It is me again with this story. I spend a lot of time unhappy with it, so I have written it over and over again. This is the latest version and I lowkey love it now. I hope you enjoy it.

That said, I'm gonna be real honest here about the romance. I don't know how it's going to work, but let's see how things go.

I'm going to come up with a better summary for this story eventually, but for now, my very poor attempt at one will have to do. Sorry for being lazy.

¡Feliz Día de los Muertos!

Omixochitl (1)

I.

The Witching Hour

.

Chapter 01

The Witch

Footsteps approached. Her feathers rustled. A shiver strummed down her skeleton like a club bumping the bones in a discordant song that made ears bled. The prison walls contained her, inscribed on their pale faces were towers of symbols and words that weaved the spellwork upon the mineral that had dulled her senses.

He returned! The air pulsed under her wings as she took flight in frenzied excitement, but touched down on the stone ground once more, her large, curved talons clicking upon contact.

"Shinji?"

Her voice echoed back to her, chittering as it pushed through the crisscrossing barrier in front of the wooden bars.

"Is that you?"

No. She stilled. The weight of this spiritual pressure…

Her sharp amber gaze pierced the darkness as he emerged illuminated by the orb-shape lantern her carried on the end of a short rod. Shadows burned into his skin, outlining the sharp edges of his jaw, darkening the brown of his hair to that of ground coffee beans, and the light produced a glare across his square glasses obscuring the soft brown shade of his eyes as they cast judgment upon her small, feathered form.

"It's been a while, hasn't it, Hisame Kazuye?" asked Aizen Sōsuke.

She noticed he wore a white haori over his pitch-black shihakusho and her feathers bristled in recognition of his new rank. "Where is Shinji?"

"Are you still squawking for him?"

Kazuye flung herself to the bars separating them, the spellwork burning at her talons as feathers fell from her limbs until she tumbled to the ground a pile of small bones. They rattled as she reassembled, growing in her skeleton, forming organs and blood vessels, creating muscle and bronzed skin to shield it, hair sprouted from her head black and wild, her eyeballs came together like white and green confetti, returning to their original state.

The prison burned with the stench of her charred remains as she stood before Sōsuke, a foot shorter, but a fully-formed. Her human limbs felt strange to repossess. She had grown used to feather and talons and to the slow crouch of padded paws and a lithe spotted body made it easy to roam in her confinement as though she were stalking prey.

"Your power is fascinating to behold," he said, his voice as smooth as poison sliding down her throat. "Even sealed within all of this spellwork and sekkiseki stone, you continue to grow."

"You left me here," Kazuye hissed. "Lie to me, Sōsuke, say that you did not put me in this prison."

"Is that what you believe?" he asked. "Do you think that I betrayed you?"

"Were you ever loyal?"

He chuckled.

Kazuye paced a straight line, tearing her gaze from his mocking smile, and repeated his words in a mumbled stream of abhorrence. She sensed her control slipping as though it were the ribbon wrapped around a gift box being pulled apart by the ends. Her skin trembled. Every cell in her body rioted, gathered, and reconfigured their constitution. Rosettes rose to the surface of her flesh, blooming into clusters around the darkening spots.

The castors that verbalized the incantations carved upon the walls imprisoned her by using her own power against her and dulled her abilities by reflecting them back onto her. The more indestructible she became, the easier it was for the cell to adapt—challenging her with her own might until it succeeded in crossing all of her wires. The little spiritual energy she hoarded escaped her body because the walls were made from sekkiseki stone and they absorbed her reiryoku constantly.

She had lost track of time. Unaware of how many weeks had passed since she entertained her last visitor. How long ago had it been that she lost the ability to retain human shape? That becoming one of many creatures was easier than to stand on her own two feet? How many times had she slammed into the bars, her body exploding into chunks of burnt flesh and warm blood?

How many years had she waited for Sōsuke to release her? After he had taken her hand long ago and raised her up, saying, "Come with me."

"I loved you," spat Kazuye. "I would have done anything for you—given up every limb for you. I would've died a thousand deaths for you. Whatever you wanted, I would've given."

