The core waters of the Florian Triangle.
At this moment, sunlight had become a complete luxury. When the Eclipse fully entered this cursed sea, the world was swallowed whole by a thick, grayish-white substance. This fog was heavy and cold, carrying the lingering scent of sea salt mixed with the sour stench of rotting wood.
The massive hull sliced through the silent surface at low speed. Every ripple against the Starfall Black Steel was magnified by the dense mist, sounding like the soft breathing of a giant beast in the abyss.
"This fog is too thick," Carina muttered at the navigator's station, her brow furrowed. She no longer relied on her eyes, activating her fruit ability to vigilantly map any movement within five hundred meters of the ship.
"The smell of decay is enough to make one vomit," Jeno added, walking up from the lower deck with a newly welded levitation bracket. "An ordinary sailboat's keel would rot through in three days here. Only our Adam Wood can withstand this moisture."
In the shadows, Shark's grayish-blue skin looked even deeper. His nostrils flared. "This silence... there isn't even a living fish beneath the surface. This isn't a sea; it's a giant graveyard."
Suddenly, the faint, haunting trill of a violin drifted on the cold breeze, cutting through the heavy mist.
"Yohohoho— Yohohoho—"
The ethereal, desolate singing voice echoed across the vast emptiness, carrying a loneliness powerful enough to pierce the soul.
"G-g-g-ghost!!!" Buggy jumped as if struck by lightning, his body instantly splitting into floating segments. His head clutched the mainmast, his red nose turning pale with terror. "Ace! Turn around! Let's get out of this hellhole!"
"Calm down, Buggy. That's not a ghost," Sabo said, descending from the sky with residual heat still shimmering beneath his boots. He pressed his top hat down, his Observation Haki locking onto a weak but clear life signal ahead.
"Yahahaha, what an interesting creature," Enel leaned back, spinning his gold staff. His own Haki had perceived a strange electrical signal. "It doesn't feel like a living person, yet it isn't a dead object either."
A massive, dilapidated sailing ship appeared like a gray phantom through the fog. It was a ruin—sails torn like spiderwebs, timber blackened and skeletal. On the edge of the ghost ship's deck, a tall figure in a tattered suit drew a bow across a violin.
Ace stood at the bow, restrained divine fire evaporating the damp mist before it could touch him. Through the Voice of All Things, he didn't see a comical skeleton; he saw a gravekeeper trapped in fifty years of darkness, guarding a promise alone.
"Stop the ship."
The music stopped abruptly. The skeleton—Brook—leaned against the rotting railing, his empty eye sockets 'looking' at the massive, pitch-black warship radiating heat and dominance.
"Yohohoho... you really scared me, even though I'm already dead," Brook said, tremblingly putting away his violin to give a graceful, comical gentleman's bow. "Extraordinary gentleman, are you real humans? Or have I finally started having hallucinations because I'm too lonely?"
"That depends on how you define 'real'."
Ace leapt from the figurehead, landing lightly on the groaning planks of the ghost ship. He looked directly at the musician, his tone dropping a bombshell.
"That fellow Laboon has been ramming the Red Line even harder lately. It leaves new scars every day, thinking that if it cries loud enough, its comrades from the Rumbar Pirates might hear it."
Brook's skeletal frame froze. The violin bow fell to the deck with a clatter.
"You... what did you just say?" Brook's voice was a raspy tremor of half a century's hope and despair. "Laboon... the Laboon of Twin Capes is still alive?"
"It has waited fifty years, and it has no intention of giving up." Ace reached out, a warm wisp of Vermilion Bird flame dancing in his palm. It illuminated Brook's face. "I promised that big fellow I would bring you lost souls back. So, Brook..."
Ace turned, looking toward the terrifying shadow looming in the distance—Thriller Bark.
"Pick up that dust-covered violin, come onto my ship, and become my partner. I will take you back to see Laboon." Ace's voice carried an unquestionable kingly dominance. "This isn't a suggestion; it's a mandatory recruitment based on my promise."
Brook knelt on the deck, his old bones heaving. Finally, he let out a laugh that was no longer filled with the aura of death.
"Yohohoho... Yohohoho..."
Crystal tears actually seeped from his empty sockets as he reached for his violin. "If that is the reason, then these old bones are entirely at your service, Captain!"
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