One Piece: Madness of Regret-Chapter 30: Rain, Storm and Whales. Again!(3)

When one with the gift of sight is suddenly lost, what happens?

Maybe at first, nothing. A fleeting moment of disorientation. A pause. The brain fumbles for what it knows, waits for shapes to emerge, for light to appear. But they do not.

The blackness remains, heavy and suffocating. And then something shifts.

Do they freak? Do they hyperventilate, chest heaving and falling with greater and greater panic? Does their skin prickle cold, their body leaping into action first, their mind slow to catch up? The response is different, but the reaction is the same—fear.

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The human body is not prepared to handle pure darkness. The useless eyes strain against it, searching for something—anything—to cling to. The eyes expand, hoping to catch even the slightest beam of light. The ears stand at attention, compensating for the blindness, hearing sounds that are not there. The silence, once forgotten, now suffocates. Silence is no longer comforting—it's alien. The quiet is eerie, empty, a space to be filled. And if nothing else will, the mind will.

Paranoia creeps in with every tick of the clock. One starts doubting one's perceptions. Was it a creaking wind? A hiss? A crowd? The brain, wired for survival, begins creating dangers where there aren't even any. Darkness, movement, figures in blackness—all tricks of the mind, all illusions, but tangible enough to cause the vertebrae to shrink.

Human beings require light, not merely because it guides the way, but because it guarantees reality. Reality is uncertain in the dark. And uncertainty is terrifying.

Being afraid of the dark isn't weakness. It's nature. A survival instinct passed down through the centuries, warning of danger unseen. For a long, long time ago, when the fire burned out and the night dragged on, the darkness wasn't just hiding the unknown—it was hiding beasts, hidden threats, unseen perils lurking for that one misstep. Today, even now, in the modern world, where electricity keeps the night at bay, the instinct is still there. A person alone in the pitch dark, stripped of sight, will feel it. A racing heart. A tightening chest. A creeping thought: What if something is there?

And so, they crave sound. A voice. A footstep. A breath. Anything to remind them they are not alone. Because in the dark, loneliness is just as terrifying as the thought of being watched.

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It was pitch black.

I couldn't see a thing, but I knew I was still here.

My body was still present, my mind still active, and I knew this because of all the rest—everything except sight.

Sound, scent, touch, and taste. Those were my lifelines now.

I could hear the wind screaming, no longer a soft whisper but something much more ferocious. It screamed through the vacant space, slicing through the air like an animal waking up. The thunder growled far away, a threat. The sky was charged with something hidden, something brewing, something poised to lash out.

I could sniff the salt on the wind, heavy and stinging, the smell of an ocean too far away to perceive but near enough to make itself felt. Blended with it was the pungent taste of iron, the smell of my own blood running from the heels of my feet. It fell onto the ground, dispersed in the rain, but unmistakable. There was the scent of wet stone, of something stagnant and old, slick beneath my feet. The storm itself smelled—heavy, electric, like the very moment before a lightning bolt, like something about to break.

I could sense it all. The icy rain striking my flesh, quicker, heavier, transforming from a rhythm into a battering. Every drop hurt, like tiny knives against my bare skin. My wet clothes stuck to me, dripping and heavy, pulling me down. The barnacles on the ground cut into my feet, hard and unforgiving, leaving each step marked by new agony. My feet throbbed, raw from the abuse, but I continued.

I could feel it all. The rain, fresh and bitter, washing against my lips. Salt, heavy on my tongue, deposited there by the wind. The metallic flavor of my own blood. But beyond that, I could sense the storm itself—not water, not air, but the gravity of it. A presence, weighing upon me, filling my lungs, leaking into my very pores.

And then there was this.

I tasted sanity, or what little I had left. The storm pounded it down, pecked at it with black talons and night, the mere weight of what I had consented to. Walked into here voluntarily, knowing very well what would come my way. The world around me punished me for it now.

But I still walked.

Because stopping meant surrendering. And I wasn't ready for that yet.

I walked for what felt like hours. Not that I had any real sense of time anymore. The darkness stretched out endlessly in all directions, devouring each second, each step, each thought.

I held up my hand in front of my face. Nothing. I knew it was there. I could feel it, the heaviness of my own fingers but I couldn't see it. It was a strange sensation. A silent horror. To feel something and have no proof that it existed.

The last lifeline I had to sanity—the faint vision of the south—was gone. The complete darkness had consumed it whole. Now I had nothing.

Nothing but me and the darkness.

The idea settled heavy in my chest, a slow, creeping weight. I was alone. Totally alone in a place without shape, without direction. A place where my own breathing was the only tie to being. I had no point of reference, no sky, no ground beyond the sensation of my feet on a solid surface. It was unsettling.

And that idea—that idea frightened me.

I needed to distract myself.

So I hummed.

A song, any song, something far back in memory. The sound wavered at first, faint and tentative, but I kept at it. My steps quickened. My breath heavy and fast. Something in it, the rhythm, the repetition, made the fear loosen its grip. Just a little but it was enough.

One song passed. Then another.

By the seventh, something was different.

Far off, where there shouldn't have been anything, there was light.

