Chapter Text
EDELWEISS KINGDOM
NEW WORLD, GRAND LINE
“We should turn back,” Chiffon urged as the woods grew dark around them. “Yuen and Raisen are dead.”
“And we should abandon them here?” asked Katakuri, stoically. He was the only one who had forgone a winter coat, braving the icy air on his own.
Chiffon didn’t rise to the bait. She was younger than him, yes, but she had seen much of the world too. There was something strange about this island. Something that made her blood rush in her ears. “Not abandon them, but we should tell mother about this. It was…it was a mistake…”
"We were attacked first,” said Katakuri, stopping to turn and stare he down. “The beast came for us, and we defended ourselves.”
But, we knew, she wanted to say. We knew we were trespassing, and it only did what its instincts told it to. Now, two of our brothers are dead. We should turn back.
She wished Lola was here with her.
“We’ll go back after we’re done with our business,” he said, leaving no room for arguments. Chiffon wanted to believe in him, but she was shaken. Scared. Not willing to die just yet.
“Don’t be frightened,” said Amande, speaking up for the first time. Smoke followed her words. “We’ll pay the witch back for what she’s done.” Her voice carried far between the trees, yet nothing moved.
“We’ve still got a long way to go,” said Katakuri, glancing up at the sky, grey with storm clouds. Snow fell without stop in Edelweiss, blanketing the paths up the mountains. If they continued to walk, night would fall, and they would be left wandering blindly in the dark.
Chiffon could see the tightness in his spine, the rage festering beneath his sunken eyes, drawing down into the scarf that covered his mouth from view. He blamed himself, she knew. Failure was not a word that Katakuri was familiar with, but they had made a mistake this time. A careless, senseless mistake.
Yet, it was more than that. Katakuri and Amande had been sent here on purpose. Big Mom’s best fighter, though it was meant to be an easy mission. She had sent Chiffon to aid with picking up the bride, though Chiffon realized now that her mother never mentioned whose bride she would be. Behind Big Mom’s hurried words, Chiffon sensed a nervous tension, a sort of perilous arrogance, and something almost close to fear.
Edelweiss was a land of snow, mountains with white flowers, so beautiful and wonderful, that it had eased all their worries when they landed. From the shore, they’d spotted the blue turrets, flying glittering gold flags, firelight alit in every window, and imagined there’d be a princess there waiting for them with a warm hearth and roasted meats to feast on.
They slept in the valley that first night, lighting a raging fire to keep warm, hunting down the deer in the forest to feed their bellies, and then came across the beast. A great, hulking monster of a wolf. Hackles rose, merriment died, teeth flashed and, in an instant, out of instinct, violence bred from violence, Katakuri set upon it. Raisin and Amande had joined him. Challenging one another to keep the pelt, who’d pick apart it’s bones to bring back, who’d take its head for a trophy? Katakuri had won. It’d make a fine gift, he’d said.
What a gift, thought Chiffon now. A fine cloak, soaked in blood.
Their bride had called them up to the castle, hanging flayed pieces of her brothers along the mountain paths, ravens feasting at every severed limb. A cloak for a cloak, she’d written into the snow.
They were marching to meet her. Tonight, something strange lingered in the air. The darkness pressed in all around drawing her shoulders tight. Nine days had passed since they started up the mountain. Nine days up, facing storm after storm, seeking shelter in damp caves, finding no firewood to keep warm. Today, a cold wind blew south, and the trees thickened as they approached the castle, wind whispering voiceless words.
All day, Chiffon felt eyes on her, cold, unforgiving eyes. Katakuri felt it too. Warned them that it would not be an easy meeting. Chiffon wanted to forget it all. Wanted to take back her brothers, whole and unhurt, and run home. But, she knew there would be no peace there either.
Big Mom was unforgiving. Merciless. In a rage, she would feast upon them with the same cruel coldness of a raven picking at carrion. No, the better—the safer choice was to face this unknown enemy. When they looked up and saw the flickering warmth of the castle, it seemed enchanting, mesmerizing in its beauty, but they all knew something about the fallacy of sugar-spun houses and pretty princesses.
