Note: Okay, first things first. I'm sorry I kind of dropped off the face of the Earth without any warning. I didn't handle that very well, but it wasn't really a planned hiatus, and there's not a good way to get a message out to all my readers without just... publishing a new chapter. I could offer up a bunch of excuses, but the truth is that I kind of got to a point where the kind of responsibility I was putting myself under... probably wasn't very healthy. I was stressed about not writing, which made it even harder to write, which made me even more stressed, and it wasn't great.

I'm not dead. The fic's not dead. I'm not a hundred percent sure when I'm posting the next chapter, or what my schedule is going to be, but I do have almost fifteen thousand words written that I haven't published yet. They're just not really /complete/ chapters, so much as a bunch of scenes in various states of finished. On top of that, I've still been having ideas and making notes in my big Planning Document. Don't worry, there's a lot of really cool shit coming.

I just really wanted to put this chapter out there so I could touch base, let everyone know that I'm still here, and that this isn't over. I hope some of you will bear with me while I tinker around and get myself up and running again. If you have any questions or anything, you can find me on tumblr as ashendreamer, on twitter at theashendreamer.

The girl sits on his shoulder, and her weight is reassuring. He doesn't feel the cold, but he does see her breath misting in the air, and remembers that that means she is probably cold. There isn't anything he can do about that but to get her home, where the lights are soft and fires burn in lonely hearths. The girl sings softly, the words indistinct, her tone melancholy.

He had a name once.

He has a different name now.

He likes this one better, because the girl is the one who says it.

The song she sings in an old one, one he has heard a hundred times or more since his summoning. A part of him feels the pull of the music, as bone-deep and instinctual as love and hate, but the music is not his, and so he will not take it from her. Still, he knows the melody as well as any song he ever sang in life, and her voice is pretty and clear as crystal glass.

In the middle of the melody, the girl trails off, and for a moment all he hears is the low whistle of the wind and the crunch of his heavy footsteps in the forest detritus and piling snow. A quizzical grunt.

The girl sighs heavily. A quiet exhalation of breath. "Leaving was the right thing," she says firmly.

He grunts again. He has no real opinion on the matter, beyond a general distrust of anyone other than the two of them, but the purple girl had been true to her word. She had not harmed his Master.

"Yes, Berserker," she said patiently, as though he had protested. "Even the way I did. She'll be fine."

The girl often does this. Uses him as a vessel to work through problems with. He doesn't mind. In his clearest moments, he knows that this helps her more than any genuine attempt to converse would. This was one of those moments.

"She needed to sleep anyway," she continues, though a note of doubt creeps into her voice. "I just gave her a little push. I did her a favor, really. She should thank me when she wakes up."

He steps carefully over a fallen tree, one massive hand lifted to steady her. She wraps her arms around his massive palm, and a feeling like warmth touches his chest. A part of him wonders whether he is a better father this time. Mostly, he doesn't remember that that means.

(He remembers what he is in the heat of battle. The blood-rage feels too familiar to allow him to forget.)

Gingerly, he releases her, and her hands fall away from him. He doesn't need to look to see that she has crossed her arms over her chest. He knows her well. He knows just enough to know how little he knows; this is not his place. This is not his time. This is barely even his body.

Even his memories from this existence — since the summoning, a voice he barely understands whispers — are foggy. Standing in an unfamiliar forest, snow pounding so hard it was almost hail, roaring his defiance as the blood of starving beasts splatters his blade, a piercing scream from behind. The first time the girl held his hand, looking strangely defiant and embarrassed at the same time. His brief skirmish with the golden girl on the long stairs, the look of fear on her face overpowering all other emotion, until his girl's voice called him back, though he would have easily won.

"Besides," she mumbles, "she should also thank me for not killing her when I had the chance. I could have. I could have called you any time, and splat." She smacks one tiny fist into the palm of her open hand. This is the tone of voice she uses when she is lying to herself. He wonders if she knows that he can read her so well, even as the actual words she says drift past like flakes of snow in the wind.

He'd like to believe that she does.

He grunts. There isn't a meaning to it, beyond leaving her an opening to continue her conversation with herself. He could have growled to remind her that she'd been laying in the snow, him chained back by a Command Spell, but he did not.

