"Zanka no Tachi—Final Scene: Elegy of Heat Death!"
Flames erupted across Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni's entire body.
This time, however, he was no longer relying solely on the power stored within Ryūjin Jakka or the Solar Star.
He began burning away the lifespan of his own spiritual body, sacrificing it directly and pouring everything he could draw from himself into the blade.
At the tip of Ryūjin Jakka, the flames contracted violently.
Heat and light compressed tighter and tighter until they collapsed into a microscopic cosmic singularity, a point so small that it was almost impossible to perceive, yet dense enough to consume virtually anything brought within its reach.
At that same moment, Mitsuhiko released the arrow formed from millions of dead souls.
The instant it left the Bow of Conquest, the light across the battlefield reversed direction.
Every source of energy nearby seemed to answer Ryūjin Jakka's singularity at once.
Heat, light, reishi, and residual spiritual pressure were dragged toward the tip of Yamamoto's blade as though the battlefield itself had fallen into the gravitational pull of a dying universe.
The soul-arrow collided with Ryūjin Jakka.
The impact shook Soul Society.
Space twisted around the point of contact, and for one impossible moment, the present battlefield seemed to disappear beneath the image of another war from a thousand years ago.
Ancient battlefields flickered across the Seireitei like overlapping memories, while the pounding drums of conquerors blended with the roar of collapsing stars until the two sounds became a single, overwhelming symphony of destruction.
Then the light began to fade.
The captains watching from a distance stared in disbelief at what remained.
Mitsuhiko's Bow of Conquest lay beneath Yamamoto's foot.
The soul-arrow that had been powerful enough to distort causality had been driven straight through the body of the bow itself, pinning it to the ground.
Mitsuhiko could only stare.
"No…"
His voice came out almost as a whisper.
"That's impossible. The power of Revelation… how could it be broken so easily…?"
The state of his body offered no comfort.
The pale bone armor that had covered him since his arrival was fractured from shoulder to waist, pieces falling away one after another until much of the protection had shattered completely.
Yamamoto stood opposite him with Ryūjin Jakka still burning in his hand.
"Conquest?"
His expression was cold.
"What you call conquest is nothing more than ash left behind after a star has burned itself to death."
He swung.
The slash crossed Mitsuhiko before the Tsunayashiro founder could recover.
His right arm separated from his shoulder.
Blood sprayed through the air.
For several seconds, Mitsuhiko simply stared at the severed limb.
Then his voice became terrifyingly calm.
"Good."
His remaining hand tightened.
"Very good."
No one had expected Yamamoto, whose spiritual pressure stood only in the middle stages of the transcendent tier, to fight a peak transcendent like Mitsuhiko this brutally, much less take one of his arms.
For Mitsuhiko, it was more than an injury.
It was humiliation.
Shinigami often said that battles between them were ultimately contests of reiatsu, but the fight unfolding before Soul Society had already exposed how incomplete that idea really was.
Spiritual pressure determined how much power a combatant possessed, but at this level the outcome depended just as heavily on the laws they controlled and how effectively those laws could be used against one another.
Mitsuhiko had possessed the superior raw level from the beginning.
His mistake had been assuming that superiority guaranteed victory.
That arrogance had cost him an arm.
His expression changed.
"Then face judgment."
Light burst from his body.
A book slowly appeared before his chest.
It looked ancient beyond measure.
Three strange characters were carved into the cover, their shapes twisted and intertwined so densely that none of the watching captains could consciously read them.
Yet the moment they looked at the symbols, their meaning appeared directly in their minds.
Revelation.
The book opened by itself.
Its pages turned slowly in the air, and every movement released another wave of the Law of Conquest.
The pressure rolled outward through Soul Society in great surges, each one heavier than the last.
Then the words recorded within the book began manifesting around them.
A voice seemed to emerge from nowhere and everywhere at once.
"When the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals, I heard one of the four living creatures call out with a voice like thunder: 'Come.' And I saw a white horse. Its rider carried a bow, and a crown was given to him. He rode out conquering, and to conquer again."
The scene described by the words began taking shape around Mitsuhiko as though the scripture itself were becoming reality.
The pages continued turning.
Eventually, the book reached its final page.
Light exploded outward.
