He woke to wind.
Not silence. Not a void. Wind.
It brushed through the tall grass like fingers against skin, carrying with it the sharp scent of earth and ash and something faintly sweet. For a moment, he simply lay there—his back on warm dirt, limbs heavy, eyes open to a sky that wasn't cracked or burning or bleeding starlight.
No blood. No war cries. No remnants of a world ready to be torn apart.
Just sky. Open and blue.
Ichigo let out a slow breath.
It felt like breathing for the first time in years.
But even in the stillness, he knew better than to trust it. The ripple he'd felt when the Soul King sent him through had been massive—a tear in the veil that spanned worlds. He was beyond normal detection now; a transcendent being whose spiritual pressure no longer registered to anything below divine. But the portal—the act of entry—that had weight.
Someone would come soon.
He sat up, rubbing grit from his palms. The movement was fluid. Too fluid. His body obeyed without delay or resistance, as if it had been remade without scar tissue or hesitation.
It felt like his body, but sharper. The world around him was painfully crisp. He could hear the shift of worms beneath rocks. The rhythm of breath from something nesting beneath a nearby tree. Every color had a new depth, every shade a whisper.
This wasn't his world. Not the one he left behind.
And maybe that was the point.
"You can become what I was," the Soul King had said, voice fracturing across planes of reality. "The lynchpin. The still heart of a new world. Or I can send you away. Far. Somewhere adjacent. Somewhere that might still hold shape and where you can live. But the people you will see won't be your friends and family. They won't remember you."
Ichigo had laughed then. Bitter. Flat. Being alone in this new world was better than staying.
He'd already buried everyone. Watched friends dissolve into dust. Held Inoue's hand as her soul unraveled in the wind. Heard Urahara's voice go silent in the middle of a spell. Felt Rukia's reiatsu stutter out like a candle drowned in blood. Not to mention his family—
No. There was nothing left for him there, and he couldn't kill himself. He knew that much. Cowardice? Maybe. Or just plain weariness. But he couldn't keep walking through the world Yhwach had hollowed out.
So when the Soul King offered him a door, Ichigo stepped through.
With a sigh after thinking that, he rose to his feet.
The wind shifted. Behind him, faint echoes of spiritual presence began to stir—far off still, but converging. Shinigami. Patrol squads maybe. Investigating the distortion left behind, most likely.
It meant he needed to move.
A breath. A flex of his fingers. A shunpo—and the world blurred.
He didn't stop until he was miles from the entry site, perched on the crumbling edge of a low hill, overlooking a dust-gray stretch of Rukongai. A cleaner version than he remembered. Less desperate. Still poor, but not rotting.
His chest heaved lightly. Not from exhaustion, but from something else. A… tug in his senses. Like the air had shifted. It wasn't reiatsu, not exactly. More like a fragrance wrapping itself around his spine.
He inhaled.
Soft. Floral. Slightly tart. Not overpowering, just… there, weaving through the wind like a whisper meant only for him.
It took him several moments to realize it was coming from him.
He froze.
His first irrational thought was: That smells like the strawberry tea my mom used to drink.
Delicate. Faintly fruity. Warm in memory.
But he wasn't carrying anything. He had eaten nothing. He drank nothing. The scent clung to him like heat after a bath. Gentle, cloying, foreign.
He lifted his arm. Breathed in. There. Again. Stronger on the skin around his wrists.
What the hell?
A scent wasn't supposed to come from spirit pressure. And his pressure wasn't supposed to exist anymore. Not at this level. He wasn't even masking it—it just didn't register to anyone not on his level.
So why did he smell?
Ichigo frowned, stomach sinking with something that felt a little like unease and a little like instinct.
Something was different. The body may have felt like his. But it wasn't. Not exactly.
Oh, well. He shrugged. He'd worry about it later.
Right now, there was a greater concern.
Yhwach.
If he were here—if this world bore any resemblance to his own—then Yhwach was still alive, festering somewhere behind a throne of corpses and vengeance.
He tightened his grip on the hilt of the sword resting on his back. Familiar weight. Cold reassurance.
He'd made his choice.
The scent clung to him like something waiting to be acknowledged. But Ichigo had no time for it.
Not now.
He turned, the wind catching in his cloak, and vanished back into the wind, hoping his speed and the wind would help him take away some of the smell. But after a couple of jumps, the scent hadn't faded.
If anything, the closer Ichigo moved toward what his senses told him was civilization, the more it wrapped around him—cloying, sweet, warm like a blanket soaked in sun-dried fruit and tea leaves. He couldn't escape it because it was his. It bled from his skin like steam, subtle but persistent. The irony of it still clung to the back of his throat.
