-Broadcast-
The arena filled with magic.
It poured from Wendy's small frame all at once — not a gradual release but a sudden flood, raw and enormous, enough to make the stone floor tremble underfoot. The air thickened with it. Azure light rippled outward in visible waves, and for a moment the Infinity Castle around them seemed to hold its breath.
No woman who reached the rank of Admiral was ever simple. That much was plain.
Wendy had originally eaten the Tori Tori no Mi, Model: Seiryū (Bird-Bird Fruit, Sky Dragon) for her brother's sake. In those first frantic days, she'd barely understood what she'd swallowed — only that she needed power and needed it immediately. But that was years ago. The fruit had grown into her since then, or perhaps she had grown into it. The boundary between the two had long since blurred.
The Seiryū model was unlike other Mythical Zoan fruits in one way. When a Sky Dragon user died, their memories did not disappear. They crystallized instead, settling into the fruit itself, waiting for the next heir to unlock them — one layer at a time, like reading a book from the inside. Tens of millions of years of accumulated memory. Lives stacked upon lives. In theory, the brain of any human host would have been overwhelmed long before reaching the earliest records. In practice, most users simply didn't live long enough to receive them all.
Grandine had been the exception. The longest-lived Sky Dragon fruit user in recorded history — so long-lived that near the end, she'd forgotten the human girl she'd once been. The memories she'd left behind were not just information. They were a map of the world drawn over millennia.
"You must be the Admiral Tenryu the intelligence reports mentioned." Albedo's voice was pleasant, measured, with the particular warmth of someone who had learned to perform warmth rather than feel it. Her gaze moved between the two women with unhurried interest, settling on Wendy. "It took some effort to arrange this meeting."
She wasn't concerned. That was the unsettling part — not the horns curving from her head, not the black wings folded at her waist, but the complete absence of concern in her expression. Her eyes stayed on Wendy with the focus of someone recognizing something long-theorized and now confirmed.
"The horns and the wings," she said, almost to herself. "They're not accessories. They're part of her body."
Esdeath kept her hand on her sword and said nothing.
"An ordinary Zoan transformation changes the body's form," Albedo continued, addressing Esdeath now. "It doesn't change the creature's fundamental nature. But something like her — every piece of flesh and blood saturated with magic particles. That quality doesn't come from a Devil Fruit alone. In my memory, only one classification of being carries it."
Wendy answered before Esdeath could. Her voice was quiet, and the blue light around her pulsed with each word.
"Demons."
Grandine's memories didn't lie. In the last thousand years of that ancient life, the sky dragon had encountered demons more than once — had killed many of them personally, standing on the side of the human race. In those memories, the classification was consistent: demons, monsters, different words from different eras describing the same recurring phenomenon. Every few centuries the cycle turned. Every cycle brought catastrophe with it.
The mechanism was simple enough. Demons carried magic particles in their bodies — dense, saturated concentrations that could interface with ambient energy and produce effects no human technique could match. The variety of magic was as wide as the variety of demons. Some could kill people. Some could level countries. The gap between those two endpoints was not a matter of degree but of kind entirely.
"The black fog over Rome," Wendy said. "That's your work. Demons."
Albedo's smile didn't change. "You are correct that I am a great demon. But I am not the one who summoned you here." She performed a bow — unhurried, precise, the formal etiquette of a lower-ranked demon acknowledging a higher one. It was not a gesture she had chosen to offer. It was a gesture her nature compelled. "My master will come to greet you personally. He will not be long."
The implications clicked into place in Wendy's mind faster than she wanted them to.
A great demon that bowed. Which meant a hierarchy above. Which meant —
Her mother's memories surfaced before the conclusion finished forming, and the answer arrived like cold water down her spine.
Above the great demon was the demon god.
Named for divinity. Circulated in myths only, because records of them being defeated barely existed. In all of Grandine's accumulated centuries, she had encountered references to demon gods exactly twice. Both encounters were described in the same way: run, if running was possible; fight only if there was nothing left to lose.
Wendy took a step back. She recognized the instinct for what it was and didn't resist it.
"Esdeath." Her voice came out steady despite everything. "If she's not lying, what's coming through that portal isn't something we can fight. We should withdraw and report."
"We were led here by the shamisen's sound," Esdeath said. Her sword was out now, the blade catching the arena's dim light. She had not moved from her position since Albedo appeared. "Getting out won't be simple." She glanced back once — not retreat, just information. Then forward again. "Before anything reaches you, it steps over me first."
The Admiral of the Ice had been entrusted with Wendy's protection. That trust did not come with conditions. She was not especially afraid of dying, if the dying meant something.
The arena cracked open.
A scar of red light tore across the air above them — vivid and wrong, too bright to look at directly, edges fraying like something too large to fit through the aperture it was forced into. Heat poured from it in waves. The crack widened slowly, steadily, and the energy radiating from its edges was older and heavier than anything the Infinity Castle had produced so far.
It was not Nakime's spatial manipulation. This was something else entirely. A different kind of door.
Wendy's magic circles flared brighter around her. Esdeath's killing intent sharpened into something cold and absolute.
The red crack kept spreading.
Whatever was coming had not arrived yet. But the air in the arena had already changed — the quality of silence before the first word of something that intended to speak without stopping.
Both Admirals stared into the light. Waiting.