Marvel With Zanpakutou

Crack!!!

The man crushed the seed in his hand, his eyes filled with nothing but cold indifference.

Crystalline specks of light drifted in midair, looking like countless fireflies dancing. In this monochrome white-snow world, they shimmered with a starlike brilliance, beautiful, yet carrying a deadly and dangerous allure.

In truth, the man did not know where this seed had come from.

He only knew that this seed, called "Advanced Spirit Particle Bait," could create a type of creature known as a "Hollow", a fallen soul completely stripped of heart and emotion, ruled by malice and hatred, whose very instinct was to devour human souls... monsters.

It was just like applying fertilizer to crops, but here it was to rapidly stimulate the growth of human souls, pushing them toward corruption and maturity.

Incidentally,

the bait’s acceleration rate... was a hundredfold!

The crystalline specks of light floating in the air drifted down like scattered dandelion seeds.

The seeds were swept along by howling gales, and their coverage was so vast that they blanketed hundreds of kilometers of land, including a nearby expanse of dense, towering forest, as well as every crevice of the frozen lake and mountain ravines.

In that moment, it was as if they were standing amidst the radiance of a sea of stars.

The desperate people seemed entranced by the sight before them, their faces showing intoxicated fascination. Some even believed it to be a divine miracle sent down by God, a sacred baptism to forgive them of their sins.

However... they seemed to have forgotten one thing.

In nature’s iron law, the more beautiful something is, the greater the danger it hides.

"W–What... what are those things?"

Steve stared at the falling specks, a powerful sense of unease rising within him.

His whole body prickled as though pierced by needles, the shiver and terror spreading from the depths of his soul seized his entire mind within seconds. The inhuman senses of a super-soldier blared like alarms, warning him of an impending and terrifying death!

A super-soldier’s instinct told him one thing, don’t touch it.

Steve pulled the heavily injured Bucky with him, nimbly dodging the descending lights. Luckily, their coverage area was vast enough that density within any given spot wasn’t too high, and with his superhuman dynamic vision, he just barely managed to avoid most of them.

Unfortunately, his right arm still accidentally brushed against one speck.

The light landed on his combat suit, instantly dissolving like a snowflake without a trace, bringing no discomfort at all.

"Could it be... I was just too tense?"

Steve looked at his uninjured right arm, wondering if he had simply been overreacting to cause that earlier sense of danger.

But before the thought could settle, it was shattered by countless agonized screams.

"ROAR!!!"

Next came a strange, piercing wail tearing through the air, echoing across the forests and ice fields in an unending chorus.

In those shrill cries surged indescribable negative emotions, malice, hatred, rage, jealousy, savagery, bloodlust, all mixed together into a near-tangible storm that battered the minds and souls of every living person.

Forcing himself to endure the skull-splitting agony, Steve’s bloodshot scarlet eyes glared into the distance.

He tried to find the source of those eerie howls, but the sight that met him froze his mind into utter blankness.

Dear God... what had he just seen?!

Over a hundred monstrous horrors utterly beyond human understanding, each a grotesque blend of features from various creatures. They stood as tall as three or four-story buildings, their faces covered by sinister, pale-white bone masks, and on their chests was an ominous black void.

Just the crimson glow in their eyes radiated an immense sense of oppression.

It was like the natural order of the food chain, when a lesser creature meets a top predator, the innate dominance from higher up the chain made every soul tremble.

"Aaaah... the pain... it hurts so much..."

"I... I hate you all so much! I’ll kill you... kill you all!"

Several more people dropped to their knees, letting out cries of agony, as countless streams of thick white fluid gushed from their mouths and noses.

Then, under the shocked and horrified gazes of everyone present, those people’s screams grew sharper and more piercing, until they warped into a kind of hungry howl,

and then their entire bodies swelled like overinflated balloons and burst with a deafening pop.

Moments later, from the torrents of white fluid that erupted, the shattered remains of those people gathered again, reconstructing into enormous hulking forms.

At the final stage of transformation,

On the chest of each massive body appeared a pitch-black, bottomless hole, their faces hidden beneath masks like white bone, and in those masks blazed a pair of crimson eyes, forever brimming with hunger and slaughter, lit like burning beacons.

So... this was the punishment "He" had brought down!

Seeing countless people, in just seconds after touching the light specks, forced to transform from human into monster, Steve’s heart almost stopped beating. His limbs felt cold and rigid, as if they were prosthetics.

Hunting is the instinct of every creature.

And the food most to a Hollow’s liking, naturally, is a soul steeped in despair.

At the moment when the despair in the crowd had been brewed to its peak, hundreds and thousands of newborn Hollows, driven by their hunger, roared and pounced on the terrified Hydra soldiers.

The feeding... had begun!

It was a banquet, a massacre, and an act of revenge.

Flesh and bone were ground between teeth, producing a sickening crunching sound. Screams mixed with curses and shrieks, composing a requiem of wails, a hymn and psalm straight from Hell, poured into the ears of all present.

Steve watched helplessly as a human was seized by a monster and shoved into its mouth.

The scream was cut off in that instant, and as two rows of massive, door-like teeth snapped shut, like an iron-forged crusher, it took only seconds to pulverize hard bones, turning a whole human into minced flesh and fragments between those jaws.

In under a minute, hundreds of Hydra soldiers were slaughtered to the last by the monsters.

One extremely large and powerfully built monster fixed its gaze on Steve and Bucky, greedily licking the scraps of meat and blood from its lips, and then roared as it charged toward them.

"Rooooar!"

The roar had barely left its mouth when a violent, murderous figure tore through the air, charging straight in.

Its speed was so great it triggered an ear-piercing sonic boom, the rolling shockwave crashing down like a tsunami, its crushing presence overwhelming like mountains and oceans, enough to make even the super-soldier Steve Rogers feel suffocated with terror and despair.

"Run!"

Suddenly, a familiar shout exploded in his ears like a thunderclap.

In the instant Steve froze, a hand shoved him with all its strength to the side,

and then a figure, not tall and straight but rather hunched and battered, charged without hesitation toward the monster, a ticking spherical grenade clenched in his teeth.

That was... Bucky Barnes!

"Run! Run, Steve!"

In that final glance back, Bucky’s eyes held countless complicated emotions.

There was a yearning for life.

A longing for his homeland.

A deep reluctance to part...

But above all, there was resolve and determination.

He knew his wounds were beyond healing, in this situation, he would only be a burden.

So, in his last moment, he unleashed all his strength, shoving his friend away, pulling the pin on the energy grenade himself, buying Steve the chance to escape.

America could do without Colonel Bucky,

but it could never do without Captain America.

"No!!!"

Steve’s final sight of him was Bucky being swallowed whole by the monster.