The Warship Snail hovered above Yggdrasil's roots, its engines snarling like wounded beasts. Below, the Mirror Crypts glowed faintly, the black mirrors pulsing as though the tree itself had swallowed a dying star. Judge's hulking presence and golden helmet gleamed under the frozen moonlight as he addressed his children.
"No failures this time," he growled, electromagnetic spear crackling. "Whatever thing lurks in those crypts—clone it, break it, or burn it."
Reiju adjusted her Poison Pink gauntlets, her breath misting in the subzero air. The last mission had left her with nightmares: Sora, her mother's ghost in the mirrors, whispering, "You could have saved him."
Yonji cracked his neck, Winch Green arm whirring. "Easy. Just smash the damn glass."
The crypts had changed. The mirrors now oozed viscous black sap, their surfaces rippling with half-formed visions. Clone soldiers marched ahead, their boots crunching on frost-coated stone.
"Movement detected," a Type-MST droned, raising its rifle.
The squad froze. The mirrors hissed.
Reflections peeled free—clone doppelgängers, but wrong. Their armor rusted, faces rotted, eyes hollow. They moved with jerky, insectile precision.
"Open fire!" Judge barked.
Plasma rounds tore through the duplicates, but the mirrors simply spat out more. Yonji laughed, his winch arm snatching a clone copy mid-air and slamming it into the wall. "Pathetic! They're just—"
A mirror shard moved. It sliced through his forearm, severing cables. Hydraulic fluid sprayed.
"Yonji!" Reiju lunged, misting the air to obscure the clones' aim.
"I'm fine!" he snarled, sealing the leak with a burst of searing gel. "Focus on the mission!"
They reached the central chamber, now warped. The mirror pool had solidified into a grotesque altar, its surface etched with the same runes as the Poneglyphs. Above it hung a colossal reflection: Imu's predecessor, their hand clasped with a cosmic horror's tentacle. The air reeked of iron and brine.
"Sample the altar," Judge ordered. "And destroy the rest."
Reiju approached, vial in hand. The mirror beneath her feet flickered—a vision of Sanji, battered but free, laughing with the Straw Hats. Her finger trembled.
Then the altar screamed.
Black tendrils erupted, seizing clones and dragging them into the mirrors. Their screams echoed as their reflections twisted into fuel for the crypt. Yonji roared, smashing tendrils with his winch, but for every one destroyed, two more took its place.
"Fall back!" Judge barked, retreating toward the exit.
Reiju froze. The pool showed Sora again, this time holding a child—her child, a girl with Sanji's smile. "You don't have to obey him," the vision pleaded.
"Reiju! Move!" Yonji grabbed her arm, yanking her toward the tunnel.
Too late.
A tendril speared Yonji's leg, pinning him. Another wrapped Reiju's waist, slamming her into the altar. The mirror beneath her cracked, bleeding icy mist.
"Father—!" Yonji reached for Judge, who stood at the threshold, clones scrambling past him.
Judge met his son's gaze. For a heartbeat, Reiju saw it—a flicker of hesitation. Then he turned. "Germa does not waste resources on lost causes," he said coldly. "Your sacrifice will be analyzed."
The chamber doors sealed.
The crypt shuddered, walls collapsing. Yonji tore free, dragging Reiju into a side tunnel. "This way! There's—there's got to be an exit!"
Reiju coughed, her gauntlets shattered. The mist here was thicker, hungrier. It leeched warmth from their veins. "Yonji… stop."
He ignored her, winch arm sparking as he punched through ice. "We're Vinsmokes. We don't die in holes!"
A mirror shard slid from the ceiling, impaling his shoulder. He gasped, falling to his knees.
Reiju knelt beside him, her gloves slick with his neon-blue blood. "The mist… it's draining us. We can't outrun it."
Yonji's eyes widened—not with fear, but fury. "I… I won't…"
The walls groaned. Ice sealed the tunnel behind them.
Reiju leaned against the glass, her reflection now a stranger—a woman without Germa's crest, without poison, without regret. "Rest, little brother," she murmured. "I'll find a way out… for both of us."
But as the crypt's light dimmed, the mirrors whispered the truth: No one escapes Yggdrasil.
