Law's Room flared, blue light engulfing Marya an instant before Eternal Eclipse could strike the orb. They reappeared on the temple's fractured steps, her blade still crackling with Void energy. Law parried her next swing with his nodachi, sparks erupting where cursed steel met Ope-Ope precision.
"Wake up, damn it!" Law snarled, his amber eyes reflecting her corrupted form—the mist swirling around her now streaked with inky black tendrils that ate the light. "This isn't you!"
Marya's laugh was a discordant echo. "You're wrong. This is what I am." Her mist thickened, corroding the temple stones into ash. The ground beneath them dissolved into a fractal void, reality itself unraveling.
Law gritted his teeth. "ROOM: Memory Dive!"
The world inverted.
Marya's mind was a storm of fractured timelines. Law stood in a crumbling library—Elisabeta's study, shelves lined with Poneglyph rubbings and star charts. A younger Marya, maybe eight, cradled her mother's body as blood pooled around them. Elisabeta's hand trembled, pressing a notebook into her daughter's chest. "The Void… it's not a curse. It's a key…"
The memory shifted. Now, Elisabeta stood before a massive Poneglyph in a cavern, its indestructible surface glowing as she chanted in the ancient tongue. The air thrummed with the Primordial Current, and black veins snaked up her arms—the same curse now consuming Marya. "Suppression requires sacrifice," Elisabeta whispered, her voice overlapping with Marya's own. "The chant… remember the chant…"
Law's critical mind deciphered the glyphs: a mantra of binding, a song to cage the Void in a parallel dimension. An image of Elisabeta vaporized into mist.
Back in reality, Law's hands moved on instinct. "ROOM: Spatial Tear!" His nodachi slashed the air, ripping a jagged rift between dimensions—a howling abyss where the Void thrashed like a caged beast. "Get back where you belong!"
The black mist recoiled, but not fast enough. Tendrils fused with Marya's own powers, twisting her silver fog into a hybrid storm—Void-Mist, unstable and ravenous. It devoured the temple's pillars, the air itself screaming as it was unmade.
Marya gasped, her eyes flickering between white and black. "Law… it's inside me—"
"I know," he growled, seizing her wrist. "And I'm cutting it out."
The air within Law's Room hummed with the sterile intensity of an operating theater, blue-tinted light casting stark shadows across Marya's trembling form. Law's hands moved with the precision of a virtuoso, every gesture calibrated by battlefield triage and a surgeon's ruthless focus. His mind echoed with the Poneglyph chant—a guttural, ancient rhythm that vibrated in his bones, its syllables stitching themselves into his consciousness like a lifeline. The words weren't merely remembered; they possessed him, their cadence syncing with the pulsations of his Room, as if the ghosts of long-dead Lunarian priests guided his scalpel.
"Hold still," Law growled, though he knew Marya couldn't obey. The Void thrashed inside her like a caged star-beast, its tendrils burrowing deeper into her veins with every heartbeat. Her arms, once marked by faint black threads, now resembled cracked porcelain, the Void's corruption branching toward her throat in jagged lightning bolts.
He pressed his nodachi's tip to her collarbone, and the Room's energy coalesced into sutures of spatial force—threads of cerulean light that pierced her skin without breaking it, weaving a latticework over the ruptured veins. The Void recoiled, hissing as the sutures seared its essence, but Law twisted the blade, tightening the weave. Each stitch emitted a harmonic chime, the Poneglyph chant resonating through the Room like a struck bell, its vibrations stabilizing the fraying edges of her soul.
Marya's scream tore through the chamber, a raw blend of human pain and something other. Her Mist-Mist Fruit reacted violently, tendrils of silver fog erupting from her pores—only to be corrupted midair by the Void's influence. The mist curdled into an oily black haze, its edges dissolving stone, air, even light itself. A stray wisp brushed the temple wall, and the ancient basalt crumbled into ash, revealing the molten Current churning beneath.
"Damn it—focus!" Law barked, more to himself than her. Sweat dripped into his eyes as he anchored the final suture, the Void's core now quarantined in a pocket dimension—a jagged rift hovering above Marya's sternum, visible only as a flickering absence in reality. But the damage was done.
Her Devil Fruit had fused with the Void.
When she phased, it wasn't the graceful dissolution of mist, but a voracious unraveling. As she stumbled back, her hand passed through a serpent pillar—and the stone didn't just part; it disintegrated, eaten by a miniature black hole that left a gaping, spiraling void in its wake. The air around her warped, light bending into grotesque shapes as the hybrid power destabilized.
