The med bay of the Polar Tang hummed with sterile light, the air sharp with antiseptic. Marya lay motionless on the operating table, her skin pallid under the glare of overhead lamps. Law rolled his sleeves to his elbows, black tattoos stark against his skin, while Kikoku leaned against the wall, its eye ever-watchful. Shachi and Penguin hovered near the door, their usual banter stifled by the gravity of the room.
"Room."
A blue sphere enveloped the table, its shimmering edges casting jagged shadows. Law's fingers flicked, and Marya's bandages dissolved under his power, revealing the ruin beneath. Her right shoulder was a landscape of atrophy—muscles withered, skin mottled with inky veins that pulsed faintly, as if alive.
"Nerve clusters… dead," Law muttered, his voice clinical. He rotated her arm in the air, tendons and bone visible through translucent layers. "No trauma. No infection. Just… gone."
Penguin whistled low. "How'd she even swing a sword like that?"
"She didn't," Law said coldly. "Not well."
His gaze shifted to the black veins. They writhed under his scrutiny, tendrils burrowing deeper into her flesh. Law's brow furrowed. He isolated a strand with his power, holding it suspended in the Room. It coiled like smoke, resisting dissection.
"Nanobots?" Shachi ventured, peering over Law's shoulder.
"Too organic. A virus, maybe. Mutating… feeding." Law's amber eyes narrowed. He sliced the vein with a scalpel of energy. It split—then reknit, threads of void stitching themselves back together.
Bepo's muzzle twitched. "Captain, that's… not normal."
"No kidding." Law's jaw tightened. He'd seen plagues, curses, Devil Fruit side effects—but this? This was something older. Hungrier.
Marya's kogatana glinted on a nearby tray. Law glanced at it, then at the sword propped in the corner—Eternal Eclipse, its obsidian blade leaching light from the Room. The runes along its edge throbbed in time with her veins.
Connected, he realized.
"Jean Bart," Law snapped. "Secure that sword. Now."
As the former slave captain hauled the blade away, Law turned back to Marya. His fingers danced, excising a sliver of the blackened tissue. It squirmed in his palm, dissolving into ash.
"Whatever this is, it's tied to her," he murmured. "Remove it, and you remove her."
"So… she's screwed?" Penguin asked.
Law didn't answer. Instead, he sutured the wound with precise flicks of his power, containment over cure. When the Room faded, the veins had retreated—for now.
"Keep her sedated," he ordered, stripping off his gloves. "And post a guard on that sword."
As the crew filed out, Law lingered, staring at Marya's ashen face. His thumb brushed the faded "D." on her mother's notebook, left open on a nearby tray.
Dawnless City. Titans' bones.
"What the hell did you dig up?" he whispered.
In the shadows, Eternal Eclipse hissed.
Law's gloved fingers sifted through Marya's belongings, spread across the Polar Tang's steel briefing table like artifacts from a forgotten war. Bepo hovered nervously nearby, clutching a half-eaten rice ball, while Shachi and Penguin traded morbid bets about how many bones she'd broken in her life. Jean Bart loomed in the corner, arms crossed, eyes never leaving Eternal Eclipse—now chained to the bulkhead with sea-stone cuffs.
The first item was a weathered notebook with fresh ink, the edges frayed, written in the jagged script of the Poneglyphs. Law recognized the language instantly. Rocinante's voice echoed in his memory: "The World Government kills for less, Law." He set them aside.
Next, photographs. A younger Marya, no older than three, being held between a stern Mihawk and a woman with warm gray eyes—Elisabeta. Mihawk holding Marya to his shoulder, his usual icy demeanor softened, just barely. Another photo showed Marya in a vibrant kimono, standing beneath Wisteria blossoms, her smile unguarded, Eternal Night (not yet Eclipse) strapped to her back. Law stared at it a beat too long before tucking it into his coat.
"Whoa, Captain's got a crush," Shachi snickered.
Law shot him a withering glare. "She's Mihawk's daughter. That makes her either a liability or a weapon. Figure out which."
The crew sobered. Penguin picked up a faded map, its corners marked with the same coordinates from her mother's notebook. "Dawnless City… doesn't ring a bell. Has anyone heard of it?"
But Law's attention was locked on the sword. The chains rattled as Eternal Eclipse shuddered, its crimson runes flaring in sync with Marya's labored breaths from the med bay. He approached it slowly, Kikoku humming in warning.
"Room."
The blue sphere enveloped the blade. Law's fingers grazed its surface—and the void bit back. Black veins spiderwebbed across his gloves, dissolving the fabric. He severed the connection with a flick, sweat beading his brow.
