The Polar Tang sliced through the ink-black waters of the New World, its hull groaning under the weight of the oppressive air. Above, the sky was a writhing tapestry of storm clouds, their jagged edges crackling with violet lightning that split the darkness like fractured bone. The sea itself seemed to recoil from the tempest ahead, waves clawing at the sub's sides as if begging it to turn back.
And there, rising from the abyss, loomed the Dawnless City.
Petrified titan skeletons formed its foundation—colossal ribs arched into the heavens, their curves sharp as scythes, while vertebrae the size of warships lay half-submerged in the water, crusted with barnacles and seaweed. Between the bones swirled the storm, a living maelstrom of indigo and ash. It roared in a guttural tongue, its winds howling verses of dead languages, its lightning carving symbols into the sky that stung the eyes to behold. The storm wasn't just weather; it was a presence, ancient and ravenous, its hunger palpable in the way it lashed at the horizon.
Marya stood at the bow, the salt-stiffened wind tangling her hair. Eternal Eclipse hung heavy on her back, its obsidian blade humming against her spine. The sword's void veins pulsed rhythmically, syncing with her heartbeat, each throb sending a cold ache radiating down her arm. The whispers had become a chorus now, hissing promises in a voice that slithered between her mother's tone and something far older.
Almost there, she thought, clutching Elisabeta's notebook to her chest. The pages trembled in her grip, their edges frayed from years of desperate study.
Law materialized beside her in a flicker of blue light, his amber eyes narrowed at the tempest. Kikoku's crimson eye glinted from its sheath, its gaze locked on the storm. "That's no squall," he said, voice low. "It's alive. Can you feel it?"
Marya nodded, her throat tight. "Guardian of the city. My mother wrote that it… feeds. On ambition. On hope." She traced a finger over a sketch in the notebook—a spiral of storm clouds devouring a ship. "The hungrier it gets, the stronger it becomes."
Bepo's whimper cut through the growl of the engines. The polar bear clung to the sonar display, his fur bristling as the screen flickered with erratic blips. "C-Captain… there's something huge beneath us. Bigger than the Tang. Bigger than anything." His paw trembled as he pointed to a shadow on the radar, a mass so vast it dwarfed the sub's sensors.
"Titan's bones," Marya murmured, leaning over the railing. Far below, the water churned over a submerged mountain of skeletal remains—skulls with hollow eyes the size of islands, femurs like shattered towers. "The city's built on their corpses. My mother called them the 'Silent Judges.'"
Shachi elbowed Penguin, his usual grin strained at the edges. "You think they've got treasure down there? Chests of gold? Crowns? Maybe a cursed diamond or two?"
Penguin peered into the gloom, his reflection warped in the Tang's rain-smeared portholes. "Only one way to find out. Bet the World Government left a few shiny toys lying around."
Law's voice cracked like a whip, sharp enough to silence even the storm's growl for a heartbeat. "Stay sharp. This place is a graveyard—and we're the fresh meat." His gaze swept over the crew, lingering on Marya. "The second we dock, assume everything here wants you dead. The stones, the water, the air. Understood?"
A chorus of grim nods answered him.
Above, the storm shrieked, as if laughing.
Navigating the storm was like sailing into the gullet of a leviathan. The Polar Tang bucked violently as waves taller than Marineford's walls slammed against its hull, each crash reverberating through the sub's steel bones. Above, the sky seethed with unnatural lightning—crackling veins of violet and indigo that split the clouds like claws raking flesh. The strikes weren't random; they hunted, arcing toward the sub with sentient malice. One bolt grazed the starboard side, its sizzling tendrils crawling across the hull before fizzling out, leaving scorch marks that reeked of sulfur and burnt metal.
"Ikkaku! Redirect power to the shields!" Law's voice cut through the din, sharp as Kikoku's edge. His coat billowed in the gale, eyes glowing faintly with the strain of maintaining his Room around the sub's critical systems.
"Shields are at 30%!" Ikkaku shot back, her hands a blur over the control panel. Sparks erupted from a overloaded conduit as she wrenched a lever, her teeth gritted. "Engines are overheating! Another hit and we'll be dead in the water!"
The sub lurched, throwing Shachi into a console. "Since when do storms have aim?!" he yelped, righting himself.
"Since never!" Penguin braced himself in a doorway, his usually cocky grin replaced by a grimace. "This thing's got a grudge!"
Marya clawed her way to the top deck, battered by wind that felt like fists. Rain stung her face, but Eternal Eclipse burned in her grip, its blade humming like a tuning fork struck by the storm's fury. The void veins in her arm writhed beneath her skin, cold and electric, as if the sword itself were drinking in the chaos.
