Hello and welcome to the prologue of Fate – Rewind! This story takes place after Kiritsugu leaves the Alimango Islands with Natalia, and in a way is used to help set up the events of the Fourth War in our own take on some of the backstories.

This will, however, largely feature OCs, and that the canon characters will not be the primary focus of this story, so if that's not your cup of tea, I'm sorry. We –myself and the artist drawing the pictures – did spend quite some time building up the characters and the setting, so please abstain from flaming. Reviews and criticisms are welcome, of course!

Special thanks to Kyubey1161 for proofreading this chapter and Moczo for general pointers. You guys are awesome!

Disclaimer: I do not own the Fate series nor its characters. What more can I say?

They were the majority, for they were the weak. They were the commonplace, for they were powerless in the face of destiny. They were never heroes, and they were never once of significance to the world.

If they were to cease to exist tomorrow, then today, they would not have 'lived'.

And yet, they truly did exist. They may have been weak, and they may have been commonplace, but they, too, had their own story to tell.

However, theirs was – and still is – a story of failure.

The fields of lush green grass danced, with the occasional blades being lifted off the ground and riding jovially on the wind. It was a gentle, soothing breeze – one that could easily lull anyone to sleep. Anyone except Akatsuki Ishida, that is.

Heaving a sigh so loud it felt more like an audible sentence, the young man refused to budge from where he lay. He was too lazy to move, which was only natural since he was too lazy to even sleep (and yes, he believed that made sense). It was a shame, too, considering how perfect the day was for a long, if not eternal, nap.

He vaguely wondered if the world was being nice or downright terrible to him. On one hand, the lovely weather could be interpreted as a way to comfort him over the recent loss of his precious literary collection. On the other hand, however, it could have been mocking him and his lack of books to read, by providing him the perfect setting to do so.

He sighed. To be fair, he was indeed partially at fault; had he not gotten carried away and made that comment (which just so happened to imply members of someone's family frequently and enthusiastically fornicated with livestock), his bookshelf might have been spared its untimely fiery demise. The feeling of said arsonist's nose breaking under his knuckle was gratifying, though.

For all the time he had spent reading up rubbish over literature to pass off as a magus, Akatsuki – or 'Aka', as his friends called him – had barely any results to show for it. As proof, he had resorted to his fists instead of throwing a fireball into his target's face during their 'squabble'. Unlike most of his peers, he just did not see the appeal of studying magecraft. There was only one thing keeping him here, all the way in freaking London and not back in Japan, and it was sure as heck not his parents. They may have thought his talent was something worth developing, but he frankly could not care less. No; the only reason he was still here was because his friends were here, too.

Having friends was certainly not uncommon, but Aka had come to understand that in the world of magecraft, it was something practically unheard of. Regardless of what they said, mages were, in the end, just selfish douchebags who sought nothing but personal fame and glory. And they had been shoved head-first into a shithole like that.

He sighed. Again. Maybe one of these days he would forget how to exhale and just passively sigh with every intake of breath.

"Y'know, sighing too much'll decrease your luck."

Without turning his head or even moving, Aka flipped the speaker the bird. He knew that voice well enough, and friendly acts of insults and profanities were nothing new.

"Good day to you too," Rei Morikawa said, sitting down next to him. "Why aren't you studying?"

"Do I look like a nerd to you?" Aka asked back.

Rei adjusted his glasses. He tended to do that, right before-

"Shut up," Aka said hastily, stopping him before he could voice that smartass comment.

"I heard some guy set fire to your bookcase," Rei commented. "What you do this time?"

"I made a comment about his parents."

"Okay… what did he do, then?"

"I forget," Aka lied. If he had spilled the beans – and told Rei that the unnamed magus had insulted their whole group, he was not sure if the result would be pretty. In short, he was hesitant about making them commit an act that would forever scar a potential ace magus both mentally and physically.

"Right," Rei said, dragging out the word. "I'm gonna sneak a cockroach into his food later."

"Don't," Aka advised. "I'd feel sorry for the cockroach. Besides, you'd be exposing yourself to germs by touching it."

"Good call," Rei nodded. "I'll just make him eat it directly then."

After a brief pause, they chuckled. Like any other youth, on any other day, at any other place, they laughed. As though nothing was wrong with the world, they laughed.

And, possibly for the last time in their lives, they laughed.

"Oh, right," Rei said, standing back up. "It's almost time to meet. We agreed to have one last lunch before the test, right?"

