Hachinosu , New World
The scent of charred wood and ash still lingered in the air, even after all these years. The once-infamous pirate island of Hachinosu lay in complete ruin, a hollowed-out carcass of its former glory. The island had once been home to the most ruthless of pirates—warlords, marauders, and cutthroats who had left their mark on history. But now, it was nothing more than a graveyard of burnt-out structures, collapsed skull-shaped fortresses, and eerie silence.
Captain Vance Blackthorne stood at the shore, arms crossed, his coat billowing slightly in the wind. His sharp, calculating eyes roamed over the desolation before him. The fire had devoured everything, leaving behind nothing but the bones of a dead empire.
"Damn… Whoever did this really wanted to burn this place to the ground…" he muttered, his voice barely above a whisper.
Behind him, his crew shifted uneasily. They were seasoned pirates, hardened by the merciless tides of the New World, yet something about this island unsettled them. The hairs on the back of their necks prickled, as if unseen eyes were watching from the shadows.
"Captain," came the voice of old Magnus, the most experienced sailor in their crew. His voice was rough, worn from years of screaming against the roaring winds of the Grand Line. "We should turn back. Something about this ain't right. It's been years since Hachinosu was burned down… Who knows what still lurks here?"
Vance turned his head slightly, his expression unreadable. He despised Magnus. The old man always questioned his decisions, always voicing concerns like some superstitious fool. But Magnus was their best navigator, and in the treacherous waters of the New World, a good navigator was more valuable than an entire armory of cannons.
"You damn coward," Vance growled, his lips curling into a sneer. "If not for your halfway decent navigational skills, I'd have fed you to the sharks long ago."
Magnus didn't flinch, though he knew the threat wasn't empty. Vance had thrown men overboard for far less.
The old navigator inhaled sharply. "What if the map is a fake? A trap to lure us here?" His voice was steady, but there was something behind it—something that made even the most reckless of the crew hesitate.
Vance's patience snapped. With a furious scowl, he ripped the tattered map from his belt and shoved it in Magnus's face. The parchment was old, worn by time, its ink faded but still legible. The lines and symbols formed a cryptic path leading deep into the heart of the island.
"For fuck's sake, do you even realize that if there's even a fraction of a chance this is real, we could live like kings for the rest of our lives?" Vance snapped. His eyes burned with greed, his fingers gripping the parchment as though it alone could manifest his dreams into reality.
The younger pirates in the crew burst into laughter, sneering at the old navigator.
"You hear that, Magnus? The old bastard's pissin' himself!" one cackled.
"Maybe we should leave him behind! Let the ghosts of Hachinosu deal with the coward!" another sneered.
"Hey, Magnus, you wanna go knit a sweater instead of huntin' treasure?"
The insults flew, but Magnus remained silent, his gaze fixed on the map. He had spent years navigating the most treacherous waters in the world, had deciphered countless maps, both authentic and fraudulent.
But this one…
His throat went dry. The map bore markings he recognized—too well. They were real, authentic. More than that, they pointed to a name that sent shivers down the spines of even the most fearless pirates.
Davy Jones.
Most dismissed Davy Jones as a mere legend—a drunken tale told around dying embers. A story to scare greenhorns. But among the old guard, those who had sailed long enough to know the truth behind myths, there were whispers. Whispers of a fortune so cursed, so damned, that before Gol D. Roger had declared the existence of One Piece, the greatest treasure hunt in history had been for Davy Jones' Locker.
And the map they held pointed straight to it. Magnus clenched his jaw. Was it possible? Could the stories be true? If they were, then even the richest loot in the world wouldn't be worth the price of taking it.
"You know," Vance spoke again, smirking, "if you're so scared, you can leave right now. You've served under me for years, so I'll allow it. Walk away." He leaned in closer, his grin widening. "But if you do, you won't see a single coin if the treasure turns out to be real."
A hush fell over the crew. The young, greedy pirates chuckled amongst themselves, patting their swords, their eyes gleaming with the thought of wealth beyond measure.
Magnus remained frozen, battling the war inside his mind. His instincts screamed at him to turn back, to flee and never return. But then, something else stirred inside him.
Greed.
Decades. He had spent decades chasing fleeting fortunes, only to be left with scars and empty pockets. If this treasure was real—if they truly stood before the cursed fortune of Davy Jones—then he could finally retire, finally escape the life of blood and betrayal.
A deep breath. A choice. He followed.
The crew moved deeper into the island, their boots crunching over scorched earth. They laughed, joked, their voices loud, crude, full of bravado. Yet despite their noise, the island remained eerily silent.
