The summons arrived in the form of a silver hawk — not a message, but a demand. It came from Valemara, the Ivory Kingdom, an ancient power on the Grand Line known for its unmatched courts and armies veiled in ritual. The hawk bore the seal of High Regent Caedus Valemare, ruler of Valemara and steward of the Lex Ultima, a doctrine that predated even the World Government.
The charge:Crimes against humanity.Genocide.Treason against the Pact of Nations.
Not against Raizen.
Against his father — the man Raizen never knew. The man who had once been called Ashen Rael.
The courtroom was not a room at all, but a coliseum, carved from petrified coral, where ancient laws were spoken in tongue, and guilt was not proven — it was unveiled. Raizen stood before the Regents in a circle of firelight, his crew confined in silenced galleries above. His sword had been taken. His title ignored. His legacy weighed like iron shackles.
The trial wasn't about evidence.It was about memory.
Using forbidden memory-extraction relics, the court conjured images of Ashen Rael — not the myth or the missing father, but a soldier turned butcher, razing cities under banners that bore the same flame crest Raizen now wore.
Valemara's claim was simple: blood remembers.And Raizen, as the last of Rael's line, must answer for what his blood wrought.
"I am not my father," Raizen said, his voice steady even as the gallery hissed.
But the court wasn't convinced.
A young girl named Ellis Valemare, survivor of the sacked province of Caltherra, stood as a witness. Her home, destroyed in a purge ordered by Rael decades ago, was reduced to ash. She had one request: "If the son wears the crest, let him inherit the justice."
Zuri tried to intervene — nearly cutting through the magic-bound gallery to reach him — but Raizen raised his hand.He would face this.
He demanded trial by legacy — a rite outlawed in most of the world but preserved in Valemara. It meant descending into the Memory Depths, a vault of consciousness where Raizen would confront the truth of his father's past firsthand. Not illusions. Not myths. The man himself, as he had been.
Within the Memory Depths, Raizen stood beside a younger Ashen Rael — a man of fire and fury, who began as a liberator and ended as a monster. Through the haze of war, Raizen watched his father betray comrades, burn cities for peace, and abandon ideals in pursuit of something greater: a throne made of silence.
And then, Rael turned and spoke — not to the ghosts of memory, but to Raizen himself.
"Will you kill who you must to build your truth? Or will you let the world chain you in guilt for sins you never committed?"
Raizen returned from the Depths trembling. The court waited.
And he answered not with defense, but with a vow.
"I will not answer for my father's crimes. I will undo them. One by one. I will cleanse the legacy — not with fire, but with truth."
High Regent Caedus, after long silence, passed judgment.
"Raizen is guilty of inheritance — but not of repetition. Let him walk free. But know this: the world watches, and blood has a long shadow."
As Raizen left the court, Ellis approached and pressed a flame-marked stone into his palm.
"Make it right," she said. "Make sure no one else carries this curse."
Outside, the crew gathered around him. Silent. Tense.
"What now?" Zuri asked.
Raizen looked out toward the sea.
"Now, we stop fighting to become heroes."
He clenched the stone in his fist.
"We start fighting to end history repeating itself."
END OF THE CHAPTER3