The End of Light

Endless Void.

This was the only sensation Zoro felt at that moment.

After he was swallowed by the out-of-control spacetime energy, his consciousness fell into a bizarre nightmare. The concept of time had been completely stripped away here; an instant could last an eternity, while a century could pass in a moment. Space stretched, twisted, and folded. He felt his body sometimes pulled into an infinitely long noodle, sometimes compressed into an invisible singularity.

Brilliant ribbons of light, like lifeless giant serpents, coiled around him and dragged at him, trying to tear him apart into his most primitive particles. The profound darkness, meanwhile, was like the maw of a beast waiting to devour its prey, relentlessly eroding his will.

Countless phantoms of shattered worlds flashed before his eyes. He saw burning cities, frozen oceans, winged beasts soaring through skies made of crystal, and even a bizarre world composed entirely of gears and steam. Every phantom was steeped in chaos and destruction; they were the remnants of countless worlds within the spacetime torrent.

If an ordinary person fell into this place, their mind would likely be crushed by the immense torrent of information within a thousandth of a second, their soul and body reduced to Void together.

But Zoro was no ordinary man.

He was a man determined to become the world's greatest Great Swordsman. His will had long since been tempered, through countless battles brushing against death, into something purer than the hardest diamond.

"I... haven't... become the world's greatest..."

"How could I... die in a hellhole... like this..."

He clung to that faint obsession deep within his heart, like grasping a lifesaving straw at the bottom of an abyss. That obsession became his final barrier against all erosion.

More importantly, he was not alone.

He could still feel the three swords in his hands. Wado Ichimonji emitted a cool, steadfast presence, like the last wish of a dear friend, constantly reminding him of his promise to Kuina and steadying his sword heart as it neared collapse. Sandai Kitetsu's ominous demonic aura instead thrived amid this chaos, greedily absorbing the surrounding negative energy and forming a thin protective membrane.

And most crucially, there was Enma!

This cursed blade, capable of forcibly drawing out its wielder's Haki, revealed another terrifying side at this moment. Like a starving black hole, after Zoro's Haki was completely depleted, it began on its own to frantically absorb the scattered spacetime energy around them! Those violent forces, enough to tear gods and demons apart, were transformed into some kind of pure energy after Enma drew them in, nourishing Zoro's body as it teetered on the brink of collapse.

Enma was protecting its master! Or rather, it was protecting its future "food."

Who knew how long passed—perhaps a second, perhaps a thousand years.

Just as Zoro's consciousness was about to be completely worn away by the endless darkness, a faint point of light suddenly appeared at the edge of his vision.

At first, it was only the size of a needlepoint, but in this Void containing nothing but chaos and darkness, it was incomparably conspicuous. It radiated a warm, peaceful, life-filled aura utterly out of place with everything around it.

The instinct to survive made Zoro focus all his attention on that point of light.

It was expanding.

It was drawing closer.

A gentle yet irresistible pulling force came from the light, as though calling this lost traveler home. Zoro no longer resisted. He gave up control of his body and used the last of his strength to "swim" toward that point of light.

When his fingertips finally touched that warm radiance, it was as if someone had pressed pause on the world.

His consciousness sank completely into profound darkness.

His body, meanwhile, like a meteor breaking free of its shackles, pierced through the thin World Barrier between worlds, passed through an expanse of rainbow aurora, and fell straight toward the vast, unmarked sky below, as azure and clear as a freshly washed canvas.