The Arch of Tartarus' Shadow loomed like a jagged smile, its coral-encrusted runes weeping brine that pooled into puddles of liquid moonlight. The air reeked of salt and petrified time, the stone groaning as if the Sea Devourer's breath still strained against its prison below. Juro wiped sweat from his brow, his scales glinting turquoise under the sudden pall of a solar eclipse—a celestial wink that plunged the ruins into twilight.
"Cozy," Mihawk remarked, plucking a glowing barnacle from the arch. It pulsed in his palm, humming a nursery rhyme in Lunarian dialect. "The decor's a touch damp for my tastes."
Marya ignored him, her Void veins flaring as the Poneglyph beneath the arch began to levitate, vines slithering off its surface like startled eels. The glyphs etched into it glowed crimson, casting jagged shadows that twisted into the shape of chains. She stepped closer, the ground shuddering as the Sea Devourer's hunger vibrated through the stone.
"Careful," Juro blurted, lunging to steady her—only to trip on a root shaped like a serpent's fang. Mihawk caught him by the collar, dangling him mid-air like a flustered tuna.
"Graceful," Mihawk said, dropping him. "A true romancer of the deep."
Marya pressed a palm to the Poneglyph. Instantly, visions erupted—Tartarus' Maw unhinging, islands dissolving into its abyss, their screams harmonizing with the Drums of Liberation. Her knees buckled, but Mihawk's sword sheath hooked her arm, holding her upright.
"Focus," he muttered, though his tone lacked urgency. "The abyss hates applause."
Juro scrambled up, brandishing a seastone chisel. "I could—uh—carve it? Distract the glyphs with… poetry?" He winced at his own suggestion.
The Poneglyph's runes rearranged, forming the Riddle of the Unseen Dawn. Marya snatched a charcoal stick from her belt, scribbling the verses onto a scrap of sailcloth as the eclipse deepened. The air thickened with the ozone tang of ancient lightning, and somewhere above, Tavi and Kip's laughter echoed through a ventilation shaft, followed by the rip of another bounty poster update: "Almost Died Heroically - 200 Berries!"
"Speak the price the Void demands," Marya read aloud, her voice flat. "Cryptic. Great."
Juro inched closer, pointing to a stanza. "See this? 'A crown undone, a debt atoned.' That's about the Celestial Dragon traitor! My mentor told stories—said their blood's like liquid guilt. Or maybe vinegar?"
Mihawk leaned against the arch, tossing the glowing barnacle into the abyss. It plummeted, illuminating a mosaic of the Sea Devourer swallowing a fleet of WG ships. "How thematic. Shall we recruit a noble for a light snack?"
The eclipse peaked, and the Poneglyph shuddered, its levitation faltering. Marya's Void veins blazed as she traced the final line—"Sail where Lethe's gate commands." The vision sharpened: a map of Angkor'thal's underbelly, veins of luminescent sap marking a path to the Gates.
"We need the keys," she said, turning. "And a Celestial Dragon's regret."
Juro nodded vigorously. "I know where the Heart of the Sea Devourer is! It's in the Naga's Maw Forge. I could—uh—craft something? For you? To, y'know… commemorate our… uh… teamwork?"
Mihawk smirked. "A commemorative dagger? How original."
Marya pocketed the riddle, striding past Juro toward a fissure in the wall. "Save the crafting. We move at dusk."
As she vanished into the gloom, Juro deflated, kicking a pebble that ricocheted off a mural of Joy Boy facepalming. Mihawk brushed his shoulder, steering him toward the exit. "Cheer up. Rejection builds character. Or aneurysms."
Above, the eclipse waned, sunlight spearing through the arch to ignite the coral runes. They flickered, spelling out a final, glowing taunt in Ancient Tongue: "Love is a storm even gods drown in."
Juro groaned. "Subtle."
Mihawk chuckled. "Admirably so."