"No!" She denies his imagined reply too vehemently to be truthful. "I don't feel bad at all. The last thing she'll remember is hugging me while I pretended to cry to make a distraction, and she'll wake up fine and comfy in that bed! And I didn't panic! Shut up!"

Grunt.

"Fine. Be that way." She huffs.

He doesn't smile, but only because his face doesn't bend that way.

The trek continues. One foot in front of the other. The girl shivers on his shoulder, and he wishes he had a blanket for her. He doesn't exactly think the word blanket, but he remembers the way they feel, the warmth they provide.

A Berserker he may be, but moments like these are the most peaceful he has ever felt.

"Berserker?" All the false bravado is gone from her voice, all the blustery self-confidence that is only sometimes true. Now, she truly sounds like a little girl. Uncertain. Nervous. "The— Sakura. What did you think of her?"

Deceptively resilient. Courageous. He is aware of how terrifying he can be, and yet, the purple girl had not bent an inch. There is something about that kind of bravery that he can respect. Should his Master will it, he will kill her, of course, but he is nothing if not loyal. These feelings are too complex for him to communicate, though, so he settles for making a noise that is not entirely threatening. Something between a question and a comment with no real meaning other than what the girl would want to take from it.

The girl seems to take this as intended. "Yeah…" she mumbles thoughtfully. He steps over another fallen log, and this time her small hands tangle in his hair to keep her balance. "Did she seem…" She fumbles for the words, lost. "Did she seem weird to you at all?"

Everything is strange. Her? Not any more or less than anything else in this foreign world he has found himself in. He tilts his head.

The girl is quiet again. They are drawing near her home, and he is growing anxious to return her. She is a small and fragile thing that must be carefully protected, and she is not a creature of the ice and snow. Not really. When she speaks again, her voice is distant. "When I was near her, I could tell something was different, but I couldn't tell… I couldn't figure out why." She hasn't released his hair. That's okay. It's not as though she can hurt him that way, and she takes comfort in it. "But… there, at the end…" He turns his head just enough to see her from the corner of his eye. Her little brow is furrowed, her lips twisted into a pale frown. "She felt…" Her eyes narrow, but she doesn't look angry. She looks lost. "Familiar. Do you know what I mean?"

He does not reply. He doesn't.

She studies him, as though the heavy crags of his face might reveal the answers to all of her questions. She will find no answers there. "When she was holding me, I felt…" She wraps her arms around herself again, but this time there is nothing defiant about the gesture. "...Safe. I haven't felt safe like that in so long, Berserker. I don't like it."

He grunts quizzically.

"Because it's a lie," she says softly. "Safety is a lie. Other people hurt you. They betray you. They leave." She smiles. "That's why I love you, Berserker. You're never going to leave."

He will never leave her. He is hers, and he will fight for her as long as there is breath in his body. He is glad that she knows this. She has so little. He can be solid for her.

Her face lights up in a brilliant smile, and for a moment, for the briefest, barest moment, he feels pride.

Another day, another lost cause.

Another day, another catastrophe.

Another day, another scar to add to the collection.

Archer didn't know why he'd allowed himself to expect anything different.

After all, in life, he'd declared himself a hero of justice, dedicated himself to an impossible goal, and died having made the world a measurably worse place for his having ever existed. He lived and breathed being unable to save those he loved, let alone those he didn't, so at this point, Fucking Up was pretty much his oldest friend.

If only that stopped it from hurting. Broken glass in his eye. Acid in his throat. Burning shame in his chest. Next to those, the actual injuries he'd sustained were almost soothing.

They were in a part of the city he didn't recognize. Fuyuki wasn't an enormous place, but any city was too big for any one person to really know. Not the most run down part he'd seen. Not the fanciest. Rin had excused herself at a little convenience store, mumbling something about needing to use the bathroom, but Archer had seen the haunted look in her eye. Had heard the slightest hint of a quaver in her voice. She was going to cry where no one could see her.

Archer was still in his spirit form. Shirou sat on a bench outside, occasionally stopping to brush snow off of the seat next to him, as though he expected someone would actually come sit next to him. People passed by, oblivious. The chatter of the city.