"I am aware," he said, observing her internal battle with strange fascination. "However, admiration weakened you—desperate for love and attention, desperate for recognition and protection, and desperate to be saved. I had no need for a child at my side."

"Fortune has blessed you with these barriers or I'd rip your skin from your bones," snapped Kazuye, her jaw aching from the sharpening of her teeth. "You want a puppet, one that would rally the nahualli (2) to your side and I will not be controlled."

"Do you wish to protect the witches?" asked Aizen, pausing. "After all that they did to you? Do you know why you are here? Fear. People fear you because they cannot understand you." Each patient word was calculated and dripping with charm. "The Tlaminqui School (3) incident with the Akram boy, the Sayegh Queen's funeral, and the Shisou Project (4) troubles that you stirred—each one was a phenomenal display of your gifts. Each one instilled fear in those around you. They were unable to fathom how anyone could have so much power."

"Don't pretend to understand me."

He chuckled. "Am I not the only one that can understand you? Was that not what you said to me once?"

Her rage stirred. She shouldn't have expected any less from this man when she had given him all the ammunition he could ever hope to use against her. She idolized him. Spoke to him in confidence, seeking counsel, and divulged every chamber in her heart because he listened. He pretended to understand when he wanted only to use her power.

"Take control of your life again and come with me," he propositioned. "Use your power—all of your gifts."

He snatched her attention.

"Do what you will, however you chose to do it, but do it at my side." He paused, reading her expression as much as the glow of his lantern allowed and it was possible he knew her answer before she said it aloud. "We can help each other."

Kazuye's eyes narrowed. Agreeing was falling into the palm of his hand once more, but…

To leave this place. Not even Shinji had given her hope in ever doing so. She never entertained it because the queen herself had made certain that her sentence could not be lifted. People had died because of her.

Temptation boiled, stronger than suspicion. What was the worst he could do to her? Throw her back into this prison made specifically for her? And she would live a thousand years until another came to set her free or however long it took for her to understand it enough to destroy it.

"So be it."

Satisfaction brightened in his eyes, but there was no way for her to know the reason behind it. She lived better days not trying to figure out what went through his head.

"When your queen comes, do what you are skilled at."

He turned to leave.

She stepped forward, a new emotion rising from the pit of her stomach at the number emblazoned over the back of his captain's haori.

"Where's Shinji?" she shouted, hesitating when she reached the bars. The powerful vibrations the complex spellwork emitted left her wary after she had experienced death. Although it had been a quick and almost painless one, the clatter of her bones as her own magic pulled them together at the base of her being, the regrowth of her organs and flesh was painful, like being born in reverse.

He paused, looking over his shoulder. "He's dead."

The bones in her legs began to splinter and she fell to the ground holding herself, pushing her fingernails into her skin to maintain control. "What about Souko?" she cried, the tips of her wild hair entangled into spotted feathers. "What happened to Souko?"

He continued to walk despite her shouting and she succumbed to her uncontrolled magic, resetting her shape.

It took seventy agonizing hours to burst free of her feathered prison and fifty minutes to drag her body across the cold stone to a patch of warmth to rest. She haggard breaths, her body aching from having broken and reshaped into that of a human, when the spiritual energy tethering her skin in place pinged with the distortion of a new visitor.

Another familiar energy pooled at her feet. It spread like the cold of winter used to as it began, seeping in through the bottom of the shoji screens in her childhood room. It wrapped around her like cool chains snaking up her legs and pinned her in place.

"Cihuapillahtocatzintli. (5)"

Two figures materialized from the darkness welcoming light with their presences. The tallest of the two tugged the hood off her head and her black hair spilled like a toppled inkwell down her back. A high-collared handmade jade necklace shone brightly in the glow of light fanned out across her dark skin.

She pinned Kazuye down with her strong golden gaze. "What did you do, Hisame Kazuye?"

Kazuye's skin tingled as she rose, poised like a jaguar on the brink of attack. "Why are you here, cihuapillahtocatzintli?"

The cloaked guard at the queen's side stomped forward and hissed, "Her majesty asked you a question!"

