Three months had passed since Ethan's training began.
The transformation was remarkable. The hollow-eyed orphan who'd barely survived each day had become something else entirely—a young warrior in the making. His body had filled out with proper nutrition and relentless training. His movements carried a fluid grace that spoke of countless hours practicing Zanjutsu kata. Most importantly, his reiatsu flowed through him like breathing, natural and effortless.
Kenji had progressed him through the basic Kido spells with methodical precision. Hado #1 through #11 were now within Ethan's grasp, though anything beyond #4 still required intense concentration and drained him quickly. Bakudo #1 through #8 came more naturally—something about defensive spells resonated with his protective nature.
But today was different.
Today, Kenji had announced, would be Ethan's first real test.
"You've mastered the fundamentals," the old man said over breakfast. "Your reiatsu control is solid. Your Kido foundations are adequate. Your Zanjutsu basics are... acceptable." He paused, sipping his tea thoughtfully. "But all of this has been training. Practice. Theory. You've never faced a real opponent who's actually trying to hurt you."
Ethan set down his rice bowl. "You want to fight me?"
"Heavens, no. I'm eighty-seven years old. My back hurts when it rains, and my knees sound like grinding stones." Kenji chuckled. "Besides, fighting me would teach you nothing useful. I'm too experienced, too controlled. You need something more... unpredictable."
A knot of apprehension formed in Ethan's stomach. "What did you have in mind?"
Kenji's smile turned cryptic. "You'll see. Finish your breakfast. We leave in an hour."
They traveled deeper into District 78 than Ethan had ever ventured.
This area made his neighborhood look civilized. Buildings leaned at impossible angles, held up by hope and rotting timber. The few people they passed watched with hollow eyes, their spiritual pressure so faint they barely registered as alive. This was where souls came to fade away, forgotten by the Soul Society and abandoned by hope itself.
"Why are we here?" Ethan asked, his hand instinctively moving to the bokken strapped to his back.
"Because this is where they hunt," Kenji replied cryptically.
"They?"
Before Kenji could answer, Ethan felt it—a spike of spiritual pressure that made his skin prickle. Not human. Not friendly.
"Hollow," he breathed.
"Hollows, plural," Kenji corrected. "Three of them, drawn by the concentration of weak souls. They've been terrorizing this area for weeks."
Ethan's eyes snapped to his teacher. "And you knew? Why didn't you—"
"Because I needed them." Kenji's expression was unapologetic. "You need to face a real Hollow, Ethan. Not in a panic, not accidentally, but deliberately. With preparation, with training, with someone watching to ensure you don't die." He gestured ahead. "Consider this your entrance exam. Defeat one Hollow, and I'll write you a letter of recommendation for the Shinigami Academy."
The spiritual pressure intensified. Somewhere ahead, screaming began.
"And if I fail?" Ethan asked.
"Then you're not ready for the Academy anyway." Kenji's voice was hard. "A Shinigami faces death constantly. If you can't handle one Hollow under controlled conditions, you have no business pursuing this path."
Ethan wanted to argue, to protest that this was reckless and dangerous. But Kenji was right. The Academy wouldn't coddle him. Real Shinigami faced worse than this daily. If he couldn't pass this test, he didn't deserve to continue.
He drew his bokken. The wooden sword felt solid and familiar in his hand. "What are the rules?"
"Survive. Win. Try not to die." Kenji leaned against a crumbling wall. "I'll intervene if you're about to be killed. Otherwise, this is your fight. Show me what three months of training has earned you."
Another scream echoed through the broken streets. Ethan's jaw tightened. People were dying while they talked.
He ran toward the sound.
The Hollows were feeding in what had once been a small plaza.
Three of them, just as Kenji had said. They weren't particularly large—maybe eight feet tall each, smaller than the one that had attacked the marketplace months ago. But what they lacked in size, they made up for in viciousness. Their masks were cruel parodies of predatory animals: one wolf-like, one resembling a mantis, one with too many eyes arranged in a spiral pattern.
