Rear Admiral X Drake stood at the bow of the Judicator, his coat billowing in the salty wind, eyes locked on the jagged silhouette of Talon Island. The sea roiled beneath the iron hull, reflecting the turmoil in his chest. He clenched a bloodstained parchment in one gloved hand the final report from the envoy he'd sent to broker peace. Slaughtered. Strung up in the square. A grotesque message painted in entrails and ash.
Whether by Ashborne's hand or some other firebrand's, the meaning was unmistakable.
Drake had offered them a chance. A real one. One he'd fought for in the halls of Marineford. One he'd bent protocol for.
He turned to the communications officer beside him, his voice low, cold, devoid of the hesitation in his heart.
"Give word to Hina... Initiate the Buster Call. Talon Island is lost."
The officer froze. "S-sir?"
Drake didn't blink. "Execute it."
A breath caught in the officer's throat, but he nodded, relaying the order into the Den Den Mushi. Moments later, the cannons of the assembled fleet roared to life a thunderous requiem across the sea.
Behind Drake, another officer stepped forward. "Rear Admiral… we still haven't confirmed Ashborne's identity. There could be civilians—"
"I know what's down there," Drake said, his jaw tight. "They knew the cost. We offered them another way."
He didn't add what twisted in his gut, This isn't justice. This is penance.
------------------------------------------
Wyrmsreach was burning again.
Just fire raw, indiscriminate, divine in its cruelty.
The harbor fell first. The first shells struck like gods' wrath, reducing warships and fishing boats alike to splinters. The market was obliterated second, stalls and homes vaporized in the blink of an eye. The air grew thick with smoke and blood. The once bustling streets of the lower city, where children had played and thieves had prowled, turned into rivers of flame and screams.
What had begun as a revolution ended in a massacre.
The rebellion, the dream, was ash in the wind.
The manor atop the hill, once a symbol of tyrannical rule, now stood as a broken silhouette against the inferno, its spine cracked and blackened. The square below, where people had once chanted for freedom, was now a crater rimmed with broken bodies.
Smoke swallowed screams. Fire danced with death.
And Riven Caelum… was alone.
He stumbled through the ruin of the lower city, barely conscious. His right arm hung useless, twisted at the shoulder. His left wing dragged behind him, bones shattered and feathers scorched. His bare chest was streaked with soot and blood, his breathing ragged. Slade's blood was dry on his fingers. His mentor. His father in all but name.
Gone.
His mind reeled. Faces flickered in memory, Edda the cook, who had given him stale bread and a smile. Boochie, the strange cheese man who taught him to throw a punch. Children who had laughed when he flew above them.
All gone.
He didn't know how he was still breathing.
Didn't matter.
The rebellion had failed. There was no one left to save.
The last words Slade had rasped haunted him,
"Run, boy. Don't let it end here."
Above, distant horns wailed, piercing through firelight and stormcloud.
The Judicator had arrived.
And with it… the Buster Call.
-----------------------------------------------------------
The first shell hit the market district. A thousand voices rose and vanished in an instant.
The second shattered the workshop quarter. Molten steel flowed like blood through cracked alleys.
The third fell through the heart of the governor's tower, obliterating the foundation, crumbling it into the undercity.
By the time the fourth shell fell, Riven was gone.
Not dead. Not yet.
But fading.
He dragged himself toward the manor ruins. Toward the shattered altar beneath it. Toward the place he'd sworn never to return to.
The Crypt of Caelus.
----------------------------------------------------
Rubble shifted with each explosion. The grand staircase, now half collapsed, descended into the crypt like the throat of a dying beast. Riven staggered down, one foot in front of the other, guided by instinct, by pain, by something older than memory.
The tomb greeted him with silence.
He collapsed at the base of the glyph covered wall, eyes dim, vision swimming. The golden light of the glyphs was weak, like embers under ash.
His arm bracing the wall for support, only for it to slip down leaving a trail of handprinted blood.
His cutlass, emberfang, slipped from his fingers.
His lips were cracked. His lungs burned.
There was no clever plan. No final attack. No fire left.
He was just a boy.
And he was tired.
-----------------------------------------
Then warmth.
