One Piece: Tempest Of Principles Book 1: Embers of Rebellion

### **The Weight of Dawn**

The sun clawed its way over the Isle of Ashura, its light strained through a veil of sulfurous mist. Zayn knelt at the edge of a stagnant pool, his reflection fractured by ripples. The face staring back was a stranger's—hollow cheeks, grey hair streaked white like lightning, eyes the color of tarnished brass. He dipped his hand into the water, willing it to boil. Steam hissed upward, scalding his palm.

*Molecule by molecule. Control them. Command them.*

The memory of the Marine captain's shattered sword flashed in his mind. The man's scream, the way his eyes had bulged as his weapon disintegrated. Zayn's stomach churned. He hadn't meant to unravel the blade so completely. The power had surged through him like a rogue wave, hungry and directionless.

*Kai would've known what to do.*

The boy's face haunted him—storm-gray eyes wide, fingers brushing Zayn's cheek in their final moment. Zayn gripped the seastone shard until blood welled in his palm. "I'm sorry," he whispered, the words swallowed by the growling surf.

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### **The Devil's Apprentice**

By midday, Zayn's hands blistered from trial and error. The Mole-Mole Fruit's power writhed beneath his skin, a caged beast. He started with ice, condensing dew into marbles, then shaping them into crude blades. They melted like candle wax.

*Focus. Jabari said intention is everything.*

He closed his eyes, summoning his mother's voice. *"Begin with *niyyah*, Zayn. Let your heart guide your hands."*

This time, he envisioned the dagger's structure—hydrogen bonds tightening, oxygen aligning into crystalline symmetry. The ice hardened, its edge gleaming like diamond. It lasted five minutes before collapsing.

*Progress.*

He moved to stone, dissolving boulders into sand, then reassembling them into makeshift shelters. The sea remained a taunting adversary. Waves crashed, mocking his inability to swim. Salt stung his raw palms as he scrubbed them raw.

*I need a boat. But how?*

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### **Echoes of Another Life**

Exhaustion dragged him into fitful sleep beneath a petrified oak. Dreams came sharp and unwelcome.

**Flashback: Istanbul, 2023**

*Zayn sprawled on his bedroom floor, Volume 59 of *One Piece* splayed open. Ace's death scene glared up at him, the ink smudged by his tears. His mother's voice floated from the kitchen, fragrant with cumin and garlic. "Zayn! The *maqluba* is getting cold!"*

*"Five more minutes, *Yemma*!"*

*She appeared in the doorway, her hijab dusted with flour. "Always with these comics. What's so special about this one?"*

*He gestured to Whitebeard's defiant roar. "They fight for freedom. Like Musa against Firaun."*

*She knelt, calloused hands brushing the page. "Musa didn't just fight. He *led*. Remember that, *habibi*. Real heroes rebuild what's broken."*

**End Flashback**

Zayn awoke choking on ash and memory. The dream clung like a second skin. *Musa and Firaun*. Prophet and tyrant.

*Am I meant to lead? Or am I just a fool with a cursed fruit?*

---

### **The Crypt of Ashura**

Hunger gnawed at him like a rat. The island's heart was a maze of obsidian spires and skeletal trees, their branches clawing at a jaundiced sky. Zayn traced the runes etched into the stone, their patterns mirroring the Poneglyphs from Oda's manga.

*This isn't natural. Someone carved this.*

He pressed his palm to a monolith. The stone *shivered*, molecules rearranging to form words:

**"Here lies the gateway. The Minaret waits."**

*Black Minaret.* The Architect's riddle. Before he could ponder further, the earth trembled.

A trap.

The monolith split, revealing a staircase choked with serpentine roots. Zayn descended, ice dagger glinting in the gloom.

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### **Chamber of the Damned**

The crypt stank of rot and ancient metal. Murals coiled across the walls—armies clashing beneath a twenty-eyed shadow, a spire piercing storm clouds, a fruit *identical to the Mole-Mole* rotting in a skeletal hand.

At the chamber's heart lay a pedestal. Upon it, a journal bound in seastone thread.