*****
The submarine cut through the blackened depths of the New World, its hull humming with the Consortium's proprietary bubble porter technology. Inside, the air smelled of aged parchment, sea salt, and the faint tang of Vaughn's anxiety sweat. Marya leaned against the polished mahogany control panel, idly spinning her dagger Celestial Devastation while Charlie hunched over a star chart, his glasses slipping down his nose.
"Y'know," Vaughn said, adjusting the dreads tied back from his face, "when Nanette said 'stealth mission,' I didn't think she meant sardine can." His double-sided axe, Light Bringer, glinted in the sub's bioluminescent glow. "Harper's gonna kill me if I miss our wedding because Germa turned us into pincushions."
Marya smirked. "Relax. Worst case, I turn you into mist. You'd make a lovely fog bank."
"Fascinating," Charlie interjected, nearly headbutting the holographic map of Yggdrasil's coordinates. His finger jabbed at a flickering rune. "These crypts—they're built around the roots of the fossilized tree. If the legends are right, Yggdrasil's mirrors don't just show the past. They invert it. Alternate timelines, fragmented histories—"
"—and Germa's crawling all over it," Vaughn finished, eyeing the sonar. A cluster of red dots pulsed near their trajectory. "Judge's clones'll be on us like seagulls on a chip."
The sub lurched suddenly, gears groaning. Alarms blared as the bubble porter sputtered, its core overheating. Charlie yelped, clutching a leather-bound journal titled Yggdrasil: A Comprehensive Guide to NOT Dying. "The pressure valves! They're—they're overloading!"
Marya cursed, her Mist-Mist powers already swirling at her fingertips. "Vaughn—!"
"On it!" Vaughn slammed his palm against the wall, his Dazzle Dazzle fruit activating. Soundwaves from the engine's whine crystallized into searing light, funneling into the overheating core. The sub shuddered, stabilizing as the porter's bubble reset. "Damn antique tech. Remind me to kiss Harper's engineer cousin when we get back."
Outside the reinforced glass viewport, shadows loomed. A Germa Warship Snail glided past, its orange "66" insignia glowing like a predator's eyes. Clone soldiers patrolled its deck, their blank visors scanning the abyss.
"They haven't spotted us," Marya whispered, mist creeping up the glass. "Yet."
Charlie adjusted his glasses, voice trembling with excitement. "The crypts—they're beneath the main roots. If we can slip through the thermal vents—"
"—we'll boil alive," Vaughn snapped. "Got a Plan B, Clou D. Clover?"
Marya's Eternal Night scraped free of its sheath. "We fight."
"Or," Charlie said, unfurling a brittle scroll, "we use this." The page showed a crude sketch of Yggdrasil's trunk, with a spiral of runes near its base. "The 'Breath of Jörmungandr'—a tidal current that surges every 12 minutes. It'll slingshot us past Germa's perimeter… if we time it perfectly."
Vaughn raised an eyebrow. "And if we don't?"
"We'll be chum for the nearest kraken."
Marya grinned. "Better than Judge's hospitality. Do it."
The sub dove deeper, its hull creaking. Charlie manned the controls, counting seconds under his breath. Outside, the ocean roared as the current awakened—a colossal whirlpool dragging everything into its maw. Germa alarms flared as the Warship Snail veered, too slow.
"Hold on!" Charlie yelled.
The submarine shot forward, propelled by the current. Marya's mist enveloped the sub, masking its signature. For a heartbeat, the viewport showed Judge himself on the Germa deck, his towering figure and golden helmet cracked as he shouted orders. Their eyes met—hunter and prey—before the sub spiraled into a volcanic vent, scraping through razor-edged rock.
When they surfaced, Yggdrasil dominated the horizon.
The fossilized tree was a monolith, its roots thicker than mountains, encased in ice and weeping black mirror-sap. The crypts yawned below, their entrance a jagged maw lined with reflections of the crew—alternate reflections. Vaughn saw himself older, wearier, leading a rebellion. Charlie glimpsed a version of himself entombed in a Poneglyph. Marya's double stared back, clad in Marine white, Eternal Night bloodied.
"Cheery," Vaughn muttered.
Marya sheathed her sword, jaw tight. "Let's finish this before I change my mind."
