain of the fracture prevented any effective struggle, leaving her to tremble on the cold ground like an offering to the abyss.

A scarred Loran soldier roughly pinched her chin, forcing her head up. "Tch, damn pretty. Pity she's a Rose bitch." His fingers, like maggots, crawled over the delicate skin of her neck, leaving filthy prints.

"Broken leg. Won't be much fun," another, shorter and stockier soldier spat, though the murky light of mingled disgust and desire in his eyes remained glued to the girl's exposed skin.

"Just a bit of fun. We have to dispose of her before dawn anyway," the scarred soldier said, undoing his belt, his face twisted with excitement. "Let these noble Roses taste the mud too!"

"No... please... don't..." the girl whimpered, a small, animal-like sound. She tried to curl away futilely. The agony from her broken leg scraping the ground sent spasms through her body, which only seemed to excite her tormentors, eliciting a round of low, dark laughter.

Guths stood in the deepest part of the shadows, calmly "appreciating" the scene. He didn't intervene, nor did he participate. He was savoring it—savoring every line of fear on that exquisitely beautiful face, savoring the helpless tremors of that young body in despair. A cold, god-like sense of control burgeoned and spread within him. He held dominion over everything here, including the manner in which this beautiful life would be extinguished, the precise nature of the pain and humiliation she would endure before her end.

Beside him, Kate's breathing was slightly rapid, but her face was one of utter numbness. She had long grown accustomed to following her master into the darkest depths of humanity.

Finally, at the moment the scarred soldier was almost upon her, Guths moved. He stepped into the moonlit area like a blade tearing through the shadows.

His appearance froze the soldiers instantly. The scarred soldier scrambled up, fumbling frantically with his trousers. "G-General!" His voice was thick with fear.

Guths didn't even glance their way. His gaze, like an icy probe, remained locked on the Rose soldier. Seeing the rank on Guths's shoulder, a faint spark of light—a mix of terror and... a pitiful sliver of hope—flared in her blue eyes, drowned as they were in despair. Perhaps she thought an officer represented order and convention.

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Guths slowly crouched down, meeting her eye-to-eye. He was close enough to feel the heat of her fear-quickened breath. He reached out a hand, not touching her, but hovering just above her cheek, as if sensing the tremors of a fine porcelain piece about to shatter.

"Name?" His voice was as calm as a frozen lake.

"... A... Alya..." Her voice was shattered, laced with uncontrollable sobs.

"Age?"

"Sev... seventeen..."

"Seventeen..." Guths repeated, no emotion discernible in his tone, but the corner of his mouth seemed to twist in an almost imperceptibly cruel arc. "A flower-like age. Should be sheltered in a greenhouse. Yet here you lie in the mud, like a toy waiting to be broken."

Alya's pupils contracted violently at his words.

Guths's gaze, tangible as a physical force, swept slowly over her body, from her delicate collarbone, to the slight rise and fall of her chest, and finally back to her eyes, brimming with tears, like the purest sapphires.

"You know, Alya?" His voice suddenly took on an almost intimate, yet chillingly gentle quality. "Destroying beauty like yours requires technique. Mere killing is a waste."

He slowly drew the bayonet from his belt. The moonlight flowed like a cold, mournful light along the blade.

"No... no... please... kill me..." Alya understood. A massive, overwhelming terror seized her. She began shaking her head desperately, tears streaming. "I surrender... I'll do anything..."

"Surrender?" Guths let out a soft laugh, low and hollow. "I don't need your surrender. What I need is... the process."

Before the words had fully left his mouth, the tip of his bayonet moved. It didn't plunge towards her heart. Instead, it came to rest lightly on the tender skin of her uninjured thigh. Then, he began to apply pressure, slowly.

"Ah—!" A sharp, piercing pain wrenched a short scream from Alya. Her body arched violently.

The tip broke the skin. A thin, crimson line trickled down, stark against her pale flesh. Guths's movements were slow, precise, ensuring the pain was transmitted clearly, yet not causing immediately crippling damage.

"See, how fragile life is. Beauty, even more so." Guths's voice was like a murmur in a dream, his eyes fixed on Alya's beautiful face, now contorted in pain, as if admiring a masterpiece. "I am recording. Recording how perfection is gradually eroded and defiled by suffering. This is ten thousand times more interesting than mere possession."

The psychological evisceration proceeded in tandem with the physical torment. His words, like venom, seeped into Alya's teetering consciousness.

"Your comrades are all dead. No one will remember you. Your final moments exist only in my memory, as an... interesting fragment." He twisted the blade slightly.

Alya's screams dissolved into broken, tear-choked whimpers. Fear, pain, humiliation, and the despair of being utterly negated swallowed her whole.

The Loran soldiers had gone pale. One even turned his head away. They might be base, but they were far from reaching Guths's level, where cruelty was refined into an "art." Kate's fingertips trembled slightly, but she remained silent.

When Guths felt the psychological torment had reached its peak, when the light in Alya's eyes had begun to fade, leaving only the instinctual twitches of fear, he seemed, at last, "satisfied."

"Time," he whispered, as if conducting a farewell rite.

This time, the bayonet plunged accurately and swiftly into Alya's heart. Her body convulsed violently. Those beautiful blue eyes flew wide open, pupils dilating rapidly, the final light within them solidifying into an expression of ultimate agony, boundless terror, and the void left after utter desecration. A short, almost inaudible gurgle, choked with blood, and her head lolled limply to the side. The breath of life ceased abruptly.

The entire process was as quiet as a nightmare.

Guths pulled out the bayonet and meticulously wiped the blood on Alya's tattered uniform, his movements as elegant as someone maintaining a musical instrument. He stood up, looking down at that face, now lifeless yet still hauntingly beautiful, like a white rose utterly ravaged by storm.

He turned to the pale-faced soldiers, his voice returning to its previous coldness, but with a faint, barely perceptible undertone of satiation. "Fun? That was just bestial instinct. Remember, next time, either be quick and clean, or... learn how to truly 'savor' it." He paused, then added, "Dispose of it."

With that, he turned and walked into the outer darkness without a backward glance. Kate took a deep breath and quickly followed.

Behind them came the dull sounds of the soldiers dragging the corpse, and a few fearful, muttered words.

"Madman..."

"I almost vomited..."

Guths caught these words clearly, but he paid them no mind. On the contrary, a subtle sense of pleasure stirred within him. In this god-forsaken land, he had long since crowned himself a new god—a deity presiding over pain and ruin. And Alya's blue eyes, frozen in ultimate despair, along with every frame of her trembling in agony, would become the most vivid, the most worthy decorations upon his divine throne, to be savored again and again. To desecrate the altar was not merely to prove his power; it was the very meaning of his existence.