The submarine's interior hummed with the low thrum of engines, the air thick with the scent of aged steel and brine. Flickering green light from the navigation panels cast long shadows across Mihawk's face as he adjusted the coordinates, his fingers moving with the precision of a swordsman—deliberate, unerring. Marya leaned against the bulkhead, arms crossed, watching him. The Heart Pirates' jacket hung loosely on her frame, its embroidered grin at odds with the tension coiling in her shoulders.
"You remember how to pilot this relic?" she asked, her voice flat but edged with a challenge. Her gaze flicked to the control panel, where Mihawk's hand hovered over a well-worn lever.
"Familiarity is not sentiment," he replied, pulling the lever with a metallic clunk. The sub shuddered, bubbles rising past the portholes as it submerged. "Though I see you've adopted… decorations." His golden eyes lingered on the Jolly Roger stitched to her sleeve.
Marya shrugged. "Temporary. Like alliances."
A faint smirk tugged at Mihawk's lips. "Yet here you are. Seeking one."
She stiffened, her knuckles whitening around Eclipse's hilt. The blade's obsidian surface seemed to drink the light, the crimson runes pulsing faintly—a reminder of the Void's whisper in her veins. "I need answers. Not alliances."
Mihawk turned, his coat sweeping the floor like a shadow given form. "Answers require trust. A currency you've never spent freely."
The sub groaned as it descended deeper, pressure waves creaking the hull. Marya's gaze drifted to a faded map pinned to the wall—her mother's handwriting scrawled in the margins, notes on tidal patterns and lunar phases. Elisabeta's research. The paper was yellowed, the ink bleeding at the edges, but the symbols were unmistakable: Poneglyph fragments, circled and connected by lines that spiderwebbed into a constellation of secrets.
"She trusted you," Marya said quietly, the words sharp as a dagger's edge. "Enough to die for whatever she found."
Mihawk's stillness was absolute. For a heartbeat, even the engines seemed to quiet. "Your mother," he began, each syllable measured, "sought truths that devour the curious. The island we approach—Karathys—was her last discovery. A place where the sea forgets to sing."
Marya's pulse quickened. Karathys. The name echoed in her mother's journals, buried beneath layers of cipher. A myth, the Consortium had called it—a graveyard of scholars, swallowed by the Grand Line's caprices. "Why there?"
"Because it holds the key to why she was killed." Mihawk's hand rested briefly on Yoru's hilt, the black blade humming in response. "And because the ones who did it… are waiting."
The sub lurched suddenly, throwing Marya against the control panel. Alarms blared as the sonar screen lit up with jagged red lines—a school of Sea Kings, their serpentine forms coiling in the depths beyond the glass. One slammed into the hull, its eye—a massive, phosphorescent orb—pressing against the porthole before vanishing into the dark.
Mihawk steadied himself, unfazed. "They sense something. Something that calls to predators."
Marya righted herself, her breath steady despite the adrenaline. "Then let's not keep them waiting." She flipped a switch, activating external thrusters that whined. The sub jolted forward, weaving through Goliath's thrashing tails.
As the chaos outside faded, Mihawk spoke again, his voice softer. "Elisabeta believed there was a key. A bridge between realms." He withdrew a folded parchment from his coat—a page from her mother's notebook, its edges singed. "She wrote this the night before she died."
Marya's guarded mask cracked. She snatched the page, her eyes scanning the glyphs—a language of spirals and slashes, alive with hidden meaning. The words were a storm on paper, furious and desperate. "…the Abyss sings in the Primordial Current, and the gate opens only to those who bear the Eclipse's mark…"
"You kept this," she whispered. "All these years."
"I kept you alive," he corrected, though there was no bite in his tone. "Your mother's work… it was a blade pointed at the World Government's throat. They silenced her. But her killers—"
"—Are the same ones as Vaughn's," Marya finished, her voice steel.
Mihawk nodded. "Karathys is their stronghold. And your mother's final cipher is etched in its bones."
The sub emerged into a cavernous underwater grotto, bioluminescent fungi coating the walls in veins of blue and green. Ahead loomed the island—Karathys, a jagged spire of black stone puncturing the ocean's belly. Ruins clung to its cliffs, their arches and columns eroded into skeletal remains. The water here was unnervingly still, silent as a tomb.
Marya's fingers brushed the Kogatana at her throat, its edge cold against her skin. "Why now? Why tell me?"
Mihawk met her gaze, and for the first time, she saw it—the ghost of a father's fear. "Because you are ready. And because I will not let her fate be yours."
The admission hung between them, fragile as the bubbles trailing the sub. Marya turned away, her reflection fractured in the porthole's glass. "Sentiment doesn't suit you, old man."
"Nor does patience suit you," he retorted, but his tone lacked its usual edge.
As the sub docked in a crumbling stone quay, Marya hesitated. "If we survive this… I have questions. About her. About us."
Mihawk stepped onto the gangplank, Yoru's tip scraping the ancient stone. "Then survive."
In the distance, a hollow chant echoed through the ruins—a dirge in the ancient tongue, the same one etched in Marya's veins. The Void stirred, its tendrils curling around her thoughts, but for the first time, she did not face it alone.
Above them, the fractured moon watched, a silent witness to the reckoning of blades and blood.
The air on Karathys tasted of salt and rusted iron, thick with the musk of centuries-old stone. Marya's boots crunched over the quay's fractured flagstones, each step scattering brittle fragments of seashell fused into the rock. Above them, the island's jagged summit speared the night sky, its obsidian surface pocked with hollows that moaned as the wind passed through—a chorus of dead voices. Bioluminescent fungi clung to the cliffs like weeping sores, their blue-green glow casting long, skeletal shadows. Mihawk strode ahead, Yoru's tip leaving a hairline scratch in the stone, a trail only a father's blade could etch.
