Ulquiorra raised his right hand. A Bala shot from his fingertip, its dark red orb of Reishi cutting a straight line through the gloom of the Dangai.

Emiri Tsunayashiro flicked his folding fan open. Bakudō #39: Enkōsen unfurled before him, and the Bala slammed into the translucent curved shield. The burst of light threw a brief dark red glow across the damp walls, illuminating the translucent slime clinging to every surface.

"Heh, what a shame. I—"

Before he could finish, a dark green Cero came tearing down the same corridor, riding right on the heels of the Bala.

It was nothing like that exploratory shot a moment ago. The dark green light flooded the entire pitch-black passage, bright as day, throwing every slimy ridge and groove on the walls into sharp relief.

Emiri snapped his fan shut and thrust both hands forward. Bakudō #81: Dankū took shape before him, its translucent barrier of Reiatsu catching the Cero dead-on.

The screech of impact bounced back and forth through the Dangai. Slime shook loose from the walls and pattered down. The damp stone floor trembled beneath Emiri's feet, and the fingers gripping his fan trembled with it.

Ulquiorra stood before the Garganta. His pale skin looked almost translucent in the fading glow of the Cero. His green eyes held no expression at all.

"Indeed. Unlike those two just now, you are not someone who can be casually disposed of."

A bead of cold sweat seeped from the edge of Emiri's short green hair and rolled slowly down his temple.

He could feel his fingertips trembling.

His Reiatsu was telling him exactly how vast the gap between himself and this Arrancar truly was.

If he had been a single moment slower on either of those two attacks, his skull would have a new opening in it.

Ulquiorra walked to Orihime's side.

He took her by the throat with one hand and lifted her off the ground.

He was short enough that her toes could still barely graze the floor. Her hands clutched his wrist on instinct, and a small, strangled sound escaped her throat.

"Step back, Shinigami. I have no interest in wasting time. Otherwise, I will kill this woman."

Emiri looked at Orihime hanging there by the throat. He looked at Ulquiorra's utterly emotionless green eyes. Then the corner of his mouth curved upward.

He unfurled his folding fan with a gentle snap, and his almond-shaped eyes bent back into two easy arcs.

"You're lying. You have to bring her back without a scratch."

Ulquiorra's lip twitched.

The hand around Orihime's throat released, and he set her back on the ground.

She clutched her throat and coughed hard, tears welling in her eyes. She bit her lip. She didn't make a sound.

"I see. So you're the lie detector Lord Gin Ichimaru mentioned?" Ulquiorra returned his right hand to his pocket, green eyes fixed on Emiri.

"That's rather rude, don't you think? I am a Vice Kidō Commander, after all."

Emiri gave his fan a leisurely wave, the way one might acknowledge a mildly impolite guest at a tea party.

"There is no difference."

"Ouch." The fan stopped midair. Emiri's almond eyes peered over the edge of it, and his tone dropped to something almost offhand, like a thought he'd just remembered to mention. "How long do you think it'll take you to kill me? Ten minutes? Half an hour?"

What answered him was the sound of a Sonído splitting the air.

Ulquiorra appeared directly in front of him, five fingers held rigid, a stabbing thrust aimed straight at Emiri's throat.

The nails on that hand gleamed cold white in the dim Dangai light. The strike was fast enough that no afterimage had time to form.

"To kill you, ten breaths is more than enough."

His voice was as cold as the strike.

Bakudō #63: Sajō Sabaku.

Thick, serpentine chains of Reishi materialized around Emiri and coiled around the right half of Ulquiorra's body, his right arm, his shoulder, his flank. They snapped taut in an instant and wrenched his strike off course by a fraction.

Emiri seized the opening. He flicked backward, one toe touching the ground, and put several paces of distance between them.

Ulquiorra did not immediately try to break free.

He simply re-aimed that bound right hand at Emiri, spread his fingers, and began drawing a black Cero into his palm.

The density of inky Reishi climbed in an instant to something suffocating. The Dangai air hummed around them, and the slime on the walls shook loose and dripped steadily under the pressure.

Emiri's pupils tightened. He didn't pause.