That the people were so unaware would have shocked him, a long time ago, but he'd been through enough to understand a fundamental truth about humanity: they just didn't care. If anyone had figured out how many people were missing after the ritual last night, it wasn't news. It was just the poor, after all. When people who had nothing left lost everything, there wasn't a whole lot of empathy left to go around. There was some chatter about the church having exploded, but the only gossip he ever caught took it as gospel that the problem had been a gas leak. Were the Church or the Clocktower suppressing information about the Holy Grail War, or were they truly just so apathetic?

Archer stared down at Shirou. At himself. The person he hadn't been in so long that he'd started to forget his own name. Dust still smeared his face and his clothes, but he'd at least wiped the blood from his nose and his cheek. The cut on his cheek was dark and scabbed, the skin around it pale. His hair was matted. His clothes were torn. He looked like someone who had been near the church when it had gone off, and yet, no one asked him if he needed help. No one offered a hand or a comforting smile. They all just walked on by. Shirou looked distant; not concussed, exactly, but like he was having trouble keeping his thoughts on the present. For once, Archer couldn't blame him.

Kill him now. Kill him and break the loop. Break the cycle. Kill him and find your peace.

Shirou's eyes flickered from face to face, as though each passerby were a potential threat. His face was neutral, but Archer knew himself well enough to see the panicked edge in the way his eyes moved, in how carefully set his jaw was, in his hands clenched in his lap. This was a boy trying with everything he had to harden himself against the fear and the doubt and the pain.

Archer knew all too well that doing that just made you brittle.

If Archer had had arms in this spirit form, he would have crossed them over his chest, and if he'd had breath, he'd have heaved a heavy sigh. "Hey. Asshole."

Shirou blinked, his eyes focusing. Good. The little shit wasn't completely lost in his quiet little freakout, then. His brow furrowed, and a strange feeling not unlike deja vu washed over Archer. Not for the first time. It was a strange kind of doubling; a sense of being in two places at once. He wondered if that feeling hit the younger Shirou the same way. Probably not. More than likely, he didn't have the capacity.

Archer didn't know for himself how he'd managed to survive to adulthood, let alone long enough for someone else to come along and put him out of his misery. Completely idiotically entrenched in his own obliviousness. But he had been there at one point. And now, the damn kid was trying his best not to melt down.

He was doing a terrible job of hiding it.

"What is it?" The kid murmured quietly. Irritation buzzed in the words. The first seeds of an all-too-familiar defense mechanism.

"Take a deep breath. Loosen your muscles," Archer sighed. "You keep sitting that tense, you're going to pull something."

The kid frowned, like Archer had just insulted him. Maybe he was looking for the barb couched in the friendly advice. There wasn't one, but that did seem like something Archer would do. Still, after a moment, his shoulders sagged a little, some of the nervous rigidity leaving his body. "Thanks," he said.

Finally, some damn respect. "You're no good to us dead," Archer said.

Shirou frowned. He was confused. Again. Archer wanted to slap the expression straight off his stupid face. "I don't think that being tense while I'm sitting on a bench is going to—"

Archer materialized.

He wasn't worried about being seen. People could justify all kinds of impossible things if they wanted to. A guy appearing out of thin air? They probably just hadn't noticed him there — or maybe he'd just come out of the doorway while they hadn't been paying attention. By the time they reached wherever they were going, they'd have forgotten all about him.

People saw what they wanted to see.

"Listen to me," Archer said, crossing his arms and taking the seat on the bench that Shirou had probably been saving for Rin.

Shirou frowned harder. "If you're just going to insult me again—"

"Mouth closed," Archer said, surprising himself with how calm he sounded, considering how irritated he felt. "You can't listen and talk at the same time."

Shirou crossed his own arms in an upsetting mirror of Archer's. "Fine."

"Who are you?"

He blinked. "Who—? Archer, are you feeling okay?"

The stupid kid's voice had taken on such a note of sympathy that it made Archer cringe.

Archer forced the grimace off of his face. "Who is Shirou Emiya?"

There was a long moment of silence. Archer very deliberately did not look at the boy. Instead, he looked around at the sight before him. People milled around. People getting late lunch. People stumbling by, trying not to look like fools as they tripped on the same shitty spot in the concrete. People just being… people.

It wasn't something Archer got to see often. Not even before he'd died.

"I'm…" Shirou's voice sounded strange. "I don't know how to answer that."

