Soul Society.
Countless burning meteors blotted out the sky, like thunderbolts cast down by a god.
The shadow of despair permeated every heart. They could only watch helplessly as the apocalypse descended.
Just then, a figure stepped out from the Gates of Hell.
It was a tall, straight-backed young man with black hair, handsome features, and calm, unrippled eyes, as if the world-destroying scene before him was merely a slightly noisy backdrop.
Facing the meteor shower capable of destroying the world, the young man casually raised his right hand and snapped his fingers crisply.
But after that single snap, centered on the young man's position, a silvery-gray ripple spread outward.
Wherever the ripple passed, space was 'smoothed out', time was 'frozen'.
Then, the falling meteors, like pencil drawings being erased, suddenly vanished.
Sunlight once again spilled down, and the sky returned to clarity.
"Wh-what happened?"
"Is it an illusion?"
"No, it's not an illusion. Captain Setsuna saved us!" Komamura shouted excitedly.
Looking towards the direction Komamura was staring at, many people finally noticed the figure before the Gates of Hell.
"He did this? So strong, unbelievably strong!" Ichigo's heart shook violently.
He had witnessed Aizen's power, experienced Yamamoto's might, and even faced Yhwach's oppression directly.
But this scene before him still exceeded his understanding.
"So this is the man who could make even a monster like Aizen willingly follow and never forget... Chiaki Setsuna?"
Toshiro's hand gripping Hyorinmaru trembled slightly, his heart full of bitterness.
He had been secretly comparing himself, measuring the gap between himself and this legendary senior.
Only now did he understand that it wasn't a gap, but a difference in dimension.
He might be able to freeze a few meteors by exhausting his Reiryoku, but this man had erased the entire meteor shower with a single snap of his fingers.
Even Yhwach, who had remained cold and aloof, felt his emotions churn violently.
'Could he be the variable from Hell that I foresaw?'
In contrast, Aizen and the others were overcome with excitement.
"Setsuna-nii!"
"Setsuna-sama!"
They were incredibly excited, as if transported back to that day over three hundred years ago.
Yoruichi instantly appeared before Setsuna and embraced him tightly. "I knew you would be alright!"
Setsuna showed a gentle smile and patted her head. "You've worked hard."
For him, it was merely a short journey of ten years, but for them, it was over three hundred long years of life.
Then, his gaze swept over Aizen, Koga, and the others, giving a slight nod as a greeting.
This blatant reunion infuriated someone who felt ignored.
"Bastard!" Gremmy appeared directly in front of Setsuna, his face flushed.
His full-powered imagination had been erased by a snap of Setsuna's fingers. This was a humiliation!
"Chiaki Setsuna! I know about you!" He said with a tense little face. "According to the memory fragments I read from those Shinigami, your Bankai ability seems to be immortality?"
"Hmph, that's exactly the Bankai ability I want most! With it, my 'imagination' will have no more worries. I can freely imagine the power to destroy everything!"
"Captain Setsuna! Be careful!" From afar, Kyoraku's expression changed, and he quickly shouted a warning. "These Quincies have a sinister method to steal Bankai! Don't use Bankai lightly!"
"Steal my Bankai?" Setsuna shook his head, his tone casual. "Someone like you isn't even qualified to make me use Bankai."
"What?" The smile froze on Gremmy's face. "You dare look down on my ability? Now I'll show you the terror of imagination..."
"Imagine, the vacuum of space!"
As his words fell, the space around Setsuna's body suddenly changed.
The air vanished instantly. The temperature plummeted to near absolute zero. Various cosmic rays and deadly radiation appeared out of nowhere. The powerful internal and external pressure difference was enough to crush any conventional life form.
However, Setsuna, wrapped in the 'vacuum of space', didn't even have a corner of his clothes flutter.
"Wh-why are you unharmed?" Gremmy's eyes nearly popped out of his head. "How can a human survive in the vacuum of space?"
"Who told you I was an 'ordinary' human?" Setsuna's voice transmitted through his soul. "Physically traversing the cosmos is merely a stroll for me."
"Impossible! What about this!" Gremmy went completely mad, pushing his imagination to its limit until blood even seeped from his facial features due to the excessive strain.
"Imagine, the black hole that devours everything!"
Not far in front of Setsuna, space twisted violently. A tiny, yet terrifyingly attractive and destructive, embryonic 'black hole' was forcibly imagined into existence by Gremmy.
Although it was far from reaching the scale of a true cosmic black hole, the gravity it emitted had already caused the surrounding space to twist violently. Light was being devoured, and even Reishi began to uncontrollably collapse towards its center.
"Ahhh! Gremmy! Stop!"
"You idiot! Is he trying to suck us all in?"
"Get away from there!"
The Sternritter once again screamed in terror, making quite a few Shinigami feel a bit of sympathy for them, 'Living with such a powerful madman must be very difficult, right?'
Facing this miniature black hole that could even distort and devour space, Setsuna calmly opened his mouth.
A suction force even more overbearing than that of the embryonic black hole emanated from Setsuna's mouth.
The moment the gravity emitted by the embryonic black hole encountered this suction force, like a stream meeting the ocean, it was pulled back and devoured in reverse.
A few seconds later, the entire embryonic black hole, along with the twisted space and dissipated energy around it, like a strand of noodles, was sucked into Setsuna's mouth in one go.
Setsuna swallowed lightly, then smacked his lips and commented, "Hmm, the energy is a bit rough, the flavor is on the spicy side, but the concept of 'destruction' it contains is quite pure... not bad. Got any more?"
Although he was not yet powerful enough to devour the universe like White Demon, devouring an embryonic black hole was still effortless for him.
The entire field fell into deathly silence.
Gremmy stared blankly at Setsuna, his mouth unconsciously agape, his mind a complete blank.
A black hole was already the limit of his imagination. He simply couldn't imagine anything else that could kill this monster.
"It seems there are no more." Setsuna looked at the petrified Gremmy and said calmly, "Imagination is an interesting ability, but it has a fatal weakness."
"Its upper limit is restricted by the user's own cognition and capacity."
"You can't even imagine how powerful I am, so how could you possibly imagine a power that can defeat me?"
The moment his words fell, Setsuna's fingertip pointed lightly at Gremmy.
A soft pop, like a bubble bursting.
Gremmy's entire being was completely erased, without a trace of life left.