The air crackled with the acrid tang of charcoal and burnt metal as Marya's blade carved through another Vanguard mask, the obsidian edge of Eternal Eclipse leaving a trail of void-black ichor in its wake. Around her, the mercury rivers of Karathys pulsed faintly, their silvery glow reflecting off the cavern's Living Gold veins like a thousand watching eyes. She pivoted, mist swirling at her heels, and caught a glimpse of Mihawk—Yoru a blur of midnight steel—dispatching three foes with a single crescent slash. His movements were economical, lethal, utterly devoid of flourish. Of course he makes it look easy.
A Vanguard lunged at her, serrated kris knife aimed for her throat. Marya dissolved into mist, reforming behind him to drive Eclipse through his spine. The blade's crimson runes flared as it severed his shadow, the man collapsing into ash. "Predictable," she muttered, though her gaze flicked instinctively to Mihawk. He wasn't watching.
Another attacker came—taller, his mask etched with Sican spirals. She recognized the pattern from her mother's journals. Lieutenant. Higher rank. His trident crackled with Armament Haki, its prongs dripping mercury. Marya parried, the impact reverberating up her arms. Behind her, Mihawk's voice cut through the clangor: "Left flank. Open."
She didn't hesitate. A surge of mist enveloped her left side, and she materialized just as the lieutenant struck empty air. Eclipse met his trident in a shower of sparks, their locked blades hissing where mercury met void. "You're slower than your underlings," she taunted, though her pulse quickened. Is he watching now?
The lieutenant snarled, his mask distorting the sound into a guttural growl. "You think this victory matters? The Vanguard are eternal."
Marya's grip tightened. "Eternity's overrated." She channeled Conqueror's Haki into the blade, the runes blazing as Eclipse devoured the trident's Haki like a starved beast. The lieutenant staggered, his weapon crumbling to rust.
A golden flash—Yoru's edge severed the man's head before he could scream.
"Distractions," Mihawk said, sheathing his blade as the body thudded to the stone. "Efficiency, Marya."
She bristled, wiping ichor from her cheek. "I had him."
"Eventually." His tone was neutral, but she caught the faint lift at the corner of his mouth. Was that… approval?
The remaining Vanguard faltered, their formation crumbling. One raised a trembling hand, his mask cracked to reveal a milky eye. "This island… will be your tomb. The Primordial Current remembers—"
Marya flicked her wrist, a whip of mist snapping his mask in two. "Tell it to write faster."
The survivors retreated into the mercury fog, their robes dissolving into the gloom. Silence fell, broken only by the drip of venomous river water and the low hum of Karathys' Living Gold. Marya sheathed Eclipse, her fingers lingering on the hilt. The fight had been too clean, too scripted. The Vanguard's threat lingered like a bad aftertaste.
Mihawk knelt beside a fallen warrior, examining the Sican spirals on his breastplate. "They'll return. With reinforcements."
"Let them." Marya leaned against a petrified mangrove root, feigning nonchalance as she watched him. "We'll be gone by then."
He stood, brushing sediment from his coat. "Confidence is a blade that cuts both ways."
"Says the man who dueled Shanks for fun."
This time, the smirk was unmistakable. "Fun is relative."
A breeze stirred the mercury mist, carrying the salt-rot stench of the Tidebound Guardians circling offshore. Marya's Void veins prickled, the black tendrils on her arms writhing in time with the distant chant of the island's spectral scholars. She glanced at Mihawk, his profile sharp against the cavern's bioluminescent glow. For a heartbeat, she wanted to ask—Did I do well?—but the words lodged in her throat like shrapnel.
Instead, she nodded to the Pyramid of the Drowned Sun looming in the distance, its gold-leaf tiles glinting beneath the fractured moon. "The Poneglyph's next. Unless you've forgotten the coordinates."
Mihawk's gaze followed hers, a shadow passing over his face. "I forget nothing." He strode ahead, Yoru's scabbard scraping the stone in a rhythm that matched her heartbeat.
Marya lingered, her boot nudging a discarded Vanguard mask. Beneath it lay a scrap of parchment—a partial star chart, its constellations labeled in World Government cipher. One coordinate was circled: Stygian Abyss. She tucked it into her coat, the paper crisp with latent Haki.
Not over. Just begun.
As she followed her father into the mercury-drenched dark, the Void's whisper coiled around her thoughts, softer now, almost… amused.
The mercury lake surrounding the Pyramid of the Drowned Sun shimmered like liquid starlight, its surface rippling with the weight of forgotten prayers. Marya's boots sank into the black sand of the shore, each step releasing wisps of toxic vapor that curled around her ankles like spectral hands. Above them, the pyramid's terraced tiers loomed, their gold-leaf tiles dulled by centuries of brine and neglect. Tidal Sentinels stood frozen along the shoreline, coral-encrusted tridents raised in perpetual defiance, their hollow eyes weeping rivulets of algae-green water.
Mihawk paused at the water's edge, Yoru's tip tracing a faint groove in the sand. "The Vanguard's base is beneath the pyramid," he said, nodding to a corroded hatch half-buried in the sediment. "A Marine facility built over the catacombs. Convenient, isn't it? Burying secrets under more secrets."
Marya's gaze drifted to the distant silhouette of the Celestial Vanguard's steel-clad outpost, its angular walls clashing with the pyramid's organic decay. "You still haven't answered me," she said, her voice steady but edged with insistence. "Why become a Warlord? Was it just to get close to them?"
