Chapter 5: The Birth of Ruin
The sky wept ash.
Fires raged unchecked across Marineford's sundered bones. Great slabs of stone and steel lay broken, buried beneath the dead. The stench of burning flesh, blood-soaked earth, and salt-choked air turned each breath into a curse.
I stood in the heart of it.
Yoru hummed in my grip, a low, eager vibration that matched the pulse in my veins. The storm above was no longer natural. It circled, a vast, writhing thing, black clouds forming a cyclopean eye over the execution platform.
Whitebeard stumbled back, one palm pressed against the wound in his side.
The blood was darker than it should have been.
His face — that mountain of weathered flesh and stubborn pride — was a map of disbelief.
It was the first time anyone had made him bleed like this.
Good.
Let the world watch a god fall.
---
[Shock Points: 2580]
[Ruins Domain Active — 02:36 Remaining]
The blood-red haze clung to the battlefield, turning everything into a nightmare realm of shifting shadows and jagged light. Men faltered. Monsters hesitated.
Even the Admirals, demigods of order and destruction, kept their distance.
Except one.
Akainu.
The fool.
His fury burned too bright, too blinding for him to understand the weight of what now stalked this graveyard of kings.
He emerged from the haze, his magma body cracking the scorched ground with every step.
"You think this changes anything, Mihawk?"
He spat my name like a curse.
"You're just another traitor, another mongrel begging for death."
I tilted my head, watching as the molten rivers oozed from his fists, devouring what little remained of the ground beneath him.
"Wrong."
My voice, low and steady, cut through the smoke.
"I'm not here to beg."
I stepped forward.
"I'm here to end."
And the storm screamed.
Lightning forked downward, striking the execution platform. The chains binding Ace shattered like brittle glass.
The boy slumped, dazed, his eyes wide as the reality unraveled around him.
The war was no longer about Ace.
It was about me.
---
[+300 Shock Points!]
Akainu snarled and hurled a wave of molten death toward me.
It never reached.
I moved.
A blur. A phantom. The storm incarnate.
Yoru cleaved through the magma like it was mist. Each strike drinking the heat, the fury, the very essence of the Admiral's power.
And with each cut, the world darkened further.
The earth cracked. Fires died, suffocated by the unnatural gloom.
Akainu's face twisted in something rare.
Uncertainty.
I drove Yoru through his shoulder, the obsidian edge erupting from his back. Lava hissed, steam belched. Blood and fire mingled.
He coughed, a wet, ragged sound.
"Impossible…"
I leaned close.
"You're a relic of order, Sakazuki. And order burns."
With a savage pull, I wrenched the blade free, severing flesh and fury alike.
He collapsed to his knees, magma pooling around him.
[+600 Shock Points!]
[Shock Points: 3180]
[Ability Upgrade Unlocked: Bloodstorm Edge → Cataclysm Fang]
[Effect: Damage amplification x4 for 3 minutes. Each kill extends duration by 10 seconds.]
I didn't stop.
Couldn't.
The system's hunger mirrored mine.
One Admiral down.
---
A flicker.
A blur of light.
Kizaru.
His lazy smile was gone, replaced with something colder, sharper.
He fired.
A beam of condensed light streaked toward my heart.
It moved too slow.
I raised Yoru.
The beam struck the blade, splitting harmlessly into the storm.
His eyes narrowed.
"No one moves that fast…"
I did.
I appeared before him, driving a fist into his stomach. Light fractured, his body distorting, but the Ruins Domain held him down.
He coughed blood.
Real, red, mortal blood.
His head snapped up, shock writ clear.
"Impossible."
I smiled.
"Not yet."
Yoru fell.
Kizaru's world split in half.
[+550 Shock Points!]
[Shock Points: 3730]
[System Notice: Legendary Title Pending.]
---
Only one Admiral remained.
Aokiji.
The ice-blooded tactician.
He didn't speak.
Didn't sneer.
He only raised his hand.
And the world froze.
For miles, ice spread, devouring the wreckage, choking fires, trapping the dead in crystal tombs.
The ocean hardened into jagged fields of frost.
But not within my domain.
Inside my blood-red haze, his ice crawled sluggishly, flickering like a dying heartbeat.
His expression betrayed him.
A flicker of doubt.
A single bead of sweat.
I advanced.
He formed a spear of glacial death and charged.
It shattered.
A black blur. An obsidian fang.
I severed his arm.
Blood sprayed, freezing mid-air.
He staggered.
I severed the other.
Then a leg.
Dissecting a god.
Aokiji's face remained stoic, but his body betrayed him — shivering, bleeding, breaking.
I whispered against his ear.
"You should've stayed in the cold."
And decapitated him.
His frozen head struck the ground with a hollow crack.
[+800 Shock Points!]
[Shock Points: 4530]
[System Notice: Legendary Title Unlocked — Worldbreaker]
[Effect: All enemies suffer 30% reduced defense in your presence. All Fear effects double in potency.]
[New Ability: Oblivion Howl — Release a wave of deathly intent. Instantly incapacitates enemies below 50% Will.]
Perfect.
---
The battlefield was silent again.
Not from peace.
From extinction.
Three Admirals lay dead at my feet.
The storm was mine.
And every surviving Marine, pirate, and warlord knew it.
Even Whitebeard, wounded, bloodied, gripped his bisento as if it weighed a thousand tons now.
Sengoku stared.
A man who had ruled men, gods, and monsters alike — and found himself now a relic.
His lips moved in a single, broken prayer.
"A demon born in man's shape…"
I raised Yoru one final time.
And the storm screamed.
"This world is over."
"Mine begins."
The clouds ruptured.
A singular, titanic bolt of black lightning fell from the heavens.
The execution platform vanished in light.
A new age was born.
In ruin.
---
Author's Note:
That was your slaughter chapter.
Three Admirals down.
One world left to break.
Drop your thoughts. Lurk if you want. The ruin isn't done yet.