"Black Crescent!"
The slash tore through the tempest, a crescent of pure void energy that split the sky. The storm screamed—a sound like a thousand voices shredded into static—as the lightning recoiled, repelled by the blade's negation of light itself. For a heartbeat, the maelstrom parted, revealing a corridor of eerie calm. The crew gaped at the impossible sight: rain hung suspended midair, frozen in shimmering droplets, while the Tang surged forward on suddenly glass-smooth seas.
"Since when can she do that?!" Shachi shouted, clutching his hat to his head.
Law's gaze narrowed, his Room flickering as he studied Marya. The void energy radiating from her blade seemed to twist the air, bending reality around its edge. "Since the sword wants this place as much as she does," he muttered. "It's not just a weapon. It's a key."
Beyond the storm's wrath lay the Dawnless City.
Crumbling obsidian towers clawed at the bruised sky, their surfaces etched with Poneglyphic script that glowed faintly, as if the stones themselves remembered the language of the ancients. Giant chains, thick as sea king spines and crusted with centuries of barnacles, draped over the titan bones below like cobwebs strung by some colossal, long-dead spider. The air thrummed with a low, dissonant hum—the sound of the city's heartbeat.
At its center loomed the ziggurat. Its steps were carved from black basalt, each tier lined with grotesque reliefs of winged figures bowed under jagged crowns. And atop it all, pulsing like a diseased star, hung the Void's Cradle—a sphere of swirling darkness that devoured the light around it. The very air warped near its surface, bending like a lens, and faint, ghostly shapes flickered within its depths: silhouettes of people, places, histories erased.
Marya's breath caught. "That's where she worked," she whispered, her mother's notebook trembling in her hands. A sketch fluttered open—Elisabeta's hurried drawing of the Cradle, annotated with frantic script: "The Void is not a weapon. It is a door. And doors swing both ways."
Bepo's whimper broke the silence. "C-Captain… the water. Look at the water."
Below, the sea had turned viscous and ink-black, bubbling sluggishly around the titan bones. Shapes moved beneath the surface—skeletal, luminous, watching.
Law's jaw tightened. "Move. Now. Before the storm regains its appetite."
The Tang plunged forward, its shadow stretching long and jagged across the dead city, as if the darkness itself were reaching out to claim them.
The Polar Tang docked at a crumbling pier of black stone, its obsidian surface slick with algae and etched with glyphs that seemed to shift under the crew's footsteps. Above them, the Dawnless City's towers leaned precariously, their jagged silhouettes clawing at the storm-choked sky. Chains thicker than mast trunks hung slack between the ruins, rusted links groaning in the wind like the whispers of the dead.
Marya leaped onto the pier first, Eternal Eclipse humming at her back. Her boots crunched over shards of pottery and bone—remnants of a civilization erased. She paused beside a towering Poneglyph embedded in the dock's edge, its surface worn but the angular script still legible. Law materialized beside her, Kikoku's eye narrowed at the text.
"What's it say?" he asked, voice taut.
Marya traced the grooves with her fingertips, the void veins in her arm flaring faintly. "'Turn back. The Silent Judges wake for the unworthy.'" She glanced at the skeletal titan remains looming in the distance. "This place… it's not just ruins. It's a trap. The ancients built an automated defense system—guardians that react to intruders."
Law's gaze swept over the crew as they disembarked, their nervous chatter dying under his glare. "Don't. Touch. Anything."
Shachi saluted mockingly. "No touching! Got it, Captain Buzzkill—"
CRACK.
Penguin froze, his boot hovering over a loose stone tile he'd just stepped on. "Uh… that wasn't me."
The ground trembled. From the city's heart came a deep, mechanical whir, like gears grinding to life after centuries of slumber. The air hummed, charged with static.
"Move!" Law barked.
Too late.
The city exhaled.
Dust devils erupted from the streets, swirling into snarling cyclones of debris that lunged like wolves. Ropes of ancient seaweed, petrified into barbed whips, snapped from the towers, lashing at the crew. From the blackened harbor, waterspouts exploded, vomiting skeletal fish with needle teeth that rained down in a piranha-like frenzy.
"ROOM!" Law's blue sphere flared, teleporting Shachi away as a dust cyclone swallowed his former position. "Stay clustered! Jean Bart—!"
"On it!" The giant snatched a falling stone pillar midair and hurled it at a waterspout, scattering piscine horrors.
Bepo ducked under a flying rope-tornado, his fur standing on end. "Why does everything here want to kill us?!"