The rope around his neck was scratchy. That was what he remembered most about his death. Not the circumstances, not the pain or the fear, not the foolish pride that goeth before the short fall and the sudden stop. He remembered wasting one of his last thoughts on the most meaningless of details. He could think of nothing more appropriate.

"Of course you don't," Archer said simply. A sparrow hopped along and pecked at a broken chip. "That's why you're going to lose everything."

Shirou stiffened beside him. No regard for the advice a moment ago. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means," Archer said levelly, "that you are a fool, Shirou Emiya. You have always been a fool. You will always be a fool. What do you care about? In your heart of hearts, what do you want more than anything else in the world?"

Silence, but for the quiet clamor of a city in motion.

"I want to be a hero," Shirou responded quietly. "You've heard me say it."

"A hero, huh?" Archer laughed. "A hero. Do you think you've been acting very heroic lately?"

Shirou didn't reply. He was smart enough to know when he was being baited. It was shocking.

"Because, see," Archer continued. "You just tried to assassinate someone. Sent your dogs in to kill a man without letting him know you were coming. Does that sound like something a hero would do?"

Silence.

"Does a hero summon an Assassin, Shirou Emiya?" There was no real reason to go after him for this, but the boy needed to stand up for himself in a real way—in a way that mattered. Archer needed to see that this kid was worth saving. That his indecision and his lack of self awareness weren't going to get Archer (or worse, Rin) killed. If he was going to have a crisis of identity, it was better to get it over with now, when everything was quiet. For the sake of the world.

That's what he told himself.

"I didn't choose him," Shirou finally said. "I didn't choose anyone. I didn't want any of this."

He believes it, doesn't he? "This is exactly what you wanted," Archer said. "You wanted to be a hero. A hero of justice isn't a hero of anything without an enemy. Because let's face it. You weren't training to open a soup kitchen. You were training for war. All that time in that goddamn shed was for something, and this is that something. Now, you've got your chance, and you're wasting it."

"You don't know me." Archer could almost hear Shirou's muscles creak as the boy clenched his fists. "You don't know anything about me."

Archer nodded and considered his next words carefully. He didn't want to give the kid the keys to the kingdom about his identity, so being clever was the only thing he could count on.

"I know who you summoned," Archer said finally. "There can't be a summoning without resonance. The soul of the Master and the soul of the Servant must harmonize. If you weren't at all like him, he wouldn't be here."

"Is that a bad thing?" The kid spoke without thinking. "Assassin… he doesn't seem like a bad guy. He's a little… intense, yeah, but…" He trailed off. Archer could tell how weak his own protestations sounded, even to himself.

"Do you know who he is?" Archer said. "And I don't mean in an existential way. Hassan-i-Sabbah. Do you know who he is?"

Shirou was quiet again. A shadow passed over his face. "No," he said, but that wasn't a complete answer. He'd been having the dreams. Every Servant had dreams about their Master's life, and every Master had dreams about their Servant's. They were often cryptic, and rarely pleasant.

People with happy, idyllic lives didn't usually end up as Heroic Spirits.

"Well," Archer said. "I know a thing or two. Do you know where the word 'assassin' actually comes from?"

"No," Shirou said slowly. He didn't understand the apparent change in subject. "I don't."

"It comes from him. No one knows who he was, really, but he founded an order of killers around a thousand years ago. The Hashshashin. Assassins. See?"

The kid didn't respond.

"A cult leader might be closer to what he was than anything. Holed up with his followers on a mountain until they all got themselves killed by some army or other. Think he was dead by that point, though." He frowned. "Actually, dead might be a relative term, all things considered. I've talked to the guy, and it seems like he's been hanging around killing people for a lot longer than he should have been, historically speaking." Getting sidetracked in minutiae. Again. "Maybe he's got ideals, and maybe he thinks he's doing good, but he's still a murderer. You know what happens when you kill enough people for the sake of others? You know what happens when you use death to try to make a world where no one has to cry?"

Something changed in Shirou's expression, and before Archer had the chance to wonder if he had said too much, the balance of power had already shifted. "Who are you, Archer?" he asked, his voice quiet.

Shit. "You think you're being clever, turning that question back on me? I know who I am. That's not the issue." Anger rose up in him. Self-loathing. Shame. He forced them down.