No birds. No insects. Not even the whisper of the wind through dead trees. It was as if the land itself had swallowed the sound, devouring it like a hungry beast.
Magnus noticed it first. The way their voices didn't echo. The way the air seemed thick, heavy, pressing down on them like unseen hands.
And then, something else. The feeling of being watched. It was suffocating, clawing at his spine, sinking into his bones. The laughter of the crew felt wrong, their movements too loud, too intrusive—as if they were trampling through the domain of something ancient and unforgiving.
Vance, oblivious to the growing unease of his crew, had only one thought in mind. The treasure.
His mind was already racing ahead, calculating, planning. If the treasure was real, there were too many mouths to feed. Two hundred men? No. He needed a fraction of that. He needed loyalty, not numbers.
His gaze flickered to his vice-captain, a powerful brute of a man who commanded fear and respect among the crew. If there was one obstacle in Vance's way, it was him. A slow, creeping smile spread across Vance's lips.
When the time came, when the treasure was in his hands, there would be a reckoning. And he would be the last one standing. But as they ventured further, deeper into the ruins of the skull fortress, none of them noticed the shifting shadows. The way the burnt, hollowed structures seemed to move when unobserved.
And above them, in the darkness of the ruins, something watched. And it waited.
For an hour, Vance and his crew had scoured every crumbling ruin, every scorched foundation, searching desperately for the markers detailed on the ancient map. Their boots disturbed the soot-covered ground as they pressed deeper into the forsaken heart of Hachinosu.
Their path had led them beyond the infamous Skull Fortress, a mile or two past its charred remains, into the true core of the island—where even the most hardened pirates felt something was wrong.
The moment they laid eyes on what lay ahead, every man in the crew—seasoned killers, marauders who had spilled blood without hesitation—froze in place. Their muscles locked, their breath caught in their throats, and an unnatural, suffocating dread wrapped around them like a noose.
The lake.
Under the cold gaze of the moon, a vast black lake stretched before them. But it was no lake of water, nor was it dried and cracked earth. The surface was thick, viscous, resembling something between pitch-black tar and boiling ink.
Yet it wasn't just the lake itself that paralyzed them—it was what floated within it.
Corpses. Hundreds, maybe thousands of bodies bobbed lifelessly atop the tar-like abyss, their hollowed eye sockets staring up into nothingness. Some were fresh, their faces still twisted in expressions of agony, while others had been reduced to blackened bones, stripped of flesh by time and something far, far worse.
The stench that rolled from the lake was beyond anything they had ever endured. A fetid wave of rot, decay, and something ancient filled their lungs, making bile rise in their throats. It was the smell of death, but not just any death—this was something unnatural, something that had festered and grown rancid for decades, perhaps even centuries.
No one knew when the first corpse had ended up here, but judging by the layers upon layers of the dead, it had been a long time ago. Yet the horror did not end there.
At the very center of the lake, resting atop a raised altar of jagged obsidian, lay a massive corpse—its skeletal frame still draped in the tattered remains of what might have once been a grand captain's coat. Even in death, its presence was monstrous, a being that must have been larger than any normal man, a giant , its massive, bony fingers curled into jagged claws.
Vance's breath hitched. His body screamed at him to move, to flee, but his feet felt like they had been nailed to the ground.
Even as ruthless and bloodthirsty as he and his crew were, every instinct in their pirate-hardened bodies told them this was something beyond them. Slowly, Vance gulped. His throat was dry as sandpaper. He took a single step back.
Carefully. Silently. He was afraid that even the mere sound of his breath might wake up whatever lurked in the abyss.
Then— A whisper. Low. Smooth. Unhurried.
"Beautiful, isn't it…?"
Vance's blood turned to ice. Before he could even react, an arm—heavy, firm, familiar—casually draped over his shoulder, as if an old friend had just joined him for a drink.
A presence so overwhelming that it crushed the air from his lungs had settled behind him.
Vance did not dare turn his head. He didn't need to. His entire 200-man crew—cutthroats, killers, the kind of pirates who had sailed through the worst hells of the New World—were frozen in place. Not by chains, not by weapons—but by sheer, unrelenting presence.
It was a presence that could bring even the most arrogant of warriors to their knees. And the worst part? He wasn't even using his Haki. This was just him.
A bead of cold sweat dripped down Vance's temple, rolling off his chin like a drop of blood before vanishing into the darkened earth below. Slowly, painfully, he turned his head.
