The Ebb Tide

"Bankai!"

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

His Reiatsu solidified.

"Higan Heaven: Underworld Blossoms!"

The instant he called out its name—

Four-colored Red Spider Lilies began growing from the ground beneath his feet. They appeared from thin air, sprouted, grew stems, budded, and bloomed. The entire process happened with astonishing speed.

Red flowers were the most numerous, carpeting the widest area; blue ones threaded through them like winding rivers; yellow ones dotted the red and blue like tiny lamps; white ones were the fewest, scattered sparsely, but every bloom was blindingly white.

The sea of flowers spread outward from Shuichi.

It reached Saito's side.

Red Spider Lilies emerged beside his pool of blood. Blue Red Spider Lilies bloomed amid his loose purple hair, like blue ribbons entwined around his strands. Yellow ones lit up at his side, while white ones swayed above his head.

Saito felt a warmth. The massive wound stretching from his right shoulder to his right abdomen was still bleeding, but the flow had clearly slowed. Subtle changes began appearing along its edges. The wound 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, pressing his back against a broken wall amid the ruins and steadying himself in a half-sitting, half-reclining position.

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

Is it the same type as Yachiru's?

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

A pool of blood spread out, flesh and blood dissolved—an ability where ultimate healing and ultimate destruction coexisted. It healed oneself, healed enemies, dissolved flesh and blood, and came down to whose Reiatsu ran out first.

And this sea of flowers was healing him?

A rookie who had not even fully mastered Bankai had a Bankai capable of healing Captain-Class injuries?

Saito did not say it aloud. His gaze shifted away from the flower sea and toward Shuichi at its center.

Shuichi stood there with his Zanpakutō held before him. Its blade no longer possessed a metallic texture, having become translucent like colored glass, while four strands of light slowly flowed around it.

The sea of flowers beneath his feet was still expanding, and had already reached Jugram Haschwalth's feet.

Jugram did not retreat.

He lowered his head to look at the red Red Spider Lily that had just bloomed by his boot, its petals lightly brushing against it.

He did not crush it underfoot, scatter it with Reiatsu, or even move aside to avoid it.

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 experienced the blue butterflies—illusions, memories, mental interference.

He had also experienced the golden chains—restraint, confinement, physical suppression.

That had only been Shikai. What stood before him now was a Soul Reaper who had just completed Bankai, a Soul Reaper with four-colored strands of light flowing across 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 as the four-colored strands of light flowed along the blade.

Then, suddenly—

Jugram's pupils contracted slightly.

Not in fear. Not in surprise. In solemn focus.

A tremor rose from within, one only he could sense, like a string being plucked 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 standing inside his head and speaking.

"Take back the heartbeat in nine hundred years, take back the consciousness in ninety years, take back the strength in nine years, take back the world in 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 that the time had come, that he had to leave, that this battle was over.

He raised his shield.

The silver-white shield surface blocked Jugram's front. Then something black, like a curtain, rose from the ground and covered him, forming a black humanoid silhouette.

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

Yet the sword energy passed through the black silhouette as though passing through a curtain of water.

Then the black silhouette turned into threads, linking with the surrounding shadows before finally merging into them and vanishing. His Reiatsu vanished with it.

Jugram had retreated.

Shuichi's blade was still swinging.

The sixth red sword-energy slash flew from his blade, passed through where Jugram had been standing, and shot into the distant street, carving a long fissure into the ground.

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

The sea of flowers still bloomed beneath his feet—red, blue, yellow, and white—covering the entire field of ruins. But no one stood before him anymore.

Jugram had vanished. His shield had vanished. His sword had vanished. Even his Reiatsu was gone, completely and cleanly.

Shuichi could only stare.

His mouth hung slightly open, but he did not speak. His eyes remained fixed on the spot where Jugram had disappeared.

He did not understand. One second, that person had still been fighting him. The next, he was gone.

Running away would leave traces—a direction, a trajectory of moving Reiatsu. This was not running away. This was disappearance, as though 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 once.

The Holy Soldiers put away their Reishi Bows and left through the shadows. The Lieutenant-Class Quincy broke off their battles and moved toward the pillar of fire without looking back. Even the Sternritter members battling the captains stopped attacking at the same moment.

Not because they could not win, but because someone had ordered them to withdraw.

The order was synchronized, precise, and impossible to defy. Some Quincy still had their blades raised halfway through a swing when their bodies began to fade.

Others were still shouting, their mouths open and their voices not yet emerging before they 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 wind.

The first to react were the besieged Lower Nobility.

The attacks on their estates had far exceeded what they could withstand, and they had suffered the heaviest casualties.

Some families had only their heads left standing. Some had lost their entire younger generation. Some had seen their estates burned down to bare ground.

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

The young heir of one Lower Nobility family knelt before the ruins of his estate, covered in wounds. Blood had sealed his left eye shut, and the Zanpakutō in his right hand was chipped.

