The frozen swamp of Marya's Eternal Abyss Form spread across the grey wastes like a bruise, a pocket dimension of howling ghosts and weeping cypresses superimposed on reality. At its center, Marya stood, a serene pivot in the storm. Her nine Grim Reapers flowed around her in a deadly ballet, their silent screams etching lines of frost in the air.
Against them, the four Ogres of Kamaten formed a wall of muscle and menace.
Stanislav was on some robot timing, moving perfectly as he swung his massive black club, Hashira. He caught a glowing reaper's blade with a hit that sounded like a cracked bell. "Scanning these ghosts," he muttered, totally deadpan. "Solution: brute force." He wasn't even hyped up; he just talked his way through it while he deleted a reaper, turning it into a pile of gold glitter with a heavy-duty swing.
His brother, Dimitri, was the opposite. "You call this a party?!" he boomed, his frosted indigo skin gleaming as he swatted a Purgatory's Arbiter aside with his permafrost-coated kanabo, Shingiro. The Arbiter's mirror-blade shattered against his chest-plate. "This is a funeral march! And you're off-beat!" He laughed, a thunderous, infectious sound, before charging another reaper, his head-crest glowing with icy power. "Crest-Slide: Absolute Zero!" A wave of bitter cold flash-froded the swamp water around a Hell's Executioner, slowing its chain attack to a crawl.
Polly Tetsuko didn't bother with the ghosts. She barged straight through a dissipating Herald, her furnace-orange skin steaming where the holy light touched it. Her eyes were locked on Marya. "Enough with the spooky light show, kid! You're warping the deck plates!" She hefted her colossal sledgehammer, Chikatsu, its head shimmering with black Armament Haki—what she called her "Industrial Coating." With a grunt of effort, she brought it down in a mighty two-handed swing aimed at Marya's skull. "Blowout Preventer!"
The shockwave from the hammer hitting the swamp ground was physical, a ring of force that would pulverize stone. Marya didn't block. She flowed. She became part of the shockwave's motion, letting it lift her and carry her back, her boots skimming the black water. She landed lightly, her tri-split sword, the Key of Thresholds, held loosely.
Benn Roland, hanging back near the edge of the frozen zone, cackled as he unleashed a crackling whip of stored static electricity from his insulated rod, Asu. It arced through two reapers, making their forms flicker and distort. "Ha-ha! Look at that! Interference pattern! Your god-tech's glitching, princess!" He adjusted his brass goggles, his long neck craning. "Just a matter of finding the resonant frequency for a total system crash!"
For minutes, it was a brutal stalemate. The reapers were endless, reforming from the mist after being shattered. But the Ogres were powerhouses, their combined strength holding the spectral tide at bay. Stanislav shattered a reaper with a perfectly measured blow to its "structural weakness"—the ghostly spine. Dimitri froze two more in a block of unmelting ice with a blast of frozen air from his lungs—his "White-Out Bite." Polly waded through them, a force of nature, her hammer sending geysers of frozen muck skyward.
But they weren't gaining ground. And Marya, her face calm under her nebula-hair halo, simply watched, her mismatched eyes taking in every move.
Frustration began to boil over.
"Brother!" Dimitri roared, smashing another reaper. "This is repetitive!"
Stanislav adjusted his crimson-tinted sunglasses with a sharp, irritated motion. "Agreed. Let's switch it up!"
With twin roars that shook the floating gears on their poles, the Robben brothers abandoned their human forms. Stanislav's body grew leaner, sleeker, his skin becoming a pattern of white and grey scales. A long, powerful tail tipped with bony spikes erupted behind him. His head elongated into a fearsome maw, his sunglasses somehow staying perfectly perched on his new snout. The Ryu Ryu no Mi, Model: Nanuqsaurus—the Arctic predator.
Around him, the light died. His Photonic Insulation ability activated, swallowing the ambient glow of Marya's reapers and the fractured sky, plunging a five-meter sphere around him into pitch blackness. From the darkness, only his deep-set crimson eyes glowed.
Dimitri's transformation was louder, brighter. His body swelled, his fur-lined coat tearing as azure and white scales covered his broad frame. A magnificent, bone-hard transverse crest, like a frozen, jagged pompadour, sprouted from his skull—the Ryu Ryu no Mi, Model: Cryolophosaurus. He sucked in a breath, and the temperature around him plummeted so fast the air itself crackled.
"Now that's more like it!" Dimitri bellowed, his voice deeper, echoing from his dinosaur throat. "Let's turn this funeral into a fossil exhibit!"
The enhanced Ogres tore into the reapers with renewed fury. Stanislav moved through his circle of darkness like a living shadow, his tail swipes ("Aurora Executioner") moving so fast they created brief, blinding flashes of light before impact, disintegrating reapers caught in the black. Dimitri became a glacial avalanche, his "Crest-Slide" charges plowing through multiple ghosts, freezing and shattering them.
Polly cheered. "That's the spirit! No more messin' about!" Benn just wheezed a laugh. "Demon glitches versus prehistoric glitches! I love this island!"
Marya, for the first time, tilted her head. A faint, almost imperceptible smirk touched her lips. It wasn't cruel. It was the look of someone who had been gently testing the weight of a tool and finally decided to use it properly.
"You are very loud," she said, her voice echoing triply, layered with the whispers of heaven and the groans of hell.
