Chapter Text
"So, is this the end?" Kurosaki Ichigo asked.
Aizen did not answer. He looked as if he were dying.
They lay in the Reio’s Palace, the final battlefield, surrounded by scattered ashes and debris. Some belonged to the Reio, some to Yhwach, and some were their own. They were panting heavily, drenched in blood, their bones shattered to pieces, unable to stir even a single finger. Yet, even after paying such a tragic price, even after crushing their enemies, there was ultimately no winner—
The world was ending.
Without the Reio acting as the lynchpin, the three realms were inevitably collapsing, and everything would eventually return to the primordial chaos. Kurosaki Ichigo and Aizen Sosuke lay at the highest point of the world, listening to the howling wind and the sound of the world tearing apart.
"You must have a way!" Ichigo struggled to lift his head to look at him, letting out a wheezing gasp.
Aizen blinked. "How fascinating. The hero who saved the world, the hero who defeated me, is now begging me like a dog."
"You definitely have one!" Ichigo glared at him stubbornly.
Aizen twitched the corner of his mouth, wanting to mock him. If Kurosaki Ichigo had indeed inherited the bloodline of the Quincy, it must have been the Schrift 'D'—for Deaf. No matter what was said to him, he would always put on that stupid face that read, “What are you talking about? I don't understand.” It was always like this, forever like this, staring with those foolish eyes, speaking ridiculous nonsense, and doing idiotic things on his own accord.
Then, Aizen suddenly froze. Miraculously, within those burning eyes, he saw a reflection of his past self.
Just when exactly had he turned into such a monster?
"Have you read Victor Hugo?" Aizen asked.
Ichigo’s face was an absolute picture of utter bewilderment. What the hell? At a time like this, you want to chat about literature?
Ignoring him, Aizen merely recited in a low voice, "The blood shed for the Great Revolution could be contained in a single square; but the victims who died unjustly under thousands of years of despotism could not be contained within the entire country. For fifteen hundred years, the sky was thick with dark clouds. After fifteen centuries, the clouds have dispersed, and yet you want to condemn the thunderbolt."
"No, wait, are you giving me a lecture right now?" Ichigo finally snapped, unable to hold it in. "Did you really have to pick this exact moment?"
"You should have stood by my side," Aizen spoke again, his voice laced with an underlying resentment and fury—an anger he had never shown over the past centuries. His ruptured lungs throbbed with agonizing pain, and every single word burst forth with bloody force. "If you could see everything that I have seen, you would have made the exact same choice as I did. Weren't you rebelling against this world too? What difference is there between what we did? I slaughtered the decadent nobility, guided the evolution of the Arrancar, and made the stagnant Soul Society move forward once more... I made this world better. I am the one who is right."
"What on earth are you talking about?!" Ichigo despaired. Damn it, why is everyone such a riddle-monger? But he couldn't be blamed; ever since he stepped into this world, not a single person around him ever spoke straight.
Aizen gazed at Ichigo for a long, quiet moment.
How naive, how willful, how... enviable.
After a prolonged silence, Aizen said softly, "I can no longer... move forward."
Ichigo questioned, "What do you mean?"
"You understand nothing." Aizen began to laugh, his teeth stained with blood. Half of it was mockery, the other half was helplessness. "Kurosaki Ichigo, you understand absolutely nothing."
Ichigo wanted to press further, but Aizen did not wish to continue. He only felt that he was utterly pathetic to have actually hallucinated a desire for validation from this idiot. He did not need anyone's validation, just as the stars had no need to know the delusions of a mayfly. Under Ichigo’s shocked gaze, Aizen made an unexpected move—he drove his fingers like a blade straight into his own chest.
And then, he ripped out that miracle known as the Hogyoku.
"Look at that stupid face of yours." Aizen tossed the Hogyoku over. It clattered and rolled across the ground, just like a common glass marble found anywhere, nothing worth caring about. "Do whatever you want." His voice faded, his brown eyes gradually dimming. The tips of his limbs began to disintegrate, and fragments of Reishi scattered into the air like fireflies.
The Hogyoku rolled forward, gently bumping against Ichigo's fingertips. It was pulsing—thump-thump, thump-thump—like a heartbeat.
