Deep beneath the Ghost Domain.
Everjoy City had been built on a wasteland, and beneath that wasteland lay another space.
Amid the endless darkness, a coffin floated silently in midair.
The coffin was blood-red, with faint incantations surfacing across it.
At that moment, the coffin suddenly shuddered.
Above the Ghost Domain, the shock of the White Bone Heart-Locking Hammer's full-powered strike penetrated the rock and reached the space where the coffin lay.
The lid slid open a crack without a sound.
Scarlet blood energy surged through the gap, thick as blood plasma.
A hand as thin as a withered twig reached out of the coffin, gripped its edge, and pushed lightly.
The entire lid slid off and fell into the darkness below, without even a sound of it landing.
The person inside opened his eyes. They were entirely red.
No pupils, no whites—only a sea of flowing blood-red.
"Without flesh and blood, my injuries heal far too slowly."
He could not remember how long he had slept.
Fifty years? A hundred? Or longer still?
He had never bothered to count.
Counting the days was something only the living did.
And he had ceased to count among the living long ago.
He raised his head. His wholly red eyes pierced the rock overhead, the ruins of Everjoy City, and the dispersing blood mist, settling on the direction of the Ghost Domain's exit.
There, he sensed humans.
Humans brimming with life and rich blood energy.
His throat bobbed slightly, and he closed his eyes as though savoring a memory.
Fresh flesh and blood. It had been far too long since I tasted any.
"Without flesh and blood, my injuries heal far too slowly."
He raised his right hand, spread his fingers, and pressed lightly toward the space above his head.
His entire