After releasing seven or eight Kidō spells in succession, Seijūrō lowered his outstretched fingers.

She was already struggling.

He had used nothing but the most basic Hadō, firing them one by one at a standard pace, testing the limits of her defense.

She hadn't deflected a single attack. Start to finish, she had tanked them with her armor, parried with the shaft of her lance, or evaded with her footwork.

Her Cero Doble had not triggered once.

Which meant Nelliel's Cero Doble could only reflect a Cero.

Kidō was entirely alien to her. She didn't know how to receive it, how to dodge it, or how to send it back. She simply weathered it with her body, her unbelievable defense absorbing every strike.

"Nel. How large is the gap between you and the other Espada?"

Hovering in midair, Seijūrō sheathed his Asauchi. There was no point continuing.

"Hmm..."

Nel stopped as well, cradling her double-headed lance and counting on her fingers.

Her Resurrección hadn't been released. Her gazelle hind legs folded beneath her, emerald hair spilling over her shoulders, the ends drifting in the breeze.

"Grimmjow is about the same as me, I think. If we really fought I'm not sure who'd win. LuLu runs really fast, but I feel like I could beat him. The ones ranked lower don't seem very strong."

"What about the ones above you?"

Seijūrō knew she wasn't lying.

It was hard to associate such an innocent, guileless girl with the word "Hollow." Was this the Hōgyoku's doing? Or did some Hollows simply come out this way? Even if they did, in an environment where the strong devoured the weak, a Hollow like that should have been consumed long ago.

The only reason she had survived was that she was naturally powerful. So powerful that no Hollow had ever dared target her.

"Hmm... feels like I can't beat the top ones at all."

Nel tilted her head and held her finger high above her head, indicating a gap that was just enormous.

"Where do you think I would rank?" Seijūrō asked, waiting.

"Estrella... you feel like Coyote Starrk."

Nel looked into his eyes. Her emerald irises were clear as spring water in the moonlight.

She was completely serious. Every word felt carefully weighed, except her way of weighing things was listening to his Reiatsu, not analyzing it with her head.

"Coyote Starrk?"

A name he'd never heard. It wasn't on the Pícaro's list of Espada.

He already had a rough guess.

"Is he the Primera Espada?"

"Mm-hmm. Both of you have really high Reiatsu. I can't tell whose is higher."

Nel nodded. The double-headed lance swayed gently in her arms.

"I see."

So none of the Espada were on par with Captain-Commander Yamamoto, or at the very least, the Primera Espada's Reiatsu was at the same level as his own. As for Baraggan Louisenbairn and Ulquiorra Cifer, who ranked below the Primera, the odds of either of them facing the Captain-Commander head-on were even slimmer.

Conclusion settled.

One more Espada to clash with, and it would be time to head back to Soul Society. The intelligence gathered from this infiltration had already far exceeded expectations.

"Huh? We're not fighting anymore?"

Nel blinked. The ears of her Resurrección form twitched along with it.

Those ears were long and nimble, their tips carrying a faint dusting of downy fur in the moonlight. Right now they twitched in the same rhythm, like two small creatures poking their heads out of tall grass.

"Yeah. Tired."

"Hehe, want some dried sand scorpion? You have to at least chew it once before you judge."

She waved toward Pesche.

Pesche immediately untied a small cloth pouch from Dondochakka's waist and poured out several strips of dried sand scorpion meat.

They were a dark brownish color, their surface dusted with a thin frost of white salt, like fossil fragments freshly dug out of a desert storm.

Beside them, Dondochakka pressed a chubby hand over his mouth, his whole body shaking as he held back laughter.

"No, I—"

"Want some dried sand scorpion?" Nel leaned one step closer, ears perking straight up.

"No—"

"Dried sand scorpion." Another step. Ears pivoting forward.

"Dried sand scorpion!"

She was right in front of his face. Those emerald eyes were inches away, clear without a single trace of anything beneath the surface. She tilted her head up at him, a completely unguarded smile at the corners of her mouth, ears twitching happily.

You're a Hollow. A Hollow! How do you make a face that's impossible to refuse?

Seijūrō roared in silence.

He had turned down Iwakizhi Tetsusai. Turned down Shunsui Kyōraku. Turned down Genryūsai Yamamoto. None of those had ever given him any trouble.

But right now, standing before this Vasto Lorde Arrancar in her half-gazelle form, looking into those outrageously clear eyes, watching those ears twitch, the word "no" simply would not come out.

