Marvel: From the Void and Back Again, Part 4
Chapter 3: Of Broken Hearts and Broken Things
…
The steel doors hissed open, revealing the upper command chamber bathed in angled light and flickering data holograms. The scent of old concrete, ozone, and years of tension were still there. A tactical grid hovered in the center, silently rotating, but all eyes were on the woman standing at the far end.
Director Maria Hill.
Immaculate. Stone-eyed. Silent as the group filed in.
Her arms were folded across a dark blue SHIELD jacket, but her gaze didn't waver. It passed from Laura-B1 to Peter-B1… then to Logan… then to Peter-Knull.
Only then did she speak.
"So. It's true."
No one said anything at first.
Peter-B1 finally stepped forward addressing her directly. "We didn't come back lightly."
"I figured," Hill replied. "Most people don't bring Void Kings and extradimensional, undocumented spirit-based beings unless they're trying to start either a war or an exorcism."
Laura-B1 snorted faintly. "Both might be on the table."
Hill didn't smile.
She looked past them at the others — Rangiku, Grimmjow, Renji, and Hitsugaya. The glimmering spiritual bracelets made them visible, their forms flickering faintly under the chamber's augmented light.
"You're from the place they call Soul Society," she said, more observation than question.
Hitsugaya gave a small bow. "Captain Tōshirō Hitsugaya, Tenth Division. These are my comrades. And yes, we're spirits. Visible only because of those bracelets your team is wearing. Good tech."
"We've been upgrading," Hill muttered. "Ever since the last Knull."
Her eyes lingered a second longer on Peter-Knull. Still trying to reconcile the devourer who saved half the galaxy with the quiet, impassive man standing before her like a black hole in humanoid shape.
"I've been briefed," she finally said. "Your Fury sent me the preliminary scans. The Nimrods. The soul weapons. The… Spirit King."
Peter-Knull tilted his head slightly. "He was never a king. Just a variant. One who built a cage and forgot why."
Hill exhaled sharply through her nose. "Yeah. That's about the tone Fury of your reality had, too."
She motioned toward the table, where projections of corrupted schematics, time-loop resonance threads, and dimensional bleed patterns hovered midair.
"Let's cut to the real reason you're here," she said. "The name 'Sojiro' came up."
Hitsugaya nodded solemnly. "He was my friend. A Soul Reaper who… lost himself."
The room quieted. Even Hill's breath caught slightly.
"He and I," Hitsugaya continued, stepping forward, "were chosen by the same Zanpakutō spirit. But in those days, our laws were absolute — only one wielder could exist. One soul, one sword."
He looked down briefly. "He panicked. Lost control. And I… I had no choice. I believed he died that day."
"And now?" Hill asked.
"He's alive," Hitsugaya said. "He attacked a royal transport convoy in Soul Society — one carrying the King's Seal."
That got Hill's full attention.
Peter-Knull took over.
"It wasn't a holy relic," he said flatly. "It was a Necro-Sword. A living codex wrapped in black mass, hidden in time-lock stasis. If it had touched the Spirit King's prison, it would've triggered a partial reawakening."
He looked directly at Hill.
"I devoured it."
She didn't flinch, but her shoulders shifted slightly.
"Right," she muttered. "Because that's something we say now."
"And," "And," Nemu's voice came from the small relay unit on Peter-Knull's shoulder, "the Sentinels Sojiro deployed came from this Earth. Earth-B1. Cross-referencing universal signature markers proves it. This world was a launching point."
Laura-B1 bristled. "We were trying to rebuild. Trying to fix things."
Peter-B1 gritted his teeth. "But they used our world. Again."
Logan finally spoke. "And I know what you're thinking," he rasped, addressing Hill directly. "That I'm just like the one who slaughtered your people. Who killed Cap. Gabriella. My own son."
Hill stared at him. Silent.
"I'm not him," Logan continued. "But I'm not here to make excuses. I'm here to finish it."
The silence held for a long moment. Then…
Hill turned.
And activated the last file on the table: a red ping, blinking slowly at the far edge of the map, a quarantined sector, once the edge of Upstate New York.
"Then I hope you're ready. Because we tracked residual dimensional signature trails to this facility. It was abandoned… but active."
She looked back at the team, her voice now steel.
"You want Sojiro? You want to end this? You'll get your chance."
She glanced again at Peter-Knull.
"And if you don't finish it… you better be ready to finish everything else."
Hill didn't speak right away.
She looked over the room, her expression unreadable — somewhere between war fatigue and silent dread — and then turned to a small secure case behind the console. Her gloved fingers entered a rapid code, unlocking a pressure-sealed compartment with a hydraulic hiss.
"I was debating whether or not to tell you this now," she said quietly, "but if we're going to walk into the lion's mouth together…"
She lifted something from within the container — small, cold, metallic.
She placed it on the table.
A thin, circular implant.
Almost unassuming.
Except for the diamond etched in its surface.
It gleamed under the tactical lights like a mockery of trust.
"…We recovered this," Hill said flatly, "from what was left of that Logan's skull."
A beat of stunned silence followed.
"No one's supposed to survive a phased cerebral disconnection," she continued. "Kitty ended it, because no one else could. But there was still brain matter left… and this was embedded inside it."
Laura-B1 took a step forward, eyes narrowed. "That's-?"
"Krakoan tech," Peter-B1 finished for her. "But that mark…"
"Sinister," Logan growled as the full implications hit him.
Hill nodded.
"Yes. Sinister embedded this directly into the regeneration matrix of the mutant resurrection protocol, back when Krakoa was still functioning."
Peter-Knull's expression darkened. The Void swirled faintly behind his eyes like the faintest rippling of a cosmic tide.
"So he was tampered with from the beginning," Renji muttered.
Hill's voice stayed level, but the tension beneath it was definitely there.
Hill exhaled, a long, heavy breath, the kind reserved for hard truths and colder justice.
Her eyes shifted away from Logan for just a moment, scanning the flickering map display behind the group. Then she looked back, sharp and tired.
"Next time you see Sinister," she said, voice low but iron-clad, "don't talk to him."
"Don't cut a deal. Don't try to reason. Just kill him."
A pause followed that statement
"Kill him again. And again. However many times it takes."
Her gaze swept the team like a weather front, slow, unrelenting. "Because compromises with Nathaniel Essex don't buy time. They sell souls."
Logan said nothing. He didn't need to. His silence was an open wound still bleeding behind his eyes.
Hill turned back to him.
"And I thought you should know… it wasn't your fault."
She didn't say it lightly. Not like someone offering pity, or forgiveness she didn't mean. It was delivered like a report, a truth found in black boxes and battlefield analysis.
"That version of you?" she continued. "He didn't make those choices. They were prewritten. Hard-coded into him like a virus. A failsafe for a war Sinister never got to start… but made damn sure someone else would finish."
Laura-B1's lip trembled once before she locked it down with a clenched jaw.
Peter-B1's hand slid gently into hers, grounding her.
Hill let the moment breathe, then spoke again, quieter now.
"So whatever guilt you're carrying, Logan… carry it like a sword. But don't let it become your cage."