And just like that, Aka was brutally reminded of his incompetence. He was due for a test at this time in the year, when pretty much no one else was because of a simple fact: his results had sucked too much.

He and his group of friends – 'Avifauna', as they called themselves – were, simply put, the worst. Be it in terms of results – academic or practical-wise – or their motivation to improve, they were without contest the bottom of the barrel. Granted, they were not truly, entirely incompetent (they did produce good results in whatever they were really interested in), but there was only so much they could achieve with only two generations of mages in their family trees.

After many futile attempts to improve their results (with the exception of Shizuku, who actually became decent), the members of Avifauna were given a simple choice: pass a special test, or be expelled.

To be completely honest, Aka would not have minded being expelled. He could have just lived a normal life without the distraction of magecraft screwing up said normality. That being said, there was no way his parents would have accepted that; if anything, they would probably force one of his sisters to take up the mantle. To have them plunge into the world of mages, devoid of humanity or freedom. He could not let them suffer like that. He believed quite firmly that if anyone had to suffer, it might as well be a piece of shit like him.

Bystanders may have called it selflessness. The ignorant may have called it arrogance. But as his friends and siblings knew, it was simply self-loathing.

"Right, right," he said, sitting up and dusting his shirt. "But surely you could've phrased it better; you make it sound like we're all gonna die or something."

Even as he said that, his mind nonetheless entertained that thought. Mages were far from being beyond killing – a huge reason to despise being considered as one. As a magus, there was a very real risk of actually dying, and this was doubly so for inexperienced idiots like him. This might really be his last chance to see them ever again.

Shaking his head frantically to rid those paranoid thoughts, the scrawny teen planted his palms on the ground in an attempt to push himself up. Then, he paused, looking at the outstretched hand in front of him.

Rei, grinning in a good-natured sort of way, proffered his hand, offering his friend some help with getting to his feet. A harmless, kind gesture – one that only friends displayed to each other. In the face of such a friendly offer, Aka narrowed his eyes.

"If I touch that hand," he said apprehensively. "Am I going to suddenly sprout chicken pox or some sort of rash or something?"

"I dunno," Rei replied innocently, that big smile still plastered on his face.

For all the stuff he did and said, Aka was a loyal person. When it came to matters involving his friends and family, he had no trouble openly declaring their importance to him. He also had no qualms about defending their name, or just plain punching someone for insulting them. It went without saying, then, that he trusted them greatly. But Rei's pranks were a different matter; he still had not forgotten the 'brown waterfall' incident.

"Well, thanks for the offer," he said, getting up by himself. "But no thanks."

"Aww," Rei whined, withdrawing his hand. "Such a shame."

I should have taken that hand.

He could not have possibly known what was to come, and what the future held. He could not have understood the weight of his options, and how real and dire the consequences were. Yet, there was a strange tingling sensation welling up inside him, as though chastising him for not reaching for that warmth. But, being ignorant to that fate, he ignored it.

And so, he did not reach for that hand. In the end, he never did take that hand ever again.

"What's wrong?" Rei asked, when Aka refused to follow him.

Wordlessly, Aka put a hand over his chest. Without understanding why, he tightened his grip on the fabric of his shirt.

There was a stinging pain lurking in his chest, tugging at his heart in dull throbs. It was not a significant level of pain, and it disappeared just as swiftly as it had come, leaving nothing but the pressure of his hand over his ribcage.

"No, it's nothing," he managed to say. At that moment, he truly believed those simple words. "Let's go."

Ignoring the growing sense of unease, Akatsuki Ishida walked forward.

The library was a wonderful place. Besides its countless shelves of intriguing books, it was also somewhere one could be in peace. For Shizuku Otonashi, who had to lead a group of rambunctious man-shaped torpedoes, it was a place of reprieve.

Closing the book he had been reading, he took a few minutes to organize his thoughts. Unlike the boys he led, Shizuku had rather decent results as a practitioner of magecraft, specifically Necromancy. There was no reason for him to willingly enter this 'test' that they had to do, just to follow through with his idea of 'friendship' – a concept that should not even exist in the world of mages. And if he had to be honest, none of them had to do this; they were not stupid, and they were not talentless. They were just not motivated.

Maybe their tests will do them some good, he thought. But what about mine?

In a few hours' time, they would each be given their own individual tests to complete. The contents of said tests were and would remain a secret, so Shizuku had no idea what awaited the other seven. But whatever it was, he doubted they would get a more dangerous task that Shizuku himself had. In fact, he suspected that was why he had been the only one to be informed of his task beforehand.

