The skies above Dressrosa darkened with the war-smoke and cannonfire, but down beneath those clouds of gray the first hint of genuine victory began to filter in.
The last remaining World Government soldiers — worn out, battered, desperate — fled their ships under an unrelenting hail of gunfire. Cannonballs exploded in the sea, catapulting huge plumes of foam high into the sky.
Some of the Marines never made it to the ships. Some clung to the sides of boats sheared off with them, abandoning comrades to the mercy of the sea.
Milo reloaded calmly on the wall, his face stern.
"No way out," he growled, firing down another soldier wading through the shallows.
Kael at his shoulder bellowed orders to the artillerymen, who lobbed mechanical salvos against the rearguard of the fleet.
Below at the ruined docks, Rear Admiral Stainless shouted for order, but few listened. His proud men were disintegrating into a mob, and even wounded Rear Admiral Dalmatian, unsteady on his feet, could barely hold a fraction of the line.
The battle was no longer a battle.
It was a rout.
And far above it all, the true storm raged.
In the center of the destroyed plaza, Solian and Green Bull clashed back and forth, shockwaves splintering the earth and curving the air around them.
Each strike seemed to rip the world in half.
Solian's Observation Haki flared, enabling him to sense the Admiral's movements before they happened. His body slipped on autopilot, dodging whips of serrated vines, parrying spears of wood and thorn that tore up the ground.
But he knew it wasn't enough.
Not yet.
Gasping for breath, blood streaming from his mouth, Solian clamped his fists tight and plunged deeper — into the core of himself, into the howling solar furnace that was the power of his Devil Fruit.
He could feel the fire flood into his limbs, molten and pure.
He didn't stop there.
He summoned it into his right fist, shaping it — shrinking it — until the very air before his hand shrieked and shattered.
Plasma.
The untamed, brute fury of a newly formed star encased his knuckles, white-hot.
Meanwhile, Solian's Conqueror's Haki moved — not as a presence but as a physical, crackling power that wrapped itself around solar plasma, building it, creating the very atmosphere to break apart with unseen blades of will.
The ground beneath his feet crumbled, spidering outward.
Green Bull saw it — felt it — and his face twisted into something more like awe than anger.
In response, the Admiral bellowed, pushing his Devil Fruit to its limits. Tree-like protrusions erupted from his body, trunks blackened and strengthened, leaves slashing with precision. The earth itself curled and warped in its attempt to contain him as he coalesced every last shred of strength into his own crushing blow.
"You actually think you can stand against the World itself?!" Green Bull bellowed, his voice trembling across the wreckage.
Solian remained silent.
He advanced.
In a single heartbeat, the two men surged forward.
Their fists collided with a soundless explosion — a punch so gigantic, so absolute, that for a moment the entire world stopped breathing.
No motion. No noise.
Blinding light and trembling earth alone.
And then — the plaza burst outward, a circle of devastation extending with horrific strength. Buildings toppled. Rubble burst upward like missiles. The sea itself receded, waves crashing back from the shore.
Amidst it all, Solian and Green Bull struggled, their powers trapped in a conflict greater than simple brawn.
But inexorably — irresistibly — Solian's fist closed.
Plasma reduced Green Bull's vines to cinders, exploded through the Admiral's defenses, and crashed into his chest with the unyielding ferocity of the sun and the unstoppable will of a warrior.
Green Bull's mouth hung agape in a shocked whisper of amazement as he was blown backward, destroying two buildings before crashing into the shattered stump of a warship mast.
The towering Admiral braced himself against the wreckage, coughing up blood, his body wracking.
Silence fell over the battlefield.
Even the running Marines — even the men firing from the walls — halted to gaze at the impossible sight.
An Admiral. defeated.
Solian stood amidst the ruined plaza, his right arm still burning with solar energy, his eyes cold and unyielding.
He didn't step to kill Green Bull off.
He didn't need to.
The Admiral clenched his teeth against the pain and strained upwards with trembling limbs. His gaze encountered Solian's — and in that moment, wordless, a comprehension glowed between them.
This was no longer his war.
Retreat was his only option.
With a final snarl of fury, Green Bull's body broke up into a welter of roots and vines, rampaging back towards the remainder of the Marine ships. In a moment, he was lost, swallowed up in the chaos of the fleet's retreat.
Solian breathed a slow breath, his own body easing, the tension draining from his muscles.
It was done.
The other vessels retreated from Dressrosa's burning docksides, battered and bloodied. A few floated barely afloat, holed and ablaze.
On the beach, the Dressrosan army stood victorious — weary, wounded, but unbroken.
They didn't yell.
Not yet.
The cost was too fresh, too heavy.
But there was pride in their eyes.
Pride. and hope.
Milo leaned against the wall, rifle clattering on the stones.
"We won," he said hoarsely, as if not believing it.
Kael nodded, wiping soot and blood off his face.
"Yeah,"
"We did."
Down on the battlefield, Itachi picked his way among the wounded, helping where he could, quieter than a spirit.
His blade was clean. His conscience, not so much.
Higher on the horizon, Solian stood looking out at the burning wasteland.
The Marines would come back someday.
The World Government would not soon forget this defeat.
But today.
For today, the sun shone on a free Dressrosa.
Ashes and sunlight.
And the very first genuine step toward a new age.