Title: Crimson Tide: The Rise of Kaizen
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Prologue: Memory in the Womb
Darkness.
That was all there was at first.
A slow, pulsating silence. Like floating in ink, without direction or meaning. No air, no sound, no pain, no pleasure. Just… stillness.
Then came the fragments.
"Luffy... Ace... Enies Lobby... Raftel..."
Images. Words. Feelings. A thousand broken reflections of a past life.
Was this death?
Or rebirth?
He didn't know. Couldn't know.
Not yet.
All he understood was the sensation—the awareness that he existed, even before birth. That his thoughts were not a blank slate. That something in him remembered.
"Wait... this is... One Piece."
The realization hit not like lightning, but like fog slowly parting.
It made no sense. And yet it made all the sense in the world.
He was not nothing.
He was not gone.
He was… someone else now.