Even as Sajō Sabaku launched, his hands had already started the incantation, each syllable landing precisely in step with the Cero's gathering pulse.

"Ye lord! Mask of blood and flesh, all creation, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of Man! On the wall of blue flame, inscribe a twin lotus. In the abyss of conflagration, wait at the far heavens!"

Hadō #73: Sōren Sōkatsui met the Cero Oscuras in the middle of the corridor.

Azure twin-lotus flames and pitch-black Cero twisted together. Two entirely different Reishi radiances tore the darkness apart.

The shockwave blasted outward to both sides. Emiri skidded backward through the force of it, the soles of his boots screaming against the stone floor.

"Hadō #67: Reimeisan!"

His fingertips traced an arc through the smoke.

Lightning cracked to life inside the haze, piercing and dense. Thunder rolled back and forth through the Dangai. Countless small arcs wove themselves into a net and swallowed Ulquiorra whole.

The electricity bounced off the walls, over and over, throwing up sprays of sparks with every contact.

The smoke cleared.

Ulquiorra stood exactly where he had been. Residual arcs still danced across his white uniform with a faint, steady crackling. A few pale scorch marks showed on his skin.

He was essentially untouched.

His left hand snapped out and tore the Sajō Sabaku from his right side in a single yank. The chains shattered into motes of light and scattered.

He raised one hand and swept the remaining mist away with an invisible force.

Expressionless as ever.

Emiri was slumped on the damp stone floor, his folding fan lying askew beside him, his chest heaving. Sweat dripped from the tips of his short green hair onto the filthy ground beneath him.

"Then your resistance ends here."

Ulquiorra walked toward him, step by step. At the tip of his raised right index finger, an almost invisible pinprick of light gathered.

A Cero compressed to the absolute limit. Enough to punch straight through Emiri's skull.

Orihime saw that point of light and reached out almost before she could think, crying toward her hairpins: "Hinagiku! Baigon! Lily!"

Three lights flared on the pins at once. Santen Kesshun bloomed before Emiri, the triangular translucent barrier sliding into place a heartbeat before the Cero arrived.

The moment of impact shook the entire shield. Golden light shattered into countless fine motes and dissolved into the dark.

"Woman. Don't think that just because I won't touch you, you can—"

Ulquiorra stopped.

He looked down at his feet.

He couldn't move. An invisible force had locked him from every direction simultaneously. He couldn't lift a single finger.

His green eyes shifted to his arms, his shoulders, his knees. Every joint. Sealed.

Sitting on the ground, Emiri Tsunayashiro started to laugh.

It was a deep laugh, the kind that comes up from somewhere low when a plan falls exactly into place.

He braced his hands on his knees and pushed himself up. He dusted the grime and slime off his white robes. Then he opened his folding fan and held it in front of the smile he couldn't quite keep from spreading too far across his face.

"What did you do to me?"

"Who knows?" Emiri turned and walked toward Orihime. "You really saved me, Miss Orihime. Let's get out of here."

Ulquiorra's mind moved fast.

A Kidō seal planted in the smoke?

No. His Pesquisa had been running at full scope throughout the entire fight. Not a single Reishi anomaly in that smoke could have slipped past him.

And the restraint had come with no forewarning. No fluctuation. No prelude at all.

Not Kidō. Not Bakudō. Nothing belonging to the Shinigami system.

It had simply appeared. Like a rule being enforced.

If he had this method available, why not use it from the start?

Why wait until he was cornered, until even that woman's Santen Kesshun was shattered, before activating it?

If that shield hadn't been there, he would already be dead.

Then his gaze settled on the folding fan.

That fan.

From the first exchange to this moment, Emiri had never let go of it. He held it while casting Kidō. He held it when deflecting the Bala. He hadn't released it even when he was slumped on the ground.

That was no ordinary folding fan.

Ulquiorra's green eyes narrowed.

"I see."

His voice came from behind Emiri. The same unhurried cadence as always, but each word landed with a precision that was quietly cold. "From the moment we clashed until just now, exactly ten breaths have passed. Your Zanpakutō's ability isn't to detect lies. It's to hold a person to their own words. When an opponent makes any subjective judgment about their own future, the fan records those words as a promise. The moment their actions fail to match that promise, punishment descends. I failed to kill you within ten breaths, so your fan has bound me. Is that it?"