The temple's entrance stretched like the throat of a slumbering beast, its jagged stone teeth dripping with bioluminescent moss that glowed an eerie chartreuse. The air hummed with the static of ancient electro, carrying the faintest whiff of burnt cinnamon—a remnant of Lunarian purification rites. Marya stepped inside, her boots crunching over shards of petrified offering bowls, their surfaces etched with crescent moons and snarling Sea Kings. Above, the vaulted ceiling arched into shadow, where colonies of ghost bats roosted, their wingbeats whispering verses of Joy Boy's dirge.
Juro trailed behind, his scales reflecting the moss-light in nervous ripples. "So, uh… this place was built to honor eclipses? Or, like… summon them?" He gestured to a mural of Nika dancing atop a Titan-Sea King, its scales rendered in tarnished star-metal. "Looks… festive?"
Mihawk ran a finger along the wall, dislodging centuries of dust that sparkled like powdered amethyst. "Festive as a funeral pyre. Lovely."
The corridor opened into a vast chamber dominated by Surya's Wrath—a corroded colossus of Lunarian alloy, its once-gleaming surface now pocked with verdigris. The weapon's barrel curved like a scorpion's tail, aimed at a mosaic of the Gates of Lethe. At its base, a Poneglyph pulsed faintly, its glyphs oozing Void Moss like weeping sores.
Marya knelt, her Void veins flickering as she deciphered the text. "Joy Boy's pact with the Titan-Sea Kings… it wasn't a betrayal. It was a stalemate." Her voice tightened. "Their souls couldn't bear the Void's weight. They… unraveled."
Mihawk leaned against Surya's Wrath, his shadow stretching into the shape of a key. "Like yours," he said, golden eyes sharp. "Restless souls make poor bedfellows."
Before Marya could retort, the temporal mists rolled in, thick and syrupy, carrying the acrid tang of burnt hair. Juro coughed, waving a hand. "We should camp. These mists'll turn our brains to pudding by midnight."
Marya's glare could've frozen magma. "We're close. The Gates are—"
"—not going anywhere," Mihawk interrupted, plucking a luminescent beetle from his sleeve. It chirped a sea shanty as he crushed it, the sound distorting into Branson's off-key singing. "Even shadows need naps."
Reluctantly, Marya relented. Juro scurried to assemble a firepit using shattered altar stones, while Mihawk "borrowed" a tapestry of Three-Eyed elders to use as a rug. The flames crackled, casting shadows that danced like Sulong Minks on the walls.
"So!" Juro blurted, roasting a skewer of suspiciously glowing mushrooms. "This Surya's Wrath thingy… activating it needs a Mink's zap, Lunarian fire, and a Three-Eyed chant? Sounds like a… uh… team-effort thing!"
Marya sharpened her blade on a stone carved with World Noble faces. "Or a death wish. The weapon's unstable. One misfire, and Angkor'thal becomes a crater."
Mihawk smirked, sipping from a flask labeled 'Regrets'. "Crater's an improvement."
As night deepened, the temple's quirks emerged: a cluster of Singing Vines coiled near the fire, crooning lullabies in Lunarian when stroked. Juro, emboldened by the mushrooms' hallucinogenic shimmer, offered Marya a wilted bloom he'd found growing through a crack in Surya's Wrath.
"It's, uh… moon-resistant! Repels temporal paradoxes. Or… uh… mosquitoes?"
Marya stared at the flower, then at Juro's hopeful grin. "I don't collect flora."
Mihawk snorted. "A shame. It matches your eyes—vaguely lethal."
Suddenly, the Poneglyph shuddered, its Void Moss surging into the shape of Joy Boy, translucent and grinning. "Rest here, starvelings!" the vision boomed, tossing a spectral dice. "Fortune favors the sleep-deprived!"
Juro yelped, toppling into the firepit. Marya yanked him out by his collar, her stoic mask cracking with a flicker of irritation. "Really," she muttered, dusting ash from her sleeves.
Mihawk raised his flask to the fading vision. "To Joy Boy—eternal nuisance."
