Chapter 109: The Silent Shore

The Titan’s Glory drifted through the milky, ethereal mists of the White-White Sea like a ghost ship. There were no sails to catch the wind and no engines to thrum against the hull. Instead, the massive galleon moved with a spectral, silent grace, propelled entirely by the lingering kinetic pull of my Sky-Roc Jade Clone.

As the coastline of Angel Island loomed through the haze, I raised a hand, and the emerald thunderbird dissolved into a fine green mist. The ship’s momentum carried it forward, gliding perfectly into a thick, natural bank of sea clouds that hugged the shore.

“Perfect,” I muttered, looking at the dense fog. “Bepo, drop the anchors. Keep the crew quiet. As of now we’re officially going off the grid.”

The boarding ramp lowered with a muffled thump onto the bouncy, marshmallow-like cloud beach. Mont Blanc Cricket was the first to step off. He didn’t fall to his knees or weep as I had thought, but he stood as still as a statue, his eyes fixed on the horizon. The weight of four hundred years of family shame was a physical burden on his shoulders, and I could see the steel in his gaze. He wouldn’t allow himself to feel, not yet. He wouldn’t celebrate until the gold was under his fingernails.

“Jacob, Maria, Peter,” I called out, turning to my cousins. “Do a perimeter sweep. Find out if anyone is left on this beach. I don’t want us getting jumped while we’re unloading.”

[Peter POV]

I adjusted the straps of the Ghost Touch vest. I stayed in my human form, the Spinosaurus hybrid was great for a brawl, but it was too loud and too heavy for scouting. Besides, I liked the way the air felt against my skin when I used the harness.

“Stay behind me,” I told Jacob and Maria. “If I tap my comms twice, it means I’ve found something.”

I pressed the activation stud on my chest. A cold, static-like hum washed over me, and suddenly, the world turned a shade of translucent blue. I was invisible. I was intangible. I was a ghost.

I drifted across the cloud beach, my boots making no sound on the soft ground. Looking around the eerie devastation of Angel Beach hit me immediately. The quaint houses, built from that strange “Cloud-Mud,” were scorched black. The once-vibrant streets were littered with shattered Dials, some cracked, others burned out. This wasn’t just a quiet island Victor had told us about, it looked more like a graveyard.

I moved toward a collapsed pagoda near the edge of the residential district. As I drifted through a fallen wall, I felt a rhythmic vibration in the soles of my feet. It wasn’t the wind. It was the faint, frantic thudding of hearts.

I spotted a hidden, reinforced hatch beneath a pile of debris. Even in my ghost state, I could hear the muffled, terrified whimpering of people holding their breath.

I tapped my comms twice.

Jacob and Maria appeared from the fog a few seconds later. Jacob looked at the debris I was pointing at and nodded. He didn’t waste time with a shovel. He wound up a punch and tapped a heavy fallen beam.

Twin Impact.

The initial tap did nothing, but a second later, a localized shockwave blasted the debris away from the hatch, clearing the path without sending a single splinter into the cellar below.

“Come on out,” Jacob said, his voice grounding and calm. “We’re not with the guys in the sky.”

A young girl with pale blonde hair and two short tails peeked out, followed by an older, balding man. They looked at Jacob’s double-jointed arms and Maria’s horns with pure, unadulterated terror.

I pressed the stud on my vest and flickered back into the visible spectrum right in front of them. The girl shrieked, but I held up my hands. “Easy. We’re Blue Sea dwellers. My brother sent us.”

“Blue Sea…?” The man, Pagaya, stammered, looking at us with a glimmer of hope. “You… you have to leave. This island is a prison.”

[POV: Victor]

They brought the survivors, Conis and Pagaya, back to the edge of the cloud bank where the ship was hidden. They were shivering, despite the mild weather. As the crew gathered around, Conis began to sketch out the horrific calamity that had befallen Skypiea.

“It’s a war between two monsters,” Conis whispered, her eyes darting toward the distant, towering forest of Upper Yard. “A year ago, a man with golden hair and swords for legs arrived. He calls himself Golden Lion Shiki. He brought an army of mutated beasts that can tear a man in half in seconds.”

“Shiki the Golden Lion,” Ace muttered, his face darkening. “The old legend from my pops’ era.”

“He wants our people to be his slaves,” Pagaya added, his voice cracking. “But the ruler of this land, ‘God’ Enel, refuses to yield. He has the power of lightning itself. They have turned the Holy Land into a perpetual slaughterhouse.”

“They stay on Upper Yard mostly,” Conis explained. “Shiki wants the civilians intact to build his empire, so they fight for the ‘Vearth’. But if anyone is caught in the middle, Enel executes them as a ‘criminal,’ and Shiki’s men take them as ‘laborers.’ No one is safe.”

I looked at Jasmine and Robin as the gravity of the situation settled in. This was turning out to be more than just a training trip for us. We had stepped into the war zone of two clashing eras of piracy.

“Wait,” Jasmine said, her voice sharp with concern as she looked at the Skypieans. “What about the Shandians? The people of the forest?”

Conis looked down at her lap, her expression turning grim. “The Shandian guerrilla warriors are fighting a two-front war. They are trying to take their ancestral home back from both Shiki and Enel. They are also getting massacred for it.”

She looked up at us, her eyes welling with tears. “Many of the Shandian women and children were in the thick of the forest when the last major offensive started. Many have not been seen in weeks. Their current status is… unknown.”

The silence that followed was heavy. I looked at the crew. I saw the fire in Maria’s eyes and the grim resolve on Peter’s face. The last of our family was out there, trapped between a “God” and a “Lion.”

I looked toward the dark canopy of Upper Yard.

“Well,” I said, my voice dropping into a low, dangerous rumble. “I guess we have our mission.”