One Piece: Madness of Regret-Chapter 53: The girl with red hair(16)

A heart in a skull.

Not my first eerie experience. But certainly an interesting one.

A living, beating heart nestled where a mind should have been. A grotesque contradiction, pulsing in the hollow cavity of brittle bone, veins wrapping around the fractured interior like roots searching for soil. It throbbed, slow and steady, unaware—or uncaring—that it did not belong.

I crouched lower, my breath stirring the stagnant rotting air around it. My fingers twitched. Curiosity? I wasn't sure.

I reached out and poked it.

It shifted beneath my touch—firm yet yielding, a rubbery muscle, spongy and cool, its slick surface damp with coagulated blood. The flesh resisted slightly before giving way, just enough to make me press deeper. A faint tremor pulsed beneath my fingertip. It was beating quite heartily for being in a skull.

I pressed it even more.

That's when the blood came.

A sudden, wet gush. Thick and eager, like a wound relieved to bleed. It spurted from the heart's valves in a slow, lazy seep, spilling over the edges of the shattered skull. But it didn't just drip—it moved.

It reached for me.

The blood slid over my fingers, curling around them in thin, slithering tendrils. It coiled along my wrist, creeping up my arm with intent.

And then, I felt it.

It settled into me. It was returning home.

Not just resting against my skin, but inside—seeping into my pores, sinking into my veins. A rush, a strange, invasive warmth spreading through my limbs, coiling into my skull.

And there, deep inside me, it waited.

Silent. Obedient.

Like a dog awaiting its master's approval.

The thought alone made me grin, sharp and wide. How eager the blood was. How loyal. It had done its job. And in return it sought praise. Just praise.

It wouldn't get it. It was just a toy for me to play with nothing more. It deserved no praise. All it had to do was be a part of me and obey.

I pulled the heart free from the skull with a wet, pop. Veins stretched and snapped, reluctant to let go. The muscle quivered in my grasp, its final beats thudding against my palm.

Still warm.

Still trying.

Still beating.

I turned, bringing both the skull and the heart that did not belong to the big guy.

He would want to see.

He would want to know what happens to his trusty man, wouldn't he?

The one he barked orders at, leaned on in storms, trusted to slit throats in the dark and clean up the mess before breakfast.

The man who stood by his side like a mast on this creaking wreck of a ship, loyal, unyielding, always the first to draw steel and the last to question a command.

He would want to know what it meant to be devoured by the blood.

And if he didn't?

Well.

It didn't matter.

I turn to him, slowly. The heart still warm in my palm, the skull grinning, still hollow.

"He didn't scream. He couldn't." I whisper. "Thought you'd like to know."

The blood already knew its job.

It was devouring the big guy.

But slowly. Much slower than it did with the coward.

Strength, I realized, played its part. The blood didn't just consume—it tested. It wrestled with its prey. And this one? This one was putting up a fight, even as his mind lay vacant, even as his body betrayed him.

His skin bulged in strange places, twitching under pressure. Not bruises—distortions. Veins ballooned outward, pulsing beneath his flesh as though something inside him was trying to push out. His muscles, once proud and defined, now quivered like gelatin, swelling grotesquely, stretching with unnatural pressure.

Then came the pops.

Tiny at first. Wet, muffled bursts. Like someone popping bubble wrap under a soaked towel. His skin cracked, split, and then healed over again, only to swell and crack anew. The blood was metabolizing him like a parasite that wanted to savor every bite.

His eyes didn't scream.

They just leaked.

Vacant and bleeding, red trails dribbling down his cheeks like tears of surrender. The whites had turned a milky red film, no longer tracking, no longer human. Just windows to a soul that had already left.

And it wasn't just his body.

All his artifices—his rings, his knife, the brass buckles on his belt—began to dissolve. Not fall. Not clatter to the floor in a sad heap. They melted, eaten mid-fall by thin strands of blood that reached up greedily, like a thousand little tongues. The metal hissed and warped, curling in on itself before vanishing into wet nothingness.

There was no sound but the gurgle of digestion.

The room reeked of copper, bile, and something older.

Where he stood, there was no flesh left to speak of—just swelling lumps that tore open, one by one, revealing the glistening crimson beneath. It wasn't blood anymore. Not really. Just color.

Color that consumed.

Color that painted the walls in quiet pulses, as if it had a heartbeat of its own.

I watched it work.

The slow undoing. The blood didn't rush. It took its time. It savored. Every inch of the man. Every part of what made him him. Until nothing was left but that same, endless, violent red.

And still, it pulsed.

And still, it waited.

Satisfied. But never full.

Not yet.

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