Kill The Shadow 2

The instant four Sternritter, Äs Nödt, BG9, Bambietta Basterbine, and Cang Du, seize their opponents' freshly released Bankai, the surrounding officers freeze in disbelief. Suì-Fēng, Tetsuzaemon Iba, Rangiku Matsumoto, and Marechiyo Ōmaeda struggle to process the theft, while Sajin Komamura glances upward and finds his own transformation simply gone. Tōshirō Hitsugaya calls out to Hyōrinmaru, receives only silence, and drops to his knees in anguish before ordering Rangiku to raise the alarm. She slices her thumb, traces a seal along her arm, and invokes Bakudō 77, Tenteikūra, linking her thoughts to every captain at once so the warning reaches all of them: the enemy can claim a Bankai, so none should be released. The message ripples outward, drawing shock from Kensei, Kenpachi, and Ukitake, fury from Mayuri Kurotsuchi over the captains acting before his analysis finished, and grim calculation from Shunsui Kyōraku, who concedes that a sacrifice may be unavoidable when victory demands the very releases they can no longer safely use.

Robert Accutrone closes on Shunsui using Hirenkyaku, flicks off his hat, then slips past his counter by triggering his Quincy: Vollständig, Grimaniel, and reappears to blast out the captain's right eye, leaving Shunsui bleeding and rattled. At the Blue Stream Gate, Shino Madarame collapses beside Hidetomo Kajōmaru's corpse and screams for him while Ryūnosuke Yuki and the others stand mute; overhead, the leader in Yhwach's guise grants Haschwalth free rein to spare the broken unit. On the Sixth Division grounds, Byakuya Kuchiki halts Renji before he can release his own Bankai, refusing to surrender it too, which leaves the lieutenant demanding to know how they are meant to fight. Watching casualties mount, Akon slams his fist to a monitor and orders a direct line opened to Ichigo Kurosaki, vowing to shoulder the blame himself since Mayuri is away at the front.

This installment is the eighth chapter collected in the fifty-sixth volume, March of the StarCross, and was adapted as part of the anime's episode 370. The commanding figure the Sternritter answer to here is not the true Yhwach but Royd Lloyd wearing his likeness, a detail revealed later in the arc. The story belongs to the opening stretch of the Thousand-Year Blood War, in which the Wandenreich's power to strip Shinigami of their strongest release throws the entire Gotei 13 onto the defensive.