"Ahhh!!!"
The heart-rending scream echoed through the Forest of Menos.
Because of Muramasa's special ability, countless trash Hollows and even Gillians had been forced to fuse into his body. In moments, white, viscous matter crept over him like slime—not just on his face but across his entire body. A Hollow's mask. A Hollow's body. Even the emptiness in his heart seemed to yawn open.
Yet after a brutal struggle inside, Muramasa finally pressed the Hollows down and forced himself back into human, manifested form.
"Huff… huff…"
Panting rough, he staggered and tore open a black garganta again.
When Kyoka Suigetsu saw him, an involuntary note of admiration slipped out. "Remarkable, Muramasa-san. After fusing with so many Gillians, you still kept your ego from collapsing."
Muramasa ignored him. Face pale, he turned his gaze toward Karakura Town. Thanks to the Hollow power in his body, his wounds had already closed. Guided by the subtle bond he shared with Hibiki, he lurched along the riverbank until he stopped.
"Here…?"
With a single slash, intricate kidō sigils flowered across the ground—a layered seal woven from multiple bakudō. Four golden tridents pinned it at the cardinal points.
"Master…"
Hibiki gritted his teeth and fought to wrench a golden trident free.
Minutes later, the seal broke. From within the barrier stepped a rag-wrapped, skin-and-bones figure gripping a broken blade—his presence all the more terrifying for that gauntness. Spiritual pressure rolled off him in waves.
Kyoka Suigetsu narrowed his eyes. "Interesting. Not as weak as I expected. Sealed for centuries and he can still flare reiatsu like this."
"Hibiki!"
Muramasa's eyes brightened with joy.
Hibiki looked back at him, hand tightening on the broken sword. His voice rasped. "Muramasa."
Just then, another senkaimon opened in the sky. Byakuya, Rukia, and Sode no Shirayuki stepped out and stared down grimly at Hibiki.
Rukia's eyes shook at Hibiki's skeletal frame. "Sealed for hundreds of years and he can still erupt with this kind of reiatsu… just how strong was he back then?"
Byakuya said coolly, "In the previous generation he was a man expected to lead the Kuchiki clan. His strength is not trivial."
He walked forward, drawing Senbonzakura. "Come. The shame of the Kuchiki must be ended by us. This is our family's affair."
Rukia nodded and moved at his side, fingers closing around Shirayuki's hand.
As they advanced, both unleashed frightening reiatsu at once.
"Bankai—Senbonzakura Kageyoshi (Vibrant Scattered Thousand Cherry Blossoms)!"
"Bankai—Hakka no Togame (Penalty of White Haze)!"
A sea of pink blades blossomed, swirling around Byakuya like a tidal ring of petals. From Rukia, a killing chill burst outward; frost-blue air clung to her, her skin temperature plunging.
"Senbonzakura… has already returned!?"
Seeing this, Muramasa's eyes tightened with urgency. He snapped to Hibiki. "Hibiki, use it—if we attack together then—"
"Ssht!"
The wet sound of flesh being pierced.
Everyone froze.
Byakuya and Rukia stared, stunned, at Hibiki.
Even Kyoka Suigetsu raised a brow.
Hibiki's hand held his broken blade—buried straight through Muramasa's chest. Blood poured freely.
Muramasa stared at his master in disbelief. "Hibiki… why…?"
It wasn't just Muramasa who was shocked. Byakuya and Rukia were too. For all the trouble Muramasa had caused them, they had to admit—he was an excellent zanpakuto. To save his master, he'd turned against the entire Seireitei.
And that same loyal zanpakuto had been stabbed by his own master.
Why…?
Hibiki yanked his blade free, flicked the blood away, and gazed coldly at his manifested zanpakuto.
"Why didn't you answer me back then?"
Centuries ago, when Yamamoto Genryusai and Ginrei forced him down into the World of the Living and sealed him with four pseudo-divine Golden Tridents, he had called Muramasa again and again.
But no voice had ever answered.
Otherwise, how could he have been sealed for hundreds of years? Shut in darkness through every heartbeat of those centuries, he'd grown to hate Muramasa—hate his silence, his indifference—until he'd wanted to snap his own zanpakuto in half.
Muramasa's eyes went blank. He clutched his bleeding chest and babbled, panicked, "No—that's not it. I kept waiting for you to call me… I never heard anything, not until I learned you'd been sealed…"
While Muramasa tried to explain, another ancient senkaimon opened above. A vast green one-eyed devil ray glided out.
Cole sat on its back. Beside him were Unohana and Minazuki.
Byakuya's face darkened at the sight of the three. "Cole. Unohana. Minazuki. Why are you here? This is the Kuchiki's business."
Cole waved lazily. "Relax. I'm just here to watch, then I'll head out."
He turned and smiled at Kyoka Suigetsu. "Besides, if I hadn't come, I doubt you could handle Kyoka Suigetsu's five-senses hypnosis on your own."
Byakuya fell silent. Pride aside, he couldn't deny it—he had no answer to Kyoka Suigetsu's power.
Kyoka Suigetsu's face, on the other hand, grew ugly. He backed away, a hand over his chest, eyes wary on Cole. "Damnable human…"
Human or not, the wound this human had given him still hadn't healed.
Minazuki, cheeks rosy as if newly nourished, hugged Cole's left arm and beamed at Byakuya. "Little Byakuya, you really should thank Cole. If he hadn't insisted on coming, I wouldn't have let him go so easily."
Byakuya's mouth twitched. He glowered at Unohana. "Captain Unohana, you're a senior I respect. Could you… show a little restraint?"
