Within the massive crater carved into the seabed, the smoke had yet to disperse—
When a cold, level voice rang out from its depths.
"Heavenly Quake · Thousand Radiant Rings!"
"Shing—shing—shing—shing—!!!"
In an instant, hundreds of pure-white energy rings burst forth from the swirling dust. Their edges were serrated like saw blades, spinning at terrifying speed as they shot skyward.
Their trajectories were vicious and unpredictable, sealing off every possible angle in the sky. The shrill scream of severed air filled the battlefield as the rings swarmed upward like a furious hive, engulfing Whitebeard in midair.
Whitebeard's expression darkened.
Murakumogiri swung in his hands.
"Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang—!!"
The blade struck each incoming ring with absolute precision. The supreme vibrational force coating the naginata invaded the rings' internal structures the instant they made contact, detonating them midair before they could close in.
Yet when the final ring was shattered—
Whitebeard's face did not relax.
It grew even more grave.
"If possible… I'd rather not witness… a future like this."
Below, on the exposed seabed, an invisible pressure blasted the lingering smoke away.
At the center of the crater, Gern Reginald Sigmar knelt on one knee.
His ruined upper garments had been torn away completely. A thin line of crimson ran from the corner of his mouth.
He raised his eyes.
There was no fury within them.
Only near-absolute calm.
He fixed his gaze on Whitebeard. Slowly, deliberately, he lifted a hand. Blood stained the edge of his lips as they curved upward.
"Domain expansion."
The moment the words fell—
"Bzzzz—!!!"
A perfectly transparent cylindrical vacuum, roughly ten meters in diameter, materialized around Gern without warning.
Then—
It expanded.
Not at the speed of sound. Not like a shockwave. Not an explosion.
It expanded at a velocity that defied reason—one hundred times faster than the eye could follow—devouring everything in all directions.
It was not impact.
It was not destruction.
It was… erasure.
Wherever the vacuum domain passed—whether shattered reefs, fractured seabed, lingering seawater, even the air and light themselves—
All matter and energy were forcibly dismantled at the structural level by a pure vibrational authority that transcended physical law.
They were reduced—
Shaken apart—
Into their most primitive particle state.
There was no thunderous explosion.
Only a continuous, low, suffocating hum.
Within the domain, all things returned to void—transformed into a boundless, roiling sea of pale mist composed of the most fundamental particles.
And that was not the end.
Across the very fabric of space within this pale ocean, countless porcelain-like cracks began to appear—dense, spreading fractures of ghostly white.
One hundred meters.
One thousand meters.
The scale and speed of expansion were beyond comprehension.
Compared to the first awakening of his Devil Fruit during his battle with Roger—when he could not yet control its range—
Gern had now completely mastered this power.
When he finished, he slowly raised his left hand toward Whitebeard, whose expression had become unprecedentedly solemn.
Gern positioned his fingers to snap.
At the instant his middle finger and thumb were about to meet—
"Snap."
The crisp sound echoed through the deathly pale domain like the toll of final judgment.
"Quake Halt · Zero."
It felt as though an invisible hand had seized time by the throat.
Within the domain—
The world froze.
Not time itself.
But vibration.
For 0.5 seconds, the vibrations that composed reality were forcibly paused.
The thermal motion of air molecules.
The churning of particle seas.
The propagation of spatial fractures.
Every phenomenon founded upon "vibration" ceased.
A suffocating silence swallowed everything.
Whitebeard, relying on the pinnacle of his Haki, forcibly resisted the rule-level suppression of the Fruit's authority.
But in the next instant—
A flicker of shock passed through the eyes of the man who had weathered countless storms.
When he instinctively attempted to summon the power of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit—
He found that the ability that had accompanied him for nearly a lifetime…
Had been severed.
Within those 0.5 seconds of Quake Halt, all vibration returned to zero.
Including the very foundation upon which the Tremor-Tremor Fruit operated.
Standing at the center of the pale world, Gern looked like a god presiding over law itself.
"Here," he said slowly, "vibration… is defined by me."
He did not wait for Whitebeard's reaction.
His right index finger pressed downward.
"I command it… to be silent."
The word silent carried the weight of absolute decree.
The 0.5-second suspended state did not restore.
It deepened.
Within the particle mist, the final trace of microscopic thermal motion—the fundamental oscillation that constituted temperature itself—was stripped away.
In that instant—
Absolute zero descended.
Space itself emitted a wail under the crushing extremity of cold.
Visible azure cracks spread outward from Gern's fingertip like a virulent plague, racing across the entire domain.
In less than a ten-thousandth of a second—
The pale mist realm transformed into a coffin of perfect stillness and perfect cold.
Whitebeard's colossal body was sealed within this absolute silence and freezing void.
His movement stagnated.
Yet this ultimate quiet lasted only a heartbeat.
Gern's lowered finger rose.
"I command it… to be not silent."
The decree shifted.
"BOOM!!!!"
The authority of vibration—just stripped away—was returned a thousandfold in ferocity.
It was detonated.
Every fundamental particle within the domain, having been brought to perfect stillness, was instantly accelerated to frequencies bordering on annihilation.
They vibrated.
Collided.
Friction ignited at the most microscopic level.
The azure crystal coffin of absolute zero reversed—
In less than a billionth of a second—
From absolute cold to absolute heat.
There were no flames.
Yet it burned hotter than the core of the sun.
Terrifying heat surged from the violent friction and collisions at the particle level. Space twisted under thermal distortion. Light passing through the region blurred and shimmered.
The blue crystal did not even vaporize.
It sublimated directly into a white-hot purgatory.
The shift between ultimate stillness and ultimate motion—
Between freezing and incineration—
Existed within a single thought of Gern's.
A single finger's breadth.
And yet—
Gern did not immediately launch his next attack.
Instead, he deliberately loosened his suppression over Whitebeard's Tremor-Tremor Fruit.
"Bzzz!"
The instant the binding weakened, Whitebeard reactivated his power without hesitation. White halos surged around his fists.
But—
In the split second before the tremor was unleashed—
Gern's lips curved faintly upward.
He crooked a finger toward Whitebeard's quake-wreathed fist.
"Even your vibration…"
Before the sentence finished—
The law was rewritten.
Whitebeard's pupils contracted violently.
He felt it clearly—
The Tremor-Tremor power gathered upon his fist, obedient as an extension of his own will—
At the very peak of release—
Suddenly lost all form.
All intent.
The white sphere of force—capable of shattering islands, rending seas, cracking space—
Did not explode.
Did not disperse outward.
Instead—
Under Whitebeard's stunned gaze—
It unraveled like sand through fingers.
It broke apart into countless visible, dust-like pale vibration particles.
They slipped from his control—
Silently drifting away—
Thread by thread—
Gathering above Gern's raised palm.
Gern opened his hand.
The tremor particles that once belonged to Whitebeard circled his fingertips.
At this moment—
Within this domain—
The authority over the law of vibration had been seized by Gern in the most tyrannical manner possible.
"In short," Gern said softly,
"Here… I am everything."