Desperate Lights

Standing among slaughtered comrades, Shinji absorbs a Shin'eiyaku and refuses to bow to sheer numbers. Because certain techniques are too dangerous to use near allies, he waits until only Soldat remain, then releases his Bankai, a huge metal flower that inverts everyone's perception until the soldiers cut each other down as imagined foes.

Across the ruins, Ikkaku, Yumichika, and Hisagi are driven together by Mask De Masculine, a self-styled superstar who shrugs off their blows while his herald James rings a gong. The trio bind and batter him regardless. Elsewhere, Bambietta flings aside her Medallion, killing Shinigami with the blast, and swears to level the Seireitei; Komamura crashes down to stop her, vowing to avenge Yamamoto, before Shinji takes over and scrambles her senses with Sakanade's reversing power.

Then the balance tips once more. Yhwach bids his knights rejoice as Quincy: Vollstandig ignites across the false city, pillars of colored Reishi crowned with pentacles rising from Cang, BG9, Bambietta, and others. The emperor declares the hopeful battles finished and true despair begun, while far above, Ichigo staggers through the Irazu Sando and is seized by fractured visions of a man sealed within a sea of Reishi.

Shinji's Bankai forces the Soldat to slaughter one another. Ikkaku, Yumichika, and Hisagi engage Mask De Masculine. Komamura and Shinji confront Bambietta. The Sternritter's Quincy: Vollstandig erupts across the Seireitei, heralding despair, as Ichigo glimpses the Soul King's past.

Desperate Lights is a chapter of the sixty-second volume, HEART OF WOLF, in the Thousand-Year Blood War. Its events were adapted within Episode 382, The Fundamental Virulence. The chapter's own wiki page is a disambiguation notice, so this account is based on the corresponding Fandom coverage.