The new passage was short and utilitarian, a stark contrast to the cosmic wonder of the Athenaeum. It ended at a heavy, reinforced door that groaned open at Marya's push, revealing a chamber that was the scholarly heart of the facility.
It was an archive, vast and cold. The air smelled of old paper, dry leather, and the faint, metallic tang of dormant electronics. Rows of dark metal shelves reached towards a shadowy ceiling, stacked with data-slates, crystalline tablets, and bound volumes whose covers were stamped with the same spiral glyph Marya had seen on the dais. Dominating the far wall was a colossal control panel, a sweeping console of dark stone and embedded crystals, above which hung a massive, blank monitor that dominated the entire wall.
The group fanned out, their footsteps echoing in the cavernous space. Jannali placed her hands on her hips, her headscarf a splash of color in the monochrome room. "Right then, where do you think it is? This place is a bloody maze."
Her question was answered not by a scholar, but by a bouncing blue blur. "Bloop!" Jelly ricocheted off a shelf, sending a cascade of slates clattering to the floor, then caromed off the wall and straight into the massive control panel. He landed in a wobbly heap as the console lit up with a soft, deep hum. The giant monitor flickered to life, casting a cool, blue-tinged light across the room.
An image resolved on the screen: a sleek, terrifying, and beautiful vessel, shaped like a predator from the abyss. Its hull was a polished black, with a massive, fin-like sail, and glowing patterns like ancient script ran along its length.
"Whoa," Atlas breathed, his lynx eyes wide. He, Galit, and Aokiji moved closer to the screen, their faces illuminated by the ghostly projection.
Marya walked up, her eyes scanning the flowing script beneath the image. "Dreadnought Thalassa," she read aloud.
Emmet moved to stand beside her, his sharp green eyes analyzing the data. "Those are coordinates. It's giving a location."
Galit was already a step ahead, his long neck craned as he pulled out his own tactical slate. "Agreed." His fingers began flying across its surface with practiced speed.
Marya raised a questioning brow. "You're assuming that thing is still working after eight hundred years. And that those numbers are accurate."
"They are," Emmet interjected, his voice calm and certain as he pressed a sequence of buttons on the console. A complex star chart with a pulsating icon appeared next to the submarine's image. "This tracking data isn't historical. It's live. This is its current position."
A heavy silence fell, broken only by the hum of the console. Marya let out a short sigh, the weight of the implication settling in the room.
"Well, boss?" Atlas asked, a feral grin spreading across his features.
Marya narrowed her golden eyes, a calculating look on her face. "We'll see," she said, her tone noncommittal. "Figure out where it is. And maybe… maybe we'll check it out."
Galit, without looking up from his frantic tapping, muttered, "We're going to need to upgrade our vessel soon. The space is only getting smaller."
"Sure thing, boss," Atlas replied with a toothy grin, his enthusiasm undimmed.
Marya rolled her eyes and turned away from them, only to be met with the sound of a tremendous crash and a shower of data-slates. "Sorry!" Eliane's voice piped up, followed by Jelly's cheerful, "Oops!"
Jannali threw her hands up. "What in the world did you break now?"
Marya, Jax, and Jannali walked over to the source of the commotion. A shelf had toppled over, spilling its contents across the floor. Eliane and Jelly were frantically trying to stack the scattered slates and books back into a precarious pile.
"You two are a menace," Jannali fussed, kneeling to help them, her movements efficient. "A walking, bouncing catastrophe."
Then Marya saw it. Behind the fallen shelf, now exposed, was a seamless, circular door set into the wall. It was made of a dull, brushed metal, devoid of any ornamentation save for a single, recessed keyhole.
She walked past the cleanup crew, straight towards it, Jax a brooding shadow on her heels.
"What is it?" he asked, his voice low.
"It's the vault," Marya said, her voice flat with certainty. "The one the dais showed us. This is it."
Jax's scowl deepened, a conflict warring in his eyes between his duty to stop her and the memory of her stark warning to stay out of her way.
Jannali stood, brushing dust from her knees, and joined them. "So, how do we get in? Another riddle? A blood sacrifice? Do we need to sing a song?"
Marya ran a hand over the cool, featureless metal. She shook her head. "It's a basic vault. Not Seastone. I don't see any additional security."
Jannali cursed. "That seems too bloody easy and convenient. Something's off."
Marya simply shrugged, and in one fluid motion, unsheathed Eternal Eclipse. The obsidian blade seemed to hum with energy.
