After asking Nami how long it would take to reach the island, I decided to head ahead, as usual — to purify the wandering souls and strengthen my resistance to darkness.
"Be careful, Jordan," Nami said softly.
"I'll stay invisible and won't do anything reckless, promise. Besides, I'll only be two hours ahead of you," I replied with a reassuring smile.
I rose into the night sky, following the northeast direction on my compass, and soon reached Kotzia. The beach formed a crescent shape, and the island itself was quite large. My senses immediately detected numerous locks on the ships anchored nearby.
There was also a central one — the island's main lock — seemingly located inside the dormant volcano at its center. I summoned a Shadow, letting it drape me in my Preacher's cloak. Slipping through the darkness, I quickly noticed the first wandering souls.
The streets were narrow, the walls cracked and crumbling, the signs half-collapsed. But it wasn't the decaying buildings that disturbed me — it was the souls. They were everywhere.
Unlike in the small villages or isolated islands, here the spirits roamed through the very heart of the city, drifting like silvery mists. Some floated at head height, others followed living people, clinging to them like spiritual leeches.
Whispers surrounded me — unfinished prayers, silent screams, the muffled weeping of children.
I began my task after turning invisible. With a single gesture, a single word, the invisible chains broke. One by one, the souls dissolved into pale light, finally returning to peace.
Fifty-eight in total.
But it was upon freeing the fifty-first that I understood the true nature of this island's evil.
Many of the souls were women… and seven of them were children.
Little girls, mostly. They were bound to the emaciated silhouettes of parents still searching for them — hollow-eyed figures lost in grief, their hands reaching into nothingness. Parents who, without knowing it, carried the souls of their own children within them.
The spirits were heavy with sorrow and rage, but as I released them, the haunting left their faces. They drifted toward their loved ones, luminous and calm. The children's souls returned to their parents' bodies, making them realize the tragic truth. Three couples collapsed in the streets, sobbing uncontrollably on the cold stone.
Even the faint glow of light gained from their release brought me no joy.
This island is rotten, I thought grimly, scanning the area. The number of trapped souls was disturbingly high — but it made sense. The bounty hunters here harmed civilians freely, protected by the silence that never left Kotzia.
Rage built inside me as I searched for the ones responsible for all this death.
And I found it — exactly what I was looking for.
A large building, shaped like a warehouse.
And inside… the vice of man was running wild.
A multi-tube man abuses a woman and girl while other men watch, beaten and tied up, forced to watch helplessly.
Something inside me broke as I watched that scene. Unconsciously, I fused with my crocodile Zoan, becoming visible again as violet flames coiled around me, sending out a murderous pressure. The shadow that had served as my cloak shrank and became a simple bandana around my neck.The rapists froze and panicked when they saw me; the shadow-cloak swelled, making my monstrous form even more terrifying.
I grabbed the first man within reach and burned him alive in the purple flames surrounding my clawed hand as he screamed in agony.The others tried to flee, but I offered them no escape. My Heartless surged from the shadow in a black tide to block the exits and to free their victims so they couldn't take anyone hostage.I gathered the bounty hunters together and started dealing with them the same way as the first—reducing them to ashes one by one, making them suffer as much as they had made their victims suffer. I didn't even grant them the "honor" of becoming Heartless.
When calm returned, I turned to the survivors. The women stared without really seeing, as if part of themselves had remained elsewhere; the children clung to familiar silhouettes, terrified but alive. The men who had been tied and beaten were already, with a weak kind of courage, trying to get up to protect their families. Around them, the acrid smell of smoke and the dust raised by the mêlée still hung in the air.I shifted back into human form. The shadow-cloak fell around my shoulders, making me at once familiar and strange. I approached slowly, laid a hand on fevered brows, breathed in the scent of salt and dried blood, and murmured in a soft, calm voice:
"It's over. You're safe." The syllables felt thin against the scale of the trauma, yet little by little bodies relaxed. A man wept softly while rocking his daughter; another finally let out a groan that sounded more like relief than anything else.
I activated my healing spells and launched into a frenzy of salvation. Wounds closed, fevers broke, but their eyes remained hollow. The harm they had endured does not heal with a single gesture. To lighten their burden, I next invoked Django's Heartless, which I had acquired earlier: it looked like an alien with large, piercing blue eyes.
I breathed my intent to it. It knelt before the parents, placed its hands on their temples and, in a low voice like an echo, wove a gentle hypnosis that erased the most immediate cruelties of the night from their memories. The victims opened their eyes as after a long sleep; their movements were mechanical, slow, almost uncertain as they found themselves in the middle of the street before regaining full awareness and returning to their homes.
I then rifled through the bounty hunters' belongings. Chests bulged with thick wads of cash and sacks of coin; scrolls and papers rustled under my fingers—invoices, shipping lists, names and signatures; proof of human sales, shady transactions on the black market.I took everything of value and, above all, anything that could be useful:
the money to meet immediate needs, the documents so I could follow leads later. The pockets of those miserable scoundrels were matched only by their cowardice.Before leaving, I performed one last visible act: I unleashed a contained, precise blaze, and the isolated building where they stored their "merchandise" erupted in roaring red flame.
Fire climbed, licked the beams, exposing the shame of the place, then devoured the compromising traces I didn't want left behind. The awakened townsfolk watched the glow—some with trembling smiles, others with tears.
I then headed toward the volcano. The heated rock gave off a dull warmth that hit my shoulders; the ash crackled under my feet. The lock was near the summit. I stared at it for a long time without opening it: I refused to have Sora immediately associated with every island we cleared. If every island along our route became filled with Heartless, people would end up linking their presence to our crew, and that was unacceptable. A clear divide had to exist between my actions and Sora's.
When everything was decided, I went back down to the beach. The wind greeted me, salty and cool; I plunged into the dark water and the liquid hiding place swallowed me like a protective cloak. Floating there, rocked by the swell and the stars, I slowly removed my preacher disguise—the cloak and the mask—and let the shadow return.
As I let the cool water absorb my last sparks of anger, the sun began to eat away at the horizon in a golden stroke. The surface started to shimmer; the sunrise painted the sea orange and pink. I stayed still for a moment, my gaze lost in the scene, letting peace wash over me.
I felt the Merry approaching thanks to the torpilots accompanying Meumeuh, and I headed in their direction. I gave the sea-cow a quick greeting before climbing aboard the Merry.
"I took a quick tour of the island. There's a large town with the bounty-hunters' HQ; the rest is farmland and wilderness," I said before turning to Luffy. "If you want to explore the island first, we'll have to go around the town," I added, but he gave that trademark grin. "We'll go straight through, and whoever blocks our way, we'll kick their asses," he said simply.
"Okay, Usopp, get ready to use your skills. Nami and I will handle the incoming cannon fire, and if anyone wants to do a bit of boarding, they can either wait until we get close or take Meumeuh's ride. I counted 35 ships in the harbor, fifteen of which seem to belong to the bounty hunters, but as you know," I said, looking at Luffy and Nami, "the bounty hunters use merchant ships or flagless vessels to attack, so be ready."
They all answered in unison, resolute: "Roger!"
(Author's note: that's the bonus chapter ^^)