The silence of Marineford had a different texture at night. In a relatively isolated area of that fort that represented justice, Marineford's medical wing and medical ward were located. The place never truly slept. There was always a light on somewhere, a monitor beeping, a body healing or giving up trying.
That night, however, there seemed to be something else.
The sea breeze, which usually filtered through the cracks in the windows, didn't bring freshness. It brought something dense, as if the salt had decided to stagnate in the air. The hallways seemed longer, the clocks slower. Even the squeak of the metal wheels of the medical carts sounded muffled, as if the hospital itself were holding its breath.
And amidst that whisper of uncertainty, someone walked without a trace, with an almost methodical calm that contrasted with the calm of the place.
It wasn't the calm of a safe harbor, nor the rest of an invincible fortress. It was the kind of silence that clings to your skin. One that echoes in your bones as if something were wrong, even though everything seemed in its place.
In the room, the flickering light from the lamps cast long shadows on the walls. The air smelled of alcohol, cotton, and… something else. Something hard to name. Something that hadn't been there a few hours ago.
In room three, the only sounds were the whirring of the ceiling fan and the faint panting of one of the many marines there. If they looked closely, they would see that there were no wounds left, not even a relatively fresh one. Even so, many high-ranking officers had ordered him to stay there longer due to his importance in a past attack, an attack where a mysterious figure had stolen three Devil Fruits after massacring the entire ship. He was one of three survivors of the most recent large-scale attack the Navy had suffered. Although it was only one ship, it was classified as such due to the way the survivors described the attacker's actions.
As he lay, finally free from the nightmares of that night and with his mind far from that fog, the sheet covering him reached his chest. The rhythm of his chest was almost imperceptible under the white sheet. The ceiling fan spun lazily, spreading a faint hum throughout the room, and yet he was sweating, even though the room was cold, as if his mind was free, something had permeated his body, changing it forever.
He slept poorly.
Since they rescued him, his body responded to its own schedule. His blood ignored the medications. His temperature swung like a pendulum. Yet he had spoken. He had told of things not even the Cipher Pol could explain. Shapes that appeared from the air, soldiers who disappeared, and a man with empty eyes who imagined the end of his ship… and created it.
Tsuru had written everything down during his interrogation and had decided that these sailors would be important if they could remember more or if they could absolutely identify the attacker. As was well known, a spoken-word poster rarely worked. Considering the seriousness of the matter, the Navy had sealed the report as "top classification."
And that night, without fanfare or alarm, something slipped into the hospital.
It didn't break down doors. It didn't pick locks. It was simply there, walking in the shadows. The figure wore a white coat, a stethoscope hanging around its neck, and a clipboard in its hand. The face was covered with a medical mask, and the eyes, though covered by tinted lenses, shone with meticulous intelligence.
His footsteps made no sound on the polished floor.
He paused at the door to room three. Seeing that sailor,
"I suppose you saw more than you should have... but less than enough."
He took a small vial from inside his gown. He held it up to the light, watching how it caught the lamplight as if it wanted to devour it. Inside, the liquid looked like some strange mixture you'd never expect to find on a dial or a bottle like that; it looked like a mixture of shadows and light, like a black hole devouring clouds... it was coffee with milk. But the handwritten label had only one symbol: ∅.
He entered.
"Well, well..." he whispered in a barely audible voice. "You're so persistent."
The man was asleep, but his brows furrowed as if he'd heard something.
The visitor placed the clipboard on the nightstand. He signed it with a fake signature, identical to the one the doctor on duty had. He opened the drip with hands that weren't shaking, connecting it to his usual bag. There was no need to rush.
"It's not personal," he murmured as he sat down next to the bed as if waiting for something to activate. "But your testimony could tip the balance... and while that guy is the one who's interested in the balance on the scale... Ha," he burst out laughing as if his words were a joke he barely noticed due to the irony of the man changing the balance of Everything, "well, I think I at least share a certain taste for having everything in its proper place."