"It's alive," he muttered. "Or cursed. Same difference."
Bepo whimpered. "Captain, her vitals—they're spiking!"
Through the med bay window, Marya's body arched off the table, the black veins writhing like serpents under her skin. Eternal Eclipse's chains snapped taut, the runes blazing. Law's eyes darted between the sword and her convulsing form.
"They're linked," he realized. "The sword isn't just a weapon—it's a parasite."
Shachi paled. "So we chuck it overboard, right?"
"And kill her in the process?" Law's grin was razor-thin. "Not yet."
He returned to her belongings, unearthing a final item—a weathered wanted poster. Monkey D. Luffy – 30,000,000 Berries. The bounty was laughably low, years out of date. Tucked behind it, a letter addressed to Luffy in elegant script.
Law's thumb brushed the "D." in his name. Always another shadow.
"Captain?" Bepo whispered. "What do we do?"
Law pocketed the letter and photo. "We wait. She'll lead us to answers—or a damn good fight."
As the crew dispersed, Law lingered, staring at the sword. Its hunger mirrored his own.
What are you hiding, Dracule?
The Polar Tang's med bay hummed with the low thrum of machinery, but the air around Eternal Eclipse felt heavier, denser—as if the blade were breathing. Law stood before it, Kikoku slung over his shoulder, his amber eyes narrowed. The sword's obsidian surface drank the light, its crimson runes pulsing like a heartbeat.
"You're not just metal," Law muttered. "You're a leech."
The blade shuddered in its sea-stone chains, a low, resonant growl vibrating through the hull.
Marya's fingers twitched on the med bay cot, the void veins writhing. Memories flashing through her mind:
Fire and ash. Vaughn's ax shattered, his body crumpling as Teivel's spear tore through his chest. "Marya… run," he gasped, blood frothing on his lips. Then—laughter. Her mother's laughter, warm and bright, as a younger Marya sparred with Mihawk in a courtyard. "Focus, child," her father chided, but his blade never struck to maim. Only to teach.
Law's Room erupted in a corona of electric blue, the surgical glow intensifying until it swallowed Eternal Eclipse whole. The blade's obsidian surface seemed to fracture under the light, revealing fissures of crimson that pulsed like exposed veins. Unsheathing Kikoku, it shimmers, "scan," he commanded, his voice a blade itself—cold, precise.
The world dissolved.
Law's consciousness plummeted into a chasm of absolute nothingness, a void so vast it defied direction. The air—if it could be called air—seared his lungs with a frigid burn, as though breathing in shards of glass. Stars did not exist here. Light did not exist. Only a suffocating darkness that pressed against him, alive and ravenous.
And then—movement.
A shadow coalesced at the void's heart, its form warping grotesquely: one moment, a woman's silhouette, regal and sharp-edged, her features echoing Marya's; the next, a thrashing abomination of serrated bone and dripping fangs, limbs elongating and snapping like rotten sails in a storm. The spirit's voice clawed into Law's mind, grating and metallic, as if dragged from the belly of a rusted shipwreck.
"Surgeon of Death."
The words reverberated, shaking the void itself. "You dare trespass in my domain?"
Law stood motionless, Kikoku's spectral weight grounding him. The sword's eye glared balefully from his shoulder, its gaze a familiar, icy counterpoint to the chaos. "You're killing her," he said, tone devoid of fear. "Why?"
The spirit's laugh was a chorus of screams. Its humanoid guise melted, flesh sloughing away to reveal a coiled serpent of shadow, teeth glinting like shattered obsidian. "She knelt at the altar of the void. She begged for its bite. Life for power—fair trade."
"There's another currency," Law countered, brow furrowed, his amber eyes narrowing. "Haki."
The void shuddered. The serpent stilled, its countless eyes—each a pinprick of malevolent crimson—fixing on him. "Her will… instead of her flesh?" It sounded almost amused, a predator toying with prey. "You think her spirit can sustain me?"
Law smirked, sharp and calculating. "She's Mihawk's blood. Her Haki's a feast. Keep her alive, and you'll grow stronger than that relic Yoru ever dreamed of."
For a heartbeat, the void held its breath. Then the spirit lunged, its form disintegrating into a swarm of tendrils blacker than pitch. They lashed around Law's throat, squeezing with the force of a sea king's jaws. "You reek of ambition, D.," it snarled, the void itself curdling with its rage. "But chain me to her will, and I'll gnaw your bones before the first dawn."
Law didn't flinch. His Room flared brighter, the blue light shredding the tendrils into ash. "Try it," he said, Kikoku humming as he raised a hand. "I'll carve you out of her cell by cell. Leave nothing but scrap metal."