She looked past the unthreatening guard. "What could I do from here? You don't think this cage is strong enough to keep me in? Your majesty, I'm flattered."

The Akram Queen, Tono Sumika, grimaced. "The Central 46 is pressuring the Council of Elders for a retrial." She paused, stabbed into her with her ruthless spiritual pressure, not in the least bit concerned for the wellbeing of her companion, who struggled under the massive weight of power vibrating through the building. "What did you do, Hisame Kazuye?"

Kazuye kissed the ground under the monstrous spiritual pressure and balled her hands into fists, the ends of her fingernails pressing crescents into her palm. "I have done nothing!"

"Lies!" The queen's voice echoed and Kazuye sensed the sputtering of the barriers as they came undone with the rattle of keys.

The overbearing pressure slammed into Kazuye hard, crushing her into the ground as Sumika moved to her.

"Your majesty, you shouldn't—"

Kazuye caught a glimpse of the queen's guard as she was hurled back into a wall, her small body flattened against the stone and slid to the ground misshapen and bloody.

The queen snatched Kazuye by the neck and raised her high above her head, her sharpened nails punctured Kazuye's flesh with the precision of a needle. Blood soaked into Kazuye's plain white robe, red lines of it twisting along the shape of her. Pain rippled through her as if she were the conductor of an electrical current, spreading wildly from her neck and sparking every nerve in the rest of her body.

"What did you do?" the queen demanded, a harsh wrinkle formed between her eyebrows. Her face twisted in a familiar fury, one that had once hexed Kazuye until the skin began to rot off her body.

Kazuye wheezed out a response. Her lungs ached as if doused in accelerant and set on fire.

The woven spellwork began to disappear after the queen disrupted their magic, so Kazuye's wounds were slow to repair, but still they depleted what little energy she had remaining. This cage had been designed to use her own power against her and it had been an excruciating realization for her years ago, but it meant that it was the only way to keep her in.

Sumire flung Kazuye to the ground and buried her heeled boot between her ribcage. Each crippling blow that followed grew heavier, broke three ribs, pushed one piece far into her lung that left her choking in her own blood. Every stomp of the queen's booted foot weighed twice as much as the last. This fury-driven display of physical power would end when it stamped Kazuye from existence.

Kazuye drowned a thousand times in her own blood, returning from the brink with every spark of spiritual energy.

With the barriers' magic fading fast, Kazuye welcomed the gentle cold of death. A couple of more drownings and she would please the witches across every realm.

Kazuye clung on until the Akram Queen was dragged off her and a group of healers surrounded her to accelerate the reparations already underway.

"I hope you rot in here, you unholy beast," Sumire spat. She shoved the hands that reached for her with a hiss. "Do not touch me."

Kazuye's hazy vision focused on the furious queen, revitalized by the spellwork that returned her from the brink. Her teeth red, mouth dripping blood, as she chuckled. "Are you afraid of me still, Tono Sumika?"

A younger woman that shared the same angled features as the queen stopped Sumika from another frenzy. "Do you not see what she is doing, your majesty? She's provoked you into guaranteeing her release! After this, the Central 46 will not allow her to remain in our custody!"

Kazuye lifted her eyes to the ceiling, her body engulfed by the blue healing light of the nahualli surrounding her. She drank deep of the warm, nurturing glow of their fingers, hungry for the energy that powered their spell. "It is not what I did, Sumika. It's is what you have done."

Kazuye welcomed the chief of the Winterbloom Order when he stepped forward with a round silver key twirling in one of his long, bony fingers. He dispelled the barriers with a wave of his hand and the chain-link of spellwork came undone with the ease of his command, but he alone did not create this prison.

"Lady Hisame," greeted Akizuki Yuuto, offering her a brilliant smile that brightened his amber-colored eyes. His light blue hair fell from behind his ears, the longer strands covering one of his eyes. "I overheard it took more than five sessions to heal you after you insulted the queen. You're as charming as ever, it seems."

Kazuye smiled at the faded brilliance of the magic as it melted into the shadows. "The incarcerating spellwork is fascinating, Chief Akizuki." She watched him sink onto one knee in front of her, digging for a black collar from inside the sleeve of his black haori. "It makes use of my talent for Deconstruction as well as my ability to Shift, doesn't it?"