Marya sliced through a serpentine dust devil with Eternal Eclipse, its void edge dispersing the storm into nothingness. "Because we're worthy!" she shouted, half-grinning.
"Not the time for jokes!" Law snarled, severing a barbed seaweed whip with Kikoku.
Ikkaku lobbed a wrench at a gear mechanism jutting from a wall. "Override it! There's gotta be a control hub!"
"Where?!" Penguin yelled, dodging a fish that latched onto his sleeve.
Marya parried another dust attack, her eyes locking on the ziggurat. "The Cradle! The system's tied to the Void—shut it down there!"
The crew fought toward the ziggurat, a chaotic ballet of blades, fists, and desperate improvisation. Shachi lit a flare, tossing it into a dust devil—the flames turned blue, then screamed.
"Nope! Never doing that again!"
Jean Bart ripped a chain from its moorings, swinging it like a flail to clear a path. Bepo, in a rare burst of courage, body-slammed a waterspout, scattering fish.
Law teleported Marya to a half-collapsed archway. "You're faster. Get to the Cradle. Disable it."
She nodded, darting into the shadows.
Behind her, Shachi yelped as a rope tornado stole his hat. "Hey! That's vintage!"
Marya plunged Eternal Eclipse into the Cradle's control panel—a stone slab thrumming with void energy. The city shuddered, the guardians collapsing into dust and rust.
Panting, the crew regrouped at the ziggurat's base.
Law glared at Penguin, who sheepishly held up a stolen cog. "What? It looked shiny!"
Marya wiped grime from her mother's notebook. "Next time, listen to the Poneglyph."
Bepo peered into the ziggurat's dark entrance. "Um… you think the next traps are worse?"
Law adjusted his hat, striding forward. "Only one way to find out."
Above them, the Void's Cradle pulsed, its darkness stirring hungrily.
The air inside the ziggurat hummed with a low, mechanical growl, as though the Dawnless City itself were grinding its teeth. Marya braced her boot against the Void's Cradle—a monolith of obsidian threaded with veins of pulsating void energy—and yanked at Eternal Eclipse with both hands. The blade remained lodged in the control panel, its obsidian edge fused to the stone as if the cradle had grown teeth to clamp down on it.
"Come on," she hissed, her voice fraying. The void veins in her arm throbbed angrily, reacting to the Cradle's resonance. Sweat dripped down her temples, mingling with the grime streaking her face.
Law stood a few paces back, Kikoku's eye narrowed at the walls. Ancient Poneglyphs etched into the stone began to glow—first a faint amber, then a searing gold. Symbols twisted and realigned, their meaning shifting like sand in an hourglass.
"Marya," Law warned, his voice sharp. "The script—it's not just a warning. It's a countdown."
"Not now, Law!" She wrenched the sword sideways, her boots slipping on the slick floor. "I've almost got it—"
"Look at the damn walls!"
She jerked her head up, frustration burning in her golden eyes—and froze.
The Poneglyphs weren't just glowing. They were moving.
A deafening clang reverberated through the ziggurat, followed by the screech of ancient gears lurching to life. The floor trembled as the Dawnless City began to rearrange itself. Walls pivoted, staircases inverted, and entire corridors folded like origami. Chains snapped taut, dragging towers into new configurations, while the distant roar of stone grinding against stone echoed through the labyrinth.
Shachi stumbled into the chamber, clutching a bleeding arm. "The whole city's gone mad! The path we took here? It's a dead end now!"
Outside the ziggurat's entrance, Jean Bart cursed as a slab of black basalt slammed down, sealing the crew inside. Penguin pounded on the stone, his voice tinny with panic. "We're trapped!"
Law's gaze snapped back to Marya. "The sword. Now."
She threw her weight against Eternal Eclipse, teeth bared. "I'm trying—!"
With a final metallic scream, the blade tore free—and the Cradle's void energy flared, lashing out like a whip. The Poneglyphs dimmed, their golden light snuffed out as the labyrinth's movement ceased.
Silence fell, thick and suffocating.
Then, with a shuddering groan, the wall opposite them split open, revealing a fluctuating archway. Its edges rippled like liquid shadow, and beyond it stretched a corridor of shifting stone, its path warping and reforming every few seconds.
Bepo inched closer, ears flat. "Um… is that our only exit?"
"Seems like it," Law said
The archway swallowed them whole.