And there he was—a man whom Vance himself couldn't recognize.But for those who truly knew…He was the man whose name was synonymous with terror.
The monster who once ruled these seas with an iron fist, whose ambition was so vast, so terrifying, that even the World Government had considered him a greater threat than the Pirate King himself.
A man so feared that legends claimed he could not die but most believed had been lost to time. Vance's lips trembled, but no words came out. His mind, his thoughts—blank.
But behind him, someone did speak, someone who recognized the man for who he truly was. A single, broken whisper, filled with absolute terror.
"Xebec…"
It was Magnus. The old pirate, the one who had seen the world before Roger, before the Great Pirate Era. His face was ashen, his body trembling. His eyes had gone wide, glassy, his legs weak. He had already lost control of his bowels, but he didn't care.
His mouth moved unconsciously, his mind unable to stop itself from uttering the name that had been burned into the nightmares of every pirate who had sailed under the sun before Gol D. Roger took the throne.
Xebec's grin widened. Slowly, he exhaled, his breath cold against Vance's ear. And then, in a voice so calm, so unhurried, that it felt like the whisper of the abyss itself, he spoke.
"What's the matter, Captain?"
Xebec's voice was a whisper, yet it carried through the air like a death knell, cold and merciless. Vance's breath hitched as he felt the pirate's fingers tighten ever so slightly on his shoulder. His body refused to move. It was as if the very weight of existence had grown heavier in Xebec's presence.
"Did you really think you were the only one looking for treasure?"
Xebec gestured towards the lake before them—a grotesque abyss filled with tens of thousands of corpses. The moonlight bathed the tar-like surface, making the bloated, rotting bodies seem almost endless.
Vance wanted to look away. But he couldn't. None of them could.
"Every single one of them came here chasing the same dream as you," Xebec continued, his tone almost amused. "The same treasure… the same delusions of grandeur."
Then, without warning, his fingers brushed the map Vance clutched in his trembling hands. Before the captain could even process what was happening, Xebec had already plucked it away.
There was no resistance. Vance didn't even try to stop him.
"This little scrap of paper… You think it's your key to glory?" Xebec chuckled, rolling the tattered parchment between his fingers as if it were nothing more than a trivial piece of history. "This map… I found it in my younger days. This was the reason I chose Hachinosu as my domain… back then."
He glanced at the dark lake once more, his grin widening.
"But despite ruling this island, despite years of searching, scouring every damned inch of this forsaken rock... I never found Davy Jones' Locker."
His voice darkened.
"But I did find something else... something that made me conquer death itself."
The air grew colder. Every pirate in the crew—every last one of the 200 men who had followed Vance into this hell—felt it. A force that did not belong in the world of the living. Their bodies screamed at them to run. But there was no escape. Xebec exhaled, his breath hot against Vance's ear.
"Speaking of conquering death… you should feel honored, Captain."
There was no warning. No moment to react. Xebec's hand shot forward—a blur, faster than the eye could track. His fingers clamped around Vance's head, gripping it like a predator playing with its food.
And then— CRACK.
With one effortless motion, Xebec ripped Vance's head clean off, tearing it from his body along with his spine. The sickening sound of snapping vertebrae echoed through the deadened air. The crew watched in horror, their eyes wide with incomprehensible terror. Vance's lifeless body twitched for a moment before Xebec casually discarded it, tossing it like a piece of trash.
He chuckled.
Still gripping the severed head, he turned it slightly, inspecting the terror frozen in Vance's dead, glassy eyes.
"Tch. Why am I even wasting words on you?"
With a lazy toss, he flung the head into the abyssal lake, where it disappeared beneath the surface with an almost unnatural silence. His hands were still slick with warm blood, and without hesitation, he brought them to his lips, his tongue darting out to taste it.
A satisfied sigh left his mouth. His eyes gleamed with something inhuman. Xebec's gaze slowly swept over the remaining pirates, who were still paralyzed in absolute fear.
"You know," he mused, "I could tell you all to surrender. Lay down your weapons, give up your lives without resistance." Then he grinned. "But we all know that would be pointless."
His tone dropped to a growl.
"Because you see… fear—" he licked his lips again, savoring the taste of death, "—fear of death is what makes a human tap into their truest, most extreme potential." His chuckle rumbled into a dark, twisted laugh.
"Struggle. Struggle all you can." His arms stretched wide, as if welcoming them into their own damnation. "For in the end, your lives hold no meaning. No one will remember you." His laughter turned into a cackle—wild, unhinged, filled with madness beyond mortal comprehension.
