Thunder did not roll across the heavens—it tore through them. The skies above Elbaf had split into a writhing abyss of black and violet, lightning branching endlessly across the firmament like fractures in the world itself. The sea surrounding the island boiled under hurricane winds, waves rising high enough to swallow warships whole. Ancient trees—older than most kingdoms—were ripped from the earth and hurled like splinters.
Elbaf, land of the giants, had become a battlefield of apocalypse. Across its vast plains and towering cliffs, colossal warriors roared in defiance as monstrosities clashed against them—grotesque beings that had appeared without warning, stitched from nightmare and shadow.
Some were titanic brutes with too many limbs; others slithered across the ground like living storms. Their bodies defied nature, their howls shuddering through bone and stone alike. Steel rang against flesh. Lightning split mountains. Blood—giant blood—ran in rivers down the sacred valleys.
"NOOOOOO…!"
The scream came from Jarul. The legendary giant staggered, a blade driven grotesquely through his skull. Even impaled, he tried to rise—fingers clawing into the broken earth, teeth gritted in stubborn defiance. His massive frame trembled as he forced one knee beneath him. But it was too late.
Before him stood King Harald. Once the proud ruler of Elbaf, now something profane. Something wrong. His body radiated an unnatural vitality, wounds closing as quickly as they formed. His eyes were empty of warmth—lit instead by a cold, merciless purpose. He had become an immortal behemoth, a sovereign of slaughter.
Jarul, the giant warrior of a hundred campaigns—was swatted aside like refuse. His colossal body crashed through a stone ridge, the impact splitting the cliff in two. Nearby, Scopper Gaban staggered forward, blades drawn, breath ragged. His Observation Haki flared desperately, reaching, searching, and finding despair.
He was already too late. Harald's massive hand had closed around Dora's throat. She dangled in his grip, her body colossal by giant standards, yet remained broken in Harald's grasp. Sparks still danced along her skin, remnants of her Lightning Logia power crackling wildly as if refusing to accept what her body already knew.
A blade protruded from her chest. Driven clean through her heart. Blood dripped from the steel, sizzling as it mixed with fading arcs of electricity. The Lightning Giant had fought like a storm given form—splitting the sky, turning the battlefield into a thunderhead. For a moment, it had seemed as though she might actually wound him beyond recovery.
But Harald did not stay wounded. He did not stay broken. He did not stay down. He was undying. Coldly, almost curiously, Harald tightened his grip around Dora's neck as she struggled. Her fingers clawed at his wrist, lightning surging in one final desperate discharge. Lightning exploded point-blank into his face, illuminating the battlefield in blinding white.
When the light faded, he had not moved. Smoke curled from his cheek, flesh already knitting itself back together. With his other hand, Harald slowly—deliberately—wrapped his fingers around the hilt of the sword embedded in Dora's chest. And began to pull. Her body convulsed.
A broken gasp escaped her lips as steel grated against bone. Yet even then—even then—Dora roared. With the last fragments of strength left in her failing body, she drew back her fist. Lightning gathered weakly around her knuckles, flickering like the final ember of a dying flame.
"For… Elbaf…!"
She swung. The punch connected with Harald's face. It was not the thunderous blow it once would have been. Not the mountain-shattering strike of the Lightning Giant in her prime. It was a fading spark. A final refusal. Harald's head tilted a fraction. That was all. Her fist trembled against his skin.
The light around it sputtered. Dimmed. And went out. At that exact moment, Harald tore the blade free from her chest. The sound was wet. Final. Dora's body went slack. Her arm dropped first. Then her head bowed. The last spark of lightning flickered weakly across her fingertips before dissolving into nothing.
Silence swallowed her. Harald let her corpse hang there for a moment longer, as if acknowledging the stubbornness that had dared defy him. Then he released her. Dora fell from his grasp like a broken star, her enormous body crashing into the earth below and carving a crater into Elbaf's sacred ground. The storm above roared louder—as if mourning her.
