El Corazón de las Tinieblas
El Corazón de las Tinieblas (エル・コラソン・デ・ラス・ティニエブラス (闇の奥), Eru Korason de rasu Tinieburasu, lit. Heart of Darkness), frequently shortened to El Corazón (エル・コラソン, Eru Korason, lit. The Heart), is the Stand of Fernando Alhorn, featured in the light novel El Aleph.
It allows Alhorn to alter the compositions of any organism or object by exchanging parts belonging to them.
Appearance
El Corazón de las Tinieblas looks like a warrior from the ancient Inca Empire, wearing a mask with curved horns like a god of death. Its muscular torso and limbs shine with the gleam of chrome steel, and it has dangling massive fists. According to Alhorn, the entire body radiates an aura of dripping sadism, bloodlust, ferocious cruelty, and mercilessness. Alhorn also believes that no living creature with such an extraordinary appearance exists anywhere on Earth.[1]
When Alhorn summons it, he hears a mechanical ringing sound echoing in his head. Black smoke then billows from his body, swirls into a spiral, and consolidates into the humanoid figure of the Stand.[1]
Personality
El Corazón does not seem to have a personality of its own as it simply follows Alhorn's orders. However, Alhorn claims that it always aims for the heart in its attacks.[1]
Abilities
As a close-range Stand, El Corazón de las Tinieblas boasts extraordinary destructive power and speed. It strikes with its fists in close combat, typically doing barrages of punches.[1]
Matter Substitution
When El Corazón strikes with its fist, it scatters innumerable mercury-like droplets, which allows it to switch around the composition within objects or organisms. Essentially, it allows the Stand to exchange the positions of one's body parts or restructure buildings.
For example, when used on a body, it can swap one's nails with their teeth, their arms with their legs, their heart with their nose, or even their blood vessels with their body hair. It doesn't matter whether it's skin, bones, muscle fibers, or their internal organs. The size also doesn't matter, as Alhorn can swap large body parts with small ones. El Corazón can turn a building into a labyrinth by swapping the positions of walls, complicating the corridors, and constructing new rooms through its exchanges of various objects to trap its prey. Alhorn describes it as forcing mismatched pieces into a puzzle. Due to variations in dimensions and masses, destruction and deformities occur at the locations where the swaps take place.
The Stand has three rules it must follow:
- It only happens where El Corazón strikes with its fists.
- The target must be something Alhorn is knowledgeable of and can visualize in detail like firearms or the human body.
- Alhorn can't decide which parts to swap, so it's a gamble for him. However, as he develops his skills, he's been able to increasingly make the precise swaps that he wants to.
Swapped parts will be restored to normal if the Stand's effects are deactivated. Alhorn can also use his Stand on himself, though he does it as a last resort to save his life. When Alhorn's head is bitten off his neck, El Corazón swaps Alhorn's heart with his right cheekbone. It is capable of creating a successful bypass in his blood vessels while keeping the ventricles and atria intact, maintaining blood circulation and metabolic cell activity. Thus, Alhorn is able to stay alive for years as a head. However, his Stand disappears, which Alhorn presumes is because he no longer has a body.[1]
Chapters
Novel Appearances- El Aleph Chapter 4: IV - Peru Arc (Mentioned only)
- El Aleph Chapter 5: V - Peru Arc (Mentioned only)
- El Aleph Chapter 18: XVIII - Final Arc (Flashback)