And then—
Two massive presences appeared behind them, cutting off their only escape route. The pirates turned, their already-shattered minds barely able to comprehend what they saw. Two figures, standing in the shadows.
The moment the two figures emerged from the shadows, a heavy, suffocating pressure dropped upon the already-terrified pirates. Even before they had drawn a single weapon, even before a drop of blood had been spilled—death had already claimed its victims.
Two names that they recognised because both held a similar title, Shichibukai. Izumi Arakaki and Dorian Lacasse.
Once, they had been legends—names whispered across the seas in fearful awe. Now, they stood as monsters, bound by only one allegiance: Rocks D. Xebec.
Izumi moved first. A single step forward, and she vanished. A gust of wind. The faint shhkk of a blade whispering through the air.
Then—silence.
For a moment, the crew didn't even realize what had happened. Then, bodies began to fall. Limbs separated from torsos, heads toppled from shoulders, and gallons of blood erupted into the air like fountains of crimson.
A dozen pirates stood motionless, their eyes wide with terror—until their bodies suddenly slid apart, bisected so cleanly that their blood had yet to even spill from the cuts.
Only when their halves hit the ground did the delayed spray of blood explode into the air. Izumi landed gracefully among the carnage, her katana dripping red, her expression unbothered.
She was tall and regal, her sharp, angular face giving her the appearance of a war goddess sculpted from stone. But her eyes—those dark, piercing eyes—held nothing but emptiness.
A fallen samurai. A traitor to Wano. She had abandoned honor long ago. She raised her blade, flicking the blood off in a perfect arc, staining the blackened ground at her feet.
"You should consider yourselves lucky," she murmured, her voice cold. "Most men never get to die by my sword."
Then—she vanished again. A massacre followed. Pirates screamed, some raising their weapons, some turning to flee, but it didn't matter.
Izumi was everywhere. She danced through their ranks, her blade a phantom of death.
Every slash was precise. Every kill was elegant.
A man swung his cutlass, only to find his entire arm severed at the elbow before he could even register the pain. Another tried to block with a rifle, but Izumi's blade cut through both the gun and his throat in the same motion.
She was unstoppable. But she was not alone. Because then came Dorian. Unlike Izumi's elegance, Dorian's attack was a force of pure annihilation. His body rippled, the air around him warping as his form shifted into liquid darkness—his Logia abilities in full effect.
Thick, black oil spilled from his skin, twisting and coiling like a living creature. The ground itself darkened beneath him as the viscous substance spread outward, trapping the panicked pirates in a sea of death.
One of them—some fool—lit a match. Perhaps in his desperation, he thought he could set Dorian ablaze, but the moment the flame touched the oil, the result was catastrophic.
WHOOSH!
The entire battlefield ignited. Pirates screamed as rivers of fire consumed them. The oil spread like a curse, creeping up their legs, catching their clothes, their flesh—turning them into living torches.
Men ran in blind agony, their bodies alight, their flesh melting as the inferno devoured them.
Dorian laughed. Not a normal laugh. Not even the cackle of a madman. It was low. Amused.
Like he was simply enjoying the spectacle.
One pirate, half-burned, his body seared beyond recognition, crawled towards him, gasping, pleading, his voice a hoarse rasp—
"Please… h-help me…!" Dorian crouched down, a smirk tugging at his lips. "Help you?" he mused. "Of course, I'll help."
The pirate's eyes lit up in desperate hope—
And then Dorian shoved his hand into the man's chest. There was no blade, no weapon—just oil. It pierced through his flesh like a spear, burrowing into his ribs, his organs—before twisting inside him like a venomous serpent.
The pirate convulsed, his eyes rolling back, his mouth frothing—until he stopped moving entirely. Dorian pulled his hand free, leaving nothing but a gaping hole in the man's chest.
He sighed.
"Ahh… too fragile."
He wiped his bloodied fingers on his coat, not even sparing the corpse another glance. All around them, pirates wailed, running in every direction—only to meet Izumi's blade or Dorian's flames.
Their once 200-strong crew had already been reduced to half in a matter of minutes. And it was only getting worse. At the center of it all, Xebec watched. Not moving. Not interfering. Just watching. His arms crossed, his grin widening, his eyes alight with dark amusement.
The pirates were scattering, some dropping their weapons, others trying to retreat to find an escape—but there was none. Because the moment they had stepped onto this island, the moment they had sought this treasure, they had already sealed their fate.
This was no treasure hunt. This was a graveyard. And Rocks D. Xebec was merely welcoming them home.