Back in Soul Society, everyone who had been there in the World of the Living received a gag order about what happened.
And for reasons no one could guess, Central 46 brushed past the deaths of several shinigami with a few light words and moved on.
Shuuichi even heard that the 13th's captain, Jūshirō, had gone to Central 46 in person—but the result seemed far from ideal.
After leaving, Jūshirō shut himself inside his small captain's room, the Ugendō.
Another captain with a heart full of justice, slapped by reality.
Shuuichi could only feel regret. He wasn't going to try to change anything.
After returning, his daily life slid back on track: teaching kidō, kaidō, and pharmacology to 4th Division members as usual; the once-a-week sword sessions he'd mockingly dubbed "Retsu's Queenly Flogging"; the almost daily after-school one-on-ones with Shūsuke and Rangiku; the occasional trip to 2nd Division to play sparring partner for Soi Fon; a drop-in at the Maggot's Nest to catch up with Mayuri—and to have him study the triangular-prism gem Shuuichi had pocketed from that battlefield.
Everything looked unchanged.
Only Shuuichi knew that after nearly five months of quiet digging, he'd finally pried a few scraps of intel from Yoruichi about the most secret of the Five Great Noble Houses.
The Kabuma clan: the family assigned to guard and monitor Hell—responsible for nothing else, never involving itself in Soul Society's internal affairs.
Not even a trace of them in Central 46.
They existed a lot like the Royal Guard—except one served only the Spirit King, and the other served only Hell.
Now, with spring warming the air, Shuuichi visited the home of the former 10th Division captain, Kurando, in the Seireitei.
"I'm terribly sorry, Shuuichi-kun. Please don't mind the mess~"
Kneeling across from him was Kurando's widow: young, graceful, pretty in a modest way, a model of the Yamato nadeshiko.
"I'm the one who should apologize. Dropping in like this must be a bother."
He meant it.
Because the one ultimately responsible for her situation… was Shuuichi himself.
They lived in the Seireitei. Kurando had worn the 10th Division haori for years. Yet not a year after his death, the house already looked "austere" to the naked eye.
In those bare rooms, sound echoed.
Kurando had been a Rukongai commoner once, and only after becoming a captain did he marry a minor noblewoman from the Seireitei. He hadn't had time to leave much behind.
One glance told Shuuichi what the widow faced.
Jackals, circling.
After a few more pleasantries, Shuuichi stated his purpose. With the widow's leave, he entered Kurando's private quarters.
He'd already combed the 10th Division captain's lounge and found nothing. This was a long shot.
Luck favored him this time: tucked inside one of Kurando's old garments, he found a talisman etched with eerie black lines.
The instant his right hand touched it—
A scene he'd never seen flooded his mind.
A lightless shrine. Dim candles. A bent, pallid silhouette. It was as if every evil in the world had gathered there. Just that glimpse sent a chill up Shuuichi's spine.
Kabuma—
The vision vanished quickly. In the afterimage, he noticed one tiny detail:
A hanging ornament at the brim of the figure's headpiece—almost certainly the emblem of Soul Society's most mysterious fifth noble family.
Just as he'd suspected.
From the day he'd seen Kurando's bizarre Bankai—and the strange vision after Shuuichi killed him—he'd held a guess.
In the original tale, Hell's affairs bled into Soul Society because, after the Thousand-Year Blood War, too many top-tier combatants died.
In this world's rules, shinigami with tremendous reiatsu cannot disperse into reishi and return to the land. They are consigned to Hell to be punished, again and again, to scour their sins.
The most grievous are granted new strength and become "Togabito (Condemned)." They fight without end, are defiled without end, are killed without end, and revived without end—misery without relief.
When Yamamoto, Retsu, and others of that rank entered Hell, the realm—already near capacity—tipped out of balance.
Only then did the Togabito gain the chance to intrude into Soul Society.
But at this point in time, Hell shouldn't have reached that critical mass. Its power shouldn't be surfacing here yet.
Shuuichi saw one possibility: the legendary fifth family was meddling.
It fit. Only the Kabuma—who, after the Five Houses ambushed the Spirit King centuries ago, took on the duty of overseeing Hell—would have the ability and the opportunity to draw Hell's power outward.
Weighing the talisman in his hand, Shuuichi recognized the choice in front of him.
A gamble.
He would gamble that, like the Royal Guard, the Kabuma didn't care about Soul Society's fate—only their own charge.
If that were true, everything Shuuichi had done wouldn't become the noose around his neck.
Judging from their current inaction, he was ninety percent confident.
Even so, when he left Kurando's house and set one foot inside Kabuma territory, his heart beat tight.
He knew how many times the headsman would've taken him on Sōkyoku Hill for what he'd done.
Silence pressed his ears; only the crunch of leaves underfoot and his own breathing kept him company.
He slid a door open. Dust lay thick, as if no one had lived here in ages.
He knew better. The talisman in his hand purred with delighted clicks.
Something it hadn't done in Kurando's home.
It felt the way those oni had, when Kurando's eerie Bankai had sprung them loose.
Following the talisman's faint tug, Shuuichi soon found a staircase down.
He lifted the heavy latch. Dust billowed.
He coughed a few times, throat stinging.
Clearly, no one had opened this in a very long while.
"Hadō 20: Shōtenkyū (Sky-Lighting Sphere)!"
A sphere of light bloomed in his palm and poured down the tunnel.
What was the creator of this spell thinking, labeling it Hadō and giving it a number as high as 20?
It only lights the way.
In killing power, it probably loses to Hadō 4: Byakurai (Pale Lightning).
He descended to the end. A sealed door waited.
Rooms lined the hall behind him, their doors unlocked. He'd opened them all. Each held the kneeling bones of someone on a cushion.
