Farewell, Nika!

Leviathan opened its massive jaws to their limit.

The joints on either side of its lower jaw cracked like snapping metal. Dark-gold patterns surged wildly along the inside of its mouth, stretching the last mote of compressed darkness into the beginnings of a thin beam. The line was so fine it was almost invisible. Yet every inch of space it crossed collapsed. The air twisted into a transparent tube, then shattered.

Marco's blue flames were still driving him forward.

Most of the feathers had been stripped from his wings. Blue feathers fell one after another, and each one slowed him a little more. Thirty meters to Luffy. Twenty. Fifteen. But the dark beam's charge was already in its final countdown. Marco's eyes were bloodshot. He knew he wouldn't make it.

Whitebeard swung Murakumogiri again.

A shockwave carrying the roar of the earth rushed toward the gravitational field around Luffy. The moment its ripples touched the edge of the darkness, they stuck, like flies in a spiderweb. The force of the tremor was peeled away layer by layer and swallowed. Not even a ripple reached Luffy. Whitebeard tightened his grip on the shaft until his knuckles turned white.

Rocks swung his black-flame blade a second time.

This strike was heavier than the last. The pitch-black slash carried enough destructive force to cleave an island as it slammed into the side of Leviathan's neck. The dark-gold patterns on its scales flashed. They swallowed half the blow, and the rest left only a scorch mark barely deeper than a hair. Rocks's pupils contracted.

Everyone knew it then.

Too late.

No one could reach Luffy in that half-beat. No one could stop the dark beam about to erupt. Not Whitebeard. Not Rocks. Not Marco. Not Sabo.

Luffy knelt on the broken ice. The white