Bleach: Shattered Blade Novels & Stories

Collapsing to the ground, I felt the weight of defeat wash over me, my life flashing before my eyes in a blur of fear and pain. The relentless onslaught of punches and kicks continued unabated, leaving me too feeble to defend myself. My vision blurred and my senses dulled, a disorienting haze enveloping me as one of the men motioned for the others to pause, his gaze fixed intently on me. As he drew nearer, a cruel smirk playing on his lips, he grabbed hold of me, his chilling stare piercing through me. "It seems you've meddled in affairs beyond your reckoning. Our client made it explicitly clear that you must endure excruciating agony," he taunted.

Her hands reached out for the smallest yet sharpest knife and she held it in a tight grip. Tears were streaming down her eyes, thinking back to those days when she felt too vulnerable and helpless. When the crying and the taunting never stopped. When everything haunted her: her life and the world. She would cut and sit there helpless, but she always cut so far away from the Radial Artery so she knew she was not helpless but she was not ready, never ready to help herself. After a few minutes, the cut would stop bleeding but she would still have consciousness and her life. Then she would take the carpet cleaner and clean it quickly.

The shard sat in my palm when my hand retracted. "Destroy it," I looked at Valen and threw it into the air. Valen released a purple electric ball that exploded the shard into cinders. Panic-stricken, Assad trembled in my left hand. At this point, he had no voice left to speak. Blayne would want me to make him bleed for days. The thought of my friend brought water to my eyes. A profound sadness threatened to swallow me whole. In the rise of the wind, a large burst of blue-green wave infused with sun-lit white in its crescendo splashed roughly against the shoreline to deliver a choking Kodjo and Tygart at my sand-caked feet before forming a diminuendo and ebbing back to sea.

It's a lot different when you're in the shit. My blade started to glow blue. I was preparing for a [Raiden's Finger]. I lifted my sword into the air forming a large blue electric blade. I was going to cut down Syllia when a dwarf appeared in front of her. He had a knife in each hand, and around his feet, wind was swirling.

[Soul Cleave] Lucas also didn’t hesitate as he roared. [11th Blade] CLANGGGG! The sword and the axe collided. A shockwave was released from the point of contact, converting everything nearby into dust. Half of the mansion, which was the size of a mountain, vanished with it. The dust that has spread through the air has formed a massive cloud in the sky. Then, in the midst of it all, two figures stood motionless. “Kugh…” Lucas grinned. As the adversary's powerful aura ripped his body inside out, cracks appeared on his body.

Pulling one of the frame pieces out of the mess, I heaved it with all my strength and shattered the glass. I could get in now, but the snake could also get out. It dropped to the ground and headed for the opening, then shied back, moving slowly and gingerly. The broken glass cut at its scales. It was so desperate for food, it came at me anyway and let the glass slice it to ribbons. That gave me an idea. I picked up a particularly large shard of glass and waited.

Just me, silence, and a truth I couldn’t outrun. The blade was where I’d left it. Carefully hidden beneath a false floor tile and shrouded with cloth enchanted to dampen aura bleed. It wasn’t a standard weapon. This one had been gifted to me after the hybrid trials. Blood-forged. Custom-coded to react to the specific fingerprint of my aura signature. One of the only things that still felt real when the rest of my memories seemed to come and go like smoke.

He felt the shift in the air pressure, the sudden, violent displacement of the holographic cherry blossoms. The white blade materialized aimed directly at Dax's neck. Dax ducked, the blinding corrupted sub-ether searing the collar of his leather cut as it passed over him. He spun on his heel, driving his Phase-Knife in a brutal upward arc toward the Shogun's exposed chrome ribs. CLANG. The Shogun parried the strike with blinding speed, the clash of blue and white sub-ether sending a localized shockwave through the courtyard that cracked the obsidian floor beneath their boots.

The blade began to glow with a heat so intense the floor beneath it turned to liquid. "Stop it!" Hecate lunged for the blade. Aradaa grabbed her ankle. "Stay. Down." Aradaa let out a burst of siphoned energy, a pulse of pure Muse-rage that knocked Hecate back against the balcony railing. The Dagger couldn't hold the power. It began to crack. "Kaelor, get down!" Aradaa tackled him. The blade exploded. A wave of white light washed over the room, erasing the darkness. The solarium glass shattered. The stone pillars crumbled.

Nothing would stop him except my death. I manifested fully. Let Silvermoon power pour through me without restraint. Let the integrated death I carried surge to the surface. When Marcus's blade met my hand, when I grabbed it without hesitation, something unexpected happened. The death I carried recognized the death in the weapon. They merged. Became something new. The blade shattered. Not broke. Shattered. Exploded into fragments that dissolved into nothing. Marcus stared at his empty hand, shock crossing his face. "Impossible," he whispered. "The blade was forged to kill integrated Silvermoon. It cannot be destroyed by the very thing it was designed to kill."