"Die!"
With that sudden roar, the plain, broken sword in Asuka's hand erupted with scorching spiritual pressure.
Though in this Mirror Field he couldn't even tell what state he was in—he wasn't even sure whether breathing was necessary anymore—the sword instincts carved into his bones through every day and night he had spent at Hayama had never once left him.
"Ichi no kata: Saku!!"
His figure came tearing forward like a gale, and in an instant he unleashed a spiraling storm slash.
The white figure casually tilted aside to avoid it, its gaze full of contempt.
[Using this trash heap of memories as a weapon? You're beyond saving.]
The battle exploded in full within that desolate spiritual world.
The white figure moved like a phantom, dragging countless afterimages through the air. Every swing of the black blade in its hand sent violent tremors rippling through space itself.
Asuka was naturally forced into a brutal disadvantage.
He had no sword.
Or rather—he had no sword capable of sustaining him through an extended fight.
He had to keep moving through the Mirror Field, snatching up the next broken blade before the one in his hand shattered apart.
"This one… was left behind by Muichiro Tokito…"
"And this… was the one Hotaru Haganezuka forged…"
At his side, the white wolf Nugata circled the battlefield in support, syncing with him flawlessly.
Its massive body shielded him from fatal strikes. Its claws carved wounds across the white figure's back whenever an opening appeared.
Man and wolf.
In that moment, they displayed a level of coordination beyond anything ordinary—like two halves of the same will split apart, capable of understanding one another's thoughts with a single impulse.
[Enough! This farce ends now!]
The white figure let out a furious roar. The black blade in its hand suddenly cracked apart, breaking into countless tiny black fragments.
Those fragments multiplied and spread in an instant, swallowing Asuka and the white wolf in a storm of darkness, blotting out the pure white sky above.
[The End—All-Consuming Void!!]
The broken blade in Asuka's hand turned to dust in an instant.
The white wolf Nugata let out a shrill cry as black fragments tore through its white fur again and again, blood splashing across the mirrored ground.
A massive shockwave sent both of them crashing down.
Asuka felt his sense of self rapidly slipping away.
His vision blurred.
The pale sun above began to drip black liquid.
He saw the white figure slowly approaching, the black blade in its hand reforming once more.
[See? This is how it ends.]
The white figure raised its sword—
[In the end, you're nothing more than a—]
The world went still.
An eerie, suffocating silence—one capable of stifling all life—suddenly descended upon the wasteland.
In the deepest reaches of the Mirror Plain, within the shadows where that white sun could never reach, a man sleeping inside a transparent coffin slowly stood up.
It was a young man wearing a black shirt with neatly trimmed black hair. His features were identical to Asuka's, yet his aura was worlds apart.
His eyes remained shut. There was no killing intent, no malice, no trace of human emotion.
What he gave off was a pure, exhausted stillness—as if after passing through countless cycles of life and death, he had grown weary of existence itself.
The black-haired young man began to walk forward.
With each step he took, flowers bloomed beneath the mirrored surface, transforming it into solid earth.
Every broken sword let out a low, humble hum, as if welcoming their true—and only—king.
The Mirror Field began to collapse and reconstruct itself at terrifying speed.
Within only a few breaths, it had transformed into the gloomy skies of Rukongai, and the battered yet lively streets below.
The arrogant white figure from before began trembling violently the instant the young man opened his eyes.
It was as though it had seen something so incomprehensibly horrifying that its very existence rejected it.
The black blade in its hand shattered on its own with a crack.
[You… how are you… awake…?]
Its voice trembled with fear as it staggered backward, even trying to melt into the shadows.
The black-haired young man said nothing.
He simply passed through Asuka.
Passed through the collapsed white wolf.
Then stopped before the white figure, raising a pale, jade-like hand and lightly pressing it against its forehead.
"You've been making too much noise."
His voice was cold and clear, carrying an authority that could not be resisted.
"I was only taking a nap."
"Don't start thinking you're the actual master."
The instant that hand touched it, the white figure let out a shriek of agony.
Its body was torn apart into countless white threads, which the black-haired young man scattered into the world itself.
In a single moment, the entire spiritual world cleared.
The black-haired young man turned and looked at Asuka, who was sitting on the ground with shock written all over his face.
"Sorry. Something went wrong with the boundary gate. I almost overslept."