"What… did you do to me?" Marya rasped, her voice layered with a guttural echo. One eye blazed white, mist swirling like a storm; the other was shadow, sucking in the faint light of the Room.
Law didn't answer. His gaze flicked to the Ocēlōtl Orb above, its celestial glow now tainted with threads of corruption. The temple shuddered, the ground splintering as Tlaloc's roar shook the sky.
The cure birthed a new plague.
And the clock was ticking.
Law sheathed his blade, breathless. "Bought us time. The Void's trapped, but it's still tied to you. That hybrid power—it's a ticking bomb."
Above, Tlaloc's roar shook the heavens. The fight wasn't over.
But for now, Marya was hers again.
*****
The chamber groaned as Zephyr drove his dagger deeper into the celestial brass chain, the blade screeching against metal forged in the volcano's heart. Bioluminescent algae clung to the walls like a sickly green cobweb, casting jagged shadows over the Lunarian relics—petrified wings fused to stone, skeletal hands still gripping rusted spears, frescoes of fire and flight now peeling into ash. The air reeked of brine and the metallic tang of the Primordial Current, its viscous, breathable liquid burning Ciela's lungs as she struggled to rise.
"Why?!" Ciela spat, blood trickling from her split lip. Her Sky Rider armor—once polished volcanic glass and azure feathers—was cracked and smeared with the beast's iridescent blood. "You'll drown us all!"
Zephyr laughed, the sound echoing unnaturally in the submerged chamber. His scarred face, half-lit by the dagger's glow, twisted into a rictus of bitter triumph. "Drown? No, Ciela. We'll ascend. The Sky Riders cower on their cliffs, Aerion clinging to his hollow oaths. But Tlaloc—" He gestured to the monstrous chain anchoring the ceiling, its links etched with pulsing Poneglyph runes. "—Tlaloc is power. Real power. The kind that doesn't beg scraps from a god!"
The beast stirred, its gargantuan eye—a vertical slit of molten gold—fixing on Zephyr. The chain trembled, ancient enchantments fraying as the dagger bit deeper.
"You think this is freedom?" Ciela staggered forward, her boots slipping on algae-slick stone. "The Lunarians tried to chain the god, too. Look what happened to them!" She pointed to a fresco: winged figures engulfed in lava, their faces melting as Tlaloc devoured their city.
Zephyr's smile faltered. For a heartbeat, his gaze flicked to a smaller carving—a Lunarian child clutching a toy bird, her wings still downy and small. "The Sky Riders left me to die in the ash when I was that girl's age," he hissed. "My village? Crushed under a rockslide. Aerion's flock flew overhead. They watched. Said it was the Current's will." He slammed the dagger again, sparks flying. "So I'll rewrite the Current. Let the god burn the lies to cinders!"
Ciela lunged, her macuahuitl flashing. The obsidian teeth grazed Zephyr's arm, drawing black blood that sizzled against the Current's liquid. "You're not rewriting anything! You're just repeating their mistakes!"
The chamber quaked. Cracks split the ceiling, raining debris. The beast's tail lashed, smashing a pillar adorned with Lunarian constellations. Ciela dove, narrowly avoiding a chunk of stone that crushed her fallen helmet.
"You don't understand," Zephyr murmured, almost gentle. "You've never hungered." He ripped a pendant from his neck—a tiny bird skull, its eyes filled with volcanic glass. "This was my sister's. All I have left. The ash took her voice… but Tlaloc will give her a new one."
Ciela's chest tightened. For a moment, she saw the boy he'd been—scrawny, ash-coated, screaming into a void that never answered. "Zephyr… vengeance won't bring her back. It'll just bury you."
He stared at her, his dagger hovering. Then, slowly, he pressed the pendant to the chain. "Then I'll be buried with purpose."
The final rune shattered.
The chain snapped with a sound like the sky tearing open. The beast roared, its body surging upward, the chamber collapsing in its wake. Zephyr's laughter echoed as the Current boiled, the liquid thickening into tar-like Void.
"Go then!" Ciela screamed, scrambling toward a fissure where moonlight pierced the chaos. "Rot in your 'purpose'!"
