The moment before impact was pure silence—no crackle of spiritual energy, no howl of monstrous rage—just the faintest widening of Grimaldi’s pupils, a static flicker across his soul. He saw Estarossa barreling forward like divine punishment, and his scythe shifted in his grasp, pulled not by muscle, but by will. His body coiled, the weapon raised to cleave through the sky and erase this “freedom” with one crushing stroke.
But she arrived first.
In a flash of white and starlight blue, Shizukana Kurayami touched down like a memory Grimaldi hadn’t earned. For a heartbeat, it was as if the battlefield had paused—not by force or threat, but by presence. She moved with soft, mortal grace—too soft for a place so shattered—and in the wake of her entrance, even the Chimera stopped snarling.
And then her reiatsu touched him.
Grimaldi’s breath hitched. A stutter. A crack.
It wasn’t pain—it was resonance.
The reiatsu wormed through the air like a lullaby gone wrong, wrapping around him before sinking—not into flesh, not into bone—but into the chain that coiled through the hole in his chest.
The Soul King’s Chain.
It pulsed.
Grimaldi’s eyes twitched. His scythe dipped an inch lower. That familiar gravity, that crush of cosmic pressure… hiccupped. And in its place, something else took root.
He staggered, just a little, clutching at his chest like something had pulled taut within him. The green corona of his reiatsu flickered… then bloomed into a painful, radiant flare.
And then the scream came—not from Grimaldi, but from within him.
“¡Pendejo!”
The voice was unmistakable. Familiar. Familial.
A brother.
Suddenly, a convulsing ripple coursed through Grimaldi’s body. His left side warped—no, peeled—as a glowing figure was violently ejected from him like a soul in mid-exorcism. Quinn. His brother. No longer fused. No longer dormant.
He landed hard in the dirt, coughing, groaning, limbs shimmering as they reformulated into coherence. Grimaldi whirled, staring at the gaping hole in his chest where once the chain and fusion swirled together.
“¿Tú de nuevo?” Grimaldi spat, clenching his fists.
“I was fine until she showed up.”
Quinn stood tall, unarmed, eyes blazing with a fury matched only by disappointment.
“¡Mentiroso! You haven’t been fine a single day since we fused. All this talk—‘I don’t need anyone,’ ‘I was born to devour’—cállate. You just wanted to forget.”
Grimaldi’s jaw tightened.
“You always whined about how I talk, hermano. Now you come crawling back?”
Quinn chuckled, hollow and bitter.
“No, Grimaldi. I’m not back. I’m done. Even without a Zanpakutō—I’m not helping you anymore.”
He said it in English. He wanted them all to hear it.
Then, a final look—a smirk, a shrug—and in a single sonido, Quinn launched himself toward the Chimera’s base, the beast not moving against one third of its creator, disappearing into the descending shadow of the Garganta, leaving only the faint echo of his parting shot:
“Voy a robarme esa cadena que tanto odias. Disfruta tu maldito agujero.”
The moment lingered, and then—
SNAP.
Grimaldi roared.
The sky broke under the weight of it. His scythe, Calabozo, carved an arc through the air, green fire spiraling along its edge like a star being torn open. The gaping hole in his chest was naked now—raw and vulnerable—and rage poured from it like gravity reversed.
The Chimera howled with him, its own core glowing as it mirrored its master.
They didn’t need words anymore.
Grimaldi’s left hand rose, and from it, a blackened spiral of reiryoku ignited into pure hell—a Gran Rey Cero Oscuras, congealed like oil and emerald lightning. The Chimera did the same.
Two beasts. Two betrayals. One cataclysm.
The Seireitei trembled as both monstrosities unleashed their wrath—not at the walls, not at the heavens—but directly at the two who dared to interrupt Grimaldi’s kingdom of pain.
At Estarossa.
At Shizukana.
A sky-shattering flash followed. The sun vanished behind it, however, The Seireitei sky didn’t explode.
Not yet.