As the mists thickened, the temple seemed to breathe, its stones exhaling whispers of old alliances and older betrayals. Somewhere above, Tavi and Kip's latest bounty poster fluttered down from a ventilation shaft: "Failed Florist - 500 Berries!"
And deep within Surya's Wrath, a dormant energy core flickered—a pulse of light that mirrored the Gates of Lethe's impatient thrums. Waiting, always waiting, for the storm of fools and flirts to reignite its fury.
The temporal mists thickened at dawn, swallowing Prasat Yama in a gauzy silver shroud that tasted of brine and burnt sugar. The River of Forgotten Time gurgled ominously, its currents reversing with a sound like a thousand marbles rolling uphill, exposing submerged ruins slick with luminescent algae. Juro snored propped against Surya's Wrath, drooling onto a World Noble's stone face, while Mihawk slept sitting upright, Yoru planted in the ground like a morbid tent pole.
Marya, however, was already moving.
Her bare feet padded soundlessly over moss-caked tiles, guided by a dream where Lunarian architects with wings of molten gold welded star-metal beams, their hammers striking in time to her pulse. Joy Boy's laughter echoed as he etched the Poneglyph, his shadow stretching into the shape of her mother's blade. Then—fire. World Noble warships exploded offshore, their sails burning like paper lanterns, ash raining onto the river as it choked on their hubris.
"...so much destruction," Marya murmured, walking trance-like toward the riverbank.
Tavi and Kip, who'd been pilfering dried squid from Juro's pack, froze. "She's sleep-swordfighting!" Kip whispered, pointing as Marya unsheathed her blade and began parrying phantom enemies.
"We gotta save her!" Tavi hissed, darting forward. She yanked Marya's sleeve. "Wake up! You're gonna step on a crab!"
Marya swatted her away, mist curling from her fingers to form a spectral shield. "The chains… must break," she intoned, wading into the river.
Kip tackled her waist, only to slip on the algae and faceplant into the muck. "Tastes like muddy shrimp!" he spat, seaweed dangling from his tricorn.
Juro jolted awake, scales flushed cobalt. "Marya?!" He tripped over Mihawk's sword, crash-landing into a pile of petrified coconuts. "Mihawk—help!"
The swordsman opened one eye, watching Marya stride deeper, the river's reversed current now waist-high. "She's fine. Shadows don't drown."
"Fine?!" Juro spluttered, lobbing a coconut at him. It bounced off Mihawk's head harmlessly.
Grumbling, Mihawk rose, wading into the river with the enthusiasm of a cat in a bath. The mists parted reluctantly, revealing Marya standing atop a half-submerged mosaic of the Sea Devourer, her blade raised as if to duel the dawn.
"Encore's over," Mihawk said, flicking her forehead.
Marya blinked, the dream dissolving. Around her, the ruins glimmered—crumbling towers adorned with barnacle-choked murals of Three-Eyed elders dancing with Minks. The river's water, now lapping at her ribs, fizzed like tonic wine and smelled of forgotten birthdays.
"...Why am I wet?" she asked flatly.
"Midnight swim," Mihawk deadpanned. "You insisted."
Juro slogged over, relief warring with panic. "You were sleepwalking! The mists—they showed you things, right? Scary things?"
"Things?" Marya sheathed her sword. "Just history. It's repetitive."
Tavi and Kip popped up beside her, dripping and grinning. "You fought a ghost crab!" Kip said. "It was this big!" He stretched his arms wide, toppling backward into the river.
As dawn fully broke, the temporal mists retreated, leaving the ruins to vanish beneath the river's restored flow. On the bank, Juro wrung out his scarf, handing Marya a (soggy) seaweed wrap. "For, uh… hydration?"
She stared at it. "I don't eat scarves."
Mihawk smirked. "A tragedy. They could be considered a…. delicacy."
Above, the ghost bats erupted into a cacophony of shanties, their voices warped by the temple's acoustics into a dirge about lost socks and broken hearts. Tavi and Kip launched into an interpretive dance, splashing algae at each other.