He resigned himself to it. Descended to the ground. Took the dried sand scorpion from Pesche's hand.

Nel crouched in front of him, chin resting on both hands, ears drooping forward.

Pesche and Dondochakka flanked her on either side, the three of them lined up in a row, all tilting their heads up to watch him. Their eyes sparkled like they'd been waiting for this show for a long time.

He placed the dried sand scorpion in his mouth and chewed.

At first it was brittle, like biting into a piece of desiccated tree bark. His teeth came down and it gave a sharp snap, the way a withered autumn leaf cracks underfoot.

Then came the sand. Not a metaphor. Actual sand grains rolling across his tongue, as if someone had thrown a handful of quartz powder between his teeth. Every chew brought the faint, grinding squeak of grit against enamel.

Then the heat arrived. Not the heat of chili pepper, something more primal, closer to the raw bite of Hueco Mundo quartz-tree sap. It spread from the back of his tongue all the way down his throat, like someone pressing tiny needlepoints into every single taste bud at once.

The heat receded quickly. In its place came bitterness.

Not a subtle, lingering bitterness. Something direct and almost violent, like chewing through an expired pill. Sourness and bitterness detonated together, both sides of his tongue going numb, his temples starting to throb.

And when all of that dissipated, only salt remained. An overwhelming, high-concentration salt that made you wince before you could stop yourself, like the final crust left behind after a desert evaporated, scouring every remaining sense of taste into a flat, sickening brine.

He spat it out.

The remains hit the sand. A faint wisp of gray smoke curled up.

Seijūrō looked up at the three Arrancar already rolling with laughter and shouted with the most sincere voice he had produced in his entire life: "Are you people — actually Hollows?!"

The weight behind those words was something perhaps only Sōya Azashiro could ever truly appreciate.

Nel laughed the hardest. Her ears twitched gleefully several times as he yelled.

"He fell for it, he fell for it!"

"Huge success!"

"Dried sand scorpion prank — huge success!"

Well. Time to say goodbye.

Though the next time they met, they'd be enemies.

He raised a hand to retrieve his Caja Negación. The black cubes descended slowly around them, returning one by one into his sleeve.

The darkness didn't disperse.

He raised his head. The pupils beneath his mask contracted slightly.

"Hmm?"

Nel's ears perked up sharply.

"Is it you, brat?"

An ancient voice emerged from the dark, heavy and deep, like a block of granite worn smooth by ages slowly grinding across the earth.

Seijūrō's hand froze at the edge of his sleeve.

He had dismissed his own Caja Negación.

Which meant the darkness that remained belonged to someone else's. A new layer, laid from the outside.

And the one responsible was standing right in front of him now.

A burly, powerfully built old man stepped out of the dark. His pace was unhurried, every footfall landing in exactly the same rhythm, steady as a pendulum.

A crown-like ornament rested on his head. A massive golden compass hung at his waist, its rim carved with dense, intricate patterns that gleamed a dull gold in the dim light. The needle trembled faintly, unable to settle on any fixed heading.

He wore a long outer garment woven in purple and gold, the interlocking patterns tracing the sovereignty of a Las Noches that no longer existed.

He looked every inch an emperor.

His left hand gripped a thick scepter, its crown set with a dark red jewel. Spiritual particles circulated slowly within it, sluggish and dim.

The sand beneath his feet bore no footprints. Before each step landed, the grains had already turned to ash ahead of his soles.

Those deep-set eyes, buried beneath the shadow of his brow, swept past Nelliel's shoulder, past Pesche and Dondochakka, and locked onto Seijūrō.

"Were you the one who killed my beloved subordinates?"

Nel stepped in front of Seijūrō almost before she'd decided to.

Her long emerald hair swept an arc through the air as she turned, the ends brushing his arm.

Her double-headed lance angled across her body, tip pointed toward Baraggan Louisenbairn.

Her posture was nothing like the easygoing girl who'd been pestering him with dried scorpion moments ago. Center of gravity low, lance shaft pressed against her forearm, shoulder blades slightly raised. She had gone from a gazelle grazing at leisure to one coiled to charge.

"Baraggan, what are you doing? Docente Estrella is my friend." The teasing warmth was completely gone from her voice.

Baraggan Louisenbairn didn't answer. Those sunken eyes drifted over her like she was a piece of furniture that happened to be in the way.

He raised his ring-laden right hand and gave a slight wave. The butt of his scepter struck the sand with a heavy thud. The dark red jewel flared, and an aura of decay spread outward from him in all directions.