Six souls lay scattered across the plaza. Most weren't moving. The mantis Hollow crouched over one, its mouth-hole opening impossibly wide—
"Hado #1: Sho!"
Ethan's thrust of spiritual pressure caught the mantis in the side, sending it stumbling away from its intended victim. Three masked faces turned toward him in unison.
Okay, Ethan thought as his heart hammered against his ribs. Maybe this was a terrible idea.
The wolf Hollow moved first, faster than Ethan expected. It crossed thirty feet in a single bound, claws extended. Ethan barely got his bokken up in time. The impact jarred his arms and sent him skidding backward, feet carving furrows in the dirt.
"Fresh meat!" the wolf Hollow snarled. Its voice was higher-pitched than the one Ethan remembered, almost gleeful. "And this one has reiatsu! Tasty, tasty!"
The mantis joined its companion, moving with insectoid precision. Its blade-like arms whistled through the air in a cross-pattern strike. Ethan rolled aside, feeling the wind from the attack ruffle his hair.
The third Hollow—the one with spiral eyes—hung back, watching. Learning.
Smart, Ethan realized with a chill. That one's intelligent.
The wolf lunged again. This time, Ethan was ready. He sidestepped and brought his bokken down on the creature's extended arm. Wood met bone-white armor with a sharp crack. The Hollow howled in pain but didn't stop. Its other claw raked across Ethan's shoulder, tearing fabric and skin.
Pain blossomed, hot and immediate. Ethan stumbled back, pressing his free hand against the wound. Blood—or whatever souls bled—seeped between his fingers.
Focus, he commanded himself, echoing Kenji's teachings. Pain is just information. File it away and keep moving.
The mantis attacked from his blind side. Ethan sensed more than saw the strike, throwing himself forward in a desperate roll. The blade-arm missed by inches, gouging a trench in the ground where he'd been standing.
Three months of running laps paid dividends—Ethan came out of the roll already moving, putting distance between himself and his attackers. His mind raced, evaluating options.
Fighting all three at once was suicide. The smart Hollow hadn't even engaged yet, which meant it was waiting for him to exhaust himself. He needed to change the dynamics, separate them somehow.
The wolf charged again, predictable in its aggression. Good. Ethan could use that.
"Bakudo #1: Sai!"
His hands moved through the practiced gesture, and spiritual energy crystallized into an invisible binding force. The wolf's arms snapped behind its back as if bound by invisible rope. It crashed face-first into the ground with a satisfying thud.
"Clever little morsel," the mantis hissed. It moved more cautiously now, blade-arms held defensively. "But parlor tricks won't save you."
The wolf struggled against the binding, its spiritual pressure pushing against Ethan's Kido. The technique wouldn't hold long—maybe ten seconds if he was lucky.
Ten seconds would have to be enough.
Ethan charged the mantis, bokken held in a two-handed grip. The Hollow raised its blade-arms to block, confident in its superior reach and cutting power. Wood against bone should have been no contest.
Should have been.
At the last moment, Ethan channeled reiatsu into the bokken, the same way Kenji had taught him to reinforce his body during Hakuda. The wooden sword blazed with spiritual pressure, suddenly hard as steel.
His strike crashed through the mantis's defense and caught it across the mask. The bone cracked with a sound like breaking ice. The Hollow shrieked and reeled backward, green ichor leaking from the fracture.
Behind him, the wolf broke free of the binding. Ethan sensed it coming, those predator instincts screaming danger. He spun, bringing his bokken around in a horizontal slash—
And found his blade caught between the wolf's jaws.
They stood frozen for a heartbeat, Hollow and Shinigami-in-training, locked in a contest of strength. The wolf's breath was rancid, its red eyes burning with hunger. Ethan could feel his bokken beginning to crack under the pressure.
"Hado #4: Byakurai."
The pale lightning erupted from Ethan's free hand at point-blank range, spearing through the wolf's open mouth and out the back of its head. The Hollow's eyes went wide. Its grip loosened. Then its entire body began to dissolve, disintegrating into particles of light.
