The Spiritual Pressure of Kyōka Suigetsu dissipated without a sound, and the warped perception of time snapped back to normal.
Candice blinked, shaking her head in mild confusion — she had the distinct, nagging feeling that she had just spaced out for a moment.
Everything appeared perfectly ordinary.
Aizen gave a small nod to his side. An Arrancar stepped forward, pushing the transparent stasis pod ahead of him; the indicator lights along the pod's rim shifted from red to green, and with a soft hiss of escaping pressure, the lid slid smoothly open.
Inside the pod, Meninas's eyelashes fluttered. Her eyes opened.
At first her gaze drifted, unfocused, up to the ceiling above her. Then it slowly swept across the unfamiliar surroundings — passing briefly over the faces of her fellow female Sternritter — before finally coming to rest, and locking onto, Soifon's face.
An instant later, some memory buried deep within her ignited all at once.
Her body sprang from the pod like a coiled spring, right fist balled tight, driving in a perfectly straight line directly at Soifon's face.
"Invaders of the Empire——!"
"Eat my fist!"
The attack came from absolutely nowhere. All three Quincy standing nearby felt their hearts lurch simultaneously.
But Soifon simply raised her hand — and caught Meninas's fist without budging an inch.
The shockwave ruffled Soifon's hair, but her body didn't sway in the slightest.
Meninas tried to wrench her hand free, but that grip was like an iron vice — utterly immovable. She gritted her teeth and swung her left fist again—
Her fist stopped dead in midair.
Thud——
The muffled boom of Sonído burst through the air. Nelliel and Harribel materialized on either side of Meninas simultaneously, cold steel pressed against her throat from both sides.
"How dare you show such disrespect to Lady Soifon."
"Do you want to die?"
The brilliant blue of Blut Vene lit up across Meninas's body — yet it was fear that spread across her face.
Hollow power—!
"Wait!"
Candice's voice cut through the tension as she stepped forward to defuse the standoff.
"Meninas, calm down!"
"Soifon is one of us now! She's already joined the Sternritter!"
Candice spoke fast, terrified that if she were even half a beat slower, her friend would be cut down by the Arrancar.
The toxicity of Hollow poison to a Quincy was no laughing matter.
"One of us?"
"Joined... the Sternritter?"
Meninas turned her head toward Candice, bewilderment written plainly across her eyes.
"What happened back then was a misunderstanding," Candice pressed on. "And look — you're not injured, are you? So... can we just let it go?"
"Back then?" Meninas's frown deepened. "What 'back then'? As far as I'm concerned, I just woke up from a nap..."
"A nap that lasted over ten years, hon." Liltotto sauntered over at her own leisurely pace, digging a fresh lollipop from her pocket and tearing open the wrapper. "You really missed quite the show, Meninas."
Liltotto gave the candy a slow lick, then added:
"By the way — Miss Soifon here is our new comrade. And furthermore..."
She paused, tilting her head in Soifon's direction. "——She's Schrift A."
She had deliberately stressed the words Schrift A, and her gaze drifted with pointed intent toward Bambietta standing nearby — who had gone chalk-white and instinctively pressed both hands to her stomach.
Meninas's pupils contracted sharply. She stared at Soifon for a long, unblinking moment, and the rigid tension in her body gradually began to ease.
Her expression still carried a trace of awkwardness, but her tone had softened considerably:
"If she's a comrade... then I won't hit you."
"But — I still haven't entirely forgiven you for knocking me out back then!"
At Soifon's silent cue, Nelliel and Harribel lowered the blades from Meninas's throat, gave her a warning grunt in unison, and stepped back a short distance to watch from there.
Meninas rejoined her companions, falling into place behind Soifon.
"It seems the misunderstanding has been cleared up."
"In that case — the delivery is complete. Captain Soifon, please do as you wish. Las Noches welcomes you all to visit again anytime."
Aizen brought his hands together in a single, light clap — a polite but unmistakable send-off.
Not far away, Nelliel looked distinctly unhappy. "Wait — Lady Soifon just got here and she's already leaving?"
"Nelliel — don't make things difficult for Lady Soifon." Harribel reached over and caught her friend by the wrist. "Don't be so willful."
At those words, Nelliel pressed her lower lip between her teeth, holding Harribel's gaze with reluctant, unconvinced eyes — then cast a lingering, unwilling look back toward Soifon.
Sending Harribel a grateful glance, Soifon turned to them both with a genuinely apologetic expression:
"I'm sorry. I had been thinking that after the Battle of Karakura Town, I'd take you both on a trip to the World of the Living..."
"I'd also thought about taking you to Soul Society — but it doesn't seem like the right time for that."
The apology was almost sincere — and even if Soifon was still, as ever, making promises she might never keep, Nelliel and Harribel ate every word of it, eyes shimmering with a crystalline brightness.
Lady Soifon...
With reluctance written plainly across their faces, they watched as Soifon turned and walked out through the hall's great doors.
Candice and Liltotto quickly moved to flank Meninas — still slightly unsteady on her feet — supporting her on either side. Bambietta followed carefully behind.
Shadows writhed and churned underfoot, like a living black mire.
Candice and Liltotto, with Meninas supported between them, stepped into the darkness first. Bambietta followed close after.
Soifon stood at the edge of the shadows, just about to step through herself — when some instinct made her glance back over her shoulder.
