Worlds Apart

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. Eternal night.

The sombre dimension of eerie, the wraiths that emerged from the despair and lunacy of fallen people. A realm of endless darkness suspended above the endless white of a barren desert. Desolate and sinister. That was neither Hell nor Purgatory but a dimension comparably grim and cruel to its twisted, bestial inhabitants. The land where survival of the fittest was the only rule accepted by everyone. Where the power of an individual was the only way to assert dominance over the others, to impose rules upon the unfettered or, more commonly, to prevail at all.

There were few points of reference to be found in that nigh-incomprehensible realm. So that somewhere, sometime, a particular figure appeared among the white dunes of eroded quartz. A very tall, somewhat lanky figure clad in a tattered and torn white cloak, complete with a hood that obscured the person's face. Unusually humanoid for a supposed Hollow, and with actual clothes, if worn, to further distance the person from the monstrous forms of his fellows. For that was an, an entity straddling the line between a Hollow and a , the ultimate form a spirit-eating wraith could achieve. And that particular Arrancar was arguably the ultimate of his own kind, at the very least during his own time, a thousand years ago... Because now, after such a long absence, he was visiting his old home, as part of an excursion, the first one after serendipitously escaping from the depths of Hell, finally as free and unbound as he used to be long ago.

"Haaah, it's so incredibly boring in here", the Arrancar sighed as he was looking around, swaying and striding across a dune. "Nothing's changed at all. I mean, if I bothered to remember the way those bloody sand grains were arranged, I'd wager that they haven't moved a millimetre in a thousand years. Booo-ring!"

Then, he moved his head to the right. Suddenly, there was a loud whizz, and several dunes seemed to explode, or rather vanish, in an instant. Within the following instant all that was left was a large wedge of nothingness carved into the white desert, and the echo of the phenomenon responsible for that new feature of the landscape.

"Nobody will notice, nobody will care. Where's everybody, by the way? A few new Hollows should've appeared by now... This whole place is fuckin' useless", he continued his casual monologue as he leant backward and looked upon the black sky high above him. "Huh?"

When he extended the range of his supernatural senses, he did sense something. Or rather, someone. A source of unmistakable ripples sent across the fabric of space. Peculiar, significant ripples. The Arrancar slanted his head to the side, taking a while to analyse that signature. Considerable, so that was someone strong. Not a Hollow for sure. A... Shinigami, perhaps? Most likely, even if he had not the opportunity to detect their presences since a long time. Except for those clueless blokes he encountered right after abruptly exiting Hell through a portal manifested by a fairly surprised wizard. Yes, that was probably a Shinigami. In Hueco Mundo?

Finally, there was something worthwhile to pique his curiosity. Definitely worth investigating. He was going to return to the anyway, sooner or later, so the opportunity to converse with a Shinigami first was all the better. In consequence, he lifted his leg to move... only to vanish all of a sudden. Owing to his special ability, distance was a very relative term. One he could change as he saw fit, to traverse the vast expanse of the white desert and arrive at his destination point in a literal instant, for example. Effortlessly, casually, as always.

"What's that?", he inquired, tucking his hands into the pockets of his white pants, as white and torn as his cloak was, and partially exposing his supremely toned, if sickly pale, abdomen as a result.