One down.
Ethan stumbled as the wolf vanished, nearly falling. That Byakurai had taken more out of him than expected. His reiatsu reserves were already depleting, his breathing labored. The shoulder wound throbbed with each heartbeat.
The mantis circled him warily, still reeling from the blow to its mask. The spiral-eyed Hollow finally moved, gliding forward with eerie silence.
"Interesting," the spiral Hollow spoke for the first time, its voice oddly cultured. "You fight with technique, not just instinct. Training. Someone's been teaching you." Its too-many eyes fixed on Ethan with unnerving intensity. "A waste. Such potential, thrown away on protecting the weak."
"Shut up and fight," Ethan growled, trying to sound braver than he felt.
"As you wish."
The two Hollows attacked in perfect synchronization. The mantis high, the spiral low. Ethan raised his bokken to block the blade-arms and felt something wrap around his ankle—a tentacle extending from the spiral Hollow's body, covered in those same disturbing eyes.
Damn it.
The tentacle yanked. Ethan's feet left the ground. The world inverted as he was slammed into the plaza's stone with enough force to crack the surface. Stars exploded across his vision. The bokken flew from his grip, clattering away.
"Not so clever now," the mantis rasped, looming over him. Its blade-arms rose, ready to pierce his chest—
Ethan's hands moved on pure instinct, muscle memory from three months of daily practice.
"Bakudo #8: Seki!"
A circular shield of spiritual energy materialized just as the mantis struck. The blade-arms bounced off with a shower of sparks. The Hollow staggered, thrown off balance by the unexpected defense.
Ethan rolled away, ignoring the protests from his bruised ribs. His hand found the bokken, and he came up in a defensive stance, panting hard. Blood ran down his arm from the shoulder wound. His head spun from the impact.
The two Hollows regrouped, assessing him with predatory calculation.
I can't win this, part of Ethan's mind whispered. They're too strong, too fast, too many.
But another part—the part that had survived District 78, that had awakened to power, that had trained every day until his body screamed—that part refused to accept defeat.
He thought about Kenji's teachings. About using your environment. About making your opponent's strength into their weakness. About fighting smarter, not harder.
His eyes flicked to the crumbling buildings surrounding the plaza. To the unstable walls and precarious structures. An idea formed, desperate and dangerous.
"Hado #1: Sho!"
He fired the thrust of pressure not at the Hollows, but at the wall beside them. Already weakened by age and neglect, it collapsed under the impact, sending a cascade of rubble tumbling toward the creatures.
The mantis leaped clear, its insectoid reflexes carrying it to safety. The spiral Hollow wasn't as lucky—or perhaps it was simply too arrogant to dodge. Debris crashed down on it, burying it under stone and timber.
One Hollow visible. One buried. Better odds.
Ethan charged the mantis before it could fully recover its balance. His bokken sang through the air in a series of rapid strikes—high, low, middle, exactly as Kenji had drilled into him. The Hollow blocked desperately, blade-arms moving in a blur.
But Ethan wasn't trying to break through its defense. He was herding it, driving it backward, forcing it to focus entirely on his blade.
Which meant it didn't notice him gathering reiatsu in his free hand.
"Hado #11: Tsuzuri Raiden!"
Electricity crackled across his palm and jumped to the mantis's blade-arms as they met his bokken. The Hollow convulsed, its body seizing as lightning coursed through it. Its defense dropped.
Ethan didn't hesitate. He channeled every bit of remaining reiatsu into his bokken and drove it forward in a perfect thrust, exactly as Kenji had taught him. The reinforced wood punched through the cracked mask and into whatever passed for the Hollow's brain.
The mantis shuddered once, then dissolved into light.
Two down.
Ethan barely had time to feel relief before the rubble exploded outward. The spiral Hollow emerged, furious and no longer playing games. Its tentacles whipped out, dozens of them, each tipped with grasping mouths.
Ethan tried to dodge but his exhausted body betrayed him. A tentacle wrapped around his arm. Another caught his leg. They lifted him off the ground, squeezing with crushing force.
