Chapter 1: The Founder's Blood Tide
The air in the deepest pit of Impel Down was thick with ash and the acrid stench of terror. Above, the chaos of Marshall D. Teach's brazen raid had reached a fever pitch, shaking the foundation of the underwater prison like a trapped beast. Guards and prisoners, unified only in their sheer panic, screamed as magma melted steel and tremors cracked the granite walls.
But far, far below the official six levels—deeper than the eternal darkness of Level 6, nestled in a secret, submerged compartment known only as the Abyssal Cradle—the chaos served a different purpose. It was not a destruction, but an alarm.
Monkey D. Kelean had slept for eight centuries. He hadn't aged, hadn't dreamed, hadn't moved. He lay suspended in a monolithic black coffin, a fusion of Seastone and an unknown alloy, secured by chains thicker than a battle tank's treads. His prison was not built to hold criminals; it was built to contain a force of nature, a progenitor whose existence defied the very concept of power.
He was the reason Impel Down was first conceived—the founder of the World Government's ultimate fear, and the first to bear the crimson stamp of D.
The latest shockwave, a tremendous boom followed by a shuddering groan of stressed rock, was the one that finally did it. A hairline fracture spider-webbed across the coffin's Seastone lid.
It was not enough to free him, but it was enough to let the world back in.
A single drop of crimson liquid, seeping from a fissure in the rock far above, landed on the ancient coffin. The drop was blood—the fresh, warm blood of a Marine guard slain moments ago on Level 5.
The moment the blood touched the Seastone, Kelean's eyes snapped open.
They weren't the eyes of a man, but the deep, cold amber of a predator that had hunted the Void Century. A wave of Color of the Supreme King Haki did not erupt; it simply existed, a silent, overwhelming pressure that smothered every sound above the Abyssal Cradle. The screams of the dying went instantly mute, replaced by the humming silence of souls being crushed.
Kelean had consumed the Ketsueki Ketsueki no Mi (Blood-Blood Fruit), a Paramecia so profound it controlled not just blood, but life force itself.
With a deep, rattling breath, Kelean began to feed.
The ambient seawater in the Abyssal Cradle began to warm. The scattered, stray drops of blood filtering down from the upper levels coalesced, drawn by an invisible, relentless pull. Slowly, the trickle became a stream, then a thick, dark vortex swirling around the coffin.
The Seastone chains, which should have suppressed his power, now only served as conductors. His Haki, woven with the Blood Fruit's essence, drove into the metal, forcing the iron within the alloy to respond to his command.
CRACK!
The coffin burst open. Kelean rose, his simple, ancient clothes clinging to his lean, powerful frame. He was taller than any giant, with a presence that felt older than the Grand Line itself.
He raised a hand, and the swirling vortex of blood—collected from every injured, dying, or panicked soul in the massive prison—formed into a single, colossal, crimson tide. It wasn't sticky or messy; it was perfectly controlled, flowing with the liquid precision of a river obeying the moon's gravity.
"Eight hundred years," his voice resonated, not through air, but through the vibration of the water, the rock, and the blood itself. "The children of Imu still play at war."
He clenched his fist, and the entire tidal wave of blood shot upward, instantly vaporizing the stone roof of the Abyssal Cradle. It tore through the ocean, shattering Level 6, bypassing the Demon Guards, and erupted in a gory geyser into the main prison channels, coating the panicked prisoners and Marines alike.
Blackbeard, in the middle of a triumphant roar after sinking an opponent, suddenly froze. He felt it—a chilling silence, a negation of all physical pain, and a sudden, primal dread that made his knees shake, even with his two Devil Fruits.
Kelean stepped out of the newly created hole, dripping only seawater. The massive column of blood settled, hovering obediently beside him, a perfect, crimson shield reflecting the flickering torchlight.
The founder of the D. lineage, the single most powerful man to walk the seas, was awake. And the world was about to be reminded why the World Government erased the past.