Soul Society was illuminated as brightly as midday, and Mitsuhiko stood at the center of that radiance, his entire body immersed in an immeasurable glow.
The pressure surrounding him no longer felt merely powerful; it carried an alien sense of holiness and authority, something that seemed completely detached from the spiritual systems of the Three Worlds.
Solemn hymns began echoing through empty space.
Then figures resembling angels appeared around Mitsuhiko.
They circled him with vast white wings, scattering golden radiance as they moved.
For all the blood and destruction surrounding the battlefield, the spectacle itself was almost beautiful, as though some impossible heavenly realm had briefly descended over the ruined Seireitei.
Yhwach's pupils contracted.
'What kind of power is this?'
Everything he had witnessed today had forced him to reevaluate what he thought he understood about Soul Society.
First, the original captains of the Gotei 13—men and women who should have been dead for centuries—had returned alive and stronger than before.
Then Mitsuhiko had appeared, claiming to be the founder of the Tsunayashiro Clan and openly revealing a hatred for Kazuma that stretched back into the deepest history of Soul Society.
But this was stranger still.
The power flowing from Revelation was not based on reishi.
Yhwach could feel that clearly.
It did not originate from Soul Society, Hueco Mundo, or the Human World, nor did it resemble anything produced by Shinigami, Quincy, Hollow, or Fullbringer.
It belonged to an entirely different system, something foreign to the Three Worlds themselves.
Mitsuhiko closed the book.
"God said…"
His voice spread across Soul Society.
"…I shall conquer all things."
The moment Revelation shut, his missing right arm began to regenerate.
Bone formed first.
Then muscle, blood vessels, skin, and finally the hand itself. Within seconds, the limb Yamamoto had severed had been completely restored.
At the same time, an even more terrifying force erupted from Mitsuhiko and swept across Soul Society.
The Law of Conquest no longer merely pressed down on those caught within it.
It began overriding them.
Captains, seated officers, ordinary Shinigami—everyone exposed to the power felt their sense of self being stripped away little by little.
The urge to submit deepened into something far more dangerous, as though their minds were being rewritten to accept Mitsuhiko as their master.
If the process continued, they would no longer be forced to kneel.
They would want to.
"Pierce Falsehood—Wall of the Flame Prison!"
Yamamoto drove Ryūjin Jakka forward.
The remaining spiritual power within him poured into the blade without restraint, and an enormous wall of flame erupted across the battlefield.
The barrier intercepted the spreading Law of Conquest.
For the moment, it held.
Only for the moment.
Cracks were already beginning to spread through the flames as Mitsuhiko's authority ground against them.
Yamamoto understood perfectly well that his barrier could not withstand the pressure indefinitely. Once it failed, everyone behind him would lose their minds and become slaves to Conquest.
Mitsuhiko watched him struggle and, rather than immediately pressing the attack, seemed to make a decision.
"Yamamoto Shigekuni."
His voice carried almost a note of appreciation now.
"Surrender."
Several captains looked toward him in disbelief.
"Become my servant. Someone of your ability deserves more than dying here for Soul Society. Serve beneath me, and I will grant you glory beyond anything the Gotei 13 could ever offer."
Yamamoto's answer came without hesitation.
"Never."
His voice boomed across the battlefield.
"I am a Shinigami."
The flames surged higher.
"My duty is to protect Soul Society, and I will carry that duty until the final moment of my existence. If survival requires me to sell my soul, bend my knee, and serve an enemy simply because I am afraid to die…"
His grip tightened around Ryūjin Jakka.
"…then that survival would be the greatest insult I could offer to every shred of honor I have spent my life defending."
Spiritual power continued pouring out of him and into the barrier.
The flames brightened.
But Yamamoto himself was fading.
His reiatsu, already heavily depleted by the techniques he had used against Mitsuhiko, now dropped at a frightening rate.
Every second the barrier remained standing demanded more from a reserve that was rapidly approaching nothing.
His shoulders began to tremble.
His breathing grew heavier.
The man who had stood unmoved beneath Mitsuhiko's Law of Conquest now swayed where he stood, like a flame struggling to survive in a violent wind.
Yet he never lowered Ryūjin Jakka.
As long as the old Shinigami remained conscious, the wall between Mitsuhiko and Soul Society would remain with him.
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