"Big brother! If we don't risk everything now, it'll be too late! Let me take them on!"
Watching his clansmen fall one after another, Shihoin Sojiro could no longer sit still.
With a furious roar, his beard and hair bristling, he gripped his Zanpakuto and charged toward Abarai Renji, who was cutting through the crowd like a god of slaughter.
After today, the Shihoin family would have no way out.
Only a fight to the death remained.
"Great-Grandfather Soichiro!"
Seeing the blood covering the ground and the corpses of his kin, Shihoin Yushiro's small body trembled violently. His voice quivered with tears, yet there was also a note of resolve.
"I'm going too!"
He suddenly drew his Zanpakuto. His young face was filled with the grim determination of someone ready to die, as he rushed toward the very front of the battlefield without hesitation.
As the current head of the Shihoin family, no matter how timid he had once been, at this moment of the clan's destruction, he could not remain indifferent.
No matter what, he would shed the last drop of blood alongside his people.
What's more, the source of this disaster was tied to the sister he loved and admired most.
To protect his sister, to protect the honor of the family, he had to fight until the very end.
"Yushiro."
Just as he was about to plunge into the chaos, a tall figure blocked his path.
Shiba Kukaku stood there quietly, calmly looking at the trembling child before her.
"At a time like this, you finally look somewhat worthy of the title of head of the Shihoin family."
The head of the fallen Shiba clan, once one of the Five Great Noble Houses, now facing the orthodox head of the Shihoin, another of the Five Great Noble Houses.
This was the last bit of dignity she would grant her former friend from the Shihoin family.
"Kukaku-nee, why are you also…"
Yushiro clenched his teeth, his eyes filled with pain and unwillingness.
"Hate me all you want, Yushiro," Shiba Kukaku slowly raised her hand and drew the Zanpakuto at her waist, "I'll try to end this fight quickly. I won't even let you feel pain."
"If you must blame someone, blame this pitiful world that brings nothing but despair."
The mirror bright blade reflected her cold face as she murmured softly, "And your foolish and selfish sister!"
Shing!
A flash of cold steel cut through the air.
Shiba Kukaku showed no mercy.
In just a single exchange, in that split second of lightning speed, her Zanpakuto had already delivered three fatal strikes.
For Shihoin Yushiro, who only possessed the strength of an ordinary vice-captain, this was a complete mismatch. He did not even have the right to see the trajectory of her blade, nor any room to resist.
The first strike severed Yushiro's Zanpakuto at the root, the blade he had just drawn, which had not even tasted blood. The broken edge spun through the air, reflecting the terror in the boy's eyes.
The second strike saw the icy edge sweep mercilessly across his slender neck, drawing a string of crimson droplets.
The third strike, like a viper's tongue, pierced straight and viciously through his still violently beating heart.
Only in the next second did the wind arrive.
Shiba Kukaku had already passed him, appearing several meters behind. With her back to the dying boy, she maintained a slow and elegant motion of sheathing her sword.
She had moved too fast. So fast that even though her blade had pierced Yushiro's body, not a single drop of filthy blood stained its bright steel.
Click!
With the crisp sound of the sword sliding back into its sheath, Yushiro, who was still frozen in his charging posture, the look of fearless resolve still on his face, suddenly stiffened before collapsing heavily to the ground.
Blood quickly spread beneath him, dyeing his luxurious noble garments into a shocking dark red.
The final head of the Shihoin family had at last met the fate he was dragged into.
"Yushiro… third brother…"
In the distance, for the first time, true despair showed on the deeply wrinkled face of Shihoin Soichiro.
In less than ten minutes, his younger brother had died in battle.
The family's hope, the current head of the clan, had been cut down on the spot.
Looking around, the once glorious Shihoin family estate was now littered with corpses.
More than half the clan lay in pools of blood. The remaining defenders were scattered and broken apart by the black tide of the Sixth Division. The rout was certain.
This was a true calamity of annihilation.
"KUCHIKI BYAKUYA!"
Soichiro took a deep breath. Even though his lungs burned as if on fire, he still used every ounce of strength in his body to let out a despairing roar toward the figure watching coldly in the distance.
Kuchiki Byakuya turned his head indifferently. His gaze crossed the chaotic battlefield and fell once more upon the old man.
Amid the wails and devastation before the Shihoin gates, Shihoin Soichiro still took the time to calmly straighten his disheveled clothing.
Then, slowly, he drew the Zanpakuto that had accompanied him through his long life.
"Come!"
The old man stood with his back straight, as though trying to hold up the last spine of his family.
"If you wish to step through the gates of the Shihoin, you must first pass me!"
At this moment, he had become the last fragile yet unyielding line of defense for the Shihoin family.
In the distance, his second brother Sojiro was still barely holding on under Abarai Renji's Bankai, but the outcome was already decided.
Their aged bodies, long rotted and far removed from real combat, were no match for those young beasts in their prime.
Now, it was his turn to go to his death.
Yet Kuchiki Byakuya did not immediately draw his blade to answer Soichiro's challenge.
He tilted his head slightly and cast his gaze toward Rosse, who had been observing the battle from the sidelines, a hint of inquiry and deference in his eyes.
Having attended the earlier captains' meeting, Byakuya understood everything clearly.
The Shihoin family had fallen to this state because they had angered Rosse.
And it was precisely because of Rosse's absolute dominance that he had gained a slim chance to fight for Rukia's survival.
The Sixth Division had already taken enough of the spotlight in this battle. It was time for the true mastermind behind the scenes to step forward and show his authority.
"Captain Kuchiki, I'll leave it to you to send him on his way."
Rosse stood tall, his tone as calm as if he were discussing the weather.
"He's nothing more than someone struggling on the brink of death. As the current head of the Kuchiki family and foremost among the Five Great Noble Houses, it's only fitting that you grant him his final dignity."
After speaking, Rosse did not even spare Soichiro a glance. He simply stepped forward and walked, one step at a time, toward the wide open gates.
If Soichiro's desperate stand had truly been born from a defense of noble honor or some belief worthy of respect, perhaps he would have personally acted and granted him that final respect.
But unfortunately, the old man before him, even at the moment of death, was nothing more than a confused pawn swept along by a tide of conspiracy, utterly unaware.
Soichiro had no idea that the death sentence proposal from the Shihoin family's adjudicator, the fuse that ignited everything, had never been that adjudicator's true intention.
Because most of the members of Central 46 had already been slaughtered by Aizen.
The so called Central 46 now was nothing more than an illusion woven by Kyoka Suigetsu, with only a few Kyoraku family puppets left to maintain the facade.
Nor did Soichiro know that the direct cause of the family's destruction, Shihoin Yoruichi breaking into prison to rescue someone, had not been any careful calculation on her part.
That foolish woman had acted entirely on impulse, never imagining such a tragic consequence.
Even when Shiba Kukaku had warned her, that arrogant woman had probably taken it as nothing more than a trivial joke.
If she had known that the price of her willfulness would be the annihilation of her entire clan, would she still have so freely played the hero? Truly pitiful.
Rosse had no interest in executing a pitiful soul.
Compared to this stubborn old man, the fragment of the Soul King hidden within the Shihoin family's treasury was far more worthy of his attention.
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