A bitter wind swept through the Zaraki District, sharp enough to feel like a blade as it carried loose particles of reishi through the deserted streets.
Kazuma stood motionless in the middle of it, the sleeves of his robes stirring softly around him while his gaze remained fixed on Yhwach, who had already settled into an offensive stance several meters away.
Outwardly, Kazuma still looked perfectly composed.
His body told a different story.
The battle against the four founders had forced him to draw far more deeply on his unrecovered power than he should have.
He had won, but forcing that much spiritual power through a body that still carried the damage from his previous ordeal had aggravated injuries he had never truly healed.
Now, the moment he began gathering power again, a familiar metallic sweetness crept up the back of his throat.
The old wounds were waking up.
Kazuma ignored them.
"Hadō #63: Raikōhō!"
Golden lightning erupted from his palm.
The blast tore toward Yhwach like a roaring dragon, illuminating the ruined district as it crossed the distance between them.
It should have struck him squarely in the chest.
Instead, a vicious pain suddenly ripped through the spiritual pathways in Kazuma's right arm.
His hand jerked.
The trajectory shifted by less than three inches.
That was enough.
Raikōhō missed Yhwach and slammed into the ground beside his feet, detonating with enough force to carve out a deep, blackened crater.
Smoke and pulverized stone rushed outward, swallowing the surrounding streets beneath a rolling cloud of dust.
Yhwach remained inside the haze.
When his silhouette became visible again, his blood-red eyes had narrowed almost to points.
"So that's it…"
He slowly raised one hand and wiped away a thin streak of blood where flying debris had cut his cheek.
His black cloak snapped around him beneath the pressure of his reiatsu, while the mark of Schrift "A" began to emerge faintly across his forehead.
Yhwach had not yet completely regained The Almighty.
Until now, forcing the ability awake prematurely had been a risk he preferred not to take.
That calculation had changed.
The moment his sight opened beyond ordinary perception, the calm image Kazuma had been presenting fell apart.
Yhwach saw through it.
Kazuma was smiling but he was also in terrible condition.
The fight against the four founders had forced him to push his power far beyond what his still-damaged body could comfortably sustain, and three old injuries that had remained sealed inside him were now coming apart.
Rather than simply causing pain, they had begun consuming his spiritual power from within, eating into his reserves every time he tried to draw more out.
Kazuma knew it too.
He leaned forward slightly, presenting the posture of someone preparing to launch another attack, while the left hand hidden behind his back moved through a rapid sequence of concealed Bakudō signs.
He was bluffing.
And for the first time, Yhwach could see it.
The watching captains had begun noticing something was wrong as well.
Thin black-and-red strands had appeared inside Kazuma's normally purple-gold reiatsu.
At first they resembled stray wisps of smoke, but they were becoming steadily more visible, twisting through his spiritual pressure like foreign matter contaminating it from within.
Unohana's hand tightened around the hilt of her Zanpakutō.
As one of Soul Society's greatest masters of Kaidō, she understood immediately what those strands meant.
This was not ordinary exhaustion.
"Captain-Commander!"
Isane started forward, but Unohana raised an arm and stopped her.
Only then did Isane notice the blood running between Unohana's fingers.
Without realizing it, she had been gripping her Zanpakutō so hard that she had cracked the guard beneath her hand.
Before either woman could move, an immense pressure exploded from the center of the battlefield.
The Zaraki District fell silent.
Then Yhwach spoke.
"Auswählen."
Light answered him.
The surviving Sternritter whom Yhwach had previously allowed to escape were seized by his power wherever they had fled.
Their screams carried through the spiritual connection as their bodies were stripped of what he had once granted them, each Quincy collapsing into a torrent of spiritual energy that was dragged back toward its source.
Yhwach absorbed all of it.
The influx was violent enough to shake the district.
Buildings unable to withstand the pressure cracked and collapsed one after another, stone walls bursting apart while roof tiles and debris were hurled through the streets.
Dust rolled across Zaraki until what remained of the district looked less like a settlement and more like the aftermath of a natural disaster.
Yhwach's reiatsu continued rising.
The surrounding space warped beneath it.
Then he raised one hand.
"Heilig Bogen."
An enormous reishi bow formed behind him.
A Heilig Pfeil materialized on the string, its surface wrapped in ominous black fire.
Yhwach released it.
Kazuma cursed inwardly.
He immediately tried to activate Shunshin and pain exploded through the spiritual pathways in his right leg.
Crack.
One of them snapped.
Kazuma stumbled.
For perhaps the first time since Yhwach had known him, the movement was genuinely clumsy.
The burning Heilig Pfeil was already upon him.
Kazuma forced his weight onto his remaining leg and twisted aside at the last possible instant.
The arrow missed his throat, but only barely.
Its edge brushed past the side of his neck, tearing open the space beside him and leaving behind a long, narrow fissure filled with points of starlight.
Yhwach's voice followed from across the ruins.
"Kazuma."
There was satisfaction in it now.
"It appears the one dying today will be you."
Kazuma straightened slowly.
His face had lost most of its color.
Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, and when he wiped it away, another thin line immediately replaced it.
'Shit.'
He could no longer pretend the situation was comfortably under control.
If this continued, he really might manage to get himself killed after spending the entire battle acting like Yhwach had no chance.
Kazuma gritted his teeth.
Then, for the first time in their exchange, he drew his Zanpakutō.
The blade left its sheath with a clear metallic ring.
"Hokushin Enclosure."
He raised the sword.
"Execute the demon!"
Kazuma forced his damaged spiritual pathways open and activated the Big Dipper Demon-Suppression Array once more.
The seven stars of the Big Dipper began to vibrate across the sky above Soul Society.
Starlight descended.
Yhwach's expression changed immediately.
"Again?"
He had personally watched what this technique had done to the four founders.
Kazuma might be badly injured and nowhere near his best, but the formation itself was still something Yhwach had no interest in testing head-on. Those four monsters had nearly been killed by it together.
He was not going to stand there and find out whether he could do better alone.
Yhwach tore open space.
And ran.
He did not retreat with dignity.
He did not issue a final threat.
He simply escaped.
By the time the brilliance of the Big Dipper faded, there was no trace of him left in the Zaraki District.
Kazuma remained standing for another moment.
Then one knee hit the ground.
He drove his Zanpakutō into the earth and used it to keep himself upright.
The black-and-red strands inside his reiatsu had spread much farther now.
They crawled upward along the veins of his neck like something alive beneath the skin, pulsing faintly as they advanced.
The captains immediately began moving toward him.
Kazuma spoke before anyone could reach him.
"Seal this information."
Despite his condition, his voice remained steady.
The hand gripping his Zanpakutō was another matter.
Veins stood sharply beneath the skin from the force required simply to keep himself upright.
"Notify the Twelfth Division…"
He paused long enough to catch his breath.
"Begin full surveillance of every fluctuation in the Dangai."
Kazuma closed his eyes.
His spiritual perception expanded through Soul Society.
Then he felt them.
At the Thirteenth Division barracks.
At Senzaikyū.
Even beneath the Shin'ō Academy.
Strange points of starlight were appearing simultaneously in places that should have had nothing connecting them.
Inside Kazuma's body, the old wounds continued running wild.
The darkness pressing against his consciousness grew heavier.
And this time, sheer stubbornness was no longer enough to keep it away.