Kira returned to the Upper Yard before dawn.
The sky was still dark, just a pale line of color on the horizon. The cold air stung her face as she crossed the cloudstone path, her pack secure on her shoulders, her blade tucked into a strap on her back.
She moved quickly, silently. The fewer people who noticed her leaving, the better.
The forest stood ahead like a wall — dark trees, thick vines, mist rolling across the roots like breath. She passed through the outer ring again, retracing yesterday's steps.
Past the broken archway. Past the half-buried ruins.
Toward the spot where she'd seen the vines that looked too cleanly cut.
It had haunted her all night — the idea that someone else might be here.
When she reached the same place, she crouched low and studied the ground.
No footprints. No snapped branches. No scraps of cloth or scent of oil.
She checked the vines again. In the low light yesterday, they had looked sliced. Clean. Precise.
But now, up close, they looked… natural.
Split at the joints. Curling open where moisture had built up. Weak spots from age, not a blade.
She touched one. It peeled softly under her fingers.
No one had been here.
She'd imagined it.
She let out a slow breath and leaned against a tree.
She wasn't upset about being wrong. She was glad.
Paranoia kept her alive.
False alarms were better than ambushes.
Still, she felt the pressure in her chest again.
She only had six months.
And she didn't know where the fruit would be.
She didn't even know how Devil Fruits appeared.
In the story, they just seemed to exist. Sometimes they regenerated. Sometimes they were found in boxes. It was vague — one of the only things Oda never explained clearly.
But she had to believe it was here. Somewhere. Waiting.
And she wasn't going to sit around hoping it fell into her lap.
She went deeper into the forest.
The canopy grew thicker the further she walked. Strange insects buzzed past her ears. Small sky birds flitted between the trees. She spotted a large footprint once — birdlike, sharp-clawed. But it was old.
She stayed alert.
She found another ruin — larger than the others, half-swallowed by roots. A stone platform with broken columns and moss-covered carvings.
She searched the base carefully. Pushed aside debris. Dug gently through the soft dirt at the center of the clearing.
Nothing.
Just old stone and silence.
Still, she marked it on her map.
Maybe it wasn't the place. But it was something.
By midday, she had two clear zones left to search.
The rest she had ruled out. Too shallow, too wet, too new.
The last two were harder to reach — one sat at the base of a rocky cliff, tangled with vines, the other high in the Skyvine ridge, where trees grew in vertical layers and light barely broke through.
She chose the ridge.
If the fruit had fallen somewhere years ago, maybe it had landed high, where no one would dare climb.
It was a guess.
But that's all she had.
The climb took hours.
Her hands bled a little from gripping rough vines. Her foot slipped once, and she nearly dropped her pack into the clouds.
But she made it.
The upper ridge was quiet. The trees were old — twisted, gnarled, covered in a pale film of sky moss. Wind rustled through the branches. She could see out over the entire Upper Yard from here.
She took a breath, then started moving again.
She searched slowly. Carefully.
She wasn't expecting a glowing pedestal or a neat fruit resting in the open.
She was looking for signs — a strangely shaped tree, a patch of land that animals avoided, an energy she couldn't explain.
But even as she searched, a thought lingered.
What if it wasn't here yet?
What if the story was wrong?
What if the Goro Goro no Mi didn't just sit here waiting to be claimed?
She didn't have the answer.
But she wasn't going to stop.
By the time she made camp near the ridge's edge, she had narrowed it down to this place. One final stretch of twisted tree clusters, dead soil, and unnatural quiet.
It felt right.
She sat on a flat stone and chewed a strip of dried meat, scanning the area. She'd need to dig. Search the brush. Turn over stones.
She'd come back tomorrow with better tools.
If the fruit was here, she was going to find it.
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