Something rare appeared on Emiri's perpetually smiling face.

His brow furrowed before he could stop it. The fan froze in midair. The easy mockery that normally lived in those almond eyes went out all at once, replaced by a cold that was entirely clear-eyed.

He turned back to face Ulquiorra. No trace of amusement left.

"Come on. Is this what passes for battle IQ among Arrancar?"

His tone was flat. Like a man noting a fact he finds mildly disappointing.

He raised his hand and fanned himself slowly. His almond eyes curved back into two arcs, but this smile was nothing like the ones before. No flippancy. No mockery. Just the candid ease of someone who's been seen through and has decided there's no point in hiding.

"What, Aizen's allowed to lie and say his Zanpakutō makes people slaughter each other, but I'm not? Your analysis is close enough that I'll fill in the rest — my Zanpakutō is called Enbatsu. It makes whoever speaks answer for their words."

"What I care about is the punishment. Not the promise."

"Your guess about why I'm only making you stand still is correct. The punishment is mine to set, but because of the Reiatsu gap between us, all I can manage is pinning you here, I can't execute you or deal you actual harm. So from the beginning I showed you weakness, let you think I was just an ordinary Shinigami running tricks with Kidō, and let your guard down. Then I baited you into setting your own terms, which locked you into finishing the fight within a fixed window. All I had to do was survive ten breaths. An ability you couldn't anticipate and a binding you couldn't dodge." He tilted his head slightly. "A Shinigami who uses his own life as bait. I suppose you did underestimate me a little."

Emiri put himself between Ulquiorra and Orihime. The smirk was gone. His face held only something serious and quiet.

"Damn. Grand Kidō Commander, how on earth did you make it back in one piece from a place full of people like this."

"Since it is a matter of Reiatsu, then—"

Ulquiorra slowly drew his right hand from his pocket. Inky Reiatsu surged up out of him.

Emiri threw up Dankū at almost the same instant. The translucent barrier had barely taken shape before the inky liquid Reiatsu crashed into it like a tide.

"Enclose, Murciélago!"

The entire Dangai shuddered. The walls on both sides cracked and split under the inky surge, and the slime that had been clinging to the stone splattered in every direction. The floor fractured beneath their feet.

The Reiatsu churned through the narrow space like a flood, thick enough to choke on. Every breath tasted of something rotten and sweet and metallic.

Emiri braced against the Dankū barrier, his arms shaking hard.

He could feel his Reiatsu burning away. Every wave of the dark tide that slammed into the barrier left the webbing of his hand numb.

"Lord Aizen's theory is correct. Reiatsu is the foundation of everything."

Ulquiorra's voice was still perfectly level, and yet those words carried with them the undeniable fact that he had broken free from Enbatsu's hold entirely.

The punishment had worked. It had just lasted less than a moment before this Reiatsu crushed it flat.

Rain.

Black Reishi droplets falling from nowhere, each one dense enough to punch through steel.

But this was the Dangai. A sealed space with no sky and no distance. These drops had no room to fall. They skipped past the step of becoming rain and became a tide instead.

Massive black wings spread from his back, wide enough to blot out any sky that might have existed. A white full-length robe replaced his uniform. The half-helmet gave way to a dual-horned helmet. Black nails stretched into long talons.

His hair was longer than before the Resurrección. The dark green tear-marks had deepened and widened, tracing the full contour of his eye sockets all the way down to the edges of his jaw.

The cramped walls of the Dangai looked narrower still against those wings. Slick surfaces and black tide merged together, turning the sealed passage into a graveyard built out of Reiatsu.

Emiri kept himself between Ulquiorra and Orihime. The fingers wrapped around his fan were trembling.

There was no smile on his face.

Ulquiorra Cifer. Resurrección. Murciélago.

Through the slits of the horned helmet, through the downpour of black Reiatsu, straight through the translucent screen of Dankū, those green eyes found Emiri's and didn't let go.