She didn't look back. The walls crumbled around her as she climbed, fingers clawing at Lunarian handholds carved for wings she didn't have. The beast's wake churned the water above into a maelstrom, but Ciela spotted it—a star-iron grate hidden behind a petrified banner, its edges glowing with residual Current.
"Xolotl's Passage," she breathed, recalling Tepec's tales. The Lunarians built escape routes for their priests… if they reached them in time.
As the chamber imploded below, Ciela wrenched the grate open and plunged into the dark.
Zephyr's voice followed her, swallowed by Tlaloc's hunger: "Tell Aerion… the sky falls tonight!"
*****
Marya blinked, her mismatched eyes—one a maelstrom of silver mist, the other an abyssal void—staring at her trembling hands. The air around her hummed with an unstable energy, the edges of her form flickering between corporeal and unmade. She flexed her fingers, and a wisp of her new power curled like smoke, dissolving a shard of fallen stone into nothingness. "This… isn't mist," she whispered, her voice layered with a resonant echo.
Law wiped the blood from his brow, his amber eyes sharp. "It's Void-Mist. A hybrid. Unstable. Unpredictable. Don't—"
A guttural roar cut him off. From the shadows of the crumbling temple, a Lunarian golem lurched forward—a towering obsidian construct with wings of petrified bone and joints grinding with celestial brass. Its hollow eyes glowed with residual Current, its stone fists raised to crush.
Marya didn't flinch. She flicked her wrist.
The golem unraveled.
One moment it loomed, a monument of ancient wrath; the next, it was a cloud of ash and sparks, its essence devoured by a vortex of black mist. The ground where it stood cratered inward, reality itself scarred by the absence.
"What am I supposed to do with this?!" Marya hissed, staring at the void she'd created. Her voice cracked—half fury, half fear.
Before Law could answer, Tepec and Xochi sprinted into the chamber, their faces streaked with ash and panic. "The Ocēlōtl Orb!" Xochi cried, clutching her codex. "Its bindings are fracturing—the corruption is merging with Tlaloc's prison!"
Tepec's staff trembled as he pointed upward. The Orb, once a celestial jewel, now pulsed with jagged veins of black. Its chains dripped molten brass into the temple's heart, the fluid hissing as it hit the corrupted Current below. "If it shatters, Tlaloc will erupt—and take the island with it!"
A shadow blotted the fractured ceiling. Aerion descended on Vuelo Magnifico, his armor cracked, his face a mask of deranged resolve. "Outsiders! Defilers!" he bellowed, his twin macuahuitls dripping venom. "This ends NOW!"
The Sky Lord dove, his bird's talons aimed at Marya. Law's Room flared, but Marya was faster.
She raised her hand—not to defend, but to erase.
Aerion's strike met a wall of Void-Mist. The macuahuitls disintegrated mid-swing, their obsidian teeth dissolving into smoke. Vuelo Magnifico screeched, veering wildly as its talons grazed the mist, losing claws to the hungry void.
"You… abomination," Aerion spat, banking hard.
"Yes, I am," Marya shot back with a smirk, but her bravado faltered as the Orb above them groaned. Cracks spiderwebbed its surface, leaking streams of starlight and shadow.
"The Orb's core is a Poneglyph chant!" Xochi shouted to Marya, unrolling a scroll etched with Lunarian glyphs. "If we can re-carve it, we might stabilize—"
"No time!" Law interrupted, grabbing Marya's arm. "Your power—it's the only thing strong enough to reach the Orb before it blows. But if you lose control…"
"…I'll atomize us all." Marya's void-eye pulsed, but she nodded. "Do it."
"Law, you can't—!" Tepec began, but the captain was already slashing his nodachi.
"ROOM: SHAMBLES!"
The World Upended.
Marya's body dissolved into Void-Mist, streaking toward the Orb in a helix of silver and shadow. Aerion's flock dive-bombed her, but their talons met annihilation. Behind her, the temple collapsed in slow motion, Law and the others dodging falling debris.
The Ocēlōtl Orb loomed, its surface a war zone of light and dark. Marya's hands phased into its core, the Poneglyph chant searing her mind—Elisabeta's voice, guiding her.
"End this," Law's voice echoed from below, barely audible over Tlaloc's roar.
Marya gritted her teeth. Then she pulled.
The Orb shattered.
But instead of fire, there was silence.
The Void-Mist imploded, sucking Tlaloc's fury back into the parallel dimension. The temple crumbled, the sky cleared, and the Primordial Current stilled—scarred, but whole.
