There had always been whispers about the founder of the Gotei Thirteen.
Captain-Commander Genryūsai Shigekuni Yamamoto had been revered, feared, obeyed. But never questioned.
Not out loud.
Not until now.
Because among the returned were those he had once stood beside, shoulder to shoulder, long before the First Division had its name. Long before Soul Society had been carved into order.
And now, they were walking back into the world he tried to forget.
Kairo stood in the upper chamber of the Archive, surrounded by the newly returned. Each of them had once borne a sword, but none carried one now. Their power had not vanished. It had evolved.
One of them, a woman with pale violet hair and eyes like cracked marble, stepped forward.
"I knew him," she said.
Kairo looked up from the Memory Stone he was inscribing.
"Yamamoto?"
She nodded.
"We trained together. We bled together."
Ichigo leaned forward from his seat on the railing.
"What was he like?"
The woman hesitated.
Then said:
"He was not the man you remember. He was not a tyrant. Not at first."
In the vision she shared, Yamamoto stood in the ruins of the first Seireitei, his beard black, his robes torn, his eyes burning not with rage but conviction.
There had been no Soul Society yet. Just chaos. Lost souls devouring each other. Factions rising and falling like sparks.
Yamamoto gathered those who could fight.
Not because he loved war.
Because he feared what would come if he didn't.
He built the Thirteen for stability.
For peace.
For control.
But then the war ended.
And Yamamoto could not stop building walls.
When the vision faded, Ichigo remained still.
Kairo spoke quietly.
"He forgot who he built the walls to protect. And started guarding the walls themselves."
The woman nodded.
"He stopped trusting people. Started trusting silence."
Elsewhere, deep in First Division's oldest sanctum, Shunsui Kyōraku stared at an old letter.
It was written in Yamamoto's own hand.
Signed in heat so deep it had burned through two layers of parchment.
It read:
If they return, do not stop them. But do not follow them, either. You were made to bend, not break.
Kyōraku read the words again.
Then smiled grimly.
"Old man," he whispered, "you knew this would come."
Nanao stepped beside him.
"We're at a crossroads."
Kyōraku nodded.
"We either tell the truth… or bury it deeper than before."
In Squad Eight's meditation garden, Captain Lisa Yadōmaru opened an ancient text buried beneath her own barracks. The ink had faded, but she could still read it.
It told the story of the Shikei-za, the Execution Squad before Central 46 had even existed.
And at the bottom of the scroll, scribbled in a younger Yamamoto's hand:
There are some enemies you must erase before they realize they are not enemies.
She closed the scroll with shaking hands.
"They weren't dangerous," she whispered.
"They were right."
Back at the Archive, Noa watched the air tremble.
More were coming.
Not from the void.
From memory.
Stone after stone began to pulse and crack, not with pain, but relief.
The sealed stories were unraveling.
The locked names stepped forward.
They began speaking.
First in whispers.
Then in chants.
One word repeated again and again,
Remembrance.
Kairo turned to the crowd.
"These are the ones Yamamoto feared most."
"Why?" Ichigo asked.
"Because they didn't fear him," Kairo said.
That night, across Soul Society, dreams changed.
Young recruits dreamed of men and women with no faces but voices like their own.
Captains woke with the taste of ash in their mouths and memories that weren't theirs.
A small boy in the Fourth Division dorms sat upright, heart pounding, and whispered,
"I was there."
When asked the next day what he meant, he would say nothing.
But his eyes had changed.
He remembered.
At dawn, the Archive opened fully for the first time.
The gates swung wide.
Not with power.
With invitation.
Kairo stood before them as figures began to gather.
Civilians.
Shinigami.
Children from Rukongai.
Even a few Hollows, escorted by the ones who had waited.
No one fought.
No one shouted.
The Archive did not require silence.
Only willingness.
To see.
To hear.
To remember.
Kairo raised the hilt of the First Blade, its shards still suspended in quiet orbit.
"They feared these truths would destroy Soul Society," he said.
He looked at Ichigo. At Noa. At the returned.
"But I say, this is how we save it."
The Archive pulsed once.
And the first true record began.