The darkened realm that had been a prison for the demons had not changed much in the week since the armies last clashed, even the seal inside still seen on the main entryway, locking them in. The biggest difference was the maze was no longer present, flattened and leaving the energy sucking thorns behind to cover its expanse. There were a few bodies of demons trapped within it, stragglers left behind after daring to flee the fight, wishing they could just go back to Hell to bully sinners. Because of the thorns, the two that had entered the realm had to remain in the air, a feat as easy as breathing for souls as strong as they were.
"It took a few years to learn how to use that back door." Kamai chuckled as he kept his gaze on Toshiro while the Soul King took in his surroundings. "I'm glad it came in handy."
"I made a promise not to go into another battle with you alone, so it's more of an inconvenience to me." Toshiro scowled. Karin was surely mad at him again, but hopefully she understood he actually didn't have a choice this time.
"Then I suppose it's fortunate that you are not bound to your promises as I am." Kamai clearly had no cares for his enemy's domestic problems. "How do you feel being back here?"
"It won't end like the last time." Toshiro stated with a glare. "This time, it will be you who falls."
The Dark Master only chuckled once again.
"That promise worked poorly for you last time." He jeered.
The Soul King didn't give him the pleasure of a response.
"I understand you've been chasing after a certain poem." Pulling out a sheet of paper, Kamai held it up for Toshiro to see. "I don't know how much of it your former Elementalist was able to depart to you, but I've certainly made good use of it."
"I'm sure that's how you tracked me down and set up your ambush in this place." Toshiro barely spared the piece of paper a glance. It had been a source of many questions and unanswered curiosity when he was first settling into being a prince and then king, but he wasn't about to be distracted by what was basically a bunch of vague references. "They have guided me as well, but even fate can't predict how this will end. That's why there are two endings."
"Correct." Kamai put the stolen page away once more. "That is why I refused to hide away once more. This WILL be our final fight, just as it has been written. The fate of this world depends solely on the victor and nothing more."
Toshiro reached back for Hyorinmaru, expression confident.
A sneer in his eyes, Kamai began to raise his Spiritual Pressure to match what the Soul King was already letting out.
"Not even the least bit curious about the endings?" Kamai questioned.
He got no answer back. Toshiro was done with listening to his silver tongue, the air turning bitter cold. Kamai readied his demonic blade, darkness seeping into the air to spread its parasitic influence.
"Reign Over the Frosted Heavens, Hyorinmaru."
The cold intensified and a dragon of ice snaked through the air right towards Kamai, jaws wide to snap him up. A single swing shattered the construct before he brought his blade back up to block Toshiro's strike. The two blades clashed loudly in the empty sky and a shudder went through the realm as the battle truly started. There was no hesitation in their attacks, only the single-minded goal of taking out the other. With no one else around them, there was no concern with friendly fire, something Toshiro was taking advantage of, his movements aggressive.
"You fight like a Captain instead of a King." Kamai noted between a pause in their dance of death, narrowly avoiding another dragon twisting through the air.
"I didn't think there was much of a difference." Toshiro spun the chain-blade in one hand.
"Oh there's quite the difference. A King would have some finesse with his attacks, show more respect for his opponent, but a Captain only seeks death."
"An execution is still an execution, however it happens."
The conversation cut off as Toshiro tossed the chain-blade, letting it wrap around the black blade and coat it in ice. He pulled on it before pouncing forward, letting the chain move the sword off course as he went to slice off an arm.
Kamai removed one hand from his sword and let the blade clash against his arm. It was not removed, but instead turned a glossy black, revealing a demonic arm hidden beneath human skin.
"Jumping straight to an execution, are we?" Kamai pushed away his opponent and let his sword fall away to the ground, Toshiro releasing it from the chains to bring them back to hand. "Not only do you still lack class but you seem all too eager for shedding blood."
"That's almost funny coming from someone who tried to kill me when I was just a baby." Toshiro scowled. "You wanted to kill me just for being born, I want to kill you because you have attacked my home and murdered my family. The death of your Demon Lords is your own fault, not mine, because you couldn't just get over the fact that my mother didn't pick you."