She turned back toward the map table.
"Because you're not the man who broke this world."
She looked over her shoulder.
"You're one of the ones who might help fix it."
…
The detour was Peter-Knull's request.
He hadn't said anything on the walk over. Just gestured. Just led. And none of them had the heart to refuse him.
The cemetery was quiet. Quiet in that unnerving, sterile way that only the ruins of sacred ground could be. Long since abandoned by public workers, the gravestones were weatherworn, the moss overtaking names, the fences rusting beneath ivy and ash. But amid the decay, one site stood out, recently cleaned, recently rebuilt.
Peter-Knull had made it himself.
A stone shrine, shaped like a cathedral tombstone, rose from the earth, blackened onyx etched with Kree-vine script and symbiote-thread carvings, humming with faint resonance. Atop it stood a statue of an angel, its wings cracked but spread, arms outstretched in both mourning and defiance. Beneath it, the name still shone clearly in the soft ambient light:
GWEN STACY.
A sacred name.
A memory once devoured by Aizen and dishonored by war.
Peter-Knull stopped a few feet away.
So did Laura-B1 and Peter-B1, each carrying the weight of what they'd once lost… and what they were still trying to forgive themselves for.
Logan lingered back with Rangiku. The 616 Wolverine didn't speak — but his shoulders were already tensed. He could smell something. Wrong.
That's when Peter-Knull froze.
He saw them.
Three figures. Drunk. Loud. Laughing.
Synch. Toad. Blob.
And one of them, Blob, was mid-scrawl, a can of crimson spray-paint hissing against the tomb's side.
"Knull-Whore."
Laura-B1's hand immediately clenched, claws half-extending.
Peter-B1's expression darkened, breath caught in his throat.
But Peter-Knull…
He didn't say a word. Didn't move. Just stared.
The trio hadn't noticed them yet. Not until Blob stumbled back, laughing about his addition, bottle in hand.
"Yo, Synch, remember how that buyer paid us the big bucks to sell her remains?"
Toad snorted. "Yeah, man! What a scam. Who knew a chick with spider cooties would be worth that much?"
Synch grinned crookedly, breath heavy with stale liquor. "Aizen wanted every piece. Said it was for his 'ascension'. I didn't ask questions. Just took the deal."
That name…
That name alone made time stop.
Aizen.
Laura-B1's face paled.
"They… sold Gwen's body to Aizen?"
Even Rangiku took a step forward, disbelief cutting through her usual grace.
And then, the final insult.
Blob unzipped his fly.
And urinated at the base of the shrine, right beneath the statue's angelic wings.
For a moment, the world narrowed.
Logan's jaw dropped.
Laura gasped in fury.
Peter-B1 took a step forward.
But it was Peter-Knull who said nothing.
Just stared.
His gloved hand clenched, the crack of bones audible as his knuckles popped. The quiet grind of symbiote threads twisting beneath his coat whispered like rustling paper.
His teeth, sharp, primal, void-forged, bared for just a moment as he grit them, but still he didn't move.
Didn't speak.
Not yet.
Only the aura around him changed, thickened, became heavier.
Darker.
Like the Void had started to breathe.
Logan recognized the shift. He stepped between Peter-Knull and the drunken trio, quietly drawing his claws, not to protect them.
But to warn them.
They didn't know.
They didn't understand what they'd just done.
Peter-Knull took a slow, deliberate step forward.
And even the light over the gravestone dimmed.
The angel's wings, cracked though they were… seemed to shudder.
And what came next would not be mercy.
Not this time.
The blade whispered before it sang.
Void-Fang, Peter-Knull's living sword, hissed across the cracked stone as he dragged it behind him, sparks flashing as the edge kissed the shrine's foundation, a sacred place now soiled by the vilest kind of disrespect.
Toad was the first to notice.
He turned mid-swig, half-laughing at some crude joke about spider-girls and dead gods, when his eyes widened.
The bottle slipped from his hand.
And shattered.
His breath hitched.
His tongue, normally twitching with smirking filth, froze against the back of his teeth.
"...n-no... That's…"
He stepped backward.
Blob turned, already mid-laugh. "What's your problem, Froggy?"
Then he saw it too.
The Void Incarnate.
Peter-Knull's coat flared behind him like the wings of a predator god. The ambient light dimmed, not because the sun had moved, but because reality recoiled.
Toad gasped, eyes wide. "We thought-! You-!"
Peter-Knull didn't speak.
Not right away.
He simply lifted Void-Fang, resting it across his shoulder like a scythe waiting for harvest.
And when he did speak…
His voice wasn't loud.
It didn't need to be.
"You know how this ends."
He looked at them, each in turn. Blob, covered in sweat and shame. Toad, stumbling in horror. Synch, frozen like a statue.
"Say your prayers."
Then he moved.
Not like a warrior.
Not like a man.
Like a force.
Void-Fang shimmered in his grip, tendrils rippling across its obsidian surface like a storm made of fangs.
In a single slash, one motion, all three were down.
Their legs were gone.
Not bleeding. Not even screaming yet.
Just... gone.
Blob bellowed, slamming into the dirt.
Synch howled in pain, barely understanding what had just happened.
Toad tried to scream, and that's when Peter-Knull's second motion caught him.
His tongue.
The same tongue he used for a thousand insults, now wrapped tight around his own neck, pulled taut and looped back until it snapped into a knot.
He collapsed to the ground, choking, helpless.
Peter-Knull turned to Blob, who had begun crawling backward, sobbing, half-begging through his agony.
"No no no no-!"
Peter grabbed him by the throat, hoisting him off the ground with ease.
Blob's mouth opened in a garbled scream-
-just in time for Peter to shove the severed legs of his accomplices into his maw.
One. After. Another.
The symbiote blade roared in Peter's grip, resonating with the justice he was carving into the desecrators of Gwen's memory.
Blob gagged, flailing, until he couldn't anymore.
Then he turned to Synch.
Peter didn't speak.
Just reached for his arm.
Synch screamed.
Begged.
"I didn't mean-! I was desperate! I-!"
POP.
The shoulder snapped from its socket.
SNAP.
The bicep tore.
CRACK.
The tendons ripped one by one like cello strings under fire.
SHHHHHHRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIPPPP.
Peter pulled the entire arm free from the socket, slowly, letting every muscle fiber snap and coil back like broken rubber bands.
Synch's scream echoed through the cemetery like a funeral bell torn apart mid-peal.
Peter-Knull held the arm up, inspecting it like a relic… and then simply dropped it into the dirt beside the shrine.
Then, silence.
A silence so heavy, even Void-Fang stilled.
He didn't speak again.
He didn't need to.
Because there, above him, the angel on Gwen's gravestone caught the last rays of dying sunlight.
And this time… no one would dare desecrate it again.
…
The transport rumbled quietly through the stratosphere,a high-altitude, cloaked SHIELD stealthcraft retrofitted with Soul Society's spiritual shielding and Seraphis lattice-threading. Inside, there was no conversation.
Just silence.
And the hum of restrained momentum.
