"God said, 'Let there be light.'"
A low, rasping voice rolled across the battlefield.
Thunder split the blood-stained sky, and the broken half of Lille Barro's rifle—still embedded in the ground where he had fallen—suddenly began glowing with a deep, unnatural blue, almost like the light had folded in on itself.
Within that strange radiance, glittering fragments of starlight drifted downward like snow.
Among them, the 108 quantum units that should have been completely destroyed began pulling themselves back together in a way that defied everything Unohana had just done.
One fragment connected to another.
Then another.
Until the entire structure was whole again.
The instant the reconstruction finished, Lille's presence surged back into existence.
His body swelled and distorted, shedding the last traces of its human shape as his Vollständig pushed beyond the form everyone had seen before.
What emerged was grotesque—a long-necked, bird-headed creature standing on four hollowed limbs, with eight enormous wings spreading from its back.
A small halo floated above its head, flickering like a miniature sun.
Rukia stared at the transformed Lille and immediately made a face.
"Holy shit… is that the bird-man form sensei mentioned?"
Kazuma had explained during the war council that Lille might represent some abnormal fragment or aspect of the Soul King, but hearing about it was one thing.
Actually seeing the creature was another.
It was hideous!
"You insects…"
Lille's distorted face twisted with madness.
"Today, every last one of you dies!"
Whatever composure he had once possessed was gone.
After being cornered, torn apart, reconstructed, and nearly erased, he had finally been pushed into his ultimate form.
His voice rose into a furious roar.
"Hear the trumpet of God!"
"Die!"
Lille threw both arms high above his head and arched his body backward into an unnatural posture.
Reishi poured from him in torrents, converging overhead until it formed an enormous trumpet of condensed spiritual light.
The weapon radiated pressure intense enough to make the air vibrate.
Then Lille brought one hand to his mouth and blew.
A vast stream of annihilating light erupted from the trumpet.
The blast rolled across the battlefield like the end of the world itself.
Space cracked beneath it, and anything caught directly in its path looked as though it would be erased before it could even understand what had happened.
This was Lille Barro's strongest attack.
Trompete.
The blast was almost upon Unohana when a figure in a pink floral haori suddenly flashed in front of her.
Shunsui.
The wind tore at his hat as he raised the weapon in his hand.
It was nothing like a normal Zanpakutō.
The sword resembled a ceremonial ruler, its blade completely edgeless, with four mirrored panels set along either side.
Two tassels hung from the guard and another pair from the end of the hilt.
Shinken Hakkyōken.
Shunsui had drawn it the instant Lille completed his grotesque bird-like transformation.
He had been waiting for this exact moment.
The mirrors along the divine sword began to shimmer, their surfaces rippling like perfectly still water disturbed by a single drop.
Lille's godly light crashed into them.
And vanished.
Not blocked.
Absorbed.
The immense current of divine power poured into Shinken Hakkyōken until the mirrored blade seemed to swallow the entire attack into some bottomless space.
Then the surface flashed.
Everything came back.
The reflected power erupted outward with even greater force, rushing straight toward the creature that had created it.
Shunsui smiled beneath the brim of his hat.
"You know…"
He tilted Shinken Hakkyōken slightly, looking altogether too relaxed for someone standing in front of an attack that had just threatened to erase half the battlefield.
"If you become too obsessed with a power that can pierce through everything…"
His smile widened.
"…eventually, everything starts piercing back."
The reflected Trompete struck Lille.
The sky over the Seireitei erupted into a rain of light.
Countless glittering beams scattered across the battlefield, beautiful enough that for a moment the destruction beneath them almost looked like some grand celestial display.
Shunsui lowered Shinken Hakkyōken and calmly reached out.
One of Lille's feathers drifted toward him, still half-dissolved into a quantum state.
He caught it between two fingers.
Then he turned toward Unohana and held it up.
"Want a taste?"
His eyes curved with amusement.
"A special Quincy cocktail."
Unohana gave him a long, unimpressed look.
Of course this was what Shunsui had been waiting for.
Every captain present already knew what Shinken Hakkyōken could do.
The blade had one very specific purpose: it reflected divine power back toward its source.
And somehow, the weapon had ended up in Shunsui's hands.
So naturally, when an opponent like Lille finally appeared, the job of making the dramatic entrance had fallen to him.
"My, my."
Shunsui removed his hat and lazily fanned himself with it.
"Don't look at me like that."
As he moved, his wide sleeve slipped back enough to reveal part of the sealing talisman wrapped around Shinken Hakkyōken.
A knowing smile crossed his face.
"The Captain-Commander gave me specific instructions, actually."
Unohana raised an eyebrow.
Shunsui continued, "When you're fighting someone whose ability already cheats causality, the only sensible response is to cheat even harder."
Then his expression sharpened.
He turned.
Shinken Hakkyōken moved once.
A pale afterimage of the divine sword passed through empty space with almost no sound.
Yet the final trace of quantum fluctuation Lille had left behind was cut cleanly apart.
A scream tore through a distant crack in spacetime.
It was faint at first, but unmistakable.
Lille Barro.
The cry echoed from somewhere beyond normal space, growing weaker and weaker until it finally disappeared.
This time there was no reconstruction.
The last trace of Lille Barro broke apart into drifting points of light and vanished completely.
"Lille Barro!"
Haschwalth's voice cracked across the battlefield.
The sight finally dragged him out of the terror Kazuma's presence had awakened in him.
He was the Grandmaster of the Sternritter.
If he continued standing there paralysed by memories of a war from a thousand years ago, then every Quincy under his command would die here.
All of them.
Across the battlefield, however, Yhwach showed almost no reaction.
He continued facing Batsu'unsai as though the death of a member of his Schutzstaffel meant nothing.
In truth, it hardly did.
The Schrifts wielded by the Sternritter had all originated from Yhwach's power. Whenever one of those Quincy died, that power returned to him.
Every fallen Sternritter made him stronger.
So from Yhwach's perspective, Lille's death was not entirely a loss.
As long as he escaped today, everything could be rebuilt.
He had already waited a thousand years once.
Waiting another thousand would hardly matter.
Time was one resource Yhwach had in abundance.
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