The air twisted dangerously with the feeling of fury emanating from Kamai, more of his body shifting into a solid black armor and the glow of his eyes within his skull burning angrily. It made the Soul King flinch as the power over instinct the Dark Master possessed started worming its way back into his heart, trying to snuff the fight out of him.
Then, suddenly, it calmed back down. Kamai remained semi-shifted but the anger was quickly reduced.
"I only wanted what was promised to me." Kamai's tone was quiet, anger brewing behind it but held in tight.
"After everything you've done you no longer deserve it."
"You never deserved it in the first place."
"I didn't even want it! It was your fighting with my father that forced me back to begin with!"
"Then why not let me have it? Why hold onto this and watch your friends suffer when you could have just given it to me?"
"Because your idea of a future destroys everything we all worked for!"
The blade of Hyorinmaru sliced through the air before letting out a harsh ring when it struck against Kamai's armor. A new black blade was formed in the demon's other hand and aimed to remove the king's head, managing a small nick on the cheek as Toshiro backed away again.
"You keep trying to blame me for everything you've done when it's your own choices that brought us here, Kamai Dethmaiyn. You were cursed for using your magic on my mother, you were banished for trying to murder the Soul King's family, and you've lost all your forces continuing to try and kill me and for what? To reset the world? What would that prove?" Toshiro held his blade in front of him. "I think you just couldn't handle getting rejected and want to end the world with you. That's why you let yourself fall so low as to become a demon."
Kamai didn't respond at first, just rushed forward to cross blades once more. Ice and darkness twisted through the air in a fierce struggle, the air getting heavier and heavier as they escalated their fight. Wings of ice spread as Toshiro's Bankai came forth to counter Kamai's new armor and strength. The sound of shattering glass added to the sharp rings of clashing blades as ice was constantly broken and reformed, a constant threat no matter how often it cracked.
"You may have a point that Anya's betrayal set me on my path, but that doesn't change the fact that this world is rotten." Kamai hissed as he blocked Toshiro's blade with his hand and gripped onto it, ignoring the ice that started to cover his arm to glare fiercely at the Soul King. "My goal has been the same even before I met her, she simply couldn't handle it."
"She probably realized your goal was nothing short of worldwide genocide." Toshiro scowled back.
"Is it really genocide if they cease to exist in the first place?" Kamai's head tilted slightly.
Ice cracked apart as the Dark Master pulled his hand from Hyorinmaru and put some distance back between them.
"The world is nothing but a dull, endless cycle." He continued. "Even with spirits such as Ruala and Theda, there is no beginning or end. One gives a false hope of being alive, the other brings out intense fear of dying, but neither such thing truly exists. The memory might fade, but we are simply repeating a path over and over again until the day the world finally grinds to a halt and brings all of us with it. There is no control, the only truth is that one day souls end up in Hell where they wither away to dust so that the Soul King is forced to replace them to keep the wheel turning. Are you really ready to die to keep this cycle of suffering going?"
This was all something that Toshiro had heard Kamai preach about before, and yet he couldn't help but think it over.
"You say it's my fault that you've lost family and friends, my own fault that my Demon Lords are dead, but even if I had sat quietly like a good noble and followed the Hitsugaya family like a loyal soldier should, they would have died anyway. There would have been someone else seeking your head to get your power, someone else to try and corrupt the world around them. We've seen sinners jump out of Hell and drag innocents into its depths, and once inside the miasma doesn't care which one you are. We've seen a simple Soul Reaper turn into an immortal capable of reaching the Soul King's realm to take it for his own. Perhaps instead of me, you would have been fighting Sosuke Aizen? Is that what you would prefer? Because it's all the same!"
Toshiro narrowed his eyes and held his blade at the ready as Kamai's voice darkened.