"Get out of my way. Seeing as you are an Espada, I will not hold you accountable for harboring him. But if you insist on standing before me, I do not mind turning you to ash alongside him."

The light from the jewel reflected deep in his pupils, making his already sunken eyes look like two smoldering abysses.

A slender hand reached past Nel from behind and rested gently on her shoulder guard.

Seijūrō patted her shoulder. "It's fine, Nel. Step aside."

Nel turned to look at him. Something flickered through her emerald eyes — confusion.

Pesche and Dondochakka had already scrambled behind a distant quartz pillar. Pesche stuck half his head out, his voice cracking: "It's over, it's over, it's over!"

Dondochakka squeezed his round body completely behind Pesche, only half his face visible, trembling hard.

Seijūrō stepped out from behind Nel and came to a stop in front of Baraggan Louisenbairn. Less than three paces between them.

One aged and colossal. The other lean and still.

This was almost too convenient.

He'd been wondering where he'd find one of the top five Espada to gauge their strength.

"Baraggan, could there be a mistake?"

Nel drove her lance into the sand and stepped forward. "Docente Estrella isn't the kind of Arrancar who kills people for nothing."

"There is no mistake. Before he departed, Ggio Vega reported to me that he would eliminate you and those three Fracción here. Four went out. Four disappeared. Yet you stand before me perfectly unharmed."

Pesche leaned half his body out from behind the quartz pillar. He had done many unwise things in his life. What he did next was worse.

"Hold on! Aren't you being a complete hypocrite?! You sent four Fracción to kill them, and because they lost, you're blaming the other guy for being too strong?! What kind of logic is that!"

He was on a roll now, leaning even further out from behind the pillar. "Your Fracción picked the fight and got themselves killed. You know what that's called? That's called getting what they deserved! They had it coming! Why don't you ask why four of them couldn't beat one person?!"

Beside him, Dondochakka gripped Pesche's hem with a chubby hand, his round eyes wide with pure terror.

He didn't dare say a word. He was just quietly counting how many seconds Pesche had left.

Baraggan Louisenbairn turned his head slowly. Those deep-set eyes settled on Pesche.

He looked at him. Just once.

Pesche went completely rigid. A tiny, barely audible creak escaped his throat, and then every bit of strength left his body at once and he crumpled.

Dondochakka grabbed him by the collar and dragged him back behind the pillar.

"Idiot, idiot, idiot! Do you want to be turned to ash?!"

"I'm already ash! My heart just stopped! You're talking to my ghost right now!"

Baraggan Louisenbairn withdrew his gaze and let it settle back on Seijūrō.

"What is your name?"

Seijūrō looked into those sunken eyes. He knew that whatever answer he gave would mark the end of this standoff.

"Docente Estrella," he said.

"Docente Estrella." A brief pause. "Very well. Now go die."

➤ Next: The False Mask Conceals All Edge, Reiatsu Crushes Hegemony

Chapter 73 - The False Mask Conceals All Edge, Reiatsu Crushes Hegemony

Baraggan Louisenbairn held his scepter horizontally before him. The dark-red gem at its head erupted with blinding light.

The radiance tore through the entire dark space of the Caja Negación. Those black cubes that had been floating quietly around them trembled under the impact of his Reiatsu.

When the light faded, Baraggan's form had completely changed.

He was no longer the old man leaning on a scepter, wrapped in a long coat, wearing a crown. He was a skeleton emperor bearing a massive greataxe.

The crown atop his head had grown larger, sharper, each spike a fang that seemed to have grown outward from the bones themselves.

His entire body had become bare skeleton. Purple Reishi conduits wound slowly between his ribs, and with each pulse, the surrounding space aged a little more.

The greataxe in his grip was shrouded in a layer of dark-purple radiance. Along the glow's edges, fine fissures spread and closed in a continuous cycle, senescence itself, made visible, condensed upon the blade.

Seijūrō did not move.

He stood on the sand and looked up at the skeleton emperor, his pupils contracting slightly beneath his mask.

Not fear. Evaluation, chilled to absolute zero.

The instant Baraggan released his Resurrección, Seijūrō had spread every sense he had outward: the rate at which the senescence miasma expanded, the attack radius of the greataxe, the way the air density and Reishi structure around every swing visibly warped and buckled.

It didn't attack with Reishi directly. It corroded through the authority of senescence that the Reishi carried.

The axe blade itself could not touch him. The dark-purple radiance could not graze his skin. Those were the only two lines that mattered.