"What is this place?" Marya asked, her voice steady but edged with a hunger she couldn't fully mask. Her fingers brushed the pitted wall of a collapsed archway, its carvings worn smooth by time and tide. The symbols were faint but familiar—spirals within spirals, the same pattern that haunted her mother's notes.
Mihawk paused, his silhouette framed against a cavernous tunnel ahead. "A library," he said, the word curling like smoke. "But not of paper. Of bones." He tilted his head, moonlight catching the scar that bisected his left eyebrow—a relic of a duel he'd never spoken of. "Your mother called it Karathys-kiro, the 'Silent Archive.' Scholars once gathered here to study the Primordial Current. Until the World Government erased them."
Marya's gaze sharpened. "Erased how?"
"The same way they erase all threats." Mihawk's gloved hand swept toward a half-collapsed pillar, its surface etched with a mural: robed figures kneeling before a massive gate, their faces scratched out. "The Celestial Vanguard. A branch of Cipher Pol, older than even the Nine. Their sole purpose is to bury secrets that could unravel the Void Century… or the gods who rewrote it."
A cold draft snaked through the tunnel, carrying the faint tang of burnt parchment. Marya's Void veins prickled, the black tendrils on her arms writhing faintly. "The ones who killed her."
"Yes." Mihawk's voice softened, a rarity. "Elisabeta discovered a Poneglyph here—one that spoke not of history, but of prophecy. A gate sealed by the Ancient Kingdom, holding back the Primordial Current's corruption. The Vanguard silenced her before she could decode it fully." He turned, his golden eyes reflecting the fungi's sickly glow. "But she left a trail. For you."
Marya's breath hitched. She unsheathed Eclipse, its obsidian blade humming as if resonating with the island's pulse. "Why doesn't the world know of them? Of this?"
Mihawk's smirk was blade-thin. "Because the Vanguard are the world. Nobles, admirals, scholars—all puppets with their strings tied to Mariejois. They don't hide in shadows. They are the shadows." He gestured to a crevice in the wall, where a skeletal hand protruded, clutching a rusted dagger. "Their work is done in plain sight. Wars blamed on pirates. Scholars 'lost at sea.' Entire islands… misplaced."
The tunnel opened into a cavern, its ceiling lost to darkness. Below, a labyrinth of stone bridges spanned a chasm, their surfaces slick with algae. At the center loomed a massive circular platform, its edges ringed with shattered obelisks. Mihawk stepped onto the nearest bridge, his boots dislodging pebbles that plummeted soundlessly into the abyss.
Marya followed, her grip tightening on Eclipse. "And Mother's research? What did they fear so much?"
Mihawk halted, his back to her. "That the gate she sought isn't a metaphor. It's a physical threshold. One that requires a key." He glanced over his shoulder, his gaze dropping to her sword. "A warden. Forged to seal what lies beyond the Primordial Current. Your mother believed the Vanguard aimed to reopen the gate—to harness the power beyond it as a weapon."
The air thickened, the faint echo of chanting rising from the depths. Marya's pulse quickened, but her voice remained steady. "And you? What do you believe?"
For a heartbeat, Mihawk's mask slipped. The lines around his eyes deepened, not with age, but with the weight of a father's fear. "I believe… she entrusted you with the truth for a reason." He reached into his coat, withdrawing a small, tattered notebook—Elisabeta's, its pages swollen with saltwater stains. "She wrote this the day you were born."
Marya took it, her stoic facade fracturing as she flipped to the final entry. Her mother's handwriting, usually precise, sprawled wildly:
"The Current stirs—they know she's coming. My Marya. My genesis. Forgive me. The key is not the blade, but the bearer. The Vanguard will come. But so will he. Protect her, Mihawk. Even from herself."
The page trembled in Marya's hand. When she looked up, Mihawk was closer than she'd realized, his presence a silent anchor.
"You knew," she whispered. "All this time. You knew they'd come for me."
"I did," he said, no apology in his tone—only resolve. "And I knew you'd need to choose your path. As I did."
A rumble shook the cavern, dust cascading from above. From the shadows of the platform emerged figures—tall, clad in white robes edged with gold, their faces obscured by masks of polished void stone. The lead figure stepped forward, a serrated kris knife glinting in their hand.
"Dracule Marya Zaleska," the figure intoned, their voice a discordant rasp, as if multiple throats spoke at once. "You trespass where even shadows fear to tread."
Mihawk's hand settled on Yoru's hilt. "Stay behind me," he murmured, not a command, but a plea.
Marya stepped forward instead, Eclipse's runes blazing crimson. "I've spent years running from ghosts," she said, loud enough for the Vanguard to hear. "Turns out, they're just men in masks."
The lead Vanguard hissed, raising their knife. "The gate will open. The Abyss will consume—"
Marya moved.
A crescent of black Haki erupted from Eclipse, severing the mask—and the head beneath it—before the Vanguard could finish. The body crumpled, ichor pooling black as the depth below.
"No," Marya said coldly, staring down the remaining figures. "You will."
Mihawk watched, pride and sorrow warring in his gaze. Then, with a speed that blurred the air, he joined her, Yoru's edge singing a dirge of its own.
Above, the fractured moon bore witness—not to a reckoning of blades, but to a father and daughter, carving their truth into the bones of the world.