The chamber's walls dissolved like smoke, retreating into the labyrinth's shifting bowels. The air thinned, sharp with the scent of ozone and something older—petrified marrow, perhaps, or the metallic tang of blood long dried to dust. The crew stumbled onto a fractured platform of black basalt, its edges crumbling into a cavern so vast it defied scale. Below them yawned an abyss, its depths swallowing even the echoes of their breath. Above, the ceiling arched into a cathedral of bone—the titan's skeletal remains, its ribs curving into a vault that stretched into darkness. Each rib was thicker than the Polar Tang, pitted with age and crusted with crystalline growths that glowed faintly, like bioluminescent fungi feeding on rot.
At the cavern's heart hung the Void's Cradle.
It was no longer the inert sphere they'd seen from afar. Now, it writhed like a dying star, tendrils of darkness lashing outward in erratic bursts. Its surface shimmered with a sickly iridescence, fracturing light into colors that had no name. The air around it warped, bending reality as if the Cradle were a black hole clothed in flame. With each spasm, the titan's bones groaned, their marrow vibrating with a subsonic drone that made teeth ache and vision blur.
Shachi collapsed to his knees, clutching his temples. "My skull's gonna split…"
Bepo crouched beside him, fur matted with sweat and grime. "It's the frequency—the sound, it's not natural…"
Marya stepped to the platform's edge, Eternal Eclipse humming in her grip. The sword's void veins pulsed in sync with the Cradle's throbs, as if the blade were a lodestone and the Cradle its twin. Her reflection warped in the distorted air—a shadow with too many teeth, eyes hollow and starved.
Law joined her, Kikoku's eye narrowed to a slit. "That thing's destabilizing. Another hour, and it'll take this whole cavern with it."
"Then we don't have an hour," Marya said flatly.
Behind them, Penguin prodded a shard of bone with his boot. It disintegrated into ash, swirling upward in a spiral that defied gravity. "Uh… anyone else feel like we're digested meat?"
Jean Bart grunted, hefting a chunk of basalt like a shield. "Where's the path down?"
As if in answer, the platform shuddered. Slabs of stone detached from the edges, floating in midair to form a precarious staircase that spiraled into the abyss. The steps shifted and realigned with every pulse of the Cradle, daring them to trust their weight to the void.
Shachi peered over the edge. "Yeah, no. I'd rather fight another seaweed tornado."
Law ignored him, already descending the first step. The stone held—barely. "Stay close. One misstep, and you're done."
Marya followed, her boots skidding on the slick surface. The air grew colder as they descended, the Cradle's light casting jagged shadows that twitched when unobserved. Halfway down, the staircase fractured. A slab tilted violently, nearly throwing Ikkaku into the abyss before Jean Bart hauled her back.
"It's reacting to the sword," Marya realized, tightening her grip on Eternal Eclipse. The blade's hum had risen to a shriek. "The Cradle knows we're here. It's… probing us."
Law's jaw tightened. "Can you shut it down?"
"Not without getting closer."
Bepo whimpered, claws scraping the stone. "Closer is bad. Closer is scary."
The Cradle's thrashing intensified as they neared. Tendrils of darkness lashed out, snapping at the air like whips. One grazed Penguin's arm, leaving a welt that oozed black fluid. He stumbled, cursing. "It's alive! That thing's fucking alive!"
Marya pressed forward, the sword's whispers now a cacophony. The void veins in her arm had spread to her shoulder, branching like cracks in glass. She could feel the Cradle's pull—a gravitational ache, a hunger that mirrored her own.
At the base of the staircase, the cavern floor spread into an arena of polished obsidian. The titan's spine lay exposed here, each vertebra the size of a warship, fused with rusted chains that anchored the Cradle in place. Up close, the sphere was a maelstrom of contradictions—solid yet liquid, silent yet deafening, ancient yet unborn.
Law's Room flickered around them, straining against the Cradle's distortion. "Whatever you're going to do, do it now."
Marya raised Eternal Eclipse, the blade's edge trembling. "It's not just a key, Law. It's a bridge. My mother… she wanted someone to cross it."
"Cross to what?"
The sword's answer was a roar.
The Cradle split open—a vertical seam of pure darkness—and the world tore in half.
The air thickened with the stench of iron and brine as Law pressed his palm against the pulsing wall of sinew. His fingers sank into the spongy tissue, warm and alive. The corridor around them breathed—walls expanding and contracting in a grotesque rhythm, veins throbbing with black ichor. Eyeballs lining the ceiling swiveled to track the crew's movements, pupils dilating hungrily.