Baraggan gave him no time to settle in.

The greataxe came down from overhead. The blade tore a dark-purple arc through the air, and everything it passed through aged instantly, the atmosphere curdling into a bone-dry gale that stank of rot.

Seijūrō twisted aside. The axe blade grazed the edge of his mask and buried itself into the sand, splitting a deep trench across the ground. The grains along both walls of the trench turned to ash the moment they touched the blade.

Then Baraggan's wrist turned, and the greataxe swept horizontal.

Seijūrō raised his blade to parry. The instant the Asauchi met the greataxe, something passed through the blade, not concussive force, but decay.

Rust raced across the Asauchi's surface, spreading from the edge toward the hilt.

He drove his Reiatsu into the blade immediately, flushing the spreading rot with pure Reishi density. The rust flaked away under the surge and scattered onto the sand as fine dark-purple shavings.

Baraggan did not stop.

For all his size, his movements carried no lag whatsoever. The greataxe obeyed him like an extension of his will, cleaving, sweeping, thrusting, smashing, every strike loaded with the authority to age whatever it touched.

On the third swing, his left hand came up. Fingers splayed. A fan-shaped wave of dark-purple miasma surged from his palm and blanketed straight toward Seijūrō.

Seijūrō released Reishi beneath his feet and Shunpo'd sideways, clearing the edge of the fan by a hair.

Where he'd been standing, the sand rapidly lost its color, white to gray, gray to nothing.

A flash of Shakkahō. The flames guttered out in under half a second, snuffed by the miasma before they could take hold.

The essence of senescence wasn't an attack. It was time.

After a few probing exchanges, Seijūrō confirmed it.

He stopped meeting Baraggan head-on. He shifted to high-speed Shunpo instead, moving through the Caja Negación's space and planting each step precisely in the dead zones of the axe's arc.

A shave past his shoulder. A sweep across his waist. A diagonal thrust from knee height.

Every time, Seijūrō cleared it by the narrowest margin, the blade perpetually one inch from his body.

That inch was deliberate. Not because he couldn't pull further back, but because he couldn't afford to.

He needed more data on exactly what the Second Espada's authority of senescence could do.

Baraggan's assault was relentless. The greataxe moved faster and faster in his hands, each swing carrying a dull roar of parted air, wringing every trace of moisture out of the atmosphere wherever it passed.

Seijūrō tracked the pattern while he moved. Downward cleave, then horizontal sweep. Horizontal sweep, then fan-burst of senescence miasma. Three attacks, cycling evenly, predictable in its rhythm.

He counted the intervals silently.

Then Baraggan changed.

He stopped chasing Seijūrō. He pulled the greataxe back to his flank, gripped the shaft with both hands, and raised the blade high overhead.

Dark-purple Reiatsu flooded toward the blade. The coverage area swelled rapidly.

Seijūrō read it immediately, area attack. A wide-range senescence breath meant to blanket the entire interior of the Caja Negación.

"Raaagh!"

Baraggan's voice was hoarse and deep. He brought the greataxe down with everything he had. The dark-purple radiance on the blade exploded outward, becoming a ring of senescence miasma that expanded in every direction at once.

Wherever the miasma passed, sand turned to nothing. The air was stripped of all moisture. Even the darkness itself was growing old.

Pesche and Dondochakka were huddled behind a quartz pillar, pressed together and shaking.

"We're done for!"

Pesche's shriek hadn't even finished before the dark-purple wave was already bearing down on them.

They tried to run. Their legs wouldn't move. The Reiatsu of two combatants had pinned them flat, and their bones made thin, brittle sounds under the pressure.

Dondochakka squeezed his eyes shut. His fat hand death-gripped the corner of Pesche's clothes. His mouth moved in a loop: "Lady Nel, Lady Nel, Lady Nel."

Seijūrō flashed in front of them. "Bakudō #81 — Dankū."

A translucent Reiatsu barrier unfolded across their path. The dark-purple miasma slammed into it and the barrier shuddered violently.

Decay and Reishi tore into each other along the contact surface. His sword hand trembled.

The density was higher than he'd estimated. Dankū held the front, but the miasma's overflow curled around both flanks of the barrier and kept pressing toward Pesche and Dondochakka.

"You two idiots!"

An emerald figure shot in from the side. Nelliel seized the back collars of Pesche and Dondochakka, one in each hand, hoisted them off the ground, and hurled them backward and upward toward the edge of the Caja Negación.

