Marvel: From the Void and Back Again, Part 4
Chapter 1: A Parasite Who Claimed Godhood…
…
Ishida Research Facility – Hidden Lab, Wandenreich Annex
The lights were flickering in the subterranean portion of the lab, humming with calibrated reishi containment fields and Quincy tech suspended in silver-thread tubing.
Ryuuken Ishida stood in a pressed coat, eyes narrowed behind his glasses as the microscopic display lit up with energy-mapped magnification.
"...Unbelievable."
He adjusted the spectrum resonance overlay, enhancing the spiritual particles drifting in a containment vial. Inside the glass: a shimmering layer of residual symbiote clung to a thin, fizzy, iridescent substance that refused to bind.
A second scan completed. Then a third. And finally…
The Reishi itself began to wriggle.
Ryuuken leaned closer, voice sharp.
"They're… trying to resist integration?"
He typed faster now. Calculations flared. Atomic-level models of the spirit particles displayed abnormal behavior. They twisted, broke apart, and then… reformed.
Like primitive symbiotes.
And all of it had been triggered by a soft drink his son had brought home, a cheerful can labeled:
"CANDIVORE FIZZ – Bubblegum Lightning Flavor – NOW WITH SOUL-ENERGY INFUSION!"
"Where did you get this?" he'd asked Uryu.
"Convenience shop in Seireitei-2. It's popular in that particular district and among the souls in soul society. Ichigo said the cany-based symbiote that runs it opened a candy parlor."
That shop was run by Candivore, the neon-swirl symbiote creature whose bodily fragments naturally flavored their products and happened to interface perfectly with latent spiritual energy.
It was quite literally made of cotton candy, taffy, lollipops and all manner of sugary candies.
But Ryuuken was no longer focused on the branding.
No. He was focused on what this meant.
"If spirit particles behave like proto-symbiotes… and if the symbiotes draw strength from them… then the inverse must also be true."
He looked at the model again. The spiritual particles weren't being consumed all at once, many of them were trying to escape, but it was a losing battle, the symbiotic particles were slowly but surely consuming them. They were resisting being bound however fleeting it was. That resistance meant something.
A warning.
A memory.
A will built into the spirit particles themselves.
He remembered what Peter-Knull mentioned to him the last time he met him.
…
"Spirit particles behave like raw, unformed symbiote matter. Chaotic when they wake up. Hungry. Tethered only by the will of their creator."
"The Spirit King didn't just shape this reality. He seeded it. From primordial soup... with his essence."
…
Ryuuken clenched his fist.
"That would mean..."
He turned sharply to his console, opening a secured file hidden in the Wandenreich's oldest records. Quincy history had always declared their link to the Spirit King, his divine authority used to justify their pursuit of balance through destruction.
But now…
"The Spirit King isn't a god as they thought he was."
"He's a Knull variant."
"And the Reishi, our very power, was never divine, it was like from one of Peter-Knull's shadow born being, a void-born."
He stared at the swirling analysis one more time.
It wasn't a god's gift.
It was biological. Engineered. Symbiotic.
And his people, the Quincies, had been unknowingly manipulating the raw nerve strands of a forgotten god's will.
Ryuuken whispered to himself.
"We've been harvesting the muscle fibers of a dying titan… and calling it purity."
It was then that something started waking up as he continued probing.
Ryuuken Ishida adjusted the particle resonance scale one more time, bringing the Candivore-infused reishi sample into sharper detail. The particles no longer floated peacefully in suspension.
They were moving. Fast.
Too fast.
"…That's not ambient drift…" he muttered.
The particles clustered, first in a loose spiral. Then tighter. Denser. As if forming tissue like a liquid with veins.
Suddenly, the Candivore symbiote traces flared with light. The candy-like strands that had been dormant began snapping and twisting, interweaving into a laced bio-matrix as it reached for the newly formed organic structure.
And then…
"SHREEEEEEEEE-!"
A sound tore through the chamber. Not from speakers. Not from the air.
From the reishi itself.
The spiritual particles screamed.
On the screen, the symbiotic candy-matter rapidly consumed the reishi, but not like food. It absorbed them like information. Like identity.
"No, this isn't digestion. This is... reformatting…" Ryuuken breathed.
The sample twisted violently, glowing brighter, mutating.
Within seconds, the center of the petri dish burst open, birthing something that looked like a thin, glowing worm, twisting, writhing, laced with spiritual veins and reishi-script glowing along its translucent skin.
Then it twitched.
And looked up at him.
Ryuuken froze, his hand halfway to the intercom.
The thing shivered. Then, in an almost incomprehensibly purposeful act, it tore off a glowing chunk of itself, a sacrificial offering, and that chunk began to disintegrate into particles. It was severing its own link.
The rest of it spasmed and leapt from the containment dish, flinging itself toward the lab's edge like a parasite seeking escape.
CRACK!
Ryuuken slapped a containment canister down over it just in time, barely catching it mid-thrash. A sound like nails on glass echoed within the pod.
The worm coiled tighter, glowing red, purple, then…
Pssssshhhhhh!
It evaporated into fine, glittering spirit particles, spiraling upward into nothingness.
All that remained was a mix of normal spirit particles and air in the container, and a sweet-burnt residue clinging to the inside of the petri-dish that the pink candy coated symbiote quickly consumed. Like someone had melted sugar and soul matter together.
Ryuuken backed up, hand trembling for the first time in years.
"That was… a symbiote! A spirit-based hybrid symbiote!"
He looked to the data logs already scrambling to catch up with what had just occurred.
"And it remembered pain."
Ryuuken staggered back a step, his mind racing to stay ahead of the implications as the lab's ambient light flickered, a sensor sweep recalibrating for unknown energy residues.
"A hybrid symbiote…" he whispered again, but this time not as a scientist. Not as a Quincy. But as a man.
The spirit particles still drifted in the air, glowing faintly, harmless now.
But that was a lie.
He knew it.
They weren't harmless.
They were sleeping.
And the candy symbiote, a joke to some, a novelty to others, had woken them up.
