Soifon came to a stop ten paces from Yhwach.
Between them lay the rubble of a collapsed palace — broken walls, twisted metal, and the last wisps of spirit-particle smoke still drifting through the air.
"I thought you were a smart woman, Soifon." Yhwach's voice carried a note of genuine regret. "It seems, in the end, you made the wrong choice."
Even as he spoke, a massive heilig pfeil materialized without warning directly above Soifon's head and came screaming down.
BOOM——!
The earth-shattering explosion swallowed the entire area where Soifon stood. The savage shockwave hurled the surrounding debris skyward all over again, birthing a small mushroom cloud.
Then an invisible force cleaved through the smoke from within.
Soifon's silhouette walked calmly out of the dissipating haze — not so much as a single hair out of place.
She had not chanted a single release phrase. She simply raised her right hand in silence, and Suzumebachi, without any incantation, transformed into that familiar golden finger guard.
An instant later, she vanished from where she stood — and reappeared behind Yhwach.
Two Hornet's Crests bloomed simultaneously across Yhwach's back.
The lethal venom poured into the wounds in a torrent. Yhwach's body began to corrode and crumble at a rate visible to the naked eye.
"Death in Two Steps — the name is well-earned," Yhwach said mildly.
"But it won't work on me."
In the next instant, the disintegrating wounds reversed completely, restored to nothing. He leapt backward, putting distance between himself and Soifon, and regarded her from across the ruins.
"Is that so...it won't work?"
"Then why," Soifon said, still exactly where she'd been standing, a mocking smile on her lips, "did you instinctively put distance between us just now?"
"Yhwach."
"Hmph! Nothing but empty words!"
Yhwach's composure cracked into anger. He raised his right hand, aimed it at Soifon's position, and slowly closed his five fingers.
——Kirchenlied: Sankt Zwinger!
Heilig pfeil ripped through the air, sweeping up massive boulders, shattered metal, and whole fragments of the palace, drawing them all toward Soifon at terrifying speed.
In an eyeblink, a spherical cage more than ten meters across had formed, crushing her inside.
The very next moment, a blinding golden Reiatsu erupted from its core, and Soifon's figure burst free from the rubble, rising high into the air to look down at Yhwach below.
"If this is the extent of your power, then we're done here."
Soifon raised her right arm — the one wearing Suzumebachi — and delivered four lightning-fast strikes into the empty air before her.
Schrift A — Assassin, activate!
Behind Yhwach, in what had been perfectly empty space, four faint threads of golden light appeared from nowhere.
Tzzt — tzzt — tzzt — tzzt——!
An even more savage dose of venom flooded into him in an instant. Terrifying Hornet's Crests spread across almost the entirety of his back.
This time the corrosion and disintegration moved far faster than before — more than half of Yhwach's body turned jet-black and desiccated within a single breath.
[This is bad!]
In the space of a thunderclap, Yhwach's eyes became three-pupiled. He immediately activated his Schrift — [The Almighty] — and rewrote the future in which Soifon killed him.
The next moment.
The rapidly melting, rotting body wavered like a soap-bubble illusion — and Yhwach's figure reappeared ten meters away, completely unharmed.
His crimson triple-pupils locked onto Soifon in silence:
"Your Suzumebachi cannot kill me, Soifon."
"Don't forget — whose power it was that granted you your Schrift!"
"So be it. Since my seal has been broken ahead of schedule, let both you and Sōsuke Aizen drink deeply of the despair that awaits you!"
Yhwach's left hand rose slowly, palm facing upward.
Countless points of dim blue light flooded in from every direction, compressing and condensing in his palm until they formed a single sphere — a deep, blue-black orb that spun ceaselessly and radiated an ominous pulse.
He turned his gaze back to Soifon:
"I am the progenitor of the Quincy! The very essence of my power is [Sharing] and [Granting]."
"Did you think the Sternritter were so mighty because of their own innate talent?"
"Everything — was because of my [Granting]!"
"From the moment you drank my blood and awakened Schrift A, your power was never truly yours, Soifon!"
"Rise — Silbern! What I lift on high — is your heart!"
With the final words of the [Auswählen] incantation, the blue-black orb in Yhwach's palm detonated into a brilliant, all-consuming blue radiance that expanded outward, unfurling into an enormous ring of spirit particles that enveloped the entire Wandenreich.
