Shinigami

Towering far above any person, the Shinigami manifests as a see-through, skeletal apparition wrapped in a flowing white kimono and clutching a string of prayer beads. Its skin carries a purple cast, and a mane of shaggy white hair spills around two jutting red horns above a monstrous face. A tanto usually rests clenched in its jaws; drawn out, its mouth reveals rows of jagged fangs and a long, serpentine tongue. As it works a sealing, lines of cursed markings creep along its arms.

Little is known of the entity's inner life beyond a single overriding hunger. Above all else, it delights in devouring souls.

The Shinigami's power lies in wrenching free the souls of both the one who summons it and that summoner's chosen target, severing them with its blade and sealing them within its belly using the Dead Demon Consuming Seal, an art that both Minato Namikaze and Hiruzen Sarutobi have called upon. How much of a victim's soul it can claim scales with the caster's chakra against the target's, but no matter the result, the summoner forfeits his own soul the moment the technique is invoked. A special mask kept in the Uzumaki clan's temple outside Konohagakure can later force the creature to disgorge whatever it holds.

When Minato first called it, unable to lock the entire Nine-Tailed Demon Fox inside his newborn son, he consigned the beast's yin half to his own body and sealed the yang half in his son by other means. During the Konoha Crush, Hiruzen summoned it to bind the souls of the First and Second Hokage and tried to drag Orochimaru in as well, but age left him too weak; settling for a lesser punishment, he had the god claim Orochimaru's arms and strip him of ninjutsu. Years later, Orochimaru donned the stored mask, let the Shinigami possess him, and cut open its stomach to free the sealed Hokage within.