Father

Climbing through the wreckage, Rukia and Renji flinch at a surge of power and look up to find Gerard looming in his reshaped body. Hitsugaya cautions them that the giant now vastly outmatches the foe they once faced, and Renji's confusion leads Rukia to guess, to Byakuya's mild dismay, that the newcomer must be Hitsugaya's older brother. The moment breaks when the captains and Uryu sense Ichigo squaring off against Yhwach in the central palace.

Standing before the king, Ichigo hears Yhwach observe that his freshly gained strength has made his spiritual pressure visible, and that he is deliberately setting The Almighty aside so he can relish their reunion. When Yhwach dismisses Isshin as nothing more than a stand-in father, Ichigo refuses to accept the man who murdered Masaki as any kind of parent. Branded a sulking child, Ichigo lunges and fires a Getsuga Tensho, which Yhwach smothers with a surging tide of black energy that turns on Ichigo until Orihime shields him with Santen Kesshun. Ichigo slices through the overflow with his shorter blade and charges again, only for the energy to halt him as Yhwach insists Masaki gave her life expressly to bring Ichigo into being. Calling it the highest of honors, the king hurls him into a wall and rises to reveal his true power.

Rukia and Renji encounter Gerard's towering new form and are warned off by Hitsugaya. The group senses Ichigo's confrontation with Yhwach beginning. Yhwach withholds The Almighty to savor the fight and provokes Ichigo about Isshin and Masaki. Ichigo's Getsuga Tensho is countered by black energy, blocked in turn by Orihime's Santen Kesshun. Yhwach throws Ichigo aside and stands to unleash his real strength.

This is the 673rd chapter of Bleach, the tenth chapter of the seventy-third volume, BATTLE FIELD BURNING. Its title points to Yhwach's claim of fatherhood over Ichigo, a thread that continues directly into the following chapter, Father 2.