The sky trembled.
A thousand frost swords released Sword Pressure at the same instant, and all that golden force fused into a blazing tide overhead. It rolled across the heavens like a sea of molten light, vast enough to make the world feel small.
Kairos hovered beneath it, his ice wings spread wide.
His clothes snapped in the wind. His black hair whipped behind him, but under that golden radiance, every strand seemed dyed in fire. He no longer looked like a man. He looked like a figure cast out of light itself.
Behind him, the golden tide kept swelling, each pulse releasing enough pressure to make the people below struggle to breathe.
Then Kairos raised a hand—
and brought it down.
The entire sea of gold answered.
It crashed toward Shiki in one overwhelming surge, like the heavens had split open and were pouring their wrath onto the world.
It all happened in less than a second.
Shiki's eyes narrowed.
The cigar between his teeth creaked under the pressure of his bite.
The grin disappeared from his face.
For the first time since arriving, he looked truly serious.
That pressure was enormous.
No—not just enormous.
It was suffocating, oppressive, as if the sky itself were trying to hammer him straight into the earth. For a man who had spent so long flying above the world, it had been a very long time since he had felt anything like that.
Worse still—
the attack covered too much space.
There was nowhere to dodge.
The Sword Pressure came down.
Boom!
One of Shiki's floating islands exploded on contact, bursting into countless chunks of earth and stone. But before those fragments could even fall, golden fire ignited across them and burned them away in midair.
Sword Pressure did not only crush.
It burned.
It erased.
Even Shiki himself was forced downward.
The cigar in his mouth shattered. His coat ripped apart. His body dropped violently, dragged toward the ground under that crushing force.
In Fire Country's capital, a Marine officer stared so hard his eyes began to ache.
"Golden Lion Shiki… is being suppressed…"
To most people there, Shiki was only a legend—a name from the old era, a pirate spoken of in the same breath as Roger.
But this officer had seen him with his own eyes.
He had been at Marineford back then.
He had witnessed the day Shiki stormed Marine Headquarters alone because he could not accept Roger's surrender. He had seen the destruction for himself. Even with Sengoku and Garp joining forces against him, Shiki had still smashed half of Marineford apart before he fell.
That image had never left him.
And now—
even with both legs gone—
Shiki was still a monster who, in the officer's mind, could have stood among the Four Emperors.
Because he was Shiki.
Because he was the Golden Lion.
Because he was one of the men who had ruled the previous era.
And yet now, that same monster was being forced down by a young man not even twenty years old.
"Trying to beat me with this?" Shiki roared. "Not enough!"
The Armament Haki on his body shattered under the pressure—
then re-formed immediately.
He endured the Sword Pressure head-on and finally stopped his fall a hundred meters above the ground.
Then, instead of retreating, he dropped the rest of the way on purpose.
As if to say that this much would never be enough to pin him down.
Boom!
Shiki crashed into the frozen canyon below.
Dust and shattered ice erupted everywhere.
Then the entire thousand-meter stretch of frozen rift began to shake. It was like some ancient beast had awakened beneath the earth and was trying to claw its way out.
The rumbling did not stop.
Cracks spread in every direction through the glacier, dense as spiderwebs. The canyon that had already been split open now looked ready to collapse altogether.
Then it happened.
The frozen rift exploded.
Every block of ice within a thousand meters rose into the air and began circling Shiki, revolving around him like fragments of a shattered blue planet.
His golden hair drifted wildly.
Everything around him was floating.
"Rise!"
Shiki's roar shook the heavens.
The aura pouring from him felt like a volcano erupting after centuries of silence.
Wild.
Violent.
Absolute.
The kind of dominance only those who had once stood at the summit of the previous era could possess.
Armament Haki spread across the floating ice, coating every chunk of blue crystal in deep black.
Then a roar answered him.
A thousand-meter lion took shape behind Shiki.
Its body was made from the shattered glacier, its form wrapped in black Haki. It hung in the sky like a beast born to devour the sun itself.
The moment it roared, people all across Fire Country went pale. Some clutched their ears and dropped to the ground screaming, their heads splitting from the sound alone.
"So this is Golden Lion Shiki…"
Robin looked up at the sky, her face tight with unease.
Even Kuzan's expression changed.
Shiki's strength had gone beyond even what he expected. If he had not withdrawn in time, his already wounded body might have been caught in the aftermath and torn apart.
Now Shiki stood atop the lion's head, his torn coat fluttering, golden hair streaming in the wind.
Behind him, the giant lion stared at Kairos with savage, unblinking eyes. Its sheer presence distorted the surrounding air.
And facing that monstrous sight—
Kairos remained calm.
He did not look at the lion.
He did not even look at Shiki.
He was looking at the snow.
Delicate flakes drifted through the air, tracing slow, graceful arcs as they fell. They looked like tiny white spirits dancing across the battlefield.
Kairos simply watched them.
Then he spoke.
"Ice Heaven… Hundred Flower Funeral."
◇ BONUS & SUPPORT ◇
◇ 1 bonus chapter for every 10 reviews — drop a comment!
◇ 1 bonus chapter for every 100 Power Stones.
◇ Read 60 chapters ahead on P@treon → patreon.com/StrawHatStudios