The throne room of Elbaf had become a cathedral of ruin. Massive stone pillars lay shattered across the floor, their ancient carvings splintered by the force of giant blows. The vaulted ceiling was cracked from end to end, rain and lightning flashing through the fractures above, illuminating the carnage in violent bursts of white-blue light. The great braziers that once warmed the hall had been overturned, their flames dying in pools of blood and debris.
At the center of it all, the abyssal circle burned. Carved into the very foundation of the throne dais, its runes pulsed with a black glow that swallowed surrounding light rather than emitting it. Smoke seeped from its markings like breath from a slumbering beast.
Dora's colossal body crashed against the stone floor only a few strides from that circle. The impact shook the entire chamber. Her lightning had already faded. No thunder answered her fall. No sparks danced across her skin. The blade wound through her chest remained open, dark blood pooling outward in a slow, spreading tide that reflected the abyssal glow.
For a heartbeat—silence. Then the abyssal circle flared. Black tendrils erupted outward—smoke and shadow given form—writhing like serpents as they slithered across the cracked marble toward her corpse. They coiled around her wrists, her throat, her legs. The shadows did not rush. They claimed.
With a sickening drag, Dora's lifeless body scraped across the throne room floor, her hair trailing through her own blood as she was pulled inch by inch toward the abyss. The tendrils tightened—and with a violent snap of collapsing darkness, her corpse vanished into the ritual circle.
The runes dimmed. In the very heart of the now destroyed hall, the giant King exhaled deeply. A long, satisfied breath.
"Hahahaha… so the annoying giant is finally dead." Maffey's voice rang sharp and mocking through the throne room. She stood opposite Shanks, her blade slick with blood, her posture loose and confident despite the devastation around them. A woman with eyes like fractured glass and a smile too delighted for the carnage it accompanied.
"I wonder," she mused aloud, tilting her head as she parried Shanks' next strike with fluid precision, "where the Lightning Logia will be reborn. Somewhere far from here, I hope. It would be tragic if it found its way into the wrong hands again."
Steel shrieked as their weapons locked. Now that Dora was gone… now that Gaban knelt barely conscious against a collapsed pillar, his strength nearly spent… the outcome felt inevitable. There was no one left in this room who could stop Harald. And he had not even begun to unveil his Devil Fruit's true depth.
Yet Shanks did not smile. Did not waver because he had felt what no one else within the throne room did. His instincts were screaming. He had faced overwhelming presences before. He had stood in the Holy Land and felt the suffocating aura of the one they called the Great One. He had endured that suffocation without flinching.
But this—this felt worse. Not louder. Not heavier. Deeper. It was not the crushing dominance of a conqueror's Haki. Not the suffocating pressure of a tyrant seated upon an ancient throne. It felt like an ending.
Shanks' blade paused for a fraction of a second as his senses stretched beyond the clash of steel, beyond Maffey's mocking grin, beyond the ruined pillars and the blood-slick floor of the throne room. His gaze drifted past the God's Knights… past Harald… past the abyssal circle where faint wisps of black smoke still curled like satisfied fingers.
Something had just snapped. He felt it as clearly as one feels a bone break beneath skin. The air itself seemed thinner. The rhythm of the world—subtle, ever-present—had stuttered. And now something was closing in on Elbaf. Not an army. Not a fleet. Not reinforcements. Something else.
His Observation Haki surged outward on instinct, racing beyond the stone walls of the castle, beyond the war-torn courtyards, beyond the cliffs that ringed the island. It skimmed across the raging sea and into the vast horizon beyond.
And there—there it was, far beyond where even his senses could reach, but he felt it in his bones. An encroaching void in the shape of inevitability. Shanks had stood before monsters in human form. He had crossed paths with legends who could split the heavens. He had walked into the Holy Land and met the gaze of the one who sat at the pinnacle of the world—Imu—and not once had his spirit trembled.
