Sea Circle Calendar, Year 1469 – Baterilla Harbor, South Blue.
The funeral ended at dusk.
As the sun dipped below the horizon, the sky bruised into shades of violent purple and weeping gold. The villagers drifted away in a hushed procession, their silhouettes flickering like dying embers against the darkening hills. They left Sinbad alone beside the fresh mound of earth. The air here tasted of salt and damp clay, a heavy, cloying scent that lunged into his lungs with every breath.
Fourteen years old, and already the world had carved deep lines into his soul. His mother's grave marker was simple: a polished stone etched with the elegant, curling crest of Shimotsuki waves—a silent testament to a heritage she had carried with quiet dignity. Sinbad knelt, his knuckles brushing the cold surface of the stone. There were no tears left to cry; they had all been burned away by the fever of her final days. In their place sat a cold, hard resolve, burning like a forge in the center of his chest.
He stood there until the first stars emerged, piercing the velvet canopy of the South Blue sky. He was tall for his age—nearly six feet already—possessing a swimmer's lean, ropey power that promised explosive growth in the years ahead. Sun-bronzed skin stretched tight over corded muscle, earned through a regime of discipline that bordered on masochism. His purple hair, long and unruly, whipped behind him in a high ponytail, save for that single, defiant ahoge that stood proud against the wind. When he turned his head, his golden eyes gleamed with an unnatural, predatory clarity, piercing the gathering dark as if the night itself were forced to bow to his gaze.
Sinbad was no ordinary boy, and he knew it. Destiny had marked him from birth with a brand that could not be seen, only felt. The latent Will of D. slumbered in his blood—a legacy of ancient, forgotten kings waiting for the spark that would set the world ablaze. Within him, his reincarnated soul—Yami Hirotoshi's weary essence—carried the echoes of a mundane first life. He remembered the grey cubicles, the crushing weight of isolation, the quiet despair of a man who had been irrelevant even to himself.
But here, in this vibrant world of sapphire seas and impossible dreams, he refused to fade into the background again. Strength would be his answer. Prodigy would be his birthright.
He turned from the grave, the grass crunching under his boots, and walked down toward the harbor. Below, Baterilla slept uneasily. The very atmosphere felt thick, like the moments before a tectonic shift. Rumors had been prowling the docks for weeks: black-sailed slaver ships haunting the South Blue, snatching children and giants alike for the depraved auctions of the Underworld. The World Government turned a blind eye whenever the buyers wore the gaudy silks of noble titles, leaving the fringe islands to fend for themselves.
Baterilla had stayed safe—until tonight.
Sinbad felt the wrongness before he saw it. That sixth sense, his singularity, tugged sharp and urgent at the base of his skull. The currents of destiny were no longer flowing; they were swirling in a chaotic vortex around the docks.
Danger. Opportunity.
He moved silently, a shadow among shadows. Maelstrom was strapped across his back—the crude, heavy scimitar—his father forged himself. Even sheathed, the blade seemed to hum, vibrating with a potential that mirrored his own. His Observation Haki, which had flickered into life during the agonizing nights beside his mother's death bed, extended outward like invisible, ghostly tendrils.
He didn't just see the harbor; he felt it. He felt the jagged staccato of panicked heartbeats. He felt the greasy, dark intentions of men who traded in flesh. He felt the cold, suffocating blanket of fear.
At the far pier, a black-sailed brigantine loomed, a jagged silhouette against the moonlit water. It flew no flag, but the crew moved with a practiced, casual cruelty that spoke louder than any banner. Twenty men, armed with rusted chains and heavy-bore rifles, were busy securing the perimeter. In the shadows near the gangplank, a row of bound figures huddled: village children, their eyes wide with terror behind cloth gags.
And among them—a massive shape that defied the proportions of the world. A young giant, easily fifteen feet tall even while seated, his head bowed in shame. His massive wrists were bound with heavy sea-prism stone cuffs, the specialized metal dulling his natural vitality into a lethargic haze.
Human traffickers. The dregs of the sea who preyed on the weak because they were too cowardly to face the strong.
Rage ignited in Sinbad's veins—not the hot, reckless anger of a child, but the cold, focused fury of a king. It was pure. It was unyielding.
He stepped out of the darkness and into the flickering orange glow of the pier's torches.
"Oi," he called out. His voice wasn't a scream; it was steady, resonant, and carried an authority that sounded centuries old. "Let them go."
The captain—a scarred brute with a rusted hook where his left hand should have been—froze, then slowly began to laugh. It was a wet, rasping sound. His crew turned, their weapons rising in a chorus of clicking hammers and drawing steel.
"Look at this. Pretty boy thinks he's a hero," the captain sneered, spitting a glob of dark phlegm onto the wood. He eyed Sinbad's golden gaze with a greedy glint. "Grab him. He'll fetch a king's ransom at the auction with those eyes. Don't mar the face."
They rushed him.
Sinbad drew Maelstrom in a single, fluid arc. The heavy steel sang as it bit the air.
The first pirate lunged with a spiked club, a mindless overhead swing. Sinbad didn't even look; he felt the trajectory of the strike before the man's muscles had even fully contracted. He sidestepped with the grace of a dancer and slashed. Blood sprayed, hot and metallic, against the crates. The man dropped without a sound.
