"Despair, Yhwach."
A full moon appeared in the depths of Batsu'unsai's eyes.
The Lunar Sea Domain answered.
Inside its hundred-meter radius, every enemy was dragged deeper into temporal distortion.
Their movements suffered a cumulative 300% delay, while Batsu'unsai herself received a 500% speed boost.
The difference was obscene.
She gripped the nearly ten-meter-long Lunar Sundial in both hands and disappeared into motion.
Silver arcs filled the night.
Royd could barely follow them.
Inside the domain, moving felt like trying to wade through a swamp while Batsu'unsai operated on an entirely different clock. Every attempt to block came late, and every attempt to retreat only gave her another opening.
With no other option, he activated Blut Vene Anhaben again.
Lunar Sundial hammered against the hardened shell.
Once.
Twice.
Again and again.
Sparks flew with every impact, but the outer layer held.
So Batsu'unsai stopped spreading her attacks around.
She chose one point.
And hit it relentlessly.
The same spot took strike after strike until cracks finally spread through the defensive shell.
Then it shattered.
Batsu'unsai immediately went for the kill—
only for Royd to escape at the last possible instant with Hirenkyaku.
Before she could catch him, another layer of Blut Vene Anhaben formed over his body.
Batsu'unsai stared.
He had put another shell underneath the shell.
"You've got to be kidding me."
She chased him down and broke that one too.
Royd fled again.
Another shell.
She broke it.
He rebuilt it.
Again.
And again.
It was less a fight now and more some deeply irritating Quincy version of a Russian nesting doll.
Eventually, even Batsu'unsai's patience began to wear thin.
Royd apparently mistook that frustration for an advantage.
"Come on!"
He actually laughed at her.
"You want to kill me? Then hit me!"
Batsu'unsai said nothing.
The anger faded from her face.
She thought for all of two and a half seconds.
Then she attacked again.
Lunar Sundial battered the latest layer of Blut Vene Anhaben until the familiar cracking sound rang out.
The shell broke.
At that exact moment, the full moon overhead flickered—and went dark.
"Lunar Eclipse: Eternal Loop."
The battlefield changed.
Batsu'unsai severed a section of the domain's timeline and locked it into an isolated loop lasting up to ten seconds.
Anything trapped inside could still move.
But it could no longer choose a new action.
The target was forced to repeat the movement already written into that segment of time.
Royd instinctively tried to escape with Hirenkyaku.
His body moved, then repeated the exact same dodge.
His expression froze.
It felt like being trapped inside a piece of film that kept rewinding to the same few frames.
No matter what his mind commanded, his body returned to the predetermined motion.
Meanwhile, Batsu'unsai kept coming.
Royd's smile disappeared.
'Oh, fuck.'
Lunar Sundial reached him.
The blade ripped across his body.
Blood sprayed through the moonlit air.
Royd screamed and immediately poured reiatsu into the wounds, desperately trying to stop the bleeding and repair the damage before the next strike arrived.
It didn't matter.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Batsu'unsai kept cutting.
Five seconds into the loop, Royd was barely recognizable.
His body was covered in wounds, his clothes soaked through with blood, and only the enormous reserves of reiatsu copied from Yhwach were keeping him alive.
But healing himself came at a cost.
His spiritual pressure dropped sharply.
By the time he stabilized the worst of the damage, he no longer had enough strength to form another Blut Vene Anhaben.
Stronger techniques were completely out of reach.
Batsu'unsai saw it immediately.
He had crossed the line.
"Lunar Devouring."
Her strongest Bankai technique began.
Anyone bathed in the moonlight of Eternal Moonsea had their reiatsu gradually converted into countless grains of moonlight sand.
Those grains represented the time they had left to live.
And Batsu'unsai could cut the stream.
Not the body.
Not the soul.
The remaining time itself.
She raised Lunar Sundial.
Then brought it down.
The twelve orbital rings surrounding the weapon's armillary structure shattered apart and expanded into a vast zodiac ring around Royd.
He barely had time to look up.
The ring closed.
"AAAAAGH!"
Royd vanished inside the brilliant lunar light.
Batsu'unsai's voice followed him.
"Your future was cut away by moonlight a thousand years ago."
The Lunar Sea began to tremble.
Cracks raced across the domain like fractures in glass.
Then the entire Bankai landscape shattered... and Royd Lloyd was gone.
His body had been reduced to countless grains of temporal sand, scattered into the wind until nothing remained.
Nothing except a single pocket watch.
It struck the ground with a quiet metallic click.
Its hands had stopped.
Batsu'unsai stood alone where the Lunar Sea had vanished, Lunar Sundial resting in her hand. The faint image of a full moon still glowed deep within her eyes.
She bent down and picked up the watch.
The crystal-bright buildings of the Seireitei reflected across its motionless face.
Batsu'unsai studied it for a moment.
Then she spoke quietly.
"A man who tries to imitate time…"
Her fingers closed around the watch.
"…will eventually be abandoned by it."
...
A collective hiss of disbelief ran through the watching captains, followed almost immediately by someone blurting out, "That's it?!"
"Yhwach… Captain Batsu'unsai actually killed Yhwach?"
For a moment, no one seemed quite sure how to react.
Some stared at the empty space where Royd had disappeared with their mouths hanging open, while others frowned and tried to make sense of what they had just witnessed.
Whatever their individual reactions, every captain there was stunned by the apparent death of the Quincy King.
Yhwach had been a thorn in Soul Society's side for more than a thousand years.
Even Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni had failed to finish him during the war a millennium ago, yet now Batsu'unsai had seemingly erased him on her own.