Silence.
Then—laughter. Not the cacophony before, but a single, glacial sound, echoing from all directions. The spirit reformed, its human guise now dominant, though its edges bled into the dark like ink in water. "A pact, then," it purred. "Her Haki… for her life. But when her resolve cracks—" The void rippled hungrily. "I feast."
Law staggered back, the Room dissolving as his knees buckled against the med bay wall. Blood trickled from his nose—thin, crimson streaks stark against his pallid skin—and his breath came in ragged bursts. The sword's runes blazed like freshly stoked embers, their crimson light throbbing in time with the rattle of its sea-stone chains. Across the room, Marya's arm lay still, the void veins receding into jagged, dormant lines beneath her skin, as if the curse itself were biding its time.
Bepo burst through the door, his polar bear fur bristling, paws skidding on the polished steel floor. "Captain! Her vitals—they're crashing!"
Law wiped his face with the back of his hand, smearing blood across his cheekbone. "Stabilizing," he rasped, pushing off the wall. His voice was sandpaper, but his amber eyes burned with grim focus. "For now. Good—now I can operate."
He strode to Marya's side, his Room flaring anew. The blue sphere engulfed her arm, peeling back layers of necrotic flesh and atrophied muscle with spectral precision. The damage was grotesque: Casimir's velociraptor maw had torn through her shoulder in their last encounter, severing tendons and shredding nerve clusters, but the void's corruption had festered in the wounds, turning tissue black and brittle.
"Scalpel," Law muttered, and a blade of pure energy materialized in his grip.
Bepo hovered nearby, clutching a tray of physical tools—a redundant gesture, but routine steadied him. Law's fingers danced, his Devil Fruit power excising dead tissue in microscopic increments. Rotting muscle fell away like ash, revealing the mangled brachial plexus beneath.
"The axillary nerve… gone," Law murmured, more to himself than to Bepo. "Suprascapular, obliterated. How the hell did she even move this arm?"
He glanced at the void veins, now dormant but coiled like vipers. With a surgeon's ruthlessness, he isolated the remaining healthy tissue—a scant few fibers—and began rebuilding. Tendons knit themselves from strands of Haki-infused energy; nerve endings sparked to life under his meticulous command. The void veins recoiled as his power pressed inward, their advance halted but not eradicated.
"Captain… the corruption—" Bepo stammered.
"Contained," Law snapped. "For now."
Sweat dripped from his brow as he worked, the Room's glow flickering with strain. He grafted muscle fibers stolen from her thigh, their cells reshaped into shoulder tissue. The void stirred, tendrils lashing at his incisions, but Law severed them with a flick—each cut precise, clinical, unflinching.
When he finally stepped back, Marya's shoulder was whole again, pale and scarless save for the teeth marks and dormant black veins. Her fingers twitched—a miracle of reconnected nerves.
"It'll hold," Law said, collapsing into a chair. His hands trembled faintly, a rarity for the Surgeon of Death. "Until the void wakes up."
Bepo stared at Marya's restored arm, awe and dread warring in his round eyes. "But… the sword?"
Law's gaze slid to Eternal Eclipse, its runes dimmed but watchful. "That's her problem now."
The sterile hum of the Polar Tang's med bay seeped into Marya's consciousness before she fully awoke. Her eyelids fluttered open to a ceiling of cold, riveted steel, bathed in the pallid glow of overhead lamps. The air smelled sharply of antiseptic, undercut by the faint brine of seawater. For a disorienting moment, she thought she was back in the Consortium's infirmary—until she turned her head and saw him.
Law sat slouched in a chair beside her cot, her mother's photograph pinched loosely between his tattooed fingers. His amber eyes flicked up as she stirred, sharp and unreadable.
"Welcome back," he said, voice flat.
Marya jerked upright, the motion sending a dull ache through her skull. Her left hand flew instinctively to her right arm—her bandaged, functional right arm. She froze, staring at her fingers as they curled and uncurled, smooth and responsive. The black veins still lurked beneath her skin, but the necrosis… gone.
"Impossible," she muttered. Natalie's verdict echoed in her mind: "You'll never hold a sword again."
"Not impossible. Just expensive."
Marya whirled toward the voice. "Who the hell are you?" she demanded.
"Trafalgar Law." He tilted the photo, revealing her younger self sandwiched between Mihawk and Elisabeta. "Surgeon. Pirate. Unwanted babysitter."
Marya's lip curled. "I don't need a babysitter. How?" The word tore from her throat, raw with disbelief.
