Foundation Stones

Inside Silbern, a badly wounded Luders Friegen struggles to report while sprawled in his own blood, and Yhwach amuses himself by threatening the man's legs until Luders forces himself upright. Asguiaro Ebern watches the scene, frozen with dread.

At the Kurosaki Clinic, Ryunosuke Yuki waits with Orihime, Sado, Uryu, and Shino for Ichigo to return. When Ichigo arrives unharmed, a message from Soul Society interrupts them: a funeral is being held for First Division Lieutenant Chojiro Sasakibe. An earlier briefing from Akon had laid out the attack, seven unidentified figures reaching Yamamoto's office and another intruder slaughtering 116 guards at Black Ridge Gate in barely three minutes, all while passing through the Seireitei's barriers without disturbing them.

Troubled, Ichigo sets out on patrol in Shinigami form. Mid-flight he is blindsided when Nel plummets through a Garganta and slams into him, cratering a playground below. Weeping, she pleads for his help, telling him that something terrible has struck Hueco Mundo.

Back in Silbern, Yhwach dismisses Luders's forecast that Soul Society will fall in five days, declaring he cares only for the present, then kills the messenger. He executes Ebern as well, bidding both men become foundations for peace. Reshaping his throne into a staircase, he climbs to a curtain and draws it aside to reveal Tier Harribel, beaten and bound in chains within her released Resurreccion.

Soul Society announces Sasakibe's funeral, and Akon's report exposes the scale and stealth of the Wandenreich's opening raid. Nel resurfaces after nearly two years to sound the alarm about Hueco Mundo. Yhwach murders both Luders and Ebern once they prove useless to him, and the chapter closes on the captured Harribel, chained and defeated, confirming that Hueco Mundo has already fallen under his control.

The chapter is the sixth entry in the fifty-fifth collected volume, THE BLOOD WARFARE, part of the Thousand-Year Blood War storyline. Its events were adapted into Episode 368, also titled Foundation Stones. Yhwach frames Hueco Mundo as merely one stepping stone toward his planned assault on Soul Society, and Nel's crash landing marks her return to the series after a long absence.