Then — from within that ring — countless pillars of cold blue light descended like divine judgment, striking every single Quincy within the Wandenreich with pinpoint precision.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Gerard, in the form of his titanic being of light, was struck by the Auswählen's pillars. The spirit particles comprising his body crumbled and scattered as though turned to ash. Quilge, who had taken on the aspect of a divine apostle, fared no differently.
"Is it time, Your Majesty?"
Haschwalth sank to one knee, supporting himself with his sword. His power had not been granted entirely by Yhwach, and so he survived the immediate death sentence.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud…
The Sternritter who had been locked in furious combat moments ago dropped to the ground one after another, like marionettes whose strings had been cut — soundless, motionless.
Their power, their lives — all of it converted into the purest nourishment, flowing back along those blue pillars connecting heaven and earth, surging in reverse toward the single source from which it had all originated: Yhwach.
A short distance from the main battlefield, Candice, Liltotto, and Meninas were likewise struck by Auswählen's pillars. They collapsed to the ground, gasping, hovering at the edge of death.
Liltotto used the very last of her strength to wrench her head upward. She screamed — and in her scream was the anguish and outrage of every surviving Quincy:
"What...are we to you...? Your Majesty——!!!"
Yhwach absorbed the torrent of power flooding into him. The aura around him climbed at a terrifying rate. His crimson triple-pupils turned calmly toward Liltotto, and his voice was utterly without sorrow or joy:
"Why — comrades, of course..."
Yet amid that all-encompassing Auswählen blue light, two anomalies stood out as jarringly conspicuous.
Soifon and Uryū Ishida — both immune to his Auswählen.
A flicker of unease crossed Yhwach's heart — and was immediately swept away by the intoxicating surge of power flooding his body.
No matter. If he couldn't harvest their power through Auswählen, then he would simply use [The Almighty] and take it by force.
At the same moment.
Aizen had also noticed the anomaly with Uryū Ishida. A faint arc of interest touched the corner of his mouth as his gaze drifted over the young Quincy.
Just then, Soifon — her back still turned to Aizen — spoke without glancing around, her voice carrying clearly across the space between them:
"Captain Aizen."
"Take Uryū — and the rest of the survivors — and get them away from here."
"The fight coming up... I can't guarantee I won't accidentally catch them in the crossfire."
By "them," Soifon naturally included the female Sternritter and Haschwalth.
The moment those words left her lips, Candice and the others — who had been sinking into despair over the loss of their power — turned their eyes toward Soifon's small figure in utter disbelief.
A wave of complex emotion crashed over them, instantly breaking through the wall of ice that betrayal had built around their hearts.
Betrayal...had come from Yhwach, the Emperor they had sworn their lives to and worshipped as a god.
Salvation...had come from Soifon, who not long ago had been nothing but a Shinigami to them.
Aizen raised one hand. Several Bakudō threads shot from his palm, binding the survivors Soifon had named together in a bundle. He leapt into the air and carried them to the edge of the Wandenreich, depositing them near the Garganta gate.
After layering several thick, wall-like Dankū barriers around them, Aizen turned back and drifted high into the sky, watching the two figures facing each other across the ruins below.
Now, at the center of these ruins reeking of death and betrayal, only Soifon and Yhwach remained.
Having absorbed the power of nearly every Quincy in the Wandenreich, the Reiatsu rolling off Yhwach was already so horrifying that the space around him visibly warped.
"Behold my divine might!"
"Kirchenlied: Sankt Zwinger!"
Five fingers on Yhwach's right hand blazed with vivid blue flame and fired through the air, weaving together in midair to form a pentagram that snapped shut around Soifon's figure.
Zing——
The pentagram blazed bright — but Soifon had already appeared behind it, as though what had been caught was nothing but her afterimage.
"Worthy of Schrift A — a genuinely troublesome ability."
Yhwach's three pupils rotated. He drew his blade and spun, slashing at the figure that had appeared at his back, forcing Soifon to retreat.
"My power has returned to me in full. You hid the future behind my [Almighty] — did you truly think I wouldn't see it?!"
The next instant — the crisp, wet sound of something piercing flesh.
Soifon withdrew Suzumebachi from Yhwach's body. Hornet's Crests bloomed across his back again as she spoke:
"Then — did you see this future?"
The words had barely left her mouth when a long, deep gash — bone-deep — split open across Soifon's shoulder without warning. The blade had struck them simultaneously; a ripple disturbed the air nearby, and Yhwach's figure appeared there, unscathed by the venom.
He held a spirit-particle longsword — a blade forged entirely from densely compressed reishi — and casually flicked the blood from it.
