NO BREATHES FROM HELL

A dozen years have passed since the Quincy conflict, and the Gotei 13 prepares a rite for the late thirteenth Division captain, Jūshirō Ukitake, extending an invitation to Ichigo Kurosaki. In Karakura Town, Kazui Kurosaki slips out of his bedroom past a protesting Kon, conjures two enormous fish to ride, and seeks out a lonely, afro-headed soul. Warning the spirit he may not be able to return the following night, Kazui guides it and Kon to a concealed shrine, claps through a brief ritual, and tears open a toothed portal so the soul will not be left alone.

Three hours earlier in the Seireitei, the younger recruits and lieutenants go about their day. Ichika Abarai spars with Ikkaku Madarame, while Renji Abarai holds a video call with Ichigo to explain the Konsō Reisai, a ceremony staged twelve years after a captain dies in battle. Mayuri Kurotsuchi hijacks the conversation through insect-projected holograms, grumbling that Kisuke Urahara is spoiling his research institute's aesthetic, then orders every lieutenant to gather in the Human World for the preparatory rite.

That night the assembled lieutenants and Ichigo are ambushed by Jigoku no Gaki, skeletal beings whose lack of Reiatsu marks them as no ordinary Hollows. The newer officers cut the creatures apart, Atau Rindō, Yuyu Yayahara, Akon, and Izuru Kira each dispatching one in turn, until Szayelaporro Granz rises from a portal in a monstrous new shape and names himself the Jailer of Hell. He binds Renji, threatens Ichika, and is driven off only when Ichigo severs his chains. Meanwhile, in Soul Society, Shunsui Kyōraku identifies a black residue drifting through the air as Jigoku no Rinki and recounts an old myth: captain-class Reishi can never rejoin the soil, so the Konsō Reisai secretly casts dead captains into Hell.

Szayelaporro explains that Hell's seal has weakened now that the immense Reiatsu of Sousuke Aizen and Yhwach no longer keeps it shut, and that Yamamoto, Unohana, and now Ukitake have all been fed to it. Ukitake himself strikes back from within the Gates, impaling Szayelaporro with a colossal form of Sōgyo no Kotowari, and reveals that Ichigo and the lieutenants completed the ceremony by slaughtering the Jigoku no Gaki before his eyes. As the Gates seal, a skeleton fixes its single eye on the approaching Kazui, who grins. The one-shot frames its themes with an opening parable about two goldfish.