Peter-Knull sat at the helm, piloting the vessel with one hand on the controls and the other resting against the wall, fingers splayed on a patch of curved symbiote resin that shimmered faintly beneath his palm.
He didn't speak.
Didn't twitch.
Didn't even blink for long stretches.
Only his eyes moved, scanning the horizon as if only the mission ahead existed.
But everyone behind him… knew better.
The air inside the cabin felt tight. Not from altitude. Not from pressure.
From what they'd seen.
Ichigo sat along the port-side wall, shoulders rigid, his usual storm of emotion caged behind pale, stunned eyes. He hadn't spoken once since SHIELD's report confirmed what Peter-Knull had done to those three, Blob, Toad, and Synch.
The grave desecrators.
The sellers of Gwen Stacy's body.
"They're not dead," Ichigo had said quietly earlier, almost like a question.
Grimmjow had just muttered under his breath, "Which is scarier."
Rangiku sat across from Logan, arms folded, her gaze not on Peter-Knull, but on the faint claw marks etched into her own memory of what she witnessed.
as if trying to ground herself by studying the scratches left by someone else's rage.
Even she couldn't joke this away.
Logan was the only one who finally dared to speak.
"…You good?" he asked, low — not mocking, not challenging.
Just honest.
Peter didn't look back.
Didn't flinch.
His voice came like smoke off molten steel.
"I saw justice be done."
A beat.
"They walked away with their lives."
Another pause. This one longer.
"They deserved less."
And then, almost casually, as if it were a warning across time itself:
"But I'll give them a warning."
Logan's brow twitched. "That was the warning?"
Peter's hands tightened just slightly on the control stick.
"I told them not to do it again."
That was the end of the conversation.
Because no one wanted to know what Peter-Knull's version of "doing it again" would look like.
Behind them, the screen displayed their destination, the edge of New York's Redline Divergence Zone, once a classified industrial arcology, now marked as quarantined. The same facility where the signal trail of the Nimrod Sentinels had led.
The SHIELD report had only said one thing, "Still active."
…
The transport cut through the clouds like a silent predator, slicing over the scorched ruins of a land that once called itself free. The skies above Earth-B1 were permanently dim now, tainted with smoke trails, acid rainfall, and failed promises. The aircraft's stabilizers hissed as it descended near the overgrown checkpoint of the old Nimrod deployment sector.
Peter-Knull stood at the helm, steering with one hand while the other rested quietly on the hilt of his sheathed weapon, Void-Fang. His knuckles flexed. Not from tension, but a sense of rising disappointment. This world… had not healed.
The facility loomed beneath them, a fractured dome surrounded by jagged spires and automated turrets. The turrets blinked red. Target acquired.
"Contact," Ichigo muttered, peering through the reinforced glass.
The guns fired.
Bright flashes lit the air as tracer rounds, plasma bolts, and particle slugs peppered the sky.
Before anyone could react, Peter-Knull had already opened the cargo bay.
And jumped.
He didn't fall. He descended like a blade of vengeance, his coat splitting around him like the wings of a demon. The ground cracked beneath his landing, an eruption of dark tendrils slithering out from under his boots, swallowing the debris in black hunger.
The turrets swiveled. Tracked.
He vanished.
Then, impact.
The first turret exploded into ribbons of scrap and organic fluid. The second had its barrel twisted into a spiral by a tendril that grew teeth mid-strike and bit through the core wiring. The third tried to auto-target, only for Peter to appear behind it, dragging Void-Fang across the concrete, the weapon humming like a predator begging to feed.
He said nothing.
He moved with horrifying elegance, half-shadow, half-reaper. Every step he took melted the resistance around him. Defense drones were gutted before they even finished deploying. Wall-mounted sensors shrieked static before being impaled by spears of living metal.
Then the big one arrived.
A Nimrod Sentinel.
Ten stories tall. Chrome and crimson. Eyes glowing like a false god reborn. Its chest cracked open to fire an anti-hybrid blast… right before Peter-Knull raised his blade.
The next moment?
Silence.
The Nimrod didn't fall. It split, from scalp to groin, bisected in perfect symmetry, collapsing in on itself as black corrosion crawled over the halves, devouring its circuits mid-fall.
The team landed moments later, weapons drawn, but the battle was already over.
Rangiku's voice caught in her throat. "He… tore it in half."
The smoke parted.
Peter-Knull walked forward slowly, dragging Void-Fang once more behind him, the blade pulsing faintly, as if satisfied.
Logan dropped to one knee beside the sliced remains. His claws scraped the edge of one of the cut sections, and they sparked.
He paused.
Then turned it over. Scratched deeper. A sliver came loose… and he paled.
"Adamantium," he whispered.
Everyone looked his way.
"That Sentinel's frame… it was made of adamantium."
The name didn't land immediately.
Ichigo frowned, still dusting embers off his coat. "Okay. So?"
Renji cocked an eyebrow. "We've fought creatures with skin harder than steel before. That's not exactly new."
Grimmjow kicked at one of the Sentinel's scorched limbs, watching it bounce off a piece of crumpled debris. "Is that supposed to mean something to us?"
Logan stood up slowly, his expression dead serious. "You don't get it," he growled. "You really don't."
He held the shard he'd pulled from the wreckage between two fingers, the dull gleam of the alloy catching the low light like a shard of frozen starlight.
"Adamantium isn't just strong," Logan said deadly serious now. "It's not just dense. It's perfect. Total molecular stability. No grain. No flaws. It's not made — it's forced into existence under pressure that mimics the heart of a star."
He held the sliver higher.
"This right here? It ain't metal like you know it. There are no breaks in the atomic lattice. No weak points. The electrons don't flow through it — they circle it, like a living storm. The whole damn thing is one giant, unbreakable atom."
Even Grimmjow's cocky smirk faded.
Logan continued, now staring at Peter-Knull's back as the Void King walked further into the corridor. "The only reason I survived having it laced to my bones… is because my healing factor rebuilt the cells it killed, one at a time, forever."
"And he…" Logan's jaw tensed.
"He cut through it like it was butter."
Ichigo looked back at the clean slice through the ten-story Nimrod Sentinel, now bleeding sparks and molecular ash like a gutted titan.
Even he, as used to monstrous feats as he was, went still.
"No zanpakutō I've ever seen could do that," Renji muttered. "Not even Yamamoto's."
"No sword should be able to," Logan said. "But that one-?" He nodded toward Void-Fang, still dragging behind Peter with a soft, snarling hum. "That's not a sword. That's something that can cut through something that's supposed to be unbreakable."
"Void-born," Rangiku said quietly. "Alive."
Peter-Knull didn't turn around.
But his voice echoed faintly down the corridor ahead.
"I gave it purpose."
The others followed, silence folding over them like a shroud as the smoldering remains of the adamantium Sentinel cooled behind them.
And for the first time, the Soul Reapers truly began to understand:
Peter-Knull wasn't just a Void-Born.
He was built to make the impossible… possible.
Even if it meant doing things that didn't make any scientific sense.