They drew awkward parabolic arcs through the air. Dondochakka's round body hit the sand and bounced twice. Pesche landed on top of him. They rolled into a tangle of limbs, two octopuses dumped into a desert.

The recoil pulled Nelliel downward.

Her right shoulder swung into the expanding fan of senescence miasma at the moment of release.

The dark-purple energy of decay hit her pauldrons. The white armor's surface went dull immediately. Fine cracks spread from her scapula toward her clavicle, and the fabric beneath the armor began curling, yellowing, disintegrating, peeling away sheet by sheet, as though an invisible flame were licking through it.

The miasma was seeping inward through the gaps.

Then a pale-blue flame struck her right shoulder with pinpoint accuracy.

Sōkatsui, compressed to the absolute limit of Reiatsu, condensed into a single thin beam of light.

Sharp as a blade's edge, the cutting flame grazed across the outer edge of her scapula and detonated the instant it touched the decaying miasma.

The white armor vaporized directly in the heat, solid to dust, no intermediate state.

The garment beneath bore the shockwave. The fabric shredded into countless fragments, every piece trailing a wisp of dark-purple senescence being consumed by fire.

For a brief moment those fragments formed a small shower of mixed purple and pale-blue light behind her. Then it extinguished.

The skin itself showed only a faint circle of red from the searing heat. The muscle lines of her shoulder blade tensed once, sharply, in the sudden exposure.

From below her right shoulder, below her clavicle, every shred of clothing across the entire right half of her torso was gone.

The white glove had burned away from the elbow down. Scattered armor fragments clung to her left shoulder and chest, barely maintaining the minimum.

She used the momentum to flip backward and landed clean. Her right shoulder was bare to the dry air of Hueco Mundo.

No blood. No wound. Only a shallow red mark scorched by the blast.

"And you still had time to worry about someone else."

A skeletal hand reached out from the dark-purple miasma and pressed down onto Seijūrō's shoulder with precise force.

Baraggan emerged from the miasma. Dark-red light danced within the skeleton emperor's hollow eye sockets.

He looked down at the small Arrancar pinned beneath his hand. The bone-formed mouth slowly drew back into a grin.

Senescence miasma welled from his palm, enveloped Seijūrō's entire shoulder, and began spreading upward along his neck.

One breath. Two. Three.

The dark-gray half-mask on Seijūrō's face started cracking.

Fractures spread from the dark-red lightning pattern near the edge of his right eye and raced across the entire mask.

Bone fragments peeled away piece by piece, dissolving into Reishi dust in the air.

"Softhearted fool." Baraggan's deep voice carried undisguised satisfaction. His skeletal claws tightened, knuckles sinking into Seijūrō's shoulder, grinding the Reishi remnants of the shattered mask to powder.

He kept his hand locked on Seijūrō's shoulder and waited for that fading Reiatsu to go out completely.

He didn't get to wait long.

Because it wasn't fading. It was changing.

The mask fragments were still drifting when Seijūrō's short hair began to move, extending the instant the Reiatsu shifted, as if something had cut its restraints, growing from ear-length to shoulder-length, the faded disguise color bleeding back to its original deep black.

The long hair settled across his shoulder blades. The tips drifted in the faint wake of the senescence miasma.

The Reiatsu hadn't disappeared. It had switched frequencies, from the fluctuation of a Hollow to that of a Shinigami.

The density hadn't dropped. It was climbing. Rising in a way Baraggan had never felt before.

"As I thought. Despicable, two-faced trash — that's exactly what I'd expect a Hollow to be. You, and every last one of your subordinates."

Seijūrō raised his eyes to look at the skeleton emperor.

There was no mask on that face anymore. Long hair hung over his shoulders. Something was burning deep behind his eyes.

"Impossible! How can this be? What are you — some higher evolution beyond the Arrancar? No — that face. That Reiatsu. You're a Shinigami!"

The dark-red light in Baraggan's eye sockets flared violently. The bone-formed mouth dropped open to an incredulous angle. "A Shinigami. How could a Shinigami be here?"

He tried to pull back the hand pressed on Seijūrō's shoulder.

Seijūrō caught his wrist.

The grip wasn't forceful. It was precise, locked exactly into the seam between his carpal bones, rendering his entire arm immobile.

Baraggan didn't try to break free again.

He was silent for a moment. Then the dark-red light in his eye sockets went still, no more leaping, no more flickering.

Something more resolute had taken its place, burning quietly in those hollow sockets. He no longer cared.

