After the battle, silence settled over the desolate wasteland.
The cold wind still howled, carrying with it a vacant quiet born of surviving a catastrophe.
For miles around, the earth looked like a chessboard trampled by a colossal god, scarred by sprawling fissures and bottomless, ice-choked craters.
Vast swathes of terrain lay melted by blistering heat, only to be flash-frozen a heartbeat later.
A violent turbulence of Reishi lingered in the air, the mingled scents of ash and permafrost bearing silent witness to the harrowing clash that had just unfolded.
Isshin Shiba leaned heavily on Engetsu, struggling to his feet as the frost encrusting his body flaked away.
Surveying the apocalyptic devastation with lingering dread, he glanced at the frozen figure lying motionless in the distance and exhaled a long plume of white mist.
“Haah…
Talk about a close shave!
Hyōrinmaru really lives up to being spoken of in the same breath as Ryūjin Jakka.
We were almost done for.”
Yanagawa slowly sheathed Tenzen at his waist.
He shook his head slightly at Isshin’s remark, his eyes still fixed on the fallen spirit.
“Hyōrinmaru’s innate power is undeniably terrifying,” Yanagawa said.
A faint, barely perceptible trace of exhaustion edged his voice, outweighed by his characteristic analytical calm.
“However, that battle—especially that final Four Worlds Freeze—exceeded what Hyōrinmaru’s own will could dictate, both in sheer destructive power and its rampant instability.”
“That golden energy played a critical role.
It made Hyōrinmaru’s power far more feral, aggressive, and volatile.”
He paused, then added, “Moreover, anything capable of corrupting the core spirit of a Zanpakuto like this is far from ordinary.”
After taking a moment to catch their breath and steady their disrupted spiritual pressure, the two walked across the shattered permafrost and glittering ice crystals toward where Hyōrinmaru lay.
The spirit lay quiet, his tall frame curled slightly on the frozen ground.
The crossed scars over his face remained prominent, yet their former chilling majesty had faded into profound frailty.
His pale purple kimono was tattered in numerous places, soiled with ice dust and grime.
As Yanagawa and Isshin drew near, Hyōrinmaru’s closed eyelids fluttered.
Slowly, they opened—bereft of the earlier chaos and frenzy.
Though his gaze still retained the inhuman edge typical of a materialized Zanpakuto spirit, complete clarity had returned to it.
He silently watched the two Soul Reapers come to a halt before him, displaying no hostility and making no attempt to speak right away.
“Hyōrinmaru?” Yanagawa spoke first, his tone even and questioning.
“…Yes.” Hyōrinmaru’s voice was faint, carrying a metallic rasp, yet clearly audible.
He strained to sit up, but his body swayed and collapsed back to the ground.
He turned his eyes toward Yanagawa.
“Was it you two…
who dispelled that…
power?”
“You could say that.” Yanagawa crouched down to meet his gaze directly.
“How do you feel?
Has that golden power vanished completely?”
“It’s gone…
or rather, completely spent.” Hyōrinmaru closed his eyes, appearing to take stock of his internal condition, before opening them again.
“Thanks to you both.
Otherwise, I doubt my mind would have cleared so quickly.”
His words held a trace of lingering terror, mixed with genuine gratitude.
“What on earth happened?” Isshin could no longer contain himself, blurting out the million-dollar question.
“Why did you go berserk?
And why did two people—Tōshirō Hitsugaya and Sōjirō Kusakabe—awaken you at the exact same time?
That completely defies the laws of Zanpakuto!”
At the mention of those two names, a complex gleam crossed Hyōrinmaru’s eyes—acknowledgment mingled with regret.
He fell silent for a few seconds, gathering his thoughts as he recalled memories steeped in chaos and golden light.
“The root of this…
lies in the moment of my initial awakening, when I answered the call of the white-haired youth.”
“A strange golden energy descended from the highest heavens.
Bypassing all barriers, it surged directly into my body.”
Pain flickered across his face.
“That power…
was overwhelmingly tyrannical.
It carried a higher-order authority capable of meddling with fundamental laws, forcibly twisting my will.”
*So that’s how it is.* Enlightenment flashed through Yanagawa’s eyes; this aligned almost perfectly with his earlier hypothesis.
The fact that Kusakabe’s “Hyōrinmaru” lacked a true core spirit, along with the very phenomenon of twin blades, traced directly back to that enigmatic golden energy falling from above!
“It really was caused by that mysterious golden energy,” Yanagawa said in a low voice, his brows furrowing slightly.
“Yet where did it originate?
The sky?
From the highest heavens…”
Suddenly, he turned to Isshin.
“Captain Isshin, with the Shiba Clan’s intelligence network, has anything unusual happened in the Soul Society recently?”
Isshin had been listening intently and blinked in surprise at the sudden question.
Stroking his chin, his expression shifted to deep thought.
As the head of a branch of the Shiba Clan—one of the Great Noble Families—and Captain of Squad 10, he had access to classified information that ordinary Soul Reapers and even seated officers knew nothing about.
“Unusual events…” Isshin muttered, mentally sifting through the reports and rumors he had encountered recently.
Suddenly, realization hit him.
His eyes went wide, and he slapped his thigh.
“I remember now!
Just a few days ago—it was the scheduled transfer of the King’s Seal!”
“The King’s Seal?” Yanagawa’s gaze hardened.
“Yeah!
The King’s Seal!” Isshin grew solemn, swiftly launching into an explanation.
“The King’s Seal is one of the Soul Society’s oldest and most formidable sacred treasures.
It contains unimaginable power capable of rewriting local reality itself!
“Its existence and whereabouts are classified at the highest level.
For security reasons, its resting place is transferred every few decades under absolute secrecy.
“The entire transfer is conducted under the strictest Reishi cloaking and spatial seals.”
He paused, his gaze moving between Yanagawa and the weakened Hyōrinmaru, his voice tinged with incredulity at his own deduction.
“A few days ago…
was the exact date for the latest transfer!
While the specific schedule and route were top secret, the fact that the transfer was taking place isn’t completely unknown among noble heads and captains.
“What if…
just what if, during the transit, the King’s Seal’s power leaked out due to some unforeseen circumstance?”
“And that leaked power just happened to…” Yanagawa picked up the thread, turning his eyes to Hyōrinmaru.
“…pierce through the layers of containment and, through an uncanny cosmic coincidence, plunge straight into Hyōrinmaru, the strongest ice-type Zanpakuto, right as he was undergoing his critical awakening.”
Isshin nodded vigorously, his face dead serious.
“Exactly!
That’s the only explanation!
The origin of that golden energy is almost certainly the King’s Seal!
“For some reason, energy leaked from the seal during transit, and Hyōrinmaru was the unfortunate recipient of that stray power!”
With that, all the disparate clues clicked together like interlocking puzzle pieces.
The source of the mysterious golden power: an accidental leak during the transfer of the King’s Seal.
The cause of Hyōrinmaru’s frenzy: the seal’s energy invading his spirit and twisting his will.
The truth behind the “Twin Hyōrinmaru” mystery had finally surfaced.