Empty.
No walls. No floor. Not even air I could press against. No direction. No distance. No "here" or "there." Even silence didn't exist—because silence implies there was sound once, something to be taken away.
This wasn't quiet.
This was nothing—a place that felt like "something" had never been allowed to exist at all.
A thought tried to form. It failed. It broke apart before it could become a sentence.
I reached for my body—if I was even allowed to call it mine—and found nothing to reach with. No hands. No lungs to drag air into. No chest to carry a heartbeat.
Only awareness remained.
Awareness suspended inside absence.
A name hovered somewhere close, always slipping away the instant I tried to touch it. I knew I had one. I could feel it the way you feel a word on the tip of your tongue—except there was no tongue here, no mouth, no shape. The harder I tried to remember, the thinner I felt, as if the effort itself was tearing me into pieces.
Then something caught.
A name didn't dissolve.
Aria.
It landed in the void like a small stone dropped into an endless sea, sending rings outward through the nothingness. I tightened around it without meaning to—pure instinct. If I let go, I would scatter.
And from that one sound, fragments began to drift up—not quite memories, not quite images, and yet somehow both.
A lamp pooling light over a desk.
A pen scratching dryly across paper.
Dates. Margins full of impatient question marks. The same map unfolded again and again until its creases softened and its edges wore down—my thumb always returning to the same border line, as if it might open if I pressed hard enough.
A library's cool hush.
The scent of old pages—dust and ink and time—clinging to the back of my throat like a promise.
The clearest of all: the familiar weight of glasses. A slight pressure on the bridge of my nose. A smudge on one lens that I always meant to wipe clean and always forgot. I would push the frame up with my fingertip and blink hard when the letters started to float, ordering myself through it—
One more paragraph. One more citation. One more date.
A bell. Sharp and clean, slicing through the trance and dragging me back.
Coffee lingering—warm and bitter—on my tongue. The heat of the cup seeping into my palms like I could borrow it to stay awake.
Not a whole life.
Just proof that a life had existed.
And that I had loved pulling it apart, chasing meaning until it surrendered.
But the fragments wouldn't join into a single line. They hovered like a mirror shattered mid-reflection—too many angles at once, each piece insisting on a different version of me. When I reached for one, it slipped away. When I reached again, I realized it had never been solid to begin with.
The more I tried to assemble myself, the more the pieces slid.
The void tilted.
It felt like the floor dropped out from under me—except there had never been a floor.
Something seized me and yanked—
Cold air knifed into my lungs.
Too much. Too fast. My throat burned as I sucked it in. Salt stabbed at my nose. Bitter seawater clung to my tongue like someone had forced it into my mouth. My chest answered the demand of breathing with pain, a raw ache that was too immediate to be a dream.
My eyes snapped open.
Stars.
Too many of them, spilled across a black sky so clear it looked unreal—so beautiful it felt like an insult.
The world rocked.
I tried to sit up and my body responded wrong—too light, too unsteady, too weak. Nausea rolled through me. I grabbed the nearest thing without thinking.
Wet wood.
My fingers clenched.
Small fingers.
I stared at them long enough to wish they would change. They didn't. Short. Thin. Shaking. A child's hand. Skin too smooth, too delicate—like the world could bruise it just by looking.
A sound scraped out of me—half breath, half choke—and when it became a voice it was high and hoarse and small.
Not mine.
Shock hit harder than the cold. Swallowing hurt. Salt and old fear coated my mouth.
I turned my head.
Sea.
A tiny boat swayed beneath me. The boards were slick with damp. Each wave lifted it and dropped it again with the steady rhythm of breathing. Dark water stretched in every direction—vast, indifferent. But pale lines cut through its surface, long and fading.
Not waves.
Tracks.
As if someone had drawn chalk across the ocean and the sea was patiently erasing it. In places the lines were glassy, thin sheets with broken edges—half-melted fragments drifting away, the current worrying at them until they vanished.
Ice.
My mind scrabbled for a label, for something I could hold onto.
Don't.
Not yet.
If I grabbed too hard for certainty, it would crack—and I would crack with it.
The boat pitched again. I pressed my palm against the wet boards, trying to anchor myself inside a body that still felt wrong. The name—Aria—stayed lodged somewhere deep, the only thing that still felt like mine.
Because if I let it slip, I didn't know what I would become in this small voice and this smaller skin.
My gaze dropped to the water at the boat's side.
Moonlight smoothed the surface for a moment, turning it into a mirror.
A face stared back.
Small. Pale. Hair plastered wet against the cheeks. Lips cracked.
Eyes—
Blue.
Too blue. Too large. Too familiar in a way that made my lungs forget how to work.
No.
I knew this face.
Not from meeting it.
From watching it—at a safe distance, inside a story where you can love someone without the love ever cutting you open.
The water trembled. The reflection fractured and reformed. The coincidence didn't blur. The illusion didn't break.
My lips moved, and the name left me like a curse.
"…Robin."
The word hung there, ridiculous and impossible.
Then something inside me split open.
Not like a switch flipped.