"You are not just fighting me, little king, you are fighting an idea." Kamai growled. "Because I am not the only one who wants this cycle to end. I am not the only one who is tired of seeing the same story over and over again. Your mother may have thought my idea was genocide, same as you, but what I'm trying to provide is an existence where you're actually living. With only one single existence, there can be no sinners or demons, because they will never have a chance to corrupt the cycle with their poison."
"So you're just going to take it upon yourself to pick who gets to stay in that existence?" Toshiro scoffed. "You're going to choose who to make an example of so that everyone lives in fear of being erased? How is that any better than being recycled?"
"It means darkness will be purged."
"Not if it belongs to the one in charge."
It was Kamai's turn to scoff.
"You're still focused on how to deal with the past." He pointed out. "I can see it in your eyes. Even if I reset the world, you think I will stay the same until I've been punished for my actions. I have certainly done some horrible things, little king, but that won't matter once it is all erased. I will not have my darkness once the new rules are in my place."
"Changing the rules doesn't change who you are: a narcissistic power-hungry tyrant."
"There will be no more sin-"
"No one can forgive their own sins!" Toshiro was having enough of this mindless rant. Did Kamai really believe he could banish his own darkness, just like that? As the actual Soul King, he sure would like to know the secret to doing that, but the memories forever haunted his thoughts. Fighting Kamai's own parasitic powers had shown him that much. No matter how pure you made the world, if the maker was corrupt, the world would be too. "The Soul King was never meant to be an actual God! He is a keeper, not a controller. The cycle continues how it will and it's our job to be its anchor and make sure everything keeps a balance, and sins are just a part of that."
"Then you are complacent with letting your people die."
"I would never be complacent with their deaths." The air became brittle with cold and beneath his own anger, Kamai seemed to smile again. "But I will not let their memory die. Whoever they may become next, I will always carry the memory of their life with me. THAT is what true living is. Being someone that others will carry in their hearts forever, not erasing it in some bullshit fantasy of purity."
Kamai's grin faltered again.
"Then let's see if those pitiful little memories can help you now." He growled. "Because I know how you truly are. You speak of bonds and memories, but when it comes down to fighting someone who has hurt you, you only know hatred. There is no one to save you from it here."
Toshiro lifted his sword in a non-verbal display of challenge.
"I certainly hate that you're still talking." He goaded.
The glow in Kamai's eyes intensified and the darkness in the air started to congest near Toshiro, reaching for him with whispering tendrils, wrapping around the ice as if to trap him. A shudder went up his spine and he felt a burning anger rise up from within him. This man had caused him nothing but pain and grief. He had gone after Karin's life multiple times, his men had slain Toshiro's dear friends and even his faithful grandmother from the Rukongai, and was the reason both of his parents were now nothing more than memories. Kamai had tortured him for a week all for some insane fantasy of "curing" himself and the world of sin. He needed to die, he had to die.
"Come get me then, little king." There was a menacing threat hidden within Kamai's voice. When Toshiro held the other's gaze, he felt that same sense of helplessness the others had felt as he saw what was really hidden behind the skull and armor. An endless, twisting abyss of malice and power.
"You've got to be joking if you think you can purge yourself of that." Toshiro muttered to himself, cursing the shake in his voice. These feelings were unwelcome but he couldn't push them away since they were his own. A rumble from Hyorinmaru helped to comfort him so he could stay focused.
The shadows trying to wrap his wings were pushed away as he moved them to fly forward. They had no grip, no hold on him, just a whisper in his ear to grab at his heart rather than his body. Despite the goosebumps on his skin he managed to charge the Dark Master and land a strike against the armor. Kamai had abandoned the use of blades, using his whole body as a weapon instead, shaking off whatever ice piled up as he made attempts to trap the Soul King by grabbing his blade and clawing at him with a free hand.
A winged ice dragon danced through the air before getting behind Kamai and wrapping its frozen coils around him, its jaws bearing down on his whole body and swallowing him up. Knowing that wouldn't be enough, Toshiro lunged forward, aiming for the heart, hoping to use an ability to trap the man completely in ice where he would hopefully be smothered immediately.
