Empty.
No walls. No floor. No air to push against. No distance, no direction. Not even silence in the comforting sense—because silence implied sound could have existed. This was something worse: a place where "anything" had never been.
A thought tried to form and slipped apart before it could become a sentence.
Something—someone—reached for a body and found none. Reached for breath and found no lungs. Reached for a heartbeat and found no chest to hold one.
Only awareness remained, suspended in absence.
A name hovered just out of reach. She knew there had been one. She chased it the way you chased a word on the tip of your tongue, except there was no tongue either, no mouth, no shape. The effort frayed her, stretching her thinner, as if the act of remembering could unmake her.
Then a syllable caught.
Aria.
It didn't dissolve.
It sat in the emptiness like a small stone dropped into a vast lake, heavy enough to make ripples. Instinct tightened around it. If she let go, she would scatter.
With that single sound came fragments—soft-edged, not quite pictures, not quite memories.
A desk under a pool of lamplight. The dry scratch of pen on paper. Margins crowded with dates, arrows, and impatient question marks—threads she'd tried to pull until the past surrendered its shape. A folded map, creases worn pale from being opened too many times, edges softened by thumbs that kept returning to the same borders.
A library's cool hush. The smell of old pages—dust, ink, time—caught in the back of her throat like a promise.
And, sharpest of all, the familiar weight of her glasses: a faint pressure at the bridge of her nose, a smudge on one lens she always meant to clean. She remembered pushing them up with the side of a finger, blinking hard when letters began to swim, forcing her eyes to obey one more paragraph, one more footnote, one more date that might unlock everything.
A bell—clear, metallic—cutting through the air and pulling her out of that trance. The taste of coffee lingering on her tongue, bitter and warm, the heat of the cup seeping into her palms as if it could keep her awake through sheer will.
Not a full life. Just proof there had been one—and that she had loved the act of unraveling it.
The pieces refused to line up cleanly. A mirror shattered, reflecting the same person from too many angles at once.
Reach for one shard and it slipped away. Reach again and the first was gone. The harder the mind tried to assemble itself, the more the pieces slid apart.
And then the emptiness lurched.
As if the floor dropped out.
Something seized her and yanked—
Cold air slammed into her lungs.
Too much. Too fast. Her throat burned. Salt flooded her nose, sharp and undeniable, and the sea's bitterness coated her tongue like a hand forcing itself into her mouth. Her chest hurt with the first brutal insistence of breathing.
Eyes snapped open.
Stars.
Too many stars scattered across a black sky so clear it looked unreal. For a heartbeat, there was only that—beauty so crisp it felt like mockery.
The world rocked.
Try to sit up and the body answered wrong—too light, too weak, off-balance. Nausea rolled through her. Hands grabbed for the nearest thing without thinking.
Wet wood.
Fingers closed around it.
Small fingers.
Stare at them hard enough and maybe they would change. They didn't. Short, narrow, trembling faintly. Child's hands. Skin too smooth, too delicate, like the world could bruise it with a glance.
A sound scraped out—half breath, half choke—and the voice came out high. Hoarse. Small.
Not her voice.
The shock hit harder than the cold. Swallowing hurt. The mouth tasted like salt and old fear.
Turn the head.
Sea.
A tiny boat pitched beneath her, boards slick with damp. Every swell lifted it and dropped it again, steady as breathing. Black water surrounded her in every direction, vast and indifferent—except for the pale streaks cutting across the surface.
Not waves.
Lines.
Two long, faint trails, as if someone had once dragged chalk across the ocean and the water was patiently erasing it. In places, thin sheets glinted like glass—broken edges, half-melted fragments dissolving as the current worried at them.
Ice.
The mind clawed for an explanation. A label. Something solid.
Don't.
Not yet.
Grab certainty too fast and it would crack, and she would crack with it.
The boat rocked again. Palms pressed into wet boards, trying to anchor herself in a body that did not feel like hers, on a sea that should not exist.
That name again, held tight inside like a stake hammered into shifting ground.
Because if it slipped away, she didn't know what she became in this small body with this small voice.
Gaze dropped to the water beside the boat.
Moonlight smoothed the surface for a heartbeat, turning it into a mirror.
A face looked back.
Small. Pale. Wet hair clinging to cheeks. Lips cracked.
And eyes—
Blue.
Big blue eyes, too bright against the night.
Breath caught so hard it hurt.
No.
That face… that face was known.
Not from a life lived.
From a life watched once, from the safe distance of fiction—safe enough that you could love someone and never fear that love would cut you open.
The mirror rippled. The face fractured into pieces and reformed. The sight refused to become a mistake, refused to blur into coincidence.
The throat tightened. The name slipped out, barely louder than the wind.
"…Robin."
The word hung there, ridiculous and impossible.
And then something inside her tore open.
Not like a switch flipping.
Worse. Like a door cracking just enough for everything behind it to pour through.
Smoke.
Thick, bitter, choking—so real it filled her lungs even though the night sea lay calm around her. Heat followed, not warmth but heat that burned the inside of her mouth when she breathed.
