A single, abrupt boom—small, almost polite.
And then everything unraveled.
Hundreds of layered kidō barriers and Senjumaru's near-indestructible filaments flashed out of existence, boiled to nothing. Black Coffin split wide. The ground beneath didn't just crack; it vanished—a canyon carved in charred black with lips of heat-glowing red, as if reality itself had been eaten away.
Cold sweat beaded down every brow.
Hitsugaya stared into the furnace-breathing rift and swallowed. "Captain Kyōraku… what just happened?"
Kyōraku dabbed at his temples. "Honestly? I'm not sure. For an instant I felt a heat graze past—absolute, final."
The gathered shinigami and manifested spirits traded looks and wiped their foreheads in unison. For the first time, the phrase "the strongest in a thousand years" felt real—an attack so far beyond them that even witnessing it offered no understanding.
"That was Zanka no Tachi—East: Rising Sun Blade."
Unohana's voice flowed in, calm as a cool stream. She stepped past the crowd, knelt at the canyon's lip, and brushed the seared edge with her fingertips.
"Bankai—Zanka no Tachi's first release. All the heat of Ryūjin Jakka's flames is compressed to a single point at the tip," she said softly. "When the blade touches, it does not burn or explode. It simply erases. What it touches leaves no trace—emptiness, unmade."
She lifted her gaze along the kilometer-long gouge still winking with cinders. "Everything along that line was removed. This is the pinnacle of flame-type power—of all elemental blades."
A collective hiss of breath.
One stroke. All along its path—made void.
Elemental? It felt like rules rewritten. Instinctively, eyes slid toward Hitsugaya—ice to counter fire, they thought—but he grimaced.
"Sorry my Hyōrinmaru's not that 'strong,'" he muttered, though his eyes, too, rattled at the abyss.
From the ruptured, fading coffin, Ryūjin Jakka strode forth, flame-sword in hand. Its heat-suffocating reiatsu pressed against every ribcage.
"Interfere again," it said, voice like a crematorium's breath, "and I'll cut you down."
It was not bewitched. It had no interest in shinigami. But they were flirting with its patience.
The captains swallowed, quiet as mice. No one wanted those white-hot eyes to land on them.
Ryūjin Jakka snorted and swung back to Senjumaru, whose cool glamour was now sweat and soot. She glared toward the heavens. "Tenjirō, you idiot—hurry and offer the sacrifice! If I die here, that sword will march on the Royal Realm!"
Zero Division lived in its own sky.
Above a faultless firmament, a palace of austere white vastness floated—a god's abode. Around it, five colossal cities were poised, each a bastion in orbit.
The Five Drifting Cities—gifts from the Soul King to his Royal Guard.
In one such city, Kirinji Tenjirō sat on the floor, a boat-oar blade across his shoulder, griping, "I told you—YOU die and pop back, then I'll go smack some sense into that punk Yamamoto. So he got pasted a thousand years ago—now he's sulking? Makes me itchy. I'll knock his teeth—"
"KIRINJI TENJIRŌ!"
Senjumaru's civility cracked. If she'd been there in person, she'd have minced him eight hundred times. But with the flame-devil bearing down, there was no breath left for bickering. Her needle-bright zanpakutō flicked and wove—red cloth after red cloth blooming between her and annihilation.
Those robes siphoned reiatsu—fine tools she used to fetter power when dressing people in restraint. Against Ryūjin Jakka, they lit and died like falling match heads.
"Hah! What's wrong, woman?" Ryūjin Jakka exulted, blade cleaving a world of glow. "Still not using bankai? Afraid of me?"
Senjumaru's jaw creaked. "All of you—help. I need three seconds. I'll bind this sword with a garment."
The captains stared. Three seconds against that? Kyōraku's smile was brittle. Even he couldn't promise to weather one of those cuts.
A sharp cry split the sky.
Heads tilted up. The Sōkyoku—execution phoenix wreathed in flame—streaked overhead and then crashed like a meteor.
"Sōkyoku!? What—" Omaeda yelped, and dove back as the bird detonated into a crater and a storm of sparks.
Cole walked out of the fire, panting, soot-streaked, grin intact. "Stubborn thing. Blew it up twenty-one times and it still won't behave."
He tossed the Seven-Mirror Sword to Nanao. "Here—hold this. I'll go 'educate' it some more."
The sacred blade that had always ignored Nanao quivered like a scared puppy, pressing into her arms, its presence chattering in her inner world. Yoruichi snorted. "Told you: every evil blade meets a worse handler."
With a leap, Cole landed on the reforming phoenix's back—thump, thump, thump—staff tapping its skull like a monk's wooden fish.
"Cole! Seal it!" Kyōraku shouted.
Ukitake hauled out a heavy wooden shield stamped with the Shihōin crest. As it opened, sealing cords poured forth—Tenfōhei's bindings—snaking toward the reborn bird.
Cole flinched. A fan of blue spears rained down.
"Bakudō 62—Hyappō Rankan!"
Each spear skewered a rope to the earth, pinning the warding lines before they could cocoon the phoenix.
Cole exhaled. "Hey! I was about to use this guy as a mount. If you seal it, where do I sit?"
A forest of deadpan stares.
Soi fong's eye twitched. "That's the Sōkyoku—an execution implement. You'll 'ride' it?"
"It's cool!" Cole chirped, patting flaming feathers. "Tell me this isn't the slickest bird you've ever seen."
He hugged its neck and nodded toward the pinned cords writhing below. "See, big guy? They want you caged. I want you free. Partner up, and no one seals you again. We roam—just you and me."
Pressure gathered—Ruyi Jingu Bang's world-pinning weight, Cole's spiritual clamp. The phoenix thrashed, a day-sun of flame, strong as any top-tier fire blade… but it couldn't shake him.
Ukitake sighed. "The Sōkyoku was a natural divine life… until Ōetsu forged it into the execution blade. It's cut down eight to ten thousand shinigami. A tool like that doesn't obey anyone."
But after a long, tight moment, the phoenix flared—then lowered its blazing crest, beak dipping toward Cole.
"…No way," whispered Soi fong, eyes wide. The most unruly of artifacts—the executioner of ten thousand—bowing to a man?
Cole grinned and thumped its side. "You won't regret it, big fella."
Across the field, Senjumaru—singed, disheveled, murderous—nearly fainted from rage. She was about to be cooked alive, and they were… taming a bird?
"Can you lot PLEASE hold that thing for three seconds!?" she shrieked. "And where is that bastard Genryūsai?! Tenjirō—if I die, I'll hang you in the Royal Realm for millennia!"
The captains winced, then looked to the inferno in human shape.
How do you restrain a sun?
Hitsugaya stepped forward, jaw set. "Ice counters fire. For three seconds… I should be able to blunt him."
Rukia joined him, steadying her breath. "Sode no Shirayuki is ice as well. I'll help suppress his heat."
As Ryūjin Jakka advanced, the air screamed, and the charred canyon sighed like a wound that wouldn't close.
The next three seconds would decide whether a tailor could dress a living cataclysm.
(End of Chapter)
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