Worse—like a door cracked just enough for everything behind it to pour through.
Smoke.
Thick, bitter, choking—so real it filled my lungs even under a sky full of stars. Heat after it. Not warmth—heat that burned the inside of my mouth every time I tried to breathe.
Sound stopped being sound and became a wall.
Screams layered over screams until they weren't individual voices anymore—panic itself made audible. Gunfire. Explosions that rattled bone. Wood snapping. Buildings collapsing. And the most unbearable sound of all:
Books burning.
Paper tearing as it died.
My shoulders jerked. I tried to cover my ears, but my arms were too short, too weak—and it wouldn't have mattered anyway.
The noise wasn't outside me.
It was inside.
I was still on the boat beneath the stars—and I was running somewhere else, lungs shredding with every breath, eyes stinging, ash sticking to my tongue. Tears tasted like salt and smoke. The air itself was poison, and the sky felt like it had decided to punish me for being alive.
Ohara.
The word arrived not like a fact—
Like a wound.
My stomach heaved. I tried to vomit and found nothing to give. This small body was empty. But it fought anyway. Hot tears spilled down my cold cheeks.
If this hurt like it was mine—
If it burned like it belonged to my skin—
Then was I still Aria?
Or was I—
The question yawned open like a cliff edge. If I fell into it, I wouldn't climb back out. This body was soft clay, and the feeling of "me" was already sliding, being pushed by memories that weren't mine and yet were lodged under my skin like thorns.
Hold on.
Don't let go.
The flash of burning didn't stop. It didn't crash in all at once, either. It flowed in—too clear, too physical—memories shaped like fire.
Smoke in the throat.
Screams in the bones.
Grief too heavy to fit inside a child's ribs.
And the impossible, choking certainty that people would call it justice.
Two lives.
Both real.
That was the worst part. There was no clean line where one ended and the other began. My fragments were scattered and incomplete, but the child's memories were sharp—carved by flame.
The boat slammed against a wave. The jolt shot pain through my wrist as I grabbed for the side.
That pain—now, in this moment—dragged me back.
I blinked hard.
The sky was changing.
Not sunrise yet. Just the edge of it, a bruised smear of light widening on the horizon. The sea shifted from black to steel. The pale ice-tracks thinned in the gray, breaking apart, dissolving as the water swallowed them without a sound.
Ahead, a shape thickened.
Land.
A dark bruise against the horizon, growing as the boat drifted. The air changed too—the sharp, open salt easing as the smell of wet soil crept in. Green. Leaves. Life.
My throat tightened again, but the feeling wasn't only fear.
Land meant a choice.
Land meant survival—or the end.
The boat kept gliding, obedient to whatever current owned it. I didn't know whether it was carrying me toward rescue or toward a second disaster.
Then something moved beneath the boat.
A shadow. Too large to be an ordinary fish.
It slid under the surface with patient strength. The water lifted around it as if the sea itself made room. My breath vanished. I drove my fingers into the wet wood until my joints ached—small joints, child joints, useless.
One phrase flashed through my mind like a warning shot.
A Sea King.
The shadow slowed.
For one terrifying moment, it felt like it stopped directly beneath me—deeper than the darkness of the water, deeper than the darkness of my own fear. As if it knew I was here.
Predators always know.
But it didn't circle.
It didn't rise.
It simply moved on.
Not mercy.
Indifference.
I wasn't worth eating. I wasn't even worth striking.
Only after the surface calmed again did I realize how violently I was trembling. My teeth clicked together, uncontrolled.
This world was real.
This world was hungry.
As the light strengthened, the island drew close. The first thin edge of sun washed the morning in dull gold. Behind me, the pale traces on the sea glimmered one last time—then disappeared as if they had never existed.
I stared at the place they'd been, and something knotted in my chest without a name. Not gratitude. Not relief.
Only the understanding that whatever had brought me here had already turned away.
The boat bumped something hard.
Wood scraped over rock.
My whole body jolted.
I hauled myself up, swaying. My head floated. My legs felt wrong. I braced a hand against the boat's side and lowered one foot.
Cold water bit my ankle.
My breath broke. I nearly lost my balance. The boat shifted, and I grabbed at wet stone—slick, unforgiving—then stumbled down.
Sand gave under my weight.
Ground was real.
That didn't mean it was safe.
Everything was wet.
Wetter than sea spray. The sand was darker, heavy with moisture. The rocks shone. Grass glittered like it had been rinsed clean. Leaves sagged with droplets clinging to every tip. Deeper in, water fell—tap… tap…—as if the island was shaking itself awake.
My mouth ached with dryness. My tongue stuck to my teeth. Thirst hit like instinct, animal and sharp. But the water near the shore was salt and rot and pain.
I stepped inland—just a little.
The island rose gently. The trees thickened. Not a jungle, but a damp, breathing forest.
Hunger twisted in my stomach, a dull, squeezing ache. A flash of color between leaves—fruit, maybe. Berries.
I didn't touch anything.
An adult's caution wrestled a child body's urge to shove anything edible into my mouth.
Caution won—barely.
Not yet.