Sōsuke Aizen stood three steps behind her. His white robes swayed lightly in Hueco Mundo's faint wind, and not one of the Quincy had noticed his presence at all.
And so, the return journey gained one very special passenger.
——
The Wandenreich.
"Captain Aizen — showing up uninvited like this..." Soifon spoke in her usual measured tone, making no effort whatsoever to conceal his presence. "Surely you're not actually planning to settle things with Yhwach right here and now?"
Aizen smiled faintly, falling into step beside Soifon without making a sound:
"That depends on just how much the legendary King of the Quincy is actually worth."
"Then again — perhaps I'm simply walking into a trap of my own making?"
Soifon shot him a sideways glance, then gave an uncommitted shrug.
She genuinely doubted that Aizen, in his current state, had what it took to cut Yhwach down in the heart of the Wandenreich — even with his recent breakthrough epiphany factored in.
"Though — it seems Captain Soifon was careless just now." Aizen wore a look of undisguised amusement. "You should have pretended not to notice me at all. The future of this little conversation between us — Yhwach must have already seen it, no?"
Ha.
Soifon laughed softly.
"Captain Aizen — if Yhwach were able to see it, I wouldn't be standing here chatting with you like this..."
From the very beginning, Soifon had already placed the grain of time representing this conversation between herself and Aizen behind Yhwach's [The Almighty] — into the one blind spot, the one future his omniscience could not reach.
Turning her words over in his mind, Aizen let a beat pass — and then he too began to laugh alongside her.
"Yhwach... what a pitiable creature."
Deceived by both Ichibē Hyōsube and Soifon — and now, on top of that, he himself had waltzed freely into the Wandenreich.
The group walked on along the pale corridors. At a certain corner, Aizen's footsteps came to an abrupt halt.
"It seems this place is more interesting than I imagined."
He murmured to himself, a look of genuine intrigue spreading across his face.
He turned toward Soifon, waving a casual hand in farewell. "Captain Soifon — let us part ways here."
Without waiting for a response, he turned and walked off in the direction from which that peculiar Spiritual Pressure emanated — unhurried, unrushed — his figure swiftly swallowed by the shadows between the pale columns.
Soifon followed the direction of his departure with her gaze. There was indeed a very familiar Spiritual Pressure there.
——The Soul King's Left Hand, Pernida Parnkgjas.
As her footsteps stalled, Candice glanced back. "Soifon? Why'd you stop?"
Soifon withdrew her gaze and shook her head. "Nothing. I just sensed a strange Spiritual Pressure over there — probably one of the Sternritter."
Liltotto tilted her head in that direction. "Oh — that'd be Pernida. Weird guy."
"Mm, Pernida is His Majesty's personal guard, but he can't even speak," Meninas added, her strength largely recovered.
"But he's terrifying — a whole bunch of soldiers who got too close ended up twisted into meat balls..." Candice chimed in, her voice carrying a distinctly unsettling lilt.
——
It was an exceptionally vast hall — and yet utterly, almost wrongfully, empty.
A slight, cloaked figure floated suspended in the air.
Scattered across the floor around it lay several shapeless masses of flesh — their surfaces still ridged with the lumps of bone that had burst through the skin, blood slowly seeping from the gaps between them.
Sensing an unfamiliar presence approaching, the hooded figure spun around in an instant. Beneath the shadowed cowl, no face was visible — only two points of crimson light that blazed suddenly into existence.
Ding—
The air directly in front of Aizen, perfectly still a moment before, was seized by an invisible, colossal force and wrung without mercy — that power attempting to twist Aizen's limbs, his torso, even his skull, each in a different direction simultaneously.
Crack... crack...
The nauseating grind of bone against bone rang out from within Aizen's body.
Just from bearing that invisible Spiritual Pressure, his spirit body — reinforced many times over by the Hōgyoku — began to let out groans under the unbearable strain.
"I see..."
"So this is the Soul King's power."
"The exact opposite of the power hidden within Ukitake..."
He took another step forward.
Beneath the hood, those two points of light blazed ever brighter. Pernida, utterly infuriated by this intruder's brazen audacity, unleashed an even more savage torrent of force.
Aizen's figure left an afterimage where he had stood — his true body had already reappeared several meters away.
But the arm that had been just half a beat too slow to escape his original position was clipped by a twisting field of distortion.
Squelch——
That arm was instantly wrung into a coil by the invisible force — and then, with an eruption of bloody mist, compressed still further into a fist-sized lump of flesh.
Within a single breath, Sōsuke Aizen's arm had fully regenerated.
Having mapped out the rough parameters of Pernida's ability, Aizen activated the power of Kyōka Suigetsu — plunging the opponent's vision and spiritual senses alike into total hypnotic fabrication.
Aizen's true form materialized without a whisper of sound directly behind Pernida.
He raised his freshly regenerated right hand, fingers spread wide, aimed squarely at the center of Pernida's back.
"Furetsuha."
A dark violet orb of light coalesced in Aizen's palm — and Hollow power that dwarfed Gran Rey Cero by countless magnitudes swallowed Pernida's figure whole, without reservation...
——
Deep within the palace, Yhwach's eyes snapped open. The three crimson pupils flashed for a fleeting instant.
"That Spiritual Pressure — Sōsuke Aizen... and Pernida."
Owing to Pernida's peculiar nature, even Yhwach's [The Almighty] was unable to observe his future.
"The seal Ichibē Hyōsube placed upon me... is dissolving."
____
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