Turn Back The Pendulum 6

Kensei understands that the ten abandoned uniforms mean their wearers vanished rather than fled, making them the first Shinigami victims of the case. He dispatches Shinobu Eishima to alert the Central 46, tells Izaemon Tōdō to request a researcher from the Twelfth Division on the theory that a pathogen is breaking souls down, and has Heizō Kasaki arrange a tent since he intends to camp and shield the Seireitei from any threat. As he sends the children home, young Hisagi glimpses the number 69 tattooed on his chest.

At the research institute, Mayuri and Hiyori squabble over rank until Hiyori demands Urahara intervene. Urahara describes his prototype Gigai, built to stabilize the fading souls, before Tōdō arrives seeking aid. Promising to send someone by evening, Urahara asks Hiyori to go; she balks and points at Akon, but he insists she is the only one he trusts to collect a sample. Back at the Ninth Division camp, Tōdō returns late, having gone to the Twelfth alone, and offers to take a watch. That night, with only one officer resting at a time, Kensei hears a disturbance and rushes out with Kasaki to find two officers bloodied on the ground and Tōdō standing near them. When Tōdō collapses, Kensei realizes the enemy is still close, but as he turns, Kasaki's throat is slit and Kensei himself is engulfed in darkness and run through from behind. An alarm then rips across the Seireitei as Kensei and Mashiro's spiritual pressure vanishes, and Urahara, learning Hiyori has already left, curses that he did not go himself.

The disappearances escalate into open slaughter as an unseen attacker wipes out the Ninth Division's camp and strikes down Kensei from the shadows. Urahara's stabilizing Gigai prototype is introduced, and his fateful decision to send Hiyori to the scene is set. The chapter ends on the crisis point that drives the rest of the volume: the sudden loss of Kensei and Mashiro's reiatsu, the Seireitei-wide alarm, and Urahara's dread that Hiyori is walking into the same trap.

The sixth Turn Back The Pendulum chapter was adapted across Episode 209, Muguruma's 9th Division, Moves Out, and Episode 210, Hiyori dies? The Beginning of Tragedy. The glimpse of Kensei's 69 tattoo, later mirrored on Hisagi's own face, ties the two characters together across the timeline.