"You know an awful lot about all this," Shirou pressed. "You seem like you know a whole lot about me. What I'm thinking. Who I am. Who are you?"

"You know who I am?" Archer hissed, the burning embers flaring into flames in his chest. "I'm what happens. I'm what happens when you do all those things. You know why I hate you, Shirou Emiya? Do you know what I see when I look at you?" He turned to look at his younger self, and found himself face-to-face with a look of steady determination. It did not quench the anger. "I see someone walking toward the same goddamn cliff that I walked off of. I see someone about to make the same stupid mistakes that I made. You're going to destroy yourself. Great. Who gives a shit? No, you're going to drag every single person you love into the mud with you. Hero of justice. Your ideals will tear you to pieces, and there won't be enough left of you for the vultures. Because that's what happens. That's what happens when you're arrogant enough to think that a hero is something that anyone can be. That anyone should be."

The rage now boiling in his eyes had struck terror into brutal monsters and the innocents he was trying to save alike, and still, Shirou Emiya met his gaze without flinching. "Sounds to me like you're angry because you gave up."

His fingers ached for his blade. Again. Again. Now was his chance. Now was the moment. With his blood singing in his ears, he prepared to project in one hand as he grabbed a fistful of the front of Shirou's shirt with the other—

MONSTER

TRAITOR

BUTCHER

pejoratives screamed from the throngs of

victimsperpetratorspeople

he did everything he could to save

BUTCHER

BUTCHER

BUTCHER

the long walk

the last walk

betrayed but content

he goes to his last reward

a hero forever and ever

SEE, THIS IS HIS END

SEE, THIS IS

"God damn it, Archer!" Her voice rang out like a bell as her open palm took him full in the face. In an instant, he was on his feet, his bones ringing, his breath coming in pained gasps. Like a panicked animal, his eyes flicker from Shirou, his face pale, a new bruise already joining the collection, to Rin, her face flushed with anger, her other hand raised. "Get off him!"

Shirou waved a vague hand. "It's okay, we were just… just talking," he mumbled.

Rin shook her head incredulously, but otherwise ignored him. The adrenaline fading, he noted distantly that her eyes were not red, as he had expected. Rather, her face was clean, but for the scrapes, and her fury seemed crystal clear. "Listen to me, Archer," she snarled, pressing into his personal space and jamming a finger deep enough into his chest for it to hurt. "Do not touch him again." For a moment, he thought she was about to stupidly burn her final Command Seal, but the iron vice of compulsion did not descend upon him.

Still, he found himself taking a step back, his face darkening. There were stormclouds in his chest. He looked back to Shirou, then spit on the ground. "I don't care what you become. Maybe you'll make a better assassin than you do a hero."

I do not sleep.

I don't know if I'm capable of sleeping. Not really.

A clock ticks. The seconds feel like hours.

Tick.

There is a mortal turn of phrase to describe discomfort. Your skin crawls.

I do not think they ever meant it so literally. Invisible spiders skitter across my skin. My muscles twist and contract, though I do not move. My bones pulse to an invisible drumbeat. I am covered in sweat, and my skin is pale and grey. The essence of mortality and the essence of divinity are incompatible, and Zouken's spell was imperfect. It is not enough for the flesh to contain the spirit; the flesh must be attuned. There is a fundamental incompatibility in my existence.

Tick.

I broke something when I held too much of my own power in my hands. A crack in the dam. I can hold back the flood — that is not the issue — but I must always be cognizant of the potential overflow.

The bed is hard beneath my back. The pillow scratches the back of my head uncomfortably. I take great heaving breaths, and I wonder if I even need the oxygen. An eternity in an instant, an eon in a moment.

Tick.

A battle that everyone lost.

The longing. The hunger. They do not retreat as I had hoped they would. The electric thrill I felt in the heat of battle, in the sight of the boy's blood — they are conspicuous by their absence. I had not noticed they were missing until I felt them for that first time. I do not know if I will ever be able to forget them.

I do not want this.

I do not want that side of him—

Me. I do not want that side of me. I don't want to enjoy violence and death. I don't want to long for the hatred in the eyes of someone who is helpless before my blade.

But I do.

I will fight it. I will fight it.

But it is a part of me.

It sickens me.