He stared at the back of the book he had closed. The Holy Grail War. A conflict between mages for the ultimate price of… one wish. The best of the best were chosen to compete amongst the greatest heroes mankind has known or ever will know, all just to make one wish. Sure, it could be any wish, but the amount of stupid in that entire concept was mind-boggling. What wish could possibly be so great to justify this sort of battle/ritual?

That being said, his opponents would definitely not be pushovers. That much was certain. If he was careless by even one bit, he could die. Kind of a harsh price to pay for friendship, but there was no backing out at this point.

"Hey, Shizuku."

He considered his current situation. From what he had researched, the Holy Grail War took place every sixty years, in a place in Japan called Fuyuki (he knew that place well enough; he had been born there after all). This time, however, the War was taking place here in London, and the three Families – Einzbern, Makiri and Tohsaka – were not taking part.

"Hey, Shizuku."

Something was amiss about this War. Perhaps the Clock Tower was sending him into this not to win, but to investigate the cause. He had been told to uphold a great deal of secrecy, after all (but then again, that was to be expected from anything mages did).

"Don't ignore me."

Unable to ignore that voice anymore, Shizuku looked up and at… her. He had no idea what her name was – he had never been good with names – but he knew who she was: she was the bitch who had taken a liking to him after he had upped his performance in class. Appropriately, Ran had named her 'slut'.

"Hey, Shizu-"

"Heey, boss!"

Right on cue, the bubbly and carefree voice of Ranichi 'Ran' Ooyama rang throughout the library. So much for peace and quiet.

"Hey, I was talking to him!" Slut said crossly, turning to the plump magus.

"You should be quiet in the library, Ran," Shizuku reminded. He was not a social sort by nature unlike Ran, but he tended to say and do things after thinking it through every time. Ran just sort of… ran with it. Not to mention he had no idea how to read the mood.

"It's almost time," Rain said, completely ignoring Slut as he addressed his leader.

"Oh, right," Shizuku stood up, taking the book with him.

"Can't you grow some class, fatass?" Slut said irritably. "Can't you tell that a fine woman such as myself is trying to talk to Shizuku? You're in the way!"

"You're just saying that because you have small tits."

Shizuku froze. Actually, scratch that; the entire library froze. Maybe the world had stopped rotating. It was hard to tell over the tense silence left by Ran's random comment.

Even Ran's eyes were wide as his words began to sink in. He had no idea where that comment had come from, or how it made sense, but he had said it. He had, without thinking, just blurted it out.

A dry, sharp slap rang through the air, shattering the silence that had once been Shizuku's haven.

Tetsu Hamada rapped his knuckles on the fine wood. And again. When there was no response, he did the most logical thing to do: he turned the door into one giant slab of ice and kicked it in.

Stepping through the shattered remains of the door, Tetsu could not help but sigh. Maybe Aka was rubbing off on him, but there was no other reaction he could have given.

Huddled around the small television with snacks in their hands were Masahiro Takahashi and Ushimaru Komori, engrossed in their incredibly important task of watching anime. It was an odd sight, seeing the tall, lean Masahiro (or 'Hiro') next to the shorter, pudgier 'Maru'.

"Yo, otakus," Tetsu raised his voice a little. "You're not giving the Europeans a good impression of Japanese people."

"Who cares?" Hiro asked without turning or interest. His tone was mellow, lighthearted – like how it always was regardless of the topic at hand. "This episode is more important."

"Besides," Maru added, practically tearing his eyes away from the screen as he turned to look at Tetsu. "How did you even get in- WHAT THE FU-"

"Hey, don't blame me," Tetsu said quickly. "You guys didn't answer when I knocked, so-"

"-so you acted in a manner befitting of a Japanese," a voice from outside the room said. "Interesting choice, considering what you were admonishing them for."

"Hey, I was demonstrating aptitude in applying magecraft," Tetsu countered.

"And they were appreciating an important part of our delightful culture," the boy outside the room replied. Kenichi 'Ken' Ootei was not actually trying to defend the two couch potatoes in the room; he merely wanted to be sarcastic. "Come on; we're going to be late again."

"You make it sound like it's a bad thing," Hiro said, standing up and stretching.

"It's unique, to say the least," Tetsu nodded sagely. "I've never seen anyone so consistently late for just about anything before. Except Ran, maybe."

"You'd think magic- I mean, magecraft would improve his sense of direction," Maru chuckled, taking off his shirt as he picked up another one nearby. "But seriously, Tetsu; you've gotta do something about the door."