"Oh? Have you figured it out?" asked Yuuto, securing the collar tight against her brown neck.

"The sekkiseki stone dulls my senses and eats away at my reiryoku, but you understood that that alone wouldn't be enough to control me. You did more." Kazuye rose to her feet with him as he watched her with eyes full of curiosity. "So, the barriers are designed to turn my perception against me because you understand the nature of my abilities, or at least you think that you do."

Yuuto hummed appreciatively. "I always believed you had a big imagination."

Kazuye smiled at his compliment.

Yuuto took her wrists, his touch gentle, and bound them together in front of her. He tied a cord to the center of bindings to guide her out of the prison. "How many gifts were you blessed with, Lady Hisame?"

"Seven," she said, careful with every syllable she pushed past her lips, "just like any shaman-class nahualli."

"Don't play coy. Deconstruction and Reconstruction are both Zahir abilities. We both know that we get one per different Witchlines and we can only develop more powers within our own. It's like having a certain affinity for a specific type of magic."

"Ah, yes, but you're smarter than that. Knowing one, you can know the other. If you can take apart something, you have to know how to do it, and that simple knowledge is key to putting it back together. Of course, I'm better at destroying than I am at fixing things, just as you are good at science."

"Well, you're not wrong, but not everyone is capable of understanding such intricacies."

Kazuye expected more nahualli to have gathered and escort her to the Central 46 Chambers. "Only you today?"

"You've been in here for almost two decades, it'd be shocking if I alone wouldn't be enough to handle you. I'm a chief, Lady Hisame."

"Well, nobody is doubting your ability but yourself."

He guided her through the underground labyrinth until they reached a heavily guarded door covered in ancient runes even she had never seen before. Past them was a void of darkness that oozed at their feet and with a snap of Yuuto's fingers he sparked an orb of light that drifted upward, aimless into the dark, dividing it into a path high with stairs. She had entered the prison, listening to her heaving echoing in her throbbing mind, and with a blindfold knotted tight behind her head.

The sunlight was blinding and the cold that seemed to cling to her flesh causing goosebumps, warmed slightly by the rays. It took her several blinks to make out the horizon from the gargantuan gate into the pyramid of Itzintlan (6) but Ilhuicatl (7) looked like a glittering heaven—gorgeous and unattainable. Stone apartment complexes built high and in overlapping clusters with narrow white roads zigzagging under the shade of an assorted fruit trees—apple, peach, plum, mulberry—as far as one could behold.

Members of the Zakuro Squad (8) patrolled the streets around the base of the pyramid, their eyes dark and their lips curled into snarls, as Kazuye walked a step behind Yuuto. She glimpsed once more at the gateway to the underground prison flanked by stone snake heads with jade stone eyes and exhaled as she returned her gaze forward to the emptied-out streets leading to the exit into Seireitei. She breathed in the sweet fragrance of blossoming trees mingling with the thick, smoky scent of frankincense, cinnamon, and dried herbs. If she closed her eyes, allowing Yuuto to navigate alone, and concentrated beyond the nahualli, she sensed the citizens far from her as though they were tiny, flickering flames about to snuff out.

"It's a beautiful day, Lady Hisame."

"I used to climb the tallest building in Fifth Division when I was a child to catch a glimpse of Ilhuicatl," she said, opening her eyes. The apples were almost ready for harvest. She tasted a tinge of their sweetness in the crisp breeze. "I wasn't allowed in the city."

"Was your transfer the first time you set foot in Ilhuicatl?" asked Yuuto.

"Yes."

The nahualli city was encased by high walls and protected with a barrier that Kazuye heard had been erected by her great-grandparents back when the city was new and comprised of a few buildings. She used to wonder if its history was the reason as to why she felt drawn to the city because her family's magic was prevalent there. A powerful witch's magic could remain active for years and her great-grandparents' spellwork had withstood two millennia, though she sensed where it had been stitched together by the spiritual energies of thousands of nahualli.

