One Piece: Madness of Regret-Chapter 39 - 38.2: The girl with red hair(2)

The sun blazed in the sky as if it were the only thing that had ever burned.

It stayed, constant, one ember in the upper space. It was not just rising: it was reclaiming.

The storm had buried the heavens, choked the world in blackness, but now the sun bored through it all. It burned off the remnants of night, casting long, burnished fingers through the sky, stretching, reaching, consuming. The remnants of storm clouds, torn and defeated, slunk away toward the horizon, their edges shining like dying embers. They unraveled, dissolving, their reign shattered by the unrelenting light.

Light cascaded over the water, tinting the surface in rippling colors, bringing the ocean out of the darkness awakening it. The turbulent, savage sea had steadied in the sun's heat, its waves curling slow and steady, as if with a sigh of relief. Each crest glimmered with the light, glowing like molten metal before curving into the next.

The wind, which had been a howling blast that ravaged the tempest, was now still. It no longer carried the weight of anger but the breath of renewal. It flowed across the waters in slow, careful waves, brushing my skin with a cold caress, telling me of distant places, of things outside the devastation. It smelled of the passage of the storm- salt and rain and something fresh and raw, as if the world had been stripped and remade in the sunlight.

The air was changed. The air was lighter. As if the storm had removed something from the world when it left, leaving its weight behind. The sun filled the sky now, high and alone, illuminating the horizon to infinite gold.

And I lay there, soaking in the sky, letting it fill my vision. My eyes were filled with nothing but red. Red of every shade, bleeding and blending into each other, to create something beautiful. Something eerie.

The sun was a deep, fiery red, too bright to look at directly, yet too fascinating to ignore. It did not glow gold, or white, but red, as if it had drunk deeply of the same lifeblood that flowed in my veins.

The water reflected it all, sending the sun's rays back in flickering waves. The lights shimmered—a lighter red, almost pink where the ripples bent the light. It moved, it writhed, shifting with the ocean's breath. But beneath that, beneath, darker, the sea stretched out wide and boundless, a red so thick it seemed to be alive, a color not meant for water but for something thicker, something heavier.

The sea not only looked like blood—it also felt like it. Thinned out and yet concentrated, watery and yet suffocating.

The way it moved, slow and deliberate, rolling in soft undulations, made it seem alive, knowing. It did not crash, did not churn in fury as it had before. Now it just breathed, inhaling, exhaling, as if savoring the stillness that was left behind the storm.

The world was red around me. The sea, the sky, the air I breathed carried its hue. The light curved and distorted, tingeing all in its passage. It did not simply illuminate—it transmuted.

Transmuted into a picture worth keeping in memories.

The blood had changed me. It had changed my eye, taking away its old function and replacing it with something new. Now I saw only red—red in every color, every shade, every flicker of light. And it was not done with me.

Whatever was carrying me through the waters, was healing me. I could feel it working, pouring into my skin, pulsing through my veins, finding its way through all of me that had been shattered. It was not just sealing wounds. It was going deeper, penetrating to the marrow itself of what I was. It surrounded me, covered me, entered me, inserting itself into my cells, infusing itself into my flesh.

I had healed before. My body had always been able to stitch itself back up, a quiet, involuntary thing that worked best when I slept, falling away into the void while my body worked its magic. But this- this was something else. I was awake, and I was witnessing it.

And I knew. This was not my old healing.

This was not the natural regrowth of flesh and bone, the slow, patient recreation of what had been lost. No, this was something else.

This was replacement.

Every torn muscle, every broken fiber, every cell beyond repair—it wasn't being healed. It was being consumed. Taken. Rewritten. The blood flowed through me like a sculptor creating a new shape from raw matter, carving away what was useless and filling the void with itself.

It didn't wait. It didn't ask.

One wound at a time, it remade me.

It was devouring me, reshaping me in its image.

And for now, I had healed just enough to stand. My body, once broken, was whole—or something close to it. But I didn't move. I didn't try.

I had survived. Somehow.

The Leviathans. The fog. The Cathedral. The Kraken.

Everything.

I had fought, I had bled, I had drowned, I had been torn apart, remade, and yet—I was still here. Still breathing. Still alive, in whatever way the blood had decided I should be.

But I didn't care about standing. I didn't care about moving.

I just wanted to rest.

Rest.

Rest just enough.

How long had I been drifting? How far had the waters carried me? A night? A day? A week? A year?

Who knows.

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Who cares.

Time had unraveled, lost somewhere in the waves. It could have been hours. It could have been eternity. It made no difference.

For now, I would let the ocean take me. Let the sky loom over me. Let the blood do whatever it willed. For now.

I had survived.

That was enough.