What little light emanated from the castle’s windows pulsed with in irregular rhythm. The snow that should have been pristine white had taken on a sickly gray pallor in its shadow.
It was hard to believe in the goodness of beauty, when you knew the ugly face it hid.
“She killed them without any of us knowing,” said Chiffon, hands straining at her sides. Her feet slid against the ice, but her elbow was caught in Katakuri’s grip in an instant. He held on until she was steady. “We don’t know what kind of enemy—”
“Mama told me that she was young. Nineteen.” Amande looked back at her, gaze cool. Behind her, the mist coiled between the trees, and somewhere in its depths, something screeched—long, mournful, and decidedly inhuman. “Do you not trust her?”
“I do.”
“Then why are doubting her now? Do you think she would willingly lead us to our deaths?”
If she was only a bride, why send Katakuri to take her? Chiffon did not voice this question. Katakuri seemed not to hear their argument. He was studying the trees, his eyes tracking movement that wasn't there, looking past them into some unknown future, never truly here or there. Chiffon wondered what it was that he saw.
“No,” answered Chiffon, her breath misting in air that tasted of copper and decay. “But, we should tell her—”
“And make her angry when we're not there to stop her? Do you want to lose more than—”
“Enough,” ordered Katakuri. They followed his gaze upward and saw there, hanging from the jagged spit of rock that jutted from the mountainside, a body...or what had been a body at some point.
The corpse was split open, his ribs severed along his spine and spread open like the wings of an eagle. All that was left of him was bone and tattered cloth—Navy cloth, though the fabric had been stained so dark with old blood, it was nearly black. A Marine. A neat sign hung, bolted to the top two ribs with iron spikes, that read:
Here be sorrow, here be dread
No sorrow sung, no prayers read,
For all who enter join the dead.
The wind began to moan through the corpse's hollow ribcage.
“A poet,” drawled Amande, though her usual confidence now held a brittle edge. She stepped forward slowly, tipping the skull back with the end of her pointed nail. “This one's a Vice Admiral.”
“Tell me again what you saw,” demanded Katakuri.
“I didn't see anything. I didn't hear her either. It was…she was…” A ghost, colorless and pale with eyes like stone.
“Did you see any weapons?”
“She had a spear.” A long, black thing tipped in red, looking as if it wept blood, and then there’d been the heat. Impossible heat. Fire so hot, she could still feel it nipping at her heels, but Chiffon escaped unburnt. The same could not be said for the ship, which was no more than a charred husk, leaving them trapped with no exit. “It seemed to have eaten a Devil Fruit. It made fire.”
Even as she said it, they sounded like the words of a child.
“A Zoan-fruit mostly likely. Some sort of legendary creature,” murmured Katakuri. “We can rule out Phoenix’s thanks to—
“A dragon?” asked Amande, mouth pulling into a grin. “Oh, they wouldn’t like that, would they?”
“It’s possible, but Kaido—”
“There are other kinds of dragons, besides, he’s an overgrown fish.” Amande laughed at her own joke. Big Mom would have laughed at it too.
“We’ll handle it when—” Katakuri looked back at Chiffon, who shivered despite her best efforts not to. “Are you cold?”
I want to leave, thought Chiffon. “A bit,” she muttered. “It’s the wind.”
The trees rustled again. Ravens shot into the sky, cawing furiously over one another, frenzied by some unseen predator. Katakuri's eyes jerked to watch them, unmoving until they'd disappeared from view, but their cries echoed back from the castle walls, multiplied and distorted until they sounded like the screams.
Again, there seemed to be a voice in the wind, something small and terrible and full of anger. Her eyes shot to a squirrel that stopped nearby, watching them with an iron gaze, its tail twitching restlessly. It didn’t scurry away, just sat and watched.
Katakuri glanced at it too and frowned, “You didn't see the girl, but any animals?”
“There were ravens on the ship. On the mast.” Nine of them, lined up one after the other.
He moved with lightning speed and in a single, brutal punch, the squirrel was a gruesome mess of flesh against the snow-white ground. “We kill anything we see from now on,” he ordered.