"Eh, glue will do," Tetsu replied offhandedly. "We'll get Aka to Reinforce it later. It's his forte, after all."

"Yes, his forte," Ken rolled his eyes. "Because he clearly is even capable of other kinds of magecraft."

"That's mean," Hiro interjected, but he was grinning. "He's good with the Mystic Voice of Pissing People Off, too. And the Magus Punch."

"Hiro, if you grin any wider your eyes are gonna disappear," Maru pointed out, throwing him a spare sock.

"Nah; they're always this thin," Hiro dismissed the concern easily, catching the sock and throwing it aside before putting on a pair of sandals instead.

"Alright already," Tetsu spoke up. "Let's go, ladies; the cows are coming home."

"Yay, dinner!" Maru cheered. "Wait; what cows?"

"It's an ex- never mind," Tetsu sighed. It was not even lunchtime yet, and he was already nursing a migraine. The day was going to suck.

"Ran, what happened to your face?"

"I walked into a pole."

"But it looks like a handpr-"

"I walked into a pole."

Walking over to the table with a bowl of noodles on his tray, Aka paused to stare at the glowing red handprint on Ran's left cheek. Having missed out on the exchange between Ran and Maru, he opened his mouth.

"Ran, what-" he began.

"I walked into a pole," Ran repeated, tears of regret flowing down his face.

"But it looks like a handpr-"

"Whoa, Ran," Hiro said, walking over with a milkshake in his hand. "What happened to your face?"

Ranichi Ooyama, whose heart was made of glass, broke into tears.

"Shizuku?" Rei asked, and everyone turned to their leader for an explanation.

"Er… Let's just say…" he said hesitantly. "Ran's not getting a girlfriend anytime soon."

Ranichi Ooyama, whose name had become widespread like a forest fire, cried louder.

"Good job," Ken told him.

"Idiot," Tetsu sighed.

"Dumbass," Rei guffawed.

"Thank you," Maru said. "What? It means more chances for me."

Ranichi Ooyama, whose image was now in shambles, dissolved in a pool of his own tears.

"Anyway, moving on," Aka prompted. "Shizuku, are you really going for this? We're not even going to be doing the same thing, you know. We'll probably get separated and-"

"I know," Shizuku replied coolly. "And I don't care. I'm going to clear mine just fine, so that's no reason for you guys to fail, got it?"

Receiving seven different replies affirming his statement, Shizuku nodded. He knew that everyone would be assigned a different task; it was the first thing they assured him when he voluntarily signed up for it. Which was common sense, really; if they were all competing with him in the Holy Grail War, then only one amongst them would be able to stay while the rest got expelled. There was no way the Clock Tower would do something like that.

"He just wants to be with us in spirit," Hiro pointed out. "His eighth-grader syndrome is strong, after all."

"I will bury you," Shizuku threatened. "Then I'll bring you back and kill you again."

Hiro stuck his tongue out at him.

"You're worrying about the wrong person, Aka," Rei said. "He's the best among us; if anyone should be worried about failing, it'd be us."

"I guess," Aka sighed. "Thank you for reminding me when I was trying to be in denial."

"You're welcome," Rei replied cheerfully.

"The food sucks," Ran said out of nowhere, poking at his vegetable sandwich with a finger. At least he was not crying anymore. "The taste is… flagitious."

"I see your vocabulary's improved," Ken commented.

"Yeah; the taste was so bad I had to expand my vocabulary just to describe it."

"Alright, ladies," Shizuku spoke up, and the commotion instantly died down. "I don't know what we're each going to do, but it doesn't matter. We're gonna go in, ace this crap, and get back to the regular curriculum. No one gets expelled, and no one gets hurt. Understood?"

"Hooah."

"Jolly good."

"Yeah, whatever."

"Okay."

"Uh-huh."

"Understood."

"Roger that."

Shizuku pinched the bridge of his nose. He was positive that they gave him varying replies just to annoy him. They were perfectly capable of answering him in a synchronized manner, except for moments like this when he was being serious.

"Okay, let's go," he declared.

"Yes mom," the other seven replied.

Shizuku Otonashi was an eloquent, dignified man, so he settled for replying with a single rude hand gesture.

The two men walked down the empty corridor, hardly uttering a word. At a glance, they may have been strangers, unaware of who the other person was. They were merely two men walking towards their own destinations, maybe to give a lecture of some sort.