He turned back to the holoscreen, pulling up the full molecular breakdown of the original sample. The data spike from seconds earlier was still climbing, as if the sample had continued to evolve even after death.
Ryuuken's eyes scanned each line of code. Each simulation playback.
His hands moved with mechanical precision, but the voice in his head screamed louder than any alarm, "Spirit particles are like dormant symbiotes in behavior… Reishi reacts to one of Peter-Knull's symbiotes, symbiote-residue like prey… And when overwhelmed, it doesn't just resist… It mutates."
His fingers hovered above the keys.
Then, he said it aloud.
"The reishi didn't just behave like a symbiote…"
"It is one."
He stared at the monitor's glow reflecting in his glasses, voice dropping.
"That would mean…"
His heart paused as his breath hitched.
"That would mean we are symbiotes with human and humanoid shells for bodies."
"The Quincy. The Soul Reapers. The Hollows, Gillians, Arrancar's, whatever else is out there. All of us who use reishi…"
"…are using slumbering spirit-symbiotes, within ourselves."
His gaze drifted to the cooling residue in the dish, the final remnant of that dying, candy-slick entity.
And for a moment, Ryuuken Ishida saw something he had never allowed himself to feel.
Not logic. Not control.
But a flicker of dread.
"We've always believed we were different from the Hollows," he murmured.
"But if this is true…"
He clenched his jaw.
"Then we've been wearing the same skin... just in different patterns."
Outside the lab, the soft buzz of citylight hummed like static through the Soul Society's edge district.
Inside, in Wandenreich's sealed vault…
One of the glowing spirit particles pulsed once.
Then stilled.
…
(Location: Hidden laboratory below Karakura Hospital)
Ryuuken stares into the still-radiating containment dish, watching as the last of the soul-symbiote fusion fizzles into nothing. The data is crystal clear.
"Symbiotic mimicry. Reishi behavior. Panic reflex. Adaptive cluster detachment."
Each line on his screen drives the stake deeper into the truth:
Reishi is symbiotic.
The Spirit King is a Void-born.
The Quincy aren't divine.
They're just better at metabolizing symbiotes.
He stands back from the lab bench. The implications grind behind his eyes like rusted gears.
There was silence.
Only the hum of the centrifuge behind them. The faint flicker of the last spirit particle drifting into inert stillness.
Uryū swallowed hard.
"If spirit particles are symbiotic… and we use reishi in our own bodies…"
"Then that would mean..."
His voice caught.
Ryuuken didn't let him finish. Instead, he answered:
"We're already part symbiote."
The weight of it settled over them like frost.
Uryū gripped the edge of the counter.
"Then the Quincy… aren't divine descendants."
"We're just another strain of... mutation."
"Another branch… of something that came from the Void."
Ryuuken nodded once. Slowly.
"It explains our obsession with purity."
"We were trying to fight what we already were."
Uryū turned toward the sealed container. Inside, the last flecks of pink-and-gold residue still shimmered like candy glass.
"That symbiote was just trying to survive," he whispered. "And so are we."
Ryuuken looked at his son.
And for the first time in many years… he didn't speak as a father, or a scientist, or even a Quincy.
He just spoke as a man standing at the edge of a terrible understanding.
"We need to tell someone."
"But not Yhwach. Not yet."
"If the wrong people hear this, it could start a war long before the first blade is drawn."
Uryū's voice was steady now.
"Then we tell someone who won't panic."
Silbern – Deep Listening Vault Sigma-3
The corridors beneath the hidden palace of Silbern were quiet. Hushed. Crystalline veins of pure reishi pulsed faintly in the walls, vibrating with command-line data streams only the highest-ranked Sternritter could access.
And in Listening Vault Sigma-3, where echoes of intercepted transmissions were compiled and dissected for patterns of threat… something had just pinged.
Something not supposed to exist.
Jugram Haschwalth stood with his back straight, arms folded, face lit only by the faint glow of the data-projection interface. His golden hair shimmered under the artificial reishi light as he stared at the expanding waveform.
"This… is Ishida Ryuuken's lab signature," he said softly, almost reverently.
Behind him, two other Quincy joined him.
The hall was bathed in silver-blue light, filtered through ancient Wandenreich crystalline veins embedded in the walls like spirit-circuitry. Each whisper here was recorded, each step counted.
A single listening sigil pulsed softly, active.
Jugram Haschwalth stood in silence, one hand behind his back, the other clenched tight around a fist-sized device carved from soulglass and bloodmetal. The transmission it intercepted was faint, fragmented…
…but unmistakably from Ryuuken Ishida's private lab.
Through the echo came the voices.
…
"They're not divine."
"Reishi is symbiotic."
"Then… we're part symbiote."
…
Jugram didn't flinch. But his jaw twitched.
Behind him, Bazz-B leaned on a pillar, his usual smirk missing.
"That's not… that can't be real, right? That's gotta be some Soul Reaper garbage. Propaganda."
No one answered.
"Right, Jugram?"
Still, silence.
The device hissed again.
…
"We were trying to fight what we already were…"
"…another branch of something that came from the Void."
"…tell someone who won't panic. We tell Peter-Knull."
…
The recording stopped.
Liltotto, perched atop a stone rail, tossed her lollipop into a bin and slowly stood, arms folded.
"That wasn't propaganda."
"That was a confession."
Jugram said nothing for a long moment.
Then… he moved.
The vault was buried beneath three floors of sealed scripture and silence—protected by Quincy-form kido, reishi harmonics, and memory barriers even Soul Society's sages would fail to interpret.
Jugram Haschwalth walked without escort.
His boots echoed along the blackened stone, torch-crystals flaring briefly as his spiritual pressure passed. The hallway led to an isolation greenhouse, a contained, monitored chamber they had kept hidden since it was… retrieved.
A gift they never truly understood.
A symbiote-flower, grown in Hueco Mundo soil, sealed in a synthetic habitat, breathing filtered spiritual air and nothing else.
It didn't bloom.