They inched forward slower, more wary, watching every shadow to see if it was watching them. A light snow began to fall and it wasn’t only the cold and wet slush that they had to brave, but stone and roots hid beneath the fresh downfall waiting for them to falter. Chiffon brought up the rear as Katakuri led, his gaze never straying back, even when hers did.
Somewhere off in the woods, wind howled like a wolf. She shivered, reminded of the beast’s final cry—a pitiful, sorry thing. They took hold of its beautiful, gleaming coat, and laid it up to dry. It covered the deck of the ship from end to end. The beast had been the size of a small mountain.
A mighty thing to hunt and even harder to kill. Maybe that was their mistake: making a trophy of the kill.
It took them another day and night to reach the castle. From afar, its towers had gleamed like sapphire, proud and bright, but up close, the illusion shattered. War had visited Edelweiss in the past, they knew, and now it was an empty, ruined shell.
Stone walls crumbled, leaving jagged caverns in their wake. Battlements leaned precariously, as if one strong wind would send them tumbling into the valley below. The glittering flags they’d seen from the shoreline were nothing but tattered rags now, their color leached away. Only the courtyard seemed alive, lit by a forge that blazed unnaturally bright, casting copper light over the snow.
Edelweiss had once been known for its smiths—swords, jewelry, and all the like had been cast in the forges of this island and shipped across the world. Then, the Celestial Dragons had grown greedy, wanting the luxuries only for themselves, so they’d taken it.
“Stay focused,” Katakuri ordered, his voice low but sharp. He led them through the heavy gates, creaking with every flutter of air. The courtyard was eerily silent despite the roaring fire. Edelweiss was an empty land.
The castle’s interior was worse. The entry hall was dim, candles burning down to pathetic stubs in tarnished sconces. Their light flickered over stone walls streaked with water damage and age. Empty bottles lay scattered across the floor, crunching underfoot as they advanced. The smell of sour wine clung to the air.
“Spread out.”
Chiffon stiffened. “Splitting up here is foolish. We don’t know what—”
“Do it,” he said, final as a guillotine blade.
Amande didn’t argue. She vanished down a hallway without a glance back, boots clicking softly against stone. Katakuri disappeared next, a ghost swallowed by the flickering dark.
Chiffon stood there a moment, breath fogging in the bitter air. Something about the castle felt wrong. The air pressed too close, a suffocating pressure that squeezed down on all sides, but Chiffon had no one to voice these concerns to.
Room after room yielded nothing but overturned furniture, burnt curtains, and shattered windows where snow drifted in. No sign that anyone had lived here beyond the scattered bottles and the forge still blazing outside.
When she reached the library, the silence pressed heavier. Dust motes spun in the faint candlelight, clinging to shelves lined with neatly ordered books. It was the first place in the entire castle that looked loved and alive.
And there, above the cracked fireplace, hung the only painting she had seen.
A woman stared back at her from the canvas, so stunningly beautiful that it made the darkness in the room recede. Her hair was pure white, the absence of color. Her gaze was soft around the edges, a starry-eyed gentleness. Chiffon found herself stepping closer, drawn in despite herself. She raised a hand, almost unconsciously, to trace the line of the woman’s face—
“Please don’t touch that.”
Chiffon spun, weapon already leveled.
A girl sat slouched on the floor in a pool of shadow, knees drawn to her chest, a half-empty bottle of wine clasped loosely in her hands. Her hair, the same stark white as the woman’s, fell like a veil over her shoulders. Her pale face was streaked with dried blood, rust-colored patches matted into her clothes and bare skin as if she’d been sitting in it for days.
Chiffon thought she might have seen her before, though she couldn’t place where. A photograph, perhaps? One of Mama's endless tea parties?
Around her, the room was a ruin. Cracks spiderwebbed through the stone floor and walls, jagged fissures carved out in every direction as if some great force had erupted from this very spot. The shattered remains of furniture lay strewn in splinters, books torn from their shelves and crushed beneath fallen beams.
“That’s all I have left of my mother,” the girl murmured, voice calm but hollow. Her pale gray eyes glinted with a feverish light, the rims raw and red, as if she’d wept herself dry. Her lips curved into a sharp, mirthless smile. “Well…that, and this kingdom she left me.”
