At the very moment Luffy and his companions rode the Ascending Sea Current up to the White Sea.
On Upper Yard Island, atop the White-White Sea, ten thousand meters above the world.
Amid a sacred halo, a figure stood quietly on top of the Poneglyph.
She was a girl with snow-white wings upon her back.
Gentle daylight poured down, gilding her body with a hazy golden outline. Her long wings stirred softly in the wind, their white feathers as flawless as snowflakes.
Her eyes were lowered, her expression serene and detached, like an angel stepping out of a painting.
Conis.
Ross's third daughter, the ruler of this island among the clouds.
Her long eyelashes trembled slightly, as though she had seen something interesting.
She slowly lowered her head and gazed toward the far end of the Cloud Sea, toward somewhere so distant that even her eyes could not reach it.
A gentle, knowing smile curved her lips.
She softly raised an arm, letting the wind slip between her fingers, and murmured in a voice only the clouds and wind could hear:
"Welcome to my kingdom."
"You lucky ones watched over by the gods."
As her words faded, a breeze swept past.
That sacred figure dissolved silently into the surrounding halo, like the thin mist of morning.
Elsewhere.
"Cough, cough... pfft! It's all water up here!"
Crocodile poked his head out of the waist-deep white cloud-water, looking bedraggled as he spat out a mouthful of it.
The sea they had arrived in was an endless expanse of white.
Though it differed from the ocean and did not suppress Devil Fruit powers as strongly, being immersed in it still left him feeling weak.
They were now floating more than seven thousand meters above sea level.
Everywhere they looked, strange and magnificent