The subterranean hideout shuddered like a wounded beast, its walls weeping moss and the sour tang of Sanguine Lily runoff. Flickering bioluminescent algae clung to the ceiling, casting an eerie green glow over the canal water below—water that pulsed with the neon-pink poison of the fields above. The air hummed with the groan of ancient wood and the metallic bite of clashing steel.
Marya's laughter cut through the chaos, a silver thread in the cacophony. She dissolved into mist just as Vergo's Jitte shattered the stone where she'd stood, the bamboo weapon humming with Armament Haki. Reforming atop a crumbling support beam, she tilted her head, Eternal Eclipse gleaming in her grip. The sword's crimson runes throbbed in time with her pulse, devouring the scant light.
"You've improved," she remarked, her voice as cool as winter's breeze. "Last time, you barely scratched my boot."
Vergo adjusted his Marine cuff, unruffled. "A mistake I won't repeat." His Jitte twirled, its tip carving a crescent moon in the air.
Behind them, Law's brow furrowed. Last time? His mind raced—when had these two crossed blades? But there was no space for questions. The ceiling splintered, raining debris into the black water.
Marya lunged, mist trailing behind her like a spectral cloak. Vergo parried, the impact sending shockwaves through the hideout. Their dance was a paradox: Marya, fluid and untouchable, her blade singing through the fog; Vergo, a fortress of brute precision, each strike cracking the earth.
"You're still the Navy's lapdog," Marya taunted, her golden eyes glinting. She feinted left, then spun, Eclipse slicing a gash in Vergo's coat. A strand of his hair drifted to the floor, severed midair.
"And you're still a ghost," Vergo countered, slamming his Jitte into the ground. The force shattered a rowboat tethered nearby, its planks exploding into splinters. "Chasing a legacy that drowned with your mother."
Law froze. Elisabeta. The name hung unspoken, a blade in the dark.
Marya's grin turned feral. "Funny," she hissed, mist coiling around her fists. "I am not the only one chasing that legacy."
The ceiling groaned. A beam snapped, plunging into the canal with a sulfuric hiss. Hakugan, his goggles cracked, shouted over the din. "Captain—what do we do?!"
Law's gaze swept the room: Bram already herding Lotte and Klaas into a rowboat, Willem clutching Mira's mural sketches to his chest, Dr. Visser frozen in the doorway. Hendrik Van Berg stood there now, his hulking frame silhouetted by torchlight, eyes locked on Elsa.
"Execute the plan," Law barked. "Now!"
Bepo didn't hesitate. He scooped Clione and Hakugan under each arm, leaping into a boat as Bram revved the engine—a jury-rigged monstrosity of stolen Marine tech. The vessel lurched forward, churning the neon water into froth.
Hendrik strode toward Elsa, his moth-eaten Overseer's uniform streaked with grime. "Elsa," he rasped, voice raw.
She met him halfway, her lab coat flaring like a wounded bird. "You came."
No time for more. The ceiling cracked again, and Hendrik hauled her through Vergo's entrance, the door slamming shut behind them.
Marya and Vergo's battle crescendoed. She conjured a mist-whip, lashing it around his ankle, yanking him into a pillar. Stone dust bloomed. Vergo retaliated with a Soru-enhanced kick, shattering her mist-form—but she coalesced behind him, Eclipse aimed at his throat.
"Room!" Law's blue sphere engulfed them. He swapped a falling timber with a rusted anchor, the metal screaming as it embedded itself in the wall. "Marya—move!"
She didn't. Her blade met Vergo's Jitte in a shower of sparks, the clash echoing through the tunnels. "You first," she purred.
Vergo's mask slipped—a flicker of frustration. He'd underestimated her speed, her hunger.
The canal roared. Bram's boat vanished into the labyrinth, its wake sloshing toxic water onto the crumbling floor. Law leapt onto the last rowboat, Kikoku slashing through debris. "Marya!"
She finally disengaged, melting into mist as the ceiling collapsed. Vergo lunged, but found only air—and the hideout's final beam crashed between them, sealing the chamber in a tomb of stone and rot.
In the dripping silence, Marya reformed beside Law, her breath steady, her blade unmarred. Behind them, Vergo's voice echoed through the rubble, cold and final:
"This isn't over, Trafalgar."
Law didn't look back. "It never is."