As the sub docked in a hidden ice cave, Charlie shouldered his pack, trembling not from fear, but fervor. "This… this is the find of the millennium! The Consortium'll etch our names in platinum!"
Vaughn hefted Light Bringer, its edges humming. "Just keep your goggles on, yeah? I'm not explaining to Nanette why her star archivist got turned into a mirror zombie." .
The entrance to the crypts loomed before them, an archway of ice that seemed to swallow the light. As they crossed the threshold, the temperature plunged, and the world turned to shadow and frost. The tension intensified with each step deeper into the labyrinth. It felt like a step back in time, into a world where ancient secrets lay in wait, undisturbed for centuries.
The air inside the crypts bit like a blade, sharp and glacial, as Marya, Charlie, and Vaughn descended. The walls, lined with polished black mirrors, swallowed the light from Vaughn's lantern, casting fractured reflections of the trio that flickered like ghosts. Marya's breath misted in the cold, tendrils of vapor curling around her like phantom fingers—a subconscious manifestation of her Mist-Mist fruit.
"This way!" Charlie hissed, his voice trembling with excitement. He scrambled ahead, his boots crunching on frost-veined stone. "Look—there! A Poneglyph!"
The slab loomed ahead, its obsidian surface etched with glowing crimson runes. It stood at the heart of a circular chamber, flanked by mirrors that shimmered with half-formed visions: a king kneeling before a shadowed throne, a fleet of ships swallowed by a maelstrom, a child laughing in a field of sunflowers—wrong sunflowers, their petals edged with teeth.
Charlie dropped his pack, gloves trembling as he brushed snow from the glyph. "It's… it's intact! This dialect—pre-Void Century, maybe older!" His glasses fogged as he leaned closer. "Listen: 'The Covenant of Dawns… a bargain forged in starlight and blood…'"
Marya crossed her arms, Eternal Night strapped to her back. "No. The third rune isn't 'covenant.' It's 'burden.'" Her finger hovered over the glyph, her mother's notebook burning in her memory. Elisabeta's notes: "The Ancient Kingdom didn't make deals. They inherited sins."
Charlie stiffened. "Nonsense! The root verb here is 'karuta'—'to bind,' not 'to bear!'"
"Karuta shifts meaning in reflexive form," Marya countered coolly. "Context: the next line references 'chains of our making.' It's a warning, not a contract."
Vaughn leaned against a mirror, his axe Light Bringer slung over one shoulder. The glass behind him flickered—a reflection of him older, scarred, leading a mob of rebels. He glanced away. "Y'know, while you two debate grammar, Germa's probably carving 'kick me' into our sub."
Charlie ignored him, scribbling in his journal. "But the syntactical structure—!"
"Is fluid," Marya snapped, patience fraying. "The Ancient Kingdom used glyphs as palimpsests. Layers of meaning. My mother's research—"
"—is your bias!" Charlie retorted. "We can't project personal trauma onto history!"
The mirrors hummed, their surfaces rippling. For a heartbeat, Marya's reflection wore Dracule Mihawk's sneer.
Vaughn pushed off the wall, his boots scattering ice. "Enough. Charlie, note both translations. Marya, stop acting like your dad. We're leaving."
The archaeologist opened his mouth to protest, but a low groan shuddered through the crypt. The Poneglyph's runes pulsed, and the mirrors began to bleed—black sap oozing like tar, hissing where it struck stone.
Marya's mist coiled defensively. "Move. Now."
As they fled, Charlie muttered, "It was 'covenant…'"
"And I'm the Queen of Alabasta," Vaughn shot back. "Write a footnote and run."
Behind them, the chamber collapsed, the Poneglyph swallowed by darkness. But in the echoes of their argument lingered a truth: history, like mist, shifted to fit the hand that grasped it.
The air in the crypts clung to Marya's skin like a fever sweat, thick with the metallic tang of ancient stone and something darker—stagnant water, rusted iron, the faint sweetness of decay. The black mirrors lining the walls drank the light from Vaughn's lantern, their surfaces rippling like oil on a poisoned pond. Marya's hand rested on Eternal Night's hilt, a familiar weight, but her mother's journal pressed heavier against her chest, tucked inside her coat.