With the man at the top gone, the remaining Sternritter suddenly seemed far less intimidating.
No matter how dangerous they were individually, an army that had lost its king and commander was bound to lose cohesion sooner or later, and the tension that had gripped the captains began to ease.
Then an unfamiliar voice cut through their relief.
"You truly believe you've won?"
Every head turned.
The real Yhwach emerged with the Schutzstaffel at his side.
Lille Barro walked with the steady confidence of a marksman who already had his target in sight.
Gerard Valkyrie towered beside him, radiating the raw aggression of a warrior who wanted nothing more than a battlefield.
Askin Nakk Le Vaar looked far more relaxed, but there was nothing harmless about the sharp attention in his eyes, while Pernida Parnkgjas followed silently at the rear.
All four wore white cloaks that snapped in the wind, and the combined pressure they brought with them instantly killed the celebratory mood.
Shunsui stared at Yhwach, then looked back toward the place where the other one had just died.
He even rubbed his eyes once before saying, "Hold on. Didn't Captain Batsu'unsai just kill you?"
The other captains were hardly doing any better.
For several seconds, the entire group seemed to short-circuit as they tried to reconcile the man standing before them with the one they had just watched disappear.
Batsu'unsai alone showed no surprise.
Resting Lunar Sundial against her shoulder, she looked Yhwach over with mild contempt and said, "So the real one finally decided to crawl out. I was starting to think you'd already tucked your tail between your legs and run."
She had figured out some time ago that the man she had been fighting was an impostor.
What she still couldn't understand was why Yhwach had gone to so much trouble to arrange the deception in the first place.
If the intention had been to wear her down before he appeared personally, then Royd had accomplished very little beyond getting himself killed.
Yhwach's expression was distinctly unpleasant as he regarded her.
"Katori Batsu'unsai. A thousand years have passed, and I admit your current strength exceeds my expectations. I did not imagine Royd would be unable to survive even a single battle against you."
That one name cleared up the confusion almost immediately.
"Royd?"
"So the one she killed was Sternritter 'Y'?"
The captains finally understood.
The first Yhwach had been Royd Lloyd using his Schrift to copy the Quincy King, which explained why the supposedly legendary enemy had fallen so much more easily than expected.
Batsu'unsai, however, merely smiled.
"Real or fake, what difference does it make? You came here in person, which saves us the trouble of digging you out ourselves."
She raised Lunar Sundial and released her reiatsu without hesitation.
"Bankai: Eternal Moonsea—Celestial Ecliptic Armillary."
Moonlight flooded the battlefield as the enormous armillary structure formed around her weapon and the familiar lunar domain began to unfold.
Yhwach reacted at once, raising a Quincy medallion high in his hand.
The device flashed brilliantly as he attempted to seize her Bankai in the same way the Wandenreich had planned to strip the Gotei 13 captains of their greatest weapons.
The light lasted less than a second.
Then it simply went out.
Yhwach stared at the medallion in silence, apparently wondering whether the thing had somehow broken.
He turned it slightly in his hand, and for perhaps the first time since his arrival, genuine confusion crossed his face.
Batsu'unsai took one look at him and burst out laughing.
"Hahahahaha! What's wrong? Not working?"
She laughed so hard that she had to hold her stomach, while Yhwach's expression grew darker by the second.
"You were prepared for this."
He didn't yet understand what had interfered with the medallion, nor how Soul Society had discovered a secret the Quincy had guarded so carefully.
None of that changed the obvious conclusion, however: the Wandenreich's plan to rob the captains of their Bankai before engaging them had failed before it could ever become useful.
Even then, Yhwach refused to back down.
He lifted his head and stared past Batsu'unsai as though she were beneath his notice.
"And what of it? Bring Yamamoto Shigekuni and Satou Kazuma before me. You are not worthy of standing as my opponent."
After releasing Bankai, Batsu'unsai's strength had already climbed close to his own current level, yet Yhwach continued speaking as though the difference between them were absolute.
Unohana answered him before Batsu'unsai could.
"To kill you? There's no reason to trouble the Captain-Commander over something so minor."
Her voice was calm, but the look in her eyes was anything but gentle.
She drew her Zanpakutō, and the captains behind her followed suit until the sound of blades leaving their sheaths spread through the battlefield.
Twenty-one captains moved into position around Yhwach and the Schutzstaffel, closing every obvious avenue of escape
Even enemies of their caliber would have to fight their way through a ridiculous concentration of Soul Society's strongest combatants if they hoped to leave.
Then Yhwach suddenly shouted, "Now!"
The shadows erupted.
Sternritter who had remained hidden until that moment burst out in every direction, scattering instead of joining the confrontation.
Their objective had never been to reinforce Yhwach.
They were using the clash between the Quincy King, the Schutzstaffel, and the captains as cover to break through Soul Society's defenses and escape.
"Don't even think about it."
Kazuma's voice rolled across the Seireitei from far beyond the battlefield.
A colossal palm formed high above the fleeing Quincy, so vast that its shadow seemed to swallow the streets beneath it.
It descended with crushing pressure, slamming down across the Sternritter before they could tear open an escape route.
Kazuma himself had never left First Division headquarters.
From that distance, the technique did not carry enough of his diminished strength to seriously injure opponents of their level, but killing them had never been the point.
The blow disrupted their movement and tore them out of concealment.
When the pressure finally passed, the scattered Sternritter were largely unharmed, but every last one of them had been forced into the open, clearly visible to the captains waiting throughout the Seireitei.
Their escape had just become considerably more difficult.