Tide Recedes

"Bankai!"

The blade turned into translucent glass, with four-colored strands of light winding around it.

His Reiatsu solidified.

"Higan Heaven: Underworld Blossoms!"

The instant he called out the name,

four-colored spider lilies began growing from the ground beneath his feet. They appeared out of thin air, sprouted, grew stems, formed buds, and bloomed. The entire process happened with astonishing speed.

Red flowers were the most numerous, carpeting the widest area; blue flowers threaded through them like winding rivers; yellow flowers dotted the red and blue like tiny lamps; white flowers were the fewest, scattered sparsely, yet each one was dazzlingly white.

Centered on Shuichi, the sea of flowers spread outward.

The flowers reached Saito's side.

Red spider lilies pushed up beside the pool of his blood. Blue spider lilies bloomed amid his scattered purple hair, like blue ribbons winding through his locks. Yellow ones lit up at his side, while white ones swayed above his head.

Saito felt a warmth. The enormous wound running from his right shoulder to his right abdomen was still bleeding, but the flow had visibly slowed. Subtle changes began appearing around the wound's edges. It was no longer worsening, as though something were protecting it from tearing further, becoming infected, and continuing to take his life.

Saito's pupils contracted slightly.

He struggled to crawl backward, bracing his back against a remaining wall amid the ruins and steadying himself in a half-reclined position.

His eyes fixed on the four-colored sea of flowers spreading beneath his feet.

The same type as Yachiru's?

He thought of Yachiru Unohana's Bankai, "Minazuki."

A pool of blood spread out, flesh and blood dissolved. It was an ability where ultimate healing and ultimate destruction coexisted, healing oneself, healing enemies, dissolving flesh and blood—testing whose Reiatsu ran out first.

And Shuichi's sea of flowers was healing him?

A newcomer who had not even fully mastered Bankai—his Bankai could actually heal injuries at captain level?

Saito said nothing. His gaze left the sea of flowers and turned toward Shuichi at its center.

Shuichi stood there with his Zanpakutō held before him. The blade no longer had the texture of metal, instead turning a translucent glass color as four-colored strands of light slowly flowed around it.

Beneath his feet, the sea of flowers continued expanding, already reaching Jugram Haschwalth's feet.

Jugram did not retreat.

He lowered his head and looked at the red spider lily that had just bloomed by his boot, its petals lightly brushing against it.

He did not crush it, disperse it with Reiatsu, or even move his foot out of its way.

Then he raised his head and looked at Shuichi with calm, patient, almost experimental scrutiny.

He wanted to know what this Bankai could do.

He had already seen the blue butterflies: illusions, memories, mental interference.

He had already seen the golden chains: restraint, confinement, physical suppression.

That had only been Shikai. Now standing before him was a Soul Reaper who had just completed Bankai, a Soul Reaper with four-colored strands of light flowing over his blade, a Soul Reaper who had covered the entire battlefield in a sea of flowers.

Jugram wanted to know what this Bankai could do.

He did not have to wait long.

Shuichi tightened his grip on the hilt, and four-colored strands of light flowed across the blade.

Suddenly,

Jugram's pupils contracted slightly.

Not from fear, not from surprise, but from gravity.

A tremor rose from within, something only he could perceive, like someone plucking a string inside his mind.

The voice did not enter through his ears. It surfaced directly from the depths of his Reiatsu, clear as if someone were speaking inside his head.

"Regain the heartbeat after nine hundred years, regain consciousness after ninety years, regain strength after nine years, regain the world after nine days."

Yhwach's voice.

Jugram did not answer.

He did not need to.

That voice had not come to ask for his opinion. It had come to inform him.

To tell him the time had come, to tell him it was time to leave, to tell him this battle was over.

He raised his shield.

The silver-white face of the shield blocked Jugram from view. Then something black, like a curtain, rose from the ground and covered him, forming a black humanoid shape.

Shuichi's red sword energy slashed out in rapid succession, one after another flying from his blade and surging toward Jugram.

Yet the sword energy passed through it as though through a curtain of water, going straight through the black figure.

Then the black figure turned into threads, linking to the surrounding shadows before merging into them and vanishing. His Reiatsu disappeared with it.

Jugram had retreated.

Shuichi's blade was still swinging.

The sixth red sword energy flew from his blade, passed through where Jugram had just stood, and shot into the distant street, carving a long crack across the ground.

Shuichi stood there with his Zanpakutō held horizontally before him, four-colored strands of light still slowly flowing across the blade.