"This place is alive," Charlie whispered, his voice swallowed by the suffocating dark. He traced a gloved finger over a mirror's edge, where the glass bled into the rock like a scar. "These carvings… they're not just decorative. They're warnings."
Vaughn snorted, Light Bringer slung over his shoulder. "Yeah? What's this one say? 'Abandon hope, nerds?'"
Marya ignored him, her eyes locked on the reflections. Her own face flickered in the glass—sometimes older, sharper, her father's cold amber eyes staring back. Sometimes younger, softer, her mother's smile. She would've known how to read these walls, she thought bitterly.
Ahead, the tunnel split. The left path sloped downward, lined with mirrors that hummed faintly. The right curved upward, its walls studded with jagged Poneglyph fragments.
"Down," Charlie said, adjusting his cracked glasses. "The central chamber's likely deeper. The Ancient Kingdom buried their secrets in—"
"—traps," Vaughn finished. "Cool. Let's vote. I say up."
Marya stepped toward the left. "We're not here to play safe. Move."
The air grew colder. Frost crackled underfoot, and the mirrors began to shift. Not reflections—echoes.
Ahead, a figure materialized: a woman in a Consortium coat, her raven hair streaked with ash, crouching over a Poneglyph. Elisabeta. Marya froze.
"Mom…?"
The vision turned. Elisabeta's eyes were hollow, her mouth a blackened gash. "You're too late," she rasped, blood pooling at her feet. "The Void Century… it's a chain. Break it or become it."
Charlie grabbed Marya's arm. "It's not real. The mirrors—they're mocking us."
Vaughn raised his axe, the blade shimmering with trapped soundwaves. "Mock this, then."
He swung. The mirror shattered—but the glass didn't fall. It hung, suspended, then reconfigured into a thousand shards, each reflecting a sliver of Mihawk's face.
"Weak," the shards hissed in unison, his voice a blade dragged over stone. "You carry my sword, but not my will."
Marya's mist surged, tendrils lashing out instinctively. The shards dissolved into vapor, but the fog curled back, thicker, heavier. Charlie coughed, stumbling.
"The mist… it's burning," he choked.
"Huh," Marya muttered. "Don't breathe deep, then."
He tightened his grip on Marya. "We need to move, now."
Vaughn nodded, his eyes scanning the ever-thickening fog. "Stay close. If it's the mirrors, they'll twist everything we see."
They edged forward, every step a cautious hesitation. The tunnel convulsed, the air humming with latent energy. Marya's mist seemed to pulse in rhythm, its tendrils weaving an intricate ballet of defense and curiosity.
"Charlie, keep your eyes peeled for more glyphs," Vaughn ordered, his voice a hushed command.
Marya swallowed hard, her mind whirling with her mother's haunting words. Could it really be a chain? How did one break something so ancient, so entrenched in their very existence?
The tunnel spilled into a cavern, its ceiling lost to darkness. At its center stood a Poneglyph, pristine and throbbing with crimson runes. But it was the pool beneath it that stole their breath—a liquid mirror, its surface churning with visions.
Charlie lunged forward, notebook in hand. "This is it! The 'Covenant of Dawns' tablet! The Consortium's been searching—"
A reflection erupted from the pool.
Mihawk.
Not a memory—a doppelgänger, perfect down to the kogatana at his neck. He drew Yoru from his back, the blade's edge singing. "Prove you're worthy," he said, cold as winter steel.
Marya's mist faltered. Eternal Night trembled in her grip.
Vaughn stepped between them, axe flaring. "Family therapy's later. Move, Hawk-Eye!" He slammed the axe down, soundwaves detonating into searing light. The doppelgänger dissolved—but the pool boiled, birthing more. A dozen Mihawks, a hundred, their golden eyes piercing the gloom.
Charlie scrambled behind the Poneglyph, scribbling frantically. "The runes! They're a counter-spell! 'The liar's bargain… undone by truth's—'"
The air in the crypts turned to ice as Mihawk's blade descended. Yoru, the black blade of legend, cut through the gloom like a scythe through wheat, its edge humming with a lethality that transcended mere sharpness. Marya's muscles coiled instinctually, Eternal Night snapping up to meet it—a half-second too slow.
