Mimihagi-sama

As Yhwach insists the Soul King cannot be brought back, the tremors spread everywhere: Hollows reel in Hueco Mundo, Keigo and Mizuiro puzzle over the unreported quake in Karakura, and the Soldat realize they too will be crushed alongside Soul Society. Inside the laboratory, Jushiro Ukitake steps forward with a dark aura swelling behind him and announces that he will replace the dead sovereign. Casting off his captain's coat and bearing his upper body, he draws his blade and chants to Mimihagi as the shadow stretches into a vast arm tipped with a single staring eye.

A memory shows Ukitake's parents pleading at a crumbling shrine to save their dying son. He explains that a grave illness at age three whitened his hair and should have killed him, and that Mimihagi is a one-eyed, misshapen god of the Sakahone district, worshipped as the Soul King's fallen right arm, which shields any worshipper willing to surrender all they own save their eye. His parents bargained his lungs away to the deity, letting him survive and one day join the Gotei 13.

Coughing blood, Ukitake reveals that Kamikake spreads Mimihagi's stilling power from his lungs through every organ, surrendering his whole body to become the Soul King's arm. A tattoo of the god spreads across his chest as he tells Rukia he prepared this rite long ago, thinking of this exact day, and declares that giving back the life once saved for the Gotei 13's sake would be his greatest joy. Meanwhile, deep in Muken, Shunsui Kyoraku senses the tremors and calls for his voice to be heard and answered by Sosuke Aizen.

Ukitake volunteers to stand in for the slain Soul King. He unveils Kamikake, the pact with the god Mimihagi that saved his life as a child, and channels its stilling power through his entire body. In Muken, Kyoraku begins reaching out to the imprisoned Aizen.

The chapter's Japanese title translates to Mimihagi-sama. It appears in the sixty-eighth volume, THE ORDINARY PEACE, and its events were adapted in the anime as part of episode 395.