The rowboat's engine surged into the dark, its wake glittering with neon poison and the ghosts of a thousand drowned lilies.
The canals of Nieuw Bloemendaal stretched ahead like veins of a poisoned god, their waters glowing neon-pink under the bioluminescent algae clinging to the crumbling brick arches. Law's rowboat drifted soundlessly, the engine cut, leaving only the drip of toxic runoff and the distant wail of windmills grinding their gears. Marya sat across from him, her posture relaxed but her eyes sharp—Eternal Eclipse lay across her lap, its obsidian blade swallowing the faint light.
Law's hands gripped the oars, knuckles pale. The silence between them was a third passenger, heavy and charged.
"Okay," Law said at last, his voice smooth as canal silt. "Talk."
Marya raised a brow. "You first."
A muscle twitched in his jaw. The water around them rippled, disturbed by something unseen beneath the surface—a skeletal lily root, perhaps, or the shadow of a Gifter patrol.
"Fine." He exhaled, the word a blade drawn reluctantly. "You want my history? It's not a bedtime story."
Marya's fingers traced the runes on her sword. "I didn't think it would be."
Elsewhere, in the labyrinth of canals:
Bepo's rowboat juddered as it clipped a half-sunken windmill gear, the impact sending a spray of neon water over the edge. Hakugan cursed, scrubbing his goggles with a stained sleeve. "Can't see a damn thing in this glow!"
"Just follow Bram's map!" Uni barked, his voice too high to sound convincing. He gripped the sides of the boat, his boots slipping on algae-slick planks.
Bram, hunched at the bow, squinted at the tattoos winding up his arms—living charts of the island's underground waterways. "Blood Dike's ahead," he muttered. "But the evacuation signal hasn't lit yet. If we blow it too soon…"
"Do you think they'll be okay?" Bepo blurted, ears flattening. "Captain and Marya, I mean. And, um. Us?"
Clione snorted, adjusting his hat. "Worry about your steering, Bepo. That gear nearly took my arm off."
Uni forced a laugh, brittle as old glass. "We're Heart Pirates! Since when do we not barely survive?"
Bram didn't smile. His gaze lingered on the water, where the reflection of a child's skeletal doll floated past, its limbs knotted from dead lily stems.
Back in the drifting boat:
Law's voice was low, stripped of its usual edge. "I was born in Flevance. The 'White City.'" He paused, as if the name itself was a relic he'd buried. "Our walls were marble. Our wealth, endless. And our curse… invisible."
Marya watched him, unblinking.
"White Lead Disease," he continued. "A death sentence in our bones. The World Government burned the city to hide it. My entire family was gone. Soon after I joined Doflamingo's crew," Law's thumb brushed Kikoku at his side, the gesture unconscious, tender. " That is when I met Cora….. Corazon, was a fool. A clumsy fool. But he gave me a name. A purpose." Law's grip tightened. "Doflamingo is a cancer. He killed Cora, his brother, to keep his secrets. Shot him through the heart while I hid in a trunk, choking on my own blood."
The memory hung between them, raw and jagged. Somewhere above, a windmill's fan snapped, its broken blade plunging into the canal with a sulfuric hiss.
Marya tilted her head. "And Vergo?"
Law's gaze sharpened. "He is Doflamingo's spy. A Marine dog."
"Ah." Marya leaned back, her smile thin. "We've met. On Isla Koralia." Marya smirked at the memory. "That is also where I also met Ace."
Law stared at her. "You fought him."
Marya's gaze shifted to her palm as she fisted her hand, flexing her forearm and the dark veins underneath. "Yeah, before this happened." She flicked a droplet of neon water from her blade. "I figured out something about my Haki because of that. I am surprised he lived."
The boat drifted into a cavern, the walls studded with fossilized tulip bulbs—relics of the island's fertile past. Marya's hand closed over his wrist, cold as mist. "Corazon… Did he ever tell you why he betrayed Doflamingo?"
For a heartbeat, Law's mask slipped—a flicker of the boy in the trunk, trembling and alone.
"No," he said quietly. "But I think it was because he believed in something… foolish."
"Hope?"
The cavern walls trembled, sending ripples through the neon-lit canals as Willem Van der Zee's rowboat sliced through the toxic water. Bioluminescent algae clung to the stone above like cursed stars, their green glow reflecting in the panicked sweat on Lotte's brow. She clutched a rusted wrench, her fingers trembling as the ceiling groaned.
