#devoured soul effect

Sebastian is a young demon?

That's pretty much my thoughts on it. For a demon, he might be "young" and somewhat inexperienced, despite any humble bragging or outright boasting.

At some point, the demon gives up "messily sampling" souls and starts accepting contracts. But the only hints we have about his previous contracts suggest there might not have been many. In fact, we only have hints about two previous contracts: one in the second half of the 18th century in Austria and maybe one in the later 15th century in Italy. Those assessments are based on things he says about the Viennese Waltz and the outfits he changes into when our earl seems shocked by his first appearance as a human.

If he slept between those contracts, that means a lot of time spent in his own realm, away from human contact.

I wouldn't say our earl is the first child he's ever interacted with, but he's definitely the only child contractor he's ever had, and he says so. He admits he's not used to caring for a human who can do so little for themselves, and he's not used to masters who expect the demon to cook from scratch, appear to do things the human way, or generally "act human". And even though Sebastian suggests a human lifetime isn't a long amount of time for him to wait for his "meal", Othello suggests that most contracts don't last long at all, because most humans have very simple wishes when they make contracts.

The demon learns knowledge and skills from contracts, and judging by the things he didn't have skills with or knowledge about (like choosing dish patterns [according to the Character Guide], making tea, cooking, bathing a person, water temperatures that harm humans, particular illnesses like asthma, or even how to get the best work out of the other servants), he's never had contracts before where those skills or that knowledge was required.

Where is real Ciel's soul?

That seems to be the first question here. I'm a bit confused by this ask, but I'll answer what I can.

No, it's not in the ring. Even though we don't directly witness the demon devouring real Ciel's soul, it did. Sebastian says he's already taken/claimed/devoured real Ciel's soul as payment for "crossing" from his world into the human realm. When our earl later asks Sebastian what happens to souls he eats, the demon says "nothing" but then says they "disappear" by the time Judgement Day comes along. What I'm saying comes from ch139:

So, theoretically, real Ciel's soul could still be somewhere inside Sebastian's demonic guts, just like the ring was still inside real Ciel's guts. And it's just sitting there until it eventually disappears. It's unclear just how souls provide energy or sustenance for demons, but I theorize the souls they eat do have an effect on them. So, I do think that when this demon devoured real Ciel's soul and then took a human form, that form was partly based on what real Ciel (and our earl) would have looked like as an adult. This helps explain why Sebastian and Vincent have visible similarities. It's like Sebastian (in his current human form) is a combination of Vincent, Rachel and something purely demonic. The demonic part accounts for the pitch black hair, black nails, and eyes that change from human to demonic. He apparently cannot change his hair color or nail color. It also might be impossible for Sebastian to make his eyes look blue, like the twins' eyes. If you gave Sebastian the signature Phantomhive hair color with real Ciel's side part, changed his eyes to deep blue, and made his nails look normal, this is basically what a grown-up real Ciel might look like. And grown up "our earl" would just be the mirror image of that.

Real Ciel's soul also seems to affect the demon's behavior, as there are things Sebastian does... from time to time... that remind me of real Ciel, like: 1. Offering our earl warm milk and honey when he was at a loss what other food to offer and didn't want for his young master to go to bed hungry and 2. Trying to spoon feed our earl while he was sick; real Ciel also did that once when our earl was ill.

What was the demon doing before this contract?

That seems to be another question in your ask.

Apparently sleeping! Sebastian wrote the lyrics for the Phantom Five's songs, and one is from his perspective as a hungry demon, awakened by the aroma of a soul. He says sleep is a luxury for demons, and so he might have been taking a long pleasure nap after a previous meal.

When was that previous meal, you might ask? Probably back in the late 1700's, judging from two things: 1. One of the outfits he offers to wear while serving his master is from that time period, and 2. He says he danced the Viennese waltz at Schönbrunn Palace, and that dance didn't exist until the second half of the 18th century. He might have had a contract with a member of the Hapsburg family in Austria. Either that or with someone in their social circles. So, Sebastian definitely isn't a demon who only offers contracts in Great Britain.

If the third outfit he appears in is any indication, he's also had a contract dating back to the late 15th century, possibly in Italy. For whatever reason, the app isn't letting me paste the link I grabbed for an old post about this third outfit, but if you search my blog (or click the tag on this original post) for "ch138", it should be one of the posts that comes up; it's dated August 26, 2021.

What demon was the cult trying to summon?

I'm not entirely sure. The cultist calls the demon by a number of descriptions or sobriquets, with the licensed English translation saying "the devil", "lord of chaos", as well as many wordier phrases. From ch136:

Interestingly enough, one of those wordy phrases is "the nefarious beast who sups on spilled blood", and that might be what is happening in this image:

Sebastian as the main character

Yeah, he’s officially the main character, according to Yana-san. I don’t recall any tweets specifically about that, but she did say so in one of the art books… was it Artworks 2? We also have to consider the fact she went to Editor K with “I want to write about a demon butler”, not “I want to write about an aristocratic boy”. In fact, it looks to me like she recycled an older character concept she’d originally meant for another story to become our “Ciel” Phantomhive; his name was Ao (which means “blue”), and he was some sort of young, aristocratic detective. I used to have an image of him, from her old blog, but I haven’t been able to find that image again these past few years.

Anyway, yes, this means Sebastian should go through some sort of character development. And, even though he’s centuries (or even millennia) old, among demons he might be considered “young”. So, I do often call this series the demon’s Bildungsroman — his coming-of-age story.