And deep below, the Gates of Lethe clanged impatiently, their rusted hinges echoing Juro's sigh as Marya strode past him, already plotting the next move—untouched by flattery, unfazed by fools, and utterly, magnificently oblivious.
The Baray of Echoes stretched before them, its obsidian waters glinting under the noon sun like a sheet of polished onyx. The air reeked of stagnant brine and something sharper—something burnt, perhaps, or the metallic tang of Black Seastone dust leaching from the reservoir's depths. Tavi and Kip skidded to a halt at the water's edge, their reflections warping in the ripples as Mihawk flicked a pebble into the abyss. It sank without a splash, as though swallowed by a hungrier darkness.
"Why's it so sparkly?" Kip asked, poking the surface with a stick. The water clung to the wood like tar, droplets crystallizing mid-air before shattering.
"Black Seastone slurry," Juro muttered, adjusting his pack. "Suppresses Devil Fruits. Don't fall in unless you fancy becoming an anchor."
Marya ignored them, mist already coiling from her fingertips. With a flick of her wrist, the reservoir parted, revealing a staircase of algae-slick stones descending into the gloom. The water hissed as it retreated, exposing fossilized Mink skeletons frozen in mid-flight, their bony paws clutching a starstone tablet etched with constellations.
"Cool!" Tavi lunged forward, only to slip on the slime. She slid downhill, colliding with a Mink skeleton that crumbled into dust. "Oops."
Juro groaned. "You're literally walking on graves."
"They don't mind!" Kip chirped, balancing a skull on his tricorn. "Look—this one's winking!"
Marya knelt, brushing silt from the starstone map. The constellations shifted under her touch, aligning into a celestial chart that mirrored the grooves in her Void veins. "Uranus' coordinates," she murmured. "They died protecting this."
Mihawk leaned over her shoulder, golden eyes narrowing. "A weapon even gorosei fear. How quaint."
Juro hovered nearby, offering a rusted compass. "I could, uh… help navigate? If you want. Not that you need it! You're clearly—"
"Busy," Marya cut in, not looking up.
Tavi snickered. "He's flirting! It's like watching a seagull try to juggle."
A patch of Void Moss quivered at the map's edge, its tendrils glowing faintly as it emitted a low, seductive hum. Marya's hand twitched toward it—the moss promised understanding, the whispers of a hundred dead scholars. But her mother's face flickered in her mind, blurred by time and Void's erosion. "Memories are anchors," the woman had said, "and you, child, must stay adrift."
Mihawk's blade flashed, slicing the moss into ash. "Temptation's for amateurs."
Juro blinked. "But the knowledge—"
"—isn't worth your name," Mihawk said, sheathing Yoru. "Unless 'Juro Who?' has a ring to it."
The twins, now "decorating" a skeleton with seaweed bracelets, paused. "What's Uranus?" Tavi asked.
"A planet," Juro said.
"A god," Mihawk corrected.
"A weapon," Marya stated, rising. "One the World Government would drown islands to possess."
Kip gasped. "So… it's a space cannon? Can it blow up the moon?!"
"Focus," Marya snapped, though the corner of her mouth twitched—a near-smile buried under stoicism.
As the group pressed on, the reservoir's waters loomed overhead, held at bay by Marya's mist. Bioluminescent eels darted through the liquid's darkness, their bodies tracing the constellations etched into the starstone. Juro lagged behind, kicking a pebble that ricocheted off a carved relief of Minks and Lunarians clasping hands under a crescent moon.
"They built this place together," he said softly. "Before the World Government turned them to dust."
Mihawk raised an eyebrow. "Sentimentality suits you like a fish suits a bicycle."
Ahead, Marya halted at a fissure in the reservoir wall. Beyond it lay the sunken city—a labyrinth of coral-cloaked spires, their windows gaping like the eye sockets of the skeletons guarding them. The starstone map pulsed in her grip, its light fracturing into a path only she could see.
"Stay close," she ordered, not glancing back.
"She loves us," Kip stage-whispered, scampering after her.
Juro sighed, shoulders slumping. "I'd settle for 'tolerates.'"