A flicker beneath the glyphs. A faint, rhythmic pulse, like a heartbeat echoing from within the stone.
Riven twitched.
His eyes flickered open, golden and dim.
The pulse grew stronger.
He felt it not in his body, but in something deeper. A tether. A memory. A promise.
The tomb did not judge him.
It cradled him.
From the cracks in the floor, golden flames curled like roots, wrapping around his limbs, his chest, his broken wing. They didn't burn they mended.
Torn flesh knitted. Splintered bone sealed. His wing straightened, feathers regrowing in brilliant hues silver and flame, sky blue and gold.
His breath steadied.
But it wasn't just his body that healed.
The pain the crushing, soul breaking grief had... softened. Not erased. But dulled.
As if Caelus the ancient power that now stirred within him understood loss.
Understood exile.
Understood survival.
And more than that… it remembered vengeance.
Then the visions
His mind drifted. Visions bled into his thoughts.
A sky split in two by wings of fire.
A figure titanic, luminous standing alone atop a mountain, facing a navy of black ships.
Chains wrapped around celestial wrists. A crown cast into a pit of ash.
Then—
A campfire under starlight. Figures danced in a circle, silhouettes laughing, shadows long and wild, their joy untouched by time.
The flames roared higher.
A figure leapt through the blaze, silhouetted by a rising sun. The world held its breath.
Was it him again?
Or someone new?
Then a voice not spoken, but felt. A whisper in his blood.
"Rise, child of flame. The fire does not die. It waits."
Other voices followed faint, fractured. Echoes.
"Gaude... Puer"
"He carry's it... The boy who will free the world..... F--in---d"
A pause....
Then golden eyes, familiar.
And behind it... a unfamilliar wide smile... A voice ringed out
"Will it burn again?"
Riven gasped.
The flames around him pulsed once, then vanished into his skin.
----------------------------------------
He stood slowly.
No shirt. His body was lean and scarred, glowing faintly gold. Scars traced his chest like constellations. His wings unfurled with new strength bigger now, more radiant. Ethereal. Each beat of them stirred dust into spirals.
His cutlass lay on the floor.
He picked it up, his grip tight, reverent.
Then the tomb trembled. Part of the ceiling above gave way. Dust and flame spilled through the cracks. The Buster Call had found even this sacred place.
But Riven wasn't running this time.
He moved quickly, guided by memory and instinct, deeper into the crypt. Glyphs whispered of escape an ancient vent, a tunnel used by the first worshippers to flee when Caelus fell. He passed murals Lunarians standing against Celestial Dragons, cities floating in the sky, wings raised in defiance. He passed carvings he hadn't seen before of a laughing being in a straw hat.
A chill ran down his spine. Gaude puer, Or was it someone else?
He emerged hours later, miles beyond the city, soot streaked and silent, wrapped in shadow and wind.
He turned once.
Wyrmsreach was gone.
Nothing left but firelight and ghosts.
----------------------------------------------
By morning, the world believed him dead.
Cipher Pol confirmed it. No survivors. No trace of the Devil Fruit. No rebel leadership.
Talon Island was declared a grave. A warning.
Rear Admiral Drake gave his final report from the deck of the Judicator, face unreadable.
"Operation concluded. Justice has been served."
No cheers followed. Only the creaking of the ship's deck and the whisper of the wind.
Later, in his cabin, Drake stared at a single photograph, Wyrmsreach in springtime. Children playing near a bakery. A smith hammering steel. He didn't speak.
He poured a glass of dark rum, hands shaking slightly.
"Justice," he whispered. "Or shame."
And far beyond, in the hills beyond fire's reach, a lone boy walked through grasslands still wet with dew. A cutlass at his side. He didn't look back. Clad in his black boots and pants,
He carried no flag. No cause. No name.
Only fire.
And the memory of those who had given him everything.
The world thought Ashborne had perished with Wyrmsreach.
But ashes don't vanish.
They ride the wind.
And someday… they fall again.
He spreads his wings out wide, before leaping from the cliffs of the now destroyed Talon island.
Off to find his new calling... perhaps finding this so called "Gaude puer".