The wind over the open sea grew colder.
A silence crept through the waves — unnatural, unsettling. Birds vanished from the sky. Clouds hung still like held breath. Somewhere in that stillness, death moved.
Raizen felt it before he saw it.
It started with the decimation of the Redwake Rebellion — an allied fleet of five warships turned to ash within minutes. Survivors whispered of a figure cloaked in black flame, whose sword struck faster than sound and whose voice turned the bravest men to stone.
The Emperor's Hand had arrived.
Not a name. Not a rank. A myth made flesh.
Said to be the personal enforcer of the World Government's highest echelon — the Silent Council, the ones even admirals feared. The Hand existed outside of law, justice, or morality. His orders: absolute elimination.
His target: Raizen Flameheart.
But this wasn't just a mission.
It was personal.
Because years ago, when Raizen led a raid on the Obsidian Archives to destroy one of the Crown's shadow reactors, he made a fatal decision. He destroyed everything — and in doing so, killed the only family the Emperor's Hand had left.
A sister.
Now, vengeance burned hotter than duty.
While the Flameheart Fleet gathered at Stormhold Atoll to prepare for the campaign on the Southern Armadas, Raizen held council with Lyra, Kael, and the captains. They debated battle plans, siege points, morale.
But then the alarms sounded.
The sea ripped open.
A single obsidian-hulled ship emerged through a rift in the waves — smooth, silent, and shaped like a dagger. The sky darkened. Transponders shut down. Observation Haki across the fleet went blind.
Then he stepped onto the deck.
Tall. Cloaked in fractured armor made from Crown remnants. His right arm, a gauntlet forged of shadowglass. His face — hidden beneath a mirrored mask shaped like a weeping skull.
The Emperor's Hand.
With no warning, half the harbor exploded. Ship hulls split like eggs. Flames consumed flags.
Raizen leapt into action, blade drawn, eyes blazing.
Their first clash cracked the sea itself.
The Hand fought like a ghost forged from discipline and hate. Every move was calculated, every strike forced Raizen back. Not even Lyra's interference could break his rhythm — Kael was injured in the first exchange, and two captains were killed before they could blink.
As they fought across the decks of the Ashen Wraith, lightning flashed.
"You think this world wants saving?" the Hand hissed. "You're a child with fire in your veins and blood on your hands."
Raizen's answer came through grit teeth. "I'm not here to be wanted. I'm here to end you."
Their battle tore through mast and hull, spilled into the skywalks of the surrounding fleet. It wasn't a duel. It was war distilled into two souls.
And in the climax of the fight, Raizen caught a glimpse — through the cracked mask — of a face twisted not by evil, but grief.
In that moment, Raizen hesitated.
The Hand didn't.
He drove the blade into Raizen's side.
Only Lyra's last-second intervention — a desperate explosion of Light Bloom — saved him from the killing blow.
The Emperor's Hand retreated, wounded but unbroken.
"Next time," he said, disappearing into shadow, "there will be no hesitation."
Raizen awoke hours later in the infirmary, bandaged and broken, but alive.
He had lost the duel.
And yet, something had changed.
He had seen the truth behind the mask. The Hand was not a monster — he was a man, forged by the same broken world Raizen now sought to remake.
But the war had reached a turning point.
The rebellion was no longer theory. It was blood, fire, and sacrifice.
And with the Emperor's Hand in the shadows, the final battle for the soul of the world had truly begun.
END OF CHAPTER15
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