She raised the Key of Thresholds. The nine tolls had stopped. Now, she focused. The chaotic swirl of her tripartite halo—gold, silver, obsidian—began to spin in a unified, slow rhythm. The fractured realms around her pulled in tighter, the golden fields and burning wastes bleeding into the central frozen swamp, concentrating their power.
She wasn't just summoning reapers anymore. She was conducting them.
The six remaining Grim Reapers halted their individual attacks. They floated back, forming a semicircle behind her. Their empty gazes fixed on the four Ogres.
"Oh, come on!" Dimitri laughed, though it sounded a bit forced. "Group hug?"
Marya pointed her sword.
The reapers moved as one. No longer mindless minions, they became extensions of a single, terrifying will. Two Heaven's Heralds shot forward not to slash, but to encircle Stanislav's sphere of darkness. Their starlight scythes crossed, and from their intersection, a radiant, purifying light poured forth, flooding his dark zone, neutralizing his Photonic Insulation. Stanislav hissed, recoiling as if scalded.
"Impossible!"
Before he could finish, two Purgatory's Arbiters were upon him. Their mirror-blades didn't strike his body; they reflected his own cold, calculated movements back at him, confusing his analytical mind, trapping his limbs in a web of parried and counter-parried motions. A final, coordinated swipe from their scales sent the colossal ogre-dinosaur stumbling, dazed, into the path of a Hell's Executioner's chain. It wrapped around his legs with a sound like cracking ice, and with a heave, the skeletal reaper yanked him off his feet. Stanislav Robben hit the ground with a world-shaking thud, his glasses flying off, and did not rise.
"STAN!" Dimitri roared, his fury turning his icy crest blue-white. He charged Marya directly, a glacier on the move. "You icy-hearted—!"
Marya didn't flinch. She gestured, and the two Hell's Executioners melted into the swamp. As Dimitri thundered past, six chains of burning cold iron erupted from the black water, snaring his ankles, wrists, neck, and tail. He roared, straining, freezing the chains, but more erupted, pulling him down. The swamp itself swallowing him, the frozen muck climbing his body like a living creature. His roars became muffled, then silent, as he was submerged up to his crest, trapped in a frozen sarcophagus of his own making.
Polly Tetsuko stared, her hammer half-lowered. "You… you…!" Rage, real and hot, overcame her. She ignored the reapers and charged Marya, the last Ogre standing. "You broke my crew!"
Benn Roland saw the coordinated power and his sneer finally vanished. "Okay, that's… that's a variable. Time to reassess!" He turned to run, to find Ekkoo or Pier, but two Purgatory's Arbiters appeared before him, their mirror-faces showing his own panicked expression.
Marya turned to meet Polly's final, desperate charge. As the sledgehammer fell, Marya didn't use her sword. She lifted her empty left hand. The sleeve of her leather jacket fell back, revealing the cracked, void-veined skin beneath. From the Hell-domain side of her power, a tide of black, primordial sludge erupted, not to strike Polly, but to meet the hammer.
Chikatsu slammed into the Tartarus Tide. There was no metallic clang. There was a sickening, wet thump, and a hiss like a forge dunked in water. The incredible, Haki-coated hammer didn't bounce. It sank. The corrosive sludge ate the Haki, then the metal, dissolving the mighty head of the weapon into nothingness before Polly's wide eyes. She stared at the smoldering stump of the handle in her hands.
A Heaven's Herald gently placed the tip of its starlight scythe against the back of her neck. Polly froze, the fight draining from her. She dropped the handle.
Benn Roland yelped as an Arbiter's mirror-blade tapped his goggles, not breaking them, but covering them in a sheen of ice. Blinded, he stumbled, and a chain wrapped around his legs, tripping him. He fell into the swamp with a splash and a final, wheezing curse.
Silence, heavier than before, fell over the frozen battlefield. The reapers faded, dissolving into mist. The fractured realms pulled back into Marya. Her hair solidified back into black strands, her halo winked out, her eyes returned to their normal gold. The frozen swamp retreated, leaving only soggy, scarred ground. She let out a soft breath, the only sign of exertion.
Then, a wriggle in her jacket pocket. The flute—Mikasi—poked its head out. It twisted, sniffing the air with its carved mouthpiece. Its beady wooden eyes scanned the field, past the fallen ogres, and landed on Vesta Lavana, who was being helped to her feet by Jannali, a look of stunned awe on her face.
Mikasi gave an excited little wooden toot. It launched itself from Marya's pocket. In mid-air, its shape melted and grew. The smooth wood became shaggy, grey fur. The body elongated, legs and a bushy tail sprouting. It hit the ground not as a flute, but as a lean, mischievous-looking coyote made of polished, living wood and gut-string. It let out a playful yip and bounded across the ash.
Vesta saw him. Her eyes, which had seen so much fear, lit up like twin violet suns. "Mikasi!"
The coyote leapt. In a flash of golden light, its form shifted again, compacting, the neck stretching, the body becoming a smooth curve. It landed in Vesta's waiting arms not as an animal, but as her beloved guitar, the strings humming with a joyful chord.
She clutched the instrument to her chest, burying her face against its smooth body. "I missed you!" she whispered, her voice thick with emotion, all her flashy bravado gone in a moment of pure, heartfelt relief.
Marya watched the reunion, her stoic expression softening for a fraction of a second. She gave a small, almost imperceptible nod, then turned her golden eyes back towards the immense, silent bulk of the Grand Chrono-Anchor in the distance. The first part was done. The real work was still ahead.
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