Zayn flipped it open. The script was archaic, but fragments burned into his mind:

*"…the Great Kingdom's fall… Void Century… Joy Boy's promise…"*

A sketch depicted the Black Minaret—a jagged spire straddling the Calm Belt and New World. Coordinates bled into the margins.

*My path.*

Above, boots crunched stone. Marines.

---

### **The Hunt Begins**

"Fan out! That devil-spawn's here somewhere!"

Zayn recognized the voice—the Marine captain he'd disarmed. Reinforcements had arrived: a dozen soldiers, a lieutenant with a rifle, and a hulking figure in a plague mask.

*The buyer from the auction.*

Zayn melted into the shadows, ice marbles orbiting his fists like tiny moons.

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### **Ambush in the Sulfur Pits**

He struck at dusk, when the sulfur clouds hung thickest.

**Stage 1: The Pistol**

The first Marine fell screaming, his pistol's barrel frozen and ruptured. The lieutenant fired. Zayn disassembled the bullet mid-air, lead dissolving into harmless dust.

**Stage 2: The Cyborg**

The plague-masked giant lumbered forward, spiked chain whirling. "Little mouse," it rasped, voice mechanized. "The Architect sends his regards."

*The Architect?*

Zayn dodged, the chain gouging stone where he'd stood. He froze the links, but the cyborg shattered them effortlessly.

**Stage 3: Revelation**

"You're a mistake," the cyborg taunted, gears grinding beneath its armor. "A glitch in the system." It swung again, the chain morphing into a blade.

Zayn rolled, sweat stinging his eyes. *Molecules. Break its structure.*

He focused, unraveling the iron's atomic bonds. The blade disintegrated.

The cyborg staggered. "Impossible!"

**Stage 4: The Core**

Zayn pressed his palm to the cyborg's chestplate. "*Tafakkur*," he hissed, invoking the Quranic concept of contemplation. The metal bloomed like a rotten flower, revealing a glowing core.

The machine spasmed. "He… knows… your… name…"

Zayn drove his ice dagger into the core. The cyborg imploded, gears scattering like shrapnel.

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### **The Architect's Gambit**

**Mariejois – Shadow Sanctum**

The Architect watched via Den Den Mushi, fingers steepled. Data scrolled across his screen—Zayn's vitals, Haki fluctuations, the Mole-Mole Fruit's anomalous energy signature.

"Fascinating," he murmured. "Not mere Paramecia. You're rewriting reality itself."

He typed a command. On the island, the cyborg's corpse sparked to life one final time.

**"The Void Century holds your truth, Player Two,"** it boomed. **"Seek the Minaret… or perish like the D."**

The core detonated, etching the Black Minaret's coordinates into the stone.

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### **Gifts from the Grave**

In the wreckage, Zayn found a map on indestructible parchment and an Eternal Pose, its needle quivering north.

*No coincidence. The Architect is herding me.*

He pocketed both. Trap or salvation, he'd play the game—for now.

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### **Atonement by Fire**

That night, Zayn built a pyre for the Marines. Haram, perhaps, but necessary. As flames consumed the cyborg's remains, he recited Surah Al-Fatihah.

The journal glowed in the firelight. Its final warning:

*"Beware the Eyes of God. They see all. They judge all."*

---

### **Departure**

At dawn, Zayn lashed petrified wood into a raft. The Eternal Pose pointed north, its pull insistent.

He knelt, forehead pressed to the earth. *"Yemma, Jabari, Kai… guide me."*

As he sailed, a shadow followed beneath the waves—a seaking with scars across its snout. The same beast that took Kai.

This time, it kept its distance.

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### **Epilogue: The Storm's Eye**

**Calm Belt – Three Days Later**

The raft drifted into fog so thick, Zayn tasted decay. Ghost ships materialized—hulls splintered, sails in tatters.

At their helm floated a galleon, its flag a crescent moon devoured by chains.

A voice rasped from the mist, weathered and familiar:

"Took you long enough, *Tayyib*."

Jabari stood at the prow, very much alive.

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**End of Chapter 4**

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