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Kozuki Oden suffered a humiliating defeat. To save the lives of his retainers, he swallowed his pride once more and played the fool, striking a devil's bargain with Kaido, King of the Beasts. If the samurai could endure one hour in the boiling oil, the Nine Red Scabbards would be permitted to leave Wano Country alive.
The punishment began.
Kozuki Oden stripped bare and leaped into a massive iron cauldron filled with oil heated beyond seven hundred degrees. The Nine Red Scabbards moved to join him—to share their lord's suffering—but the samurai would not allow it. He balanced a wide wooden plank across the cauldron's rim and made his most loyal retainers stand upon it, shielding them from the searing heat below while his own body submerged in liquid fire.
Even protected by Armament, Oden remained flesh and blood. The countdown to his death had begun.
Flames roared beneath the cauldron, sending waves of shimmering heat into the execution ground's night air. The crowd watched in horrified silence as Kozuki Oden's skin reddened, then blistered, the oil bubbling violently around his submerged form. Yet the samurai's face remained defiant—teeth gritted, eyes burning with unshakable will.
Above him, the Nine Red Scabbards stood upon the plank balanced on his raised arms, their tears falling like rain into the oil below.
"My lord! Please, let us share this burden!" Kin'emon's voice cracked with anguish.
"Silence!" Oden's roar cut through their protests, his voice hoarse but commanding even in agony. "You will live! That is my order as your lord!"
While the oil seared his flesh, Kozuki Oden revealed every secret he carried to the Nine Red Scabbards. He spoke of ancient promises, of prophecies yet unfulfilled, of the true history the World Government feared. He commanded his retainers to inherit his will—not through stubborn martyrdom, but through survival. They would prepare Wano Country for its destined opening, for the arrival of the one the nation truly awaited.
He believed with absolute certainty that Joy Boy was not Kaido, King of the Beasts. The person Wano Country waited for would come.
The hour crawled by with excruciating slowness. Each minute felt like an eternity as Oden's body trembled beneath the plank, his muscles screaming in protest, his Armament faltering as exhaustion and pain mounted. The stench of burning flesh filled the air. Blood vessels burst across his skin. His breathing became ragged, labored.
Yet he did not fall.
When the final grains of sand fell through the hourglass, a stunned murmur rippled through the assembled crowd. Kozuki Oden had done the impossible—he had survived an hour in boiling oil, still holding his retainers aloft.
"The hour is complete!" Denjiro shouted, his voice breaking. "Kaido, you must honor your word!"
But Kurozumi Orochi's serpentine smile only widened as he stepped forward, sake cup in hand.
"Honor? How amusing." Orochi's laugh was like nails on stone. "You misunderstand your position, samurai. The terms of our agreement are... flexible. This fool who called himself Shogun has outlived his usefulness. Kill them all!"
The executioners raised their rifles.
Kurozumi Orochi would not fulfill his promise. With Kozuki Oden stripped of his authority and reduced to a broken symbol, the would-be Shogun had no further need for him. Once everyone who dared oppose him lay dead, Wano Country would hear only one voice. The weak would not even possess the right to speak before the strong.
Because of this foolish prince, Wano Country would suffer under Kurozumi Orochi's rule for decades to come.
In that final moment, Kozuki Oden did not waste breath begging for mercy from those who had none. Instead, every remaining ounce of his legendary strength surged through his battered body. With a roar that shook the execution ground, he hurled the wooden plank—and all nine of his retainers—high into the air, over the heads of the encircling soldiers.
"Live! Carry my will into the future!" His final command echoed across the flames.
Then his arms gave out. His body sank deeper into the boiling oil, the liquid fire finally claiming what remained of his strength. Yet even as death embraced him, no regret showed on Kozuki Oden's face. He had lived as he chose, and died protecting those he cherished.
He died believing Joy Boy would save Wano Country.
Little did he know that this generation's Joy Boy had put a bullet through his skull hours earlier, ending the samurai's life before the oil could claim him. Even if Kozuki Oden died like a hero, it was nothing but self-deception. What did his death accomplish? If not for the son he left behind, Kozuki Oden would have been nothing more than a clown on propaganda posters for all eternity.]
The observation hung in the air like bitter smoke—a truth that made even Oden's noble sacrifice feel hollow.
The sea holds many who die bravely, but such deaths rarely change anything. The people of Wano Country remained numb, broken by years of oppression. To think one man's death could awaken a spirit of resistance was pure idealism—unrealistic fantasy. Without strength to back their cause, rebels would always be at the mercy of those with power.
Kaido, King of the Beasts, learned from Kurozumi Orochi that Kozuki Oden had left behind two children. Though he respected Oden as a worthy samurai, the tyrant knew what needed to be done. To eliminate trouble permanently, one must eliminate the bloodline. Besides, he still had questions about this "Joy Boy" business.
He would personally confirm what kind of people Kozuki Oden's children were. Perhaps it would help him prepare for Joy Boy's awakening.
The young boy had noticed the changes first in small things.
When servants brought his meals, Retainer Kin'emon now tasted each dish before allowing Kozuki Momonosuke to eat. The eight-year-old prince watched with growing unease as adults whispered in worried clusters, their conversations dying the moment he approached.
Then came the night he overheard the truth.