Jannali's eyes went wide. "You're just going to cut it? Are you mad?"
"You may want to stand back," Marya advised calmly.
She didn't swing with wild abandon. It was a single, controlled, horizontal slice. A wave of black-haki energy, visible as a ripple of distorted air, shot from the blade and passed cleanly through the metal. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with a groan of tortured metal, the entire circular door segment slid inward an inch and collapsed forward with a deafening CLANG that shook the floor.
Everyone froze, waiting for a hail of darts, a collapse of the ceiling, or the wail of an alarm.
Nothing happened.
Jannali stared into the now-open darkness, then back at Marya, her expression utterly incredulous. "You have got to be kidding me," she cursed for the third time, her twang thick with disbelief. "Really? It was that easy?"
The vault was a cavern of lost echoes, a time capsule sealed away from the world's memory. The air was still and cool, carrying the scent of old metal, treated leather, and the peculiar, dry smell of dormant electronics. Rows of clear crystal drawers lined the walls, each illuminated from within by a soft, golden light, displaying a dizzying array of artifacts: strange tools of twisted metal, crystalline orbs that swirled with captured smoke, and data-slates etched with languages dead for centuries. One entire section was barred like a cage, containing larger, more ominous objects shrouded in dark cloth.
Jax let out a low, sharp curse as he took it all in. "This is…"
"I know," Marya agreed, her voice quiet as she sheathed Eternal Eclipse. Her golden eyes swept over the treasure trove of a forbidden era. Without looking at him, she added, "You may want to make a call."
His brow furrowed deeply, the scar on his cheek pulling tight. Before he could reply, Jannali's voice called from deeper within the vault. "Over here! I think I found it!"
They found her standing before a solitary pedestal, atop which sat a transparent dome of flawless glass. Inside, resting on a cushion of black velvet, was a fragment of what looked like captured moonlight. It was a hexagonal prism, about the size of a palm, crafted from a luminous alloy that seemed to hold shifting constellations within its depth. The core held a shard of black opal that whispered of abyssal secrets. This was the Tideglass fragment.
Just then, Emmet, Galit, Atlas, and Aokiji entered the vault. Emmet let out a low, appreciative whistle that echoed in the silence. "This is…"
Jax looked over his shoulder, his expression grim. "I think we'll need to make a call."
Emmet's gaze traveled over the countless drawers, his mathematician's mind already calculating the logistical nightmare and historical windfall. "I think we'll need to make a couple of them."
Aokiji stood silently, his large frame seeming to absorb the chilling truth of the place. The sheer scale of what had been hidden here—and what had been destroyed to keep it secret—settled on him with a physical weight. "I wonder if those scholars knew," he muttered, his voice a low rumble. "If they knew what was really beneath their feet."
Marya looked over her shoulder at him, her expression unreadable. "I suspect not. They were most likely the descendants of those who did, and the knowledge was lost over time." Her eyes hardened. "But that doesn't mean the Gorosei didn't know. If the scholars had even started to suspect… that would have been reason enough."
"There may have been one who knew," Aokiji rebutted, thinking of Clover and the other doomed intellectuals.
A faint, knowing smirk touched Marya's lips. "It's possible. And they may have decided to keep it secret because they knew what the implications would have been."
Aokiji gave a slow, heavy nod. "And it happened anyway."
Their attention returned to the prize. Jannali tapped the glass dome. "Should we break it like the door?"
"No," Emmet said, stepping forward. He pointed to the pedestal itself, where a complex control panel was set into the stone, its surface a maze of unmarked buttons and slots. "There it is. The real lock."
Jannali cursed. "There it is, then. Not as easy as we thought."
Marya studied the panel and let out a short sigh. "It needs some sort of combination. A sequence we don't have."
"Bloody hell," Jannali grumbled, crossing her arms.
"Everyone stand back," Aokiji's voice cut through the frustration. He took a single step forward, a puff of frosty air crystallizing before his lips.
Marya turned, a glint of understanding in her eyes. "You think it will work?" she asked, already beginning to retreat. The others followed her lead, giving the former Admiral a wide berth.
Aokiji shrugged, his posture lazy but his focus absolute. "Don't know."
Emmet ruffing the scruff on his chin, "What happens when it melts?"
Aokiji, lifing a finger, "I don't intend to be here to find out what happens when it melts."
A smirk played on Marya's lips. That was her kind of plan.
