The 73rd district of Rukongai sprawled like a scar across Soul Society, its cracked stone paths and decaying shrines whispering of long-forgotten tragedies. Here, the law held no dominion, and only the strong walked with their heads unbowed.
A low wind stirred dust across the abandoned rooftops.
"This is our first field mission," Lan Yan murmured, golden eyes narrowing as he adjusted the hilt of his zanpakutō. "Stay alert."
Lanran, walking beside him, offered a faint smile. "Was I ever not?"
The assignment seemed routine: reports of Hollow activity near the district's edge. But the spiritual signatures felt—wrong. Distorted. Like whispers speaking backward.
They passed a shattered torii gate where old prayer tags flapped like skin in the breeze. Reishi particles hung thick in the air, glinting unnaturally, drawn into faint spirals.
"Something's pooling reiatsu," Lanran said, extending two fingers and tracing a shimmering thread of energy. "This isn't natural Hollow presence. It's artificial."
Lan Yan paused.
Then his eyes flared.
BOOM!
The ground exploded in a burst of black mist. Shapes emerged—seven, no, nine—figures in broken Hollow masks, their eyes glowing with sentience. They wore fragments of what had once been Soul Reaper uniforms.
Aberrants.
They moved in twitching synchronicity, mouths stretching unnaturally.
"Lanran," Lan Yan said, stepping forward and drawing his zanpakutō in one smooth motion. "Contain the hive signature. I'll handle the dancers."
One of the creatures shrieked and lunged. The instant it crossed into Lan Yan's shadow—CRACK!—a wave of golden spiritual pressure exploded outward. The air warped. The Hollow stopped midair, frozen in place.
The others hesitated.
Too late.
Lan Yan vanished. A golden afterimage shimmered behind each Hollow, and in that suspended breath of silence, nine heads rolled from broken necks.
Thud! Thud! THUD!
Only one remained—a twisted humanoid with a Hollow core embedded directly in its sternum. It chanted in mangled Shinigami incantations, reishi converging around it.
Lan Yan raised a brow. "It speaks Kido?"
"It's mimicking," Lanran called, now hovering midair with four binding seals radiating around him. "Hive core's under the shrine. I'm disrupting its channel lines."
The aberrant surged with unstable energy.
Lan Yan raised his blade. It glowed faintly, light refracting in patterns like crystal fractals.
"Too slow."
ZSHING!
A flash. A ripple of bending space. The Hollow shattered before it could finish its chant, its scream dying in glimmering embers.
Silence fell.
Lanran touched down beside him.
"The core?"
Lanran extended his hand. In his palm lay a cracked orb, leaking spirit fluid—but tainted with something else. A thin seal surrounded it: noble script.
"This wasn't made by Hollows," Lanran said, eyes narrowing. "It was tethered. Someone lured them here. Fed them."
Lan Yan crouched, pressing his fingers into the dust. He closed his eyes.
The ground beneath pulsed.
"There's something else," he whispered. "A rift. Small. But trying to grow."
Lanran stiffened. "Hueco Mundo?"
"No," Lan Yan murmured. "Something older."
He stood slowly.
"Let's report this. But not everything."
Lauren raised an eyebrow.
"Yamamoto might already know," Lan Yan said, sheathing his zanpakutō. "If this was a test… then we've passed."
Behind them, the last fragments of the Aberrants crumbled into dust.
But in the silence that followed, unseen beneath the cracked earth, a thin sliver of obsidian-black light pulsed once—and vanished.