The sun was merciless, suspended like a cruel overseer in the wide, open sky. Its rays pierced Zoro's skin, baking him under its weight as he stood bound in the yard, wrists stretched tight against the wooden post. Sweat traced slow paths down his face, drying before it could fall. Flies buzzed, the air thick with dust and silence, but Roronoa Zoro didn’t flinch. He stared straight ahead, unmoving, every muscle tensed with stubborn defiance.

His swords were gone. Stripped from him, like honor stolen in the dark. But he didn’t break.

Each minute crawled, days bleeding together in a haze of hunger and heat. His stomach had stopped growling—now it just ached, dull and hollow like a wound that forgot how to bleed. His lips were cracked, his throat dry. Someone had offered him rice balls once—a small girl with trembling hands—but they’d been stomped into the dirt before he could taste them. He hadn’t looked at her. Hadn’t spoken. If he had, the guards might have made her pay more than just bruises. He wasn’t here because he was weak. He was here because he’d stood up when others looked away.

That’s what burned more than the sun. Not the ropes, not the thirst. The waiting. The stillness. The nothing.

He didn’t know how many days it had been. Five? Seven? Time melted in the heat, turning hours into an endless cycle of pain and silence. But in his mind, Zoro trained. He remembered every swing, every stance. He fought shadows behind his eyelids, relived battles stroke by stroke. If he could stand now, if they cut him loose—he’d be stronger. He was stronger.

They thought they were punishing him. Teaching him a lesson. But Zoro wasn’t a man who could be broken with rope and time.

They could bind his body. Starve it. But his spirit? That was another story entirely.

And it would take more than rope and sun to kill the future world’s greatest swordsman.