A thousand-year-old granny entangled with a sixteen-year-old boy—infuriating. And remembering Cole's closeness with Rukia only stoked the fire. Old cow, tender grass.
Unohana's faint blush cooled to a dangerous calm. She looked at Byakuya from the corner of her eye. "Captain Kuchiki, are you saying… I'm old?"
Rukia stared at her brother, eyes shining with hope. Yes, brother! Teach this old woman a lesson! Tell her Cole belongs to your adorable little sister!
Byakuya's eye twitched. He turned away and spoke coolly. "…I said no such thing."
Even the greatest villain the Soul Society had ever known might hesitate here—and so did he.
Rukia nearly cried. Not even her brother dared cross Captain Unohana!?
While the others spoke, Muramasa had already fallen to his knees, one hand clutching his chest, the other reaching toward Hibiki. "Hibiki, it wasn't me. I truly never heard your voice… Believe me… This time I'll stay by your side…"
Hibiki answered by kicking him away and grabbing one of the golden tridents that had once sealed him.
"Muramasa, you let me be sealed on purpose. You wanted freedom, so you abandoned me for centuries."
Muramasa's eyes flew wide. "No—I've searched for you all this time, but you weren't sealed in Soul Society—"
"Silence."
Hibiki sneered. "You are my zanpakuto—and you can manifest. How could you not know where I was sealed?"
A shinigami and their zanpakuto share a mysterious bond. When Shirayuki is hurt, the sensation passes into Rukia. He refused to believe Muramasa couldn't sense him.
Muramasa opened and closed his mouth, lost. He truly hadn't sensed Hibiki at all.
Sitting cross-legged on the devil ray, Cole seemed to have figured it out. He spoke, amused. "You… shut your heart, didn't you?"
Muramasa had invaded Cole's inner world before, and Cole had felt out some of his power. Muramasa's manifestation could invade another's inner world—but if that person sealed their heart, even Muramasa couldn't enter. How do you seal a heart? Despair of the world, a darkness smothering the soul… a self-imposed isolation.
Muramasa's eyes lit. He crawled, desperate, toward Hibiki. "I understand! When I tried to sense your inner world, there was only darkness. Your heart was cloaked—"
"Doesn't matter."
Hibiki lifted his broken zanpakuto and the golden trident, knocking them together with a cold clang. "I don't need an unstable blade."
"My strength alone is enough."
Crack.
His zanpakuto shattered. The golden trident that had bound him came down and crushed the fragment representing Muramasa's blade.
"…How… could this be…"
Despair swallowed Muramasa's eyes. Wounded at the core, his heart in ruins, he couldn't hold the Hollow power back any longer.
"AHHHHH!!!"
His scream ripped the sky. Blood-red reiatsu geysered from his body, spreading like a whirlpool of gore. Countless snarling Gillians crawled out of that scarlet vortex and howled at the heavens. In the maelstrom, Muramasa's figure split into writhing Hollows, his body glazed in corpse-white matter—falling to corruption at a speed the naked eye could follow.
Unohana murmured, "He's been sustaining himself with borrowed Hollow power. Now it's completely out of control…"
Cole shook his head. "Pitiful. All he clung to collapsed—and that left a crack in his heart."
Unlike the Visoreds and Ichigo, who mastered the Hollow within, Muramasa had never subdued those Hollows. He only devoured them to patch wounds and survive. With his heart cracked, the Hollow flood would surge through him—opening a hole inside—until he became a Menos. Perhaps an Adjuchas. Perhaps a Vasto Lorde. Either way, it meant darkness had eaten his heart. Death's countdown had begun.
Rukia's eyes burned. She rounded on Hibiki. "You bastard—what do you think a zanpakuto is!? They're not toys. They're the comrades you trust most."
"Foolish."
Hibiki's lip curled. He flashed forward, golden trident cleaving down toward her. "A zanpakuto is a zanpakuto—an instrument of killing. If it can't kill, it has no reason to exist."
"You—!"
Rukia slashed—pure white cold flaring out—
—but her blade cut empty air.
Hibiki appeared at her flank, trident already scything down. "Die, woman."
Cole's eyes narrowed. His left hand closed over his golden staff—but he did not move.
Clang.
A million cherry blades crashed in, stopping the trident. Byakuya strode forward through falling petals, eyes cold. "Rukia, don't underestimate him. Even with Muramasa shattered, he can still mimic Muramasa's shikai—an illusion-type ability like Kyoka Suigetsu."
Hibiki skipped back a few paces, eyes taking in Byakuya's ornaments. "The star-clasp hairpiece only great nobles may wear; the silver wind-flower scarf of the Kuchiki head… and that face. I see."
He leveled the trident at Byakuya and smiled thinly. "So you're the current head."
Byakuya let the myriad petals wheel beside him. "I am the 28th head of the Kuchiki—Byakuya. Ginrei was my grandfather."
Rukia glared coldly. "I'm Rukia. Hibiki… prepare yourself. My brother and I will erase this stain from our family."
Hibiki burst out laughing. "You two wastes think you can kill me? I am Hibiki. The world itself will kneel."
He charged. Byakuya and Rukia surged to meet him, petals and frost exploding together—
—and in the instant they closed, both of their faces changed.
"What—?"
"Shirayuki!"
They were still in Bankai, yet for a heartbeat, they couldn't sense their blades. Forced clean out of Bankai.
The golden trident fell. Their pupils blew wide.
Bang!
A single crisp impact. Hibiki flew like a shell, Cole's Ruyi Jingu Bang smashing him into the earth and plowing ten pits in a row.
Cole stood before Byakuya and Rukia with the golden staff propped on his shoulder, amusement in his eyes. "You—rule the world?"
"Please."
(End of Chapter)
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