Word spread like thunder across the seas: Raizen had challenged the World Government's justice itself.
The duel was to be held on Neutral Ground, a sacred islet untouched by war since the Void Century. It was here that the World Court once rendered its most severe judgments — and it was here Raizen would stand trial in the most unorthodox way possible: combat in lieu of law.
His opponent was Chief Arbiter Vannis Gravemoor, a legendary judge known as "The Iron Scales." Cold, immovable, and revered for sentencing entire islands to death in the name of "balance." He wore a blindfold of silver threads and wielded a gavel forged from sea-prism stone, capable of disrupting Devil Fruit abilities on contact.
"This is not vengeance," Gravemoor said as he stepped onto the black marble platform. "This is correction."
Raizen responded with silence — his sword drawn, not in rage, but in clarity. Around them, emissaries from kingdoms, pirate lords, and rebel enclaves watched. This was more than a duel.
It was a statement.
Steel clashed against justice.
Gravemoor's attacks were brutal and precise — his every strike a legal argument, backed by history, law, and bloodshed. Raizen fought not just for his life, but for every soul labeled a criminal by a corrupt order. He was fighting a system incarnate.
Midway through the battle, Gravemoor summoned a hidden technique: "Judgment Chain", a spectral noose conjured from the will of past verdicts. It wrapped around Raizen's limbs, forcing him to feel the weight of every law he had broken — every command defied.
"You are a traitor to order," Gravemoor growled. "What justice do you stand for?"
Raizen, bleeding and bound, answered with a roar that cracked stone:
"The kind that listens before it condemns!"
In a final surge, he shattered the chains with a burst of haki and struck Gravemoor's blindfold from his face. The world saw not a man of perfect law, but a hollow shell — a judge who had never once questioned the system he served.
Raizen spared him.
The crowd erupted into chaos. Some called him a hero. Others, a madman.
But all agreed on one thing:
Justice would never be the same again.
And the World Government had been dealt not a wound of flesh… but a wound of legitimacy.
END OF CHAPTER 13