Chiaroscuro: Trepidation

Part 1
. Ruins of the Ninth Division Barracks. Night.

It was a tenebrous and quiet night, with nary a gust of wind disturbing its unnerving silence. The air was dense and stifling; a thick shroud of clouds obscured the entire sky, drowning the ravaged city in nigh-impenetrable darkness. Only the immense, prism-like Kidō barrier outstretched over a portion of the Seireitei cast some light on the surroundings, however dim and faint, thus extracting some details from the vast sea of blackness.

Broken walls. Collapsed roofs. Pavement dotted with craters and cracks. Corpses. Countless bodies laying motionless amongst the piles of rubble, mutilated, bifurcated, disemboweled and dismembered, broken Zanpakutō still held firm in the forever-clenched fists.

Then, a single moving silhouette in the world of stillness; a mobile shadow, darker than the pitch-black surroundings and the night itself. Pacing across the abysmal battlefield, each slow and measured step completely soundless, aimless. Only the bone-white mask could be discerned from the unfathomable tar of the night's shade.

Nonetheless, there seemed to be someone else lurking in the thick shadows.