Behind the girl, piled high in grotesque reverence, was the pelt of the wolf they’d slain. Its black fur gleamed even in the meager light. It loomed nearly to the ceiling, the size of a hill. The girl shifted, leaning her head back against the mound of fur as if it were a cushioned seat of state. She patted the dark hide beside her, the gesture slow, mocking, her bloody fingertips staining it red.
“Can you bring him back?”
The wolf? He was dead.
“My dog,” said, the girl. She was just a girl. Younger, it seemed than Chiffon. Beautiful, like a star, but cold and distant too. “You killed him.”
“We didn’t know anyone had claimed him.”
“Did he look like a dog without a home?” she asked, her eyes wide and deep, dark without end. “Even if he was, why would hurt him like that? Are you the sort of people who go into someone else’s home and steal the skin off their backs?”
“We didn’t know,” repeated Chiffon.
“I didn’t know they were your brothers,” she said, quick and blank. Chiffon felt the cold teeth of fear sink into her spine. “Does that excuse it?”
“Beasts and men aren’t the same.”
“No?” she asked softly, with a laugh that was more breath than sound. “That’s news to me.”
“Where are they? You killed them. You cut them up. Where are—”
“You killed him.” She paused and stood slowly, groaning as she did so. She left the bottle on the ground, staring at Chiffon more intently. “You say that his life wasn’t worth a man’s life, but I disagree. His life was equal to a hundred-thousand men. I’ve only taken two.”
“Orm,” the girl called. Something tore through the air, so fast it whispered death in Chiffon’s ear. A few strands of her hair drifted to the ground, severed clean.
The girl caught the weapon. It was a spear, black and gleaming, its shaft made of countless interlocking scales that shimmered like oil. At its tip, a razor-sharp point glowed faintly crimson.
It rippled faintly in her hands, scales shifting like a breathing creature. Chiffon’s stomach knotted. Even dormant, it radiated heat, and the scent of scorched stone filled the room. The girl spun it once lazily, the scales clinking like metal chains. The tip seemed to hum, tasting the air, hungering.
“My name,” said the girl, rising to her feet, eyes no longer cold, but burning with fury, “is Sigyn and my dog’s name was Fenrir. He was a good dog.” She glanced back, staring at the pelt for a long moment. “I loved him.”
Chiffon did not apologize. She was the daughter of a Yonko and had never been taught to yield. Soon, her siblings would arrive, and they would pay this girl back for what she’d done. We won’t kill her here, thought Chiffon. She doesn’t deserve a quick death. They’d take her back to Totto Land and let Mama drain her dry of all her years.
“We were sent to take a bride,” revealed Chiffon, though that didn’t matter now.
“A bride?” Sigyn’s brows furrowed for the briefest moment, and then laughter, sharp and humorless, rippled through the room. “Me? Who asked for me as a bride?”
“Big Mom. I’m one of her daughters.”
“Charlotte Linlin?” The spear dipped slightly, tracing a charred scar into the stone floor as Sigyn’s pale eyes lifted, steady and unblinking, pinning Chiffon where she stood. “I see.”
“Yes, I hope you do. You’ll—”
“Tell your mother,” she interrupted calmly, as if offering a kindness, “that you found no bride in Edelweiss.”
“You won’t be coming as a bride,” snapped Chiffon. “But, as a prisoner.”
Suddenly Chiffon couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't do anything but see—
She saw the spear move, faster than breath, faster than fear. She felt the bite of steel between her ribs, and the world erupted in fire. Agony flared through her chest as if she were burning from the inside out, her ribs searing where the steel pierced them. Her blood ran hot down her front, molten, and her own scream choked in her throat.
The vision shattered. Chiffon staggered back, gasping, her hand clutching at her chest where phantom pain still lingered.
Sigyn studied her for a long moment, and then, to Chiffon’s shock, her stance softened. “Take one of my ships and go home,” Sigyn murmured. For a fleeting moment, her eyes burned like coals in the dark. “Mourn your losses. Gather your strength. When I’m done burying my dead, I’ll come pay Linlin a visit.”
It was only when they had left the seas around Edelweiss that Chiffon recalled where she’d seen the girl. Her stomach plummeted low, fear crawling up her throat.
Mama sent me there to die.