Awakening

Awakening is the event that transforms a claymore or destruction squad member into an awakened being but can be more generally applied to a moment when yoki fully merges with a piece or entirety of a being. The Organization believed and still does believe that awakening is when a warrior uses too much yoki and turns into gut-loving psychopaths. However, the organization was only partially correct. Awakening is truly when the abused yoki of an individual can't take any more abuse and seperation from its owner (hence the part of using too much yoki) and rips apart its owner's mind and reforms around the observer (soul) of the individual in a personalized armor. This armor is what shows in the observed (body) and creates the awakened's awakened form. The soul of an awakening individual can either be covered by its yoki "armor", retaining the memories of human (and claymore life) and keeping its humanity or can be completely destroyed and integrated into the yoki, creating mindless awakened ruled by their instincts. The result of the combination of the mind and its yoki is what drives the body after awakening. Another way of looking at the situation is that the yoki and the being's soul aren't fully combined due to the presence of hate, which separates the two parts. The yoki acts as a reflection of the being's soul. Upon awakening, the human mind and body fully succumb to the yoki, being devoured entirely, leaving the yoki in power over the soul. However, due to the hatred that still exists between the two pieces, the awakening results in monstrous forms (now that the yoki's inhuman nature is dominant) and a need to feed on humans (as that is the only thing that the yoki is used to eating before when it was eating the human parts of its master). Awakening also releases any of the claymore's latent potential and causes them to gain an awakened body and mindset. Typically, awakening is followed by mindless rampaging in Blood Mist, although the rampaging, insane aspect is skipped if the claymore wasn't hungry when she awakened.

Awakening is inevitable and a natural stage of evolution as yoki constantly gets stronger with time, and continually devours anything it contacts. The yoki in a claymore has already consumed their bodies and thus, begins to corrupt their minds. Claymores usually don't accept their yoki and instead try to push it away with chaining due to their own self-loathing. However, their human minds eventually grow weaker as time progresses while the yoki in their bodies gets stronger the more it is used due to its immortal nature and corruption of the mind (it needs to corrupt the mind since the body is fully corrupted already). The yoki starts replacing the dying human mind, unnoticably as the yoki itself thinks exactly the same as the human mind so the Claymore still feels as though nothing has changed. Eventually, upon awakening, the human mind is finally completely destroyed, making way for the yoki's mind. The yoki's mind contains everything the human mind had and all of its repressed instincts and secrets, particularly, bringing out the instinct to feed and find meat to eat. In this stage, the yoki can assimilate the memories and personality of the original human mind to create an awakened that thinks it is still a human and have memories of its past (which really isn't its past as the awakened is the yoki itself that bonded to its host), or awaken mindlessly (usually only happens to Destruction Squads). This mindless awakening occurs due to a lack of time in all senses of the word (time to copy, Seasoning). The yoki has only been in contact with the body for less than a day before it is forced to awaken and copy the mind. However, the copying time is too short to copy the whole mind so only the most basic instincts are preserved. Similarly, looking at it from a seasoning prospective, the Destruction Squad member has only days worth of seasoning which could never be enough to engrave the entire human mind into the yoki so only a small amount is engraved.

In THUMA, awakening still occurs. However, instead of the yoki destroying the mind and copying its master's self-loathing, the yoki is merged with its master's mind, allowing for perfect control over the yoki's particular ability/reality warping and a lack of hate, causing no aura to be seen. The awakening itself can be seen on the user's mental body but not physically due to a lack of hate (which creates). The user can still eat regular food as the human mind was not overwritten and the body responds to the human mind's human needs (albeit these needs are far lower than a regular human (sleep, eating, etc..)). However, if an awaken were to go through THUMA, the need to eat guts would still be preserved as there no longer is any human mind in awakends and the only mind to use is the yoki's will which includes the need to eat raw food. Users of THUMA say this allows the yoki to combine with their souls completely. This is because in THUMA, the hate, which separates the yoki from the soul (as the soul wishes to be separate from the yoki and the yoki reflects this back, not wanting to be part of the soul), is removed, leaving only love which joins all things together.

Another way of thinking of awakening is like this:

Claymores really have "monster" bodies (bodies shaped by their soul through yoki) but these bodies don't show due to them wearing a skin of their appearances as humans and their mental chaining of their yoki. As they use more yoki, unlike an awakened, their body remains somewhat human since the chain is preventing their awakened sides from showing on their bodies. When the claymore awakens, the chain (the claymore's mind) is completely destroyed and the claymore awakens. As an awakened being, there is only one will in the body (the awakened/yoki's will) so awakened never see "their yoki" and are constantly using 100% of their power (since there is nothing restricting them). However, like claymores, they too wear the skins of their human appearances, just with no chain to stop their true appearances from showing when the use their power.

Upon awakening, the late claymore looses his/her stigmata, silver eyes and sometimes the blonde hair color and pale skin tone. Unawakened practitioners of THUMA can't awaken since their wills are one with their yoki's. Awakenings can be reversed if the target hasn't fully awakened through yoki synchronization to calm down the raging yoki and reinforcing the user's chain. Full awakenings can be reverted in the cases of Zeros (possibly. although zeros can only use 95% yoki, this is above the awakening threshold) and Soul linkers. Messire is rumored to be even able to reverse a complete awakening.

Naturally born hybrids can't awaken and yoki-wise can be considered an already-awakened claymore, as evident by their angelic halos and their yoma-like bodies.