"Enough games," the Hollow snarled. "You've irritated me. Time to die."
The tentacles drew Ethan toward its central mouth, which opened to reveal rings of serrated teeth. This close, he could feel the creature's spiritual pressure pressing down on him, malevolent and overwhelming.
No, Ethan's mind screamed. Not like this. Not after coming so far.
He reached for his reiatsu and found the well nearly empty. Three Kido spells, multiple reinforcements, the constant drain of healing his wounds—he'd pushed too hard, spent too much.
But not quite everything.
Deep in his core, beneath the exhaustion and pain, that familiar warmth still flickered. The same presence he'd felt during his first meditation session, the essence of his spiritual power. It felt bright. Pure. Strong.
Ethan stopped fighting the tentacles and instead turned inward, diving deep into that warmth. He didn't try to control it or channel it through pathways. He simply... embraced it. Let it fill him completely.
The world went white.
Light exploded from Ethan's body—not the focused beam he'd used three months ago, but a sphere of pure radiance expanding in all directions. The tentacles wrapped around him simply ceased to exist, erased by the intensity. The spiral Hollow shrieked as the light seared its body, burning away layers of its mask and armor.
It released him and retreated, but the light followed, pursuing like a living thing. Ethan felt himself floating, suspended in his own power, every cell of his being burning with luminescence.
"What ARE you?!" the Hollow screamed, the same question its predecessor had asked months ago.
Ethan didn't know. He could barely think through the sensation of his power finally, fully awakening. But he knew what he needed to do.
He raised his hand, and the light gathered around it, condensing into a single point of impossible brilliance.
"Hado #1," he whispered, his voice echoing strangely. "Sho."
The thrust of spiritual pressure, amplified by the light surrounding him, hit the Hollow like a falling star. The creature's mask shattered completely. Its body disintegrated, unable to withstand the assault.
Then the light faded, drawn back into Ethan like a receding tide. He dropped to the ground, landing hard on his knees. The world spun sickeningly. His entire body felt hollow, drained of something essential.
He'd done it. Three Hollows, defeated.
He'd passed the test.
"Most impressive," Kenji's voice came from somewhere to his left. Ethan turned his head—even that small movement required immense effort—and saw his teacher standing at the plaza's edge, expression unreadable. "Though you nearly killed yourself in the process. Again."
"Did I... pass?" Ethan managed to ask.
Kenji walked forward and knelt beside him. His weathered hand rested gently on Ethan's head. "You did more than pass, boy. You've shown me something I've only seen a handful of times in my entire life."
"What?"
"A soul touching their true power." Kenji's eyes gleamed with fierce pride. "That light at the end—that wasn't just reiatsu. That was something deeper. A glimpse of what you could become."
He helped Ethan to his feet, supporting most of his weight. "But it's also proof that you're not ready for unrestricted combat. You have power, yes. Immense power. But without proper control, you're as dangerous to yourself as to your enemies."
Ethan nodded weakly. He couldn't argue. If Kenji hadn't been there, if the Hollows had been stronger, if he'd miscalculated even slightly...
"The Academy will teach you that control," Kenji continued. "They'll refine your raw talent into genuine skill. They'll push you to your limits and show you how to exceed them safely." He smiled. "And I'll write that letter of recommendation tonight. You've more than earned it."
Relief and exhaustion crashed over Ethan in equal measure. His knees buckled, and Kenji caught him.
"Rest now," the old man said gently. "You've taken the first real step on your path. There will be many more, each harder than the last. But today, you proved you have what it takes to walk it."
As consciousness faded, Ethan's last thought was of that light—brilliant, pure, and somehow intimately his own. Whatever it was, wherever it came from, he would master it.
He would become worthy of its power.
Ethan woke in his futon two days later.
His body ached in ways he hadn't known were possible. Every muscle protested movement. The shoulder wound had been bandaged, and he could smell the medicinal herbs Kenji had used to prevent infection.