Coming back from his thoughts, he looked at the heart monitor. The rhythm was normal.
There was no rush.
Outside, a light wind hit the windows. Far away, a seagull screeched. The sea seemed asleep.
In the adjoining room, another patient coughed. The mysterious visitor turned his head in the direction of the sound, then looked at his watch and touched his stomach as if remembering what he had recently ingested in large quantities. Suddenly, the monitor changed, showing how the signs were diminishing, as if he had been poisoned and the poison had taken effect during the conversation they had had.
"Two more," he whispered. "And then... I'm going home."
And, most beautiful of all: the symptoms mimicked natural rejection. Multiple organ failure. Common after weeks of trauma. No one would raise suspicions.
"An easy death for a noisy witness," he murmured, adjusting the flow. "Not everyone receives such a graceful end."
He turned toward the door, but paused.
He liked to watch. Watch the color slowly drain from his victims' faces. Appreciate his work.
But this time, he had other matters to attend to.
The second room was brighter, with the half-open window letting in the distant fragrance of the sea and a murmur of distant waves. On the bed, a woman slept with a furrowed brow.
The visitor paused in the doorway, looking at the photos pinned to the noticeboard beside the bed: a sailboat, a family, a small dog.
They seemed unnecessary.
"Did you think surviving made you special?"
He didn't expect an answer. She was sleeping soundly thanks to a previous dose he had "suggested" to the on-call doctor days earlier, using a combination of technical language and a believable smile. "You can really go far by appearing kind, huh," he said, thinking of a monster he had seen a long time ago, a monster in human form, and it hadn't even been human or anything concrete other than a threat to his king. The substance was already circulating throughout his body as these thoughts arose.
The figure in white sat in the chair next to his bed. He looked at the medical records with professional interest.
"Stable. Positive reaction to treatment. Mental state improving."
"How interesting," he whispered. "It would be a crime to ruin so much progress. But the balance must be maintained. Besides, it would be more pleasant if I could do the same as with the previous one, but I can't fill that many dials with coffee with milk without them suspecting, so I had to drink that disgusting stuff just for you. It almost made me throw up." He watched as her body reacted slightly, showing signs of poisoning. But they hadn't administered anything other than medicine. Even so, it was as if the dosage had been wrong, but it had only taken effect until now. A lethal dose.
Then he looked at her.
"You could have recovered. But... the scales decided to tip against you."
He stood up and disappeared into the shadows before the woman's pulse began to flicker like the light of a candle on the verge of its end.
continue with his work he goes to the The last one who was isolated.
The youngest. The only one who was beginning to speak with almost absolute clarity about that "crazy monster" and the "attacks like a twisted imagination" that flew through the air.
"The others began to doubt. But you... you're the brave one, aren't you?"
The man slept with his mouth half open. The serum dripped steadily. A guard was posted outside, but the visitor had already taken care of him thanks to his coffee. Which mysteriously made his heart race.
Inside, everything was silent.
This time, the method was different.
No more vials. No more serum.
He sat on the edge of the bed and placed a hand on the young man's chest. He breathed deeply. He felt the heartbeat. And then, he concentrated just a fraction of his energy, just enough to alter the density of the air around him.
The temperature dropped one degree.
The marine stirred.
The molecules in his bloodstream began to lose coherence. Oxygen was no longer being distributed. He wasn't suffocating. He wasn't bleeding. He was just… dissolving.
"This… this is more complicated. But not impossible."
Three minutes passed.
Finally, the young man stopped moving.
The visitor stood up, stretched his neck as if finishing a long shift, and carefully gathered the gloves. He placed them in a sealed bag and disintegrated it between his fingers. A kind of compressed energy, but still too tenuous to be detected. Not yet. It was still early.
"Ah, even he'll have to admit it," he thought with a crooked smile. "Not everyone can do this without causing a spectacle."
When he left the medical wing, the sky was beginning to light up with the moon at its zenith. No one noticed his departure. The breeze brought clean air back from the sea. Seagulls flew overhead with their usual cries.