"I had intended to bisect you with that strike from the [Future]...I didn't expect your spirit body to be tougher than that, Soifon."
(Author's aside: TL;DR — mutual backstabs, matryoshka-style.)
Soifon let out a low grunt, pressing her left hand over the wound. With her now-free right hand, she spread her five fingers — and the dense reishi saturating the air seemed to answer an invisible summons, flooding wildly toward the gash.
Within two or three breaths, aside from the torn fabric and blood not yet dried, her shoulder was as though it had never been touched.
"Soifon! Don't forget what you are — you're a Shinigami!"
"Using Quincy power to heal yourself — have you no shame?! Does Captain-Commander Yamamoto know about this?!"
Seeing Soifon use Quincy abilities to close her wounds, Yhwach's composure visibly cracked. He could tell that this game of mutual counters might be settling into a drawn-out war of attrition.
"Not only does the Captain-Commander know — he intends to pass the title of the next Captain-Commander to me."
"Yhwach — would you like to consider handing over the throne of the King of the Quincy as well? If you do, I might consider letting you live."
Even as she spoke, the Reiatsu around Soifon flared sharply, deflecting a slashing strike that had arrived from the future.
Yhwach lunged in with his longsword, and the two clashed in close quarters: "Insolent wretch!"
The duel between the two Schrift A bearers erupted once again.
From his vantage point in the distance, Sōsuke Aizen watched the battle unfold — and found it increasingly bizarre, almost farcical. He could not see the futures Yhwach was surveilling, nor could he see the preemptive dodges Soifon was executing. All he could observe was Yhwach occasionally swinging his sword at empty air, or firing off heilig pfeil and Sankt Zwinger at nothing — while Soifon, as though gifted with supernatural foresight, consistently completed some apparently pointless repositioning, or tapped off in some seemingly safe direction, at precisely the moment before each attack would have landed.
The battle between the two of them had become something like two completely misaligned, independently running performances.
He gave a faint shake of his head. Even with all his pride, he could not deny the reality in front of him: "Even after absorbing the Soul King's left hand, the gap between us is still painfully obvious...Captain Soifon."
Below, within the zone protected by layer upon layer of Dankū barriers:
Candice struggled to prop herself against a broken wall and craned her head upward. "Hey, King of Hueco Mundo up there — who's actually winning between Soifon and His Majesty right now...?"
Aizen lowered his gaze, glanced at them, then turned back to the battlefield: "Based on the current rate of exchange and the pattern of engagement...roughly a draw."
"A draw?!"
Meninas's involuntary cry rang out. Even the gravely injured Haschwalth jerked his head up, his eyes full of something he could barely process.
Soifon...was holding Yhwach to a draw? Yhwach, who had absorbed the power of nearly the entire Wandenreich and wielded [The Almighty]?
"Let me go in!" Uryū Ishida surged a step forward and slammed his fist against the Dankū wall. "I'll go reinforce her."
His words were immediately dismissed by Aizen: "You can't even break through my Dankū seal. What makes you think you have any business interfering in that fight?"
"Correct, Uryū Ishida." Haschwalth forced himself upright, casting a withering look at Uryū. "Did you think His Majesty and I hadn't noticed? Your motives for joining the Empire were never pure from the start."
"Your one point of distinction is your Schrift A. Beyond that, your power is not worth mentioning, as far as I'm concerned."
Bazz-B had died in his battle with Aizen. Haschwalth, who had survived the Auswählen, had simply lost all will to carry on — and so he lay back and let his tongue run free.
...
At the center of the battlefield, Soifon and Yhwach separated once again, facing each other across a gap of dozens of meters.
"It seems that the longer this drags on, the less either of us can do to the other."
Soifon raised her right arm. The golden Reiatsu on the Suzumebachi finger guard flickered.
Yhwach's three pupils shifted slightly: "Oh? Have you finally grasped the size of the gap between us, and decided to surrender, Soifon?"
"Surrender?" The corner of Soifon's mouth curved. "Don't tell me your [Almighty]...didn't see this future?"
The instant the words left her lips, Soifon stopped holding anything back.
Hhhmmmm——!
An immense Reiatsu — so crushing that space itself groaned under its weight — detonated outward with Soifon's small body at the epicenter.
A golden column of spirit energy shot into the sky. The already-ruined ground beneath her sank further. Broken walls and debris at greater distances crumbled instantly to powder under the pressure of pure, undiluted Reiatsu.
