Chapter 4 : Symphony of Hanging Corpses

Three days later, Takeshi sits silently in a modest café in the heart of Rome, Italy. With the intelligence gathered from his clan, he watches a towering building across the street, one that tonight becomes the nest of wolves—a meeting place for half the ruling heads of Europe’s darkest underworld. Human trafficking barons, mafia dons, and drug lords converge in this single fortress.

Through the window, Takeshi’s sharpened shinobi senses trace their defenses: fifty men scattered, some disguised as locals, some posted on rooftops, others blending into the crowd. To ordinary eyes, they appear invisible, but to him, they are glowing beacons of prey. He sips his coffee like a harmless tourist, blending into the rhythm of the city, while his true self lurks beneath the mask of calm.

At exactly 9:20 p.m., black cars roll to a halt. One by one, twenty titans of crime step into the building, their footsteps heavy with arrogance. The fortress is sealed by one hundred eighty-eight armed guards, twenty snipers scanning from every rooftop, and countless men patrolling inside. Yet to Takeshi, clad in black shinobi garb, dual katanas crossing his back, chained kunai coiled on his arms, shuriken hidden in the folds of his sleeves, and his demonic black mask glowing faintly in the moonlight—they are not protectors. They are livestock.

Inside the heavily guarded chamber, the twenty crime lords sit around a long oak table, their cigars burning low and glasses of wine trembling slightly in their hands. The air is heavy with paranoia.

Viktor Dragunov slams his fist on the table. His Russian accent cuts through the smoke. “This Lunatic has cost me millions. Girls stolen from my network, my buyers furious. He cuts them apart… leaves them like carcasses for dogs to feast on.” His words drip with both rage and unease.

Alessio Romano leans back, his gold rings catching the dim light. “Not carcasses, Viktor. Corpses are merciful. What he leaves is… art. I saw one of my men nailed upside down in the port of Naples, entrails hanging like garlands. And written on the wall, in blood—‘Your sins are your chains.’” He spits, but his hand shakes as he reaches for his glass.

Rafael Giaccone growls from the other side, his Sicilian voice cold. “He knows our routes, our secrets. No one is safe. I lost an entire shipment because he slaughtered my couriers mid-journey. When we found them, their organs were lined up neatly on the roadside. Hearts, livers, eyes—everything placed in order, like some twisted ritual.”

Ivan Markovic exhales slowly, his jaw tightening. “He plays with us. Leaves trophies of our men on rooftops. I had three soldiers found in Belgrade, strung by their own intestines. No bullets. No signs of struggle. Just silence… until the crows found them first.”

Marek Kowalski mutters with a bitter laugh, though his eyes betray fear. “And always, always, the same mark. Blood smeared across the walls. Messages written like curses. The last one said: ‘Hell has opened. I am its hand.’”

The room falls into silence. Gheorghe Petrescu stares into his glass, speaking almost in a whisper. “We call him The Devil Butcher. But devils have names. He doesn’t. No one has ever seen his face. No cameras. No trails. He simply appears… and vanishes into the night.”

A heavy tension grips them all. Jürgen Krüger finally breaks the quiet. “He is not a man. He is a shadow. And if we don’t find him, if we don’t end him… one by one, we will be next.” The crime lords exchange glances, hardened predators suddenly made prey.

At the same moment the crime lords speak in trembling voices, something stirs above them. On the rooftops, the shadows shift, silent and alive. The Devil Butcher has arrived.

The first sniper never even senses it. A whisper of steel cuts the air—shuriken glinting under the pale moon—then buries itself deep into his throat. He collapses soundlessly, his rifle sliding from his hands, his eyes wide in eternal surprise.

Another guard scans the rooftop nervously. The faint clinking of chains brushes past his ear before he can react. A kunai, tethered by black steel chain, wraps around his neck. The Butcher yanks it back with one merciless tug. The man’s head jerks sideways, his windpipe crushed as blood sprays across the tiles. The body dangles for a moment, like meat on a hook, before being discarded.

From the darkness, two crimson sparks gleam—the eyes behind the demonic mask. In an instant, the Devil Butcher moves, faster than sight, his twin katanas drawn. The blades sing, and three more guards are carved apart in a single breath. Arms severed. Torsos split open. Their screams never escape; only wet gasps and the sickening sound of steel cutting flesh echo into the night.

Below, guards outside the mansion hear nothing—only the distant flutter of crows. One of them steps forward, uneasy, when a shuriken whistles through the dark, embedding itself between his eyes. He drops like a puppet with its strings cut. Panic erupts.

Two more rush forward with rifles raised. Chains whistle, slicing through the night, kunai tearing into their throats. The Butcher pulls back, ripping flesh as the men crumple in pools of their own blood. Then silence again. A silence heavy and suffocating.

At the center of the massacre, he stands tall—the Devil Butcher is standing infront of the building, blades dripping with crimson, his mask gleaming under the blood-red moon. He breathes slowly, not in exhaustion, but in hunger. The hunger for more blood.

The massacre has only just begun.

The blood-soaked silence outside the mansion thickens, pressing against the walls of the meeting hall. The mafia lords sip their wine nervously, but none of them speak of the unease crawling up their spines. Suddenly, the lamps along the outer corridor begin to flicker—once, twice—before plunging into darkness. The room breathes with shadows.

“Wh-what happened to the lights?” one guard whispers, his voice trembling.

“Maybe the generator—” another tries to answer, but his words are cut short by a scream.

A shriek erupts from the darkness. A guard stationed near the window collapses, his body split open by an unseen blade. The sound of steel ripping through flesh fills the silence, wet and grotesque. His scream gurgles, turning into nothing but a choking cry as his organs spill onto the floor.