With a gesture as casual as pointing, Aokiji unleashed a wave of cold so intense it stole the breath from the air. A crackling, white frost raced up the pedestal, and with a sound like snapping bones, the entire structure—panel, dome, and all—was encased in a thick, perfectly clear shell of ice. The golden light from the fragment within glinted through its frozen prison, casting fractured rainbows on the vault walls.
Without a moment's hesitation, Marya stepped forward. In a fluid motion, she drew the Kogatana from her neck. The small dagger looked insignificant against the block of ice, but as she drove it into the frozen dome with a sharp crack, a wave of black Haki surged from her hand, through the blade, and into the ice. A spiderweb of fractures exploded outwards, and the entire frozen structure disintegrated into a pile of shimmering, harmless dust, leaving the Tideglass fragment untouched and exposed.
Marya reached in and plucked the prism from its velvet bed. It was cool to the touch, humming with a latent, ancient power. She held it up, the captured starlight within it seeming to pulse in time with her heartbeat.
"Okay," she said, her voice cutting through the stunned silence. She tucked the fragment securely into a pocket inside her leather jacket. "We got what we came for. Let's go."
The heavy silence of the Athenaeum was broken as the group filed back through the stone archway, emerging into the muted grey light of Ohara's surface. The air, thick with the ghosts of incinerated knowledge and the salt of the sea, felt different now, charged with a finality that had nothing to do with the ancient chamber they were leaving behind. Marya led without a backward glance, her crew falling into step around her with the easy rhythm of a found family. The Consortium members trailed a few paces behind, a separate entity once more.
It was then that Jax's voice cut through the damp air, sharp and strained. "Marya!"
The entire group stopped. Marya turned slowly, her expression unreadable, though a flicker of something—impatience, perhaps—crossed her golden eyes. Her crew shifted, a subtle, protective reordering around her. Galit's hand drifted toward his whip, Atlas cracked his knuckles, and Jannali's gaze sharpened.
Jax stood rigid, his fists clenched so tightly the leather of his gloves strained. The internal war he'd been fighting since their reunion was laid bare on his face—duty, concern, and a frustrated affection warring with the undeniable truth standing before him. "I can't…" he began, the words torn from him, a sentence he couldn't finish. I can't let you go. I can't watch you walk away. I can't follow you down this path.
Before he could find the rest, Emmet was there, a calm and calculated presence. He placed a firm hand on Jax's shoulder, his grip both grounding and restraining. "Jax," he said, his voice low and even, the voice of a friend acknowledging a lost battle. He shook his head, a single, definitive motion. "You know there is nothing we can do."
Emmet's gaze then lifted from his friend's tormented face to the entrance of the Athenaeum, the stone archway that had sealed for centuries and now stood open, a yawning mouth of dark secrets. Zola and Jax followed his look. "We have a different mission now," Emmet continued, the weight of a thousand unread books and a salvaged artifacts in his words. "You need to let them go."
A long, shuddering sigh escaped Jax. The fight drained from his broad shoulders, replaced by a heavy, resigned acceptance. He gave a single, sharp nod, his eyes dropping to the ash-strewn ground.
Zola, having watched the exchange with a scientist's curious detachment, finally broke her silence. She stepped toward the archway, peering at its edges. Tapping a finger on her chin, she mused, "Hmm. A curious thermodynamic anomaly. The door didn't close. The temporal anchor must have been permanently disrupted by the key." She glanced at Marya, a look of professional interest momentarily overriding the tension. "Your blade's interaction with the mechanism appears to have been a one-way trigger."
Marya didn't answer. She simply held Zola's gaze for a moment, then turned away, the motion a period at the end of their conversation. Her crew turned with her, a single organism moving with a shared purpose. They left the three Consortium members standing there—Emmet the resigned mathematician, Zola the fascinated physicist, and Jax the heartbroken guardian—at the threshold of a history too vast for them to control.
The group moved toward the shoreline where their submarine, a vessel that shared its name with the icy depths, awaited. They did not look back, walking into the future they had chosen, leaving the ghosts of Ohara and the burdens of the past behind.
*****
Several days after the cataclysm at Ohara, the sea was deceptively calm. A single, massive iceberg, sculpted by tremendous power into a jagged, floating prison, drifted under a pale sun. Upon its fractured surfaces, seven figures were bound in thick seastone chains, their proud uniforms torn and stained—Darcy Rue, Garrett Hasapis, Alisa Copperfield, Leander Cole, Esen Sturm, Admiral Casimir and Elvira Jaeger. The silence was broken only by the lap of water and the ragged rhythm of their breathing.