A source impossible to be in the pitch black dark—yet there. A light moving up and down, wavering. It burned bright when it rose, then vanished when it fell.

It was far.

But it was something.

And in the dark after so long, something was enough.

My steps quickened, my humming faded, and my stride lengthened. I walked strong, pushing forward with purpose. The barnacles beneath me bit into my feet with each step, their jagged edges carving shallow cuts into my skin. The rain-slicked ground tested my balance, forcing me to adjust, to stay upright. But none of it mattered. The light ahead was growing, expanding with every step.

The rain thickened, falling in sheets, drowning out all sound except the howling wind. And then, in an instant, the sky tore open.

Lightning struck.

For less than a heartbeat, the world was bathed in pure white. Bright enough to illuminate everything—sharp enough to blind me. My eyes had no time to adjust, only to witness.

A field of barnacles stretched ahead, endless and unbroken. And beyond them, the light remained. Still glowing. Still unnatural.

Then, just as quickly, the darkness reclaimed everything.

A few seconds later, the thunder arrived. It rolled through the air like a living thing, a deep, booming presence that vibrated through my chest. It was getting closer.

I slowed my pace, my mind catching up to my instincts.

Questions formed, tumbling one after another. Do I risk it? How far is the storm? How close is the lightning?

I measured the delay between flash and sound. Three to five kilometers away.

A pointless calculation.

Such a stupid question. I had already walked this far in the pitch dark. I had already gambled everything. The risk had always been there—the only difference was how much more I was willing to accept.

And I had too much sunk cost to turn back now.

So, I walked.

The winds raged, pressing against me like invisible hands trying to push me back. My long strides shortened, my movements braced. The force of the wind clawed at my body, but my grip on the wet ground was firm enough to keep me from stumbling.

I raised my arm to shield my eyes, leaving just enough of a gap to follow the light in the pitch dark.

I could see it clearly, even through the rain. The light source was big. And it was moving.

There was no distortion, no bending of its glow through the sheets of falling water. No reflection bouncing off the rain. This wasn't light scattering through the storm—it was attached to something. Something living.

Step by step, I got closer.

It swayed. It shifted. And with every movement, I felt it. A tremor beneath my feet, a subtle shift in the ground, as if something massive was stirring, almost like an earthquake.

I slowed. Not cause of the wind but because I needed to.

The light wasn't blinding. A muted yellow glow, steady yet dull. But in this pitch-black void, my eyes had long adjusted to absolute darkness, and now they struggled to compensate. My pupils dilated and contracted, trying to find the perfect size, trying to balance the absence of light with its sudden presence.

Until they adjusted, all I could do was stare at the glow.

And step closer. One step at a time.

The ground trembled more with every shift of the light. A deep, rhythmic movement. Not like the wind. Not like the storm. Something else. Something living.

Yet still, I saw nothing but the glow itself.

Not what carried it.

Not what caused it to shine.

Not what loomed just beyond it.

Nothing.

Just the light. And the darkness that swallowed everything else.

I approached as slowly as I could.

The light moved.

It rose, slow and steady, pushing its way upwards through the rain. For a moment, it hung at its peak, swaying ever so slightly—then, just as suddenly, dropped. Downward, into the blackness below.

Then the shaking.

A low, rolling growl that passed through the ground beneath me. Not the wind. Not the storm. Something else.

Something massive.

I remained frozen, every molecule of my body screaming at me to turn back. To halt. To hear. But I didn't.

I couldn't.

I slowed my walk, my steps slow and calculated, each one set with caution. The nearer I got, the more violent the tremors became. The earth seemed to shudder under my feet, as if it was reacting to my approach—or something else entirely.

Then, in the desolation, I saw it.

I thought at first it was some deception of the dark. A shifting of shadows, a movement of something in the corner of my vision. But when I blinked, my eyes readjusting, I saw that it was real.

A shape.

A reflective, mirror-like surface, barely visible against the blackness that surrounded it. Round and perfectly circular. Too round. Too deliberate.

It wasn't the light. It wasn't of the rain. It was something else. Something watching.

But it wasn't looking at me.

At least, I told myself so.

It faced my direction, but its gaze was unfocused. Or pretending to be. Or maybe it was playing a game. Maybe it was simply waiting for me to approach, for me to reassure myself that I had seen it after all.

The shakes grew stronger.

The light edged up once more.

And right then, lightning struck behind me.

For a fraction of a second, the world was ablaze with light. Every detail, every shape hidden in the darkness was thrown into stark clarity.

And I saw it.

The source of the glow.

It was a fish but not just any fish. A massive, grotesque thing fish. Its body half-submerged in the darkness.

Its body was bloated and uneven, covered in thick, leathery skin that shimmered wet under the flash of lightning. Its translucent, yellowish lure—so small compared to its grotesque form—hung from its head, the faint glow looking almost pathetic in comparison to the monstrous bulk it belonged to.

And then, its mouth.

Wide. Too wide. An open chasm filled with rows and rows of needle-like teeth, sharp and jagged, each one curved inward like they were designed to prevent anything from ever being able to escape once caught. The bottom jaw stuck out abnormally, and when it moved, I could see things—a second set of teeth under the first.

It was an anglerfish.

A leviathan-class anglerfish.