The First Division's walls were not made of stone alone.
They were built from kido-laced marble, layered with blood-seal barriers and fragments of the World of the Living's time itself. Few knew that the walls could listen. Fewer still realized they could remember.
Now, for the first time in centuries, the walls began to whisper.
Not to warn.
To confess.
Captain-Commander Kyōraku stood barefoot in the quiet chamber where the Great Logs were kept, a room where only three captains in history had ever entered without summons.
He poured himself sake. Didn't drink it.
The floor trembled beneath him. Faint. Rhythmic.
The heartbeat of memory.
Behind him, Nanao opened the heavy scroll they had uncovered two nights earlier from a collapsed section of the archive hall. The script on it was fluid and unstable—letters that refused to keep their shape.
"It's responding to the Archive's growth," she said.
Kyōraku nodded. "The truth's been buried under our own foundation so long that it got trapped. Now that Kairo's waking everything up…"
He didn't finish the thought.
Nanao did.
"…the walls want to speak."
At the Archive, Kairo stood at the far edge of the oldest stones.
Each of them bore signs of being sealed rather than forgotten.
Noa stood beside him, hands folded behind her back. She wasn't smiling.
"These names were hidden," she said.
"Not lost," Kairo agreed.
Ichigo ran his fingers across the surface of one.
The letters twisted. Not into a language. Into sounds.
He heard a voice, a woman shouting orders, blades clashing, fire cracking.
He blinked.
And it was gone.
"What was that?"
"A memory not allowed to become a story," Kairo said. "A name so dangerous it was muted."
Noa pressed her hand against the stone.
It vibrated.
Then, softly, it breathed.
She stepped back. "It's waking up."
Ichigo raised Zangetsu.
Kairo did not move.
The stone split.
Not shattered, opened.
Inside, folded like a forgotten chapter, stood a figure.
Not spirit.
Not Hollow.
Not soul.
A construct. Held together by language alone. A living testimony.
"I am Segment," it said.
Kairo's breath caught.
Ichigo flinched. "That thing's made of stories."
"Not just stories," Kairo murmured. "Censorship."
Segment blinked slowly.
"I was created by the First Division. To seal truths that would break the balance."
"Like what?" Ichigo asked.
Segment didn't answer with words.
It showed them.
A vision struck them all at once.
The Soul Society, before the Gotei Thirteen.
A lawless expanse of soul-rich chaos.
The rise of Yamamoto.
The slaughter of pacifist shinigami who refused military ranks.
The burning of entire districts to make room for the Academy.
The trial of a captain who discovered a way to free souls from the cycle permanently, and was silenced.
Segment stood in every scene.
Watching.
Sealing.
Removing.
They gasped as the vision faded.
Ichigo reeled.
"That can't be true."
Kairo's voice was quiet.
"It is."
Segment spoke again.
"Captain-Commander Yamamoto ordered me to bury these names. Because history built on fear is easier to defend than truth built on trust."
Ichigo stepped back.
Noa reached for his hand.
Kairo didn't speak.
Because he already knew.
Yamamoto hadn't just enforced order.
He had rewritten what order meant.
Back in the First Division, the walls cracked again.
One stone broke in two, revealing a seal buried behind it.
A name burned itself into the floorboards.
Tenmei.
Nanao stepped back.
Kyōraku crouched to trace the name.
"Tenmei was purged from the academy records," he said softly. "He discovered a way to merge shinigami and human souls."
"For peace?"
"No," Kyōraku said. "For love."
Nanao looked away.
Another crack echoed through the ceiling.
Kyōraku finally sipped his sake.
And said, "It's all going to come out."
At the Archive, Segment stood silently between the open stones.
"I can return to rest," it said. "Or I can unseal the others."
"How many?" Ichigo asked.
Segment turned its head.
"Eighty-four."
Kairo closed his eyes.
"That many were hidden?"
"Eighty-four names," Segment replied. "But over ten thousand souls tied to them."
Kairo nodded once.
"Then open them."
Segment raised its hand.
The Archive shifted.
Eighty-four stones cracked, not violently, but like old doors easing open.
And with them came the first wave of truth.
Not clean.
Not glorious.
But real.
In the outer districts of Rukongai, dreams changed.
Children began to see faces they didn't recognize but felt drawn to.
Elders began to hum songs they hadn't remembered in decades.
One woman, blind for forty years, opened her eyes and said the name of a brother she had buried before her birth.
Ichigo stood with Kairo, watching the stones glow.
"This is going to destroy Soul Society."
Kairo didn't disagree.
"But maybe," he said, "we can build something better on what we finally admit."
Segment watched them both.
And for the first time, smiled.