He didn't care if the senescence miasma damaged himself. He didn't care if his own skeleton suffered the backlash.

Kneeling twice before an unknown Shinigami who had wandered into Hueco Mundo, that was worse than death.

Dark-purple miasma surged simultaneously from every crack and fissure across his entire body.

Not a fan-spread. Not a ring breath. The most primal, most direct form of release, point-blank, face to face.

He compressed every last trace of senescence authority remaining inside him deep into his throat. Then he opened his mouth and poured it all straight into Seijūrō's face.

The miasma was so dense it hung like a solid. Wherever it passed, even the black walls of the Caja Negación began to emit fine cracking sounds.

His finger bones and teeth were being reverse-eroded as he released it. The fingertips closest to Seijūrō had already begun to weather, the ends of the knuckles crumbling into fine dark-purple powder that sifted down in a steady stream.

That mass of senescence miasma, enough to reduce an entire Las Noches guard regiment to ash, hit Seijūrō square in the face.

And shattered.

Like a massive wave breaking against a reef. The spray burst into countless small bubbles and slid powerlessly down the rock's contours.

Not a single strand of Seijūrō's hair had aged. Even the tips retained the arc the wind had stirred into them moments ago.

Deep-black strands drifted in the wake of the senescence miasma, every one intact.

The dark-red light in Baraggan's eye sockets finally went still.

It didn't leap. It didn't burn.

It simply froze there, fixed on the Shinigami standing before him without a mark on him.

He had seen countless enemies across his lifetime. Those ground to ash by senescence. Those who had fought their hardest and collapsed to their knees halfway through. Those who had wept and begged when death came.

He was the king of Hueco Mundo's old era. His authority was absolute.

"An opportunistic ability."

Seijūrō still had hold of his arm. "So this is what you used to get here? Every step of the way? Your kingship, your rank, everything you take pride in—"

He tightened his fingers slightly. Baraggan's wrist bones let out a faint crack.

"Something like this, watch me crush it with pure Reiatsu—"

Baraggan had only just adapted to that Reiatsu. He'd felt it the moment the mask shattered, an oncoming pressure that made it hard to breathe.

Like a storm hammering at a house from outside, terrifying in both sound and force.

He had thought he'd weathered the worst of it. He had thought that pressure was already at its peak.

The next instant, the storm ripped off his roof.

What he'd believed he could endure had been nothing more than a breeze riding ahead of the real thing.

The entire house he'd sheltered in, every year of experience, every judgment he'd trusted, every understanding he'd built about power and about where Hollows ended and Shinigami began, was torn apart in a single breath.

The roof was gone. The walls were down. Every measure he'd ever used to read an opponent collapsed at once.

He was standing in the open center of this power, unable to raise even one arm, unable to straighten his back. The pressure drove him downward.

He felt his bones swaying in the storm. Every rib groaned under a weight it hadn't been built to bear.

The senescence miasma that had reduced countless enemies to ash was a joke now. It couldn't reach that man. It couldn't move a single strand of his hair.

He tried to call up more decay, tried to push back with everything his authority had left, but he found he couldn't breathe properly, couldn't fully expand his ribcage.

He knelt on the sand, listening to the fine brittle sounds of his own bones fracturing. Listening to the gears inside his golden compass lock up and stop.

In a storm this vast, he wasn't even a grain of sand.

His finger bones were the first to give. Cracks spread from the joint edges, each small fragment pulverized by the Reiatsu into even finer powder.

The powder never reached the ground. The Reiatsu pressed it back against the surface of his bones.

As if telling him: you don't even have the right to become ash.

The hands he had braced against the ground shook violently, not from fear, but from raw physical suppression.

His body wanted to kneel deeper. His spine wanted to bend. Every bone in him was being ground downward, inch by inch, under the weight of that Reiatsu.

He could not resist.

The last time he had felt anything like this was the day Aizen subjugated him.

That Shinigami with glasses had simply stood there looking at him, and he had knelt.

But that had been Kyōka Suigetsu, hypnosis, illusion, a phantom art that drew willing submission out of you.

This was pure Reiatsu. Without disguise. Without adornment.

It didn't make him want to submit. It left him with no space to even want otherwise.

He forced his head up. His cervical vertebrae crackled finely under the strain.

He looked at the man standing before him.

Long hair hanging loose. Gaze steady and still. Standing there without a single breath out of rhythm.

➤ Next: A Taste of His Own Medicine