"Scan," Law muttered. His Room bloomed outward, a blue sphere flickering with jagged static as it collided with the Void's corruption. The world sharpened into a surgeon's diagram—arteries, nerve clusters, and something deeper, older.
The walls aren't stone—they're flesh, a hybrid of human tissue and something alien. Muscle fibers braid around bone-like struts, capillaries carrying not blood but a viscous, bioluminescent fluid that hums with energy. The eyeballs are nodes in a neural network, transmitting signals to a central organ far below. Each blink sends data—images of the crew's movements, their weaknesses. The floor beneath them is a lattice of cartilage, vibrating with the city's heartbeat. Law's Scan traces the rhythm to a colossal chamber miles beneath their feet—a heart the size of an island, its valves crusted with barnacles of crystallized Void energy.
Beneath the heart, something shifts. The Scan recoils instinctively—a primal refusal to perceive it fully. But Law forces the focus. It's a river, but not of water. A swirling vortex of iridescent particles, each a flickering microcosm of life and death. Fish-like shadows dart through its currents—proto-Devil Fruits, their forms half-formed, their powers raw and unstable. The Current isn't just a source. It's alive. A sentient force, older than the Void itself, imprisoned here by the ancients. Its tendrils brush against Law's consciousness, whispering in a language that predates human speech:
[CONSUME. EVOLVE. REPLICATE.]
Law's gaze flicks to Marya. The Scan reveals her void veins as parasitic roots, burrowing into her marrow. Eternal Eclipse isn't just a key—it's a symbiote, feeding on her life force to sustain its bond with the Primordial Current. Worse: the Current recognizes her. Tendrils of energy coil toward her through the walls, drawn to the sword's resonance.
The flesh isn't passive. Immune cells the size of warships patrol the bloodstreams beneath their feet—leviathans of white bone and serrated teeth. The air is thick with spores. Inhaled, they'd rewrite DNA on contact, turning the crew into tumorous growths on the city's walls. Law's breath hitched as the Scan collapsed, the Room flickering out. Sweat dripped from his chin, sizzling where it struck the floor.
"Well?" Marya demanded, Eternal Eclipse crackling in her grip.
"It's a prison," Law rasped. "The city, the Current—they're not ruins. They're a cage. And we're standing in its digestive tract."
Shachi gagged. "So… we're lunch?"
"Worse." Law adjusted his hat, amber eyes narrow. "The Current's the reason Devil Fruits exist. The World Government didn't just want your mother's research, Marya. They wanted to weaponize evolution itself."
Bepo's claws dug into the fleshy floor. "C-Captain… the heartbeat's getting faster."
Above them, the ceiling rippled. Veins contracted, funneling ichor toward the heart. The city was waking.
Jean Bart hefted his axe. "How do we kill it?"
Law's smirk was razor-thin. "Same way you kill any disease." He nodded to Marya. "We cut out the heart."
The city's heartbeat thundered like war drums as Law's crew pressed forward, their boots sinking into the spongy floor. Bioluminescent veins pulsed beneath their feet, threading toward the distant heart chamber. Law led with Kikoku unsheathed, his Room flickering ahead like a spectral lantern, its blue light revealing the truth beneath the meat—arteries coiling like serpents, nerve clusters sparking with alien electricity.
"Stay in formation," Law ordered, his voice cutting through the wet, rhythmic gasps of the city's respiration. "Bepo—rear guard. Jean Bart, Shachi, flank Marya. If the walls twitch, assume it's hostile."
Shachi snorted, sweat gleaming on his brow. "Hostile? Captain, the air's hostile here." He gestured to a cluster of eyeballs tracking them from the ceiling, their lids peeling back to reveal serrated teeth. "See? Even the décor wants a bite."
The first antibody struck as they rounded a bend.
The air curdled with the tang of rot as Marya's boot came down—a sickening pop echoed through the corridor, followed by a spray of viscous, yellow-green mucus that hissed where it struck the floor. The walls shrieked in response, a sound like steel dragged across bone, and the fleshy membrane around them convulsed, veins bulging with black ichor.
Before the crew could react, the ceiling split, peeling back in ragged strips to unleash a grotesque deluge. They fell like rabid hail—creatures of nightmare, their bodies a blasphemous marriage of bone and quicksilver flesh. Some skittered on spider-leg ribs, joints clicking like loaded pistols; others oozed forward on gelatinous pseudopods, their mouths splitting into fractal jaws that spiraled into infinity. Claws of calcified void-energy gleamed under the bioluminescent haze, dripping acid that ate through the floor, while whip-like tendrils snapped through the air, each tipped with hooked vertebrae that whistled like falling knives.