Marya collapsed, her eyes human again, the Void veins dormant. Law caught her, his Room flickering out.
Aerion lay sprawled in the ruins, his bird dead, his pride ash. "The Current… it spared you," he rasped, disbelief choking him.
"No," Marya gasped weakly. "I spared it."
Ciela burst from Xolotl's Passage, her lungs burning with the acrid stench of volcanic ash and brine. The stone archway behind her—carved with Lunarian depictions of the twilight god guiding souls through darkness—collapsed into rubble, sealing the abyss where Zephyr and the beast had vanished. Her Sky Rider armor, once polished volcanic glass and azure features, hung in tatters, the obsidian plates cracked and smeared with iridescent blood. Her braids had unraveled into a wild mane, streaked with ash and algae from the depths.
The world above was chaos incarnate.
Lago de la Serpiente boiled, its obsidian waters churning as the sleeping sea monster erupted skyward—a leviathan reborn. Its serpentine body, half-consumed by Void corruption, writhed with scales that shimmered like oil on water, their bioluminescent glow now streaked with inky tendrils. Its maw gaped, teeth like shattered monoliths dripping with acidic saliva that hissed where it struck the ruins. The creature's remaining eye—a molten-gold slit—fixed on the Polar Tang, still lodged near Ixtabay's Gate, its hull groaning as Jean Bart and the crew scrambled to defend it from falling debris.
But Ciela's gaze locked onto the temple's ruins. There, Aerion—broken, bleeding, his once-gleaming armor reduced to jagged shards—lunged at Law and Marya with the frenzied desperation of a cornered animal. His remaining macuahuitl, its obsidian teeth chipped and venom-dulled, swung wildly. Law parried with his nodachi, sparks flying as cursed steel met surgical precision. Marya crouched nearby, her void-scarred arm trembling as she gripped Eternal Eclipse, its obsidian blade humming with unstable energy.
"Stop!" Ciela screamed, sprinting toward them. "The beast—it's free! The gate's seals are—"
A quake cut her off. The ground split, swallowing the remnants of Teocalli de la Serpiente's pillars. The beast's tail slammed into the crater lake, sending a tidal wave of black water crashing inland.
Marya staggered to her feet, her mismatched eyes blazing. "I can end this," she hissed, raising her sword. The Void veins on her arm pulsed, and black mist coiled around the blade.
"You'll end us," Law snapped, grabbing her wrist. "That power's a guillotine. One slip, and—"
"—and what? We die faster?" Marya jerked free, but her bravado faltered as the Void-Mist flickered, corroding a nearby statue into ash.
Aerion seized the opening. With a guttural roar, he tackled Law, driving him into the rubble. "This island… is mine to burn!"
Ciela skidded to a halt, her macuahuitl raised—but froze as the beast's shadow engulfed them. The beast's maw yawned overhead, its breath reeking of rot and primordial brine.
Jean Bart's voice boomed from the Tang's deck: "CAPTAIN! MOVE!"
The beast struck.
Law twisted, his Room flaring as he swapped places with a chunk of debris. Aerion wasn't as quick. The beast's teeth snapped shut around his leg, yanking him skyward. His scream echoed—a raw, primal sound—before the beast shook him like a ragdoll and hurled his broken body into the lake.
"Aerion…!" Ciela whispered, horror-struck.
But there was no time to mourn. The beast turned its eye on the Tang, its Void-corrupted scales oozing black sludge that dissolved the shore where it slithered. Bepo and Penguin fired the sub's last torpedoes, but the projectiles disintegrated in the mist of the beast's breath.
Tepec and Xochi stumbled from the ruins, the elder clutching a cracked stone tablet. "The Poneglyph chant!" Xochi cried. "It's the same one from the Orb—it can banish the Void, but we need time!"
Marya laughed bitterly. "Time's the one thing we're out of."
Law's gaze swept the carnage—the crumbling temple, the rampaging beast, his crew fighting a losing battle. "Then we cheat," he said coldly. "Marya. Your Void-Mist. Can you stall that thing?"
She stared at him, then at the beast. "Maybe. But if I lose control—"
"We're dead anyway."
Marya's lips curled. "Finally. A plan that doesn't suck."
As she dissolved into mist, Ciela grabbed Law's arm. "You're trusting her? After what she is?"
Law's amber eyes hardened. "Right now, what she is… is our only shot."