"I still find it difficult to believe," the taller and younger of the two said. He had a dignified air of confidence around him, as expected of the eighth head of the Archibald.

"I do not blame you," the other man replied with a chuckle. It was not every day that one had information to which even the great head of the Archibald was not privy. "But it is indeed true."

"By what means did you manage it?" Archibald asked. "I imagine creating a replica of the Holy Grail cannot be a trivial task."

"Indeed," the man agreed. "And while it pains me to say this, it is but a failed replica. It has nowhere near the power of the original, and it can hardly do more than showing the winner an illusion of having their dream fulfilled, but it has its uses."

"But why would the Mage's Association create such a thing?" Archibald asked.

"It has been the subject of much debate as to what the purpose of the Holy Grail of Fuyuki is," the man replied. "It was believed that should we be able to duplicate it, we would be able to understand what the Einzbern, Makiri and Tohsaka families had in mind for its creation."

"You believe them to have a hidden objective we are unaware of?"

"Perhaps," he nodded slowly. "Alas, the replica is severely flawed, but we have found a use for it: when this replica is activated, it emulates the Holy Grail of Fuyuki and begins a Grail War of its own. Since it runs on its own system, it is not bound by the whims of the original, which gives us a bit of… leeway. Specifically, with the choosing of the Masters."

"And what can be achieved via such a farce?"

Such harsh words, and yet an expected response.

"Mana," he replied simply. "Even though it is a replica, the 'False Grail' is able to draw miniscule amounts of energy from the Holy Grail – possible because of its origin as a copy of the sacred relic allowing it a loose link to the original. Upon the completion of the War, the False Grail is able to 'grant' the wish of the holder, while expelling large amounts of mana which we can harvest. We just need seven mages of above average 'capacity' to pull it off, so it presents little risk."

"You would constantly expend the students at the Clock Tower?" Archibald asked. It was a great waste of resources, no matter how he looked at it.

"We would be forced to," the man admitted, a queer glint in his aged eyes as he pulled out photograph from his pocket. "If not for the timely death of this man."

Expressionlessly, the head of the Archibald accept the photograph, which captured a man with messy charcoal hair, a rather sunken face and a pair of used spectacles. Naturally, he did not know the identity of this man, so he simply waited for an explanation.

"His name is Norikata Emiya," the old man informed him. "He is one with a Sealing Designation despite his shallow family history, and a man who studied means to manipulate innate time."

Even though it was brief, Archibald still paused upon hearing that.

"His studies have largely been destroyed," the man went on, clearly pleased with the effect his words had. "But we have confiscated all the important parts of his Magic Crest, and we believe that with all the resources at our disposal, we can make this the last False Grail Conflict we need to conduct.

"We believe that if we manipulate the innate time of the False Grail upon the conflict's conclusion," he went on. "We can keep it in a looped state where it constantly draws from the Holy Grail to continuously produce mana for us. It remains a hypothesis, but is nonetheless worth exploring."

"I see," Archibald replied. Something this trivial hardly required his attention, even if the prospect of attaining such a large amount of mana was indeed tempting. "And who might the participants be?"

"Simple, disposable novices," the man snarled, not bothering to hide his disgust. "They possess above average magical power, but that's it. They would do nicely."

Nothing more was said, and the two men fell silent once more. There was nothing more to discuss, for the eight young mages were clearly not a concern for either of them.

After all, their lives held no value beyond this farce of a War.

Akatsuki Ishida was fighting with every ounce of his being not to fall asleep. He had just spent a good thirty minutes listening to the old lecturer explain the rules of his test – something called the Holy Grail War. And since the two of them were the only ones in the room, giving in to drowsiness was not an option. He vaguely wondered if there was some more interesting way to pick up the rules, like via a visual novel or an anime or something. But of course mages needed to make the explanations drawn out and boring.

"Do you have any questions?" the lecturer asked.

Aka would have dearly loved to ask, 'can you just expel me now instead', but decided against it; Shizuku would be PISSED if he had. Instead, he shook his head.

"Very well, the elderly man sighed. He probably knew Aka did not care about this whole thing, and frankly, neither did he. Producing a roll of parchment from inside his robes, he placed it down on the table in front of him. "Sign this. It is a binding contract that prevents you from harming or intending to harm those whose prana dwell in this parchment. We're having your friends sign this as well after you."

"Er… what is this for?" Aka asked apprehensively.