…
The deeper they pushed through the facility, the more grotesque the silence became. Each hall they passed was choked in long-abandoned tech and decayed Orchis banners, half-melted from past crossfire. It was Grimmjow who first noticed the unusual curvature of the metal path ahead — a faint glow leaking through a sealed door near the base of the collapsed sub-vaults.
"Scanner's picking up residual heat," Rangiku murmured, tapping her holo-pad. "Industrial-grade… forge-grade."
Peter-Knull paused at the threshold.
The door opened.
Inside was a chamber unlike anything they'd seen in this reality — dimly lit by artificial torches, and in the center, an industrial conveyor flanked by assembly arms, each moving with mechanical precision. Stacked in rows were long, reinforced crates. Seventeen of them. And within… blade after blade, perfectly uniform.
Ichigo's voice caught as he stepped forward and pulled one free from its mount. "Wait… this is… Zabimaru."
Renji blinked. "What the hell do you mean that's Zabimaru?!"
Ichigo tossed the blade to the floor — it was hollow. Lacking a true soul. But to the untrained eye, it was a perfect replica. Every detail matched. Every groove. Even the spirit-inscribed surface.
Hitsugaya opened the second crate. "This one's… Hyōrinmaru."
Grimmjow yanked the lid off a third. "Katen Kyōkotsu."
Rangiku nearly dropped hers. "Wabisuke…"
Logan growled low. "These ain't replicas. They're copies. Mass-produced. But they're soulless."
On a side terminal, Peter-B1 pulled up a local console and cracked its data feed. "There's a full design schematic here. Each crate contains twenty copies of the same Zanpakutō. And…" He turned to Nemu, who had just linked in via relay feed.
"I'm reading artificial reiatsu injections," Nemu confirmed. "They're being programmed with pre-coded personality simulations. They don't house spirits… but they can mimic the basic functions of Shikai, and in some cases, even dummy Bankai modes. Not perfectly… but well enough for mass deployment."
Rangiku paled. "You mean… anyone could use these?"
"Anyone," Nemu said softly.
A slow beep chimed from the console as Peter-Knull scanned the fabrication log.
"What's the head researcher signature?" Logan asked, sensing something far worse.
Peter-Knull's eyes narrowed.
There were five lead profiles linked to this forge. He projected them on the cracked wall screen.
Hope Summers.
Exodus.
Proteus.
Beast.
Sinister.
The names echoed like gunshots.
Rangiku's hand covered her mouth.
Even Logan looked rattled. "Hope… she was one of the Five. She was supposed to save Krakoa."
Peter-Knull didn't speak. His shadow loomed longer across the crates, Void-Fang humming quietly at his side. When he finally spoke, it was a whisper steeped in revulsion.
"They used resurrection tech… and applied it to soul-forging."
"They broke open the mystery of what made a Zanpakutō alive," Nemu continued, her voice quieter now. "They didn't create life. They just… copied it. Echoed it."
"And Sojiro?" Hitsugaya asked, his voice tight with guilt.
Peter-B1 pointed at the last page of the log.
It was Sojiro's authorization code.
He'd signed off on the replication procedure. Dozens of Zanpakutō. Hundreds more on queue. And a note tagged at the bottom, scrawled in his digital hand:
"If I had been born now, I wouldn't have had to die for a lie."
Peter-Knull's gaze fell cold.
"Sojiro's not trying to wake the Spirit King," he murmured.
"He's trying to replace the Soul Society itself.
Peter-Knull didn't blink.
He moved with the deliberation of a deity approaching judgment, eyes fixed on the back wall of the forge chamber like he heard a whisper no one else could. Void-Fang's pulse throbbed faintly at his side, not a glow, but a war drum, sensing the corruption nearby.
Without a word, Peter stepped forward.
And slammed his fist through the wall.
A scream of twisting alloy echoed across the chamber as he tore through steel plating like it was decayed parchment. Sparks flew in wide arcs. Then, with one sharp wrench, he peeled the entire segment back.
Metal groaned. Light spilled in.
And there, standing in a hidden alcove, frozen mid-calibration, was Beast.
The blue-furred mutant was hunched over a sleek containment pedestal, wires still dangling from his fingers. Before him, nestled in stabilizing gyros and synthetic reiryoku tubes, was something unmistakable:
A replica of Ryūjin Jakka.
It pulsed with incomplete heat, coiling in its forge like a sleeping predator. The recreated Zanpakutō of Captain Commander Yamamoto.
Ichigo's stomach dropped. Hitsugaya's mouth parted in a soundless breath. Even Logan took a half-step forward, claws twitching like his body couldn't decide whether to rage or retch.
Peter-Knull said nothing at first. He only stepped through the exposed breach, the white of his eyes swallowed by encroaching black, as his silhouette stretched across the lab like the shadow of justice itself.
Beast stammered, backing into a cabinet of uninstalled Zanpakutō shells.
"This isn't, this isn't what it looks like-!"
"You shouldn't have," Peter muttered.
It was then that a liquid metal symbiotic mass detached itself from Peter-Knull and instantly formed into Iron-Fang symbiotes.
seven in all, sleek and terrifying, like nightmare soldiers molded from symbiote steel and ancient armor. Each one stood over six feet tall, silver glinting off their serrated helmets, fanged mouths etched permanently in twisted sneers.
Their bodies bristled with living weapons.
Their spines curved upward into spear-tips.
And the moment the last one hit the ground, they sprinted.
The back wall cracked open as a side door hissed, mutant researchers and Orchis engineers trying to escape down the corridor.
Too late.
The Iron-Fangs surged like a hive of silver wolves. Blades extended from their forearms. Organic mesh snapped into mantis-like shields. The hallway became a warzone.
Screams erupted.
Steel collided with makeshift unfinished Zanpakutō's and gunfire.
Peter didn't turn to look.
"Oh, I forgot to mention…" he said darkly, stepping over a fallen chair, "I'm back."
Beast tried to reach for a wrist-mounted failsafe. Peter caught the arm mid-swing and drove it down into the lab console, sparks spitting from the impact.
"You're going to give us Sojiro's and Sinister's coordinates."
Beast's mouth moved in silent protest.
Peter simply guided the mutant's clawed hand onto the terminal's biometric pad.
The screen blinked green.
Peter-B1 was already at the station, typing fast, pulling up the site: a reinforced bunker buried beneath an abandoned Krakoan satellite node in Sector-9.
Two signatures pinged alive on the map. One crimson. One flickering, unstable.
"They're there," Peter-B1 confirmed. "Sinister and Sojiro. Same floor."
Peter-Knull exhaled through his nose. Then looked back down at Beast.
"Good boy."
And with one motion, he slammed the mutant's head against the console.
The sound echoed across the forge like a closing door.
Beast slumped, unconscious. Blood smeared the holographic keyboard.
Void-Fang hummed.
Peter turned to the others, his face unreadable. "We burn this place after. Nothing here leaves the ground."
He stepped over Beast's crumpled body, walking straight toward the now-accessible transit shaft.
Behind him, the Iron-Fangs were still finishing their work, dragging unconscious Orchis techs back into containment pods, tagging them for interrogation.
They obeyed without needing orders.
Because they were part of him.