The chorus of their approach was a wet, chittering cacophony, a symphony of blades scraping marrow, of teeth grinding bone. Penguin's scream tore through the din—"Contacts—everywhere!"—as the horde descended, a living waterfall of teeth, talons, and hunger.
Law's Room erupted in a burst of cerulean light, the air humming with the razor's-edge precision of his will. Kikoku flashed, a silver streak cutting through the writhing mass of antibodies. "Mes!" he barked, and a dozen horrors split into geometric cubes, their gelatinous flesh sloughing to the floor—only to bubble and reform, smaller now, skittering like deranged insects on needle-thin legs. Law's amber eyes narrowed, sweat beading beneath his hat. "Regenerative," he hissed, parrying a claw that dripped void-energy like venom. "Aim for the cores—black orbs in their chests! Waste no strikes!"
Marya lunged, Eternal Eclipse keening as its obsidian edge carved through a towering antibody. The creature's core—a pulsating black orb—crumbled to ash, but the victory was fleeting. The sword's void veins flared hungrily, tendrils of corruption snaking up her arm like serpents. She gritted her teeth, veins throbbing as inky darkness crept toward her collarbone. "They're targeting the sword!" she shouted, pivoting to deflect a hooked spine aimed at her ribs. The blade shuddered in her grip, its weight doubling as if the Void itself sought to drag her down.
Jean Bart's axe cleaved through a cluster of antibodies, their bodies bursting into acidic mist. "Bepo—flank!" he roared, but the spores raining from above hissed against his weapon, pitting the steel. Bepo snarled, swatting a scuttling horror into the wall with a meaty crunch, the fleshy membrane denting under the force. "They're evolving!" Jean Bart growled as a spore-cloud coalesced into a barbed shield, deflecting his next strike. The polar bear's claws tore through another attacker, his fur matted with ichor. "Captain—they're herding us!"
Back-to-back in the fray, Shachi and Penguin danced a desperate waltz of blades and desperation. "Remember that bar in Sabaody?" Penguin laughed, the sound fraying at the edges as he kicked an antibody's jaw-hinge loose. "When that drunk fishman tried to eat your hat?" Shachi jammed a lit flare into a gelatinous maw, the creature combusting with a gurgling shriek. "This is worse!" he retorted, ducking a whip-like tendril. "At least that guy had the decency to stay dead!"
But the antibodies were learning.
A pack cornered Bepo, their fractal jaws gnashing as claws scraped against his reinforced gauntlets. "C-Captain—!" he whimpered, the walls closing in. Law's Room flickered, strained as spore-barrages forced him to shrink its radius, conserving energy. Marya's breath hitched—the void veins reached her neck now, cold and invasive, whispering promises of oblivion. Eternal Eclipse dragged at her arms like an anchor, the blade's glow dimming as antibodies swarmed, drawn to its cursed resonance.
Above the din, Law's voice cut like a scalpel. "Amputate!" His Room enveloped Marya, and with a flick of Kikoku, he severed the corruption creeping toward her heart. Black ichor sprayed, sizzling where it struck the floor, and she staggered, gasping. "Stay ahead of the infection," Law ordered, his tone glacial yet fraying. "Or I'll carve out more than veins."
Marya's breath caught as Law's Room clamped around her—a surgeon's vise, cold and unyielding. The world sharpened into monochrome clarity: the throb of her corrupted veins, the jagged edges of the Void's tendrils burrowing toward her heart. She opened her mouth to protest, but Kikoku's blade was already moving—a silver flicker, too fast to flinch from.
The cut was clean.
Agony erupted, white-hot and alien, as if Law had severed not flesh but her very soul. Black ichor geysered from the wound, splattering the spongy floor in sizzling arcs. Marya staggered, her knees buckling as the weight of Eternal Eclipse dragged her down. The sword's whispers—her mother's voice, the Void's promises—faltered, replaced by a ringing silence. She clutched her chest, expecting a gaping hole, but found only raw, unmarked skin. Law hadn't cut her body. He'd cut the infection.
The relief was worse than the pain.
Her vision swam. The void veins recoiled, slithering back down her arm like snakes fleeing flame, but their absence left a hollow ache—a phantom limb screaming for the corruption's return. She gagged, tasting bile and burnt ozone. Weakness. The word curdled in her mind. Mihawk's daughter, brought to her knees by a surgeon's mercy.
