The storm raged outside the Warship Snail, lightning fracturing the sky into jagged shards of white and purple. Inside the command deck, the air was sterile, cold, and thick with the acrid tang of Judge's fury. The king of Germa stood at the holographic war table, his golden helmet cracked down the center, exposing a sliver of his scarred face. Behind him, the crew clones worked in silent efficiency, their blank visors avoiding his gaze.
The doors hissed open. Ichiji and Niji strode in, their Raid Suits still smeared with the blackened sap of Yggdrasil's crypts. Ichiji's Sparking Red lenses flickered as he scanned the room. "Father. The clones report Reiju and Yonji were not recovered."
Judge didn't turn. His gauntleted hand clenched, electromagnetic energy crackling around his spear. "They were not prioritized."
Niji slammed his fist on the table, Dengeki Blue sparks dancing across his knuckles. "You left them?!"
The clones froze. The hum of machinery stuttered.
Judge turned slowly, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. "You question my judgment?"
Ichiji stepped forward, tone flat but edged. "They are Vinsmokes. Germa's commanders. Their loss weakens us."
"Loss?" Judge's laugh was a blade dragged over stone. He activated the hologram—a replay of the crypt's collapse, Reiju and Yonji vanishing under a mountain of ice. "They failed. They hesitated. Germa does not salvage weakness."
Niji's goggles flared. "They're your children—"
"They are soldiers!" Judge roared, slamming his spear into the floor. Lightning arced across the room, frying a clone who stood too close. The smell of burnt circuitry filled the air. "And soldiers die. That is their purpose. Or have you forgotten your programming?"
Ichiji's jaw tightened. For a fraction of a second, his reflection in the war table's surface flickered—a version of him with Sora's eyes, not Judge's. "Then what is our next objective?"
Judge's spear retracted with a hiss. "The crypt's data. The mirrors' resonance with Poneglyph material. We salvage what we can from the wreckage and adapt."
Niji bristled. "And them? If they're alive—"
"Then they will die as all failures do." Judge turned back to the hologram, zooming in on a shard of mirror embedded in the ice. "The Ancient Kingdom's secrets are all that matter. The rest… is noise."
The brothers exchanged a glance. For a heartbeat, something flickered—a ghost of defiance, buried deep beneath layers of genetic tampering. Then it vanished.
"Understood," Ichiji said tonelessly.
Niji smirked, sharp and hollow. "We'll scrape the crypt clean."
As they turned to leave, Judge's voice stopped them. "And boys?"
They paused.
"Never question me again."
The doors sealed behind them. On the hologram, the mirror shard pulsed—a faint, trapped echo of Reiju's voice, whispering: "Legacy is a prison."
The crypt's entrance loomed like the maw of a starved beast, its jagged ice teeth dripping black sap that hissed where it struck the frozen ground. Ichiji and Niji stood at the threshold, their Raid Suits—Sparking Red and Dengeki Blue—humming faintly in the oppressive silence. Above them, the Warship Snail hovered like a vulture, Judge's holographic glare burning into their retinas.
"Retrieve the core shard. Do not repeat your siblings' incompetence."
The transmission cut. Niji cracked his neck, lightning flickering across his knuckles. "Let's make this quick. I'm bored already."
Ichiji said nothing, his visor scanning the crypt's shifting geometry. The mirrors lining the walls no longer showed reflections—they pulsed, swollen with dark fluid, their surfaces writhing like living skin.
The moment they crossed the threshold, the air thickened. Black sap rained from the ceiling, splattering their suits. Where it landed, the armor sizzled, tendrils of smoke curling upward.
"Acid?" Niji muttered, flicking a droplet off his gauntlet. "Pathetic."
"Adaptive defense," Ichiji corrected coldly. "The crypt is learning."
They pressed deeper, their boots crunching over frozen clones—Germa soldiers from the last incursion, now half-melted into the ice, their visors cracked and empty. The mirrors began to laugh, a chorus of distorted voices.
A shadow moved.
Niji spun, lightning arcing from his fist—but the bolt struck a mirror, refracting into a dozen searing beams. Ichiji dodged, but one grazed his shoulder, scorching his suit.
"Watch your aim," Ichiji hissed.
"Watch yours," Niji shot back, nodding to the floor.
Beneath them, the ice had begun to crawl, tendrils of black sap coiling around their ankles.
The first doppelgänger materialized from a mirror—a twisted Ichiji, his Sparking Red suit corroded, eyes glowing venom-green. It fired a beam of crackling energy, forcing Ichiji to dive.