"Lord Oden... the execution... an hour in boiling oil..."
The words struck Momonosuke like physical blows. His father—his invincible, larger-than-life father—was dying. No, might already be dead.
The realization crashed over him with suffocating weight: his father, Kozuki Oden, the strongest samurai Momonosuke had ever known, had failed. How could someone so powerful lose? How could heroes fall to schemes and treachery?
From that moment, Kozuki Momonosuke rejected everything his father had taught him. He would not become a foolish samurai chasing idealistic dreams. He would not play the hero. The boy decided he must become someone domineering, someone powerful enough to protect what he cherished. Only strength mattered in this cruel world.
But tonight, he had no power at all.
The screams started before midnight.
Momonosuke huddled with his younger sister Hiyori and their mother Toki in the inner chambers of Oden Castle as the sounds of battle erupted throughout their home. Metal clashed against metal. Men shouted. Someone was dying in the corridors.
Then the wall exploded inward.
Kaido stepped through the shattered wooden beams like a force of nature given flesh. His towering form cast monstrous shadows across the room, horns silhouetted against the flames beginning to consume the castle's outer wings.
The retainers who had sworn to protect the Kozuki family threw themselves at the King of the Beasts. They lasted seconds. Kaido swatted them aside with casual contempt, their bodies crashing through screens and pillars like rag dolls.
Lady Toki moved to shield her children, but Kaido's fist caught her across the temple with brutal efficiency. She crumpled without a sound.
"Mother!" Kozuki Hiyori scrambled to Toki's unconscious form, tiny hands shaking her shoulders desperately. "Mother, wake up! Please!"
Momonosuke couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. His entire body trembled as terror seized his heart in an iron grip. In his sheltered life, he had never faced real violence, never confronted the possibility of his own death. But now, with his protectors broken and his mother unconscious, reality crashed down around him.
No one could save him. No one would stand between him and this monster.
Kaido made a mistake in Oden Castle that night. If he had killed Kozuki Momonosuke then and there, the story of Wano Country would have ended differently. The hidden danger that would ultimately destroy the Beasts Pirates was planted by the captain himself. Sometimes fate plays cruel jokes. History had once again abandoned Joy Boy.
Kaido's massive hand closed around Momonosuke's throat, lifting the boy effortlessly off the ground. The King of the Beasts walked to where the castle wall had collapsed, holding Oden's son over empty air. Below them, flames had engulfed the lower levels—an ocean of fire waiting to swallow anyone who fell.
"So high... I'm going to die..." The words tore from Momonosuke's throat as tears streamed down his young face. Fear unlike anything he'd ever experienced consumed him. His father's killer held his life in one hand, and terror left permanent scars on the boy's psyche.
From this night forward, Kozuki Momonosuke would fear heights—a weakness he would struggle for years to overcome.
"Your father was a fool, Your Highness." Kaido's voice rumbled with dark amusement. "After your death, the Kozuki bloodline ends forever."
The words cut through Momonosuke's panic. Even as tears continued to fall, even as his body shook with fear, something deeper stirred in the boy's chest. He might have rejected his father's ideals, might have sworn never to follow Oden's path—but Kozuki Oden was his father. Not someone this monster could insult.
"My father..." Momonosuke's voice cracked, but he forced the words out through chattering teeth and bitter tears. "My father was the greatest samurai! And I... I will lead this country one day!"
For a moment, genuine surprise flickered across Kaido's scarred face. This child, dangling over certain death, still possessed the courage to speak boldly. Even Kaido felt something stir in his heart—though whether it was respect or amusement, he couldn't say.
The tyrant found the boy's naive dream laughable. His father had failed. How could this crying child who'd barely been weaned accomplish what Kozuki Oden could not?
Because of that brief moment—that fleeting spark of something in the boy's eyes—Kaido tossed Momonosuke back into the burning castle instead of dropping him into the flames below.
The King of the Beasts had no intention of letting the Kozuki family survive. But he would not execute this particular child with his own hands. Not tonight.
Azure scales rippled across Kaido's form as he transformed, his body elongating into the magnificent serpentine shape of a dragon. He coiled through the air above Oden Castle, flames reflecting off his scales as he opened his massive jaws.
"Bolo Breath!"
Searing heat erupted from the dragon's maw—a concentrated beam of fire that dwarfed even the flames already consuming the castle. The technique struck Oden Castle with apocalyptic force, transforming the ancestral home of the Kozuki family into a pillar of raging inferno.
All traces of Wano's ruling family would be erased tonight. The connection between the country and the Kozuki bloodline would be severed in fire.
A handful of fearless retainers attempted to break through the perimeter and rescue Oden's family, but their efforts proved futile. With Kaido himself standing guard, hovering in the air like a divine beast of destruction, they could only watch helplessly as the flames devoured Oden Castle completely.
From his vantage in the sky, Kaido observed the inferno with cold satisfaction. The fool Oden was dead. His castle was ash. His children would burn or suffocate in the collapse.
The Kozuki family was finished.
Or so the tyrant believed.
Below, consumed by flames and smoke, destiny continued to turn its wheels. The seeds of revolution had been planted—not by Oden's sacrifice, but by his killer's moment of mercy.
In the future, the boy Kaido chose not to kill would return to shatter everything the King of the Beasts had built.
But that is a story for another time.