…
Rangiku was the first to move after Peter-Knull disappeared into the shaft, her wide eyes darting across the crates of replica Zanpakutō like they might spring to life at any moment.
She tapped her comm.
"This is Lieutenant Rangiku Matsumoto. Priority code Void-Twelve. We need full lockdown of the Sector-9 Forge Facility. Immediate SHIELD support. Tag all exits, launch perimeter drones, and deploy dampener fields."
She turned toward Logan, who was already pacing, his claws out but they quickly retracted. His eyes were stormy, haunted, too many ghosts walking again.
"SHIELD inbound," Rangiku confirmed.
Logan didn't reply. He was already raising his communicator, flipping through encrypted channels until the one labeled 'HILL–ECHO–616' lit up.
It connected instantly.
"Logan," Maria Hill's voice came sharp through the line. "Talk."
"We found it," he growled. "The Forge. You're not going to believe this, we've found Zanpakutō? Copies of them. This wasn't theory or concept; they've been mass-producing them. Seventeen crates. Over three hundred copies. All unbonded. All usable."
Hill's end was silent for a moment.
Then: "Are they stable?"
"Too stable," Logan said grimly. "No spirits, but they're functionally identical. Orchis and former Krakoa techs. They cracked part of the soul-forging process, Maria. The same resurrection tech they used on us... applied to blades."
There was another pause.
Then a low, deliberate breath from Hill.
"Understood. Lock the site. No one in or out. I'm sending in two Rapid Enforcer Teams and a few strike teams Wetwork and data sweep. We need every terminal copy from that lab before anyone tries a coverup."
"Already taken care of," Logan added. "Peter-Knull's Iron-Fangs are tagging personnel. Facility's under his protection now."
"…God help the ones still conscious."
By then, the walls of the forge facility shook with the rumble of inbound dropships.
Outside the broken ceilings, shadows passed over the sunless sky as three SHIELD air-transports descended, their hulls bristling with mounted turrets and symbiote-threaded stabilizers. Troops rappelled down, rifles glowing with anti-psionic calibration fields, and mobile suppression towers slammed into the ruined earth like coffin nails.
The perimeter lit up in waves of blue.
No escape.
Inside, Logan ended the call and sheathed his claws.
Peter-B1 was still typing into the terminal, dragging encrypted logs into multiple copies while Nemu who arrived not to long ago stood beside him, watching over Beast's limp form like a doctor judging a failed experiment.
"They weren't just copying swords," Peter-B1 said. "They were preparing to deploy them. These logs reference units already shipped to two other sectors."
Hitsugaya narrowed his eyes. "You think Sojiro's already armed them?"
"I think," Nemu said softly, "we're only seeing one arm of the monster."
Outside the lab, the rhythmic thud of boots echoed through the corridors as SHIELD forces swept in. Agents began collecting unconscious mutants, tagging every workstation, drone-forging array, and discarded blade with containment fields.
One agent passed Rangiku, nodding quickly. "Ma'am. This whole place is being locked for dimensional containment. Even a spiritual whisper won't leak out."
She gave him a thin smile.
"Good. Because what we just found shouldn't exist."
She looked toward the elevator shaft, where Peter-Knull had vanished with Void-Fang humming like a heartbeat in metal.
"And we're going to make sure this never happens again."
It was right then that the elevator light Pinged…
…
The elevator groaned as it began to rise, the rusted cable screeching against the walls of the shaft. Dust fluttered from the ceiling like powdered ash, and the entire floor seemed to shiver with tension as SHIELD teams spread through the perimeter behind them.
Grimmjow rolled his shoulders as his reiryoku flared just slightly. "Someone's coming up."
"No… something," Ichigo corrected, his eyes narrowing.
The light above the elevator door turned green.
Ding.
The doors slid open.
And the first thing they saw, was a body.
Sinister came flying out of the elevator in a graceless heap, bound in writhing chains of black symbiote metal. He hit the floor hard, skidding across the steel tiles before slamming against the base of the opposite wall. His mouth was sealed by a living gag of Void-venom that hissed softly with every attempt he made to scream.
He wasn't alone.
One by one, the other three, Exodus, Proteus, and Hope Summers, were tossed out next, flailing and snarling beneath wriggling coils of parasitic iron. Then came Sojiro, last and loudest, thrashing with terrifying strength despite the mass of tendrils looped around his torso like a serpent's nest. They were tied up like ritual sacrifices, gift-wrapped in malice.
Peter-Knull stepped out behind them, dragging the final links of the chain over his shoulder, the gleam of his Iron-Fang units just behind him, hissing like wolves that hadn't yet been called off.
He gave the chain one final tug. It rattled like thunder, and every prisoner fell still.
Peter turned toward Hitsugaya, Matsumoto, Ichigo, Renji, and Grimmjow, who had instinctively braced for a fight, but found themselves frozen in stunned silence.
"I needed you to see something," Peter said coldly, nodding toward Sojiro.
The tendrils binding Sojiro parted slightly around the chest, just enough to reveal what had been hidden.
Right in the center of Sojiro's torso… was a gaping Hollow hole. The edges were cauterized from constant spiritual suppression, but it pulsed faintly with power. The moment it was exposed, a pressure filled the room, the kind of soul-deep cold only a Hollow could bring.
Rangiku gasped. Ichigo flinched.
Peter reached again, adjusting the chains at Sojiro's neck.
A thin necklace of bleached bone slipped into view — carved not by hand, but by the formation of a Hollow mask fragment, faintly etched with the same ridges Grimmjow recognized instantly.
"He's... one of us," Grimmjow growled, shocked. "But buried it so well…"
"I hate to break it to you," Peter-Knull said, calm as a razor's edge, "but I think your old friend didn't just die."
His voice sharpened.
"He was devoured."
Hitsugaya's breath hitched.
"He must've landed in Hueco Mundo… after his soul scattered from that fatal strike."
Peter nodded. "Some Hollow found him. Fed on him. He clung to whatever was left… and over time, he climbed."
Matsumoto covered her mouth, trembling slightly. "Sojiro became a Vasto Lorde…"
Ichigo's jaw clenched. "Then forced himself into a form close to human. An Arrancar."
"And he used that time," Peter said, dragging the chain back over Sojiro's face, "to plan all of this."
Sojiro's muffled scream was deafening despite the gag.
But Peter didn't flinch.
"He didn't just resent the law that killed him. He resented everything, the Soul King, the Soul Society, the natural order of death. And he allied with anyone who could help him build his revenge."
He turned toward Sinister.
"And I do mean anyone."
Renji stepped closer, his knuckles white. "Sojiro's been one of them all along."
"Worse," Peter said. "He's the one that made it all possible."
Behind them, the SHIELD agents began dragging the prisoners toward extraction craft. The Iron-Fang symbiotes followed, uncoiling from the dark like shadows bound to judgment.
Peter's eyes never left the flickering glow of Sojiro's mask fragment.
Peter-Knull stood silent for a moment as Sojiro was hauled away by the Iron-Fangs, the chains creaking softly beneath his weight. The others remained fixed in place, still processing the sight of the Hollow hole, the implications of what Sojiro had become. The pain, the madness… the betrayal.