The sea of flowers continued blooming beneath his feet, red, blue, yellow, and white carpeting the ruins. But there was no one in front of him anymore.

Jugram was gone. The shield was gone. The sword was gone. Even the Reiatsu was gone, utterly clean.

Shuichi could only stare blankly.

His mouth parted slightly, but he said nothing. His eyes remained fixed on where Jugram had vanished.

He did not understand. One second, that man had still been there, and the next, he was gone.

Running away would leave traces, a direction, a trail of moving Reiatsu. This was not running away. This was disappearance, as if someone had erased him from the battlefield with an eraser.

Shuichi slowly lowered his Zanpakutō. He did not know what to do anymore.

His enemy was gone.

The battlefield changed faster than Shuichi could process his confusion.

The instant Jugram's Reiatsu vanished, Quincy throughout the Seireitei began retreating at the same time.

The Holy Soldiers put away their Reishi bows and departed through the shadows. The lieutenant-level Quincy broke off their battles and moved toward the pillar of fire without looking back. Even the Sternritter fighting the captains stopped attacking at that very moment.

It was not because they could not win. Someone had ordered them to retreat.

The order was synchronized, precise, and impossible to defy. Some Quincy were still swinging their swords, their blades raised halfway, when their bodies had already begun fading.

Some were still shouting, mouths open before a sound could emerge, when they had already vanished.

It was as if an invisible hand had seized every Quincy by the back of the neck, lifted them from the battlefield, and stuffed them back into the shadows.

Saito leaned against the ruins, staring blankly as Jugram turned into a shadow and disappeared.

What the hell was that? Why did he suddenly run away?

News of the Quincy retreat spread through the Seireitei like the wind.

The first to react were the besieged lower nobles.

The attacks on their estates had exceeded what they could endure, and their casualties had been the worst.

Some clans had only their heads left standing. Some had lost their entire younger generation in battle. Some had even seen their estates burned to bare ground.

Yet when those white figures vanished before their eyes, they did not cry or collapse. Instead, they erupted in cheers at having survived the catastrophe.

The young master of one lower noble house knelt before the ruins of his family estate, his body covered in wounds. Blood had sealed his left eye shut, and the Zanpakutō in his right hand was chipped and curled.

He watched the last Holy Soldier before him turn into a shadow and vanish. He froze for a moment, then suddenly threw back his head and let out a hoarse roar at the grayish-red sky.

It was not language, only a pure, primal sound, as if he were trying to force all the fear, rage, and despair crushing his chest out through his throat.

Behind him, several clan warriors who were equally covered in injuries began shouting as well. Their voices merged into one, echoing through the ruins.

The head of another lower noble house slumped on the steps before his estate gates, both legs pierced through by Reishi arrows, unable to stand.

Two of his three sons were dead. The remaining one had lost an arm and was kneeling beside him, using strips of cloth to bandage his wounds.

He looked in the direction where the Quincy had disappeared and suddenly began to laugh.

It was not a happy laugh, but an indescribable one choked with sobs. As he laughed, tears began to fall.

He reached out and patted his one-armed son on the shoulder. He said nothing, then laughed once more.

They were shouting, "We won!"

No one had told them the battle was over. No one had declared their victory. Yet they shouted it themselves, because they were still alive, and that was enough.

The cheers spread from one district to another.

Those Soul Reapers still trapped in a daze were pulled back to reality by the cheering. Some began shouting along with them, some collapsed to the ground and gasped for air, and some began searching the ruins for their companions.

But cheering was not everyone's response.

The clans that had suffered losses too severe to be comforted by the idea of surviving the disaster silently gathered the bodies of their relatives.

By the time the lower nobles' cheers reached the districts of the Upper Nobility, they had been weakened by the ruins and corpses along the way. There was not nearly as much cheering here.

The Upper Nobility as a whole was far stronger than the lower nobles.

They possessed more complete armament systems, more refined Reishi Armament, and more lieutenant-level combat power.

The Kuchiki Clan and the Shihōin Clan among the Four Great Noble Clans had even managed to organize effective counterattacks.

Kuchiki Ginrei led his clansmen in an exchange of attacks with a Schrift bearer outside the estate gates for nearly half an hour.

The Shihōin Clan's Heaven-Bestowed Divine Armament repeatedly charged through the district, each advance leaving behind a field of white corpses.

The two captain-level fighters of the Shiba Clan had even forcibly driven back an entire Sternritter squad at the most critical moment of the battle.

But the blow they suffered was also beyond anything the lower nobles could compare to.

