Disclaimer: I do not own anything except for my OCs.

Fervent thoughts filled my head as I walked the lands that I stood upon. The green and vast expanses of trees and wilderness that I had seen from the tallest viewpoint of this place had shown me that I was somewhat alone.

But I didn't want it to be something that I felt I should focus on. Negativity had always been something I found very tempting and easy to fall to. How it poisons one's mind and how it quickly takes over one's self perseverance or one's innate ability to cling to the light. To hope.

Something felt different in the air of this place or this very world I seem to be living in. This world felt like a conduit for "evil" and it fed on it to keep going. It was best felt at night but I didn't know if it was real or just me hallucinating on things again for it to be too good to be true.

Regardless, today, it was a bright day and I kept on walking. Watching the path ahead and occasionally taking in the sights of the place I was treading through I took a long drag of air. The rags I wore, enough to turn out as a decent cover on my still teenage body that looked like it would keel over.

Metabolism sure is a bitch at times.

It burned away my food quickly for simple activities I did like walking. I fell hungry quickly, the hunger increasing day by day as I recovered my strength for the days to come. At least I had been able to bath as well. the one thing I could never truly hesitate to do. Cleaning myself with a cold or hot bath had always been a way I could open and srttle my mind. To think more clearly, with a much settled and sane mentality. There had been a river that ran parallel to my path and it had provided me with the essentials at the very least, to survive this journey.

Besides, being a lone young boy nomad with no one to turn to and nothing but my very own innate survival skills to help myself with, it was no wonder I looked like how I looked. Thin but not without life and strength.

Speaking of being a young boy nomad, my mind drifted back to the day I arrived or better explained as, woke up, in this body. This body that belonged to someone else entirely. Someone who was destined to most probably die that day but, it seemed like this so-called fate had different plans. Plans that didn't have any basis nor any specific reason. Plans that would bear a mysterious and unprecedented fruit in the future from one small ripple in this world.

Me.

Flashback

Two Months Earlier

Pain, unlike anything I felt, coursed through my body.

I felt it like a searing flame travelling through my veins, my organs, and ultimately, my whole being.

Body. My body?

My eyes felt heavier than lifting boulders. I couldn't move. My mouth filled with the ichor-like taste of blood. My throat being a dam of blood and snot, mixed in and suffocating me. My lungs were refusing to keep the oxygen I breathed in as it simultaneously switched between contracting and stopping. Everything hurt.

And it hurt most on my torso and mostly on my left shoulder.

Wasn't I dead?

As snippets of my crash and the fleeting memories of my unlucky accident rushed my brain, it caused a headache but I didn't know anymore. It was all so confusing.

Wasn't I on a road surrounded by people who were scared for me?

Wasn't I surrounded by people who wanted and were trying to help me stay alive?

My ears could make out sounds of something swiping through the air and the groans and screams of terror that followed the swinging whispers, for after those then there was silence. As if muted with a touch of a button on a remote, the voice or voices were snuffed out. My touch gave me sensations of liquids and something squishy that I really did not want knowing about.

I could feel certain emotions wash over the area and over me.

Bloodlust. Euphoria. Dissatisfaction. Uncontrolled Agony and also, Regret.

These plethora of emotions washed over me and I still couldn't open my eyes to see who it was or whom they belonged to. My voice came out like a bloody messy croak that didn't even pierce the sound of the swings and slashes in the air around me. At that moment I knew. There was suffering and then there was inevitable death, and all I wanted was this pain to end. This pain wasn't only physical, I was just fed up of feeling pain over and over again. I felt like I was cheated off my death as I had embraced it. I knew I had died and that I was ready for whatever hell or heavenly abode I was going to but this, this felt like a hell that was just too real and physical. This hell wasn't something that was all brimstones and lava.

This felt more like a torturous penance upon me. In my real human body. A torturous session of sick perverse discipline.

Then it happened.

For some reason I felt a pull on my head. A dragging motion that jerked my body from the back. Someone pulled me. Pulled me in. Which seemed ridiculous but then I was falling. Falling towards a seemingly dead black abyss. I was screaming but no sound emerged. I grabbed the air but there was nothing to grab. I wanted to close my eyes but the sheer subconscious curiosity of the unknown compelled my eyes to stay open as I kept falling.