It didn't wilt.
It just… was.
He stood before the transparent wall, watching it pulse faintly beneath the containment field. Its vines twisted around themselves, looping like a heartbeat caught in stasis.
In his hand, he held a vial.
Inside, refined spirit particles, drawn directly from ambient Wandenreich reservoirs, what the Quincy considered purest energy.
No additives.
No interference.
Raw soul-light.
Jugram didn't speak.
He unscrewed the vial cap with one steady twist.
And extended his hand slowly into the observation funnel, where the filtered air led into the plant's sealed chamber.
The vial's mouth hovered just above the sealed tube.
At first… nothing.
Then the spirit particles rippled.
Ever so slightly.
Like dust caught in a breeze no one else could feel.
Then, they pressed.
Pressed hard against the glass.
The particles pushed into the vial's walls, like hands on glass, as if drawn to something in the chamber.
Jugram narrowed his eyes and stepped one inch closer.
The containment field around the symbiote-flower flickered in response.
Then, with an audible snap, the spirit particles hardened, condensing from mist into a thin, quivering membrane that peeled itself forward, dragging against the vial's inner lining like a spiderweb being pulled inside-out.
"No…"
It twitched.
A translucent strand of light and pulse coalesced into a thin, luminescent worm, squirming, luminous, trying to crawl through the glass, toward the flower.
Then, without warning…
SHRRRRRKKK-!
It spasmed violently, collapsed in on itself.
Then melted into a thin puddle of reishi-fluid, dripping back into the bottom of the vial like it had never lived at all.
Jugram stood still, breathing through clenched teeth.
He slowly recapped the vial.
And whispered, almost to the chamber itself:
"So, it's true…"
"Even our light remembers the dark."
…
Soul Society, West District – Squad 8 Review Yard
Rows of new recruits stood at quiet attention beneath the rising sun.
The former Arrancar, many of them barely weeks out from Hueco Mundo's chaos, were dressed in modified shihakushō, standard Soul Reaper uniforms with white sashes that still bore their Hollow insignias out of respect for their origins.
Captain Shunsui Kyōraku stood in the shade of a blossoming soul-maple tree, straw hat tilted, sipping from a cold teacup as he watched the files scroll across Nanao's clipboard.
Beside them, Captain Sajin Komamura, still hulking, still stoic, reviewed a line of recruits with narrowed eyes, saying little.
All was quiet…
Until Nanao stopped reading.
She didn't speak.
Didn't blink.
Just stared.
Shunsui turned slightly, noticing the break in her composure.
"Nanao-chan?"
No answer.
She simply walked forward, past the lines of new recruits, past the curious glances, toward a figure standing off-center.
A female Arrancar, tall and serene, stood with arms behind her back. Her features were delicate, even elegant, despite the Hollow mask fragment that curled across her left eye and over the bridge of her nose like a fossilized crescent. A single antler, smooth and crystalline, jutted from the left side of her skull.
Her aura was calm. Not threatening. But ancient.
Nanao's hand trembled as she adjusted her glasses.
"Name?"
The Arrancar blinked. Her voice was soft. Dreamlike.
"...I was called Kashira, by the others. I do not remember a true name."
Her tone was sincere. Confused, but not distressed.
Kyōraku approached, now standing beside Nanao, who did not look away from the woman.
Then Shunsui saw it.
The shape of her eyes. The angle of her cheekbones. The way her reiatsu pulsed, quiet and strong, like a storm below still water.
Shunsui's face dropped into rare seriousness.
"Komamura…"
Komamura stepped forward noticing the new arrancar recruit and his eyes widened almost instantly.
Kashira turned her head, puzzled.
"Have I… done something wrong?"
Komamura said nothing.
Nanao took a careful step closer. "Do you… remember anything before Hueco Mundo?"
The woman shook her head gently. "No. Only darkness. And then light. And pain and flashing images of my time as a Gillian that was feeding on other Gillians. But it faded quickly after those dreams were over?"
"Do you remember ever being… human?"
She blinked clearly hesitating.
"No. Not that I can remember?"
Shunsui exhaled as he collected his thoughts in response to this. "I didn't think so…"
But they all knew after a moment of checking the records.
Kashira's resemblance was no coincidence.
The line of her face. The essence of her spiritual rhythm.
It was Masaki Kurosaki.
Ichigo's mother.
And if she had become a Hollow after her death… and from there a Gillian before achieving the form of a Vasta Lord, then an Arrancar… and somehow retained enough resonance to resemble herself, even with no memories, then it could only mean one thing:
The Hollow that had once threatened her life… didn't just infect her.
She became a Hollow after that, then from there, a Gillion, then a Vasta-Lord, then ultimately an arrancar.
And her soul... survived.
Shunsui's voice dropped. "This isn't just a soul anomaly. How the hell did we miss this? We need to inform Captain Commander Yamamoto. And… Kurosaki's family."
Nanao still hadn't moved. She was staring into the eyes of a ghost.
"Do we… tell her who she was?"
Shunsui frowned, deeply. "Not yet, she's already confused enough as it is, but we'll have to eventually. For now, though, let's contact decide how we'll break this news to Ichigo."
…
Squad 8, Later That Afternoon…
The sun had begun its slow descent over the Western District as a wind had a bite now. Faint, but real, an omen whispering through sakura petals and spirit glass.
Inside Squad 8's central chamber, Shunsui Kyōraku stood alone, gazing into a swirling reflection pool lined with spiritual threads. Each thread flickered softly, a relay node of the symbiote network, granted clearance by Peter-Knull to speed Soul Society's internal communications between the world of the living, Hundo-Mundo teams who are there scouring the new jungle laced lands for newly formed Vasta-Lords to join them and Soul Society.
He touched one thread.
"Bring him here. Tell him… it's urgent. But don't say her name."
Behind him, Nanao watched silently already preparing herself for the fallout of this.
…
Squad 8 Practice Grounds…
Ichigo Kurosaki landed with the familiar flash-step of a man used to sprinting across battlefields. His hair tousled, uniform half-loose, but alert.
