Keeping my eyes closed as my body forced the Shinsu within this dense pool of water. The pressure wasn't gentle. It was a hand around my soul, squeezing until it stopped pretending.
Old scars along my spirit—scars from burning too brightly—finally began to scab over. Not vanish. Not forgive. Just… seal. For the first time in a long time they started to heal instead of leaking heat with every breath, with every thought, with every moment I tried to "contain" what I was.
My soul entered a state of self-refinement.
Not enlightenment. Not peace.
Work.
The kind of work that hurts because it's not about becoming more.
It's about carving away what doesn't fit anymore.
To finish the job that Old Black—the spirit—jump started, I had to accept something ugly: the form that kept me alive in my last world would become a hindrance here.
A divine beast body had good effects there. Teeth. Instinct. A predatory certainty that made other monsters hesitate.
But this was the Tower.
Here, humanity was the scale.
And anything too divine drew eyes that didn't blink.
So I used Shinsu to cut.
Not at my flesh. At my shape.
Cutting away the excess divinity and the animal features on my soul. Not removing the abilities—never that. I wasn't here to weaken myself. I was here to stop my powers from tearing each other apart.
The conflicting nature of what I carried had always been the real problem.
Ki… an idiot's dream of being better than Haki. A system built on pride and "more" and the childish belief that will alone could overwrite reality.
Haki—my will—was all but shattered back in that world.
Not because I lost a fight.
Because I put my pride and my will on the line… and it got yanked away anyway.
By the End.
Not as a teacher.
As an answer.
As a boundary.
As the universe reminding me that there are forces you don't negotiate with.
And with every cut I made in this pool, more memories tried to rise up—traumas I'd been forced to swallow, lessons I never asked for in the form they arrived.
I kept carving anyway.
Because the Tower doesn't care about my comfort.
And neither did I anymore.
A thought slipped through the pain—sharp, unwanted, familiar.
The girl.
Giving her the counter fruit to keep her alive.
It had been a choice made with shaking hands and a steady heart. A mistake that would eventually burn me for saving her. It always did. The universe had a special hatred for mercy that wasn't authorized.
Yet no rage could grow in me.
Not because I was forgiving.
Because I understood the thread.
She was my teacher's… and his lost lover's child.
Tenebris's.
The kind of bloodline that dragged calamity behind it like a cloak, no matter how hard the child tried to run.
She wouldn't abandon her heroics.
So I wouldn't abandon her.
Even knowing the price.
That was the part that made me stupid.
And human.
The Shinsu tightened around me—
and for a second it wasn't the Tower.
It was heat. Salt. Smoke.
My lungs refusing the next breath like they'd finally learned the cost of my choices.
I remembered the moment I died.
Not clean. Not heroic.
Just… tired.
Tenebris stood at the edge of my vision—still as a seal, calm as a door that only opens one way. A man shaped like a verdict, watching without flinching.
I tried to speak and it came out rough.
"Did she…?"
My throat scraped.
"The girl," I forced out, blinking through sparks. "Did she get away?"
Tenebris didn't answer immediately.
He never rushed comfort.
He watched me the way he always did—like I was a lesson finishing itself.
Then his voice, low and steady, cut through the burn.
"She ran."
Relief hit first.
Then guilt.
Then the pain remembered its job.
The world tipped.
And the End—quiet, inevitable—closed her hand around the memory like a page turning.
"Back," she whispered.
The Shinsu pool became water again.
And I kept carving.
Nearly done now, I forced myself closer to the original cycle I came from. Using this chance to seek out my first form—when I first started this death journey through worlds.
Not the strongest form.
The truest.
The one before all the borrowed systems and stolen laws and patched-together survival.
Each cut caused untold amounts of pain and I had to stiff it down—jaw locked, heart steady, eyes still shut—because if I stopped for even a second, I'd hesitate.
And if I hesitated, I'd keep the wrong parts.
If I don't do it now then I'll never get another chance like this.
⸻
Scene 2
Breaking through the Shinsu pool after what felt like days of carving and refining my soul back to its original state—only now it carried extra abilities like scars that finally knew their place.
I dragged in air and felt the Tower around me like a living pressure.
But my body… my body finally contained what it used to leak.
Sun and war laws sat inside me without fighting for dominance.
My skin flickered between flame and flesh—heat breathing under the surface, then calming, then returning—like my body was testing the seal and finding it held.
I had traded out the Zoan transformation after mastering everything possible in it.
Not because it was weak.
Because it belonged to a world that didn't exist around me anymore.
And with the loss of awakening—because the Devil's will was a One Piece exclusive that got wiped when I left—there was no point clinging to a ghost.
So I weaponized the principles of a Logia instead.
Not the fruit itself.
The concept.
The method.
Let Shinsu become the medium.
Let my body treat fire not as a transformation… but as a state I could slide into and out of, controlled and clean.
And Old Black—quiet inside me—directed the general flow throughout my body like it had been made for this kind of refinement.
Like it had been waiting for a place where laws could be cut and rewritten.
I stood there dripping Shinsu, heat rising off my skin in soft waves, and for the first time in a long time—
I didn't feel like I was about to break.
I felt like I was finally… contained.