His wings were too slow, a dark light breaking through cracks in the dragon construct, a black gas leaking through as something bigger than the normal figure he'd been fighting freed itself. The longer the fight seemed to continue, the less human Kamai seemed to get.
"You see now… why I need the power to remake this world…" The horrid voice that came from the twisted mouth made Toshiro's skin crawl. "I have long been… taking sin from the world… in an attempt to cleanse it. But that only put it within me, and now… Even my powers cannot hold it."
The darkness that had been spreading through the air had risen to the sky where it snuffed out any attempt at light the realm had, rumbling loudly with thunder. Since it was not a real weather system, however, Toshiro could not take control of it. Everything above them was pure darkness and evil, a mass of gathered negative instincts that enveloped the field. Only Toshiro's Spirit Energy gave off any light within this smog, letting him see but only in a small circle around him and his dragon construct where Kamai was emerging from. As the ice shattered, that light went out, but just before it did he was able to see a glimpse of what the darkness had done to Kamai's true soul. The skull had skin on it again, twisted and pale, and was now big enough to swallow Toshiro whole, not to mention there was a double. The body was growing outwards until it was out of sight in the dark clouds. Something akin to wings moved behind him with sounds that Toshiro really didn't want to describe.
'So this is the result of taking power from demons and sinners.' Toshiro scowled as he kept his distance from the vague silhouette of a monster he could see in the darkness.
'Not surprising after how the Demon Lords turned out.' Hyorinmaru growled in agreement.
'I'll definitely need your full power for this one.'
'You already have it, just tell me when.'
He sensed movement to his left and shifted his wings to take him higher. An amalgamation of arms and hands twisted to look like an even larger hand swiped the air below him, the extra limbs reaching outward to grab even further, almost catching the hem of his coat and his icy tail. Something about the mesh of limbs made him realize something.
"You already know how to absorb other souls." Toshiro turned towards the shadow of a giant monster in the smog. "You were so eager to get your hands on the book about Soul Kings but you were already using those skills."
"Using them… was never the problem for me… not with my skillset. It was what they gave me… that became the problem…" Kamai's garbled voice echoed within the darkness. "But I could not stand… to let such sinners… continue through the cycle."
"And now that you've become this you want to just erase them all together."
"It is just as I have been saying…"
An anger not brought on by the whispering darkness rushed through the Soul King.
"You really do think you're some kind of savior, don't you? Just erasing people's souls however you please, and once those consequences caught up to you, you took it upon yourself to try and reset the world to absolve yourself of any blame."
The monster did not answer this time, another swipe from the twisted array of arms and hands coming from the right to latch onto the small icy figure. Toshiro did not dodge it this time but let his blade connect first, the ice that rushed over the limbs much faster than usual and preventing it from moving any further. There was a screeching hiss from the two monstrous heads as the frozen mass was pulled back into the darkness.
"The only difference between you and the last bastard that tried to take the throne is that Aizen didn't try to pawn off his selfish desire as any sort of great gift to the world. He did exactly what he wanted, how he wanted to, and never let people think it was anything other than personal gain for him. You, however, are entirely worse, because you think what you're doing is some kind of miracle to everyone!"
The monster snarled in fury and reached out for him again with a net of arms.
"And what does that make you?" Kamai snapped as the "net" enclosed around the icy king. "Content to just become a cog in the cycle of souls? A worthless sheep with no ambition to fix this world. All while parading it as protection for those you care about. You would rather they suffer forevermore in a selfish desire to preserve them instead of eradicating what actually makes them suffer."
"If there's anything I learned while I was tortured by your powers and the Angel of Death's Fear, it's that there is no end to suffering, no matter what you do. It will always be there. It's just part of living." Toshiro stood calmly within the arms as they slowly enclosed around him to crush him.
"Then change the rules…" The limbs closed in faster as they moved aside to form a tighter knitting.
"You can't change them. Even if you become Soul King and rewrite the world at great cost to yourself, the rules of life will never change. The best you can do is reset it to the beginning."
"White and black cross paths in hate, Bonds that shatter stifle courage forevermore,
Black takes hold of the world's new fate, A world of new beginnings and no more war."