"You called?"
He looked between Komamura, Nanao, and Kyōraku, sensing tension in the very air.
"Did something happen?"
Shunsui tilted his hat forward.
"Yes. But I need you to brace yourself."
Ichigo frowned. "Is it something Aizen left behind again, something that he did to screw with us even in death? Did one of the Knulls-?"
"No. This… is personal."
He gestured toward the courtyard, where a cluster of new arrivals stood finishing drills.
Among them, one figure stood still, serene.
'Her'.
Kashira.
Ichigo followed Shunsui's gaze.
And froze when his sight landed on her.
The world tilted slightly, like he'd stepped onto glass that suddenly cracked.
"That's…"
He took one step forward. His heart stuttered in his chest.
"That's… my mom."
Kashira turned, drawn by his voice.
She didn't smile.
She didn't recoil.
She simply tilted her head slightly, her eyes calm but unknowing.
"Do I… know you sir?"
Her voice was gentle. Polite.
And that was somehow worse.
Ichigo's throat went dry.
"You don't remember me?"
Kashira blinked. "No. Should I?"
His knees nearly buckled.
Shunsui moved forward slowly, voice quiet behind him.
"She came from the deepest layers of Hueco Mundo. We ran her spiritual signature through the registry three times. There's no mistake."
Nanao added softly. "She has no memory of her human life. No imprint. No ties. It's as if she was reborn through pain. Through the process that made her a Gillian and then a Vasta-Lord before becoming an arrancar after feeding on enough of those flower petals Peter-Knull left in Hundo-Mundo."
Shunsui exhaled.
"Her soul fell after the Hollow's infection. And when she died… it didn't return to the cycle. The Spirit King allowed it to drift. To fall into Hundo-Mundo. To become for whatever reason the end result of the hollow cycle."
"She went from human… to Hollow… to Gillian… to Vasta-Lorde. And then, finally, she tore off her mask."
"She became an Arrancar. One of them."
Kashira stood quietly, watching the tremble in Ichigo's hands.
"I don't want to upset you," she said softly. "You're shaking."
Ichigo laughed once, bitter and broken.
"No. It's not your fault."
He clenched his fists, trying to contain the burn behind his eyes.
"It's his."
And as he stood there shaking, the thoughts flooded his grief-stricken mind.
…
"The Spirit King did this.
The bastard who calls himself divine.
He let this happen because he was bored."
My mother… my mother became a monster so he could watch her suffer.
…
Kashira stepped closer, concerned now.
"Are you hurt?"
He looked up at her.
And for a moment, just a moment, he saw a flicker.
The same concern Masaki once showed, when he scraped his knee as a child.
But it wasn't the same.
Just a spark buried under layers of soul-erosion since she wasn't entirely his mom but also the hundreds of other spirits that became the Gillian she was before she became the arrancar she was now.
"No," he whispered. "Just remembering something."
Shunsui touched his shoulder.
"We can erase the memory from the records. Keep it hidden if you want. No one has to know."
Ichigo took a moment thinking on that before shaking his head.
"No. If she survived all that… she deserves to be known."
He stepped away, shoulders heavy. "But I need to be alone right now."
And then he was gone. A flash-step later, the air folded in on itself. Only silence remained.
Kashira tilted her head again. "That boy… he looked so sad."
Nanao whispered, almost to herself: "Because to him, you were home."
…
Captain's Council Chamber, Seireitei…
The flame-pools at each corner crackling softly. Above, the faint silhouettes of former Captains, etched into the ceiling's soul-glass dome, watched like ghosts of eras long past.
Twelve captains. Two lieutenants seated in proxy. One Commander at the head.
And a silence so thick, it felt like it had mass.
Captain-Commander Genryūsai Yamamoto sat with both hands resting on his cane, beard unmoving, eyes closed… but very much awake.
Their meeting had begun routinely, assignments for former Arrancar integrations, patrol route rotations for the more populated Sereties, discussions on the healing cycles following the Knull conflict in Hueco Mundo since the Gillians were more concerned with eating flower petals now that they had a sustainable food source.
Then, near the end…
He opened his eyes.
"Before we adjourn, there is one more matter."
His voice wasn't angry.
It was tired after the recent revelations that have come to light in regards to the rumors.
A man who had seen too much flame consume too many truths.
The others looked up, Byakuya, Soi-Fon, Amagi, Tōshirō, Ukitake. Even Kenpachi leaned forward slightly.
Yamamoto slowly raised a sealed envelope and set it on the table.
The wax had been marked with a symbiote tendril sigil, Peter-Knull's.
"A message was delivered to me by Squad Zero... and Peter-Knull, after they confronted the Spirit King directly over Kurosaki's mothers fate."
Even that name, the Spirit King, earned mixed reactions.
Soifon folded her arms tightly.
Shunsui Kyōraku pulled his hat lower.
Byakuya's jaw twitched just slightly, a crack in his usual elegance.
Yamamoto unraveled the scroll.
"The Spirit King did not deny it."
He glanced across the room.
"He confirmed what we feared. What Peter-Knull already suspected."
Then he read the words aloud, the message burned into memory:
"I made this reality. It's not like I can do anything else to satisfy my boredom. Why are you getting so upset, God of the Void?"
"Either devour me like you're supposed to, or get the, [REDACTED, out."
The room froze.
Hitsugaya sat rigid, his eyes wide.
"He said it... just like that?"
Yamamoto nodded.
Ukitake looked pained. "Not even a trace of regret..."
Soifon hissed under her breath. "So, we were all toys to him. His amusement."
Komamura's fist clenched beneath the table. "How long have we bled for a lie?"
Kenpachi barked a bitter laugh. "You mean to tell me the King of All Realms was just some cosmic brat? All this structure, all this power, and he did it for fun?"
No one answered.
Byakuya Kuchiki, finally speaking, stared ahead blankly. "He created the so called balance, these realms… not to preserve life, but to entertain himself… Our Zanpakutō were forged for a farce."