"But that's your fault too. If you hadn't caused me trouble, none of this would've happened."
Though stunned to the core, Asuka still instinctively trusted him.
"What do we do now?"
"First, deal with what's happening outside…"
The black-haired young man glanced at the sword hilt that was all Asuka still had left in his hand, then lightly waved his pale hand—
"Please stop casually breaking our sword."
The moment the words fell, the entire inner world collapsed with a deafening roar, dissolving into endless white light.
Back in the real world—Karakura Town.
Time seemed to begin flowing again.
That desperate tug-of-war in Asuka's spiritual world had, in reality, only lasted a few seconds.
The bony blade of White was only centimeters away from Asuka's forehead.
Isshin Shiba roared as he lunged forward, trying to shield him, while the Quincy girl had already drawn her longbow to its limit, the spirit arrow at her fingertips shrieking sharply with condensed power.
Boom!!
A crushing wave of spiritual pressure erupted from Asuka's body.
"This is…" In the distance, Kaname Tosen—though blind—was far more sensitive to spiritual pressure than most Soul Reapers.
"Third-Class Spiritual Might? …And it's still rising? How is that possible? He's only a regular officer!"
Asuka opened his eyes and slowly raised one hand.
His hand looked pale from blood loss, and the motion itself was unhurried.
Yet that slow-moving hand somehow moved with impossible speed—and caught White's bone blade in its grip.
Crack—!
That blade, strong enough to cleave steel, let out a pained groan in Asuka's hand.
Then, before everyone's horrified eyes—
he crushed it.
White immediately sensed a threat unlike anything it had ever faced and kicked backward in retreat, a dark purple Cero rapidly condensing before its forehead.
But Asuka was faster.
Before the blast could fire, he had already swung his "broken sword."
The severed blade was now wrapped in a black-red substance of unknown origin. It had gathered itself into the shape of a sword edge, yet there was something deeply unnatural about it.
He delivered only a plain horizontal slash.
White's hardened shell—tough enough to withstand a Heilig Pfeil—was as fragile as dead wood before that black blade.
Slash!
Pitch-black Hollow blood sprayed through the air.
Under Asuka's utterly emotionless gaze, half of White's body was cleaved clean off.
"What kind of power is this?" Isshin Shiba had already rushed to Asuka's side, but didn't attack rashly.
Because right now, he wasn't even sure Asuka was still a Soul Reaper.
The aura coming off him stirred an instinctive revulsion in Isshin, to the point that even his Zanpakuto seemed unsettled.
In the distance, the Quincy girl stood frozen in place, the spirit bow in her hands trembling from sheer shock.
To her senses, Asuka now felt like a walking black hole in the world of the living, greedily devouring all surrounding light and spirit particles.
And yet, as Aizen's prized experimental creation, White had not lost all ability to move.
Even with half its body severed, some command buried deep within it still drove it to complete its final action.
It did not continue attacking Asuka.
Instead, using the force of that slash, it lunged straight at the girl in an instant!
"Damn it!" Isshin's face changed at once.
In that brief moment of distraction, White bit down viciously onto the girl's shoulder!
Its broken body immediately began to swell grotesquely, as if it intended to drag her down with it as a final sacrifice!
Dark red veins throbbed violently beneath its skin, and a destructive aura instantly locked onto both of them.
Asuka vanished again.
The black broken blade drew a decisive arc through the air, and the violent spiritual pressure around him was miraculously compressed into a single point along the edge.
"Get the hell away from her."
The tip of the blade slid with perfect precision through the point where White's body connected to the girl.
With that slash, White was forcibly peeled off her shoulder and hurled into the distant sky like a lump of rotten flesh.
The next instant, an explosion bright enough to illuminate half the city bloomed in the heavens.
White—the source of tonight's chaos—was finally annihilated within that black-red blast.
As White perished, the suffocating spiritual pressure around Asuka rapidly ebbed away like the receding tide.
The black-red blade in his hand reverted back into that broken hilt.
The darkness in his eyes gradually faded, revealing his original unfocused pupils once more.
His aura changed back too? What the hell was that?
"Asuka!"
Isshin rushed forward and caught him just before he collapsed from total exhaustion.
Asuka parted his lips weakly.
"...I need to find a soul… she…"
Before he could finish, the overwhelming strain finally claimed him.
He fell into a deep unconsciousness.