Mihawk's hand stilled on Yoru's hilt. The mercury mist thickened, distorting his profile into something spectral. "The World Government grants… privileges to those who play their games. Information. Access." He stepped onto the lake's surface, his boots barely denting the mercury. "Come. The glyphs are deeper in."
She followed, the mercury parting like quicksilver beneath her steps. "Privileges," she echoed, skepticism sharpening the word. "Or a shield?"
He didn't look back, but his stride faltered—a nearly imperceptible hitch. The pyramid's entrance yawned ahead, a jagged maw lined with Living Gold veins that pulsed faintly as they approached. Inside, the air reeked of burnt copper and decay. Faded murals adorned the walls: Priests offering sacrifices to a deity, their faces erased by World Government sigils spray-painted over the ancient art.
Marya trailed a finger over a defaced mural, the gold flaking at her touch. "The Vanguard—how long have they existed?"
"Since before the Void Century," Mihawk said, brushing cobwebs from a cracked obelisk. "They are surgeons of history. Cutting out truths that threaten the World Government's narrative. Their agents are everywhere. Scholars. Admirals. Even kings."
"And their purpose?"
"To ensure the Void stays buried. To keep humanity ignorant of the Primordial Current… and what lies beyond it." He glanced at her, golden eyes reflecting the Living Gold's pulse. "Your mother threatened that ignorance."
Marya halted, her Void veins prickling as the pyramid's walls began to hum—a low, resonant frequency that vibrated in her molars. "You knew her killer. Before he murdered her."
It wasn't a question. Mihawk's silence was answer enough.
She pressed on, her tone clinical, as if dissecting a corpse. "His name was Casimer. Looked like a Navy officer. Zoan Power Holder: Velociraptor." Her hand drifted to her right shoulder, where her coat hid a jagged scar. "He ambushed me at Syndicate's Island. Clamped my shoulder, pinned me like a specimen. I got… distracted. Vaughn intervened. Took the killing blow meant for me."
Mihawk turned slowly, his face unreadable. "You confronted him alone."
"He hunted me," she corrected, cold pride lacing the words. "Recognized Mother's notebook. Recognized me. I was cornered and didn't have any options." Her jaw tightened. "The Consortium's doctors said I'd never wield a sword again. So, I left."
The hum in the walls crescendoed, dislodging dust from the ceiling. Mihawk stepped closer, his voice a blade wrapped in velvet. "So, you joined pirates."
Marya shrugged, feigning indifference. "Went looking for you. Found interesting new residents instead." A flicker of dry amusement crossed her face. "An unconscious green-haired swordsman. He looked pretty beat up. A pink-haired ghost girl who threatened to turn my coat into a throw pillow. Were you lonely, or just collecting strays?"
Mihawk's smirk was fleeting. "They're… persistent."
"You've gone soft," she teased, though her eyes betrayed a flicker of relief. "When you weren't there, I followed Mother's notes. That's when Law found me, or more like ran into me. Half-dead in the sub, arm rotting from… poison." Her fingers brushed the scar beneath her coat. "His surgery reattached the tendons. Grafted the muscle." The corner of her mouth quirked as she searched for an acceptable word, "Law's crew was… efficient. And his submarine had a decent library."
A beat passed. Then Mihawk did something unexpected—he laughed. A low, rumbling sound that seemed to startle even him. "Efficient. A curious reason to ally with a man who declared war on the World Government."
Marya crossed her arms, her stoic mask slipping just enough to reveal a flicker of discomfort. "It was temporary."
"Yet you kept the jacket."
She glanced down at the Heart Pirates' emblem, its grin glaringly out of place in the tomb-like gloom. "It's practical. Thick fabric."
Mihawk's smirk softened. He reached into his coat, withdrawing a small, tarnished locket—Elisabeta's, its chain still knotted from the day Marya had torn it off during their argument. "Your mother would have admired your pragmatism."
Marya froze. The air between them thickened, charged with decades of unspoken words. "Why did you really become a Warlord?" she whispered.
This time, he didn't deflect. "To keep you off their radar. The title… it granted me leverage. A way to divert their attention." His thumb brushed the locket's clasp, revealing a miniature portrait of Elisabeta, her smile achingly alive. "And to learn their weaknesses."
The admission hung in the air, fragile as the dust motes swirling in the Living Gold's glow. Marya's throat tightened. She turned away, pretending to study a glyph. "Sentiment doesn't suit you."
"Nor does denial suit you," he countered, slipping the locket into her palm. "You've always seen too much."
Her fingers closed around the metal, still warm from his grip. For a heartbeat, the pyramid's hum faded, replaced by the memory of a younger Marya—fifteen, furious, screaming that he cared more about his reputation than her. "You're just like them!" she'd spat, not realizing his silence was a shield, not a dismissal.
"I didn't need protecting," she said quietly.
"No," he agreed. "But I needed to give it."
Outside, the Tidebound Guardians roared, their metallic scales scraping against the pyramid's base. Mihawk tilted his head, listening. "The Vanguard will return. With worse than masks next time."
Marya pocketed the locket, her resolve hardening like the obsidian in her blade. "Let them. I'll carve the truth from their bones if I have to."
As they descended into the catacombs, the mercury lake churned behind them, its surface fracturing into star-shaped ripples—as if the island itself sensed the storm to come.
And deep within the World Government lab, a cryo-chamber hissed, as a clone's eyelids twitched in the dark.