THE SWORD FIVE

Opening his show with a flourish of dance, Nimaiya is promptly crashed into by his five self-declared bodyguards, Tsumiko Tsuchimiya, Hasuka Hashihara, Mera Hiuchigashima, Nonomi Nomino, and Tokie Tonokawa, who bruise him on the way down. As Ichigo and the Asauchi look on blankly, Nimaiya beckons the blade forward, and it streaks through the air to plant itself in the ground beside him. Mera breathes fire into the stone furnace, a weeping Tokie fills the quenching trench, Hasuka lifts the blade with her prehensile hair, and Tsumiko draws a tooth from her mouth and shapes it into a great mallet. Tying back his hair and removing his glasses, Nimaiya begins to hammer.

Asked what he sees, Ichigo says the world has brightened and wonders if Nimaiya should keep his glasses on, but the smith replies that he needs to read the color of the flames. He guesses that the Asauchi turning white in Ichigo's grip reminded him of his inner Hollow, then confirms as much: the blade does embody that Hollow, and it was the spark that drew out Ichigo's true Zanpakutō spirit.

Hammering on, Nimaiya delivers the real shock. Ichigo's inner Hollow is his Zanpakutō spirit, because Aizen forged White by stacking countless Shinigami souls in the very same way Nimaiya makes an Asauchi. That entity slipped into Ichigo's soul, fused with his natural Shinigami power, and became his spirit. Realizing what this means for the Zangetsu he has always trusted, Ichigo is told he must say goodbye. In his inner world he faces Zangetsu and claims to already know him, but Nimaiya urges him to look harder, for he has recently met this man as the destroyer of Soul Society: Zangetsu is Ichigo's own Quincy power wearing the face of Yhwach from a thousand years past.

Nimaiya and his bodyguards begin reforging Ichigo's Zanpakutō. Nimaiya reveals that the white Asauchi is Ichigo's true Zanpakutō spirit, formed like White from layered Shinigami souls. He then exposes the Zangetsu Ichigo has always known as Ichigo's Quincy powers taking the shape of a young Yhwach.

Closing out Volume 60, EVERYTHING BUT THE RAIN, this chapter overturns everything Ichigo believed about his sword during the Thousand-Year Blood War arc. Its events were adapted into Episode 379, THE BLADE IS ME. The dual nature of Zangetsu revealed here reshapes Ichigo's powers for the remainder of the series.