Amon hears those words coming out of a monster's mouth, and for a moment he doesn't know how to react, but the word bounces around inside his head over and over.
"S-saved them? Saved them? Saved them?!"
What kind of joke was that?
He gets up again with his legs shaking and notices that the spear feels heavier than before, but he attacks anyway, knowing it won't do anything.
The swing is so slow that Arata steps aside almost without moving from where he stands, and Amon ends up tripping over his own feet and hitting the ground. His whole body hurts, though more than his body, his head hurts.
Night of the Bloody Moonlight, that's what they had named it. Just hearing that name put people in a bad mood, because it's an event that reminds the entire world how dangerous ghouls are. An event known not only in Japan but everywhere.
It was the night Chimera stopped being a rumor and became something real, something people had nightmares about, because that night it was said he brought his followers and leveled all of Kyoto to the point that the sky turned red and the moon wept blood. It was visible even from Tokyo, or rather, from every city around Kyoto. Overnight more than a million people died.
Amon, who had read the reports until he had memorized it, is now looking at that monster standing in front of him telling him that he had saved them.
"...You..."
Amon spits blood onto the ground and looks up with red eyes.
"You saved them? You?! Every name of the fallen on that list..."
Arata crouches in front of him and puts two fingers on his forehead. His red eyes give off a crimson glow, and in that moment the world falls out from under Amon.
***
Amon realizes he's floating in the sky, looking down.
'This is...'
After seeing the city, even though it's night, there's no doubt it's...
'Kyoto. But how?'
There are Christmas decorations everywhere, hanging lanterns and banners and food stalls giving off steam. On a digital board on a tall building it shows December 24th, six in the evening.
—Ding!
The sound of a bell in the distance.
'What is this? Wasn't I with that monster?'
Amon tries to move only to realize he has no hands or legs. If he had to describe the sensation, the closest thing would be that instead of being a human, he's an eye floating in the sky.
He doesn't know it, but the scene in front of him is what an All-Seeing Eye witnessed. An eye that two years ago had been floating right above Kyoto.
The scene descends. The eye drops, passing through roofs and walls until it reaches the basement of a building that looks like an old temple. Inside there are people gathered, men and women, all of them very pale. At a quick glance there are dozens of them surrounding a round table. One of them opens his mouth to smile, and Amon sees sharp fangs.
'Vampires...? Aren't they supposed to not...?'
It was the first time Amon had seen vampires, though the CCG talked about them often ever since they established a cooperative relationship with the Hiragi family. There had been reports that a city full of vampires stretched out beneath Kyoto, but that they either felt such deep contempt toward humans or such total indifference toward them that they didn't interfere in human affairs or come up to the surface.
Seeing this scene in front of him, Amon is briefly thrown before narrowing his eyes. Some vampires are dressed in beautiful clothing sewn with meticulous care, while among them there are also vampires wearing casual clothes.
Setting aside the difference in their clothing, which may not carry any deeper meaning, what surprises Amon is the aura their bodies give off. Not that he can sense that aura himself, of course. Rather, it's the aura the Eye picks up, sending those same signals to Amon's mind while he's trapped inside the memory.
While the ones in the more luxurious clothing give off a stronger aura, on the normal ones the aura is barely noticeable.
One of them, tall with long hair and apparently the leader, says something and the others raise their glasses and toast. There's blood in the glasses, but the strange part is that in that blood there's a gelatinous piece of flesh like an octopus, with small eyes covering its body.
Shortly after drinking the blood in their glasses they all head out together into the streets of Kyoto.
Amon wants to open his mouth and shout at the civilians, knowing that those tall smiling figures are monsters wearing human appearances, but his voice doesn't come out.
—Chomp!
What Amon feared most happens.
He watches a vampire leap onto a couple walking hand in hand, watches another walk into a restaurant where people start screaming, and watches another break a shop window to get inside.
'This is...'
The next scene makes Amon lose any grip on his own mind. After the bites, the victims who dropped to the ground apparently dead get back up a few seconds later with white eyes, gray skin and open mouths showing sharp shark-like teeth.
These prey now become predators, throwing themselves at whoever is closest and biting them. Shortly after, that person gets up too and bites another.
A few minutes later police sirens can be heard. And a few minutes after that, smoke rises into the sky from cars that have exploded and from shops burning with violent fire.
By then the streets of Kyoto are full of things that are no longer human but monsters that ran and bit.
They're like zombies, but unlike the ones in movies where they're slow and clumsy, these zombies move nimbly, even able to climb walls and jump over barriers.
Every now and then he saw ghouls and Parasytes trying to defend themselves, but the vampires from that room laugh in shrill voices while commanding their pawns to corner them and eat them.
The eye rises to the highest point and from there Amon sees the full scope. All of Kyoto is falling apart and the tide of the infected spreads from the center out toward the edges, eating everything it finds.
With the speed and skill they possess, if nobody did anything, in less than a night Kyoto would disappear as anyone knew it, and in a week the infection would cover all of Japan. In a month he doesn't even want to think about what would happen to the world.
Then the Eye grows larger and the vision widens, managing to focus on a group wearing black uniforms and carrying swords, bows and other kinds of weapons.
"That uniform is...?"
The ones carrying those weapons are young, maybe sixteen to eighteen. He has heard that the Hiragi family used highly talented sorcery students to carry their first Cursed Gears.
And that is the uniform of a sorcery high school located in Osaka.
"They're sending children...? Seriously?"
He watches this with growing concern. He only hopes those kids are strong enough to hold back a tide of monsters.
But it's impossible. At the end of the day a group of high school students, ten of them, despite coming from a school specialized in producing elites, are still only students, and they were soon swept under a wave of thousands of monsters.
Through the whole thing Amon wanted to close his eyes, but he has no control over what happens.
With growing fear in his heart, he watched as midnight approached, the vampires commanding their zombie army biting every living thing in front of them, and those joined their army. By the time midnight arrives all of Kyoto glows scarlet through the smoke, and the only thing that can be heard are guttural sounds along with the crackling of flames, and the occasional police siren with nobody inside.
Amon realizes the vampires' next target is the cities beyond.
Then the eye shifts to the side, and Amon, watching through that eye, is surprised to discover a faint hope in his chest amid his hatred when he sees a figure.
On a rooftop far from the center, a little younger and a little shorter, but without a doubt it is the Chimera. Even though his face is blurry, Amon feels the same sensation he did standing in front of that being not long ago.