Deep within the Tsunayashiro Clan estate, it was even quieter than the rooms used to receive guests and display the family's glory.
In a dimly lit room, someone sat alone on a couch in the shadows.
He had slightly messy dark green hair and a pale face. His features were actually quite refined, even carrying a scholarly delicacy.
But in his eyes lay a weariness and malice far beyond his years, as though he had seen through all the world's beauty and found it false.
He wore the Tsunayashiro Clan's attire, its cuffs and hem embroidered with the ancient crest symbolizing the family, yet he wore it with a careless air of decadence and gloom.
He was Tokinada Tsunayashiro, a name that had originally occupied the lowest rank among the Tsunayashiro Clan's branch families, utterly unremarkable.
Once, he had also been a student at Shin'ō Academy, a contemporary of Shunsui Kyoraku and Jushiro Ukitake, and had even studied under Genryūsai Shigekuni Yamamoto.
Back then, he had been quiet and taciturn, the shadow most easily forgotten among his peers—a branch family descendant seemingly destined for mediocrity.
However, that had only been an appearance.
As a child, deep within the family estate, he had witnessed the "historical stone tablet" left behind by his ancestors, which recorded Soul Society's true origins and dark past.
Upon that tablet was the cruel truth of the Soul King's dismemberment and sealing, as well as the betrayal and greed of the ancestors of the Five Great Noble Houses...
Those records, enough to overturn every belief, had seeped into young Tokinada's still-immature heart like the most potent poison.
Yet they did not inspire in him any noble sense of mission or guilt. Instead, he developed an extreme disgust and self-loathing toward the Tsunayashiro blood flowing through his veins,