From Grimaldi’s clawed grip and the gaping maw of Quimera Parca, twin lances of annihilation ignited the air—two Gran Rey Cero Oscuras, born of fused hatred and unrelenting power. They didn’t simply fire—they announced themselves, seething as concentrated cosmic dread wrapped in emerald and void. They tore from their creators like tidal spears, swallowing light, sound, and matter in their wake.
The sky bled green and black.
The battlefield twisted. Gravity spiraled in on itself as stone and steel curled inward toward a converging center. Whole slabs of the Shinō Academy’s foundations warped into crescents midair, their atoms beginning to rupture apart as the beams cascaded toward Estarossa and Shizukana.
This was not a test shot. This was judgment.
But then—
—a flutter.
At the halfway point in their path, both Cero Oscuras convulsed.
Like a candle flame in wind.
Their cores stuttered—blinking, collapsing in on themselves for a moment. The eerie scream of reiryoku tearing through dimensions abruptly cut, as if the very sound were being pulled back into silence.
The black energy didn’t dissipate.
It vanished.
One pulse—two—then both beams unraveled, flaring outward into ash-like tendrils of spiritual static that scattered into the heavens. A breath ago, the end of all things was a heartbeat away.
Now, only smoke trailed across the battlefield.
The wind carried the scent of ozone and scorched air.
Grimaldi’s claw was still outstretched. His chest rose and fell. Confusion wasn’t on his face. Something far worse was.
Recognition.
His hollow hole—shining with the remnants of the Soul King’s chain—twitched violently beneath the skin, like something inside him was no longer listening. The Chimera let out a fractured rumble, its jaws clacking but no longer charged.
And in that quiet—
There was nothing left of the cero.
Only the promise of what should have been.
The silence that followed the failed Cero was unnatural.
Not just quiet—wrong. Like something sacred had been broken.
Grimaldi’s eyes didn’t blink.
Didn’t move.
Didn’t even twitch as the last particles of the black-green energy dissolved into the air, leaving only the scorched scent of nullification.
Then—
He howled.
A guttural, explosive sound that shredded through the still air like broken glass in a furnace. With a single Sonido that cracked the earth beneath him, Grimaldi vanished—reappearing atop Quimera Parca’s massive crown. The beast flinched beneath him, instinctively bowing as its creator, its tyrant, stood upon its skull like an executioner atop the gallows.
“You limp-willed carcass,” he snarled, reaching down with one clawed hand.
In a single violent motion, he sounded his scythe—slamming the flat of Calabozo against the side of the Chimera’s face with the force of a meteor strike.
The head reeled.
And with the follow-through, Grimaldi tore.
He wrenched one of the monster’s jagged, twisted horns from its skull—bone, cartilage, and glowing reiryoku fibers ripping free with a wet, seismic pop.
The Chimera screamed.
It was no mere roar—no challenge. It was fear. The kind of pain only a wounded god could feel.
It bucked, tried to pull back—but Grimaldi leapt clear, the torn horn still clutched in his left hand, the scythe gleaming in his right.
And the Chimera fled—retreating backward into the maw of the still-open Garganta, dragging its shattered mass into the void like a beaten dog crawling back into its cage.
Grimaldi turned.
His eyes were bloodshot now, glowing, wide with fury not just at failure—but at insult.
“That power— was MINE.”
The words weren’t directed at the Chimera.
They were for the two below, as he drifted in his own gravity above them.
And then he launched.
Grimaldi became a blur of savage velocity, his Calabozo raised high as he barreled forward toward Estarossa and Shizukana. The scythe was no longer a weapon—it was a storm, screaming through the air in a wide, obliterating arc aimed to cleave the rooftop and anything on it in half.
One swing came low, meant to split their knees.
The next, a violent vertical slash designed to dissect the air itself—cracking reality like a jaw unhinging.
“I’ll grind your truths to DUST!” he roared, as the force of his pressure alone began to weigh the atmosphere into a trembling black eclipse.
This was no longer about who was right.
It was about who would be left standing when the teeth stopped gnashing.
Arriving at Southeast Seireitei from Hueco Mundo.
Posting Order: Grimaldi/ Chimera → Estarossa → Shizukana.