Mihawk clapped him on the back, nearly knocking him into a tide pool. "Cheer up. Desperation's the first step to… well, more desperation."
The chamber reeked of petrified incense and the metallic tang of ancient blood offerings, its walls lined with stone faces frozen in expressions ranging from divine serenity to mid-sneeze. Tavi prodded a World Noble ancestor's chiseled cheek, recoiling when it squeaked. "It's booping me!"
"Don't touch the dead aristocrats," Juro hissed, though his warning dissolved as Marya strode toward the central statue—a Three-Eyed elder with ruby pupils glowing like hellfire. The air crackled, and suddenly, the hall erupted into a hologram of Imu's fleet bombarding Angkor'thal, flames licking the sky as Lunarian wings burned to ash.
"The Forest God's roots strangle what they once nourished," boomed a voice, its echo bouncing off the stone faces until Kip clapped his hands over his ears.
"That's my line after bean night!" he yelled.
Mihawk leaned against a statue of a scowling Mink, Yoru's tip carving idle patterns into the floor. "Charming. Even annihilation has a jingle now."
Juro edged closer to Marya, gesturing to the hologram's writhing roots. "See how the Forest God's betrayal mirrors the WG? They twist guardians into jailers! It's… uh… poetic injustice!"
Marya tilted her head, her Void veins flickering as she deciphered glyphs at the statue's base. "Or expected. Trust is a liability."
Tavi popped up between them, balancing a stolen jeweled eyeball from a nearby statue. "Is Imu a giant squid? Or, like, a really old grape?"
"Don't know," Marya muttered, though the hologram's flames cast a rare flicker of curiosity in her eyes.
The Three-Eyed elder's projection shifted, showing the Forest God's roots throttling a Lunarian temple. Mihawk smirked. "Guardians become jailers when fed lies. A lesson the WG mastered."
Juro nodded sagely. "Exactly! It's all about corrupted intent! Like when you forge a blade with doubt instead of conviction, and it—uh—stabs your foot?"
"Poignant," Mihawk said, deadpan. "You should write self-help scrolls."
As the hologram looped, the stone faces began to hum, their harmonies warping into a sea shanty about lost love and indigestion. Kip joined in, off-key, while Tavi attempted to duet with a statue's gaping mouth.
"Make it stop," Juro groaned, clutching his hammer like a stress ball.
Marya, unfazed, traced a root's path in the hologram to a hidden alcove. Behind it lay a mural of the Forest God weeping amber sap, its tears pooling into a basin of Black Seastone. "A map," she said, dipping her finger—only to yank it back as the sap hissed and formed a tiny storm cloud over the basin.
"Rude," Mihawk remarked, swatting the cloud with his coat.
Juro rushed to her side, offering a handkerchief stained with forge soot. "Let me! I've got… uh… resistant scales!" He dabbed the sap, which immediately solidified into a dagger-shaped lollipop.
"...Why is it candy?" Tavi asked.
"Symbolism," Juro lied, cheeks blazing.
Mihawk plucked the lollipop, examining it. "A weaponized confection. How revolutionary."
The hall shuddered, stone faces pivoting to glare at the group as the hologram sputtered out. The elder's final message boomed: "BEWARE THE KEYBEARER'S PRIDE."
"Is that a yoga pose?" Kip whispered.
Marya pocketed the lollipop—evidence, not sentiment—and turned to leave. "We're done here."
"Wait!" Juro blurted, knocking over a statue's detached nose. "I, uh… admire your focus! And—and your, uh… sap-resisting skills?"
The twins erupted into giggles, air-swimming around him. "SAP-RESISTING SKILLS!" Tavi crowed. "New bounty title!"
Mihawk sheathed Yoru, smirking. "Truly, romance is not dead. Just… comatose."
As they exited, the stone faces resumed humming, their chorus fading into a whispered warning: "Roots remember…"
And deep in the temple's bowels, the Gates of Lethe rattled, impatient for the day a stoic woman and her entourage of fools would teach even gods the price of hubris.