"Heh… it seems like your regeneration has a limit after all…" Shanks scoffed, his voice ragged but steady.
Blood trickled from a gash across his forehead, staining one side of his face crimson. His clothes were torn and scorched, streaked with burns from Dorian's relentless elemental barrages. His chest heaved, each breath dragging fire into his lungs, but his grip on Gryphon — his saber — never wavered. His eyes burned with a storm's resolve, the kind that toppled men far greater than his age should've allowed.
Opposite him, Dorian looked like death itself staggering on borrowed time. His once-imposing figure trembled as if the weight of his own pride threatened to crush him. His left arm was gone — severed — and for the first time since the fight began, the wound wasn't knitting back together. His logia form flickered like a candle in the wind, unable to hold its shape. The dozens of times he had regenerated before no longer meant anything; his body had finally reached its breaking point.
"Ptui…!" Dorian spat, blood and embers spraying from his lips. He glared at Shanks with weary defiance, though the edges of fear curled in his eyes.
He had thought the boy would be easy prey. A red-haired rookie of the New World, barely cutting his teeth compared to the monsters who once ruled the seas. That was the reason he had come alone, arrogantly confident he could take the head of Gol D. Roger's former cabin boy and mount it as a trophy.
But reality had proven far crueler. Shanks was no rookie — he was a storm made flesh, a monster born of the old era but burning toward the new. In every clash, in every strike of steel and will, Dorian saw the truth. He was facing not a boy… but the man who would one day challenge even the Yonko.
For a moment, retreat flashed across his mind. But pride strangled it dead. It had been his voice that invoked the Davy Back Duel, his declaration that bound them both. And though he no longer knew if those tales of curses and retribution were true, he didn't dare risk testing them. This fight was sealed: it was to the death.
And from the ache in his hollowing chest, he already knew whose death it would be.
Shanks raised Gryphon, the blade gleaming faintly with the shimmer of black lightning. His gaze hardened. "You're a relic of the past, Dorian. Dragged into this age by some wicked trick of sorcery. You should've stayed in the era where you belonged…"
The ground beneath his feet cracked as his aura surged. And then Shanks moved.
In an instant, he was gone — a blur faster than Dorian's weary eyes could follow. His observation haki, dulled by exhaustion and desperation, failed to warn him in time. The next heartbeat thundered in his ears, and Shanks was already there, right before him, Gryphon lunging forward in a thrust so precise it felt like fate itself.
The saber pierced through Dorian's chest, conqueror's haki exploding outward like a storm unchained. Black lightning crackled violently as if the very sky roared at the intrusion. His logia body shattered under the strike, elemental form unable to reform, his power trembling against the overwhelming will that infused the blade.
A fist-sized hole tore through his chest — flesh, fire, bone, and spirit annihilated in one motion.
Dorian's eyes went wide, his scream caught in his throat as the air was blasted from his lungs. For the first time, he felt not just pain… but finality. Even his cursed regeneration, which had spat in death's face time and time again, faltered uselessly against the weight of Conqueror's Haki.
Blood sprayed from his mouth as he staggered, legs buckling beneath him. His vision swam — Shanks' silhouette burned into the haze like the sun itself. Shanks wrenched Gryphon free, his eyes unwavering, voice like a hammer striking the coffin shut.
"This is the new era, Dorian. And it has no place for ghosts like you."
Shanks raised Gryphon high, the gleaming saber poised for the final stroke — the end of the man who had dared to threaten his crew and their freedom.
Dorian knelt before him, blood gushing from the gaping wound in his chest, his mouth trailing crimson with each ragged breath. His once-flickering logia form had collapsed entirely; he was flesh now, mortal, broken. Even his haki had sputtered out, fading like a candle smothered by the wind.
The island itself, which moments ago had writhed under the grasp of his awakened oil powers, slowly calmed as if exhaling in relief. The sea, too, lost its shimmer of unnatural corruption as the last embers of Dorian's will burned away.
The light in his eyes dimmed. The duel was over.
But just as Gryphon began its fatal descent toward Dorian's neck, Shanks' eyes snapped wide — his observation haki shrieking in alarm. Instinct overtook him, his arm diverting the blade just as the sky above ripped open with a streaking slash of molten fury.
