"Ugh… what's wrong with me…?"
Sombravida slowly opened his eyes. His mind felt heavy and distant, and a cold wind swept across his body, sending a reflexive shiver through him.
His vision gradually cleared.
Above him stretched a pale, yellow-white sky — cloudless, boundless, and filled with a dim, drifting haze that seemed to swallow sound and hope alike. The air was dry yet carried a faint, decaying odor, like something long dead buried beneath endless sand.
"Where… am I…"
Sombravida stared at the unfamiliar landscape, trying to gather his scattered memories.
He should have been dead.
He remembered lying on a hospital bed, his body ravaged by illness, fighting a losing battle until darkness finally consumed him.
Yet now—
A desolate wasteland.
A silent sky.
A suffocating stillness.
And an eerie spiritual heaviness pressing against his senses.
ROOOOAR!!
A monstrous roar suddenly exploded nearby.
Sombravida's nerves snapped tight.
He whipped his head toward the sound.
What he saw shattered all reason.
A creature the size of a mammoth stood on four limbs, its tail longer than its body. Covering its face was a bone-white mask shaped from an unknown beast — neither bull nor feline — with hollow eye sockets glowing faint crimson within absolute darkness.
Most horrifying of all—
A perfectly round hole pierced straight through its torso.
The creature roared once, scraped the sand with its claws, then bounded away into the wasteland as if Sombravida were beneath its notice.
Sombravida's breathing quickened.
"This… this looks familiar…"
His voice trembled.
"A Hollow…?"
The word escaped before he could stop it.
"A Hollow from Bleach?"
Silence followed.
Then realization struck.
"…Did I… transmigrate?"
The concept wasn't foreign to a 21st-century young man. Countless novels and films revolved around it.
But experiencing it himself—
That was something else entirely.
Sombravida forced himself to remain calm.
He examined the environment again.
Endless white sand.
Dead trees bleached like bones.
A sky frozen in eternal twilight.
"This place… Hueco Mundo…"
The name surfaced from memory.
The realm of Hollows.
The opposite pole of Soul Society.
A world formed from desolation, instinct, and endless predation.
"…Why am I here?"
A chilling thought surfaced.
Sombravida raised a trembling hand to his chest.
His fingers sank into empty space.
There was a hole.
A perfectly round Hollow hole pierced through the center of his chest.
Sombravida froze.
"…So I really did become a Hollow."
Unlike humans, Hollows possessed a void where their heart once existed — a physical manifestation of the loss that birthed them.
He exhaled slowly.
"Well… I'm still conscious. That's something."
Panic would only hasten death in Hueco Mundo.
Survival required acceptance.
He forced himself to assess his new body.
Nearby stood a withered white tree. Judging by its proportions, his height remained close to his former 1.78 meters.
He was upright.
Humanoid.
That alone was a blessing.
Most newly formed Hollows devolved into beast-like forms driven purely by hunger.
Looking down, he noticed bone-white material covering parts of his body.
It wasn't clothing.
It was his Hierro precursor — a natural hardened skin formed from condensed spiritual particles.
Around his waist, bone plating formed a skirt-like structure. His upper torso was partially covered in white armor-like plating.
His left arm retained a humanoid shape, though bone plating reinforced his forearm and shoulder.
His right hand, however, had transformed into a clawed weapon: five elongated bone blades extended from his fingers like natural Zanpakutō.
In the center of his chest remained the Hollow hole — the symbol of his lost heart.
Sombravida flexed his fingers slowly.
He could move normally.
That meant his spiritual body was stable.
He exhaled in relief.
"Right… Hollows have masks…"
He reached up.
His fingers touched smooth bone.
Unlike the beast Hollow he saw earlier, his mask covered only the upper half of his face and the back of his skull, resembling a bone helmet. A horn-like ridge extended above his brow, and an inverted triangular bone plate protected the bridge of his nose.
Strands of pale gold hair flowed from the back.
Surprisingly, his vision was unobstructed.
In the Bleach world, a Hollow's mask represents the heart they lost and the instinct that replaced it. It also stabilizes their spiritual structure.
Breaking the mask normally results in purification by a Shinigami.
Sombravida lowered his hand.
"So this is my new form…"
Now came the true test.
Strength meant survival.
He clenched his left fist and struck the dead tree beside him.
CRACK!
The trunk snapped instantly.
Without pause, he swung his right claw.
Five clean cuts split the wood into smooth sections.
Sombravida stared at his claws.
"…Not bad."
Physical strength in Hueco Mundo depended on condensed reishi density and spiritual pressure.
But brute strength meant little without reiatsu control.
"I'll need to test my spiritual pressure… and instincts."
Hollows hunted.
They devoured souls.
Evolution demanded it.
Just as Sombravida prepared to move—
An overwhelming pressure descended.
Invisible weight crushed the air.
His knees nearly buckled.
"…Reiatsu…"
He forced his head up.
Nearly a kilometer away, the sand exploded upward.
A gigantic shark-like Hollow burst from beneath the desert, its mask jagged like serrated stone. It released a roar so powerful the air itself distorted.
The shockwave shattered dead trees across the wasteland.
Even at that distance, Sombravida was thrown backward, tumbling across the sand.
Silence returned.
Minutes passed before he managed to stand.
The creature was gone.
But its lingering pressure still saturated the air.
Sombravida's instincts screamed.
Leave. Now.
That Hollow had declared its territory.
He had survived only because he was insignificant.
Without hesitation, Sombravida sprinted in the opposite direction.
His stamina far exceeded his human limits. Hollows did not tire like living bodies did; their endurance was sustained by spiritual energy.
He ran until the pressure vanished entirely.
Only then did he collapse beside a rock outcropping, breathing hard out of habit rather than necessity.
"…That thing…"
He laughed weakly.
Breaking a dead tree had made him feel powerful.
But that creature—
It existed on an entirely different plane.
"If that was an Adjuchas…"
Then he was nothing.
If it wasn't—
Then Hueco Mundo was even more terrifying than he imagined.
Sombravida rose slowly.
"No… first I need to understand my strength."
In Hueco Mundo, growth came through predation and survival.
Wandering blindly invited death.
Remaining still guaranteed stagnation.
He chose a middle path:
move carefully, sense danger, and hunt only when safe.
Based on his memory of Bleach, Hueco Mundo consisted of vast surface deserts and subterranean regions formed from reishi caverns. Beneath the sands existed the Forest of Menos, home to Gillian and Adjuchas.
Going there now would mean instant death.
However, smaller rocky regions and dead forests often hosted weaker Hollows.
Those would be his hunting grounds.
Time had no meaning here.
The sky never changed.
The air never shifted.
Only exhaustion and rest marked the passage of days.
After what he estimated to be three days of cautious travel, Sombravida climbed a low dune.
Beyond it—
A dead forest stretched into the distance.
White trees twisted like skeletal fingers toward the sky.
Jagged rock formations created natural shelters and shadows — ideal resting zones for Hollows.
Sombravida's eyes sharpened.
This was enough.
He did not intend to enter deep territory.
He only needed the weakest prey at the forest's edge.
And in Hueco Mundo…
Even the weakest prey could kill the unprepared.