Ichigo instinctively grasped it, as if holding a person's living heart.
"...I don't understand." Ichigo suddenly snapped out of it. "What am I supposed to do? Don't you dare die yet, finish your words! Aizen! Aizen! You can't do this... you can't just leave me behind like this...!"
Ichigo froze.
Aizen's cheek cracked open, and the fragments peeled away soundlessly. There was nothing inside. He was dead.
The Hogyoku in his palm suddenly erupted with a blinding radiance, so searingly hot that it nearly burned Ichigo. It melted, turning into a puddle of glowing, liquid stars that flowed directly into Ichigo's body, merging into one with him. At this moment, Kurosaki Ichigo obtained the final piece of the puzzle. Born with a human body, inheriting the blood of both Shinigami and Quincy, and further contaminated by a Hollow—now, he possessed the Hogyoku, a miracle forged from the fragments of the Reio.
He was finally complete.
Ichigo's body ignited like a blazing star. Boundless light and heat submerged him, and the vast, infinite expanse of the past and future surged toward him. As he witnessed a flower bloom, he simultaneously saw its withering; life was destined for death from the very moment of its birth.
The torrent of time brushed past him. A young Yhwach stood amidst the chaos, gazing toward a distant direction, waiting for a father destined never to return, a single tear trickling down. Ichigo instinctively reached out his hand, but Yhwach vanished. At the edge of his vision, the Reio slowly turned his head, locking eyes with Ichigo across time and space.
"Don't... don't disappear!" Ichigo tried to grab the Reio.
The Reio vanished. In his place stood Aizen—a faded version of Aizen, resembling overexposed film, looking just a little bit... lonely. Perhaps his fusion with the Hogyoku had left something of the man behind. Ichigo grabbed Aizen's shoulder from behind, and the ash-gray figure turned around, holding Kyoka Suigetsu, a blade he had discarded long ago.
Aizen raised Kyoka Suigetsu and, with an expressionless face, plunged it straight into Ichigo's chest.
Ichigo let go of his grip in a daze, as an endless, overwhelming loneliness welled up, submerging his heart.
A sensation of weightlessness hit him, and he began to fall, plunging down into an abyss that had no end.
……
Kurosaki Ichigo gasped sharply and snapped his eyes open.
He was lying on a patch of damp grass. The air was thick with the scent of earth and dew, and in the distance, cicadas chirped tirelessly. Shifting tree shadows cast a heavy, dark canopy over him, but through the gaps in the branches, twinkling starlight filtered down, illuminating his eyes.
Ichigo bolted upright and ripped open the clothes over his chest. The spot where Aizen had stabbed him at the very end bore no scar whatsoever. So what on earth was that? An illusion? Doing all those fancy tricks just to give him a scare?
Then, realization hit Ichigo delayed. It wasn't just the wound on his chest—all the other injuries on his body had vanished. Bewildered, he began to fumble over his own body, checking his ribs, his arms, his knees... Every single place that had been torn apart during the war was now perfectly intact, as though those brutal injuries had never happened in the first place.
"What happened...?" Ichigo was utterly dazed.
His body reacted faster than his brain. Ichigo grabbed Zangetsu and vanished from the spot in the blink of an eye, dashing toward the location of the nearest Reiatsu he could perceive. He had to figure out what was going on, had to know how his companions were faring. It was strange... his body felt incredibly light and brimming with vitality, an unprecedented power surging within this frame.
The shadows of the trees flew past at breakneck speed until, at a certain moment, the view suddenly opened up. The town at the foot of the mountain unfurled like a scroll, its lights flickering gently in the darkness. Closer by were low, humble shacks, but the closer one got to the center of the town, the more solemn and majestic the architecture became, with towering white walls rising abruptly from the ground.
Ichigo's eyes widened.
"Seireitei...?" Ichigo murmured. Compared to the one in his memory, there was something subtly different about it.
But how could this be? When Yhwach invaded, he had clearly reduced all of this to complete ruin. Could it really have been rebuilt in such a short amount of time? And for that matter, just how long had he been asleep?
Ichigo wiped his face hard, forcing down the unease in his heart, and walked toward this town that was both intimately familiar and strangely foreign.