And falling.

And falling.

Until I hit a stop. A sudden stop over something squishy. Something very soft and uneven.

"Alive.", I whispered with a rasp and I coughed up as I slowly steadied my body into a sitting position, one leg bent forward and one hand on that same right forward bent leg and the other left on the laying, bent left knee.

I took in some breath, which I noted I could do normally now, taking in notice that I didn't feel any pain from a few moments back before I fell. My blurry eyes looked around the almost crimson horizon I could make out when I heard a voice from my right.

"Who are you?"

My eyes came alive and alert and when I really took in the scenery I was in I was more horrified then I had ever been.

Strings of meaty piles, stitched up in a haphazard manner, strewn across this room(?), as the walls were bloody and had crimson stains everywhere. Guts and stitched up innards lay strewn in each and every corner my eyes could pick out. Was this what the American killer Ed Gein did in his house when the police raided it and discovered his fetish? Stitched up human skin furniture. Trophies of human heads hung up on the walls. Preserved meat and human pieces in his fridge. I read about those and this place reeked of Ed Gein's sick fetish and his hobby that he splurged on.

Before I could further explore the place I was at with my eyes, I caught the sight of the person that had called for me and asked a question a few moments ago, and he asked again.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?"

As I noted the person that addressed me with those questions I saw him, a lanky boy no more than eleven I would presume. He was slowly disappearing. His hue and, all around, his figure had gained a transparent glow on it with bloody injuries everywhere, starting from his torso having a gaping hole and his left shoulder sporting a huge gash to his diaphragm.

Those injuries told me that this boy was the real person whose body that I seemed to inhabit right now. But the question was how? Was this what people in fictional settings called the mindscape? Was this real? Was all this fake? What was going on? Questions upon questions but still no answer, I prepared to answer him when I heard another voice wash over the place.

"Aha~..", playful was the first thing to come to my mind.

"Two souls, so compatible. Mmmmm~~ how is that possible hmmmm?"

Both of us seemed to turn to the voice that echoed the hall of stitched-up guts and bloody organs. There she sat, in a throne of bones and stitched flesh and skins, two big eyeballs on the top most edge of the throne's backrest and a seat made of flesh and skins that seemed to have been teared up and stitched up like a collage.

She was something.

Something along the lines of being a fatal attraction. A prize that shall and will wreak havoc on one's life if coveted and won. This woman was someone I felt was born to have such playful control over someone that when she would tower over you with the power of life and death you would happily lay it all down for her and she will not care the slightest for the sincerity and dedication and just move on after you are eaten.

Short pastel hair in a bob cut with two bangs framing her face, full black lips grinning savagely with a predatory gaze of violet irises and black sclera, wearing a gilded golden Kanzashi on her head with elaborately designed flowers and gold earrings that fell near her shoulders. A black and orange bordered kimono that fell past her shoulders and teased her cleavage with meticulously embroidered swirling leaves and sleuthing designs. Nails painted black and her silky smooth legs shining in the bleak crimson atmospheric light as she held a needle that she licked the blood off from slowly and sensually.

As if after reading my innermost carnal fantasies and then they were given to life, the woman spoke in a voice of huskiness that penetrated and brought shivers to the skin and raised goose-bumps all over my body,

"Two is better than one it seems.", she smirked and continued.

"Of course I would digress when I say that this is really a surprising turn of events."

What was going on?

This felt familiar. No. It felt like something I already knew but I couldn't pinpoint or correctly identify this situation.

The boy from before spoke up beside me as he crawled towards me while keeping his eyes towards the woman in the throne, "Wh-who are y-you gu-guys? What... What is t-this place?"

His voice was shaky. I could see him struggling to talk along with the various injuries on himself. It was weird. For many times I have thought that the mindscape of oneself never brought real life injuries with it. If I was to take this mindscape thing as real, how was it possible for this boy to bring in the injuries I knew I felt just a few moments before I was pulled in here.

The woman must've felt my inquisitive gaze upon the boy when she spoke by addressing me, "A new soul. How fascinating."

She laughed. I wouldn't be lying if I said her laugh was as much chilling to listen to as it was sensually lush and filled with wanton eroticism. She rose from her throne, the legs slowly disappearing into the front folds of her regal black kimono as she descended. Slow and silent steps with her gaze locked on both of us.

