Seireitei, Eleventh Division, outside the captain's office.
Most of the morning mist had dispersed, leaving the daylight a pallid white.
Not an inch of the corridor leading to the captain's office retained its original pinewood color. Broken beams, shattered tiles, and dried, blackened blood covered the ground, stretching from the courtyard beneath the corridor like a wound torn open and hastily stitched shut.
And the door to the captain's office stood wide open.
That was when the captains arrived.
Once Genryūsai Shigekuni Yamamoto's reiatsu bore down from the heights of the First Division, the captains scattered throughout Seireitei began moving, one after another.
Fūgoin Yūkichi arrived first, dropping from a rooftop. Immediately afterward, Rose Ōtoribashi's long golden hair flashed behind a corridor pillar, and he was already standing in place.
Retsu Unohana did not hurry. In fact, she walked even more slowly than she usually did on her rounds through Seireitei.
Carrying her Zanpakutō in one hand, she crossed the charred, devastated courtyard step by step, her feet making faint, sticky sounds as she passed through pools of dark red blood that had yet to fully congeal.
These were buildings she had established with her own hands, the First Kenpachi's killing ground. Yet as she looked at the ruins before her, her expression was extraordinarily calm, like a bottomless pool of stagnant water without a single ripple-enough to send a chill through anyone who looked at her.
Genryūsai Shigekuni Yamamoto arrived.
Leaning on his cane, he entered from the main gate, one step at a time. Each tap of its tip against the ground was quiet, yet it made the spines of everyone present tense more than any explosion could.
Shuichi and Chojiro Sasakibe followed closely on either side of the Commander-in-Chief, like two silent guardians.
Shunsui Kyōraku had