"Breathe," Law snapped, his voice fraying at the edges. He stood over her, Kikoku's crimson eye glaring at the retreating darkness. "The Void's a parasite. It wants you to think you need it."
Marya's fingers trembled against the hilt of Eternal Eclipse. The blade felt lighter now, its hunger dulled—but the relief was a lie. She knew the truth in Law's amber eyes: this was a reprieve, not a cure. The veins would return. The Void would claim her.
"I don't need your—warning," she hissed, hauling herself upright. Her legs shook, but she locked them, defiant. Blood—her blood, red and human—dripped from her nose, staining her lips.
Law's smirk was a blade. "Then stop hesitating. That sword's a scalpel, not a crutch. Use it. Or I'll take it from you."
Around them, the battle raged. Bepo's roars shook the walls as antibodies swarmed; Jean Bart's axe sparked against evolving spore-shields. The city's heartbeat pounded—lub-DUB, lub-DUB—a taunt.
Marya wiped her face, smearing crimson across her cheek. The void veins twitched beneath her skin, restless. Almost there, she thought, gripping Eternal Eclipse until her knuckles blanched. Almost.
But as she charged back into the fray, the sword's edge trailing shadows, she wondered which would break first—the city's heart or her own.
The city's heartbeat was a war drum now, each lub-DUB shuddering through the walls, the floor, the air itself. Marya led the charge, Eternal Eclipse carving arcs of void-black through the bioluminescent gloom. The corridors twisted like intestines, veins pulsing faster as they neared the heart chamber. Law's Room flickered ahead, mapping the path—arteries constricting, nerve clusters sparking—as Bepo lumbered behind, swatting antibodies into pulp with ursine fury.
"Left!" Law barked, Kikoku deflecting a hail of spore-barbs. "The bloodstream converges ahead—move!"
They rounded a bend into a cavernous artery, ichor roaring through it like a flooded river. Jean Bart's axe gleamed as he cleaved a path through the gelatinous horrors, Shachi and Penguin flanking him with flares and curses. "Keep tight!" Jean Bart roared. "Don't let them—"
The floor ruptured.
A titanic antibody erupted from below—a leviathan of bone and sinew, its maw a spiraling vortex of teeth. The crew scattered as its tail slammed down, fracturing the artery wall. Ichor geysered, a torrent of corrosive fluid swallowing Shachi's scream.
"ROOM!" Law's sphere flared, teleporting Jean Bart and Penguin to higher ground—but the collapse came too fast. Stone-like flesh crumbled, the river of ichor surging into a chasm that split the crew in two.
Marya lunged for the edge, Eternal Eclipse's tip scraping the void as Shachi's outstretched hand vanished into the roiling current below. "No—!"
Law yanked her back. "No time! The heart—now!"
Bepo howled, claws sinking into the trembling floor as antibodies swarmed the breach. "C-Captain—the others—!"
"Alive," Law snarled, though his jaw tightened. "They'll find another path. Move."
The remaining trio plunged deeper, the air thickening with the stench of the Primordial Current. The walls here were alive with malice—fleshy barbs lashed out, eyeballs burst into acid sprays, and the floor breathed, trying to suck them into digestive pits.
Law's Room was a fading shine, its radius shrinking under the Void's corruption. "Marya—the sword. How much control?"
She didn't answer. The void veins had regrown, inky tendrils clawing past her collarbone. Eternal Eclipse dragged at her arms, its whispers louder now—her mother's voice, pleading. "Cross the bridge, Marya. See what I saw."
Bepo sniffed the air, fur matted with gore. "Captain… that smell. Like the North Blue during a thaw. Metallic."
Law froze. Ahead, the corridor ended at a membranous seal, throbbing with cancerous light. "The heart's valve," he muttered. "One strike, and—"
The seal rippled.
From its folds emerged the Leukocyte King—the colossus from the bloodstream, reborn. Six void-scythe arms gleamed, its bone-plated chest heaving with the city's rhythm. It recognized them.
Marya stepped forward, the sword's edge trembling. "Distract it. I'll take the core."
Law's gaze cut to her. "You'll die."
"I'll win," she corrected, and charged.
Elsewhere, Jean Bart hauled Shachi from the ichor's grip, the crew battered but breathing. "We need to circle back!" Penguin coughed, clutching a dislocated shoulder.
Ikkaku slammed a wrench into a pursuing antibody. "No—we push forward. Meet them at the heart!"
Above, the city's pulse quickened. Somewhere ahead, Marya's sword clashed with the Void's guardian. Somewhere behind, the others fought to close the gap.
The Dawnless City held its breath.