A torrent of liquid flame — no, lava itself — screamed downward in a blazing column, threatening to engulf them both. The searing heat warped the air, turning the battlefield into a furnace. Shanks met it head-on, swinging Gryphon in a wide arc. The blade sang, releasing a crescent of haki-infused force that collided with the infernal torrent.
The clash was cataclysmic.
Black-and-red lightning crackled as willpower met elemental destruction. The air howled, the ground buckled, and the sea itself recoiled, waves rising violently in every direction. Still, the flames surged forward, greedy, seeking to consume everything in their path.
Dorian, half-conscious and broken, staggered upright in a final act of desperation. His body, drenched in his own oil, began to glow with unbearable heat, skin blistering as he converted himself into a walking bomb. His eyes were wild — part fear, part madness.
"Die…! You Bastard…!"
With a guttural roar, he lunged for Shanks, arms outstretched to drag him into his fiery doom.
"Boom…"
The world detonated. The explosion ripped the sky apart. Fire and oil mingled in a blinding inferno, expanding outward in a wave so massive that the sea itself seemed to quake and recoil. The blast thundered across the island, toppling trees, sending rocks splintering, and hurling molten debris into the ocean. For a moment, everything was swallowed in light and sound.
But Shanks had already moved. A streak of red hair and steel cut away from the explosion, his reflexes sharp as ever. He landed hard on the island's scorched earth, dust clouding beneath his boots. His crew was already there, weapons drawn, their own haki blazing. Buggy — pale-faced but resolute — pointed toward the sky, his voice cracking.
"Oi, Shanks… Look up!"
And there it was. The heavens churned, painted red with fire and shadow as something vast descended. The sky darkened beneath the wings of a monster — a massive western dragon, its scales glowing like molten rock, as if it had been forged in the very heart of a volcano. Lava dripped from its talons, sizzling as it hit the sea. Each beat of its colossal wings unleashed a storm of molten wind, spraying gouts of flame and cinders across the battlefield.
The Red-Haired crew instinctively spread out, weapons ready, the dragon's torrential downpour forcing them back. The very air felt heavy, suffocating under the beast's presence. Shanks narrowed his eyes, Gryphon raised once more, haki surging around him like a storm.
The dragon roared, a sound like the eruption of a mountain. With terrifying precision, it dove through the smoke and fire, its glowing forelimbs stretching out.
Dorian, charred and unconscious, his body barely clinging to life after the suicidal explosion, was snatched from the brink of the sea by the dragon's massive claws. The molten beast cradled him protectively, yet its gaze never wavered from the Red-Haired Pirates. Its molten eyes blazed with a primal warning: pursue, and be destroyed.
The crew stood frozen, tension stretched taut like a bowstring, as the dragon hovered, wings beating flames across the island. Shanks' jaw tightened. He could feel it — this wasn't just a beast. It was something far older, far darker, watching them with intelligence as sharp as any man's.
And as the dragon slowly ascended with its broken prize clutched in its claws, the battlefield fell into silence — save for the hissing of molten rock cooling against the sea.
Yassop's fingers tightened on his rifle, the barrel already coated in obsidian-black armament haki, the weapon gleaming like a predator ready to strike. Beside him, Buggy's disembodied limbs floated in the air, his body prepared for aerial combat, defiance written across his scarred face.
But then—
"Stand down."
Shanks' voice cut through the tension like a blade, deep and commanding, sharp enough to make the very air freeze.
His eyes, however, were not fixed on Dorian's broken body, nor on the titanic drake whose wings blotted out the sun. No—his gaze pierced the horizon, his haki stretching far beyond mortal senses. He wasn't looking at what was before them. He was searching for what lurked beyond.
Observation haki flared within him like a storm. Shanks could feel it—faint ripples, subtle as whispers, cloaked and cunning. Presences… watching. More than one. They were buried so deep in the shadows that even his perception strained to trace them. But what his senses could not locate, his instincts screamed all too clearly: an overwhelming danger lay hidden here.
Whoever they are… they don't want to be seen.