"Y-you mu-must be h-her."

I heard the boy beside me speak. He started to straighten himself, trying to get back on his feet regardless of the blood and horrifying injuries he held, he coughed red but still stood. He continued speaking, "...I s-saw yo-you. I heard your… v-voice. *cough* You to-told me…..I n-need to be… *cough*..s-str-strong.."

I could respect that boy. He looked beaten. He looked helpless. He looked miserable. He looked ready to keel over and yet he didn't falter or got afraid to stand up. Even with those gruesome injuries. It was foolish yet humbling. To never give in to death. To one's mortality even when faced with mortal defeat. The only problem was that he was still disappearing. In front of the woman and me, he was slowly turning into something I couldn't really make out and remember even if I should.

As I kept on trying to think, a lustful scent reached my nose that I took in a whiff of. Dare I say this was something that caught me off guard and really really did something to my body that I would've probably been made fun of if this was somewhere in public or between my friends. I jerked my head sideways and saw the woman now only an arm's reach from the fading boy. Ignoring me completely for a while, I saw her smile grow morose but still having that predatory glaze.

She spoke, "Hai. Goshūjin-sama. You were strong…."

The fading boy closed his eyes as I saw the woman close the distance and hug him. She was quite tall and towered over the boy. Her lips inched closer to his ears as she whispered,

"As I see your battered, bleeding body, I can see now. You were strong. Strong enough to appear here at last, and yet, you are fading."

As she said that, everything stopped for the boy as his shaking body stopped trembling all together. The woman kept whispering still though,

"..But you see, Goshūjin-sama. Your strongest.."

She let go of the hug as she walked backed and retraced her steps behind from the fading boy.

"...was also your weakest here for me."

I saw then, as the fading boy came to view. A long sword with a black blade, a blood red handle with two gilded threads from its pommel and a circular guard with its inner part having a design reminiscent of the singular petals of a Higanbana flower, rammed straight through his heart as the thread elongated and connected themselves to the woman. The boy's eyes widened but it seemed like he was in a trance after just a split second. I only kept watch as I didn't know what was going on but if there was a fleeting moment where I wanted to help him weld up in me, the very next moment the boy completely disappeared into a red and blue husk of pure energy, it seemed, with the blade falling down to the ground, on its sharp end.

A non-existent wind blew and the woman approached the sword on the ground as the threads receded to normal length on the sword as she moaned a little and picked the sword up. She spoke again,

"You would've been a master capable of harnessing it but it was a shame that it was for naught. It seems that fate had a different plan and gave me something else to strive for. Someone more understanding."

She picked up the sword and it disappeared into her kimono folds as she continued speaking,

"Someone more in tune with their nature."

Her gaze locked onto me and I couldn't move. I didn't know what it was but I couldn't bring nor gather any strength to move myself away from the slow stalking predator of a woman that was in front of me.

Erotic. Sensual. Dangerous. Hazard.

She was a type of madness I seemed to have buried deep within me that clearly wanted to burst out.

She finally came up to me and towered over me a hefty two feet. She gazed over me. Lips widely grinning and eyes filled up with wanton ecstasy. Her hands touched my skin for the first time and they were warm. Soft yet firm. Anxious yet steady. She felt up my face. She kept me in her vision as she spoke in a singsong manner,

"Oh my little Goshūjin~

Can't you see it's killing me~

To wait for blood and guts to flow~

Until there's none but death to show~"

With that she kissed my forehead and I felt a searing pain course through my body. It was maddening and my head, it was all slowly starting to make sense. It all slowly came to light now as to what all this nonsense I was facing really was.

Transmigration.

Soul Transmigration.

It was the only way to explain what was happening and what actually was going on. One may say that Reincarnation and Transmigration of Souls were one and the same but oh were they so wrong on so many levels. There were reasons as to what made reincarnation and transmigration different, and the current situation I was in was definitely the latter; but it seemed to be akin to a forceful soul transmigration.

As far as my fictional-meta knowledge could tell, Reincarnation was something that happened to one's soul when it gained some kind of a form to its characteristics. When a specific soul gains a re-emergence of itself with a body specifically, in a word, "designed" for it with a fresh start altogether. A rebirth of one's soul, fully integrated with their own characteristics and every feasible traits of yours in the new body but without the previous life's memories. Transmigration, on the other hand, was simply the moving of one's soul from one body or origin to the next thing that can inhabit the soul, which could be anything or anyone; and the person retained much of their old memories.

