Mouad_ML

Five years before Monkey D. Luffy sets sail to become the King of the Pirates, another name stirs the seas with fear and ambition.

Born on the brutal Noctis Island, Raizen D. Crow witnessed firsthand the cruelty of a lawless world. While others dreamed of freedom, Raizen dreamed of domination. Armed with the forbidden Kuro Kuro no Mi — granting him the power to control living darkness — he vowed to unite the seas under a single iron rule.

Gathering a fleet of the most dangerous outcasts, assassins, and fallen marines, Raizen wages a silent war against the corrupt forces of the world. His mission is clear: seize the ancient weapons, crush the chaotic pirate era, and forge an empire where peace is enforced by absolute power.

As he clashes with rising heroes, secret government agents, and even future legends like a young Crocodile, Raizen’s ambition casts a long shadow across the seas — one that even the World Government cannot ignore.

But far away, a boy with a straw hat is preparing to set sail… and the age of dreams is about to challenge the age of control.

Before the dawn of a new era... there was a storm.

One Piece: Shadows Before Dawn

The world began to split — not with sound, but with silence.

Across the skies, oceans, and shattered lands, the laws of reality crumbled like old parchment. Gravity twisted. Day bled into night. Mountains floated. Seas boiled into the air. The Crown of Shadows, now unstable and awakened, pulsed like a wounded star, sending waves of distortion through the fabric of existence.

Raizen stood at the helm of the Nadir Wing, watching as the horizon warped into an endless spiral. His crew — weary, broken, but unyielding — moved with urgency. Every moment lost meant another piece of the world gone.

"The Crown isn't just reacting," said Solas, examining the runes on the helm."It's rejecting this reality… and writing a new one. But not fast enough."

"Then we beat it to the final page," Raizen muttered."We reach the Endbringer before it pens the end."

In the Veil Sea, currents flowed backward, time looped in stutters, and entire islands were caught in repeating moments of death and rebirth. As they passed through, Raizen saw former enemies locked in battles they'd already lost — endless echoes unable to rest.

The crew saved who they could. Left behind those they couldn't.

Meanwhile, the Crown began to fracture.

Black veins of pure entropy stretched across the sky. The air shimmered with false memories — events that had never happened. Raizen briefly glimpsed alternate versions of his crew: one where they never set sail, one where they betrayed him, one where they were all already dead.

"This is what the Crown fears," murmured Sylva."The truth that even power can't hold everything together."

They reached the Chasm of Dissolution, a rift in the center of the world, where everything — matter, thought, memory — collapsed into nothing.

There, the last surviving Oracles appeared, flickering between timelines.

"The Unraveling has begun," they warned in unison."The Endbringer does not destroy. It undoes.You must confront it at the center… before the last thread is pulled."

With every breath, Raizen felt pieces of himself slipping — old memories, scars, emotions. As if the world was trying to erase him, too.

But he pressed on. He anchored himself to the faces of his crew, to the name of his ship, to the choice he'd made: not to rule, but to fight for the right to choose.

The chapter ends as the Nadir Wing breaks through the storm wall surrounding the Eye of Oblivion — the Endbringer's lair — with the world literally unraveling behind them.

And the final battle… is moments away.

Chapter 9: The Unraveling