I’ve got some old posts about this, so you might check the tags of this post for more information. Probably find the most under #series end, #end of the series, #series ending, #end of the manga, and maybe something like #predictions, #emotions, #epilogue, #character development, #soul devouring, and #soul effect. Maybe even #devoured soul effect? Also please see the Tagging Masterpost for a link that’s about this topic. How and when the series might end.

But mostly, I expect for Sebastian to get the meal he’s been promised. Then, when he eats our earl’s soul, something will happen that he wasn’t expecting. Like a blossoming of emotions that he didn’t know he could feel — love, loss, shame, regret, a heavy burden — stuff like that. The sorts of emotions that make humans cry. He previously told Beast that he didn’t “yet” have a “jot” of understanding about such things as love or loss. Then there’s the scene in the witch arc, where Sebastian is crying, but it’s just from mustard gas, which he had never encountered before. He even says to himself he doesn’t have the ability to cry from emotions. I think he’s gained a little taste of these, but our earl’s soul is full of such emotions.

Demons might be the epitope of “you are what you eat”. Othello says that most demon contracts are over so quickly because the humans who make contracts usually have simple wishes that are easily granted. This suggests those humans themselves are somewhat simple. But he also says there have been notable exceptions, and I think our earl is one of them. Plus, Sebastian has accepted a contract he knows might take a while to fulfill, due to the terms placed upon it. He’s ok with that, since a human lifespan isn’t very long to him, and he thinks the wait will make the finished meal all the tastier. Yana-san calls him a “perverted gourmet” because he likes to “prepare” his meals in a way that alters the taste; he wants to put his Young Master through a lot of ordeals in order to “season his soul”. And his goal is to make this soul taste different than others he’s had before. I think he will succeed in that!

End of the series

@ickosovo I'm not sure why these go to my email but not my inbox. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I'm not counting this as a 🎉 because I have not been able to verify you follow the blog. Besides, this was a basic theory ask, not a specified task, like artwork.

I have at least half a dozen posts about that. Some of them are pretty detailed, too. 😊

Check out #series end, #end of the series, #series ending, #end of the manga, #soul devouring, #dec 13 1889, and other tags about what I expect to happen, if Sebastian gets to devour our earl’s soul. I’ve included a bunch of those tags on this post, too, so you can just click to see what comes up. There’s also a link in the Tagging Masterpost called “How and when the series might end.”

Here’s a pretty good post about it from March 19, 2020.

It’s something I’ve blogged about many times, but it’s the sort of topic that’s a bit hard to narrow down the tags for. (I’ll see if I can come up with a tag to make it easier, and then I can add it when I find my older posts that fit.) But here is probably the last time I got an ask specifically about it.

Basically, I theorize that when the demon devoured real Ciel’s soul as payment for “crossing the river”, this caused him to take on features of an adult Ciel — a combination of Vincent and Rachel. If this is true, then that would mean Sebastian’s current human form is like the adult form of our earl, too.

The biggest support I have been able to find for this is that, when he’s offering to change his appearance, all he’s changing is his clothes (sometimes including a hat and a wig), not his facial features, height, etc. I figure there must be some things about himself (in human form) he cannot control, specifically because they are informed by the soul he’s just devoured.

There are three things that definitely differ between the twins and Sebastian, though. One being his hair and nails are pitch black, which he doesn’t seem to be able to change. The second being that his hair parts down the center, instead of one side or other. Third, Sebastian is clearly way taller than either of the twins, and we have no reason to think they were expected to reach 6’1”. There might be other things, too, but those three immediately come to mind, and they might be true of his human form, regardless of the souls he devours.

And then I also theorize that there are certain things he does because of real Ciel’s soul, too... like automatically bringing his young master warm milk and honey without being prompted to do so, trying to spoon-feed his young master when Soma tells him to be “kind”, and randomly choosing to use the same recipes that Vincent, real Ciel, and Diedrich used years ago when Rachel and our earl were both ill. I don’t really consider any of that to be coincidental or random.

I’ll add some more links here as a I find them.

And I think I’ve come up with a good tag I can use: #devoured soul effect. This will be very specific to this topic of Sebastian looking like Vincent and sometimes acting like real Ciel (as big brother, etc.).

What do you think about an idea that O!Ciel is not aging because R!Ciel wasn't growing and Sebastian acts as Medium between them? Let me explain:

We can suspect that R!Ciel body still has a connection with its soul - Sebs, acted as a medium between twins ( 'couse twin magic I suppose). What if this twin magic was active all the time Sebs is with O!ciel and he connects brothers. R!Ciel can't grow, so nighter grows body of O!Ciel.

Also Also, what do you think about an idea that a demon takes place of person sacrificed to him on summoning ritual, and takes its apprentice? That would mean Sebs is a grown-up version of twins. If they were ~140cm as 10-yers-olds they could have reached 186cm. Also, Sebs is a shapeshifter jet he seems to be unable to change his face, body. He changes hair length and regenerates.

He seems to be stuck with this form, 'cause if he was able to change it would have been useful a few times in a story already.

His resemblance to Vincent could have been the same face syndrome, but R!Ciel souls impact on Sebs behavior is unquestionable. What do you think?

🤔 to discuss a specific theory

Sorry, it’s taken me a while to get to this one. Sorry again that I don’t have much to say on these topics that I haven’t said before.

I very much doubt it’s real Ciel’s soul keeping our earl from growing, but I do think it’s possible that the contract itself has somehow affected/stunted our earl’s growth.

Check out the tags below. A link to this post has been added to the Tagging Masterpost.