Toshiro managed to glare at one of the two heads through what little space was left between the writhing arms.
"My ending is still one of peace, Soul King. Just because you and your friends won't be in it doesn't mean it is a bad ending, it is a new beginning. That is all I wish for, a new start where sin can be eradicated before it ever grows."
As the fleshy net began to close completely around him, Toshiro let his eyes close. So that was Kamai's ending, the one he was fighting so hard for. It really didn't sound so evil… new beginnings and no more war.
But there was no indication that such a future was peaceful.
'Time to bring the dragon's roar.' Hyorinmaru was practically purring in anticipation.
The space around him was dark and he could feel the mass of hands grabbing at his ice wings and tail, but he kept calm and held his sword in front of him with both hands, bowing his head up against the flat of the blade.
"Eight Waves of the Great Serpent."
There was a deep chill that took over the atmosphere, creating an intense pressure that gave the impression of being at the black depths of the deep oceans. Kamai's body began to grow stiff as frost covered every part of him, forcing him to move and shake it off or be turned into a statue of ice. The fleshy appendage he was trying to use to crush the Soul King was the first to feel the sting of frost bite and the paralyzing chill of flash freezing. It was shattered to pieces as a new form of Toshiro's ultimate attack appeared.
"The hydra did not save you last time." Kamai growled, though he would admit that with the king now at full power it was a more impressive show of strength.
"The hydra has evolved." Toshiro replied calmly, still holding his sword before him. It had changed from its usual katana state, a strange glow to its form that obscured the double-edged appearance. Broader, sturdier, a sword that would be worthy of slaying a dragon, or in this case a demonic monster.
The blade held a power that made Kamai realize something was off. Toshiro did not have such powers before, the light feeling familiar. His attention was diverted to the eight dragon heads staring him down as their glittering azure scales lit up the darkness, massive icy wings spreading out where the shoulders of the heads might be, the rest of the body obscured in a pool of Spirit Energy that looked like a furiously churning ocean of ice. Icy fangs were bared as each of the heads snarled and hissed, eyes of crimson locking down their prey. Horns and spines of glowing ice adorned the crests of their head and down their necks, a royal presentation of a mighty dragon spirit.
"A shape befitting the Orochi of folklore and legend." Kamai hissed, finding a new respect for such a power. "You lecture me on stealing the lives of souls… but you take your own father's to perfect your dragon's form."
"I did not take anything." Toshiro felt a twinge of anger at the suggestion. "My mother and father both made their last wish to protect me, so that they could help me stop you even as their lives were ended by you."
He saw Kamai pause and look at him strangely, the disfigured heads seeming to search for something.
"So even in death, she despised me…" It was hard to tell if there was sorrow or bitterness in the monster's guttural tone. "Then I mustn't disappoint her…"
The darkness shuddered and Kamai stretched his deformed leathery wings, blackened thorns rising around them and lashing out at the mighty dragon heads. The eight heads snarled and were quick to fight back, their patterns more uniform and controlled, more aware of their surroundings than the wild hydra had been. Ice rose from below them to ensnare the thorns and stop them short. One of the heads in the middle turned back to Kamai and unleashed a breath of ice, followed by the wrath of an ocean to overwhelm the enormous monstrosity of a demon.
The last Kamai had seen this attack, Toshiro was unable to move from the base of the dragon's body, trapped there as a conduit for the mass of heads defending him. Since Toshiro was still in the same position, sword of light held in front of him, it must still be the same rules. To control the icy Orochi, the master had to stay put and focus. He could manage having his lower body frozen if he could just snatch at the vulnerable point.
'Now or never, Dark Master.' Toshiro kept a careful gaze on the monster's movements, not sure if there were any extra giant limbs. His dragon was making easy work of the twisting darkness, but the wild release of Spirit Energy would not last long, and if Kamai had been stealing power from sinners for so long he would have a much deeper source of energy. He needed a clear shot on Kamai's demon heart, if one was even still there.