Yhwach, caught in the leading edge of the shockwave, raised his arm to shield his face and staggered back dozens of steps.
The light of Suzumebachi in Soifon's hand blazed and surged. Its form began to shift violently — gradually forging itself into a golden spear-blade she gripped in her hand.
"Bankai——"
"Jashaku Raikōben!"
The moment her Bankai unleashed, all Three Worlds trembled.
Soul Society. The Seireitei.
"This is...Captain Soifon's Reiatsu?!"
"Legend has it — when a member of the Zero Division releases their Bankai, the Three Worlds shake."
"I suppose now we know that's true..."
"But Captain Soifon isn't a Zero Division member yet, is she?"
Every captain, vice-captain, seated officer — even the ordinary rank-and-file — all looked up simultaneously toward a sky that held nothing to see.
Beneath their feet, the earth pulsed with unmistakable tremors. Buildings swayed. The surface of ponds rippled. Even the fabric of space itself was shuddering.
Hueco Mundo. Las Noches.
Harribel stood in the vast throne hall, and she and Nelliel raised their heads at the same instant.
"This Reiatsu..."
Harribel murmured.
"It's Lady Soifon."
Nelliel confirmed it at once, a flicker of worry passing through her eyes.
Even Starrk's habitual air of indolence contracted a little. He let out a yawn: "Now that's...quite a commotion."
The World of the Living. Karakura Town.
The Urahara Shop, the Kurosaki household, the Visoreds — every single one of them set down whatever they were doing at the same moment.
Yoruichi looked skyward, astonishment plain on her face: "Who in the world could push Soifon this far?"
The calm sea churned without wind. Waves roared.
The cloud layer above was thrust aside by an invisible force.
Ding——
A warping Reiatsu pulse radiated from the blade of Jashaku Raikōben, ringing out a clear, bright clash of gold on steel.
"What——!"
Yhwach's composure shattered into a startled cry.
He had clearly broken Jashaku Raikōben's blade in the future — so why was this happening?!
Damn it! If only he had managed to destroy her Bankai back then, Soifon would have had no power left capable of killing him — damn it all!
"It seems my luck holds. You were trying to break my blade in the [Future] just now, weren't you, Yhwach?"
"Are you frightened...?"
Soifon leveled the spear-blade at Yhwach and pulled the trigger — again and again, without warning.
Front and back, coming from trajectories utterly impossible to predict — golden Reiatsu bullets punched clean holes through Yhwach from every angle in an instant.
BOOM——
A thunderous, catastrophic explosion. A mushroom cloud boiled up from the ground. A pressure wave carrying debris, metal shards, and the pulped remnants of flesh and bone rolled outward in every direction.
On the Dankū barrier — spider-web cracks, translucent as glass, appeared across the surface.
Crack——
One layer of Dankū held for a few seconds before shattering entirely. Aizen immediately reinforced it with several more layers.
As the smoke cleared, Yhwach's figure reappeared intact once more — though he was breathing somewhat harder now. It seemed that using [The Almighty] to resurrect himself did, in fact, have limits.
At least it had limits before he could absorb the Soul King's remains — though no one had ever lived long enough to see it.
"You know, Yhwach..."
"After releasing Bankai, a Shinigami's combat power increases five to tenfold."
"Can your [Almighty] keep up with my speed?"
After triggering another Bankai-powered detonation, Soifon looked at the newly resurrected Yhwach and said this.
Gradually, the battle began to tip decisively in one direction. The scales of victory tilted toward Soifon.
Every time Yhwach resurrected, he was met immediately by Jashaku Raikōben's bullets coming from every direction. Even standing at the vantage point of omniscient foresight, he could not find a single future where he avoided being hit. All he could do was use his power to rewrite fate — and resurrect himself, again and again and again.
Meanwhile, Soifon — drawing on Sklaverei — had effectively unlimited Reiatsu and unlimited firepower. Emptying Jashaku Raikōben like a minigun was no problem whatsoever.
[This cannot go on...]
[Only by absorbing the Soul King's power can I defeat Soifon.]
Yhwach's condition was deteriorating rapidly. Even if each resurrection refilled his Reiatsu to full, the accumulated pain of being killed over and over, and the erosion of his mental fortitude, could not recover instantaneously.
And facing a battle where victory was nowhere in sight, Yhwach's mood grew fouler with every passing second.