"Focus," Klaas Janssen muttered, his voice gravelly with age but steady as a tide. He gripped his cane, carved from the mast of a ship long sunk. "Faith is the compass when the map burns."
Willem unrolled a frayed schematic, its edges singed from a distillery raid. "The Blood Dike's supports are here, here, and—" A chunk of ceiling plunged into the water beside them, spraying putrid pink droplets. Lotte yelped, nearly dropping her wrench into the abyss.
"We're not gonna make it!" she hissed, her braids—woven with withered lily stems—swinging wildly. "The whole tunnel's collapsing!"
Mira De Graaf said nothing. Her hands moved ceaselessly, charcoal sketching the chaos on a scrap of parchment: the skeletal outlines of drowned windmills, the defiant orange flare, Willem's sunken eyes. Art was her language, her rebellion.
Willem placed a calloused hand on Lotte's shoulder. "This island has survived worse," he said, though his voice wavered like the algae's light. "We trusted the Heart Pirates to break the chains. Now we trust ourselves to drown them."
Above, the roar of collapsing stone echoed like a beast's final breath.
In Law's boat, the air was thick with the scent of rust and revelations. Marya's fingers brushed the scar beneath her collar—a jagged line, pale as bone, where a velociraptor's maw had bitten deep. Law's gaze followed the motion, sharp as a scalpel.
"Your turn," he said, cutting the engine again. The boat drifted into a narrower channel, walls choked with fossilized tulip bulbs, their petals long turned to stone. "Who's pursuing you? And why?"
Marya leaned back, Eternal Eclipse humming faintly against her thigh. "Are you sure you want to know, Trafalgar? Some secrets unravel the world."
Law's jaw tightened. "Spare me the theatrics. What are you tangled in?"
She studied him, her golden-ringed eyes unreadable. "What do you know of Ohara?"
"A scholar's island. Burned for asking questions."
"And Elbaf?"
"A land of giants. They protect their history fiercely."
Marya nodded. "The World Government fears two things: truth, and those who remember it. Ohara was a test. A warning." She traced a rune on her blade. "But not all knowledge died there. The Consortium—my… colleagues—guard caches of forbidden texts. Libraries hidden in plain sight, masquerading as dead, unfindable islands."
Law's brow furrowed. "The Void Century."
"Fragments of it," she conceded. "Enough to piece together prophecies. A return of the gods. A world reshaped."
"Prophecies?" Law scoffed. "You sound like a zealot."
Marya's smile was thin. "And you sound like a man who's never seen a Poneglyph."
The boat jolted as another tremor rocked the cavern. Law steadied himself, his mind racing. "The people after you—this Syndicate. They want the Consortium's secrets?"
"They want silence," she said, her voice colder now. "The man who hired them murdered my mother. Burned her research. Killed Vaughn, my… Team lead and friend." Her hand tightened on her sword.
Law's eyes narrowed. "Including you."
"Especially me."
For a moment, the only sound was the drip of nectar from the ceiling. Then Marya did something unexpected: she laughed, soft and bitter. "Being here, with your crew… It's made me forget, sometimes. The weight of it all."
Law blinked. "Forget?"
"That I'm not just a relic hunter. Or a weapon. That there is a man in need of killing. That is the reason I was searching for my father." She met his gaze, and for a heartbeat, her armor cracked—a flicker of exhaustion, of loneliness. "Thank you for that, Doctor."
Before Law could respond, the cavern shuddered violently. A fissure split the ceiling, and a torrent of rubble rained down.
"Captain!" Hakugan's voice echoed from ahead. "The ceiling—it's buckling!"
Law yanked the engine cord, the roar drowning his next words. But Marya saw them on his lips: Later.
As the boats surged toward the Blood Dike, the algae's glow caught the tears on Mira's sketch—a single drop smudging the charcoal, turning a windmill into a shadow, a hero into a ghost.
In the bow of Willem's boat, Lotte clenched her wrench and muttered a nursery rhyme, her mother's lullaby. Klaas hummed along, his voice a weathered anchor.
"De storm zal breken, het licht zal komen," he intoned. The storm will break, the light will come.
Mira added the final line in strokes: a lion's crest, half-hidden in the rubble.
The mark of De Oranje Schaduw.
The mark of hope.