While Arch slept soundly in his jewel-encrusted coffin in the wasteland of Kibi, the world outside Wano was in a state of absolute, terrified confusion.
For eight years, the "Typhoon Alpha" had defied every law of meteorology. It had stayed stationary, a screaming wall of wind and water that could have swallowed Japan, yet it chose to sit in the North Sea like a silent sentinel. The experts called it a freak phenomenon; the public called it an act of Yokai. But they were all wrong.
As the storm finally shifted and settled into a dense, impenetrable fog with its own distorted magnetic field, the world's technology became useless. Satellites saw nothing but a grey void. Radars went dark. This was the birth of the Wano Exclusion Zone.
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The Final Report of Kenny "The Scoop"
Kenny, a freelance journalist for the World Economy News, steered his private boat into the grey veil. He didn't care about the risks; he wanted to surpass Big News Morgans himself. He wanted that Albatross to look at his work and tremble.
"This is it," Kenny muttered, fumbling through his blue bag. "Hero news is garbage. This... this is history."
He pulled out his high-end Canon camera, the lens clicking as he adjusted the focus. He stepped onto the deck, the fog so thick it felt like wet wool against his skin.
"Damn it, I'm already inside. I can't see a—"
He stopped. Through the viewfinder, he saw a glimmer. Yellow shards.
He clicked the shutter. Snap. Snap. Snap. He laughed, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Yes! Gold? Crystals? What is that?!"
The shards got larger. They weren't floating in the mist; they were part of something. As the scale finally registered in his brain, the laughter died in his throat. The yellow shards weren't crystals. They were irises.
A single eye, vast and reptilian, loomed out of the fog. It was larger than his entire boat. The creature didn't roar. It didn't warn him. It simply unhinged a maw that looked like a canyon in the sea.
The last thing Kenny's camera recorded wasn't a hero or a headline. It was the dark, wet throat of a leviathan as the sea, the boat, and the journalist were erased from existence in a single gulp.
The camera that Kenny held plummeted into the darkness of the beast's gullet, still clicking until the seawater fried its circuits. That last frame—a blurry, terrifying image of a golden iris textured like a sun—would never reach the editors at World Economy News.
Kenny wanted to be the man who surpassed the Albatross, but he ended up as nothing more than a snack for the Sentinel of the Fog.
Whatever that leviathan was, it wasn't just a sea king. Its sheer scale suggested something ancient, a titan that had been rising alongside Wano for eight long years. The world was looking for heroes and weather patterns, but they were about to face a biological impossibility. The Sea of Japan had become a graveyard for the curious.
The silence that followed was heavy and absolute. The Leviathan didn't roar in triumph; it simply slipped back into the dark, crushing depths of the North Sea, its massive tail leaving a whirlpool that sucked the last remnants of Kenny's boat into the abyss.
Inside the fog, the "Eye" of the storm returned to its eerie, stagnant peace. But like a fuse burning toward a powder keg, that silence was a lie. Eight years of waiting was reaching its breaking point.
The silence within the fog was not a void, but a weight. It was the heavy, suffocating pressure of a world holding its breath. The disappearance of Kenny and his boat was merely a ripple in a much larger, darker pool.
"The fog did not just hide the island; it heralded it. The monster was a sign. The storm was a sign. Together, they form a signature that will shatter the core of this world. Anomalies and mysteries are the new laws of existence. Enjoy the peace while it lasts. After all... isn't this what they call the calm before the storm?"
While the world outside was fracturing under the weight of impossible anomalies, the source of the tremor was currently tucked away in a velvet-lined box.
Arch lay in his jewel-encrusted coffin, his chest rising and falling in a steady, peaceful rhythm. He wasn't the "Deity of Wano" or the "Master of Tremors" in this moment; he was simply a man enjoying the best sleep he'd had in two lifetimes. To him, the "Butterfly Effect" wasn't a terrifying scientific concept—it was just the quiet hum of the wasteland.
Beside him, the nine-foot fox-snake—still just Foxxy for the sake of convenience—was sprawled across a high-grade cushion that looked like it belonged in a palace rather than a desert. Its 18-foot tail was draped lazily over the side, twitching occasionally as it dreamed of the hunt.
-----to be continued-----