But Peter wasn't done.
His gaze shifted. Slower. He turned toward Hitsugaya with a weight behind his eyes, the kind that didn't come from hatred or pity, but a grim understanding of how deep this rot truly went.
"He said something," Peter murmured, voice like cold ash. "Before I bound him up. Just before I dropped the gag."
The others looked at him. Even Sojiro stilled at the edge of hearing.
Peter's voice darkened, low and venomous.
"He spat in my face… and told me his fate wasn't chance. That what happened to him had been done before. That he wasn't the first soul reaper to be discarded like garbage just because a god got bored."
Everyone froze.
"He said the Soul King, your so-called creator, let it happen. That sometimes he allowed soul reapers to be devoured. Changed. Just to see what might crawl back."
Hitsugaya's expression shattered into something unreadable, fury and horror twisting behind his pale eyes.
Peter looked at each of them in turn, Ichigo, Rangiku, Renji, Matsumoto, Grimmjow, then back to Hitsugaya.
"If Sojiro was telling the truth… then his madness wasn't born just from pain. It was fed. Or worse, cultivated."
Ichigo suddenly became pale as the horrifying realization set in that sickened him. Just like Masaki. Just like the others…"
Rangiku's eyes glistened with tears. "He really did think it was all for nothing… and Sojiro was right, that tyrant never gave a damn about him or us."
Peter-Knull didn't say another word. He simply turned, the shadows around him rippling with restrained wrath, and walked toward the transport's lift.
"The Spirit-King, the Knull who caused this is officially on my most wanted list now… I swear it."
…
The words echoed in everyone's brain like an executioner's blade.
"The Spirit-King, the Knull who caused this is officially on my most wanted list now… I swear it."
Peter-Knull's voice hadn't risen. It hadn't cracked. But the temperature of the room dropped instantly. Even the humming from the lights above seemed to dim, as though the shadows themselves recoiled at the declaration.
Logan was the first to speak, if only in a low mutter.
"Oh, shit…"
He looked at Laura-616, his jaw tightening as realization spread across his face like frostbite. "He means it," he added. "He's not just angry. He's decided."
Laura didn't blink. "I've never seen him like that before."
Daken, arms crossed but jaw visibly tense, gave a slow shake of his head. "That thing called itself a god… and poked the wrong abyss."
Across the room, Ichigo's brows knit in silent understanding. He'd seen Peter-Knull's wrath firsthand before, back in Hueco Mundo when the Void had bloomed into new life and devoured armies. But this?
This was focused.
It was personal now.
Rangiku was the next to speak. Her voice soft. "If he's made it official…"
Renji finished her thought. "Then it's only a matter of when."
Hitsugaya didn't speak. He just stared at the space Peter-Knull had left, his arms at his sides, eyes lost in some spiraling corridor of guilt and inevitability. He'd seen the Spirit King as a distant god once. Then as a prisoner. Then as a lie. But now…?
Now, he saw him as a target.
Peter-B1, still standing by his own Laura, looked down at his gloved hands. The trembling had stopped, but there was a cold weight there, something not even rage could shake loose. "This all started with him," he murmured. "With that one. Because of what he did…!"
His Laura reached out, gently curling her fingers into his. "And now it'll end with him when Peter-Knull says enough is enough."
Grimmjow gave a low growl, a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. "I almost pity the bastard."
Even Nemu, standing near the rear with quiet detachment, allowed a flicker of something akin to foreboding to surface on her face. "If the Spirit King is aware… then he already knows. And if he's afraid, he should be."
The Iron-Fang symbiotes that had lingered in the corners of the room pulsed their metallic symbiote armor in unison. They had minds of their own, but they were still connected to their progenitor, their creator, and right now they can feel his growing rage at his lesser kin… and his growing wrath.
But as a verdict.
The Spirit King, the False, fractured echo of Peter-Knull's shadow who once forged reality in his own twisted image, was now officially marked for obliteration and had sealed a death-wish should Peter-Knull decide to act.
And in every corner of the multiverse, wherever whispers of the Void still echoed, one truth began to take root.
The Devourer had chosen his next prey.
The secured SHIELD outpost buried beneath the old Stark Forge complex was buzzing with activity. Armed escorts, reinforced vault doors, and psychic dampeners surrounded the central debrief chamber, where the fallen names of Krakoa now sat in containment cells of their own making.
Beast, Exodus, Proteus, and Hope Summers.
Four out of five, with two once being revered as miracles of mutantkind.
One was missing.
Because Peter-Knull had ensured it.
Hill stood at the central podium, hands folded behind her back, eyes scanning the intel projected above the dark-paneled war table. Her voice was as hard as iron.
"As of two hours ago, Mister Sinister was officially removed from our custody by Peter-Knull at my indirect request," she said evenly. "His crimes were extensive. His punishment… swift."
Logan, seated with arms folded across his chest, muttered, "How swift are we talkin'?"
Hill didn't flinch. "Per the report submitted by the Devourer himself, he was given one chance to speak. He attempted to say, and I quote, 'Fuck y-…' before Peter-Knull tore off his face and skull and tossed them into his personal symbiote hell. He's still alive… somehow. But he'll be living in that void, without a face, without senses, for as long as Peter exists."
A long silence stretched across the room.
No one objected.
Peter-Knull stood just inside the room's edge, arms folded, his expression unreadable as ever. But the faint shimmer of the Void lingered across his coat's surface, agitated.
Hill turned to the four prisoners still bound in kinetic dampener fields. Beast was sedated and strapped down, Exodus and Proteus still glaring but silent. Only Hope seemed shaken.
"She hasn't escaped," Hill said, eyeing the red-haired girl directly. "And before anyone starts wondering why… we've got the results."
She tapped a glowing file open, expanding the bioscan readouts. "Hope's powers are… fading."
Hope blinked, startled. "What?"
"You've known, haven't you?" Hill asked. "Felt it slipping."
Hope's voice cracked. "For over a year now. But I thought I was burned out, or something was misaligned after Krakoa fell. What did you do to me?"
Hill pulled up a second screen, a file tagged with Peter-Knull's seal and reinforced with Void-level encryption.
"We didn't do anything. But someone else did."
She turned to face the table, letting the projection rotate to full display.
"According to this, the Phoenix Force is dead."
Gasps rippled through the onlookers, Polaris who arrived from the gated community of mutants who have contacts in SHIELD and who got together with this worlds nightcrawler, who was also several months pregnant, suddenly placed a hand over her stomach; Magneto, jaw locked in disbelief; Wanda's eyes narrowed in both concern and memory.
Hope stumbled forward in her restraints. "That's not possible-!"
Peter-Knull spoke quietly from the side.
"It is. I fought another version of you. From a world not unlike this one. She was still fused with the Phoenix. She blamed me for Krakoa's fall. Tried to burn the truth from me and put my two children in danger as a result shortly after they were born."
His eyes flickered like dark stars.
"So, I removed it. Ripped the Phoenix out of her."
Hope's face had gone pale.
"And then… I broke its neck, it was much more than that if you knew how I did it, but no-one else could do it besides me since I essentially snuffed out her flame of life."