Not once had his will bent. His Haki had remained unshaken. But now—now unease coiled around his heart like a tightening fist. It was not fear for himself. It was the certainty of catastrophe. The kind that did not negotiate. The kind that did not care how strong you were. The kind that erased.
A calamity was approaching—vast and indifferent. Something that would not merely conquer Elbaf… but swallow it whole. A force beyond the ambitions of the God's Knights. Beyond Harald's delusions of divinity. Beyond political control or territorial dominance. This was extinction.
The storm outside the fractured ceiling shifted unnaturally, clouds spiraling inward as if drawn toward a single invisible maw. Lightning flashed—but its thunder lagged, distant and distorted, as though reality itself were misaligned. Shanks' jaw tightened.
Even his Conqueror's Haki—unyielding, indomitable—felt like a torch held against an oncoming tidal wave. For the first time in years—perhaps ever—he felt small before something unseen. Maffey lunged, mistaking his momentary distraction for weakness, but Shanks parried automatically, his movements precise despite the storm raging inside him.
"We're out of time," he muttered.
Not because Harald was unbeatable. Not because the God's Knights had secured victory. But because something far worse than them was about to arrive. His gaze swept once more toward the horizon beyond Elbaf's shores. And in the pit of his instincts, in the marrow of a spirit that had never once faltered—he knew. Whatever was coming… It would make this battle seem insignificant.
"We need to leave," Shanks muttered under his breath, barely audible even to himself. If they remained, this throne room would become their grave. A massive figure stepped forward, stone cracking underfoot. Harald.
He stood near the dais, blood still dripping from the blade in his hand. The countless wounds carved across his torso and arms moments earlier were sealing before their eyes. Flesh knit together. Bone reset. Even the deep gash across his throat faded into smooth, unmarred skin.
Gunko landed lightly beside him, her boots barely making a sound against the fractured marble.
She regarded him with measured fascination. "How does it feel," she asked softly, "to wield the power of a god, Knight Harald?"
Harald did not answer immediately. He looked at his hands instead. Flexed them. The air around his fingers seemed to warp faintly, as if reality itself bowed to his grip.
"It's… exhilarating," he said at last. His voice was calm. Cold. "I finally understand what it means to be a god."
As he spoke, faint black veins pulsed beneath his skin before receding. The sigil of the Depths Covenant shimmered across his chest like a brand forged in shadow. The more he drew upon it, the more distant his expression became. Dora was dead. He felt nothing.
Ida—who had once been his everything, the love of his life, the one who he would have given up anything for—was dead. He felt nothing. The giants who had sworn loyalty to him lay broken across the throne room floor, killed by his own blade. He felt nothing.
The covenant had not simply empowered him. It had stripped him. Attachment. Regret. Doubt. All sanded away by something vast and indifferent. Gunko watched him closely, perhaps sensing the transformation.
"You're changing," she said quietly.
"I am ascending," Harald corrected. He turned his gaze toward Shanks, then—not with hatred, nor anger. But with detached evaluation. As though measuring an obstacle. No longer a king defending his realm. No longer a warrior fighting for pride. Harald stood now as something else entirely.
A vessel of the depths. A self-proclaimed god. And in the flickering abyssal light of the ruined throne room of Elbaf, it became terrifyingly clear—Harald no longer saw the world as something to protect. Only something to rule.
****
The shores of Elbaf were no safer than its throne room. The sea roared violently against the cliffs, waves crashing high enough to drench the hull of the Red Force, which sat angled toward open waters, sails loosened and cannons primed for departure at a heartbeat's notice. Ropes strained. Wood groaned. The crew moved with disciplined urgency—ready to leave the instant their captain gave the order.
