"Kuchiki Rukia, your execution will take place fourteen days from now."
They had brought the date forward.
But who were they? And why? The message had been delivered by white-clad guards with veils over their faces, though the number of days meant very little to her now. If not for the sun turning in the sky outside, she might have lost track of time completely.
And it was strange to no longer reckon in decades. Centuries. Two weeks seemed such a human frame.
Why hadn't Byakuya come, she wondered.
That night, the sereitei was quiet. If Ichigo had tried to reach her, he had failed, she realised.
And if he had tried and failed, then he was dead.
She turned onto her side and pulled her knees up to her chest.
Only fourteen days of feeling this way.
Only fourteen.