Hill continued, voice even.
"Your connection to the Phoenix wasn't just spiritual. It was anatomical. With it gone you and your counterparts have started losing your power, every echo of its influence has begun to vanish from the multiverse. That includes you, Hope."
The young mutant looked between them, mouth trembling.
"No… No, no, no! I was the leader of the Five! I was supposed to bring balance! I was the bridge between the past and the future-!"
"You were used," Peter-B1 said quietly from behind his Knull counterpart. "By Sinister. By Sojiro. By Krakoa. By everyone who saw your power and thought they could turn it into something else."
"And now," Hill added, her tone colder, "your crimes are stacked with those of the others. You participated in the mass cloning of soul-bound weapons. You violated cosmic structure by tampering with spiritual constructs, and broke laws meant to salvage what little trust mutants have left in some degree in your case."
She closed the report.
"Damn it Hope… your supposed to be better than this. Mutant-Kind is already in a bad enough spot in terms of trust, but you have driven that division further."
"You will face trial. Not just in this world… but in the Soul Society as well. That's the best we can do for you."
Magneto turned his back slightly, placing a hand on Polaris's shoulder as if drawing strength from his family and his future grandchild. His voice was low, tired. "I once believed you were the future Hope."
Hope shook her head, tears forming. "He let me believe it too…"
"No," Peter-Knull said, stepping forward now, as he had disappointment on his features.
"You let yourself believe it when you weren't, you were just abusing the power given to you. That's the most dangerous lie of all when it's not true."
The lights dimmed as the containment cells locked back into transport mode. Reinforced SHIELD agents moved in with magnetic cuffs and symbiote-based gauntlets that Peter-Knull gave them. Hill watched as Hope looked up at her one last time.
"Tell me one thing," she whispered. "…Why didn't I feel it? The Phoenix dying?"
Peter-Knull's expression didn't change.
"Because you didn't want to believe it Hope, and since the phoenix is a multiversal being, it's not like every nerve in it died at the same time." Right before the door shut between them.
And the room fell still.
Outside, SHIELD prepped its transport. The next stage was clear.
Now that the head of the beast had been severed, it was time to find the heart.
And Peter-Knull was already moving again.
He had a Spirit-King to face, and he's going to make some things clear to him.
…
The gates to the Spirit King's Palace opened slowly with a thunderous groan, the arcane seals and Kido lattices peeling back like the ribs of some ancient, slumbering titan. The air beyond the gates was thick — not with reishi, but with a pressure unlike anything natural. It was the stillborn breath of eternity caged.
Peter-Knull walked at the front of the delegation, flanked on either side by Captain Hitsugaya and Lieutenant Rangiku. Squad Zero accompanied them, solemn and alert. Even they, chosen guardians of the throne, had changed their tone after learning what the "throne" truly was.
No longer was reverence spoken in this place.
Only caution.
And reckoning.
They entered the sanctum.
There, suspended at the heart of the palace like an abomination disguised in holiness, floated the Spirit King's crystalline sarcophagus — a jagged prism of endless refractions, pulsing with a slow heartbeat of light.
But it was not beautiful.
Inside the translucent chamber, the being writhed.
What had once been interpreted as divine stillness was now unmistakable horror — a corpse-god twisted in silent torment. A torso laced with tendrils like roots ripped from a cancerous earth. Mouths where eyes should be, leering and muttering unspeakable syllables from the oldest depths of the Void. Limbs incomplete, hanging and twitching, stretching against the inner membrane of the prison like worms wriggling in tar.
Even his eyes were mouths — slavering, whispering things that scraped against the ears like needles through soul-tissue.
Rangiku stiffened.
Grimmjow, upon seeing the full form… gagged. "That's your god?" he spat.
Peter-Knull stepped forward. He said nothing at first. But the weight of his presence silenced the room, even Squad Zero instinctively giving him space as he approached the prism, Void-Fang humming at his side.
His voice was cold. Calm.
Deadly.
"You've fooled a lot of people."
He raised his head and stared into the corrupted gaze of the being inside.
"Ages of worship. Centuries of obedience. Countless lives shaped around your silence. Entire cultures built on the bones of a system you forged for entertainment. A toy box of power dynamics, of fake justice, of divine detachment."
The tendrils inside the crystal twitched — some reacting with slow serpentine recoil. Others slithered in agitation.
Peter didn't stop.
"You called yourself the Spirit King. You acted as if you were a fixed point in reality. But what you are… is a Knull. One of my kin. A lesser fragment. A parasite who was too weak to conquer, so you decided to rule from a prison of worship."
The mouths inside the eye-sockets hissed, a wet, chittering sound echoing across the walls of the sanctum.
Peter bared his fangs, the Void in his chest beginning to pulse with subtle luminescence.
"You let Sojiro die because you were bored. You made a law that only one wielder could bond with a Zanpakutō at a time — knowing full well what it would cost. And now that law has been overturned. Which means you orchestrated his death for nothing."
He pointed toward the crystalline surface.
"That's not godhood. That's cruelty."
Squad Zero said nothing. They had seen too much to defend this creature any longer.
Peter-Knull took one more step forward. The air around him distorted.
"And you want to know the only reason I haven't shattered this prison and torn you apart thread by thread?"
The being inside stopped moving.
"Because I need to be certain that ending you won't unravel this reality."
He leaned forward slightly.
"But hear me now. If that day ever comes—if it turns out that I can remove you without damning this plane—then I promise you…"
His voice dropped into a rasp — guttural, predatory.
"I will drag you from this cage, from this shrine of lies, and I will bring you back into the Void you crawled out of. Screaming. And no one will call you king again."
The mouths inside the Spirit King's skull screamed — all of them — a cacophony of hollow agony and ancient fear that splintered the inner membrane of the crystal slightly, fractures webbing out like spider legs across its surface.
Hitsugaya's eyes widened.
"He's… afraid of you," he whispered.
"Good," Peter said. "He should be."
The thing inside thrashed once, its form slamming against the interior. The mask of serenity had fully shattered now. There was no divinity here. No peace. Only a lesser god, snarling in helpless rage.
Peter turned away.
"Let's go. I've said what I needed."
As they began to walk out of the sanctum, Grimmjow muttered under his breath, still shaken. "I'm never praying to gods without knowing what they stand for again. Not after seeing that."
Rangiku didn't even look back.
Neither did Peter-Knull.
Because gods like this so called god, who manipulated and destroyed others for his own amusement to satisfy his boredom, did not deserve reverence.
Not anymore.
Only justice.
And Peter-Knull was very good at delivering justice.
…
Soul Society – West Garden Terrace, Late Evening
The sunset bled into the clouds above Seireitei, casting the sky in hues of soft rose and pale violet. The West Garden Terrace was quiet, unusually so. Only the soft bubbling of the koi stream and the distant flutter of shoji doors being drawn shut could be heard. The chaos of the past few days had finally begun to settle.
Captain Tōshirō Hitsugaya sat near the edge of the terrace, the cool stone beneath him keeping him grounded. In one hand, he held a chilled grey-sym kernel berry soda, condensation dripping lazily down the side of the can. He didn't really have a taste for sweet things, but something about this one was different. Bittersweet. Almost like memory.