They were waiting for him. But even the coastline had not been spared. From the mist that clung to the surf emerged grotesque figures—warped apparitions born from nightmares. Killingham's Devil Fruit power had manifested them into the waking world: towering Draugr-like giants clad in rusted phantom armor, their hollow eye sockets glowing with sickly blue flame. Seaweed and frost clung to their forms as though they had clawed their way from the ocean floor itself.
They were not truly flesh. Not truly alive. But they were solid enough to crush ships. One of them—easily the size of a fortress tower—waded through the shallows toward the Red Force, each step sending tremors through the shoreline. Its corroded greatsword dragged behind it, carving a trench through stone and sand.
"Oi! That one's mine!" Buggy roared.
The red-nosed pirate launched himself forward with reckless enthusiasm, boots kicking up sand as he split apart mid-charge—his Bara Bara powers scattering his limbs outward to avoid the Draugr's sweeping blade. The massive sword cleaved through where his torso had been a second prior, smashing into the shore with an explosion of debris.
Buggy's floating hands latched onto the creature's arm, hauling him upward. "You oversized corpse! Pick on someone your own size!"
The Draugr bellowed, backhanding him with enough force to shatter boulders—but Buggy's body separated again, the blow passing harmlessly through scattered limbs before they snapped back together behind the monster's head. High above on the deck of the Red Force, Yasopp steadied his rifle.
"One o'clock, Benn," he muttered calmly.
Beside him, Benn Beckman exhaled smoke from his cigarette, eyes sharp beneath rain-dampened hair. "I see it."
Two shots rang out almost simultaneously. Yasopp's bullet pierced straight through the Draugr's glowing eye socket, detonating in a burst of compressed Haki that shattered half its skull. Beckman's round followed an instant later, striking the creature's knee joint with surgical precision. The impact erupted in a violent shockwave, destabilizing the titan's stance.
The dream-monster staggered. Buggy grinned wildly.
"That's my cue!"
He reassembled midair and drew twin blades, leaping high above the Draugr's shoulders. The phantom giant roared and swung upward—but too late. Buggy brought both swords down in a furious cross-slash, Haki crackling along their edges. The strike carved deep through the Draugr's neck, spectral armor splitting apart with a sound like tearing metal.
The creature howled—and Yasopp fired again. This time the bullet struck the exposed fissure in its throat. Beckman followed with a final shot to the spine. The combined impacts detonated within the monster's core. Cracks of glowing blue light spiderwebbed across its entire body.
"Move, Buggy!" Beckman barked.
"I'm already mov—!" The Draugr exploded. A shockwave of mist and fractured dream-essence blasted outward, swallowing Buggy whole and rattling the Red Force against its moorings. For a split second, it looked as though the captain clown had been obliterated. Then his boots dropped onto the deck.
Followed by his torso. Then his arms. Then his head. He reassembled himself with a dramatic flourish, coughing out seawater and smoke.
"HA! Did you see that?! Didn't even break a sweat!" Behind him, the remains of the titanic Draugr dissolved into drifting vapor, its massive form unraveling like a nightmare at sunrise. But more shapes writhed in the mist beyond.
Other dream beasts prowled the coastline—serpentine horrors coiling through the surf, armored wraiths dragging chains across the sand. Yet the crew held firm. Cannons roared. Blades flashed. Rifle shots cracked with lethal precision.
"Buggy… where is Shanks?" Benn Beckman's voice cut through the wind and cannon smoke, calm but edged with steel. They had asked before. More than once. Buggy had returned alone, barking orders the moment his boots hit the deck—Raise anchor. Prepare to sail. Now. He'd claimed it came straight from the captain. Claimed Shanks would catch up.
Under normal circumstances, that would've been enough. But these were not normal circumstances. From the heart of Elbaf, overwhelming presences had flared—violent, ancient, wrong. Even from miles away, they had brushed against the crew's senses like cold fingers across the spine. The clash of titans. The distortion of Haki on a scale that bent the air itself.