☀ Early morning
The faint hum of the fluorescent lights couldn't cover the first screams.
"Doctor!! DOCTOR, SOMEONE COME!"
Footsteps echoed violently on the waxed floor of the operating room, bouncing off the walls like gunshots. A nurse dropped the tray she was carrying, and the metallic clang of falling scattered syringes, gauze, and scalpels down the hallway.
Two doctors rushed over, instinctively pushing an empty stretcher. Seeing the face of the man who must have been sleeping—his lips blue, his body still warm, but now pulseless—one of them stepped back, as if air itself was being denied him.
"He has no vital signs!" the younger one shouted, checking the monitor, unable to understand why there were no alarms.
The machine displayed a flat line… without issuing a single warning.
The other, a veteran with hands hardened by years of war, shook his head.
"This doesn't make sense. He was stable last night. We checked him just an hour ago!"
At the back of the ward, a nurse was already running toward the second room. When she pushed open the patient's door, she didn't scream. She just stood there, mute, her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide. The woman in the bed had her eyelids half-open, and a trickle of blood ran from the corner of her lip, as if she'd tried to speak at the last moment.
The nurse who arrived later did scream.
"Two! THAT'S TWO!"
The ward's alarm sounded as if the war had resumed.
And there was still the third.
The young marine had his hands clenched over his chest, as if he'd been trying to stop an invisible attack. His entire body seemed to have tensed at the final moment. A nurse tripped over the fallen chair as she entered, and the technician following her ran toward the bed only to stumble again: over the same fear.
"This isn't normal," she said, her voice cracking as she pressed on the young man's chest to no avail.
"No... it's not heart failure! There's no trauma, no apparent poisoning, there's no... nothing!"
The door was knocked on from outside.
A tall figure in a white coat and the stripes of a medical commander entered and swept the room with his gaze.
"Lock down the ward," he ordered firmly. "No one in or out until we know what the hell is going on here."
It took three minutes for Marineford's higher offices to receive the notification.
Tsuru was late reviewing surveillance reports from the past few weeks, one of his many responsibilities as a councilor, when a den den mushi erupted with an urgent beep. He pulled it up immediately.
"This is Vice Admiral Tsuru."
"Ma'am..." The voice on the other end was dry, strained, as if trying to speak through gritted teeth.
"Emergency report from the medical ward. Three casualties. The three survivors of the attack."
A heavy silence fell over the line.
"They died?"
"Under… anomalous circumstances. Simultaneously. There are no obvious signs of sabotage or outside intervention. But there's no other explanation. It was… it was deliberate."
Tsuru didn't respond immediately.
Her eyes narrowed, and she laid the report on the table without looking.
"Isolate the bodies. Check every inch of the ward, every entry record, every dose administered. And put Kizaru online. Now."
"Yes, ma'am."
The den den mushi hung up.
The sea breeze blew through the barely ajar window. The sheets on the desk rose and fell slowly, as if the breeze itself doubted its purpose.
Tsuru closed her eyes for a second.
This was a message, she thought. Someone is telling us it's not over yet.
And the day hadn't even begun.
Hours later, 4:00 a.m.
The strategy room wasn't large, but it had the weight of centuries. Every corner smelled of old paper, sea salt, and difficult decisions. The air was heavy, as if the past still murmured between the walls.
Sengoku stood, arms crossed over his chest, moonlight filtering in thin lines through the slits in the blinds. Behind him, the world map trembled gently in the breeze that snuck in.
Kizaru sat, his leg crossed, his expression as languid as ever. He played with a teaspoon, rolling it between his fingers as if what they'd just heard wasn't more important than the direction of the wind.
Garp hadn't bothered to sit down. He paced in circles, chewing a piece of biscuit with a clenched jaw. Each step echoed on the wood as if his heel could open a crater.
And Tsuru… Tsuru stared silently at the three files on the table.