The air beyond was thick and stagnant, reeking of rust and brine. The corridor stretched into darkness, its walls of shifting stone undulating like the ribs of some colossal beast mid-breath. Every few seconds, the path ahead twisted—floors became ceilings, doorways sealed and reopened as jagged fissures, and gravity seemed to lurch drunkenly. Shadows clung to the crew, cold and viscous, as if the labyrinth itself were testing their resolve.
Bepo's fur bristled. "It feels… alive," he whispered, claws digging into the stone.
"Stay close," Law ordered, his voice low. But the words barely left his lips before the floor beneath them rippled.
A thunderous crack split the corridor. The ground heaved, stone slabs tilting like scales on a serpent's back. Shachi stumbled, grabbing Penguin's arm as a chasm yawned open between them.
"Captain—!"
"ROOM!" Law's blue sphere flared, but the labyrinth resisted, warping the spatial field like oil repelling water. The crew scattered, swallowed by branching paths as walls slammed shut like jaws.
Marya lunged for Law, her fingers brushing his coat sleeve as the floor bucked violently. A slab of obsidian crashed down, sealing the two of them in a narrow passage. The others—Shachi, Penguin, Bepo, Jean Bart, Ikkaku—were gone, their shouts muffled by stone.
"They're alive," Law said coldly, though his knuckles whitened around Kikoku's hilt. "This place wants us separated. Controlled."
Marya pressed a hand to the wall. The stone pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat. "No. It wants us tested."
The walls around them began to glow. Poneglyphs materialized, their jagged script burning crimson. Marya traced the symbols, her void veins flickering in response.
"What walks on four legs at dawn, two at noon, and three at dusk?"
Law scoffed. "A child's riddle. Man."
The glyphs flared, and the path ahead shifted, revealing a bridge over a bottomless void. But as they stepped forward, new symbols seared into the stone:
"Wrong."
Marya froze. "No—it's a trick. The answer isn't literal. The Dawnless City's riddles are about… legacy." She pressed her palm to the Poneglyph. "The Void. It 'walks' on the ambition of the past, the greed of the present, and the ruin of the future."
The bridge solidified, the void beneath it retreating like a scolded hound. Law raised an eyebrow. "Guess your mother's notes aren't total garbage."
Marya shot him a glare but said nothing.
Elsewhere, the crew faced their own trials.
Shachi and Penguin found themselves in a mirrored chamber, their reflections warped into grotesque parodies. A Poneglyph glowed, morphing into modern languages they could understand: "What is shared by the liar and the saint?"
"Uh… bad fashion sense?" Shachi quipped, dodging as a mirror shattered into razor shards.
"Hope," Penguin realized, grabbing Shachi's arm. "Both think they're right!"
The walls parted.
Bepo and Jean Bart confronted a corridor flooded with rising black water. A glyph demanded: "What drowns but never dies?"
Bepo's ears drooped. "Regret…?"
The water drained, revealing a path.
Ikkaku, alone, faced a wall of gears and fire. "What burns the hand that feeds it?"
She spat. "Loyalty." The flames died.
Law and Marya reached a chamber bathed in sickly green light. The ceiling dripped with stalactites of crystallized void energy, and at its center stood a massive Poneglyph, its edges fused with writhing tendrils of shadow.
"What key unlocks the cage of the world?"
Marya stepped forward, Eternal Eclipse humming. "The Void."
"Wrong," the glyphs hissed.
Law's gaze sharpened. "No. The Void is the cage. The key is…" He paused, eyeing Marya's sword. "…sacrifice."
The chamber shuddered. The tendrils retreated, and the walls dissolved, revealing the reunited crew—battered but alive—on a platform overlooking the heart of the labyrinth.
The path ahead sloped downward into a cavernous emptiness, where the titan's skeleton lay exposed, its ribs curving into a vault of bone. At its center hovered the Void's Cradle, now thrashing like a caged star.
Shachi wiped blood from his brow. "Great. More friendly architecture."
Law turned to Marya. "Your sword's the trigger. You know that, right?"
She gripped Eternal Eclipse, its whispers now a roar. "Then let's end this."
The crew pressed forward, the labyrinth's walls sealing behind them. Somewhere deep in the city, gears groaned—not in warning, but in welcome.
Law's Room flickered, its blue sphere fraying at the edges like threadbare cloth. The Void's Cradle yawned open—a jagged maw of absolute darkness, its edges crackling with crimson static. Between the split halves of the world stretched the bridge, a churning ribbon of liquid abyss. It pulsed like an artery, its surface rippling with half-formed memories: Marya's mother hunched over star charts, Vaughn's laughter dissolving into blood, Mihawk's blade cleaving the horizon.
