My zanpakutō never sang.
Other Shinigami spoke of their swords like lovers or war-brothers. A voice of fire, or thunder, or something at least vaguely inspiring. Mine? Whenever I tried to listen, all I got was the sound of someone closing a book. I suppose it only made sense, for a man that didn't belong to be bound to a sword with a nasty habit of whispering words that made no sense in a language that sounded like a toddler trying to out-speak Shakespeare.
The asauchi that hung by my side had stayed with me from the first days I woke up in this ancient japanesque afterlife, not silent like most other swords that my colleagues wielded, nor animated with personality the way some of the captains and lieutenants spoke of their spikey tools of destruction.
It stayed with me, a whisper constantly in the edge of my hearing, almost like a nagging ghost, though quite sardonically, this ghost had chosen to haunt another. Strangely, the noise never got to me. The whispers soon became nothing but the droning of background noise, though at times the words it said almost seemed to make sense. A blade of silence. A blade of whispers. A weapon that made even captains hesitate, though even they couldn't say why, before patting me on the back.
"Be proud," the man I had at some point began to look at as a father said once. "Your sword brings closure." Closure to whom I was never sure, though to me it always sounded just one cackle away from pure tangible madness.
When I had first woken up, after my panic had died down, I had been full of hope for this mystical world that I had only ever come across in media. After what felt like centuries, though it could not have been more than a few decades, my mind seemed to have shut off. The world was no different from my previous, the same people in shinier clothes with shinier knives, that was all it was.
I suppose it was here that my story changed. Only later, in retrospect and through dreams would I begin to understand what had happened to me then.
A routine patrol like any other, the human world, just beginning to understand the beauty of phones and a Hollow sweep where I zoned out. But that wasn't what happened this time.
The dull cackle of my blade seemed to change tone, and suddenly I was awake. Like surfacing from a warm pool on a rather early afternoon, the harsh clarity bringing thoughts that ordinarily went their own course to suddenly grind to a screeching halt.
The air turned heavy, the darkness grew darker still and an eerie growl seemed to remind me that I was alive.
Reiatsu pressed like a rock on my suddenly beating chest. A flash of white shot through the night as a mask loomed out of the shadows — jagged, grinning, too big to be here. My companions froze, and then they were gone, torn apart before their screams even began.
I drew my blade. It cracked as if mocking me.
The Hollow lunged. My sword whispered back — not in words, but in a long sigh. Like a librarian shutting the last book of the night.
Claws tore through my chest. Cold rushed in, and once again after what felt like aeons regret at the life I lived bloomed in my mind. Everything dimmed. Perfect. The great legacy of a world traverser: being the appetizer.
But right before the dark took me, something else arrived. My mind seemed to crackle with an echo that spoke in silence as a deep rumble shot through me.
Not salvation. Not mercy. Something older.
A figure leaned close. I didn't see it so much as feel it: an hourglass with no sand, a library where books wrote themselves backwards. It smelled of ink and graves. It spoke in tones that had no business being spoken, and the air seemed to breathe instead of me.
The haunting whisper rocketed through my broken mind, as once more I felt a deep tug in my navel.
My mind seemed to grow blank as the words Not yet began to form with more than words between the hollow expanses of my ears.
Then, there was only darkness.