They had not faced only Holy Soldiers and lieutenant-level Quincy.

Their opponents had been official Sternritter, Quincy granted Schrift by Yhwach.

Inside the Kyoraku Clan estate, a huge crater had been blasted into the courtyard. Several clan warrior corpses lay beside it.

The clan head sat against the edge of the crater, the upper half of his once lavish attire drenched in blood. A Reishi spear had pierced through his chest, and blood was still seeping from the wound.

The Ise Clan estate was no longer habitable.

A large stretch of the eastern wall had collapsed, half the main house's roof had been torn away, and fragments of Reishi bows and mangled corpses lay scattered across the courtyard.

The clan head knelt on the steps before the main house, cradling a man covered in blood.

Her son-in-law, that captain-level man.

He was not dead, but he was not far from it.

His left arm was severed, his right leg pierced through, and there was a wound on his chest so deep that his ribs were nearly visible. His eyes were half-open, and his lips moved as if he were saying something, but his voice was so faint that even the clan head holding him could not hear him clearly.

The clan head's tears fell onto his face and mixed with the blood. Behind her, several clan maids held children while hiding in an uncollapsed room. The children did not cry, but the maids' lips trembled.

A massive icicle was still embedded in the outer wall of the Kuchiki Clan estate.

It was the mark Frida Bergmann had left behind when she besieged the Kuchiki Clan.

Her frost had frozen nearly a third of the Kuchiki Clan's armed forces. Those frozen clansmen still lay on stretchers in the front courtyard, their limbs stiff and their skin purple. Healers surrounded them, helpless.

Ice fragments still clung to Kuchiki Ginrei's Zanpakutō. He stood at the estate gates with the tip of his blade resting against the ground, silently watching his clansmen being carried into the inner courtyard.

The Shihōin Clan's situation was not much better.

Shihōin Qianri had taken the Second Division out to provide aid. Although the clansmen who remained behind had the protection of the Heaven-Bestowed Divine Armament, one of the attacking Quincy could corrode Reishi structures.

The Shihōin Clan's Heaven-Bestowed Divine Armament was as fragile as paper before him. Fragments of corroded Reishi Armament littered the street before the estate, their silver-white surfaces reflecting dim light in the firelight.

The Shihōin Clan's old steward crouched beside the fragments, picking them up piece by piece with slow, mechanical movements.

The Shiba Clan had suffered the fewest losses among the Four Great Noble Clans.

The presence of two captain-level fighters had kept the Sternritter from approaching lightly, but they had paid a price as well.

One of Shiba Chuanlu's blue giant birds was pierced through by a Quincy using a heavy crossbow. The damage to his Zanpakutō fed back into his Reiatsu, making him clutch his chest as he knelt and coughed up several mouthfuls of blood.

His younger brother's left arm was pierced through by a Holy Arrow, and he was leaning against a wall while medics bandaged him.

The Tsunayashiro Clan remained silent.

Tsunayashiro Shiki stood atop the highest roof of the estate, Nine Heavens Mirror Valley embedded in the tiles beneath his feet. More than a dozen Quincy corpses lay around him.

He did not speak or show any expression. He merely stood there, watching in the direction the Quincy had retreated.

No one knew how many people he had killed. No one knew how badly he was injured. The Tsunayashiro Clan never showed its wounds to outsiders.

If even the Four Great Noble Clans had suffered like this, then the ordinary Upper Nobility had it even worse.

One upper noble house famed for Kidō lost its clan head early in the battle when a Quincy capable of reflecting Kidō killed him with his own Hado. His corpse fell from the estate wall and smashed against the stone road, spraying a mist of blood. The clansmen did not even have time to mourn before they had to shoulder their clan head's Zanpakutō and continue fighting.

Another upper noble house skilled in Shunpo was suppressed by a Quincy who could create gravity fields, leaving them unable to move. The entire clan was trapped in the front courtyard of its estate like fish nailed to a chopping board, slaughtered one after another beneath the Holy Soldiers' rain of arrows. By the time the Quincy retreated, the front courtyard of that noble house was carpeted with corpses.

Their estate remained, but few of their people were left.

Cheers drifted over from afar, growing louder and louder. Yet no one in the Upper Nobility districts joined in. They simply silently cleaned up the aftermath, counted the casualties, and carried their dead relatives into the mourning halls. There was no joy at surviving disaster on their faces, only numb, exhausted blankness, as though they did not know how to react.

A victory bought with the corpses of their loved ones was not worth cheering for.