Brothers three born of violent thought,
Through flame and blood and blackness wrought.
Madness leeched into their steel,
A hunger to rend and split and peel.
If drawn into the light of day,
Only blood allows them be sent away.
They care not where the tribute falls,
But death awaits whom ignores their calls.
Upon the land they were forged,
Bring not a one freshly gorged.
Should home they reach recent fed,
The earth shall churn with the restless dead.
Demons shall wake and evils shall rise,
And all whom trespass shall know demise.
The altar waits to raise its child:
A beast of anguish, of strength defiled.
Dark clouds had begun to gather on the horizon as the island came into view, the starry skies soon blotted out by the sickly grey that warned of lightning. Waves roiled choppily against the hull of the Thousand Sunny as they made a course for shelter, hoping to beat the storm.
"What island is this?" Robin asked, peering down over their navigator's shoulder at a map spread across the table.
"Muramasa. It was once home to rich deposits of jewel steel, but was abandoned when they ran out," Nami explained somberly, tapping the island bearing a red X across it. "Certainly not my fist pick, but those thunderclouds would reach us before we could get near the next inhabited island. I've told Franky to anchor us in the natural cove on the western side, it should protect us from the worst of it."
The archaeologist seemed to ponder the name of the island for a moment, casting a glance out the porthole as a small frown turned her lips downward. Muramasa. It held no meaning to her, certainly, yet somehow it still made her mind itch with vague foreboding. Something was off about it, but she could not place a finger on what, nor why she should believe it to be so. Had she read about it before somewhere, having forgotten the name but holding onto fragments concerning its history? Leaving Nami to scrutinize the map, Robin would retreat to her quarters and see if she couldn't find something about this Muramasa in her sizable library.
Out on the main deck, Sanji let the growing winds whip his hair about his face while he watched the storm brewing behind the island with a deepening scowl. Teeth anxiously ground at the butt of a cigarette as he looked up toward the crow's nest, knowing in his gut that something was amiss.
It had nothing to do with the weather, that much he knew for sure.
Ever since they sailed from an island several days ago after stopping for supplies, a certain swordsman had been acting shittier than usual. The further they sailed on, the worse he had gotten: he had been unreasonably irritable, excessively angry, and had stopped joining the crew for meals. When the island had first showed up on the horizon, he had spotted Zoro retreating up to the crow's nest and had been up there for several hours now. The approaching storm seemed like the icing on this particularly unpleasant cake, driving them toward the place he was convinced had something to do with the swordsman's behavior.
Grumbling, he flicked the spent cigarette overboard-lest he deal with Franky chewing him out for damaging the deck by snuffing it under his shoe-and headed for the mast holding the crow's nest. Like it or not, someone had to check on the idiot and get him to come down, the nest not particularly safe in this weather. Carefully, he ascended the rungs leading up the mast to the hatch, hoping that he wouldn't go through the hassle only to find it locked.
It wasn't.
Pushing it upward into the room, the cook shivered as cold, stale air rushed down to meet him. There was a smell to it that spoke of dirt basements, dusty crypts, and other places best left forgotten. Eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom, soon finding that it wasn't just the air that had gone wrong.
Moonlight filtering in through the portholes was too dim, as if it were passing through tinted glass. Everything seemed duller, aged far beyond their true age, rusting and cracking while still in their prime. And the wood. From what Sanji could tell in the bad lighting, it looked…redder. But that was not his concern: the fact that the room looked like it had been put through a blender, was. Floorboards were shattered, torn up, and gouged deeply. Walls showed terrifyingly long claw-marks that cut through the wallpaper into the sturdy wood beneath.
Briefly he wondered if a wild beast hadn't managed to get into the crow's nest somehow, but the thought passed as quickly as it had come when his gaze fell on a glint of white amongst the red and grey. He didn't know a whole lot concerning Wadō Ichimonji, but it was enough to realize that something so important to the swordsman should not be-would not be, under normal circumstances-tossed aside into the jumbled pile of weights. Looking to the other side of the room, he noticed that Shūsui had also been unceremoniously discarded in a pile of debris.
Sweat began to bead on the cook's forehead and he suppressed a shudder, growing increasingly apprehensive in the room. Everything in him was telling him to run, the hairs on the back of his neck standing and his skin broken out in gooseflesh. Wrong. Something was terribly, horribly, utterly wrong. It wasn't until he spotted a figure standing in the darkness that seemed to pool at the center of the room that he knew how wrong it truly was.