"Your application of your ability was truly impressive. Unfortunately—"

His wings spread slightly wider. Their black expanse threw deep shadow across the narrow walls of the Dangai.

"Before absolute power, rules themselves mean nothing."

➤ Next: The Sins and Merits of Words, Redeemed by My Own Flesh

Chapter 77 - The Sins and Merits of Words, Redeemed by My Own Flesh

"Is this an Arrancar's Shikai?"

Emiri focused every ounce of his attention on Ulquiorra.

Then he blinked.

No. He hadn't blinked.

Ulquiorra had moved too fast, so fast that Emiri's brain couldn't process the visual signal and interpreted the blank gap as a blink.

"It seems a Shinigami's sword release is more like receiving external power. Ours releases the power that was always within us."

The voice came from behind him.

Ulquiorra stood between him and Orihime, holding a fan.

Emiri's fan.

Emiri looked down at his right shoulder.

His right arm had been torn off at the joint. Clean.

The blood hadn't even reached the surface yet. For a moment there was only a perfectly neat dark-red cross-section, paper-thin and precise, and then warm blood burst through like a dam giving way.

Ulquiorra tossed the fan aside without looking. The ribs bounced twice against the sticky, damp stone floor and rolled to a stop at Orihime's feet.

The pain arrived late. It hit like a red-hot iron rod driven deep into the joint, then detonated, tearing along every nerve and blood vessel all the way to his brain.

Tears pressed from the corners of Emiri's eyes. The pain was too severe. His tear ducts acted on their own.

But he didn't scream.

He clenched his jaw. The grinding sound between his teeth was barely audible.

In that same instant, he accepted it. Right arm: gone. His brain, swimming in agony, locked every scrap of remaining focus onto his left hand.

Lightning rolled across Emiri's palm, blue-white arcs jumping in the dim light of the Dangai, the opening signature of Hiryūgekizokushintenraihō.

He spun. The motion flung tears from the corners of his eyes. His left hand came up for a point-blank release, pale-blue lightning condensing in his palm into a searing ball of light.

Ulquiorra casually waved his hand.

Emiri's left arm was severed above the elbow. It spun through the air, turned a few lazy rotations, and hit the stone floor with a wet slap.

He never got to release the Kidō. The moment his Reiatsu cut off, the lightning scattered into countless tiny motes and died.

Then his chest caved in.

A kick, a Bala, he didn't know. The opponent was too fast. His perception couldn't track it at all. He only registered a massive force slamming into his sternum, his ribs shrieking under the impact, and then he was airborne, launched as though struck by nothing at all.

He hit the ground hard. Both arms gone. The sticky cold seeped through his back and the taste of blood flooded his mouth.

Am I going to die?

Emiri stared at the pitch-black ceiling of the Dangai. The ringing in his ears climbed, climbed, like countless cicadas screaming from inside his eardrums.

Every breath tore at the caved-in hollow in his chest. Blood kept pouring from both stumps, staining the damp stone beneath him a deepening crimson.

"Quite a sturdy body. You've trained for a long time." A pause. "I didn't even manage to put a hole through your chest."

No kidding. That's what you get from training under that bastard Azashiro.

Emiri thought it. He didn't have the strength to say it out loud.

His lips moved. Only a slow breath came out, dark with blood.

Orihime watched Emiri crash down with both arms gone. Panic, and then instinct. She activated Sōten Kisshun again.

Two rays of light flared. Shun'ō and Ayame's silhouettes were just taking shape when Ulquiorra made a lazy swipe.

Three long black claws closed around the two points of light.

Shun'ō and Ayame screamed. The sound was thin and sharp and it rang through the Dangai. Orihime's face went white.

"Woman. Don't push your luck."

Ulquiorra's claws tightened. The screams spiked.

He flicked them away. They dropped to the ground, their glow barely a flicker.

Emiri stared at the ceiling. The ringing got louder. The pain was going numb.

His life started to flash before him.

Images rolled through his mind like frames of old yellowed film: Kenpachi Azashiro turning pages of that worn, coverless book in the dim light. Uro Zakuro running him through trap after trap on the training grounds until he was a wreck. The Grand Kidō Chief's eyes, the first time they met, still and deep, like a lake with no visible bottom. And his sister.