The Red-Haired crew bristled, unease prickling their spines. Even Benn Beckman narrowed his eyes, a hand on his rifle, his own haki searching but coming up short.
Buggy hovered midair, trembling slightly. "Oi, oi, oi… Shanks. You're telling me there's more of them out there?!"
Shanks' grip on Gryphon tightened, his aura flickering like the edge of a storm about to break. His gaze sharpened, but he didn't raise his blade. Instead, he gave the order with iron certainty:
"Let them go."
The crew froze at his words, disbelief flickering in their eyes. Yassop's rifle trembled for a moment, but he lowered it. Buggy scowled, muttering curses, yet his floating limbs returned to him piece by piece. None dared question Shanks when his tone carried that weight.
Above them, the colossal flame-drake—Izumi—let out a deafening roar. Its molten wings unfurled wide, scattering a downpour of embers that hissed as they struck the ocean. The beast's eyes, glowing with volcanic heat, lingered on the crew as though daring them to move.
But Shanks did not falter. His eyes never left the horizon. His haki kept scanning, probing the unseen, wary of the ones pulling the strings. He knew now: both Dorian and Izumi were pieces on someone else's board. Puppets, not masters. And the one holding their strings… was not the World Government. No. This presence—these presences—were something else entirely. Something that even he, with his current strength, was unwilling to provoke.
Izumi beat her wings once more, the force of it rattling the trees and churning the sea into violent swells. With Dorian's unconscious, battered form clutched in her molten talons, the drake ascended.
Higher. Higher. And then, with a final screech that echoed like the death cry of a mountain, she vanished into the burning horizon.
The battlefield was silent, save for the hiss of cooling magma and the crash of waves. The Red-Haired crew exchanged tense glances. They were ready to fight—but the order had been given.
Shanks slowly lowered Gryphon, his expression unreadable. "We'll cross paths again…" he murmured under his breath, more to himself than anyone else.
No one answered. The silence was heavier than words. And though the dragon had departed, the weight of the unseen presence lingered, pressing on them like a shadow that would not lift.
****
The island was nothing but a scar in the New World—an abandoned husk forgotten even by cartographers. Jagged cliffs ringed its perimeter, black and sharp like the teeth of some ancient sea monster. The shoreline was littered with the skeletons of ships wrecked against its rocks, their splintered masts groaning in the salt wind like the cries of drowned men.
Inland, a barren wasteland stretched beneath a crimson dusk sky, the soil cracked and blackened, withered trees clawing at the heavens like skeletal fingers. No birds sang. No beasts stirred. The only sound was the ceaseless crash of waves and the hollow whistle of the wind sweeping through the ruined landscape.
It was here, on this desolate grave of an island, that three of the most feared names in history gathered in uneasy silence.
"Mamamamama…" Linlin's laughter shattered the stillness like glass breaking, her massive form shaking with cruel mirth. The sound reverberated across the empty cliffs, like a war drum of madness. She leaned against a jagged boulder, eyes gleaming with malicious delight as her voice lashed out at her captain. "Xebec, your judgment has been slipping ever since God Valley. Who would've thought you'd lower yourself to entertain such losers as part of your crew?"
At her feet, the charred and broken body of Dorian lay unconscious, blood mingling with the blackened dirt. His defeat had been swift, humiliating. Linlin took it as nothing more than fuel to ridicule her captain, delighting in another's failure like a vulture tearing at scraps.
But Rocks D. Xebec did not answer her mockery.
His broad frame stood silhouetted against the storm-washed horizon, a shadow even the crimson light of sunset seemed unable to pierce. His expression was unreadable, his eyes not on Linlin, not even on the broken body of his servant—but inward, calculating, dissecting every detail of the clash they had just escaped. The storm in his gaze promised violence, yet his silence was heavier than rage.
Izumi's voice, sharp with restrained fury, broke the quiet next. Her draconic eyes burned as she stood with her wings folded, molten steam rising from her scaled arms. "Why did we retreat? We could have killed them all. Wasn't that your plan? Or are you saying that ragtag bunch of pirates was enough to stop the three of us?"
Her frustration was a blade, but it dulled against Xebec's silence. And then—his voice cut through the air like a guillotine.
"The boy was marked."