The only reason why I said I may have faced a forceful transmigration would be due to the fleeting memories I still retained of my previous life and the trauma that I seemed to have faced with my soul, which seemed to be a very real thing now, right before I died in my previous life. It all slowly made sense in a way. The original soul of this body must've rejected my entry into its body and the resultant conflict brought up and inflicted the real life injuries over the original soul. With real life exhaustion of this body, the original soul couldn't cope with the forceful conflict and must've lost its spirit energy trying to stabilize itself.

It made sense if I spoke that in fiction talk but I could never know how it worked. I didn't know the workings of the soul. Anything I thought of was most probably a product of the many fictions that I read and loved as I mentioned before. This particular theory being in the forefront of focus right now as to what this situation was about. But I could neither confirm nor deny until I actually knew one thing.

I looked up at her as she kept looking at me with the same gleeful gaze and sensual smile from before. She didn't seem worried for anything even though she seemingly murdered a soul a few moments ago. My body was tired. My eyes were heavy and it was starting to blur. I remembered the guy before had spoken of meeting her before. Being able to listen to her whispers, of power, of aid. It all made a picture of what I deemed was the most plausible explanation. Before I felt myself go out, for this last moment of my awakened self, I asked tiredly before a pull came in full blast,

"Are you…...Are you…a….a.. zan..zanpak…"

As I felt my consciousness be brought back to the real world I couldn't help but remember back to the smiling woman's eyes growing soft when I was about to mention something about her being just that.

A fictional weapon of a fictional series that I remembered to have read.

As I felt myself return to the real world with the soft smile of the woman in the back burner, I felt the pain return tenfold than before. It seemed the theory of the mindscape having a very different understanding of time, with regards to this world, was of something I was familiar with. The real world seemed to have not gone beyond five or so seconds before I came back, along with the pain.

I gritted my teeth and through sheer will I opened my heavy eyes. I felt I had a hand over my chest which I slowly removed with difficulty akin to moving a seventy kilo boulder. My wound on my torso seemed to burn its pain into my brain. I couldn't move at all and with the gash over my left shoulder it was made even harder to move myself without getting hurt at all. Pain is a great motivator but also one of the worst feelings to go through and this time, it literally had me wishing for the sweet release of death.

Again.

The smell of rancid and dried blood hit my nose in full. The iron-like taste, the dried stickiness, the slimy texture I could feel all over my body as I tried to sit up, pushing my body upwards, grunting in between a loss of both un-clotted blood and painful breathing. It hurt. It hurt a lot but my blinking eyes made me see my injuries that I could only feel till now that was there. I saw my torso with a gaping hole that was akin to someone thrusting the sword and taking it out swiftly with an additional clean diagonal slash on my left shoulder which indicated it was intended to truly and seriously kill me in a matter of seconds.

If this person was someone normal that is, compared to whatever was normal taken as standard for the people here. I couldn't focus much, the pain was flaring up and as I wanted to control and try to minimise the hurt I felt a simple pulse emerge, the epicentre being me. Grunting, I slowly raised my head around the ocean of bodies I saw all around me when I found some people fell flat on their faces and struggling to get up. I couldn't focus on what was going on when an even more oppressive pressure of active bloodlust hit me along with something I would compare to the literal explanation of being along the lines of "killing intent".

It shocked me for a moment, my eyes glazed over, my body stopped moving and started falling back again but before it could hit the ground again I felt someone catch me. I couldn't open my eyes. It had been a long time since I had been shocked to close them and I felt something warm and mucus-like cover the torso where my gaping wound was located. It didn't burn but I felt it slowly healing my wound. It felt safe. It felt like I was gaining some of my sanity and feelings of soberness back in a slow but steady pace.

As my consciousness faded from the moment of this safety, the only thing I could remember last was a whisper of a woman's voice backed with some frantic male whisperings in the background.

"Will you be the one? Or will he be the one?"