Niji lunged, lightning-clad fist aimed at its chest—but his punch phased through, the doppelgänger dissolving into smoke. Behind him, another mirror birthed a warped Niji, its laughter shrill.
"They're illusions!" Ichiji barked.
"No," Niji growled, parrying a lightning strike from his double. "They're better."
The crypt had learned. The doppelgängers wielded their own abilities with brutal precision, their attacks amplified by the mirrors' malevolence. Ichiji's energy blasts ricocheted endlessly, igniting the sap-coated walls. Niji's lightning supercharged the crawling tendrils, turning the floor into a web of live wires.
A tremor rocked the chamber. Above, the ceiling splintered, glacial stalactites plunging like spears. Ichiji shoved Niji aside as one impaled the ground where he'd stood.
"Move!" Ichiji ordered.
They sprinted toward the central chamber, but the crypt shifted—walls pivoting, floors tilting. The core shard glowed ahead, embedded in a pillar of black ice.
Niji reached it first. "Got it—!"
The floor vanished.
They fell, crashing into a lower chamber filled with half-digested clones, their bodies fused with mirror shards. Niji's leg snapped against a jagged rock, his suit sparking. Ichiji landed hard, his visor fracturing.
Above, the ceiling sealed—a seamless sheet of ice.
Niji snarled, clawing at his leg. "Get. This. Off."
A clone's arm, grotesquely melded with a mirror shard, pinned his calf. Ichiji fired a concentrated beam, severing the limb. Niji stumbled free, his Dengeki Blue suit flickering.
"Status," Ichiji demanded.
"Functional," Niji lied, blood seeping through his boot.
The chamber trembled. The walls bled faster now, sap pooling around their ankles. Mirrors flickered to life, showing Judge's sneering face. "Retrieve the shard or die. Your choice is irrelevant."
Niji laughed, bitter and hollow. "He'd say that even if we were winning."
Ichiji adjusted his cracked visor. "We are not programmed to lose."
But the words rang hollow. The crypt's whispers seeped into their helmets: "You are replaceable. You are nothing."
The clones stirred. Not Germa's mindless drones—these were the crypt's children, their bodies grafted with mirror shards, eyes glowing with sentient malice.
Ichiji fired, but his beam diffused in the sap-thick air. Niji's lightning fizzled, grounded by the pooling acid.
A clone lunged, mirror-claw raking Ichiji's chest. He staggered, neon-blue blood staining his suit. Niji intercepted the next strike, his fist shattering the clone's skull—but a shard sliced his arm to the bone.
"Fall back!" Niji barked.
"To where?!" Ichiji spat, energy fading.
The core shard glowed mockingly above, encased in ice. Niji's eyes narrowed.
"One shot." He pointed to a crumbling pillar. "Blast it. Bring the ceiling down."
Ichiji hesitated—a millisecond, no more—then fired.
The world turned white.
*****
The crypt's air hummed with a predatory static, the black mirrors pulsing like diseased hearts. Marya's mist coiled restlessly around her legs as Reiju's words hung between them—"Or both. Your choice."
The clones erupted through the ice-walled corridor in a cacophony of shattering glass and guttural snarls. Their bodies—half-melted Germa soldiers fused with jagged mirror shards—twisted into grotesque parodies of humanity. Vaughn's axe, Light Bringer, erupted in a nova of sound-forged light, cleaving through the first wave. "Go!" he roared, veins bulging as he held the horde at bay.
Marya lunged, Eternal Night slicing through a clone's mirror-plated skull. As the creature collapsed, its fractured face reflected not her own, but a stranger in Marine white—her hair cropped, her father's cold amber eyes blazing. The vision-Marya raised Eternal Night against a crowd of chained revolutionaries, their faces pleading.
"You inherited more than his sword," the reflection hissed. "You inherited his fear."
The real Marya faltered. Her mist flickered, thinning as doubt crept in. A clone seized the opening, mirror-claw raking her arm. She gasped, blood splattering the ice, but Vaughn's axe intercepted the next strike.
"Snap out of it!" he barked, yanking her backward. "This ain't a damn art gallery!"
Reiju's poison arced in lethal ribbons, dissolving clones into bubbling sludge. A mirror caught her eye—a younger self, maybe eight, standing between Judge and a trembling Sanji. In the vision, she screamed, "Stop!" and Judge's fist froze mid-swing. Sora watched from the shadows, alive, unbroken.
The reflection-Reiju turned, eyes accusing. "You could've saved us. You chose not to."
Reiju's gauntlet trembled. A clone lunged, but Yonji's winch arm smashed it into debris. "Focus!" he spat, though his voice lacked its usual venom.