Head lowered and his back to the cook, Zoro stood motionless with a red scabbard clutched in his right hand, Sandai Kitetsu held in the left with the tip resting against the floor. Crimson, tattoo-like tendrils snaked up from the red fingers wrapped around the sword's hilt to disappear beneath the sleeve of his coat and reappear where they wrapped around the swordsman's neck. In the gloom, the markings seemed to pulse with a slight glow, in time with a slow but steady heartbeat.
When Sanji shifted-he himself unsure if it was to approach or retreat-Zoro lifted his head and slowly turned around to look at him. Zoro's normal ochre iris had been stained a deep red, contrasted against blackened sclera…and even in the weak lighting, the cook could see that the pupils gave off a red eyeshine. Just by standing there like that, Sanji found himself rooted in place, looking at his nakama with wide eyes: was this even Zoro? As if sensing the thought, the swordsman gave a chuckle with two voices overlapping, one being his own, the other was one the cook did not recognize.
"Hello, Sanji," he spoke at last.
Thoughts raced nearly as fast as his heart at this point, keeping his eyes trained on the swordsman for fear of letting him out of his sight for even an instant. Left uncertain of how to proceed, he listened closely and could hear a voice chattering below on the main deck.
"LUFFY!" he barked urgently when he realized it was his captain passing by. "GET UP HERE! N-!"
Making the mistake of blinking, Sanji was thrown to the floor with a brutality he was not even remotely accustomed to from the swordsman, air knocked from his lungs as his back struck the floor. Zoro-but not Zoro-leered down at him with a boot pressed firmly into his chest to pin him down and he tossed the scabbard away so rough fingers could grab hold of his chin.
"Doesn't it just burn you up inside," the swordsman practically purred, hand forcing Sanji's head backward and pressed Kitetsu's sharp edge against his throat. He leaned down to the cook's ear with a smirk. "Doesn't it just boil your…blood, to know you were right all along?"
Sanji caught his breath, glancing at Zoro from the corner of his eye with much of the color draining from his face. This wasn't their swordsman anymore, not really. Sure it was his body and his voice, but something else was pulling the strings…Kitetsu.
"You…bastard," he managed to hiss before inhaling sharply as the blade nicked his throat.
Thankfully, Luffy burst his way up into the room and drew Kitetsu's attention away from the cook momentarily. Their captain took one look at the destruction around him before turning to face his nakama on the floor, brows knitting together in confusion as he realized right away that this was no normal conflict between the cook and swordsman.
"Oh look," Zoro jeered with a grin that showed far too many teeth. "I've got the one he cares for more than he knows…and the one whose opinion and life he values far above his own in the same room. Perfect."
Taking a step forward, Luffy was forced to halt with a flinch as Sanji made a startled, gurgling noise, Zoro having pressed the sword just a bit further into his throat. His eyes went wide as he could see blood spilling from the wound, teeth grinding together. This wasn't right. Zoro didn't like Sanji, but he would never do this to him.
" Ah, no no, senchou," the swordsman warned with a shake of his head. "Stay right where you are, would hate to slip with the sword so close to his throat. But you know how hungry I can be…"
"Zoro, stop it!" Luffy ordered, hands curled into shaking fists at his sides.
"I don't…think it's Zoro…anymore," Sanji struggled to mutter, feeling the boot grind punishingly into his chest for the trouble.
"Now, there's no need to get so worked up," Kitetsu sighed, letting go of Sanji's chin to run a finger across the flat side of the blade, coating it in the cook's blood. "I just wanted to thank you."
"Thank us?" the young captain repeated, perplexed.
"That's right," he chuckled, cleaning the blood from his finger with his tongue. "You've brought me home, senchou. And with your help, I will be free."
The sword began to hum, its blue flame hamon suddenly flaring bright crimson, the change spreading out along either side of the blade starting from where it touched the wound in Sanji's neck. Squinting in the growing light that pulsed in time with the swordsman's markings, the cook felt his insides grow cold as Kitetsu began to laugh.
Outside, the winds had picked up into a gale force that threatened to tip the ship over altogether. Rain battered the deck and arcs of lightning lit up the sky just as Franky had finished weighing the anchor. The natural harbor seemed to shield then from the brunt of the storm, but the waves lashed the hull violently, pitching the ship as if it were no more than a child's toy. The sky grew darker. Darker. Darker, still. The moon was gone. The storm raged, thunder crashing dangerously close, following mere seconds in time with the cracks of wicked, red lightning.
Then everything stopped.
Nothingness swallowed the crew whole, plunging them into a deep darkness without sound or substance. From this darkness they would soon awaken, but shortly thereafter wish nothing more than to return to it.
"Welcome to Muramasa," Kitetsu greeted them gleefully.