"And you're saying they died at the same time?" Sengoku finally broke the silence, his deep voice more stone than flesh.
Tsuru nodded without looking up.
"No signs of a struggle. No injuries. No alarms. They just… stopped living. At the same time. In separate rooms. Under surveillance. And with the ward isolated."
Garp grunted, and the cracker's crunch became almost offensive.
"And what do you want us to make of that? A phantom virus? An invisible killer? We've had enough of those filthy Logia users playing ghosts. This isn't that."
"It's not a Logia," Tsuru said. "The examinations of the bodies are clear: no fruit residue. No toxins, no cellular alterations. The nervous system… simply collapsed. As if someone had killed them without poison or injury, none of the food or drug substances were high, yet it's as if lethal doses had been administered to all three."
Kizaru whistled softly.
"That sounds like someone very meticulous… and very boring…"
"Where are the surveillance reports?" Sengoku demanded, slamming his open palm on the table.
Tsuru slid a folder inside. Inside, images of the ward taken every hour. Reviewed. Personnel crossing. Identical routines. No apparent anomalies.
But there was a blurry, almost imperceptible image, right at the shift change.
A fuzzy figure, between the blur of two lenses. Never in full frame.
Tsuru pointed at the edge with a fingernail.
"This silhouette. It's not in any personnel records. It didn't cross the monitored corridors. And it doesn't appear on the cameras either before or after. Only in that fifteen-second window."
"An undercover CP agent?" Garp asked.
"Not apparently. I already checked with them. No one was sent. No one was infiltrated. It wasn't one of ours."
Sengoku lowered his eyes and narrowed them, knowing that if they had, they still wouldn't say so. Having to keep up appearances by saying he believed in agents and the world government.
Shaking his head, he fixed his eyes on the report and murmured, "First, an entire ship reduced to rubble. Then, three witnesses silenced right under our noses. Whoever this is... they're playing with an advantage. They're telling us they can walk into Marineford, do whatever they want, and walk away."
"And leave it clean," Kizaru added, raising an eyebrow. "No spectacle. No scandal. Just... the result."
Garp snorted.
"So what now? Do we send the admirals hunting shadows?"
Tsuru didn't respond immediately. He allowed himself a few seconds, as if thinking of something he didn't want to say.
"This wasn't a message to the civilians. It was to us. The first one was brutal: a display of unchecked power. This... this was surgical. Precise. Planned," he theorized, not considering other possibilities, out of fear of such an infiltration into headquarters.
Sengoku turned toward the window. The sea stretched beyond the horizon, calm as a lie.
"Find whoever did this, Tsuru. And this time... I don't want any surprises." Outside, seagulls were screaming above the towers. In the medical ward, three empty beds were still covered with clean sheets, and the smell of disinfectant barely managed to mask something deeper. Something that crept under the skin of everyone present: the certainty that something had awakened, and that it was already among them. Meanwhile, outside the room, a low-ranking marine was mopping and listening
"Who would have thought it? I'd better find out where you are quickly, before he gets upset."
He said, annoyed at having to clean up that kid's mess. As he continued mopping, he let out a sigh, remembering a few days ago.
Some days ago
In the vast ocean of the world, where the skies change with each island and the tides write destinies, there is a corner where everything seems too orderly.
It is not the Grand Line, nor the New World.
It is not a land of monsters, nor of legendary heroes.
And yet, something in that corner shines brighter than anywhere else.
East Blue.
The calmest sea. The weakest.
Where dreams seem small, but sometimes, just sometimes, one grows enough to change the world.
In that sea, on a shore that never seems to wear away, rises a kingdom that defies the logic of its own ocean.
The Goa Kingdom.
A territory so perfectly mapped that not even the wind dares to move the leaves of the trees without permission.
The roads are delineated with mathematical precision. The houses, painted the same shade of pale white, reflect the sunlight as if the entire world owes them admiration.
The air smells of jasmine and new wood.