Across from him, Momo Hinamori knelt on a small woven cushion, hands folded gently in her lap. She watched him with soft eyes, waiting patiently as he took a quiet sip.
"I finished the last of the incident reports," Hitsugaya said eventually, voice quieter than usual. "Filed them to the Central Archives myself. Even added the security logs for transparency."
Momo smiled faintly. "Of course you did. You always were thorough."
He looked at her. For a moment, his usual reserve faltered.
"I just needed to stop thinking about it. About him."
Momo's gaze lowered. She knew who he meant.
"Sojiro."
Tōshirō nodded once. The name felt heavier now. Less like a ghost, and more like a wound that had been torn open again.
"I used to envy his control. His clarity. He was always more at peace with himself than I was. Even when the rules were cruel… he followed them. Trusted the system. Trusted me."
Momo reached across and gently placed her hand over his.
"He still does," she whispered. "Or he wouldn't have fought so hard to become something human again. Even if it meant hiding the Hollow."
Hitsugaya looked away, eyes on the horizon, his grip tightening just slightly around the soda can.
"I watched him fall apart once. I let him die for a lie built by a monster pretending to be a god. And now…"
He exhaled.
"…He came back as a weapon, only because he didn't know what else to become."
Silence fell between them again, broken only by the gentle fizzing from the drink. Momo scooted a little closer, her voice gentler now.
"You're not alone in this, you know. He's still in there. If anyone can remind him who he really was — it's you."
Hitsugaya's expression shifted, a trace of determination cutting through the grief.
"I've already told the Gotei 13 that I'll personally oversee his recovery. I filed the request with Fourth Squad and the Symbiote Integration Rehabilitation Unit. He won't be left alone."
He turned his gaze back to her, finally, fully present again.
"I can't abandon him again, Momo. Not like before."
She gave a soft nod, her eyes brimming, but she didn't cry.
She understood.
They sat together in the golden light, shoulder to shoulder. The burden was still heavy, but shared, it was bearable.
Hitsugaya took another slow sip of the kernel berry soda, the chill washing down the back of his throat like a whisper of winter.
"I owe him that much," he said.
And beneath the blooming sakura trees, two friends, two survivors, kept quiet vigil over a future still trembling into shape.
...
The morning started like any other in the SHIELD cleanup site.
Logan stood at the edge of the makeshift operations bay deep in Earth-B1's secured quadrant, dragging a thick file folder across the screen with a practiced hand. Soul-bound weapons, fake Zanpakutōs, synthetic reiryoku matrices—he was sorting through it all. One by one, the crates from the Orchis facility were tagged for recycling or containment. The weapons were inert, powerless echoes of real things. But Logan wasn't taking chances. You didn't cut corners with ghoststeel and spiritual cores. Not anymore.
"Crate 217 clear," Laura-B1 called from the other side of the yard, snapping off her gloves. "That one's all blank shells."
He gave her a nod, checked the terminal, and moved on.
Daken was further back, slicing the seal off another manifest folder when Logan's screen flickered. A forgotten directory blinked alive, nested deep inside the Orchis logs, beneath layers of outdated file permissions.
[REDACTED ARCHIVE: JEAN-GREY-616—PROJECT PRIMORDIA/VICTORIA]
He paused.
Laura's voice cut in. "Hey, old man? You spacing out?"
Logan didn't answer. His thumb hovered over the playback tab.
He clicked it.
The screen faded to grainy monochrome, shaky footage from what looked like a portable cam. The timestamp was old. Not decades. Centuries.
It was her. Jean Grey. But older. Not ancient, just… worn. Haunted. There were lines in her face that hadn't been there before. Her red hair was slightly faded, her eyes rimmed with exhaustion. She sat at a table in what appeared to be a Victorian-era study, a bottle of dark liquor open beside her. A man offscreen asked her something muffled.
And Jean answered.
"I just want to leave it all behind," she said, voice hollow. "All of it."
Logan's throat tightened.
She adjusted a bundle in her arms. The camera shook slightly, revealing… a baby. Wrapped in white. Sleeping.
"They told me it'd be safer this way. That the paradox would hold if I left him here. On the doorstep of the Essex orphanage."
Essex…? Logan whispered in alarm.
Then she said the name.
"Nathaniel."
Laura's tablet clattered to the ground behind him. Daken stood frozen, eyes wide. The other agents began crowding around the screen.
"I'll sign it," Jean said, gripping a piece of paper. "Let the timeline stabilize. He'll never know me. Never know what he was. Just a child. Just… a mistake I couldn't fix."
Her hands trembled.
"I gave birth to him. I gave birth to Nathaniel Essex."
The room went dead silent.
"I saw it in the flames. In the dreams. The future he'd become. I thought I could raise him better. I tried. But it's him. I know it's him."
The footage cut to a second clip, this one in a different room. Jean again, but earlier. Crying as she clutched the same baby to her chest.
"It's him… it's him… I can't, please, just take him from me. Before I change my mind."
Then the screen went black.
Logan stood rigid. Even his claws twitched unconsciously.
SHIELD Agent Callen turned, voice hoarse. "Sir… what do we do with this?"
He couldn't answer.
Because what they'd just seen wasn't a memory.
It was a murder confession.
Wrapped in fate. Drenched in paradox.
And it changed everything they thought they knew about their worst enemy.
Logan didn't move for five whole minutes.
The audio from the file still echoed in the back of his mind like a ghost caught in a steel drum.
"I gave birth to him… I gave birth to Nathaniel Essex…"
His hands were still planted on the edge of the console, claws unsheathed but idle, digging shallow gouges into the reinforced alloy of the terminal's surface. He hadn't realized how tight his breathing had become until Daken silently nudged a bottle of water beside him. Logan didn't touch it.
Across the room, Laura-B1 and the SHIELD agents kept their distance. Even they knew this wasn't the kind of storm you approached until it passed… if it passed.
Then, ping.
A soft chime fluttered from the side monitor.
A SHIELD-issued tablet blinked to life with a friendly blue alert tag.
New Message — Jean Grey (Earth-616)
Subject: "Big News!"
Logan's eyes flicked over.
Against his better judgment, he tapped the notification open.
"Hey, Logan."
Just wanted to share something with the family before the day's over.
You're gonna be an uncle.
Turns out I'm pregnant.
It's a boy.
I'm scared, I'm excited, and yeah, I know you're gonna be grumpy about it but… I needed you to know first.
Love,
Jean"
Logan just stared.
At the words.
At the timestamp.
At the smiling, glowing face of the woman he'd loved and lost and found again so many times… now expecting new life.
And all he could think about…
…was a video from centuries ago.
A baby. The same name. The same woman.
Left at an orphanage.
Left to become Sinister.
His stomach turned to ice.
His hand slowly clenched the tablet, the screen cracking slightly beneath the pressure.
He didn't say a word.
But in his heart?
He whispered a name:
Nathaniel.
And this time, he didn't know if it meant hope…
…or something far, far worse.