A graceful woman with long, flowing black hair stepped through a desert of yellow sand. At her waist hung a light blade, an asauichi. Her white haori fluttered over her black kimono, and her straw sandals glided over the swirling dust without leaving a trace, as if she were dancing with the wind.
Her face, exquisitely beautiful, bore a shadow of melancholy.
It's long.
Endless.
For a woman who had endured millennia of slaughter, for whom killing and wielding a sword had become the very essence of existence, a life without worthy opponents was an agony without end.
To perfect her swordsmanship, she had studied over eight thousand kenjutsu schools across countless years.
To hone her assassination techniques, she had swung her blade relentlessly in this boundless world of the dead, cutting down everything in her sight.
To savor the eternal thrill of killing and being killed, she had twisted her own heart, reshaping her zanpakuto—the mirror of her soul—into a weapon capable of healing others and herself.
Every strike drew blood. She felt the enemy's cold steel pierce her flesh, only for her body to regenerate at lightning speed, allowing her to drive her blade back into her foe.
All this to prolong the joy of slaughter forever.
She needed no reason to kill.
Without fighting, how could she measure her sword's worth?
Without killing, how could she know if her opponent had given everything?
"Combat is everything."
Thus, Unohana Yachiru, over countless centuries, had carved her name in blood across the Soul Society. A criminal without peer, a terrifying legend in the history of souls.
But after so much carnage, she felt her quest nearing its end.
With time, her power had only grown.
And Unohana Yachiru, this woman who thirsted for battle, could no longer find opponents capable of touching her, of wounding her.
This left the warrior, craving to be pierced by a blade and consumed by murderous intent, with an existential void: the feeling of being "alive" without purpose.
No goals, no expectations.
All was emptiness.
From Junrinan to Zaraki, few could block even a single one of her strikes.
Even with a dagger as short as a finger, they all crumbled, pathetic.
Life…
So long, so empty.
"If only I could fall into Hell," she murmured, her voice low and melancholic, almost a sigh.
"Why, after so many deaths, can I still not reach Hell?"
"Must I truly die to get there?"
The elegant woman named Unohana Yachiru paused, her lips letting slip a whisper.
"A place gathering the essence of millions of years of the Soul Society, where the mightiest shinigami converge, even the worst of them, monsters of unmatched strength…"
"If I could live in such a place, perhaps I could fill this void within me."
To survive while seeking to fill her heart, emptier than a Hollow's, with endless battles.
Unohana Yachiru was a woman of insatiable greed.
But as she lost herself in these thoughts for the umpteenth time, a figure emerged in the distance, moving slowly through the yellow sand.
The shadow spotted her too, freezing almost instantly upon seeing her.
This was Zaraki.
A wasteland of desolation, cruelty, combat, and terror.
The largest, most wretched, most twisted battlefield of Flowing Soul Street.
Countless souls slaughtered each other for a scrap of bread or a drop of water, wielding blades scavenged from who-knows-where, all to survive another day.
The "wholes," those needing neither food nor water, were devoured the moment they appeared by ravenous "monsters"—their bodies, after all, were made of spiritual particles.
Only the strong remained, locked in an endless war.
Here, every encounter was an enemy.
No matter their appearance.
Unohana Yachiru, born in this hell, knew its rules better than anyone.
But the behavior of the kid across from her was… odd.
He stood far off, watching her, hesitating for a long while before shouting from a distance:
"... Excuse me, are you from Seireitei?"
Unohana Yachiru gave him a fleeting glance.
A weak, almost pitiful reiatsu.
How could a scrawny kid like that survive in a place like Zaraki?
Was he lucky… or just pathetic?
Her inward sigh lasted only a moment.
After centuries of taking lives, the very concept of "life" had become meaningless to her.
As for pity, sorrow, or fear, those human emotions had long since faded.
Without lingering, she turned and walked away in another direction.
The weak held no interest for her.
But, though she had spared him, the kid, far from fleeing, ran toward her, excited, shouting from afar:
"Are you leaving this place?"
"Please, take me with you!"
"I haven't eaten in days, and there's no water around here, I…"
The pointless cries of this frail "whole" rang in Unohana Yachiru's ears like the shrill wails of a newborn in the dead of night.
Deafening.
She stopped.
Turning around, she met the boy's stunned gaze. Slowly, she drew a delicate, finger-length dagger from her sleeve, deadly despite its size.
The next moment, a silver flash sparked in the boy's eyes.
Clang!
Steel clashed against steel in a violent strike, throwing dazzling sparks.
The boy, still frozen in shock, had drawn a battered asauichi from its tattered sheath by reflex.
The sheath shattered, revealing a poorly maintained blade.
A flicker of surprise crossed Unohana Yachiru's eyes.
But the boy, snapping back to reality, used an instinctive shunpo, retreating a dozen meters in a flash.
On guard.
Body tense.
Only then did Unohana Yachiru truly look at the young man before her.
He appeared to have died around fifteen years old. Thin, almost frail, but with a fairly handsome face. His long hair was tied with a grass root, and he wore a tattered brown yukata. The right sleeve, rolled up and tied with a frayed rope, exposed a skinny arm. The hem of his garment, half-torn for ease of movement, revealed skeletal legs. His bare feet were adorned only by a scrap of rope between his toes.
A perfect refugee look, built for survival.
The asauichi at his waist? Likely stolen from someone.
Unohana Yachiru narrowed her eyes, her heart beating slightly faster.
He was weak, sure.
But that moment when he'd drawn his blade, dazed, gave her an eerie sense of looking in a mirror—like her, this boy had etched swordsmanship into his bones.
He's trained his kenjutsu to the point of instinct.
Interesting.
A promising distraction.
Unconsciously, a satisfied smile curved Unohana Yachiru's delicate face.
In this endless life, there were still, after all, small joys to seize.