The final month of Sea Circle Calendar 1522.
News of victory from New Marineford swept through every corner of the world like wildfire.
The Navy had officially conquered the Holy Land, Mary Geoise!
Wherever the news reached, some people cheered with joy.
Some stood dumbstruck, some trembled with fear, and many more
fell into a long, disbelieving silence before unleashing cries suppressed for generations,
even centuries.
Atop Pangaea Castle, the World Government flag that had flown for eight hundred years
was replaced, before countless eyes, by a brand-new flag bearing a seagull with a sword, symbolizing the Independent Navy and a new order.
The flag snapped in the fierce winds atop the Red Line, proclaiming the definitive end of an era.
The World Government, the Empty Throne, Imu, the Five Elders, the Holy Knights...
The "Age of Gods" that had hung over all living beings for eight hundred years...
came to its final end here.
January, Sea Circle Calendar 1523.
A month of purges and reconstruction.
A newly formed, Navy-led "Reverie" was urgently convened on the former site of the Holy Land.
Its participants were no longer lofty Celestial Dragons or kings acting as their proxies,
but true representatives of the islands, races, and factions across the Four Blues and the Grand Line.
Many of those faces had suffered oppression in years past, some not even recognized as "people."
On the conference's first day, seated on a hastily erected dais,
Gern Reginald Sigma, wearing his "World Grand Fleet Admiral" coat,
expressionlessly read out the order to execute all Celestial Dragons and their core vassals before Den Den Mushi broadcasting worldwide.
There were no trials, no arguments.
Only public, thorough executions.
That month, blood stained the newly laid paving stones of the Holy Land's plaza,
and the last, most stubborn