The tidal wave of ice hit its target without issue, but Kamai pushed forward regardless, his two heads lunging forward as if to devour his enemy like he had so many others. Toshiro's hair stood on end at the proximity to such a horrible figure of sin and terror but held his ground. If he let himself flinch now, he was done for.
'Everyone… give me the strength to get through this…'
Two other heads joined the middle one to latch their jaws onto the demon, instantly flash freezing a good segment of flesh where they clamped on but unable to stop its advance, only slow it. It was enough, though, as Toshiro didn't want it stopped. His blade hummed through the air, confident and steady, and he stepped out of position. Kamai's eyes flared with fury but did not stop even as he realized his mistake. The eight-headed dragon now mature, it didn't need Toshiro as its conduit. It was the blade that was the dangerous part of this new form, not the dragon. Eight pairs of ruby eyes locked onto him and let out earth-shattering roars that brought the ocean of Spirit Energy crashing down on him, and at its front, the shining blade of the Soul King piercing through his larger head.
There was the deafening sound of crackling ice and waves of frozen water rushing over them before all went silent and the world around them was coated in a pure icy blue. Kamai realized he had somehow reverted back to his human state, his body feeling cold and numb in this icy purgatory. Even as he could see the shining sword pierced through his chest, he felt nothing.
"…How?" Was all he could think to say at first, his gaze slowly moving up to meet the pair of teal eyes glaring back at him.
Despite the ambiguity of such a question, Toshiro seemed to understand what it was Kamai wanted to know.
"Your goal was to make me hate you, and honestly I do." He explained. "But I never let go of the reasons why I was able to stand before you and fight. Not a single one. The parents I barely knew, the human family who believed in me, the Soul Reapers willing to fight as my friends and not just as my army, all of them gave me the strength to get here."
"You… took souls from the cycle, same as me." Kamai argued with a pained scowl as feeling started to return to him.
"They gave me their power as a gift of trust to see me through to the end. That bond is what you were lacking even if you had the power. It is the bond you lost when you tried to manipulate them to your own will rather than let them grow. My mother gave you so many chances, and you betrayed her every single time."
The anger faded from Kamai's eyes and he suddenly seemed completely deflated. He put a hand to the blade in his chest but made no attempt to remove it, just held it there, defeated.
"Perhaps you had a point, little king." He sighed. "Even if I removed my sins and started everything anew… her soul could never forgive me. I lost my happy ending the day she died hiding you from me."
"You lost it the moment you decided to create a world-wide purge." Toshiro corrected. "Did you really think something as instinctual as sin could be washed away with a reset? The world became how it is through natural progression, it is a part of us, so even if you change the rules, it is still a part of you, and as the new creator what you have will spread through your new world."
Kamai took this in and sighed once again.
"And what will you do to ease such suffering in your world, Soul King?" He asked, the glow in his eyes fading as his magic left his body. "I may have been a fool to believe I could purge darkness, but you might be an even bigger fool to think you can treat it naturally."
"I might be a fool, but I won't be alone." Toshiro pulled his blade towards him, releasing Kamai from it so that the man fell to his knees. "I could have been just like you… I used to think I had to do everything myself and that no one could be trusted. Perhaps if I had met you as a Captain, these ideas of ending all this pain would have convinced me to your side. But you gave me time… and my family gave me what I had been missing for so long, what you took for granted."
"Spare me such clichés on my death bed, Your Majesty." Kamai managed a small chuckle though he winced in pain for it. "Right though you might be, I'd rather not have it rubbed in my face that I die alone."
"You did torture me for a week." Toshiro frowned.
"That I did… but I suppose there is that oh so famous saying… 'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger'. You have your mother's stubbornness, you know. With a spirit like hers… I was doomed to fail from the start."
With pained movements, Kamai laid himself down on the ice, Toshiro still watching him carefully for any last minute attempts on his life. He wouldn't put it past someone like Kamai to just take the world down with him.