Mayuri, for once, said nothing.
Even he had no joy in dissection here.
Yamamoto finally broke the silence again.
"The truth is out now. There is no more veil to hide behind. We were built upon the whim of a prisoner god. A Knull, Void-born. One who fractured pieces of himself to shape this realm out of the primordial cosmic soup, and then when we sealed him away, he wanted nothing more than to cause as much grief as he could, all for a child's game… to entertain himself."
His gaze fell to the floor, then returned to the Council.
"But that darker nature… lingers, and now, we must ask; do we serve the law that binds us, or the truth that has freed us?"
The words echoed through the meeting room.
No one answered right away.
There were no declarations.
No outrage.
No unified decision.
Only the crushing, undeniable understanding:
They had been serving a kingdom built by something that never intended to lead.
…
Soul Society Processing Hub, South District – Early Morning…
The air smelled faintly of polished soul-pine and incense.
Stacks of parchment rustled gently under the clawed fingertips of Grey-Syms, a few Sym-Kitsunes and Sym-Samari, semi-humanoid symbiotes with flowing tendrils and grey and red armors and glowing rune patterns that shimmered in tandem with the spiritual resonance of nearby souls. They worked diligently, lining up forms, checking resonance logs, guiding newly-arrived souls to proper stations.
It was calm.
Efficient.
And at the heart of it, sleeves rolled up, fingers stained with soul-ink and symbiote resin,
Peter-Knull.
He was kneeling beside a younger soul who couldn't stop trembling, helping him stabilize his physical form for paperwork processing.
"There we go," Peter said gently, adjusting the boy's cloak. "The nerves are just spiritual echoes. Breathe through it, kid. You're already safe."
The Grey-Sym beside him chirped softly, extending a form sealed with a drop of golden ichor.
Peter stood, carefully handing it off.
"Slot him into Seretie-5. Healing Division needs spiritual sensitives. He'll thrive."
From behind the polished archway of soulglass and amber steel, Yamamoto Genryūsai watched the moment in silence.
The elder's fingers gripped the edge of his staff, but he didn't lean on it.
He didn't need to.
Not for this.
He was just… thinking.
He doesn't have to do any of this…
He's a god who could be sitting in judgment above us all…
And yet, here he is. Sorting soul files, listening to names, healing grief.
Fixing a mess that wasn't his to clean.
Peter-Knull caught Yamamoto's gaze and offered a slight nod. He didn't pause his work. Didn't expect praise.
He just kept doing what needed to be done.
…
Later – Outside the Processing Chamber…
They walked together in companionable silence, passing between fields where newly formed Seraphis Symbiotes comforted souls exiting trauma stabilization. A few younger soul reapers offered respectful bows, now no longer terrified of the "Void King," but deeply grateful.
"We held the vote," Yamamoto said at last, his voice softer than usual.
Peter raised an eyebrow. "And?"
"Unanimous."
"Soul Society will be… rewritten."
Peter stopped walking. Turned.
"...That's rare."
Yamamoto's beard twitched. "We've all been following echoes for too long. And that… 'thing' in the Crystal Prison is no longer our god."
Peter didn't smirk. He just nodded. Gravely.
"Good. No soul deserves to suffer in a cycle built by a bored tyrant."
Yamamoto continued:
"The law that forced death matches over Zanpakutō resonance? Struck down."
"The bias against cross-dimensional unions, repealed. Yoruichi and Damion, the son of the Mystique and Peter Parker variants, are free to marry without scrutiny."
"And the mandate that souls must suffer as Hollows before redemption? Obliterated."
Peter exhaled slowly. "That's good…"
He looked toward the eastern sky, where a Seraphis shimmered in the distance, healing a small family of lost children who had wandered out of the world of the living earlier that week.
"I will step down… in a year and a half."
Peter blinked, surprised.
"You're serious."
Yamamoto nodded "I've given my centuries. Fought in too many wars. Carried the weight of a world I no longer believe in, not as it was."
He turned his head, eyes heavy with time.
"Shunsui is ready. He doesn't know it yet. But he will be."
Peter said nothing.
Yamamoto continued.
"Raiden will come when it is his time after the captain that follows just as his future siblings said. He's not born yet, but even the stars know his name."
"When that day arrives, I want to know that I left behind a Soul Society… worth guarding."
There was quiet moment that followed for a few seconds then Peter-Knull finally said, "Then you've already started better than your predecessor."
As they stood side-by-side beneath the slow-moving clouds above the Processing Tower, Peter placed one hand gently against the polished wall beside him.
"This realm can heal. But it needs those who are willing to hold it with open hands."
Yamamoto said nothing at first. Then, simply. "And we were lucky… that one of those hands came from the Void-King."
…
It was dark.
Not the comforting dark of sleep or stillness… but the suffocating, pitch-black pressure of something ancient… aware.
Jūshirō Ukitake stood barefoot in what looked like an infinite cavern of churning ash and bone-white fog. But the air, it slithered when he breathed it. The ground twitched beneath his toes. He could feel something just beneath the surface, like a heartbeat pulsing beneath rotten silk.
Then…
A sound.
CHITTER-CHITTER-SLICK.
Like oil dragging across teeth. Like lungs wheezing beneath water.
From the far end of the void, a shape slithered forward. Not walked—slithered. Dragged. An arm, impossibly large, pale and bloated, its flesh writhing like it remembered being something else. Veins of soul-thread and old scar-tissue pulsed beneath the surface, tendrils spilling out from its wrist like liquefied spiders.
And at the center of its forearm?
An eye. Round. Black. Faceted like an insect's. It blinked—once—without a lid.
Ukitake tried to move.
He couldn't.
The dream held him like prey.
The tendrils surged, slamming into his chest—his lungs—and he screamed. Not from pain, but from the awareness flooding his mind, a language not meant for mortals twisting his thoughts into threads.
Then it spoke.
Not in words.
But in sensation. In taste. In crawling heat behind the teeth.
"Back off, little host..."
"Or you'll suffer something far worse than tuberculosis."