Yonji's winch arm whirred, crushing clones with mechanical precision. A mirror shard sliced his cheek—and suddenly, the glass showed him clad in a revolutionary's coat, defending a village from Germa's warships. The reflection-Yonji grinned, bloodied but triumphant. "This is what strength should be!"
"Shut up!" Yonji snarled, obliterating the mirror with a punch. But the cracks spread, multiplying the heroic doppelgänger's image a hundredfold.
Charlie ducked behind a frost-encrusted pillar, scribbling notes as Vaughn's axe lit the chaos. A nearby mirror shimmered—an older Charlie in a World Government robe, unveiling a Poneglyph translation to a crowd of applauding Celestial Dragons. The reflection adjusted his glasses smugly. "Knowledge is power—why waste it on ghosts?"
"No…" Charlie whispered, reaching for the vision. "I'm not—I'm not you!"
A clone's mirror-blade speared toward his chest. Marya's mist yanked him aside just in time. "Keep your eyes here!" she snapped, her voice raw.
The chamber convulsed, ice and glass collapsing in a roaring avalanche. The clones pressed harder, their shard-claws gleaming with crypt-sap. Vaughn's axe dimmed, his stamina fraying.
"The pool!" Reiju shouted, hurling a poison vial into the churning black liquid at the chamber's heart. "Now, Marya!"
Marya hesitated—Eternal Night trembled in her grip, the Marine's reflection still screaming in her mind—then plunged the blade into the pool.
The explosion of mist, poison, and light tore through the crypt. Clones disintegrated. Mirrors screamed. The floor split, swallowing Germa's horrors into the abyss.
But the visions lingered, seared into their minds as they fled—a gallery of ghosts demanding payment for paths untaken.
The explosion's aftermath left the crypt shuddering, its walls oozing black sap like an open wound. The air reeked of scorched metal and smolder, the ground littered with the glittering remains of clones and shattered mirrors. Marya staggered back, her arm bleeding freely, the scar on her cheek glowing faintly under the crypt's sickly bioluminescence. Around her, the others panted—Vaughn's axe sputtering, Reiju's gauntlets cracked, Yonji limping on a sparking leg, Charlie muttering over his sap-stained notes.
For a heartbeat, there was silence. Then the walls began to groan.
"We're not out," Vaughn growled, wiping blood from his brow. "This place is rearranging itself. Again."
Marya's eyes narrowed. Her mist, still swirling erratically at her feet, thickened into jagged tendrils. "I have an idea."
Vaughn's head snapped toward her. "No. Whatever it is—no. Last time you 'acted on instinct,' it didn't go well."
"I have it under control," she shot back.
"Debatable."
Reiju leaned against a trembling mirror, her voice icy. "If Germa's clones regroup, we die. Decide."
Marya ignored them, pressing a hand to her forehead. The glowing beetle-shaped mark on her third eye—a manifestation from Alabasta, —flared to life, its light piercing the gloom. "The mist… it responded to the crypt. I can use it to map the structure. Find an exit."
Vaughn gripped Light Bringer tighter. "And if it responds badly?"
"Then we die faster."
Before he could protest, her eyes blazed white. The mist erupted outward in a shockwave, tendrils branching like roots, seeping into cracks in the ice, probing the crypt's shifting architecture. The beetle on her brow pulsed rhythmically, synchronizing with the mist's spread.
"Marya—" Vaughn warned, watching the walls recoil as her power brushed them.
"I'm good," she hissed, though sweat dripped down her neck.
The mist surged deeper—and suddenly, she screamed.
A searing pain lanced through her skull, visions flooding her mind: the crypt's labyrinthine veins, its pulsating core buried miles below, and something else—a presence, ancient and ravenous, coiled around the heart of Yggdrasil. Her daggers, Celestial Decree and Celestial Devastation, glowed violently at her hips, their hilts burning her skin.
"What's happening?!" Vaughn barked.
"It's—alive," Marya gasped, clutching her temples. "The crypt… it's alive, and it's—"
The floor lurched. Mirrors exploded inward, birthing new clones—these ones larger, their bodies armored in jagged black crystal.
Reiju hurled a poison vial. "Focus, or we die here!"
Marya's mist recoiled, snapping back into her body like a whip. She stumbled, blood trickling from her nose, but her daggers' glow intensified. "The exit's gone. The crypt… it's changing. The way out isn't a place—it's a pattern. These mirrors, the sap… it's a lock. And these—" She gripped her daggers, the blades humming. "—are keys."
Vaughn stared at her. "Keys to what?"