When had he last seen this many intact skeletons?
Years ago, in Hueco Mundo—when he sought out Szayelaporro and Baraggan came sniffing around for a "spar."
Here in Soul Society, where bodies vanish to reishi when they die, this much bone in one place was… unsettling.
He stilled himself, brought two fingers together to knock—then changed his mind and pushed the door wide.
He'd come to ask—but with power rivaling most captains, he didn't need to bow like he did before Sōsuke.
"You've come~"
The voice was a girl's—nightingale-sweet, out of place in this dead room.
At the far end, a slender back knelt on a cushion.
Gaunt. Frail.
Five blue-faced oni clung to her—half-foot fangs sinking into her again and again, bright blood slicking everything.
They laughed. They played. They used her like a banquet table.
If this was a member of the Kabuma, one of the Five Great Houses—even Shuuichi, who prided himself on a steady heart, felt it stir.
"You know who I am?"
One hand rested on his Zanpakutō. He watched the corners for movement.
Aside from a moment's sympathy, the sight only made him more wary.
"I don't."
The girl looked up—not at him, but at a nameless idol.
"But they do. You've been acknowledged. The key to Hell is already in your hands. So you would come."
Shuuichi's eyes narrowed.
By "they," she must mean the talisman he'd taken from Kurando.
It was true—the same pulling thread had led him here.
"This 'key to Hell'—you mean this?"
He raised the talisman, feigning ignorance.
The key wasn't the talisman. If it were, Kurando would never have failed to carry it.
As expected, the girl gave a tiny shake of her head, a soft, pained breath escaping with the effort.
"Just a fragment of that man. You know it well. It doesn't belong to you."
Shuuichi's hand almost moved.
The Spirit King's Nail—one of his deepest secrets—named in a breath.
"If I'm right… you waited for me. Why?"
He kept the sword still. Questions first.
"Hell is almost full. If nothing is done, not just Hell—but Soul Society, Hueco Mundo, and the World of the Living—will all break."
Her fear seemed simple, unfeigned. She didn't press him on why he'd come.
"What does that have to do with me? What could I do?"
He asked it, but he already held part of the answer.
With Kurando in mind, a bold idea took shape—a Kabuma idea.
"Do you know what Hell is?"
She didn't answer directly. Instead, she asked something that sounded unrelated.
"When normal shinigami or Hollows die, their reishi returns to Soul Society. But for shinigami or Hollows whose reiatsu is too strong, it can't. They're sent to Hell."
Shuuichi replied.
That wasn't in any academy textbook. Most shinigami didn't even know the word "Hell."
But from the moment she said it and Shuuichi didn't ask "What's Hell?", he had followed her pace—and yielded the initiative.
He realized it later. Too late to matter.
So he chose frankness.
"And in Hell, they don't truly die. Some with the heaviest sins even gain new power—just enough to let them suffer endless cycles."
Her tone was soaked in sorrow.
"The intention was good. But the result…"
"The result is that sin piles higher. If it isn't vented, Hell's balance will be crushed by the system it built."
She finished the thought for him.
"So the Kabuma devised a method—letting Hell's sin pass through shinigami bodies to be released back into Soul Society—reducing Hell's burden. Is that it?"
He stared at the back by the altar and spoke his guess.
The back shuddered. He knew he'd hit it.
He had to admit—the mind in the Kabuma who first proposed it was a genius.
If reiatsu is too dense to disperse?
Fine. Use a funnel called a shinigami. Process it in batches.
But they'd forgotten one thing: ordinary shinigami can't bear that much reiatsu—let alone Hell-tempered sin. And who among the strong would volunteer for a job that painful and thankless?
That, likely, was why the Kabuma had withered to this state—and why those rooms of bones lined the hall.
At first, they must have tried to shoulder it with their own family. When it was too late, they turned to outsiders.
Was Kurando the first? Shuuichi didn't know. He was sure Kurando wasn't the last.
Because Shuuichi himself would take the baton.
"I can help the Kabuma continue this work. But I have one condition."
"…"
Silence fell. Only the oni, tone-deaf to moods, clicked their fangs at Shuuichi.
The girl hadn't expected it to go this smoothly. She'd spent countless words to convince Kurando.
Commoners made for easier marks.
But this? So quick, it made her doubt her ears.
"Conditions are fair. But do you understand what you're accepting?"
She knew she shouldn't say it. She said it anyway.
The best outcome was like Kurando: accept only after preparing himself to die.
"I do. Which is why my condition is harsh.
You said that man's fragment is the key. That means there's also a lock. You wouldn't randomly pull any soul from Hell at all, right?"
He was crystal-clear on what he needed.
"Give me the lock. Let me carry out the Kabuma's dream."
He wanted a pass to walk Hell—freely.
The Spirit King's Nail granting him "infinite regeneration" was his safety line.
Hell's power—he wanted it. The strength of Soul Society's past captains—he wanted that, too.
He refused to believe that, as a sitting vice-captain, he couldn't find a few "good samaritans" in Hell willing to teach him.
A Sōsuke obsessed with the Hōgyoku, a Retsu focused only on swordplay—they no longer filled his appetite.
He needed new teachers. New disciplines.
The girl hesitated only a moment before agreeing.
The lock that opened the gate to Hell was the Kabuma's hereditary Zanpakutō—Seyabasa.
"Grip her. Call her name. You can open your door to Hell."
As Seyabasa's true owner, she could close whatever gate he opened—anytime.
So she didn't fear Shuuichi committing unforgivable sins with that blade.
And Shuuichi didn't bother asking whether she might lock him on the far side.
As she trusted him without condition, he returned the same.
//Check out my P@tre0n for 20 extra chapters on all my fanfics //[email protected]/Razeil0810