The Frozen Pillar did not scream.
It remembered.
The enormous column of dark ice reiatsu rose from the Rukongai like a wound propelled towards the sky, its surface covered in fractured reishi, half-formed faces and half-frozen expressions. The souls that came too close remained motionless, with glassy eyes and lips moving slightly as if repeating names they did not understand.
The Seireitei felt it long before it saw it.
A pressure - neither hostile nor benevolent - simply absolute.
Seireitei. 6th Division Outer Walls.
Byakuya Kuchiki stood at the edge of the 6th Division's outer walls, his haori motionless despite the wind.
Senbonzakura's petals floated idly behind his back, responding to a pressure his master had not acknowledged aloud.
Renji, quitely behind him:
"Captain, reports from the Rukongai say that the pillar..."
Byakuya's voice was calm. Too calm:
"I know."
The pillar was visible even from here - a blackened spire piercing the clouds, its surface dimly luminous, as if the moonlight had been trapped beneath the ice.
Byakuya felt it then.
Not reiatsu.
Recognition.
His hand tightened at his side.
For a split second, the world tilted.
He didn't hear a voice
There was no sound.
Instead, the pressure changed and the surface of the pillar rippled.
Within the ice, a silhouette sharpened.
A familiar shape.
Small.
Still.
Not reaching out.
Not moving.
Just... there.
Byakuya's breathing stopped.
The shape did not turn towards him.
It didn't speak.
However, something pressed against his senses - a fragment, a residue, a memory so perfectly preserved that it seemed alive.
A moment.
A night.
Snow falling in the Seireitei.
A girl kneeling with her head bowed:
"Brother..."
The word did not resonate in the air.
It resonated inside him.
Byakuya's eyes widened - just a little.
Renji sensed it immediately:
"Captain-?"
Byakuya raised a hand.
Silence.
The pressure disappeared as abruptly as it came.
The silhouette became blurred, swallowed by layers of ice.
Byakuya straightened up.
Byakuya's expression returned to stone:
"...It's not her."
Renji swallowed:
"But you felt it too, didn't you?"
Byakuya didn't respond.
Because he had.
And that terrified him.
Rukongai. District 68.
On the other side of the Rukongai, Soul Reaper squads were fighting to hold the ground.
The souls wandered towards the pillar with slow and thoughtless steps, neither summoned nor ordered, simply attracted.
The healers of the 4th Division reported the same phenomenon everywhere:
"Ice does not infect. It imprints."
Where the pressure of the pillar spread over the districts, traces of reiatsu persisted - not aggressive, nor widespread - but persistent.
As if something had marked the world.
Seireitei. 6th Division Barracks.
Back at the 6th Division, Byakuya was alone under the cherry trees.
Senbonzakura trembled.
Not with anger.
With uncertainty.
Byakuya, quietly:
"That wasn't a call, that was an echo."
The petals calmed down.
Something had taken Rukia Kuchiki's soul - her reiatsu, her identity, her unresolved presence - and reflected it outward like light through ice.
No communication.
No intention.
A resonance artifact.
A Stillborn Captain whose existence bent the world around her.
Byakuya closed his eyes.
For the first time since her execution long ago, he felt something break beneath his composure.
Byakuya, whispered:
"If you can't talk, I'll listen to you anyway."
Rukongai. District 68.
At the base of the Frozen Pillar, the silhouette changed.
Not consciously.
Not deliberately.
The ice thickened.
The moonlight trapped inside the pillar darkened.
And somewhere inside that frozen heart...
Something learned to remember names.