Kingdom of Hollows

Cursing everyone around him, Baraggan decays under the weight of his own power, and his mind slips into the past. He once ruled from a throne ringed by kneeling Hollows, bored and restless, seeing little use in an army with no invader to repel. That tedium broke the day a towering Hollow was cleaved in two and Aizen strode in flanked by Gin and Tosen. When another of his subjects challenged the strangers, Tosen cut it down without effort.

Aizen asked whether he addressed the king of Hueco Mundo, and Baraggan confirmed it, puzzled by a visitor who wore no Hollow mask. He welcomed the trio into Las Noches anyway, glad for the distraction. Tosen scoffed that a palace without roof or walls was a joke, but Baraggan claimed the open sky itself served as his ceiling. Aizen, impatient, drew his blade and asked whether the king was content with what he had, then promised greater power and a new world if Baraggan would follow him.

Baraggan laughed the offer off, insisting he could climb no higher and that no new world awaited him, and ordered his host to attack. The three intruders scattered his army with ease while Aizen taunted that Baraggan, robed in black and braced to strike, resembled nothing so much as a Shinigami. Silently, the king vowed that Aizen would come to regret the gift of power, and that he would pursue him without end.

In the present his body finally collapses to nothing. Aizen spares the death a single glance and turns away in silence. Hachi observes that Baraggan never decayed from his own strikes and guesses a second ability held the rot at bay, which is why lodging a decaying arm inside him proved fatal. In the end, Hachi reflects, the Espada was only one more small life clutching at survival. Starrk finds it grim that Aizen cannot offer even a word for the fallen, though he concedes they were never a group that avenged its own.

A dying Baraggan recalls first meeting Aizen, Gin, and Tosen in his throne room. Aizen offered him power and a new world, which Baraggan mocked before his army was effortlessly cut down. The king inwardly swore eternal vengeance against Aizen. In the present, Baraggan rots to nothing while Aizen turns away without comment. Hachi explains the killing method, and Starrk notes the Espada do not avenge one another.

The fourth chapter of volume 43, Kingdom of Hollows, and the source of the volume's title. Adapted into episode 281, Crown of Lies, Baraggan's Grudge, it delivers Baraggan's backstory through flashback, showing how Aizen recruited the former king of Hueco Mundo, and closes his arc with Aizen's cold indifference to his death.