"Step lightly," Marya warned, her voice swallowed by the Cradle's dissonant hum. Eternal Eclipse thrummed in her grip, the sword's void veins snaking up her arm like black lightning. "The bridge isn't stable. It's… alive."
Shachi peered over the precipice. The abyss below churned with spectral shapes—skeletal titans frozen mid-scream, their hollow eyes tracking the crew. "Alive? Great. Just once, could ancient death traps be boring?"
"No time for whining," Law snapped. His amber eyes glinted as he recalibrated his Room, the spatial field warping around the crew. "Marya—you lead. The sword's tied to the Void. Let it guide you."
The first step onto the bridge sent fractures spiderwebbing through the air. Gravity inverted; the crew's boots clung to the abyss-path as though magnetized while the storm above rained upward into the Cradle's split halves. Marya's mist-form flickered instinctively, tendrils of fog dissipating where the bridge's corruption gnawed at her edges.
"Eyes forward!" Jean Bart barked as Penguin wobbled, his reflection splintering into a dozen panicked mimics in the bridge's prismatic surface.
Halfway across, the Silent Judges stirred.
The titan skeletons flanking the bridge turned their skulls in unison, jaws creaking open. From their throats poured a susurrus of dead languages—a verdict.
UNWORTHY.
The bridge screamed.
Reality peeled back in jagged strips, revealing the Consortium's hidden library burning, Mihawk's kogatana shattered, Law's crew disintegrating into ash. Marya staggered as the visions struck—Eternal Eclipse flaring to repel the psychic assault.
"Illusions!" Law snarled, Kikoku's crimson eye weeping black tears. "Don't engage! The Void's testing your resolve!"
Bepo whimpered, claws gouging the bridge as his reflection morphed into a starved, feral version of himself. "C-Captain—I can't—"
"You can," Marya growled. She slammed Eternal Eclipse into the bridge, the blade's negation rippling outward. The illusions shattered like glass, but the hilt seared her palm, the void veins creeping toward her collarbone. "Run! The Judges won't stop!"
The crew surged forward, the bridge dissolving behind them. Marya's breaths came in ragged bursts—each step etched Vaughn's dying words into her skull ("Tell Harper…"), each heartbeat syncing with the sword's dirge.
Ahead, the Cradle's halves convulsed, birthing a portal of fractured starlight. Beyond it loomed the true Dawnless City—not ruins, but a living labyrinth of flesh and bone, its towers pulsing with bioluminescent veins.
"Almost there!" Ikkaku yelled, her wrench sparking against a tendril of void-energy.
But the bridge had one last cruelty.
Casimir's specter materialized, his eyepatch oozing black sludge, Velociraptor talons scraping the void.
"You think crossing absolves you?" the illusion hissed, its voice a chorus of Marya's failures. "The Consortium burns because of your pride. Vaughn rots because of your weakness."
Marya faltered. Eternal Eclipse dimmed.
Law's hand clamped her shoulder, his Room flaring. "Don't listen. He's not here. This is the Void preying on regret."
"But what if—"
"Now," Law commanded, and shoved her forward.
Marya's blade pierced the portal. The bridge exploded.
They spilled onto a platform of living cartilage, the air reeking of iron and petrichor. Behind them, the Cradle sealed with a thunderclap, severing the bridge—and the Silent Judges' roar of fury.
Shachi collapsed, clutching his chest. "I just aged ten years. Twenty. What was that?!"
"A backdoor," Marya whispered, staring at the pulsating city. Her mother's notebook flapped open to a sketch of the flesh-labyrinth, annotated: "The Void's Cradle is a wound. The true city lies beneath."
Law adjusted his hat, gaze locked on the organic spires. "Your mother didn't just study ruins. She found something older."
Bepo sniffed the air, fur bristling. "Sulong… but wrong. Like it's rotting."
Marya sheathed Eternal Eclipse, the void veins receding. "The Consortium's records mention a 'Primordial Current'—a force predating Devil Fruits. This… this might be its source."
Penguin grinned, bloodied but alive. "So? Treasure?"
"Annihilation," Law said coldly. Above, the fleshy towers quivered, their vein-lights dimming. A low, wet drumbeat echoed—the city's heartbeat. "But Marya's right. The Navy, the World Government… they'd burn the world to claim this."
Marya touched Mihawk's kogatana, its edge still stained with Casimir's blood. "Then we destroy it first."
As the crew advanced, the city shuddered. Walls of sinew peeled open, revealing corridors lined with eyeballs. Distant, bestial shrieks echoed.
And far below, something in the Primordial Current stirred.