“God help us…!” another guard stammers, aiming his rifle toward the corridor. “Stay together! Don’t—” Chains whistle. A hooked kunai latches onto his chest, dragging him into the black void. His voice rips into the night, a desperate, horrifying cry: “AAARRGH! MY BODY—MY BODY!!”

The others rush toward the sound, but what greets them freezes their blood. From the rafters above, something swings. Not chandeliers. Not banners. Flesh. Pieces of flesh. Arms, torsos, heads—all dangling by steel chains, dripping fresh blood onto the marble floor. The guards stare in horror as the crimson rain stains their uniforms.

One of them breaks. “No… no no no, this isn’t human…” He sobs, his rifle shaking in his hands. Then, from the pitch-dark ceiling, two red sparks ignite—the eyes behind the demonic mask. The Devil Butcher steps forward, his katanas already wet, his chains dripping gore. He does not rush. He simply walks into the lightless hall, leaving the sound of swinging corpses behind him.

The telephone rings inside the meeting room, breaking the tense silence. One of the bosses picks it up, and instead of a voice, a chilling lullaby crawls through the speaker—soft, slow, and drenched in malice. It is the lullaby of The Devil Butcher. The melody twists their guts, the sound not of comfort but of a funeral dirge.

Sweat beads roll down their faces. One of the men, trembling, steps to the door and opens it just a crack. His eyes widen in horror—the corridor is painted with fresh blood. From the ceiling, chunks of flesh and severed limbs dangle like grotesque decorations. Blood drips steadily onto the marble floor, pooling at his feet. He slams the door shut, his voice breaking, “He’s here… Oh God, he’s here…” The room erupts into panic.

Guns are drawn, safeties clicked off, barrels pointed at the door as if sheer firepower could protect them. “We can take him down! He’s just one man!” shouts Rafael Giaccone, his voice betraying his own fear. “Are you blind? He slaughtered over a hundred guards in minutes!” Marek Kowalski yells back, his hands shaking so hard the pistol rattles.

“Where is he then?!” Viktor Dragunov’s voice booms across the table, a futile attempt to mask his terror. And then—the lights die. The room plunges into suffocating darkness. The only sound is their ragged breathing, quickened heartbeats, and the distant drip of blood outside.

Suddenly, a whisper cuts through the black: “Here.”

All heads snap upward. From the shadows above, The Devil Butcher hangs from the rafters, his black demon mask glinting in the faint moonlight, his crimson eyes burning like fire. His twin katanas gleam, already wet with blood, dripping onto the bosses below.

Before anyone can scream, shuriken slice through the dark, embedding into throats and eyes. Gurgling cries erupt. Panic consumes the room as men fire blindly, bullets ricocheting off walls, never touching him. Chains whistle through the air—two kunai on burning steel links wrap around a man’s torso, yanking him upward. His body splits apart mid-air, his screams echoing until they choke into silence.

Another boss tries to crawl under the table, sobbing, but a katana pierces clean through the wood, skewering his skull. Blood fountains onto the polished oak, pooling between documents of their empire.

The massacre unfolds like a hellish symphony—katanas carving bodies open with surgical cruelty, intestines spilling onto the floor, organs wrenched out and tossed aside like trash. The Devil Butcher moves too fast to follow, his laughter echoing beneath the mask, inhuman and cold.

“Stop shooting! Stop shooting! He’s everywhere!” one boss shrieks before his jaw is torn apart by a flying shuriken, leaving him choking on his own tongue.

Soon the floor is slick with blood, bodies reduced to mutilated heaps. Only one man is left alive—Constantin Ionescu, the trafficker of children. He crawls backward on his hands, smearing blood across the floor, begging, “Please… no… I’ll give you everything—money, power—just don’t—”

The Devil Butcher looms over him, tilting his head slowly, demon mask dripping crimson. He presses a blood-soaked katana to the man’s throat, voice low, guttural, demonic.

“You… don’t deserve to live.”

With a single slash, Constantin’s head rolls across the floor, eyes still wide in terror. The Devil Butcher stands among the ruin—twenty of the world’s most powerful monsters, reduced to nothing but broken meat.

And yet, the silence that follows is not peace. It is the silence of hell itself.

The following morning, the streets of Rome are drowned in chaos. Police sirens wail, echoing through the city as Inspector Roberto Morucci leads his men into the building that only hours ago became a slaughterhouse.

The moment they step inside, the air reeks of blood and rot. The ceiling is a grotesque gallery of death—mangled limbs, severed heads, and torn torsos dangle from chains like trophies, dripping blood onto the floor below. Some organs are pinned to the walls, still quivering as if clinging to life.

Several officers gag, clutching their stomachs before vomiting, unable to stomach the carnage. Others freeze in place, paralyzed with horror. The floor is slick with blood, painting every corner of the once-grand hall in shades of crimson and black.

And then they see it—a note, smeared across the wall in human blood. The letters are jagged, uneven, yet unmistakably deliberate: “YOUR POWER WAS BUILT ON THE BONES OF THE WEAK. NOW YOUR BONES DECORATE THE CEILING. I AM THE END YOU CANNOT ESCAPE. I AM THE BUTCHER, AND THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING.”

Inspector Morucci stares at the message, his face pale, his voice trembling as he whispers, “My God… he was truly here last night.”

Behind him, silence swallows the room, broken only by the soft drip of blood falling from the mutilated corpses above. Every officer feels it in their bones—this is not the end. This is merely the opening act of The Devil Butcher’s reign of terror.

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