Year 1510, Sea Circle Calendar — Impel Down, Starvation Hell.
Ryoku Vale's breath came ragged.
The aftermath of Hannibal's defeat left him on his knees, his vision blurring, blood dripping from his lips.
The seal inside him pulsed weakly now.
Flickering.
Starving.
His body was fraying at the seams.
But Hannibal... was no longer standing.
The man's crumpled form lay shattered in the cracked floor, blood leaking from every pore.
Ryoku barely stayed upright.
Every move cost him pieces of himself.
But there was no rest.
Not in this place.
The guards broke.
The rebellion surged again.
The prisoners, like feral beasts, trampled the guards of the third floor underfoot, drunk on fleeting victory.
They charged toward Level 4—Blazing Hell.
But as they crossed into the inferno... the world changed.
They found only death.
The purple mist came first.
Heavy.
Suffocating.
Bodies lay scattered, twisted, mouths foaming, eyes wide in agony.
Ryoku staggered back, his instincts screaming.
He recognized the scent of death immediately.
This wasn't natural.
This was Magellan.
The Warden had finally descended.
And now... the prison belonged to him again.
Ryoku retreated back to the third floor, coughing, his vision swimming.
He watched as the boiling mist flooded down the stairwell like a living beast.
Magellan followed.
A silhouette wrapped in black, crowned in venom.
Every breath he exhaled brought fresh death into the air.
"Run, little rat," Magellan's voice echoed, cruel and booming.
"Your fists... mean nothing against my poison."
Ryoku clenched his fists, forcing himself to stand, body trembling.
The seal's whispers hissed into his mind.
The flesh corrodes...
The body cannot endure...
Seek the shell...
Become the weapon...
He understood.
He couldn't fight this with flesh.
He couldn't fight this as a man.
The seal pulsed again, feeding him visions.
Puppeteers.
Cold hands.
Empty vessels.
If his body would betray him...
He would sever it from the fight.
But the price would be steep.
The seal clawed at him as he forced it open, tearing deeper into the Hall of Echoes buried within his mind.
A cursed legacy whispered to him from beyond the veil.
Granny Chiyo.
An old woman, once a master of puppets, feared not for her flesh... because she fought as an empty shell.
It was a cursed technique—one that demanded Ryoku sacrifice his body's senses, sever his nerves, hollow himself into a puppet.
A dangerous, irreversible act.
But against Magellan... he had no other path.
Pain seared through his spine as he forced the seal to weave the cursed art into his flesh.
Magellan descended, the venom-mist trailing him like a cloak of death.
"Still breathing, rat?"
He sneered.
Ryoku stood in the mist's edge.
Breathless.
Cold.
His body already dying from within.
But his hands... were steady.
He would become the puppet.
Because only something already dead... could survive here.