The morning came not with birdsong, but with silence.
Not a peaceful kind. Not the hush of a sleepy island waking to soft waves and distant clouds. No—this silence was alert. The air was taut. Like the world had realized it was holding its breath… and didn't dare exhale.
Allen D. Walker stood at the edge of the broken cliff again.
But this time, he wasn't a toddler staring at a mystery.
He was something else.
Something in-between.
His silver hair fluttered faintly in the rising breeze. The earth beneath him trembled—not violently, but rhythmically. Like a heartbeat.
Like something ancient was waking up… in sync with him.
Behind him, Hades and Serena stood close—but not too close. Their instincts, honed by decades of war and power, told them the same thing:
Do not interrupt this moment.
Because the Devil Fruit was no longer hidden.
It had risen from the crack fully now, cradled in a floating pillar of jagged rock and golden dust, glowing with celestial light. It spun slowly, as if suspended by time itself, its skin a shifting gradient of white and obsidian, feathers forming instead of stems.
It was neither Zoan nor Logia.
It was beyond classification.
And Allen… he reached toward it.
One small step. Another.
Serena's heart clenched.
"Should we stop him?" she whispered.
"No," Hades murmured. "If we try… the island might not survive it."
Allen's hand brushed the surface of the fruit.
The moment he touched it—
Everything screamed.
The sky cracked—not with lightning, but with sound. A pressure unlike any Haki either parent had ever felt exploded from the boy's body. It wasn't rage. It wasn't pain. It was birth.
A wave of force blasted outward in every direction, flattening trees, carving new trenches in the dirt. Birds dropped from the sky mid-flight. The ocean recoiled. Animals across the island either bowed or fled, howling into the distance.
Serena dropped to one knee, covering her eyes with her arm. Her Observation Haki was being shredded.
Hades stood firm—but only barely.
"This isn't Conqueror's Haki…" he muttered. "It's… something else."
Allen wasn't screaming.
He stood with eyes glowing, hair floating, the Devil Fruit now within him. Feathers—real, golden feathers—fluttered from his shoulders, dissolving before they could touch the ground.
Then he exhaled.
And the pressure vanished.
The world fell still again.
Allen turned slowly, barefoot, walking toward his parents.
"I heard it," he said. Voice soft, but too old for his face. "The voice in the fruit. It remembered me."
Serena trembled.
"You… what did it say?"
Allen looked at the sky.
"It said, 'Welcome back.'"
Meanwhile — Mariejois, Pangaea Castle.
The Five Elders sat in a hidden room, deeper than even most Celestial Dragons knew existed.
The chamber was dark. Ancient. The walls were not stone—but a metal that predated memory.
A single figure kneeled before them.
Draped in black cloth, a Cipher Pol Zero operative. Masked. Silent.
"The anomaly has confirmed contact with the relic," said the elder with the cane.
"Reaction?"
"Planetary," the operative replied. "Short-term weather anomalies. Energy pulses registered by three different Sea Stone artifacts. Likely awakened a Relic-Class Fruit."
The elder with the sword narrowed his eyes.
"And the wielder?"
"Two years old. Male child. Civilian bloodline unknown to current Marine records. Last name—'Walker.'"
All five elders fell silent.
Then the bald one with the blade stood up.
"Send the Ebon Scribe."
The operative tilted his head.
"Sir? But he's—"
"Send. Him."
The operative bowed and vanished.
Back on the island, the wind had stilled again.
Serena knelt beside Allen, gently checking his pulse, his temperature—anything.
He was fine.
Not burned. Not strained. Just… calm.
Hades crouched down, eyes level with his son.
"You didn't eat the fruit," he said. "You became it."
Allen blinked.
"I didn't choose it, Papa. It chose me."
Serena swallowed hard.
"We should hide you," she said. "The world—"
"The world already knows," Allen interrupted. "They heard me."
His voice wasn't afraid.
It was certain.
He reached toward the air, and for a moment—a single second—a faint shimmering sigil appeared on the back of his hand. A winged eye. Then it vanished.
Hades recognized the symbol.
He didn't say a word.
But inside, he remembered.
Twenty years ago. A ruin buried beneath the ocean.
That same sigil carved into obsidian.
A warning: "Should the Eye reawaken… nations will burn."
He stared at his son.
And understood.
The world wasn't afraid of Allen because of what he might become.
It would be afraid… because of what he already was.
In the far seas, the Cipher Pol ship was already slicing through the mist.
At the bow stood a man in a tattered black coat, face covered in parchment, eyes glowing red beneath a glass mask.
He carried no weapon.
He needed none.
Behind him, the Cipher Pol soldiers whispered one name:
"The Ebon Scribe."
He smiled faintly.
"Let's see what the little god remembers."