Seireitei. 4th Division Medical Wing. Midnight.
A silvery frost creeps across the tatami floor, glistening in the pale moonlight. The spiritual power crackles with static - something in the air feels alive.
Rukia Kuchiki sits on the edge of a treatment table, her pale fingers trembling. Her breath clouds with each exhale, even though the room is not cold.
Rukia, whispering:
"Captain Unohana... it's happening again. The dreams. The voice in the darkness."
Unohana studies her with quiet dread. The monitors reading Rukia's spiritual power fluctuate - sharp peaks and then valleys that look like dying stars.
A faint glow pulses beneath Rukia's collarbone, slightly violet-blue. The same colour that the Hōgyoku once had.
Unohana, quietly:
"That light... should no longer exist."
Rukia's eyes widen. She clutches her chest as the glow intensifies, veins of light running up her neck like frost breaking through glass. The ground beneath her freezes.
The deepest level of the Muken: Aizen's eternal cell.
The chains hang suspended in the endless darkness. Sōsuke Aizen sits motionless, head bowed and eyes closed. The silence is absolute... until it isn't.
A single heartbeat echoes in the void. Not his. Hers.
His sealed body contracts. A smile appears on his lips.
Aizen:
"Ah... it remembers."
The seal around him trembles. For the first time in months, his spiritual pressure spreads, not outward, but through the walls of reality.
The blue light on his chest pulses once. Rukia screams through worlds.
Back to the Seireitei.
Frost explodes in the hallway, ice spreading across the walls as the reishi in the air fractures like glass. Kiyone and Isane run in, but the moment they touch the frost, their skin turns black with spiritual rot - the infection not cold, it is corruption disguised as purity.
Isane, gasping:
Her spiritual power... is multiplying-!"
Rukia's spiritual power increases, white and blue flames clash violently. The aura twists into hollow patterns, but remains unmistakably hers.
Rukia:
"Someone... is calling me..."
The voice whispers through the corridors of her mind - Aizen's voice, serene and terrible.
Aizen, in the distance:
"You once carried my heart, Rukia Kuchiki.
And now... you carry my resurrection."
The frost under her feet forms a flower-shaped seal that shines like moonlight on blood. Every particle of reshi in the Seireitei trembles.
From depths of the Muken, a second beat respond - the complete resonance.