Sound stopped being sound. It became a wall.
Screams layered on screams until they weren't individual voices anymore, just panic made audible. Gunfire. Explosions that thudded in bone. Wood snapping. Buildings collapsing. The awful, papery crackle of books burning.
Shoulders jerked. Hands flew toward ears on instinct, but the arms were too short, too weak, and it didn't help—because the noise wasn't coming from outside.
It was in her.
Still on the boat under the stars, yet also running somewhere else, feet pounding stone, lungs tearing, eyes stinging. Ash coated her tongue. Tears tasted like salt and smoke. The air itself felt poisoned, as if the sky had decided to punish her for being alive.
Ohara.
The word arrived like a wound, not a fact.
The stomach heaved. Nothing came up—there was nothing in this body to give—but it tried anyway. Tears spilled hot against cold cheeks.
If this could be remembered like it was hers, then—
Was she Aria?
Or was she—
The question yawned open like a cliff edge. Fall into it and there would be no climbing back out. This body felt like soft clay, and the sense of self was already slipping, threatened by memories that weren't hers and yet were lodged in her skin like splinters.
Hold on.
Hold on to the only thing that still felt like hers.
The other memories didn't stop. They didn't crash like a headache. They slid in the way normal memories did—only they were too vivid, too physical. The smell of smoke. The sting of tears. The weight of grief in a child's chest. The numb, impossible disbelief of watching everything you loved burn and being told it was justice.
Two lives.
Both real.
That was the horror of it. No neat division, no clean line where one ended and the other began. Her own fragments were scattered, imperfect. The child's memories were sharp, carved deep by fire.
The boat jolted as a swell lifted it. She grabbed the side and small fingers slipped. Pain flashed through the wrist—sharp, bright, present—and it yanked her back into now.
Blink hard.
The sky was changing.
Not day yet. Just a faint paling at the edges, a slow bruise of light spreading along the horizon. The sea turned less black, more steel. The chalk-pale ice trails looked thinner in the growing gray—broken in places, dissolving as if the water was quietly swallowing them.
Ahead, a shape gathered in the distance.
Land.
A dark smudge against the horizon, slowly growing. As it drew closer, the air smelled different: less open sea, more damp earth. Vegetation. The faint green breath of leaves.
The throat tightened again, but this time it wasn't only fear.
Land meant choices.
Land meant survival… or the end.
The boat drifted onward, obedient to the current, and she couldn't tell whether she was being carried toward rescue or toward a second disaster.
Then a shape glided beneath the boat. A shadow too large to belong to any normal fish.
It moved with smooth, patient power. The water rose around it in a subtle swell, as if the ocean itself was making room. Breath stopped. Fingers clawed into wet wood until knuckles ached—small knuckles, childish, useless.
A word flashed through her mind like a flare fired in panic.
Sea king.
For a terrifying second, the shadow slowed.
It hovered beneath the keel, a darkness deeper than the ocean. It felt like it knew she was there. Predators always knew.
But it didn't circle. It didn't rise.
It moved on.
Not mercy. Just indifference.
To something that size, she wasn't a meal. She wasn't even worth the strike.
Only when the surface steadied again did she realize her shoulders were shaking so hard her teeth clicked.
This world was real.
This world was hungry.
The island loomed closer as the light brightened. The first edge of the sun began to climb, washing the horizon in pale gold. The ice trails behind her faded into ghosts and then into nothing at all—erased as if they had never existed.
For a moment she watched the last glints vanish, and something in her chest tightened with a strange, directionless ache. Not gratitude. Not relief. Just the realization that whatever had brought her here had already turned its back.
The boat bumped something solid.
Wood scraped rock.
Her whole body flinched.
She pushed herself up, unsteady. The movement made her head swim. Her legs felt like sticks. She gripped the side, breathing through the dizziness, and lowered one foot.
Cold water bit her ankle.
She sucked in a breath and nearly lost her balance. The boat shifted. She grabbed a rock—slick, wet—and stepped down. Sand gave under her weight. The ground was real, but it didn't feel safe. Nothing felt safe.
Everything was wet.
Not just sea spray. The sand clung darker than it should. Rocks glistened. Grass shone as if it had been washed. Leaves drooped with weight, water beading along their edges. Somewhere deeper in the trees, droplets fell in soft taps like the island was still shaking water from its hair.
Her mouth was so dry it hurt. Tongue stuck to teeth. The urge to drink hit like an animal instinct, but the shoreline belonged to salt and rot and the kind of water that made you sicker.
She forced herself inland, only a little. The island rose gently toward its center, trees thickening the farther she went—not jungle, just forest, damp and breathing.
Hunger cramped her stomach, a dull, stubborn ache that made her hands tremble. Flashes of color between branches—fruit, maybe, berries—but she didn't touch anything. Adult caution battled with a child's body that wanted to shove anything into its mouth. Caution won, barely.
Not yet.
Not without knowing.