"To whatever the Ancient Kingdom buried here."
Yonji snarled, smashing a clone's skull. "Enough riddles! Just do it!"
Marya's mist lashed out again, this time channeled through her daggers. The blades carved glowing sigils into the air, their light searing the clones' crystalline flesh. The crypt shrieked, the walls convulsing as the symbols spread.
"You're pissing it off!" Vaughn shouted, deflecting a clone's blade.
"Good!" Marya spat. "If it's angry, it's afraid!"
The beetle on her brow blazed brighter. The mist solidified into a bridge of glowing vapor, arcing toward the ceiling—where the sap had coalesced into a single, pulsing mass.
"There!" Marya lunged, daggers raised. "The core!"
But as her blades struck, the crypt retaliated.
The floor vanished.
They fell into darkness, the clones' screams echoing after them—and deeper still, something stirred.
The fall lasted seconds and lifetimes.
Marya's daggers—Celestial Decree and Celestial Devastation—blazed like twin stars in the abyss, their light slicing through the suffocating dark. The crypt's roar faded into a hollow, echoing silence, broken only by the screams of the clones tumbling after them. Then, impact.
She struck water—thick, viscous, and alive. It clung to her skin like tar, dragging her deeper into a submerged chamber. Her daggers' glow revealed walls lined with petrified roots, their surfaces etched with Poneglyphic runes older than the Void Century. Above, the ceiling sealed shut, trapping her in a liquid tomb.
The water moved. Shapes writhed in the depths—skeletal figures fused with mirror shards, their hollow eyes fixed on her. Celestial Decree pulsed in her grip, its light repelling the creatures as she kicked upward. She breached the surface, gasping, only to freeze.
Before her loomed the crypt's core: a colossal orb of black glass, veined with glowing crimson sap. Inside, a shadow stirred—the presence she'd sensed earlier. It pressed against the glass, formless but hungry.
Vaughn landed hard on a slope of jagged ice, Light Bringer skidding from his grip. The axe's glow dimmed, revealing a tunnel collapsing inward, walls oozing sap that hardened into razor-edged spikes. Clones rained down around him, shattering on impact.
"Charlie!" Vaughn bellowed, voice echoing into chaos.
A whimper answered. The scholar clung to a ledge below, glasses cracked, one leg pinned under debris. Vaughn slid toward him, axe flaring to life as he severed the rubble. "Move!"
The tunnel convulsed. A clone, half-melted and snarling, lunged. Vaughn's axe met its skull, but the force knocked Charlie loose. They slid deeper into the crypt's bowels, the walls closing in behind them.
Reiju landed in a crouch, poison sizzling where the acidic sap touched her gauntlets. The chamber stretched endlessly, its ceiling supported by pillars carved into the likenesses of forgotten kings—their faces hollow, crowns replaced by mirror shards.
A clone dropped behind her. Then another. And another.
But these weren't Judge's mindless drones. They wore Germa uniforms, their faces familiar: soldiers she'd commanded, men she'd sacrificed. Their eyes glowed with sentient malice.
"Princess," they hissed in unison. "You left us to die."
Reiju's gauntlets dripped venom. "You were already dead."
Yonji crashed into a circular pit, his broken leg buckling. The walls shimmered with reflections of his past victories—cities burning, armies crushed, Sanji's childhood face bloodied and weeping.
Laughter echoed. A figure stepped from the glass: Yonji's heroic doppelgänger, unscarred, unbroken, Eternal Night gleaming in its hand.
"Still a puppet," it mocked. "Still weak."
Yonji roared, winch arm lashing out—but the machinery jammed, leaving him defenseless.
Charlie crawled through a corridor that pulsed like a living throat, walls lined with books bound in pale, veined leather. They breathed, pages fluttering to reveal text written in blood.
One tome fell open at his touch. The words shifted, forming his name—CHARLIE VOSS: TRAITOR, FAILURE, FOOL.
"No," he whispered. "I'm saving knowledge, not—"
The books screamed. Pages tore free, swirling into a vortex of razored paper.
Marya pressed a dagger to the core's glass surface. The shadow within recoiled, then slammed against the orb. Cracks spread.
"You do not command me," it hissed, voice like grinding stone. "I am Yggdrasil. I am judgment."
Above, Vaughn heard Marya's scream echo through the tunnels. He hauled Charlie up, snarling. "We need to find her. Now."
But the crypt shifted again—walls pivoting, floors dissolving. Somewhere, Reiju's poison met sentient clones in a corrosive ballet. Somewhere, Yonji's blood slickened the ice.
And deep below, the core shattered.