Rain struck the corpse like it was trying to wash away a mistake.
Kaien Vohl didn't blink.
Kneeling in the iron-stained dirt of Irka's ship graveyard, he dragged a gloved hand across the chest of the dead Marine — her skin scorched from within, the flesh blackened in branching streaks, as if something had tried to claw out of her ribcage.
He touched the sternum.
A circle of light spread beneath her body — gears turning, symbols spinning, etched with impossible precision.
His eyes glowed amber as reality tilted.
[FORGE INTERFACE ACTIVATED]
Essence Signature Detected: "LOGIA / Fire"
Status: UNAWAKENED | REJECTED | CORRUPTED
Kaien's voice was low. "Core rejection again. Third one this month."
He pressed two fingers to her chest. The forge responded — light flaring through the circle, pulling a writhing ember of power from her soul. It screamed.
A glass bead formed in his palm, glowing orange and fractured like volcanic rock.
He sealed it in a compartment on his belt. Seven more sat there. Each one a fragment of a power torn from death.
Kaien stood, brushing off his coat. "One more broken flame."
Behind him, the forge seal sank into the dirt.
The corpse crumbled.
Under the Drydock — The Forbidden Chamber
He descended rusted stairs into the underground, where flickering lights revealed his workshop — a half-mechanical crypt of tools, cores, scrolls, and fruits that didn't exist on any map.
At the center sat a sealed pedestal wrapped in chains and warning glyphs.
The fruit on top pulsed.
Blue and black skin. Veins of golden code running across its flesh. Numbers floating in the air around it — and a heartbeat.
Kaien didn't look at it.
He didn't need to.
Godfruit Status: UNCLAIMED
Core Count: [REDACTED]
Seal Integrity: 87%
He turned away.
That one was for later. Maybe never.
Back in the forge chamber...
Kaien pulled the fire bead from his belt and set it into a cradle next to a black, biomechanical shell — a faux fruit he'd grown from petrified Sea King marrow and sky-soil from a ruined Sky Island.
The shell twitched. Then opened.
Kaien inserted the core.
The forge glyphs flared around him — runes spiraling through the air, calculating trauma imprints, essence frequency, and compatibility with the synthetic shell.
The lights dimmed.
[EMOTIONAL CATALYST REQUIRED]
Suggested: "Guilt" | "Failed Protector Syndrome"
Kaien frowned. "Still echoing her death?"
He reached into the forge's memory pool — a spiraling library of "soul-fragments" taken from each fruit's last user. The woman's burned silhouette reappeared: screaming, clutching a child, her flames spiraling out of control.
Kaien's jaw tightened.
Catalyst matched. Emotional bond locked.
The fruit shell sealed. The skin turned red and gold, pulsing like hot metal, with jagged black veins.
WRAITH SPARK FRUIT
TYPE: Hybrid (Logia + Paramecia)
ABILITY: Phase through machines and minds. Possess electricity. Feed on guilt.
TRIGGER: User must experience regret.
He stepped back.
It was beautiful.
And it was dangerous.
"I'll store you," he said softly, "until someone stable comes along."
"Too late."
Kaien turned.
She was already holding it.
Ravina. Cipher Pol rogue. Gray eyes like shattered steel. Black coat. One arm scorched from a past mission she wouldn't talk about.
Kaien didn't move. "You're not ready."
"I've been ready since my daughter burned alive," she said.
Kaien's gaze hardened. "The fruit reacts to guilt. That kind of power will kill you."
Ravina didn't answer.
She bit into it.
The explosion tore half the workshop apart.
The room vanished in white fire and lightning screams.
Kaien covered his eyes.
When he looked up—
She was gone.
Then a voice behind him: "I can feel the whole world flickering."
Ravina stood barefoot on a broken machine, her body glowing with threads of electricity. Her left arm phased in and out of view. Sparks danced in her hair.
"I hear their regrets, Kaien," she whispered. "Every person I failed. They're inside me."
The machines around them began shorting out. The glyphs sputtered. The forge interface distorted.
She turned toward him, smiling — wild, broken, alive in a way she hadn't been in years.
"And you made me this way."
Kaien took a step back. "Don't—"
She vanished in a crack of thunder.
Somewhere across the sea…
A young man sat in a candlelit library aboard a white-sailed vessel. He wore gold-rimmed glasses and a velvet coat embroidered with world government runes.
Dreego. Kaien's former apprentice.
Before him, a scroll unspooled — one Kaien had forged and then sealed away.
The words shifted.
[FORBIDDEN FRUIT DESIGNATION: DEITY-CLASS]
[Codename: "Godfruit"]
[Violation: MULTI-CORE FUSION]
Dreego leaned closer.
And smiled.
Back on Irka
Kaien stood in the ruined forge.
Lightning scars marked the walls. Machines sparked. The fruit was gone.
He had given birth to something he couldn't control. Again.
And somewhere in the room, the Godfruit pulsed louder — as if it had been watching.
Waiting.
Calling.
Kaien looked at it.
"Not yet," he muttered.
But deep down…
He knew someone else would answer.