Strawberries. Of course, it had to be strawberries.
He huffed under his breath, pushing through the tall reeds at the edge of the hill. In the distance, he could see it—buildings stacked unevenly like broken teeth, curling smoke from a half dozen cooking fires, the messy sprawl of outer Rukongai districts. From this far out, it looked deceptively peaceful.
But something was off.
His senses prickled—not from spiritual pressure, but from movement. Two presences. Faint, hurried. A pair of small footsteps pattered through the bushes. Moving away from him.
And straight toward something else.
He smelled it before he felt it—foul, metallic, rotting. A Hollow.
Ichigo's body reacted before his mind finished the thought.
One step. One shunpo.
The hollow was small by his world's standards—easily the size of a small building, all gangly limbs and an elongated mask shaped like a distorted boar. Its claws were outstretched, reaching toward the two figures scrambling backward in the dirt—children, maybe ten or eleven, limbs scuffed and scraped, eyes wide with terror.
One had bright, short orange hair and wore green clothes. The other, with black clothes, had silver hair and sharper eyes—already reaching for a stick like she intended to fight with it.
It was brave and stupid. Also, way too slow to be worth anything as the hollow loomed in front of them.
Ichigo appeared in front of it in a blur.
He didn't even draw his blade.
Instead, he reached out casually, grasping the creature's mask with one hand and stopping it.
The hollow shrieked, flailing as Ichigo's fingers tightened and the mask shattered like fragile porcelain beneath his grip.
The hollow didn't scream again. It simply unraveled, disintegrating into pale ash on the wind as the children stared.
Ichigo landed softly, eyes scanning for more threats. When there were none, he turned—not expecting to see faces he recognized.
But the faces were younger. Their heights were smaller.
Gin Ichimaru and Rangiku Matsumoto.
But not the ones from his time. Not yet. They were just kids. Scrappy, fast, and not smart enough to run.
Gin was the first to speak.
"You crushed it," Gin said, voice somewhere between breathless and accusatory. "You didn't even use a sword."
Ichigo blinked. "Uh, yeah. Didn't need to."
Rangiku was still staring, slack-jawed. Gin positioned himself in front of her, unknowingly getting closer to Ichigo. However, then—he winced, nose scrunching up as he turned away slightly.
"Oh no," he groaned. "You smell strong."
Ichigo's brow furrowed. "Excuse me?"
Rangiku covered her mouth, eyes watering slightly. "He's right. You really reek. It's all sweet and sharp and clingy. Like strawberries wrapped in honey."
Ichigo scowled. "...What?"
"I meant it in a good way!" she said quickly. "That's how omegas smell. Especially powerful ones. Or that's what I've been told."
His brain stopped. "What."
Gin sighed, brushing wild silver strands out of his face, and muttering like this happened often. "You died recently, right? Only really powerful souls awaken their second gender right after passing. You smell like a fresh omega in bloom."
Ichigo took a step back. "A what in what?"
Rangiku stepped forward, proud now. "An omega," she repeated, like she was educating a class of one. "It's rare for one to be born in Rukongai. The Shinigami Academy usually claims anyone with a scent that strong before the nobles sniff them out."
She held her chin high.
"I'm an omega too," she added, like it was an award. "And a strong one, too."
Ichigo just stared.
Gin looked away again, his cheeks pink despite the grimace. "Suppressors don't sell out here," he muttered. "We didn't need 'em. We barely register unless we're sick or mad or... near something strong. However, Rangiku has been getting stronger…"
The scent he'd noticed earlier—faint, delicate, nostalgic—was him, he knew that. But what was this about omegas? Was that a new race? Besides being an amalgamation of quincy, shinigami and hollow, was he going to be an omega, too?
Ichigo exhaled through his nose, slow and measured. He didn't feel different. His body moved the same. His instincts hadn't changed... No wait, they had. Just enough to leave him standing in front of two brats gawking at him like he was a walking heatwave.
He rubbed the back of his neck, frustrated. "So… what. I'm supposed to be what now? Register? Buy these suppressants?"
Rangiku tilted her head. "...No? But you're not gonna make it out here if people figure out what you are. You're rare because of the power of your smell."
"I'm not rare," Ichigo snapped self-consciously, because he knew he was rare.
Gin gave him a skeptical look. "You sure smell like it."
Ichigo's fingers curled around his cloak's edge. Not from fear. From embarrassment. From confusion. From instinct screaming against his composure.
He didn't belong here; he knew that. But he wanted to. This was a new opportunity for him to finally live instead of merely surviving. He knew it would not be easy, but he didn't expect this either.
He should have guessed it, though. Fate loved to mess with him.