"It is a sign of respect for your display of… friendship," the old lecturer outright lied. "As you may well know, the world of magi is hardly safe. This will prevent you from harming those you deem dear, and is strong enough to overpower any sort of hypnotism that should make you attempt such an act. Also, should you fail the test and get expelled, but your friends succeed and stay, it would protect them from any forms of ill-will you may choose to display. The contract also prevents you from disclosing the contents of your test to anyone, to maintain the level of secrecy required of you."

It was a flimsy excuse, and a downright shady one to boot. Aka, like most if not all of the members of Avifauna, would have easily picked up on what was wrong, if not for the giddy feeling in his head. The unnatural, spinning sensation seemed to have appeared out of nowhere and invaded his thoughts.

"You will sign it, won't you?"

Of course he would. Why would he not sign it? What else would he do?

"Of course," he said.

Unsuspecting and unaware, the eight young mages signed their own parchments, leaving their names laced with prana across the scrolls. Naturally, they never did find out that their scrolls only ever contained just one name: their own.

"What are you doing?"

"Stuff," Aka replied, continuing to draw weird shapes and symbols around the summoning circle. Or at least, that was what it looked like. "If I'm gonna get a random Servant, I might as well choose the Class. And what better way to buff up this Class than with a bunch of Nordic runes, right?"

The elderly lecturer resisted the urge to roll his eyes. It was already bad enough that a weak, scrawny kid like him was thinking of summoning a Berserker, but to display such a shallow amount of knowledge was downright shameful.

Sure, Norse berserkers were warriors who came to define the very word 'Berserker', in a similar way to how Hassan-i-Sabbah came to define the word 'Assassin'. However, there were few, if any, noteworthy mentions who stood out from the rest. There was one particularly famous one, and it was impossible to Him. Perhaps the child believed that the runes would power up the Servant somehow, or he was straight up insane and really intended to summon that particular Servant. Such naivety.

"Ye first, O Silver, O Iron," Aka chanted, smiling a little. He actually enjoyed speaking like someone from the olden times. "Let stone and the Archduke of Contracts be the foundation."

And then he forgot the chant. Forgetting to sound old, he desperately started to pull out the words from the deepest parts of his memory, attempting to complete the summoning without errors.

"Let rise a wall against the wind that shall fall," he went on, his outstretched hand starting to feel a little sore. "Let the four cardinal gates close."

"Let the three-forked road from the crown reaching unto the Kingdom rotate," Shizuku chanted. "Fill. Fill. Fill. Fill. Fill. Five perfections for each repetition. And now, let the filled sigils be annihilated in my stead."

To be honest, this whole ritual – complete with the glowing summoning circle in front of him, made him feel like a kid pretending to be a wizard. How he had left those days behind.

I wonder what would happen if I shouted 'Transform!' after the incantation, he thought.

All at once, across seven separate places, the unified voices of seven novice mages rang out:

Let it be declared now;

Your flesh shall serve under me, and my fate shall be with your sword.

If you would submit to the beckoning of the Holy Grail,

If you would obey this will, this truth,

Then you shall respond.

I make my oath here.

I am that person who is to become the virtue of all Heaven.

I am that person who is covered with the evil of all Hades.

The elderly lecturer was becoming increasingly worried. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

The air itself was shaking, and the summoning circle in front of Aka was no longer merely glowing; it was eruption with a blinding light. There was no way a Servant summoned by the False Grail could be causing this, and yet…

Aka seemed to have noticed something as well. While it was satisfying to see the summoning circle light up, and even more so when the runes he added started shining as well, he shuddered. At that moment, he felt something else in the air – something otherworldly, and eerie.

Something that came to be because of him.

"Yet you shall serve with your eyes clouded by chaos," he pushed forward, ignoring the foreboding sensation. "For you would be one caged in madness.

"I am he who commands those chains!"

From the Seventh Heaven, attended to by three great words of power,

Come forth from the ring of restraint, protector of the holy balance!

Within the depths of the False Grail, something stirred. Answering to the calls of its cheap fake, the Holy Grail had planted a seed of destruction waiting to bloom. Because of a simple mistake by one of the Masters, because of the mistake made by the Einzberns in the Third War, and an absurd amount of 'luck' that could only be described as 'misfortune', destiny shifted its course.

Because of that those tiniest of things, the world irrevocably changed.

Unaware that they had bared their fangs at their dearest friends, the seven Masters entered the 'Holy Grail War'.

Think of this as an extended summary, if you will. This sets the stage, and welcome to Fate – Rewind! Hope you stick around until the end of the story! Again, reviews are more than welcome, and thank you for reading!