Steel met steel in a shriek that echoed through the chamber, the force of the blow driving Marya's boots backward across the frozen stone. Sparks erupted in a crimson shower, illuminating the mirrors around them. For a heartbeat, their reflections multiplied endlessly: a thousand Mihawks, cold and imperious, and a thousand Maryas, their faces twisted with desperation.
Too strong. The thought seared through her mind, primal and unyielding. Her arms trembled, the bones beneath her flesh vibrating like struck tuning forks. Her father's strength was not just physical—it was conceptual, a force honed by decades of battles that had redefined the meaning of swordsmanship itself. Eternal Night, though a masterpiece specially forged for her, felt suddenly childish in her grip, a training sword against a god.
Mihawk's expression never changed. His amber eyes, twin suns in the crypt's darkness, bored into her with detached curiosity. "You hesitate," he observed, his voice a low rumble that resonated in her ribs. "The blade is an extension of will. Yours is… unfocused."
He shifted his weight, infizitesimally, and Yoru pressed downward. Marya's knees buckled. The mist swirling at her ankles—the Mist-Mist Fruit's power—thickened instinctively, tendrils coiling around her legs to brace her. But the mirrors around them drank the vapor greedily, their surfaces flickering with visions: a younger Mihawk cutting down a fleet of Marine ships; Marya as a child, clutching Eternal Night for the first time, her hands dwarfed by its hilt.
"I'm not you," Marya spat, teeth gritted. She twisted Eternal Night sideways, exploiting a fractional gap in Mihawk's stance—a trick her mother had sketched in the margins of her notebook. The blade screeched as it slid free, and she pivoted, aiming a slash at his ribs.
Mihawk's parry was contemptuously effortless. Yoru moved like a living thing, its flat slamming into Eternal Night with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel. The impact numbed Marya's fingers. She stumbled, her heel catching on a fissure in the stone.
"No," Mihawk agreed, stepping forward. "You are… less."
The mirrors erupted.
Reflections of Marya's possible futures splintered around them: a tyrant in Marine white, Eternal Night dripping with blood; a corpse at Mihawk's feet, her blade shattered; a ghost in the mist, dissolving into nothing. The crypt itself seemed to jeer, its walls throbbing with the Ancient Kingdom's scorn.
Marya's breath came in ragged bursts. Her mist lashed out wildly, forming a crude shield, but Yoru cleaved through it like smoke. The tip of the blade grazed her cheek, drawing a thin line of blood that burned like liquid nitrogen.
"Pathetic," the mirrors chorused, their voices hers and not hers.
But then—a flicker. Deep in the crypt's heart, a lone mirror glowed, showing Elisabeta Vaccaria, her mother, standing atop a sunlit cliff, her hand outstretched. "The sword is not your chains, Marya. It's your bridge."
Marya roared.
She dropped low, mist surging upward in a spiral. Eternal Night flashed, not with Mihawk's precision, but with her mother's defiance—a wild, unpolished strike aimed not at flesh, but at the floor.
"Finish translating!" she barked.
"I'm trying! But the syntax—"
"Now, Charlie!"
Vaughn roared, light exploding in a nova. The clones recoiled—briefly. "Whatever you're doing, hurry!"
"Truth's… light?" Charlie yelled. "No—'truth's echo'! Marya, the pool—break it!"
She lunged, Eternal Night plunging into the liquid glass. The mist followed, tendrils hardening into a spear.
The pool screamed.
Fissures spiderwebbed outward, swallowing Mihawk's reflection. The original Mihawk stepped back, eyebrows lifting a fraction—the closest he came to surprise. Marya didn't wait. She lunged past him, toward Charlie and Vaughn, her mist scattering the remaining mirrors into chaos.
But the lesson lingered in the blood on her cheek, the ache in her arms: To survive her father's shadow, she'd need to become more than his daughter.
The cavern shuddered. Mirrors cracked, vomiting black sludge. The Mihawks dissolved, their snarls fading.
"Go!" Vaughn hauled Charlie up, shoving him toward the exit.
Marya lingered, staring at the shattered pool. Amid the fragments, a final vision flickered: Elisabeta, whole and smiling, placing a notebook into a child's hands. Her hands.
"Finish it," the vision whispered.
Then the ceiling collapsed.