Resurrect. Die. Resurrect. Die. Resurrect. Die. ×6
Because Yhwach kept doing his merry little sit-ups from the grave, no one actually managed to reach the moment of his permanent death.
In fact, for one brief instant, Yhwach found himself entertaining the thought of simply giving up — whatever, just...let it all burn... Just let himself die temporarily, let Soifon and the others celebrate their hollow little victory. After all, death for him was just reverting to an infant state — he could always stage his comeback eventually.
But the moment that thought took root, it refused to leave. It bred a sourceless, simmering rage in the back of his mind.
The moment he imagined returning to that helpless infant state — blind, deaf, unable so much as to move — an inexplicable dread welled up in Yhwach from nowhere.
He, the supreme Emperor of the Wandenreich, Son of the Soul King — driven to this point by a single Shinigami?!
What a disgraceful wretch I've become!
While lost in his thoughts, he was killed by Soifon several more times before he even noticed — and on one occasion he forgot to activate his power to resurrect himself altogether.
Yhwach's distraction nearly cost him everything.
Damn it all, does this woman's Reiatsu and stamina seriously have no bottom...?
At last, Yhwach understood exactly how his past enemies had felt when they faced him.
What in the absolute hell kind of monster was he up against?!
BOOM——
In his desperation, one explosion's shockwave sent Yhwach tumbling directly toward Sōsuke Aizen's position.
Right — there was still a backup power source over here.
Sōsuke Aizen — who had absorbed the Soul King's Left Hand!
Yhwach's three pupils fixed on Aizen. He raised his right hand, activated [The Almighty], and fired Sankt Zwinger directly at Sōsuke Aizen.
"Oh? You want my power that badly?! I've already seen your future with my recovered vision — Sōsuke Aizen——!"
Since he couldn't take Soifon's power, he would simply take Sōsuke Aizen's power from within the [Future]!
Go — Sankt Zwinger! I've staked every future on this one move!
The burning pentagram was a fraction of an instant from enveloping Sōsuke Aizen — and vanished mid-flight.
A golden bullet fired, and sank into Yhwach's heart.
"Don't you dare try to absorb anyone else's power — Yhwach!"
A brilliant flash of gold. Soifon raised her spear-blade and, with effortless precision, severed his head from his shoulders.
Thud.
The severed head fell from the sky, rolled across the ground, bounced off a chunk of rubble — and was still.
Soifon and Aizen waited in place for a long time. Neither of them witnessed the scene they had been bracing for: Yhwach's remains dissolving into a phantom and reconstituting itself back in place.
…
A full day passed. The two of them stood vigil over Yhwach's corpse.
"He's actually dead...?"
Sōsuke Aizen picked up Yhwach's headless remains and the severed head. A strange, dreamlike feeling began to spread through him.
That last Sankt Zwinger had genuinely made him feel the nearness of death. Thank god Captain Soifon had saved his life...
The relief of a survivor far outweighed any excitement over Yhwach's corpse.
"Most likely...perhaps when he used Sankt Zwinger on Captain Aizen, he didn't have time to resurrect himself?"
Soifon also found it somewhat strange — but Yhwach's Reiatsu had definitively vanished. That was a fact.
"It's also possible that [The Almighty]'s resurrection power has an upper limit."
"And Captain Soifon's repeated kills had already pushed him to that limit."
Aizen raised Yhwach's head to eye level, studied it for a moment, and offered this analysis.
Step. Step.
Soifon walked over the rubble toward the Garganta gate. Bambietta went chalk-white at the sight of her and immediately began scrabbling backward on the ground, hands and feet working frantically.
Candice, Meninas, and Liltotto — while on reasonably decent terms with Soifon — still didn't dare address her casually.
The Emperor who had ruled the Empire — beheaded by Soifon, before their very eyes, by such brutal means. The impact of that image was still too raw.
Picking up the fallen head, Sōsuke Aizen carried Yhwach's remains to the Garganta gate. He ignored the complex looks on the surviving Quincy's faces and the awe in their eyes as they stared at Soifon, and opened the black cavity.
"Let's go, Captain Soifon."
"We'll get them settled in Las Noches first. And I can finally focus on analyzing and consuming the power remaining in Yhwach's remains."
"Based on what the Hōgyoku has conveyed to me, I estimate it will take approximately two years."
The moment Sōsuke Aizen spoke the words "two years," Soifon's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly — and an instant later, returned to normal.
Almost exactly the same timeframe Ichibē Hyōsube had told her. Was that a coincidence...?
____
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