A shallow pocket in stone sat beneath a thicker canopy, where leaves above had caught the worst of the dripping. Water had gathered there, clearer than the sea, reflecting the pale morning like a small, trembling mirror.
She dropped to her knees too fast. Pain flashed up her shins. She bit back a sound, blinking hard until the sting passed.
Hands cupped the water.
Too small. It slid through fingers. Ridiculous. Unfair. Like the universe was mocking her with her own palms.
She drank what she could.
Cold.
So cold it made teeth ache.
But it was water. Real water. It slid down her throat and her body reacted like something starving, as if she could drink until she became water herself.
Again. Again.
Breathing eased a fraction, and then the surface caught her face.
Blue eyes stared back.
Her stomach twisted.
She didn't look away.
If she looked away, she kept pretending.
The face wasn't a character anymore. It was a child. Exhausted. Frightened. Alone.
Her lips moved without permission.
"Nico Robin," she whispered, as if saying it softly might make it less true.
The name tasted wrong against her tongue—wrong because she was the one saying it, wrong because the reflection was right.
For a heartbeat she expected the world to correct itself. To snap back. To prove this was a nightmare.
It didn't.
Morning brightened. Leaves dripped. Waves breathed behind her.
And inside her, the memories remained—two sets tangled together, sharp and incomplete, jagged like broken glass. She could feel where they didn't fit. Where they overlapped. The child's grief sat beneath her ribs like a stone. Her own fragments hovered around it like loose blades.
Hands pressed to her chest.
Small chest. Fast heartbeat. Too fast.
A refusal formed, quiet but stubborn.
Something touched her shoulder.
She jerked so hard her knees scraped rock. She spun.
A hand rested on her shoulder.
Not hers.
It bloomed from nothing, smooth and impossibly real, fingers curling gently into damp fabric as if to hold her in place. Another blossomed on her other shoulder. Then one across her back—light, careful, not restraining, just present.
She froze.
Hana Hana no Mi.
The name was known. The power was known. But knowing it as a fact and feeling it on skin were two different worlds. The touch wasn't cold. It wasn't warm either. It was simply there, an anchoring pressure that told her body, in its own wordless way, You're still here.
Her chest loosened a fraction.
Not because she was okay.
Because for one breath, she wasn't entirely alone.
She didn't know what that meant. Whether Robin was "there" somewhere inside—silent, asleep, unreachable. Whether this was only the body trying to survive. Whether comfort was a trick.
But the shaking eased enough for her to stand.
She rose slowly, using the rock to push herself up. Legs trembled. Head still floated. Water helped, but it didn't fix what a full day without food and sleep did to an eight-year-old body carrying grief that wasn't meant for it.
She moved back toward the shoreline, staying near the treeline. The forest felt ordinary in the way nature always did—indifferent. Birds called somewhere higher up. Insects buzzed. Water dripped. None of it cared that an island had burned somewhere behind her eyes.
She paused often, not because she heard anything, but because pausing kept her from tipping over. Hunger made the world tilt at the edges. Fear made everything feel too loud.
Steps stayed short. Legs tired quickly. Adult instinct urged speed, shelter, food, plans. The child's body answered with weakness and shaking knees.
Planning might be sharp.
Execution was not.
She kept moving anyway.
Because if she stopped, fear would catch up.
After a while she found a low rise—a ridge of wet rock and grass. She gripped a tree trunk for balance and climbed, heart hammering, breath too fast. Her hands slipped once on slick bark and she nearly fell; the spike of panic felt too big for this small chest.
She made it to the top and peered over.
There.
A harbor, small and tucked into a curve of shoreline. A wooden pier. Boats rocking gently: scattered little fishing boats, a few larger ships with round bellies that looked heavy with cargo. Roofs clustered near the water. Thin smoke curling from chimneys. Tiny figures moving in the morning light, blurry at this distance but unmistakably human.
A coastal village.
Her mouth filled with saliva at the thought of food. Bread. Fish. Anything.
Then fear crushed it flat.
Because people meant eyes.
Eyes meant questions.
Questions meant attention.
Her knees went weak and she crouched without meaning to, palms pressed into damp grass. Breath came in short, uneven pulls. Shoulders still shaking—from the sea shadow, from the fire in her head, from the blue-eyed face in the water.
She wasn't ready to walk in there and pretend to be a normal child.
Couldn't trust her face not to betray her. Shock, grief, wrongness—all of it lived too close to the surface.
Couldn't trust her voice not to crack and give her away as something fragile and strange.
And even if she did everything right…
She didn't know what this world would do to a child with an island's ashes still in her lungs.
That name again, instinctively.
Hold it. Don't let it slip. Not yet.
Wind carried the smell of the sea up the ridge.
Behind her, out where the boat had drifted in, there were no pale ice lines anymore. The ocean looked innocent, as if it had never been marked.
She stared at the village until her eyes blurred, then blinked the sting away.
She didn't move toward it.
Not yet.
First, she would watch.
Then she would move.
When she finally pushed herself to her feet, her legs were still trembling.
But she took a step forward anyway.
To be continued…