"It looks like it's crying!!!"
The lookout's scream, filled with horror and disbelief, echoed through the silent captain's quarters over the Den Den Mushi.
Yas raised his brow slightly.
A crying island?
He walked onto the bow deck, his ice-blue eyes piercing the layers of mist as he looked toward the distant horizon.
An enormous island with a savage outline lay there in silence.
The island itself was not much different from the other strangely shaped islands on the Grand Line.
What was eerie, however, was that the entire island was shrouded in a visible, murky gray energy field filled with sorrow and despair.
That aura was so intense that even the surrounding seawater had turned a deathly leaden gray.
The air seemed to echo with the mournful cries of countless souls weeping soundlessly.
This was no natural phenomenon.
It was pure accumulated resentment, formed from the negative emotions of countless lives gathering together.
"Looks like the 'hunt' has already begun."
Yas murmured coldly to himself. He did not even need to activate Observation Haki to imagine what inhuman tragedies were unfolding on the island at that moment.
The warship slowly approached the island's only rudimentary harbor.
Several enormous, extravagantly luxurious ships lay docked there, their bows carved with the emblem of the "Hoof of the Soaring Dragon."
They were the Celestial Dragons' vessels.
Yas ignored those ships. He could not even be bothered to notify the Marines aboard his own.
Alone, his figure flickered, and he stepped onto the soil of this "Island of Crying" as silently as a ghost.
He did not let his subordinates follow him.
Because he knew that what came next would be a journey through hell capable of utterly shattering the convictions of any Marine who held "justice" in their heart.
The island's air