I couldn't afford mistakes.
In a hollow between stones, where broad leaves caught most of the dripping rain, a puddle had collected. Clearer than the sea. The morning trembled in it, a small, shaking mirror.
My knees nearly gave out. Pain sparked through my shins. I swallowed down a sound and blinked through the sting in my eyes.
I cupped my hands and scooped water.
Hands too small. Water spilled through my fingers like I was a joke. Like the world was mocking me with physics.
I drank anyway.
Cold.
Cold enough to make my teeth ache.
But it was water. Real water. The sensation of it sliding down my throat made my body move like a starving creature.
Again.
Again.
As my breathing eased for a single fragile moment, the surface of the puddle caught my face.
Blue eyes stared back.
My stomach clenched.
I didn't look away.
If I looked away, I would be pretending.
That face wasn't a reflection anymore. It was a child—exhausted, terrified, alone.
My lips moved.
"Nico Robin," I whispered, like saying it softly might make it less true.
The name tasted wrong in my mouth—wrong because I was saying it, and wrong because the mirror was answering.
For a heartbeat I waited for the world to correct itself. For everything to snap back into place. For this to reveal itself as a dream.
It didn't.
Morning brightened. Leaves dripped. The sea breathed behind me.
Inside my skull, the memories remained—two sets tangled together, sharp and incomplete, edged like broken glass. I could feel where they didn't fit. I could feel where they overlapped. The child's grief sat under my ribs like a stone. My own fragments floated around it like blades.
I pressed both hands to my chest.
A small chest. A heart beating too fast. Too fast.
Something stubborn rose inside me—not loud, but unyielding.
Then something touched my shoulder.
I jolted so hard my knee scraped stone. My body reacted before thought. I spun—
A hand rested there.
Not mine.
It had bloomed out of nothing, smooth and impossibly real. Fingers gently caught my damp clothing—not to restrain me, but as if to remind me I was still here. Another hand settled on my other shoulder. Another—lightly—along my back.
I froze.
The Flower-Flower Fruit.
The name surfaced with sick clarity. The ability too. But knowing something and feeling it happen under your skin were two different worlds.
The touch wasn't cold.
It wasn't warm.
It simply existed—a pressure that said without words:
You're still here.
And for one breath—just one—I didn't feel entirely alone.
I didn't know what that meant. Whether Robin was somewhere inside this body—silent, unreachable. Whether this was only the body's instinct clawing for life. Whether comfort itself was a trap.
But my trembling eased by a fraction, and I could move again.
I rose slowly, bracing myself against rock. My legs shook. My head swam. I'd had some water, and it helped—but the chill, the salt, the fear, the weight of a child's grief… none of that vanished just because my throat wasn't dry anymore.
I drifted toward the forest's edge, toward shade.
The island felt ordinary in the way nature always does—indifferent. Birds called overhead. Insects clicked and hummed. Water kept dripping. The world didn't care that an island had burned somewhere in my head. It didn't care that I was split in half.
I stopped often. Not because I heard something.
Because if I didn't stop, I would fall.
Hunger made the world tilt. Fear made every sound too sharp.
My steps were short. My strength bled away too quickly. The instincts in my mind demanded speed—shelter, food, a plan—but the child's body answered with trembling knees and shaking hands.
A plan could be perfect.
Executing it was something else.
But I kept moving.
Because if I stopped, the fear would catch up.
Eventually I found a low rise—wet stone and a lip of grass. I used a tree trunk to steady myself and climbed. My heart hammered. My breathing came too fast. Once my palm slipped, and panic swelled huge inside this small chest.
I forced myself over the top and looked down.
There.
A small port town tucked into the curve of the shore.
A wooden pier.
Little fishing boats rocking gently. A larger ship, belly round with cargo. Roofs clustered close. Thin smoke twisting from a chimney. Tiny shapes moving—people, blurred at this distance, but undeniably human.
A village.
At the thought of food my mouth filled with saliva. Bread. Fish. Anything.
Then fear flattened it all.
People meant eyes.
Eyes meant questions.
Questions meant attention.
My knees went weak and I sat hard, palms pressed into wet grass, fighting to steady my breathing. Behind my eyes: fire. Beneath my skin: blue eyes in water. Beneath everything: the memory of screaming.
I wasn't ready to walk into them and become an "ordinary child."
My face wouldn't obey me. Shock and grief and the wrongness of this body sat too close to the surface. My voice could crack and betray me, revealing something fragile and strange.
And even if I did everything right—
I didn't know what this world would do to a child carrying the ash of a burned island in her lungs.
The name inside me tightened again, reflexive.
Hold on.
Don't let go.
Not yet.
The wind carried the sea's scent up to where I sat.
Behind me, in the direction the boat had drifted from, there were no pale tracks left. The ocean looked innocent. As if it had never been marked.
I stared at the town until my eyes blurred, and I blinked the sting away.
I didn't move toward it.
Not yet.
First, I would watch.
Then I would move.
When I finally pushed myself to my feet, my legs shook again.
But I took one step forward anyway.
To be continued...