This city was hers and yet it wasn't. Its lively sights and sounds were foreign to her, but the smells were familiar. Frankincense and copal reminded her of her grandmother's shrine to Quetzalcoatl (9) taking up the space of the tokonoma in a six-tatami mat room in her childhood home. Her heart ached.

Yuuto guided Kazuye to the gate into the Central 46 Compound and turned to her after announcing their arrival. "Not all of us are afraid of you, Lady Kazuye."

He held a hand out to her, palm up, fingers curled inward. She stared at it, then lifted her eyes to his face, and placed her hand above his, hesitating. She clapped her hand against his and a surge of energy shot in her through the brief contact of their skin and set her circulatory system ablaze, re-energizing her weakened body.

He winked. "Don't use it all at once."

Kazuye tightened her hand into a fist and stepped past him toward the masked man awaiting to take her the rest of the way. She didn't turn back to look at Yuuto, though she had felt tempted by the flame of hope coursing through her, calling forth her dulled abilities like a beacon guiding her through the dark.

At the entrance into the main chambers where she would face the members of the Central 46, Kazuye closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. It had taken every chief in the Zakuro Squad and their adjutants to cage her and drag her inside for her final trial. The Akram Queen and the Council of Elders had deemed her a threat. She had been framed, forced into a situation in which she would lose control and she did. She fell for it. She had sensed the tethers snapping one at a time against the swell of her power and she tasted her wish on her tongue, hitting hard against the back of her teeth.

When she had swayed from the deep pull of the spellwork bursting from her body, she had made a final attempt to reel it in, but it had erupted. Thousands of people had been hurt, some succumbed to their wounds, the sacred barrier that surrounded the community had shattered, like a glass bowl hurled to the ground, and a huge crater had appeared where thousands of homes and the largest shopping district had once stood proud. Even Seireitei had felt her power rattle underneath it's surface, some had claimed that the tremors had extended far into Rukongai, but at that point, she had suspected them of saying more to damn her.

No one cared that she was provoked—pushed until the tempest inside of her grew too wild to control. The Central 46 had treated her as well as the Council of Elders had. To think they would free me now.

Kazuye entered with her head up. The queen had already done the bulk of the work. This wouldn't be hard.

The Witch. End

(1) Omixochitl is the Nahuatl word for the "tuberose." The literal translation of the word is "bone flower"—omitl, 'bone,' and xochitl, 'flower.' It is pronounced "Oh-mee-SHO-chit-ll." Don't forget to swallow that 'l' into the 't.' The tuberose is native to Mexico, and in the language of flowers, signifies dangerous pleasures and love.

(2) Nahualli, the Nahuatl word for "witch." It is pronounced "Nah-HWA-lee."

(3) The Tlaminqui School refers to the five-year curriculum required of shaman and mystic-ranked nahualli to complete in order to join the Zakuro Squad or to transfer into the regular Shinōreijutsuin curriculum, in which they would need to finish two final years of study, to pursue jobs in the Gotei 13, Kidōshū, or the Onmitsukidō. Tlaminqui is the Nahuatl word for "hunter" and it is pronounced "t-LAH-mean-key."

(4) Shisou, 死相, means "shadow of death."

(5) Cihuapillahtocatzintli is the Nahuatl word for "queen." It is pronounced, "Cee-HWA-pea-lah-toh-kat-seen-t-lee," probably.

(6) Itzintlan, or foundation, is located in the center of Ilhuicatl. Itzintlan is the Nahuatl word for "at its base" and it's pronounced "eets-een-tlan."

(7) Ilhuicatl is the nahualli city inside Seireitei. Ilhuicatl is the Nahuatl word for "sky, heaven" and it is pronounced, "eel-wee-kaht-l."

(8) The Zakuro Squad is the fourth military branch of Soul Society. They deal with nahualli-related issues. Their insignia is a pomegranate blossom.

(9) Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent is a central god in Aztec Mythology. He is the god of intelligence, self-reflection, and a patron of priests. He is the morning star. Quetzalcoatl created mankind. Quetzalcoatl is pronounced, "ket-sal-coh-wat-ll." Swallow that l little t.

Thank you for reading. Reviews are appreciated.