The streets are so clean that even the rats seem too common to tread on them.
There, poverty doesn't exist.
Not because there isn't poverty... but because it's been hidden.
Behind the walls.
Under the hills.
In the shadows where gold doesn't reach.
In Goa, cleanliness is a promise. A lie repeated so often that it has begun to seem true.
Its citizens don't pause to doubt. They walk with their backs straight, their shoes polished, and their manners etched in stone. They speak softly, not out of respect, but out of convenience. Their glances are gentle, their greetings measured, their smiles impeccable.
Royalty dwells in the center of the circle.
The lesser nobles, on the periphery.
Beyond the walls, in oblivion and mist, the human remains.
The Gray Terminal.
The dump.
The corner no one mentions.
Where withered dreams are thrown away like trash, where children grow up without names and families without history.
A scar beneath the makeup of the Goa Kingdom.
And yet, in the eyes of the world, Goa is an example.
It deserved a visit from a Celestial Dragon.
It was the birthplace of the Navy hero,
Monkey D. Garp.
A man whose mere presence was enough to clear the reputation of an entire kingdom.
A living symbol of justice.
The government celebrated him.
The Navy acclaimed him.
The people turned him into a legend.
But the walls of the Goa Kingdom are not just made of stone.
They are made of silence.
Silence over the fire that consumed the poor in the dump.
Silence over the children who escaped barefoot, their souls burning.
Silence over the broken promises and the sins no one wanted to bear.
The Kingdom of Goa is a masterpiece of denial.
A jewel carved in hypocrisy.
And that morning, under a leaden sky that still hadn't decided between rain and light, the Kingdom breathed.
The church bells rang the hour with cruel punctuality. The maids hung sheets so white they hurt the eyes. The nobles went out to walk with steps that left no trace.
On a side street, between old bookstores and watchmakers that seemed frozen in time, a café opened its doors with the same ritual as always.
The tables were neat.
The coffee was freshly ground.
The day's newspapers, neatly folded, waited to be read. A light, aimless breeze stirred the leaves of the stunted trees that decorated the sidewalk more out of protocol than real life.
The café was almost empty. Only a couple of elderly people murmured at the back table, and a young woman dressed in rags swept the entrance with automatic movements, standing out from the man. At a table by the window, away from the gentle bustle of the street, a blond man with shoulder-length hair and a white suit rested with his back straight, his face hidden behind a newspaper folded in half. His gloves were immaculate, as if the Goan dust had no permission to touch them.
The newspaper rustled barely as it moved between his fingers.
Sitting on one of the most elegant street corners in the capital, under the awning of a café that smelled of vanilla and new china, he read the newspaper as if it were a part of the world.
He didn't stand out. He didn't need to.
Her long coat, without a wrinkle; her gloves, white as snow on marble. The breeze didn't dare move her hair, and not a speck of dust seemed able to stick to it. Not because she avoided it. But because everything around her seemed... to agree.
Her presence was the perfect reflection of what the Goa Kingdom wanted to represent: immaculate, orderly, imperturbable.
She turned page after page with pinpoint precision, her eyes following headlines that spoke of trivial matters: a gala dinner, the promotion of a young nobleman to the council, a minor protest "politely" quelled by the royal guard. Nothing worth more than a second of attention.
Until an inside page rustled slightly under her fingers. A small, unadorned section, without gold ink or flourishes: a new bounty poster.
One page.
One image.
A poorly sketched portrait, with a barely visible bounty.
No details. No official name.
But something in the line, in the curve of the mouth, or the outdated expression of the eyes, began to fit together in his mind like a forgotten piece.
The illustration was still there. Ambiguous. Incomplete. But something in it... resonated.
The eyes. The mouth. The emptiness.
The memory was faint at first. Like a dream image. But it began to piece itself together, piece by piece. It wasn't the face he recognized. It was the absence of everything else. The broken logic, the chaos disguised as serenity, as if puzzle pieces were coming together.
