Location: The Bone Reef
A jagged shelf of stone and shipwrecks jutted from the sea — a place forgotten by maps and feared by anyone with Devil Fruit blood.
It was here, decades ago, that the World Government dumped the failed ones.
Fruits that never activated.
Shells that melted their users.
Cores that screamed instead of pulsing.
Fruit Graveyard #07.
Codename: The Bone Reef.
Kaien's skiff slid into a shallow cove, skimming across gray water laced with rust and oil. He stepped onto shore, boots crunching over salt-caked fragments.
They weren't rocks.
They were teeth.
He pulled up the hood of his forgecoat, exhaled slowly, and activated a core scanner—a compact lens embedded in his right eye.
[Core Echo Scan: Active]
[Searching for viable fragments…]
[Warning: Psychic Residue Detected]
Kaien smiled grimly.
"Good. Still something alive here."
Underground — Fruit Chamber 72
He descended a winding path carved into bone and basalt.
Deep below, he found it: a cracked containment pod, once sealed by Vegapunk's predecessors. Within it sat a Devil Fruit shell.
Or what was left of it.
A translucent fruit, broken in half, its insides swirling with colorless static. The air around it buzzed. Even in pieces, the core pulse was active.
[Failed Fruit No. 72 – Type: Logia / Seismic-Glass Hybrid]
Status: Fragmented | Echo Contaminated | Memory Instability: Critical
Kaien knelt beside it.
"You were supposed to shatter everything you touched," he whispered. "But all you did was break yourself."
He drew a containment ring around the fragments. Activated the stabilizer field.
As the shards fused together in the vacuum-seal, a voice whispered behind his teeth.
"I was someone once."
"I remember everything. And nothing."
Kaien closed his eyes. The fruit was bleeding echoes — the thoughts of a long-dead user stuck inside it.
He could use that.
Not as a full fruit.
But as a component.
Meanwhile – Eltheria Island, Dreego's Lab
Dreego examined a half-activated blueprint etched onto a titanium scroll. It pulsed with hot light, revealing a design nearly identical to what Kaien now held.
"Failed Fruit No. 72," he said. "You never truly died, did you?"
His assistant turned. "Will Kaien use it?"
Dreego smiled.
"He'll have no choice. That core's the only thing stable enough to counter an evolving Logia-Paramecia hybrid like Wraith Spark."
He turned to the Echoframe prototype still locked in containment.
"Prepare to deploy ours."
Forge Zone – Return to Irka
Kaien arrived back at the forge with the stabilized shard suspended in a glass orb.
He opened the Memory Integration Console, a Vegapunk-designed construct that allowed controlled splicing of memory-based essences into core shells.
He placed the glassquake shard inside.
The forge whirred.
[Echo Type: Reflective Trauma]
[User Imprint: Lost identity / recursive collapse]
[WARNING: Will overwrite unsealed memory anchor]
Kaien inserted a new trigger:
Catalyst: "Desire to forget."
Trigger: "Must look into a mirror and not recognize self."
Limiter: Activates only when the user's identity is unstable.
He shaped the fruit's shell using bonded obsidian and compressed Sea Prism fragments — capable of counter-resonance, but with side effects.
At last, the fruit was complete.
REMNANT BREAK: FINAL FORM
Type: Logia + Paramecia
Effect: Erases surrounding fruit resonance. Warps user's memory to match.
Core Echo: "The world only sees what you remember."
Risk: If core resonance reaches 0%, the user forgets their own name.
Kaien stared at it for a long moment.
"You're the price she has to pay."
Meanwhile – Cipher Pol Aigis Zero HQ
Ravina floated in her stasis pod, twitching.
The Wraith Spark inside her wasn't dormant anymore.
It was breeding — forming recursive logic chains that threatened to overwrite her mind.
The commander watched as her vitals spiked.
"She'll destabilize in less than twelve hours."
An agent approached. "Orders?"
The commander answered slowly.
"Find Kaien."
"Tell him we'll trade."
Final Scene – Kaien's Private Forge Log
He recorded a final note into the black-forge journal, a device not connected to the world.
"She's going to forget eventually."
"What I'm doing now… she won't remember."
He held the fruit one last time.
"But I'll remember enough for both of us."
He closed the journal.
Outside, the Godfruit pulsed.
Faster than before.