Two more leveled their rifles. Crack-crack.
The lead balls whined through the space where Sinbad's head had been a millisecond before. He moved like water, flowing between the lines of fire with impossible agility. His training under the old veteran Esra shone through every motion; every form had been perfected through years of blood, sweat, and the singular obsession of a man who knew what it was to be weak.
He closed the distance in a series of blinks. The blade flashed in the torchlight—a silver blur. Limbs were severed; screams were cut short by the cold finality of steel. His strikes were short, punchy, and efficient. He didn't waste energy on flourishes. He was a surgeon of the battlefield.
The crew faltered. The easy confidence of the predators evaporated, replaced by a chilling realization: this wasn't a boy. This was a storm in human form.
The captain roared, his face twisting into a mask of desperation. He charged, swinging a massive, double-headed axe. "Die, you little brat!"
Sinbad met him head-on. The blades clashed with a bone-jarring ring that echoed across the harbor. Sparks flew, illuminating Sinbad's calm, golden eyes. The impact vibrated through his arms, but his stance was a mountain. He pushed back, his muscles coiling and exploding—years of weighted runs and ten thousand daily swings paying dividends. With a sharp, tactical twist of his wrist, he disarmed the captain. The axe spun into the dark water, and Maelstrom's edge came to rest against the man's jugular.
Around them, the remaining ten slavers circled warily. Their rifles were aimed, their hands shaking. The air was thick with the scent of ozone and sweat.
Sinbad's golden eyes lifted, looking past the captain, past the ship, into the very heart of the night. Something vast and ancient stirred deep within his marrow. He had trained for this. He had pursued strength relentlessly, not for the sake of glory, but for the power to protect—to ensure a world where no one else had to stand over a simple stone marker on a lonely hill.
The pressure built. It hummed in his blood. It vibrated in his spirit. It was the weight of a thousand dreams and the iron will of a man who refused to be a footnote in history.
Conqueror's Haki.
It erupted without warning—a king's dominion unleashed upon the mundane world.
An invisible force exploded outward from Sinbad, a shockwave of pure willpower. The air itself seemed to crackle like a localized thunderstorm. The slavers didn't even have time to scream; their eyes rolled back into their heads, their consciousness snuffed out like candles in a gale. Bodies slammed to the wooden docks in heavy, rhythmic thuds, falling in heaps of unconscious meat.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Only the giant remained aware, his massive frame trembling as the sea-prism chains rattled. He stared down at the fourteen-year-old boy in a mixture of terror and profound awe.
Sinbad stood amid the fallen, his breath coming in slow, measured draws. Maelstrom dripped dark red onto the bleached wood of the pier. His ponytail swayed in the sudden, eerie stillness of the harbor, and that ahoge jutted defiant against the stars.
A prodigy. A myth in the making.
He moved quickly then, the adrenaline receding into a cold, efficient clarity. He sliced through the children's bonds with surgical precision. He turned to the giant, using a discarded key from the captain's belt to pop the sea-prism locks.
"Go home," Sinbad told the children. His voice carried that same unnatural authority, a frequency that demanded obedience. They didn't linger; they scattered into the safety of the village shadows like frightened birds.
The giant rose slowly, towering fifteen feet over the docks, a titan humbled by a boy. "You… you have the spirit of a king," the giant rumbled, his voice like grinding stones.
Sinbad sheathed Maelstrom with a sharp clack. His golden eyes met the giant's. "I'm leaving this island. This ship is mine now."
There was no hesitation. No doubt. The river of destiny was pulling him toward the horizon, and he was finally ready to ride the current.
He boarded the brigantine—already renaming it in his mind, though the name Chimera was a seed that would take years to bloom. He moved across the deck with the confidence of a veteran sailor, the memories of his past life providing the technical foundation while his current body provided the strength. Sails unfurled under his command, snapping taut as they caught the midnight breeze.
The giant watched from the pier, a solitary monument of gratitude, but Sinbad did not look back. He sailed alone.
As Baterilla shrank into a speck of light against the dark silhouette of the island, and the stars wheeled overhead in their eternal dance, Sinbad stood at the helm. The wind filled the sails, and the sea opened up before him—vast, terrifying, and welcoming.
A sudden pang of loneliness gripped him—a familiar, hollow ache that had followed him through two lives. But the fire of his resilience burned brighter. He would build something greater than a simple life. A crew. A nation. He saw it in his mind's eye: Sindria. A place where strength and dreams ruled, not the accident of bloodlines or the whim of cruel nobles.
His singularity hummed, a low vibration in his chest. The currents of fate stretched ahead: giants to save, legendary cooks to recruit, young dragons to mentor. There were monsters in the dark that he would have to shape—and perhaps, monsters he would have to create.
A touch of melancholy brushed his heart for the salaryman who never mattered, the man who had died in a grey room. But as the salt spray hit his face, a surge of pure, unadulterated optimism washed it away.
Here, he would matter. Here, he would conquer.
Sinbad smiled into the night, a flash of white teeth and golden conviction. Even in solitude, his charisma was a physical weight. The legend had begun.
The sea was his now. And he would take everything it owed him.