The wild flower in the courtyard. Her crouching at the edge of the corridor, waving to him, calling him by the name only she used.

The palanquin disappearing at the end of the stone-paved road.

The cold stone floor at the bottom of Muken.

Sōya Azashiro's voice surfaced in his ear, something said not long ago, during training in the depths of Muken: "You disguise yourself too much and judge others too harshly. If you can't clear that hurdle, you'll never move forward."

Emiri's lips parted slightly.

He forced his head up. His eyes found Ulquiorra.

Ulquiorra had opened a Garganta with his left hand. His right hand was locked around Orihime Inoue's arm.

The Garganta split the Dangai open. Cold white light poured through the rift from the desert on the other side.

Orihime pulled against his grip. Tears ran down her face. But she bit her lip and didn't make a sound.

Is it going to be like this again? Am I going to watch someone get taken because I wasn't strong enough,

He pushed his upper body off the ground. Blood still poured from both stumps. Every breath scraped broken rib fragments against each other inside the hollow in his chest.

He looked at Ulquiorra. He looked at the cold light of Hueco Mundo leaking through the Garganta. He looked at Orihime's back as she was dragged toward the rift.

He pulled the words up from the bottom of his throat with everything he had left. His voice was raw and shaking. Every syllable came out like it had been dug from the rubble in his chest, broken, halting, barely holding together.

"The sins and merits of words — redeemed by my own flesh."

Golden light exploded out of him.

The Garganta slammed shut. The rift collapsed under the force of the golden Reiatsu, sealing Orihime and Ulquiorra back inside the Dangai.

Ulquiorra clicked his tongue. He let go of Orihime and turned around.

"Bankai —"

Shinigami Reiatsu detonated inside the Dangai.

Not a slow rise. Not a gradual build. Zero to absolute peak, instantaneous.

Emiri's Reiatsu density rocketed to several times what it was in Shikai, pulling even, at least roughly, with Ulquiorra in Resurrección.

The walls of the Dangai shook. Slime dripped from the trembling surfaces. Fine cracks webbed across the stone floor under their feet.

The golden light faded.

A sword hung in the air at Emiri's side.

The blade was short and straight, somewhere between a wakizashi and a uchigatana in length. No shinogi ridge. No fuller groove. A pure flat-ground blade.

The kissaki came to a sharp right angle with no curve at all.

The tsuka-ito was white. Just white. No ornamentation, no pattern, nothing but the absolute absence of anything extra.

The habaki was a single band of pure gold. One character was engraved on it.

Vow.

"— Joint judgment of sins."

Emiri reached out and gripped the Zanpakutō.

His right arm was whole. His left arm was whole. The hollow in his chest where the Bala had caved it in was gone without a trace.

Only the torn sleeves and the bloodstains on his collar remained. Proof that none of it had been a dream.

"Your personality, your face, even the look of your Zanpakutō, you're just like Lord Gin Ichimaru." Ulquiorra's tone was flat. "Irritating."

Emiri tightened his grip on the hilt and brought the blade level in front of him.

"When?" he asked.

"When — what?"

Ulquiorra tilted his head slightly.

"When did your arms come back? I shouldn't have missed it."

Ulquiorra looked at the restored arms. At the unblemished chest. His eyes narrowed.

The moment Emiri's arms had regenerated, he had caught nothing. Not a flicker of speed. No masked Reiatsu surge. No process at all.

The arms had simply appeared. The chest had simply healed.

"When?" Emiri's mouth curved. "Same time as when you tore them off."

He gave the blade a slow, easy turn. His peach-blossom eyes stayed curved.

If not for the fact that the torn sleeves hadn't come back with the arms, Ulquiorra would have genuinely started to question whether what he'd ripped off had been arms at all.

"All of that just for a regeneration ability?" His gaze moved across the ragged fabric.

"Who knows?" Same easy smile.

Ulquiorra raised both hands. Reishi gathered in his palms.

Luz de la Luna, weapons forged from Reishi in the first stage of Resurrección, launched at range like spears.