The tendrils tightened, pulling at the spiritual anchors of his body, flooding his chest with invisible weight. The eye widened.
"You were never supposed to wake up."
"You were a vessel, nothing more."
"But you're dreaming now, Jūshirō… and dreams leak."
Reality, Outside Loly's and Grym-Axe's Quarters, Squad-4 Barracks
Ukitake awoke with a violent gasp, like a drowning man breaching the surface.
But he wasn't in his bed.
He was outside. Barefoot. Cold. Blades drawn. Breathing hard. His zanpakutō clutched in both hands.
And he was standing outside Loly's quarters, the door ajar, faint crying echoing from within.
Inside, Grym-Axe had taken a defensive stance, shielding their child behind him.
The baby's cry cut through the air like a shattering chime.
Ukitake blinked, heart thundering, vision disoriented…
And looked down.
His zanpakutō spirits, pale like moonlight and identical in apperance, had apparently noticed him and were desperately trying to wake him up, clinging to his legs like children desperate to wake their father.
"Captain... wake up!"
"You're not yourself!"
"Please! That thing inside-!"
Their voices blurred into one another, overlapping, rippling.
Ukitake fell to one knee, the weight of his own spiritual pressure collapsing in on itself.
"I... I didn't mean to-!" he choked, tears in his eyes. "I didn't even know I walked here-!"
And then he saw it.
In the glass pane beside the door, reflected back…
A faint silhouette of that arm, still whispering behind his eyes.
The right arm of the Spirit King…
Still inside him.
And no longer hiding.
…
Squad 4 Medical Bay – Late Night…
Bio-lamps that pulsed in soft, organic rhythm. Ukitake sat hunched forward on a reinforced diagnostic bench, skin pallid, his breaths shallow but controlled yet still sweating and wide eyed as he was still feeling revulsion of what happened. Unohana knelt before him, pressing a diagnostic sym-needle against his chest, reading fluctuations in his soul pressure and internal damage since his condition worsened all of a sudden after the incident.
Yamamoto stood nearby, arms folded, silent but grim.
Loly stood protectively at the edge of the room, one hand gripping the doorframe. "She's okay," she said quietly, as if repeating it for herself. "Our daughter's okay. He didn't hurt her."
Ukitake flinched. "But I could've."
His voice cracked. "I didn't even know I left my room. That… thing... it puppeted me—like I was nothing."
Yamamoto's eyes narrowed. "You were never nothing. You carried it because none of us could. But it's time we remove that burden."
Right then, the shadows along the far wall rippled—and from them, Peter-Knull stepped through.
No fanfare. Just the Void incarnate walking silently into a room brimming with tension.
Grym-Axe saluted him with a nod. "Thank you for coming."
Peter said nothing at first. He walked past everyone with the stillness of judgment and stopped directly in front of Ukitake. His eyes scanned the Captain's chest—deeper than flesh, deeper than reiatsu. Into the folds of reality and spirit intertwined.
Peter sighed.
"I knew this day would come."
Ukitake, still pale, looked up. "Can you remove it?"
Peter nodded. "Yes. But you need to be ready."
Ukitake swallowed, then drew a deep, shaking breath. "Do it."
Peter's right arm shifted, splitting into dozens of blackened tendrils, each tipped in glowing glyphs of the Void. They writhed through the air like strands of a spider's web humming with symphonic tension.
As they phased through Ukitake's chest, the Captain gritted his teeth and grunted, his hands gripping the edge of the bench so hard it cracked beneath him. The tendrils plunged deeper, swirling around the corrupted energy that had festered inside him for decades.
And then…
Peter wrenched it free.
A grotesque, twitching fleshy mass, shaped like a malformed arm with a single black, multifaceted eye and thrashing tendrils, now writhed in his grip. It squealed—a sound like steel grinding through glass, vibrating with raw, spiteful malice.
Everyone in the room flinched at the sound.
Nanao instinctively stepped behind Shunsui, her hand trembling.
Unohana froze and felt revulsion for the first time in centuries upon realizing what was inside the captain, her ally. "That… that wasn't just an appendage. It was sentient."
Peter glared down at the thing, at the wriggling parasite that had whispered through dreams and lung tissue for lifetimes.
His voice dropped low. Calm. Terrifying.
"I know you can hear me."
"You crossed a line."
"And that will cost you."
Without waiting another second, Peter opened his mouth, impossibly wide, and with a swift, brutal CRUNCH, bit down, shredding the thing between his fangs.
Its screech was cut off instantly.
A moment passed.
Then another.
Only the sound of Ukitake gasping filled the chamber.
The parasite was gone.
Devoured.
The stench of scorched soul-particles lingered, acidic and wrong.
Unohana stepped forward quickly, wrapping bandages and applying stabilizing soul-salve across Ukitake's chest. "Vitals are stabilizing. Soul pressure no longer fluctuating."
Yamamoto nodded, his face impassive, though even he looked disturbed.
Shunsui rubbed his eyes slowly. "That thing lived in him… for decades. I never knew."
Loly held her daughter tighter, staring at Peter with a mix of horror… and gratitude.
Ukitake exhaled slowly, shoulders trembling.
"…It's gone."
Peter nodded, eyes still cold.
"You were never weak," he said quietly. "You were a prison. And you held strong."
Ukitake looked up at him, eyes glossy.
"Thank you."
Peter turned to leave but paused once, glancing back.
"It was just a piece, only one of his arms," he said. "There are others… and now, they know we're removing them. I'd keep an eye out for any others like it."
And with that he gave the captain some space to breath again, for the first time in decades, he could breathe without pain or breaking into a coughing fit.
…
Ichigo's Inner World…
The sky in his soul had long since darkened.
No longer the tilted skyscrapers and drifting white clouds of memory. Now, the horizon bled with deep crimson, like a sky torn open and left to bleed into black sea.
The wind screamed around him, but it wasn't real wind.
It was his rage.
Ichigo Kurosaki stood in the center of his inner world's ocean, waist-deep in still, black water. His reflection distorted in every ripple. But he wasn't looking at it.