He watched the final Holy Soldier before him turn into a shadow and vanish. He froze for a moment, then suddenly threw back his head and released a hoarse roar toward the ash-red sky.

It was not language, merely a raw, primal sound, as though he wanted to force every ounce of fear, anger, and despair crushing his chest out through his throat.

Behind him, several similarly wounded family warriors began shouting as well. Their voices merged and echoed across the ruins.

The head of another Lower Nobility family sat collapsed on the steps before his gates. Both his legs had been pierced by Reishi arrows, leaving him 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 bind his wounds.

Looking in the direction the Quincy had vanished, he suddenly began to laugh.

It was not a happy laugh. It was an indescribable laugh with a sob caught in it, and 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 the next.

The Soul Reapers still standing around in confusion were pulled back to reality by those cries. Some shouted along with them, some collapsed to the ground and gasped for breath, while others began searching the ruins for their comrades.

But cheering was not everyone's response.

Those families whose losses were too devastating to be comforted by survival silently began gathering their relatives' bodies.

By the time the cheers of the Lower Nobility reached the districts of the Upper Nobility, they had been weakened by ruins and corpses. There were not nearly as many cheers here.

The Upper Nobility were far stronger overall than the Lower Nobility.

They possessed more complete armament systems, finer Reishi Armaments, and more Lieutenant-Class combatants.

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

Kuchiki Ginrei led his clansmen in fighting Schrift holders 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 a field of white corpses behind.

The two Captain-Class 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 had suffered was likewise beyond anything the Lower Nobility could compare to.

They had not faced merely Holy Soldiers and Lieutenant-Class Quincy.

Their opponents had been official members of the Sternritter, Quincy who had received Schrift from Yhwach.

Within the Kyoraku Clan estate, the courtyard had been blasted into a huge crater. Several family warriors' corpses lay beside it.

The clan head sat leaning against the crater's edge. The upper half of his once-luxurious clothing was soaked with blood, and a wound from a Reishi spear piercing his chest still seeped blood.

The Ise Clan estate was no longer habitable.

A large stretch of the eastern wall had collapsed, half the main building's roof had been torn away, and fragments of Reishi Bows and mutilated corpses littered the courtyard.

The clan head knelt on the steps before the main building, holding a blood-covered man in her arms.

Her son-in-law—the Captain-Class man.

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

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

The clan head's tears fell onto his face and mixed with the blood. Behind her, several family maids clutched children inside an undamaged room. The children did not cry, but the maids' lips trembled.

A massive ice spike was still embedded in the outer wall of the Kuchiki estate.

It was the mark Frida Bergmann had left during her assault on 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 shards still clung to Kuchiki Ginrei's Zanpakutō. He stood at the estate gate with the sword tip resting against the ground, silently watching as his clansmen were carried into the inner courtyard.

The Shihōin Clan had not fared much better.

Shihōin Qianri had led the Second Division outside to provide aid. Though the clansmen left behind had the protection of the Heaven-Bestowed Divine Armament, one of the Quincy attacking them could corrode Reishi structures.

The Shihōin Clan's Heaven-Bestowed Divine Armament had been as fragile as paper before him. Corroded fragments of Reishi armaments were scattered along the street before the estate, their silver-white surfaces reflecting dim light in the flames.

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-Class fighters had kept the Sternritter from approaching lightly, but they had paid a price as well.

One of Shiba Chuanlu's blue giant birds had been pierced through by a Quincy wielding a heavy crossbow. The damage to his Zanpakutō fed back into his Reiatsu, forcing him to clutch his chest, kneel, and vomit blood several times.

His younger brother's left arm had been pierced 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 at his feet. More than a dozen Quincy corpses lay around him.

He did not speak, nor did his expression change. He merely stood there, looking 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 revealed its wounds to outsiders.

If even the Four Great Noble Clans had suffered so badly, ordinary Upper Nobility had it even harder.

One Upper Nobility family famed for Kidō had lost its head early in the battle. A Quincy capable of reflecting Kidō had killed him with his own Hado. His corpse fell from the estate wall and struck the stone road, splashing a mist of blood. His clansmen did not even have time to mourn before they had to shoulder their head's Zanpakutō and continue fighting.

Another Upper Nobility family renowned for Shunpo had been suppressed into immobility by a Quincy who could create a gravity field. The entire family was trapped in the estate's front courtyard like fish nailed to a chopping block, cut down one after another by the Holy Soldiers' rain of arrows. When the Quincy retreated, that noble family's front courtyard was already carpeted in corpses.

Their estate still stood, but few of their people remained.

Cheers drifted over from afar, growing louder and louder. No one in the Upper Nobility districts joined in. They merely silently cleaned up the aftermath, counted casualties, and carried their dead clansmen into the mourning halls. Their faces held no joy at surviving the disaster, only numb, exhausted blankness, as though they no longer knew how to react.

A victory bought with the corpses of one's family was not worth cheering for.