Law ignored her. The antiseptic glare of the Tang's medical bay sharpened the edges of the photograph in Law's hand as he turned the photo. Marya's younger self grinned back at him, bracketed by Mihawk's stoic glare and a woman with wild raven curls—Elisabetta, he assumed, from the way the girl leaned into her warmth. A family portrait. A secret.
"Name," Law said, tone flat as a scalpel.
She bristled. "You dragged me onto your ship, and you don't even know who I am?" Her voice crackled with Mihawk's trademark disdain, but her eyes flickered to the photo. A tell.
"Name," he repeated, colder, rotating the image slowly, watching her flinch.
"...Marya Zaleska." She spat it like a curse. "Happy? Now answer my question. How'd you fix the shoulder? The doctors I know said I'd never hold a sword again."
Law leaned back, tossing the photo onto her cot. "Temporary graft. Devil Fruit, Haki, and a lot of dead tissue. You're welcome."
Marya's gaze dropped to her arm again, flexing her fingers as if testing a phantom limb. The sensation was alien—no numbness, no searing void. Just… whole. Her mind raced. Was it a trick? A trap? She glanced around the room, spotting Eternal Eclipse chained to the far wall, its runes dim but watchful.
Law followed her gaze. "Your sword's a chatty one. Made a deal with it."
"A deal?" She swung her legs over the cot, wincing as her boots hit the floor. "What the hell does that mean?"
"Means you feed it Haki now, not your life." He stood, looming over her with his usual detached menace. "And in exchange, you answer my questions."
Marya edged toward her sword, muscles coiled. "Or what?"
Law's smirk was a knife's edge. "Or I let the void finish its meal."
Her hand twitched toward Eternal Eclipse's hilt, but the chains rattled ominously. Law didn't move, didn't flinch—just waited.
"What do you want to know?" she hissed.
"How'd you even get an injury like that?"
She looked away, crossing her arm, resting her palm on her healed shoulder as if to verify its mobility. "Long story."
"Shorten it." Law's fingers drummed. "There has never been mention of Mihawk having a daughter. Why hide you?"
Marya's laugh was bitter. "Why do you care? You a Marine informant? A warlord groupie?"
"I'm someone who doesn't like loose ends." He leaned closer, the Tang's hum underlining his words. "What are you doing out here? Are you hunting him? Why? Daddy issues?"
Her jaw tightened. "He wasn't at Kuraigana. You know where he is?"
Law paused. The submarine's vents hissed. "Marineford," he said finally. "He was there for Ace's execution."
Marya went very still. "...Ace?"
"Portgas D. Ace. Whitebeard's man. You know him?"
"Crossed paths on Isla Koralia." Her smirk was thin, forced. "He tried to steal my lunch."
Law's eyebrow arched. "Koralia's Beast Pirate territory. You're either reckless or stupid." Scowling he pressed, "The Dawnless City." He held up her mother's notebook, open to Elisabeta's frantic scribbles. "Titans' bones. Void's cradle. "How are you able to read this?"
Marya's jaw tightened. "I don't know."
"Liar. These are…"
"I know what they are," she snapped.
"Then you also know that…."
"And," she interrupts, crossing her arms. "I am not afraid of the World Government. They are the ones who are afraid."
Law's scowl deepens, "How are you able to read this? Ohara…"
Marya sighs, "I am aware of Ohara, but you have to be naive to believe that they were the only repository of knowledge and study in the world." Law towers over her, waiting for her to elaborate. Marya rolls her eyes, "The Poneglyphs… they're not just maps. They're warnings."
Law's eyes narrowed. "Warnings about what?"
She hesitated, then deflected. "Why do you care? You're not a scholar."
"And you're a time bomb," he shot back. "That curse isn't cured—it's caged. You slip up, and the void eats you. So, talk."
Marya's fingers brushed the kogatana at her neck, her father's steel cool against her skin. "The Dawnless City… it's where the Void Century's sins are buried. My mother thought it held a weapon. Or a key."
"A key to what?"
She met his gaze, defiant. "To breaking the world."
For a heartbeat, silence hung between them. Then Law scoffed, tossing the notebook onto her cot. "Cute bedtime story. Where's the proof?"
As he turned to leave, Marya lunged—not for him, but for Eternal Eclipse. Her fingers closed around the hilt, the chains shattering as the blade's runes flared to life. Law spun, Kikoku half-drawn, but Marya leveled the obsidian sword at his throat.
"I don't need your help, Surgeon," she growled.
Law didn't blink. "You already have it."
Behind them, the submarine's alarms blared. Bepo's panicked voice crackled over the intercom: "Captain! Marine warship—dead ahead!"
Law's grin widened. "Perfect timing. Let's see if that arm works."