Two formed in his hands, teal-green and vivid against the Dangai's murk.

He threw them one after the other. They cut through the air on precise trajectories, one for the throat, one for the chest.

Emiri didn't move.

He reversed his grip. Golden Reiatsu condensed along the blade into a crescent-shaped slash.

The golden crescent left the blade and flew straight at Ulquiorra.

Ulquiorra sidestepped. It grazed the edge of his wing.

He hadn't finished adjusting his stance when Emiri appeared in front of him, Zanpakutō sweeping upward from below, the second Getsuga Tenshō released almost flush against Ulquiorra's body.

The golden crescent detonated from the tip of the blade at point-blank range. It hit Ulquiorra's right shoulder.

Black Reishi blood sprayed from the wound. The shoulder blade split open, deep enough to show bone.

"That's the technique of the human Shinigami. How did you —"

Emiri's left index finger was already at his face.

A black Cero gathered at the fingertip. The density of inky Reishi surged in a single instant to something suffocating, and the air around them in the Dangai began to hum.

The Cero detonated at zero distance. Pitch-black light swallowed Ulquiorra's face whole.

The shockwave blew the air between them outward. The damp walls shuddered hard.

When they separated, Ulquiorra was standing a short distance away. The left half of his face had been blasted off.

White mask fragments and black Reishi blood ran together, dripping slowly down his jaw.

Then the tissue began to move.

Bone crept out from the fractures. Muscle wove back into place under the flow of Reishi. Skin grew in layer over layer. In moments, his face was whole again, even the dark-green tear-mark streaks sat in exactly the same lines as before.

"Hierro and High-Speed Regeneration." Emiri held the Zanpakutō level, peach-blossom eyes still curved. His tone carried something close to genuine appreciation. "Fine abilities."

Ulquiorra was beginning to understand what this power actually was.

Not recovery. Not imitation. Something more like a contract, the terms of a loan. Make a vow, take what you want, pay the price later.

The first vow after Bankai had to have been the restoration of his injuries.

That was clearly not the only vow he'd made.

What else had he asked for? What had he taken? What would it cost him?

And the Cero's output made it plain: this ability scaled directly with Reiatsu. He could replicate Ichigo Kurosaki's Getsuga Tenshō. He could replicate a Cero. In theory, within this quarter-hour window, he could replicate any technique he'd ever witnessed, as long as he was willing to pay for it.

And accounting for the time already spent, the surprise attack on the World of the Living should be wrapping up by now. This had already gone on too long.

Emiri lowered the Zanpakutō from his shoulder. The tip angled toward the ground. His peach-blossom eyes caught the dim light of the Dangai.

He looked at Ulquiorra. The corners of his mouth still held that curve.

"So. Let me ask you one more time, do you still think you can walk out of here with Miss Orihime completely unharmed?"

Another opening for a vow.

Ulquiorra watched those smiling peach-blossom eyes.

Every question this Shinigami asked was a trap, bait for a commitment. It didn't matter how he answered. He'd be led by the nose either way. The clean move was to say nothing.

But,

"What an irritating fellow." A beat. "Yes. I will. My answer hasn't changed, no scheme, no matter how clever, means anything before absolute power."

He raised his right hand and snapped off the horns of his helmet.

Resurrección: Segunda Etapa.

Inky Reiatsu surged through the Dangai. The hem of his white robe dissolved into drifting ribbons of Reishi light.

His hair lengthened. Twin horns rose from the crown of his head. The tear-mark streaks shifted from green to deep black, bleeding out from the corners of his eyes to his jaw, and from his jaw down to his collarbones.

Emiri gripped his Zanpakutō and watched the 4th Espada standing before him, power fully unsheathed.

The vows he'd made: replicate the Reiatsu structure of Getsuga Tenshō, replicate the condensation method of a Cero, restore the severed arms.

Each one would come due in a quarter of an hour.

That quarter of an hour hadn't ended yet.

He could still make more.

The golden patterns lit up along his arms again.

On the walls of the Dangai, inky black and living gold wound around each other, flooding that sealed, airless space with a churning dark-gold chaos.

➤ Next: Everything Within Calculations