The steam from the coffee continued to rise as this process unfolded in his mind.
His gaze, without changing expression, grew more intense, tense as if someone had made a grave mistake.
"Gremmy..."
A faint whisper. And then, without turning his gaze, a shadow moved among the cleanest alleys of the kingdom.
It had no name. Only a number: 400,000,000.
The portrait was blurry. Hand-drawn, with urgent strokes, as if even those describing it weren't sure what they had seen. A young, expressionless face, lost in a dark background. Tousled hair. Empty eyes.
The man in white stopped the page. For a moment, he didn't breathe.
The spoon in his cup stopped spinning. The coffee, once in perfect motion, stilled like a lake in a storm.
The man watched it for a long time, as if reading beyond the paper.
"Too soon," he thought, without needing to move his lips.
The spoon in his coffee cup continued to spin on its own, smooth, precise. A silent vortex that reflected the cloudy sky.
A few feet away, at an unoccupied table, a woman watched him, spellbound when she suddenly saw something she couldn't understand or believe. The eyes that had captivated her since she'd first seen it changed, like a book turning a page. They became multi-pupiled, displaying an aura as if they could see everything. The man in white didn't look up. Nor did he make any gesture. As if he didn't care about the woman, despite noticing how she had seen him.
The newspaper lowered itself only a few millimeters. Sharp eyes peered out, not out of curiosity, but calculation.
"There he was, huh?" he murmured, the word barely a projected thought. "He's... useful. Unstable. Dangerous. But valuable." He murmured, "The visionary, huh?... how lucky."
The wind changed direction. No one else noticed. No one else could have noticed.
"He left a clumsy trail. He caught the attention of the big fish before his time."
"A pause, brief as a heartbeat."
"Go. Clean up the mess. Don't let anyone connect it to us. And find the boy. Yes, bring him in even if you have to leave him half dead."
—Closing his eyes as if thinking and concentrating, he began to sway as if he'd made a great effort just for that action—
—"I'm still not used to it, even so, only 10% for a partial restoration, very good compared to all those years ago"—
—Looking ahead with a hard look, he said, "What are you waiting for? Go on!"—
Suddenly, a feather fell onto the wooden surface, spun once... and disappeared.
As he walked, his boots touched the clean cobblestones as if respecting them. Around him, the Goa Kingdom looked like a postcard frozen in its artificial neatness: not a leaf out of place, not a smile out of place. A boy slipped in front of him, stood up, and upon seeing his figure—immaculate white cloak, golden hair like a judgment hammer—walked silently away.
Jugram walked unhurriedly. In his mind, the newspaper remained vivid, a silhouette in black ink, distorted, more a sketch than a portrait: "400,000,000—DEAD OR ALIVE." There was no name. Only a nickname surely left by his little game. "Gremmy... what trouble you caused." The headline called him "The Nightmare."
His eyes followed the contours of the place as he thought. He recognized him. Not by the image itself, but by the echo of the chaos. It was him, without a doubt. One of his king's soldiers. His creation... And now, his responsibility.
"A boy who thought he could rewrite reality without paying a price," he thought. And although his face didn't change, the pace of his steps steadied. Something inside him trembled, and his eyes changed again, as if responding unbidden.
A gust of dust passed through the street, lifting bags, stirring curtains, shaking everything… except him. Not a wisp of dust touched his cloak. The people around him didn't notice. The Kingdom of Goa, so obsessed with order, found in his figure something it couldn't question.
Jugram stopped in front of a fountain. Children ran around the water, their laughter echoing the distant music of a street musician. Amidst that laughter… a voice.
"Ah, hey, it's you! You're the guy with the cross of light!"
Jugram turned slowly. At first, he saw only a thin, barefoot silhouette with a smile bigger than his worries. The straw hat hung on his back by a rope, and his gaze was as clear as the sky.
The boy raised a hand in greeting, as if they were old acquaintances reuniting after years without letters.
"Remember me? It's me, Luffy!"