[In a trance, [Nihility] seemed to blur the boundaries of time.]
[Otherwise, how could she see that young girl wearing a kimono?]
[The pure white under-kimono was soaked by the rain, clinging tightly to her thin body. She stood quietly in the center of the wasteland. The tachi longer than a person behind her glowed with a bluish-gray light in the curtain of rain.]
[And before her—]
[Countless swords were slanted into the earth. They were either incomplete or broken, like the final tombstones of those who died in battle.]
[Accompanied by a soft sigh, Acheron slowly drew the tachi in her hand.]
["…Like a tide surging forth, leading you home."]
——
One Piece.
White.
Between heaven and earth, only this one color remained.
Mihawk slowly opened his eyes. What entered his vision was boundless pale white. There was no boundary between sky and ground, no changes of light and shadow. He could not even clearly tell whether the ground under his feet was solid.
In his impression, he remembered that he had just been on the deck watching the Celestial Screen together with Crocodile, and had happened to see the scene of Acheron drawing her blade... but for some unknown reason, in almost a one-second gap, he had arrived in this strange space.
"Is this some kind of hallucination? Or... am I dead?"
He subconsciously reached up to touch his neck, but there was no wound there. Not only that—he did not even feel the slightest sensation of pain. He was still wearing that signature shirt, long pants, and knee-high leather boots. The small cross dagger on his chest still hung in its original place.
Yet the eerie part was that his entire body seemed to have been bleached. All colors had completely disappeared, leaving only a monotonous white.
"Is this heaven?" He coldly snorted. "If so, it's far too boring."
He tried moving his fingers and touched the hilt of "Yoru" behind him—the familiar icy sensation made him certain that he was not in a hallucination.
…But then where could this be?
Just as he was preparing to draw his blade to probe this space, a slight ripple suddenly appeared on the distant "horizon."
It was a gray a little deeper than the pale white, slowly blooming like ink dropped into clear water. Mihawk narrowed his eyes and watched that gray gradually spread, transforming into more layers—first a light blue like thin mist, then indigo, and finally recovering the azure that the sea ought to have.
The process of color returning was like a film played in reverse, sweeping from far to near. Mihawk watched as his black blade was the first to recover its original color, followed by his clothing. The wine-red patterns appeared on the shirt, and the cross dagger also began to shine with metallic luster again.
When the color spread to his skin, Mihawk finally felt a breeze brush past his cheek. He raised his head. The originally pale "sky" had already returned to normal. A few wisps of white cloud were leisurely floating within it.
"Hey! Hawk-Eye!"
Crocodile's slightly hoarse voice came from behind. Mihawk turned around and saw him sitting on the deck covered in sweat, his golden hook deeply driven into the wooden boards, as if to stabilize his body during the previous change.
"You saw it just now too, right?"
"That stretch of white..." Crocodile took a deep breath. "…appeared only after that woman drew her blade. I don't need to say it—you can guess what that thing is, right?"
"Nihility."
"Damn it." Crocodile couldn't help but curse. "How long passed just now? One minute? Ten minutes? The instant that woman drew her blade, the colors of the entire world were swallowed by Nihility... just how far has she walked on this damned Path?"
——
Dragon Raja.
When the colors in his field of vision recovered, Chu Zihang subconsciously looked toward Caesar beside him.
From the other party's dumbfounded and shocked gaze, he quickly realized that the development of events had far exceeded his expectations—he had originally thought he would see a satisfying battle between Emanators, yet he never expected that merely Acheron drawing her weapon, the power of the Path of Nihility contained within it would affect them who were watching this battle from the sidelines.
"Bang!"
One after another, the sounds of car collisions came from outside Takamagahara. Chu Zihang and Caesar quickly ran out of the cowherd shop. They saw vehicle accidents everywhere in the streets and alleys. The wails and painful cries of people continued one after another.
"This..." Caesar was temporarily too shocked to speak.
"Perhaps in those dozens of seconds when we were deprived of color, time in reality did not stop flowing. And for these vehicle drivers... dozens of seconds are enough to cause a traffic accident." Chu Zihang said.
"…Isn't this the same as the disaster caused last time when Phantylia crushed a star?"
"It's different." Chu Zihang shook his head in denial. "This time there is no [Abundance] power dissipating from the Ambrosial Arbor to heal our wounds."
——
[Acheron's blade edge lightly and casually cut across the void.]
[At first it seemed merely a bloodstain torn open in Penacony, yet the instant it left the scabbard it transformed into a crimson crescent moon. Wherever the blade light passed, space was neatly sliced apart like fragile silk, revealing the pure white Nihility surging behind it—]
[Then, everything was swallowed by Nihility.]
——
Demon Slayer.
Tanjiro had already raised his heart to his throat. He stared unblinkingly at the Celestial Screen, not daring to move his eyes even a fraction.
But—
He only felt a flash before his eyes. A fine, bright ray of light erupted within that extremely oppressive wind and rain waterfall, drawing out extremely fast and sharp, like a red bolt of lightning, finally meeting those chips that blotted out the sky and that Aventurine who was about to destroy everything!
—Acheron had made her move!
—She had finally drawn her blade!
Tanjiro almost wanted to cheer.
In his heart he had long bound himself together with the Express crew. He had also long yearned to see Acheron draw her blade!
The sky full of "wind and rain" suddenly stopped. Yet what disappeared was not only the wind and rain, but also color. Tanjiro rubbed his eyeballs, suspecting there was a problem with his eyes. This sensation continued for about twenty seconds. Just as he began to grow nervous, the colors in his field of vision gradually began to recover.
—Clouds flew and moved in the sky. Finally a line of moonlight bloomed. Within those faint arriving rays of light, Tanjiro only saw Miss Acheron standing alone.
Her motion of sheathing the blade was very light.
Yet the instant the blade guard touched the mouth of the scabbard, the final stagnant curtain of rain crashed down. Ten thousand raindrops simultaneously smashed toward the ground, splashing countless pits in the accumulated water. The world that had just been frozen suddenly gained sound—the crisp sound of raindrops striking metal billboards, the dripping of raindrops jumping on her skin...
Time began to flow once more. The pale Penacony finally recovered its usual colors.
Tanjiro widened his eyes.
Because he saw that the Celestial Screen had shattered—no, it was not shattered. Rather, a long crack had split open in the sky of Penacony on the Celestial Screen—cloud layers tens of thousands of meters high had been neatly divided into two, revealing the deep void behind them.
Only then did he discover that something like a barrier had been covering the sky above Penacony—yet unfortunately that thing had also been cut into fragments by Acheron's single slash. Torrential rain poured in along that gap, forcing pedestrians to hide under billboards one after another to take shelter from the rain.
"That one slash just now... seemed to release something that swallowed all of us."
"Is that Nihility? Is it the effect of Miss Acheron's Path? Fortunately..."
Tanjiro finally recovered from the shock and looked toward Zenitsu and Inosuke beside him. However, these two were currently squeezed into a corner, trembling.
"Tan-Tanjiro...!"
Zenitsu's face was ashen with fear as he hugged Inosuke tightly without letting go: "What the hell was that?? I even suspected I had gone blind! Aaaaaah don't make it so terrifying!!"