"Since I'm sure you will wait until my spirit passes on fully, let me say this while my curse still binds my tongue." Kamai was breathing a bit heavy as his body began to fade. "You pointed out how I must think I'm a saint trying to absolve my own sins to purge the world… and half of that would be right. After all, if no one remembers what you did, and those events are erased from history, is it still a sin?"
"Of course it is." Toshiro responded, eyes narrowing slightly when Kamai just chuckled again.
"Correct." The agreement only confused Toshiro. "Even if I erased my own memory of it all along with everything else, the urge to continue such murderous sins would still be there. Part of me always knew that… but I was blinded by my own curse to think my path was right. Perhaps the truth was never about resetting the world… just myself. And who better to do that then someone who has seen the darkness of the world and had the strength to keep going where I could not?"
"You never wanted your ending."
"Oh I did, at least that's what I convinced myself to do. But still I waited. I had every ample opportunity to end your life, and yet I couldn't stop myself from waiting to see how strong you would get, how long you could hold onto such a bright hope before ending up like me. Within my madness for a purge, I waited for the one who could stop me."
"Telling me this won't make me forgive you."
"And I don't expect you to. In fact, I hope you never do. Let me be the villain, tell everyone of my awful deeds, of the monster beneath the skin. If I could not escape them by making a new world, then they should be marked on my grave to remind everyone of the consequences of looking too far into the void. I should be the horror story the nobles tell their children so that they behave."
"You're still trying to be immortalized as a martyr of evil." Toshiro scoffed.
"Would you rather I be forgotten from history until the next Dark Master rises from the ashes, seeking my truth?"
Scowling, Toshiro had to admit the man had a point, but even if he was plastered as the worst villain in history, someone would idolize him and try to become a copycat.
"Giving villains attention tells others they can get the same. Infamy is still fame, and attention seekers will do whatever they can to be branded into eternity. Your deeds will be known… but you will not."
Kamai's eyes closed as most of his body was now nothing more than spirit particles drifting within the ice.
"A fair punishment for the bastard that destroyed your family, I suppose." He sighed, his voice faint and weak. "Treat her well, little Miyuki. I truly did think of her as a daughter, and I am sorry for what I've done."
Toshiro wanted to call him a liar, but the curse made him hold his tongue. The familiar situation made him clench his fists tightly as well even as he watched the last of Kamai vanish into nothing, the dark Spiritual Pressure vanishing without a trace. The Dark Master was well and truly dead, with nothing left, no army or Demon Lords, to follow in his steps. The war was over, but Toshiro felt unsettled.
"You can't just… say the same thing he said." Toshiro scowled, but felt tears despite himself. He didn't shed them for Kamai, instead they were for the memories brought forth by those last words. Both Satoru and Kamai had expressed regret for abandoning Miyuki in their own ways, and it wasn't just that Kamai was acting like a father that bothered him, but the fact it proved a demon so foul could still have some kind of love after all and yet be so twisted. It made Kamai more human, and proved just how fragile they all were.
"I need to get out of here." Shaking the unpleasant memories and thoughts from his mind, Toshiro focused on what was ahead. Around him the blue faded as his ice dispersed, revealing the realm that had once been a nest of demons and evil, a prison he did not want to stay in any longer. Just as he had noticed earlier, his seal still rested over the door, suggesting his enemies had taken this back door Kamai had to get out, making the whole reason he put it there pointless.
His Bankai faded as he reigned in his power once again and Flash Stepped to the door. Being his own seal, it fell quickly to his command, allowing him step back out to the World of the Living.
Someone was awaiting him there.
A lot to unpack in this chapter, but hopefully it turned out okay as a long bit for the final fight. I figured an eldritch horror type situation would be a good "final form" for someone trying to reset the world to protect himself, and a worthy opponent for what is just Bleach's version of "God". And yes I based the final attack heavily on the legend of Orochi with a more Leviathan spin on it since he's an ice-water zanpaktou, and the sword is based on the legendary blade taken from Orochi. It was an idea I actually got from someone who wanted me to give Toshiro an attack like this in my Kingdom Shinigami story but I felt a legend like that was better suited for a king than a Keyblade user.