He wasn't looking at anything.
His fists were clenched so tight, blood mixed with spirit particles dripped into the tide.
He had been here for hours.
And every time he closed his eyes, he saw her face.
His mother's face.
Masaki.
Except it wasn't her anymore. Not in memory. Not in spirit. Not in soul. She had become something else. Something Hollow. Something warped. Something that shouldn't have been, but was, because someone let it happen.
He whispered at first. His voice barely audible beneath the roar of the crimson sky.
"That bastard..."
A trembling breath.
"He made this reality."
"He made all of this."
He turned, suddenly, violently, a wave crashing outward from where his foot struck the surface.
"For what? For his entertainment?"
He screamed it at the clouds. At the void. At the thing he could no longer pretend was divine.
"That bastard..."
His knees hit the water.
His breath was ragged.
"He let her suffer."
"He let us suffer."
"First Aizen, now this?! All of them… we fought through Hell…!"
He stared upward, tears boiling in his eyes, fists submerged in the inky black.
And then, the voice broke loose, the voice that had been building like a storm inside his ribs since the moment he saw Kashira.
"THAT BASTARD!"
The world around him shattered for a moment, not literally, but spiritually, as his reiryoku surged uncontrollably, cracking the air like lightning through glass.
Zangetsu's shadow flickered behind him. Not the old man. Not the Hollow. Something in between, both sides of his soul shaken by the storm their wielder had become.
Ichigo slowly stood.
The water boiled at his feet.
And in the jagged twilight of his world, he made a vow that cut through the silence with more certainty than any blade.
"If Peter-Knull doesn't end him…"
"If no one else does…"
He raised his head, eyes glowing with the full force of his wrath.
"Then I will."
The sky cracked again, lightning shaped like a spider's fang clawing through the clouds.
"I don't care if he calls himself God!"
"I don't care if he created everything in our reality!"
His voice broke from fury and purpose colliding.
"If all of this was just a game to him, then I'll be the one who breaks the board."
And for a brief moment…
The black water beneath him pulled back, exposing the sea floor, bones and fragments of ancient things buried beneath his soul.
Even they seemed to stir.
Because something inside Ichigo had awakened.
Not Hollow.
Not Shinigami. Just broken.
The silence after his outburst lingered like ash.
The crimson sky roiled above Ichigo, split by streaks of jagged black, the emotional storm still raging around his spirit. The black sea at his feet trembled… but not from his anger alone anymore.
There was something else.
A pressure.
A tension beneath the surface.
Like the world inside him had felt something.
Felt something die.
The air thinned.
Then, he appeared, not rising, but standing, as if he had always been there in the storm's still eye.
Zangetsu.
Tall. Calm. Cloaked in shadow and that long black coat with flowing tails. The glasses perched on his nose reflected lightning, his mouth a tight, unreadable line. But his silence was deafening.
He wasn't walking toward Ichigo. He wasn't speaking.
He was listening.
Feeling something far away.
Even Hollow Ichigo noticed.
He emerged behind Ichigo, feet bare on the dark water, expression unusually still. There was no smirk. No mocking tone. His yellow eyes were narrowed.
"…He's been real quiet," Hollow Ichigo said, low.
Ichigo turned slightly, then back toward Zangetsu. "He's not saying anything. Not since I got here."
The Hollow tilted his head. "He ain't just listening to you."
Then, Zangetsu blinked.
Once. Slowly.
And finally, he spoke.
"…It's gone."
His voice didn't echo with authority this time. It sounded… disoriented. Distant. Like someone who had just felt the floor fall out from under them.
Ichigo frowned. "What is?"
Zangetsu's head turned toward the blood-hued sky.
"Part of him," he whispered. "One of his arms. A piece of the Will."
The storm over Ichigo's inner world screamed as thunder cracked through the silence.
"I felt it die."
The Hollow moved closer, now standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Ichigo. He glanced at Zangetsu like someone watching an actor forget their lines.
"You feelin' okay, 'Old Man'?"
Zangetsu's lips parted slightly… then curled downward, as if in pain.
"He's screaming."
That made both Ichigo and his Hollow turn.
Zangetsu's glasses slipped just enough to show his eyes beneath, terrified.
"He's screaming inside the crystal. He felt it, when Peter devoured it. He's not just angry."
"He's afraid."
For a moment, all three of them stood in silence again, the weight of that word hitting harder than any sword:
Afraid.
"…Wait," Ichigo said slowly. "Are you saying the Spirit King, he's feeling fear?"
Zangetsu didn't answer. He only nodded once, like a truth buried too deep had surfaced without permission.
Then Ichigo noticed it, Zangetsu's shadow was flickering oddly. Unevenly.
"Zangetsu… are you-?"
"Not now," the Hollow cut in sharply, eyes flicking toward his counterpart with suspicion. "There's somethin' off about him. Been off for a while."
Zangetsu turned his gaze down toward Ichigo at last.
"Ichigo… you must understand. This world, this system, it wasn't just created. It was seeded. Woven together by a being who lied about why he did it. A parasite of a god. And we all, all, are his inheritance."
Ichigo grit his teeth again.
"I don't want to be part of that."
The Hollow bared his teeth.
"Then rip it out. Burn it down."
But Zangetsu only watched him quietly, and in that moment, Ichigo saw something strange behind his eyes, a deep, cold familiarity with the panic now rising across the Spirit Realms.
Zangetsu had known something like this might happen.
He had always known.
And now? He had no choice but to show it.
…
Northern Spiritway – Convoy Corridor to the High Vault
A jagged storm hung low in the sky, clouds curling like coiled serpents over the towering crystalline peaks of Soul Society's outermost sanctum. Hail of reiatsu-charged particles danced across the sky, mirroring the spiritual unrest permeating every corner of the realms. The King's Seal, contained in a coffin-like vault of soulsteel and Kido-stamped voidglass, hovered between four armored Soul Reapers trained in handling ancient relics.