The weight of those words crushed the air from the island, pressing down even on Linlin's booming laughter until it died in her throat. Izumi froze mid-breath.
"The boy carried the Devil's Mark," Xebec continued, his tone low and grim, his eyes flashing with a cruel knowing. "We cannot afford to expose ourselves so soon. Yes, we could have killed him. But striking him now would have revealed us. That mark is bait. It drags the attention of forces even I will not yet cross. And our preparations…" His fists tightened at his side, veins bulging like coiled snakes. "…are far from ready."
The Abyss Mark. Even its name carried a chill. Rocks had felt it, radiating from the young Garling spawn. A stain of abyssal energy unlike any Devil Fruit he had ever known, something ancient, something wrong. The mark was not simply a power—it was a signal flare to powers in the dark, a tether into places unseen. If they had struck then and there, their presence would have been laid bare. And Xebec could not allow that. Not yet.
But another thought gnawed at him, one far more dangerous than Linlin's mockery or Izumi's doubt. The flaw.
He had seen it in their clash against Whitebeard and Shiki, brushed it off at the time as trivial, but now it screamed at him like a wound. His puppets—the resurrected champions of his will—were not invincible. Dorian's defeat had proved it. Haoshoku Haki. That kingly will, when sharpened into a weapon, had burned through the tether of death itself.
Xebec's eyes narrowed, his teeth baring in a vicious snarl.
Yes, Haoshoku wielders were rare. Rarer still were those who truly mastered it. But rare did not mean nonexistent. And even one such wielder was enough to unravel the chains that bound his pawns back from death.
A laugh bubbled at Linlin's lips again, though quieter this time, touched with unease. Izumi scowled but said nothing more. Rocks turned his gaze out to the endless sea, his shadow cast long across the jagged earth of the island. His voice was low, yet it carried the weight of mountains.
"This sea and this world will be mine again. But we will not rush. We will not stumble again this time. The age of gods will burn… and in its ashes, only I will remain."
The wind howled over the deserted island, scattering ash and dust into the fading sky. And though no life stirred upon that land, the world itself seemed to shudder beneath the promise of the storm to come.
"So what do we do with this one…?" Linlin's thunderous voice cracked across the barren island as she kicked the crumpled body at her feet. Dorian's blood smeared across the blackened soil where he lay, every breath a ragged rattle of broken lungs.
The casual cruelty of her gesture earned her a sharp snarl from Izumi. Her wings folded inward as her towering draconic form shimmered, molten embers retreating into pale flesh. In the blink of an eye, the flame drake was gone, replaced by a woman of regal poise and simmering wrath.
Izumi now stood tall in a crimson cheongsam that clung to her lithe frame, embroidered with black dragon motifs that seemed to ripple with every subtle movement. Her long jet hair, bound in a flowing tail, spilled across her back, and her golden eyes burned with restrained fire as she glared at Linlin.
"Careful," Izumi said coldly, her voice like the hiss of steam escaping volcanic stone. "Mock him all you like, but remember he fought in our stead, and you yourself may not have fared better."
"Mamamama… are you comparing me to this weakling?" Linlin's voice cracked across the ruined island like thunder, her mountainous frame looming as she ground her heel into Dorian's broken body. "This pitiful scoundrel couldn't even handle an upstart rookie! I could crush that red-haired boy with a single arm!"
Her sneer stretched wide, lips curling into a feral grin as her eyes slid toward Izumi with deliberate malice. "Or perhaps… perhaps you're afraid, Izumi. Afraid you might have ended up in a similar state if you had faced that brat yourself. And truth be told…" She let her words drag, savoring the venom dripping from each syllable, "I wouldn't be surprised if you did."
The laughter that followed was wild and jagged, echoing across the barren cliffs of the island. To Linlin, neither Izumi nor Dorian mattered. Without the spark of Conqueror's Haki, they were nothing more than stronger pawns—useful tools, but pawns nonetheless. Disposable. Replaceable.
Izumi's golden eyes narrowed into slits, fire smoldering within. She could feel the weight of Linlin's derision pressing down, an attempt to remind her of her place. Yet Izumi was no meek subordinate. Her lips curved into a cold, cruel smile, and when she finally spoke, her voice carried the razor edge of scorn.