And now it felt worse. Buggy had held firm until now. Follow the captain's orders. Trust him. Don't panic the crew. He opened his mouth to answer Beckman again—and stopped. His half-reformed body faltered mid-motion.
One leg hovered inches above the deck, disconnected from his torso, but instead of snapping cleanly back into place like it always did, it trembled… as if his power itself hesitated. Buggy's grin—usually stretched wide and theatrical—froze. Something brushed against him.
Not from Elbaf. Not from the throne room where Shanks and Gaban were currently fighting. From the opposite direction. From the horizon beyond the sea. Slowly, mechanically, Buggy turned his head away from the island. Toward open waters. The same direction Shanks' gaze had flickered to.
Unlike Shanks—who had been dividing his attention between combat and instinct—Buggy wasn't fighting anyone. His senses were unoccupied. And now they were screaming. A dreadful, suffocating omen pressed against his chest. It wasn't a surge of Haki. It wasn't killing intent.
It was absence. Something vast and inevitable moving closer. He felt familiarity in it—like standing too close to a power he had once glimpsed from afar. But there was something foreign too. Something colder. Something final.
Buggy swallowed. His face drained of color so quickly it was almost comical—were it not for the absolute terror in his eyes.
"Buggy…?" Yasopp pressed, rifle still in hand. "We're holding the line here. If we give him another few minutes—"
"No," Buggy said. The word came out thin. Then louder.
"NO." Every eye on deck snapped to him. His jaw clenched, his red nose trembling faintly as he forced his limbs back into alignment. His entire body shook—not from fear of battle. From certainty.
"If we stay here," he said hoarsely, eyes locked on the dark horizon, "we die."
Beckman's gaze sharpened. "Explain."
Buggy didn't look at him. "I can't," he admitted. His instincts were not as refined as Shanks'. Not as controlled. But they were sharp in their own chaotic way. And right now, they were howling.
"Cut the anchors!" he bellowed suddenly, his voice cracking like a whip across the deck. "Full sail! We leave now!"
"Cut them!" Buggy's voice tore across the deck like cannon fire. Not lower them. Not raise them. Cut. For half a second, the crew froze, processing the command.
Benn Beckman's eyes narrowed. "Buggy—those are reinforced—"
"I said CUT THEM!" Buggy roared, his voice cracking with something dangerously close to panic. The deck erupted into motion. Axes swung. Sparks flew.
The Red Force lurched violently as thick, iron-bound anchor chains—crafted to withstand sea kings and typhoons—were hacked apart under a rain of steel. The first chain snapped with a thunderous metallic shriek, whipping across the deck and smashing through a railing before plunging into the churning sea below. The ship tilted hard to port.
"Second anchor—move!" Yasopp barked, abandoning argument and shouldering responsibility like he always did. Three crewmen swung in unison. The blade bit deep. Once. Twice. Again. The storm winds howled harder, as if answering some distant, unseen call.
Buggy stood at the helm, hands gripping the wheel so tightly his knuckles whitened. His body trembled—not from the effort of maintaining his powers, but from the pressure building in his chest. It was closer. Whatever it was— It was closer.
Lucky Roux stepped forward. "Buggy, we can't abandon Shanks."
"We're not abandoning him!" Buggy snapped, spinning around with a ferocity that silenced even the sharpshooter. "You think I'd do that?!"
For a fleeting second, the clown façade cracked completely. What remained was raw conviction.
"He told us to be ready. He told us to sail if things turned. That's what we're doing!"
Beckman studied him carefully. Buggy's fear was obvious—but beneath it was something else.
Faith.
"He'll come back," Buggy said, quieter now—but firm. "He always does." His gaze drifted once more toward the horizon, where the sea seemed unnaturally still despite the storm.
"But I'm not testing fate by keeping this ship here." His voice dropped to a near whisper.
"Anyone who stays in Elbaf right now… is marked." The words hung heavy in the salt air. Then Buggy roared again, forcing steel into his tone.