Tōshirō Hitsugaya walked beside them in full battle regalia, Hyōrinmaru pulsing at his back. Despite his composed exterior, his senses were stretched thin. This wasn't just a vault transfer. This was an act of containment, reexamination… and suspicion.
If this really is another parasitic fragment… if this is tied to the Spirit King again…
He clenched his jaw.
Flanking the convoy was an unlikely squad—Soul Reapers, blanks reborn from the Valley of Screams, and a small detachment of hybrid allies including one young woman who had once been forgotten:
Senna.
Clad in a sleeveless, modernized Soul Reaper coat interwoven with symbiotic stabilizers, her orange eyes were sharp as ever. No longer fading. No longer an echo. Her zanpakutō shimmered beside her, held with confidence.
"Status check, two clicks out," she said, flicking her gaze toward Hitsugaya. "Still smooth."
Hitsugaya gave a short nod, though tension had already begun to gather behind his eyes.
A gust of foul wind rolled across the road from nowhere—followed by a sound like scraping metal twisted through ice.
And then… impact.
Two Nimrod-class Stealth Sentinels, their plating now marked by eerie crimson glyphs of unknown programming, shimmered into view from a cloaked dimensional fold. Their limbs bristled with energy lances, reaper-field arrays spinning from their backs like petals of death.
One opened its maw and shrieked a sound that wasn't technological at all—but living.
They had been reprogrammed. Infected. Something had rewritten their purpose.
But the defenders were already moving.
Two titanic figures leapt forward from the misted ledge overlooking the convoy trail.
Thraag-Gor the Dreadbound was a towering male Sym-Orc with rough black-and-olive hide etched in tribal sym-script. His symbiote armor clung like molten obsidian fused to spiked iron plating. A single glowing eye adorned his left shoulder, scanning enemy patterns. Massive fists wrapped in symbiote bone-plates cracked together with a thunderous boom as he roared.
His warcry split trees and scattered birds in the region.
Veshkara the Howling Bloom however was a lean, muscular female Sym-Orc adorned in armor reminiscent of a flowering corpse-lily, a combination of armored thorns and smooth bio-metal plates. Vines of luminous purple energy coiled around her limbs and weapon, an enormous glaive that looked grown from living crystal. Her movements were graceful and brutal, like a storm's edge wrapped in fury.
Together, they clashed with the Nimrods in a flurry of green, black, and metallic violet, roaring as their symbiotic forms tangled with the techno-organic monstrosities. Every impact echoed through the convoy like thunder smashing through mountain roots.
"Keep the Seal moving!" Hitsugaya shouted.
Senna leapt to his side, her blade charged with resonance-stabilized energy.
"On it! I'll keep them back with you!"
As the two Sym-Orcs tackled one of the sentinels into a broken ravine and the other screeched toward the vault…
Hitsugaya narrowed his eyes.
"We're not losing another piece of this puzzle."
Hitsugaya's voice cut through the storm, sharp and certain.
The cart containing the King's Seal surged forward, its shielding wards glowing under constant strain as Senna and the others cleared a path ahead. The Sym-Orcs were still locked in violent combat with the sentinels below the ridge, Veshkara letting loose a banshee howl while Thraag-Gor crushed a Nimrod's faceplate underfoot with symbiotic gauntlets writhing like chained spirits.
And then…
He saw movement.
Hitsugaya's eyes flicked left. Just near the rear axle of the seal cart, a shimmer in the rain, like oil sliding across a glass blade.
Too late for a full counter.
But not too late for instinct.
SHHHK!
He flash-stepped forward, Hyōrinmaru already halfway unsheathed in one hand as his other arm braced against the arc of a descending blade.
The clash echoed like the sound of ice fracturing beneath pressure.
Sparks flew.
A cloaked figure skidded back in the impact, masked in bone-white with a tattered gray cloak soaked by spiritual rain. The figure's weapon, a jagged saber that pulsed with faintly familiar reishi patterns, trembled in his grip.
Hitsugaya stood between him and the now-retreating cart.
"Who the hell are you?" Hitsugaya demanded, his voice low but seething.
The masked intruder said nothing.
Just stood there.
Breathing.
Watching.
Waiting.
Hitsugaya narrowed his eyes.
"You won't get another chance at it. The symbiotes have already tagged your scent. That means all of Soul Society knows you're here."
He took a step forward, frost crackling beneath his boots.
"You've already lost."
Another silence.
Then… the figure reached up.
And slowly removed his mask.
What Hitsugaya saw beneath it hit harder than any ambush.
His hand trembled.
The world seemed to freeze around him, not from ice, but from recognition. A scar across the jaw. Those familiar eyes, deeper now, colder… but undeniably his.
"Sojiro…?"
The figure's face remained calm. Empty of hate. Empty of remorse.
But those eyes, those were the same eyes that used to laugh with him in the old snowfields outside North Rukongai. The same eyes that trusted him. Followed him into battle. The same boy who… died.
Because of him.
Because they shared the same Zanpakutō.
Because the law had demanded it.
"You died…" Hitsugaya whispered, his voice cracking. "I saw you die."
Sojiro's expression didn't change.
"I was discarded," he said quietly. "Because I shared what they said no one else could. You remember, don't you? The moment I drew ice and they said it was treason."
He took a step forward, not in aggression, but in quiet damnation.
"I remember the cold more than the pain. The moment my soul was deemed... incompatible with order."
Hitsugaya's breath caught.
"You were my friend…"
"And I died for that."
A flicker of light behind them marked the cart reaching the outer gate, the Seal now surrounded by dozens of guards as it disappeared into the fog.
Too far now for Sojiro to reach it.
He hadn't come to succeed.
He had come… to make a point.
Hitsugaya stared at him in shock and grief and something else—guilt, carved deep.
And then Sojiro turned without a word.
A ripple in the rain cloaked him in distortion, and he vanished into mist.
Hitsugaya didn't move.
Couldn't.
Behind him, Hyōrinmaru pulsed faintly.
"…He's alive…"
His voice broke again.
"…He came back."