The lightning didn't stop.
Machines convulsed. Worktables shattered. Kaien's forge room was ruined — not just broken, but rewritten. Tools he had built from cursed alloys twisted into spirals of useless metal. Glyphs on the walls turned to gibberish. The air smelled like ozone and grief.
Kaien stood in the center of it, his coat charred at the edges, eyes flickering with golden data-light.
"Wraith Spark… Fruit's personality profile exceeded parameters."
He swept a hand through the air. Light followed, drawing schematics from memory. Half the interface sputtered, distorted. The fruit had destabilized the forge's core link.
She'd phased through his forge code.
That shouldn't be possible.
"Ravina," he muttered.
He didn't know if he was angry or impressed. Maybe both.
Far away — the city of Brambledeep
Smoke curled from a collapsed bell tower as terrified civilians looked up at the storm swirling above.
Ravina stood barefoot on a rooftop, lightning coiling around her like a ghostly second skin.
The Wraith Spark Fruit had taken her fully. She could feel it whispering — not in words, but regret. Memories. Electrical echoes of things people wanted to forget.
The city was screaming.
She touched a copper wire strung across two towers. Her body phased — became signal — and she surged across the entire block in a heartbeat.
Every radio, every den den mushi, every surveillance system lit up with her voice:
"I am Wraith. I see what you hide. I burn what you bury."
Below, the Marine station lost power.
Back on Irka Island — 15 minutes later
Kaien crouched beside the pedestal again. The Godfruit pulsed harder now — as if hungry. Its glow flickered in time with Ravina's outburst miles away, as though recognizing her surge of hybrid energy.
Kaien's expression darkened.
"It reacted."
He ran a scan. The Godfruit was still sealed — but its core matrix had shifted 0.02 degrees toward instability. That should be impossible. It was locked in twelve layers of glyph-code. It shouldn't even know Ravina existed.
Unless—
No.
He refused to finish the thought.
Not yet.
Flashback: The day Kaien crafted the Godfruit
The forge had gone black.
Not broken. Not asleep.
Silent. Watching.
Even the tools had trembled.
He had forged fruits before. Hundreds.
But nothing like that one.
That day, he hadn't used a normal core.
He'd used forbidden fragments collected from ancient wreckage — from a time before even the World Government.
Void Century shards.
He combined seven core essences in one construct: light, dark, wind, quake, mind, beast, storm.
A mistake.
A miracle.
Both.
He had sealed it immediately.
Never to be eaten.
Never to be finished.
And now, it was stirring.
Irka — Kaien's forge, now
A den den mushi on the wall rang. Kaien's only working comm-line.
He answered without a word.
On the other end: Dreego.
"You've lost control," Dreego said, softly amused. "Again."
Kaien stared at the snail.
"You're watching me?"
Dreego chuckled. "Not watching. Observing. You left the seal open on Prototype Codex VII. I was curious. You said the Godfruit couldn't awaken unless it recognized a sibling."
Kaien didn't respond.
"You made one, Kaien. Wraith Spark was a key. And you fed it to a ghost."
Kaien's voice dropped. "She wasn't supposed to take it."
Dreego's tone turned reverent.
"She triggered the pulse. That means the core will start syncing. Do you know what that means?"
Kaien already did.
It meant the lock was failing.
Dreego's voice whispered like silk.
"It's almost time to finish what you started."
The line went dead.
Brambledeep — Marine HQ Ruins
Ravina sat on a throne of melted steel.
Her hands sparked.
She wasn't alone.
Surrounding her were outcasts, bounty hunters, revolutionaries — drawn to the broadcast. Drawn to the power.
"You see what I did?" she asked them.
They nodded, awed.
"You still want my help?"
A few backed away.
One didn't.
A tall, jagged man stepped forward — a body full of scars and bolts. He bowed low.
"Help me," he rasped, "and I'll help you take the world apart."
Ravina's smile cracked wider.
"Then let's burn the masks off."
Final Scene: Kaien's Forge, Below Sea Level
He opened a drawer lined with scrolls.
Inside, the first failed prototype.
A fruit split down the middle. Half-light. Half-void. Unstable. Nearly killed him to seal.
The note on its tag read:
Project: Chimera 001
Status: "Too dangerous to eat. Too alive to destroy."
Notes: "Still whispers."
Kaien stared at it.
Ravina was gone.
The Godfruit was reacting.
Dreego was watching.
And the world was waking up.
He had no choice.
"I'll need to forge another."