The old man sat nearby, reading by lamplight. He looked up as Ethan stirred.
"Welcome back. You've been unconscious for forty-eight hours. Spiritual exhaustion, physical trauma, and what I suspect was a mild case of reiatsu poisoning from channeling more power than your pathways could safely handle." Kenji set down his book. "In other words, you were spectacularly reckless."
"But I won," Ethan croaked.
"You survived," Kenji corrected. "There's a difference. Winning would have been defeating those Hollows without nearly killing yourself." He poured water from a pitcher and helped Ethan drink. "However, I won't deny the results. You showed remarkable adaptability, tactical thinking, and when pushed to your absolute limit... something extraordinary."
He reached into his kimono and produced an envelope, sealed with red wax. "This is my letter of recommendation to the Shinigami Academy. It details your training, your potential, and my professional assessment that you would make an excellent Shinigami."
Ethan's hand trembled as he accepted the letter. Three months of brutal training, of pushing himself past every limit, of pain and exhaustion and doubt—all of it had led to this moment. This envelope represented the door to his future.
"The Academy entrance exams are held twice per year," Kenji explained. "The next session begins in four months. That gives you time to recover, to continue training, and to prepare yourself mentally for what's coming."
"What should I focus on?" Ethan asked.
Kenji considered. "Your Kido foundation is solid. Your Hakuda instincts are good, though raw. Your Zanjutsu basics are acceptable. What you need most is refinement and, more importantly, endurance." He fixed Ethan with a stern look. "You can't keep relying on desperate bursts of power that leave you comatose. A real Shinigami needs to fight for hours, even days, without rest."
"So more training?"
"Different training." Kenji stood and moved to the window. "For the next four months, we focus on efficiency. Teaching you to accomplish more with less energy. Learning to recognize your limits and operate within them, saving that explosive power for true emergencies."
He turned back to Ethan. "The Academy will try to break you. Not because they're cruel, but because Shinigami who break under pressure die in the field. They'll push you physically, mentally, and spiritually. Everything you've endured so far?" He smiled grimly. "That was the warm-up."
Ethan absorbed this without flinching. He'd come too far to be intimidated now.
"I'm ready," he said simply.
Kenji studied him for a long moment, then nodded. "Yes. I believe you are."
He moved toward the door, then paused. "Ethan? That light you manifested... have you felt anything like it since waking?"
Ethan focused inward, searching for that familiar warmth. It was there, but distant now. Dormant. Like a fire banked for the night, waiting to be rekindled.
"It's sleeping," he reported.
"Good." Kenji's expression was thoughtful. "Don't try to force it awake. That kind of power needs to emerge naturally, at its own pace. Trying to rush it would be..." He seemed to search for the right word. "Catastrophic."
"What do you think it is?"
"If I had to guess?" Kenji's eyes gleamed. "A Zanpakuto spirit trying to manifest early. Your soul is so naturally powerful that your inner spirit is already attempting communication, even though you have no actual blade yet."
A Zanpakuto spirit. The legendary weapons that defined every Shinigami. Ethan had read about them extensively, but Kenji had said he wouldn't be ready for one until after formal Academy training.
"Is that normal?" he asked.
"Nothing about you is normal, boy." Kenji chuckled. "Which is precisely why I have such high hopes for your future. Rest now. Tomorrow, we begin the next phase of your preparation."
After Kenji left, Ethan lay in the darkness, thinking about everything that had happened. Three Hollows defeated. His first real test passed. A letter of recommendation that could change his entire existence.
And somewhere deep inside him, a spirit of light waiting to be born.
The path ahead was clearer now. Four months of refined training. Then the entrance exams. Then the Academy. Then, finally, becoming a true Shinigami.
It seemed impossibly distant and thrillingly close at the same time.
Outside his window, the distant spires of the Seireitei gleamed in the moonlight. Ethan stared at them until sleep claimed him, already dreaming of the day he'd walk through those gates.
The day everything would truly begin.
END OF CHAPTER 3
Next Chapter: The Road to Seireitei