The sleek, shark-nosed prow of a Marine vessel cut through the water, its sails emblazoned with the government's symbol. From high in the crow's nest, a lookout's voice rang out, sharp and clear. "Admiral Chaton! Off the port bow! Survivors on an ice floe!"
On the deck below, Admiral Chaton, a man with a kind face often at odds with his station, lowered his teacup. "Survivors? Here? All hands, prepare for recovery! And someone fetch the doctor!" he ordered, his voice carrying a tone of genuine concern. As his crew swung into action, hauling the broken forms of the God's Knights and fallen aboard, a young officer stared at the intricate, now-soiled uniforms.
"Who are they, sir? And what in the world are they doing all the way out here?"
Chaton's eyes, usually crinkled with a smile, were hard as flint. He recognized the regalia, the specific cut and quality that spoke of a station far above his own. "They are God's Knights," he stated, his voice low. "From the Holy Land of Mary Geoise. And by the look of them... they lost." The weight of that statement settled on the crew. A God's Knight falling in battle was a rare thing; six of them defeated was unthinkable.
Leaving his subordinates to tend to the wounded, Chaton moved with purpose to the communication room. The large, sleeping face of a Den Den Mushi stared blankly until he activated the line, its features morphing into a familiar, stern visage capped by a Marine cap.
"Fleet Admiral Sakazuki," Chaton began, his report crisp.
The snail's expression immediately soured. "Chaton. Report."
"We've recovered seven individuals adrift on a man-made iceberg. Their identification confirms they are God's Knights. All are in critical condition."
The Den Den Mushi's face contorted with rage. "Those damned fools!" Akainu's voice was a volcanic rumble, even through the snail. "A covert operation on my doorstep, and I wasn't informed? This reeks of their shadow games." He growled, the sound promising future eruptions. "I will handle this. Stand by for orders." The line went dead with a decisive click.
In his office at Marine Headquarters, Akainu slammed a fist on his desk, the wood groaning in protest. He immediately placed another, more encrypted call. The Den Den Mushi that answered now wore the distinctive horned appearance of Jaygarcia Saturn.
"Saturn," Akainu's voice was a low, dangerous thing, stripped of any deference. "Care to explain why I was fishing the Gorosei's personal hounds out of the sea? When I am tasked with absolute justice, these secret missions undermine my authority and strategic oversight!"
The snail's face remained impassive, but a flicker of irritation crossed its features. "You overstep, Fleet Admiral. The operations of the God's Knights are not subject to your approval." The voice was cold, final.
"These 'operations' create messes for my Marines to clean up!" Akainu roared back.
The response was a deafening silence as Saturn unceremoniously terminated the connection from his end. In the opulent chamber within Pangaea Castle, Saint Saturn slowly turned from the silent transponder snail, his eyes settling on the two figures who had been waiting in the room. Saint Garling Figarland stood ramrod straight, his jaw a hard line, while Shamrock observed from the shadows, a faint, unreadable smile playing on his lips.
"It seems your instruments have failed, Figarland," Saturn stated, his voice dripping with cold displeasure. "The 'Primal Vanguard,' the 'Silent Judgment'... all broken. On Ohara, of all places. A wound that should have remained scarred over has been ripped open by your incompetence."
Garling did not flinch. He did not offer excuses or explanations for the failure of Darcy, Garrett, and the others. He merely stood there, the muscle in his jaw flexing rhythmically, a silent testament to the dressing-down. The air grew thick with the unspoken threat of celestial wrath.
"And this girl," Saturn continued, the words slicing through the quiet. "This 'shadow.' She has become a beacon for every dissident and dreamer who hears this story. Your mission was to snuff her out, to erase the problem. Instead, you have amplified it. End. The. Girl."
A curt, dismissive wave of Saturn's hand signaled the audience was over. Garling gave a short, sharp nod of acknowledgment, his pride swallowing the command whole.
As the two men turned to leave, Shamrock's smirk widened into a genuine, triumphant grin the moment his back was to the Elders. He strode briskly ahead, his footsteps echoing in the marbled corridor. Once out of earshot, a low, pleased chuckle escaped him. "Dracule's shadow, indeed," he muttered to the empty hallway, the words hanging in the air like a promise. The game had just become far more interesting.