"MOVE! HARD TO STARBOARD! FULL SAIL!"
Crew members hesitated only a fraction of a second before obeying. Chains rattled. Sails unfurled violently in the storm wind. The Red Force groaned as it turned from the cursed shoreline. Beckman held Roux's shoulder briefly, stopping him from arguing further.
He had seen that look before. Not cowardice. Instinct. And if Buggy—of all people—was pale with that kind of certainty… Then something was truly wrong. As the ship began pulling away from the shores of Elbaf, Buggy remained at the helm, eyes never leaving the dark horizon.
****
Dressrosa, New World
Far from the storm-ravaged halls of Elbaf, beneath the gilded ceilings of Dressrosa's royal palace, another silence was taking shape. It was quieter here. But no less violent.
Señor Pink stood alone in the vast throne chamber, his lithe frame unmoving beneath chandeliers of cut crystal and gold. Velvet banners bearing the Donquixote crest hung from marble pillars. The world outside remained blissfully unaware.
In the center of his palm lay a half-scorched square of parchment. A Vivre Card. One he had personally crafted. It belonged to Dora. The tiny scrap trembled faintly as its edges curled inward, blackened and fragile. Thin veins of ember crawled across its surface, consuming what little remained. The faint glow reflected in Señor's sunglasses as he stared, unblinking.
He knew what it meant. A Vivre card did not burn without reason. It burned when its owner's life faded. The final corner ignited. For a split second, the last intact fragment fluttered weakly in his palm—as if fighting against fate. Then it crumbled.
Ash. A fine grey residue scattered between his fingers and drifted soundlessly to the polished marble floor. Señor's jaw tightened. Tears gathered behind dark lenses, threatening to fall—but he did not move. He had endured wars. Betrayals. The crushing weight of his own past.
But this—this was family.
"CLANK—!" The violent shattering of glass exploded through the chamber. Across the room, near the foot of the throne, a goblet lay in shards. Crimson liquid spilled down the steps, pooling across the marble. It was unclear whether it was wine. Or blood.
Atop the throne sat Donquixote Doflamingo. His head was slightly lowered, blond hair casting a shadow across his glasses. His hand—still clenched—dripped red as fragments of crystal slid from his fingers. The entire throne room had gone deathly silent.
Even the air felt heavier. Colder. The temperature seemed to drop as if something unseen had passed judgment upon the world itself. Doflamingo slowly stood. No manic grin. No theatrical laughter. Just a stillness far more dangerous than rage.
"Señor," he said at last. His voice was calm. Too calm. "Recall all our family members back to Dressrosa." A pause. "No exceptions."
Señor swallowed, grief choking his throat. He wanted to speak—wanted to curse the heavens, to demand names, to beg for confirmation that this was some mistake. But there was no mistake. The ash at his feet was proof.
Doflamingo stepped down from the throne without another word, shoes clicking softly against marble. The faint trail of red followed him as he walked toward the grand doors leading to the private corridor of his chambers. Señor instinctively moved to follow.
"Master—"
"Stop." The word was soft. Yet absolute. Doflamingo did not turn around. "I need to be alone for some time, Señor."
The doors opened with a low groan, revealing a dim corridor lined with portraits of fallen ancestors and broken kings. For a brief second, the light caught the side of Doflamingo's face. There was no smile. Only a thin, restrained tremor at the edge of his jaw.
The doors closed behind him. Señor remained standing in the vast chamber, staring down at his palm where the Vivre Card had completely turned to ash. It had been years since the Donquixote family had known true loss.
After that tragedy long ago—the day they had been cast down, hunted, humiliated—they had sworn something to one another: Never again. Never again would they allow the world to take one of their own. And now it had. Dora was gone. The chandeliers above swayed slightly, though there was no wind. Beyond the palace walls, the sea surrounding Dressrosa darkened beneath gathering clouds.