Flashback end

Present

Seemingly Two Months later

It felt warmer today. As I opened my eyes to the sun rays that peeked through the cracks between my self-made leaf roof, my blurry vision cleared out to see that I was at a height. Looking down, I noticed that I was currently sitting on a platform made of branches in a humongous tree. I rubbed my eyes out, stretched myself a bit and then tried to clear my head and think back to where I was at the moment.

Looking around the scenery from my viewpoint, I could see the unending green of the forest but at a distance I could see some structures now that were faded in view. This whole world, I figured out, was alive and hungry. The night was a time when the hunger of this world came to play. Yawning my early wake-up away I saw a bundle wrapped up in a thick leaf native to this place. Picking it up I unwrapped it and I saw what was inside. A freshly skinned piece of wild-game I caught yesterday for food and had left some for the morning.

Stomach growled and kicked as it saw the soft meat that had been boiled and cleaned last night and was okay for consumption. My sleep still didn't leave me much but as I took small bites of the meat to quell the hunger of the day, I recollected as to how I got here and what this place actually was.

Seventy days, I had kept track. Since that incident, it's been seventy days since I had been travelling after I recovered from the wounds, which was a surprise in and of itself. I woke to a rundown shack that didn't look to have been used for a long while and with the marks of ashes, that had faded, I saw a few feet away I gathered that whoever had left me here, bandaged up and dressing my wounds as well, had left a long while ago. My wounds closed up quickly due to whatever was done to me and after having a quick meal for myself with the nearby fruits I had ventured out towards the north end of this place. I didn't know my destination, but I just wanted out. So I kept walking.

In this seventy days I could feel my mind merge with the original soul of this body and all of his memories and skills became one with me. It was the perfect example of the saying "I am you and you are me". I was both the original soul and myself as well. I found the name of this body.

Hibarashi Ryūzen.

A Japanese name to my original name I remembered being Paulo Dorji.

Finishing up my food, I cleaned myself and then slowly started descending down towards the land. Even though it's been around two months of travel it was not without any sort of hardships or stupid encounters. I had a run-in with some local thugs two days into my travels. I got captured but lucky enough there were some honest-to-god rebels here that came out of nowhere and I got my chance to get out. Not before I could lope off the head of my captor in excitement and being pumped with adrenaline.

It was shocking, I was shocked still for a moment when his head came clean off his body with just a swing of one of his own saw-like blade he carried on his waist. It was a lucky swing that should have only cut his neck but it went through clean. For a moment, everyone stopped fighting but then the cheers, the massacre and the blood was the only thing I could remember before I was running from that place. A small voice in my head whispering,

"Did you see how the blood flew out? Did you see it splash on your face? Ahahaahahahaha, it was great. It was so fine! Ahahahahahaaha!"

It was shocking to hear something like that emerge from within me. I didn't want to believe it. I still remembered bits and pieces of what happened to me. The transmigration. The souls. The mindscape. The women. The blood. The death.

Amongst all these memories one thing stood out the most for me. I ran and the reason for that was something that had been haunting me for long.

I wasn't disgusted with the way I killed the man. I wasn't disgusted by how he died so quickly. No.

I was disgusted by the fact I couldn't stay around and try to watch blood flow out until there was no more. I was disgusted by the fact I couldn't wait around to look into how he actually died after getting his head cut off.

And that scared me. Somewhere in my mind it scared me.

I hadn't been able to go back to my mindscape. No matter how much I would try and meditate, with how the environment was around me, I couldn't help but keep my senses active all around and that didn't help me with getting into the state. I noticed, everything here had a certain presence to it. A type of film that covered their appearances, their shells. This shell gave me a rough outline of what I am feeling and thus I could always find out anyone or anything that is near me or coming at me with some intent. In a way, I guess one could say I was a sensor thingie. It was a bit weird to label oneself as such as that solidified my theory of being in a very different world that seemed to hold an uncanny resemblance to a fictional setting I had already read about.

Walking towards the small community of huts and buildings I saw from the tree, I neared the clearing and saw the village come to view. As I entered the premises of the village my gaze quickly caught something similar in a distance.

Black kimono. Sword in hip. A badge on his left arm that read something in Japanese that I was surprisingly able to read.

Wait, black kimono? Sword in hip? A badge that said seventh division's lieutenant. It clicked at last. After seventy days of travels it clicked at last.

Was this world really Bleach?