"Tell me, Linlin…" Izumi's tone dripped with false sweetness, her words honed like daggers. "Did you not also fall? And not to some mighty Emperor or legendary pirate—but to a nameless rookie, barely the same age as that red-haired brat? A teenager, wasn't it?" She tilted her head, studying Linlin like a snake sizing up its prey.
"Perhaps the world exaggerated your strength all along. Maybe the so-called 'infamous Big Mom' was nothing more than a story inflated by fear."
The island seemed to still.
Linlin's booming laughter, so constant and unshakable, faltered. For a fraction of a second, the mirth in her eyes was replaced by a flicker of rage—dark, raw, and unrestrained. The implication cut deep. It was one thing for her to mock Izumi or Dorian, but to question Linlin's legacy—her terror, her myth—was sacrilege.
Her gaze snapped to Xebec. For the briefest heartbeat, her lips parted as if to demand the right to tear Izumi apart, to crush her for her insolence. But then, like a storm swallowed back into the horizon, she clamped her mouth shut. Her laughter resumed, forced and jagged, masking the ember of fury that burned beneath.
Because no matter how deep their hatred ran, no matter how sharp their barbed words cut, they were still chained. Still shackled. Still dogs on Xebec's leash.
The silence that followed was poisonous. Izumi stood tall, her red cheongsam fluttering in the sea wind, her sneer lingering like ash in the air. Linlin's thunderous laughter rolled on, hollow and grating, her eyes gleaming with the promise of vengeance she could not yet claim.
And above it all, Xebec sat unmoving, watching his resurrected monsters snarl and snap at one another like wolves in a cage. He said nothing—for he knew. He wanted their hatred to fester. The deeper their grudges, the tighter his chains bound them.
Linlin only cackled, taking in a deep breath, her tall form looming over the rest, wild hair tangling in the salt wind. She prodded Dorian's broken ribs with the toe of her enormous foot, delighting in the weak groan that escaped his lips.
"Mamamama… he's sure to die if not treated. Even your Devil Fruit trickery doesn't seem to be healing him, Xebec. What use is a corpse that refuses to mend?" Her laughter rolled like thunder, each note laced with venom.
At last, Xebec's gaze turned from the stormy horizon and fell upon the broken man. His eyes were cold, devoid of sympathy. For a heartbeat, he considered it—stripping Dorian of the tether that bound him, snuffing him out like a failed experiment.
A weak pawn was no pawn at all. But his greater mind prevailed. The rituals… the preparations… they required time. And until he was ready to bind another soul into his collection, every piece he possessed was too valuable to discard. Even a broken Dorian was better than no Dorian at all.
"Izumi." Xebec's voice boomed with an authority that silenced even Linlin's laughter. "Your Shichibukai privilege grants you certain… protections. Use them. Lean upon the World Government's resources, have their dogs heal him. He may yet be of use when the time is right."
His words fell like iron chains. Linlin erupted in fresh, mocking laughter, doubling over with mirth at the irony of the great Rocks D. Xebec ordering one of his resurrected monsters to go crawling to the Marines for aid.
"Mamamama! How rich! To see Rocks, the man who once sought to tear the world itself asunder, now plotting to save scraps of rotten meat through the mercy of the Government!"
But behind her gleeful mockery, Linlin's thoughts churned like storm clouds. The longer she remained bound to Xebec, the clearer the truth became. His shackles were strong, his will suffocating, but not absolute. She had survived too long, conquered too much, to remain anyone's puppet forever. Somewhere, somehow, there had to be a flaw, a crack in the chains that held her spirit hostage.
And when she found it… she would tear free. She would walk the seas again, not as Rocks' plaything, but as Big Mom. The emperor of the new age. And when that day came, she would repay Xebec's captivity with a lesson so brutal, so merciless, that even death itself would remember the name Charlotte Linlin.
On that desolate island, as Dorian groaned faintly beneath the weight of his wounds and Izumi's golden eyes burned with restrained fury, the air trembled under unspoken truths. Xebec had given his command. His pawns would obey. For now. But beneath the silence, betrayal festered, as inevitable as the tide.