The contradiction tears me apart as hungrily as the physical rejection of my divine essence. My body will adjust. By tomorrow, I will be in control again. I will be able to defend myself again. But will my mind?

I am a monster.

Of course they would come for me. Of course I am their target.

But I do not want to die.

I will not return.

I will not be a weapon any longer. I will not kill uncounted infinities for a God I have never met and do not understand.

And when I stand amid their bodies, blood cooling on the ground, scythe in hand, the Grail will appear to me. When I am alone in the rubble, it will offer me its power.

And I will have a choice to make.

More and more, I think I know what I will choose.

Azrael had no moral code, for he had no need of one. Kirei had no true code, because he fundamentally couldn't understand the concept of good. But there was a man who did. Someone that Kirei Kotomine knew better than he knew anyone else. Someone he understood. Someone he had, in some ways, become obsessed with. A man who was the hero the world needed.

At the close of the Fourth Holy Grail War, Kiritsugu Emiya destroyed the Grail for the greater good. In doing so, hundreds died.

He made the right choice.

Kill one to save a thousand.

Kill part of the city to save the world.

Did he enjoy it? Did he take pleasure in it? I don't think he did. That's part of what so haunted me about him.

But that's part of what made it the right choice.

Humanity in all its myriad worlds labors under threat of execution, subject to rules they were never told and can never understand. No one polices them until after the fact. Given enough time, every single timeline will have its turn on the butcher's block.

I think...

I think I could save them.

Through the power of the Grail…

With a resounding crash, the door flies open. I had locked it, but this does not matter to my Lancer. Wood splinters as the deadbolt smashes free, and the door's handle drives a deep dent into the wall. He surges through with all the fury of a charging bull, cold fury in his eye.

I have never seen him like this.

Kirei never saw him like this.

He comes to a halt at the foot of my bed. With a clipped, angry motion, he thrusts his hand to the side, and the crimson lance springs fully formed to his hand. "We need to talk, bossman." There is none of the easy bravado in his voice. This is Cu Chulainn in the grip of a cold rage.

This is expected. I know him well enough to know what he's worked himself into a frenzy about.

I don't know the answer to his question any more than he.

I speak slowly, pushing my feverish body into a sitting position. Sweat stains the bed beneath me. "If you took that lance and pierced my heart, Cu Chulainn, do you think I would die?"

He blinks, cocks his head like a dog. His lip tugs down in the barest hint of a frown. "What?"

I force my limbs to steady, though I cannot change the grey pall of my skin. "If you used Gae Bolg to strike true. The effect before the cause. My heart, destroyed. A bloody hole in my chest. Do you think I would die? Vanish back into the Grail?" I meet his gaze. I don't know what he sees in my eyes, but he falters. "If you brought everything you had to bear against me, if you struck true, do you think you could kill me?"

He grits his teeth. Forces down the fear and fans the flames of his anger. "So that's how it is, is it?"

"And if it didn't kill me," I say, and I feel him in my voice. "Do you know what would happen next? Do you think you would simply be allowed to die? To vanish into the night in a blaze of glorious combat? Do you think that you will be allowed that satisfaction?"

"You—" he begins.

"Do not speak," I say softly.

His mouth closes with a clamp, but the fires of hatred burn even brighter. We can never be friends, now. A part of me feels a pang of sadness at this loss, but you cannot lose what was never truly possible. This would have happened one way or another. This is for the best.

Our relationship is more honest this way.

He strains against the binding. I see the moment that he realizes that he cannot speak, and I see the moment he decides that he is going to try to kill me, his own well-being be damned. "You will not try to harm me," I say, and regret weighs each word down like lead. I did not want it to be this way. "You will not betray me."

He is almost purple with rage. I smile at him, and I hope he sees the sadness in it. I hope he sees that this is for the best. Emotions still overwhelm me. A tear streaks silently down my face, and it is no act.

From the moment he was introduced to the idea that he was under my control in any way, he became a ticking clock. Perhaps this could have been avoided if I had not ordered him to halt, last night in the theater. Maybe it couldn't. Some chance directive would have shown him his inability to disobey eventually.

He tries to raise his arm to strike, and he cannot. He is impotent. This is a man who is unused to genuine powerlessness, and I have shown him how little power he truly has over me.

I try to ignore the part of me that is enjoying this.

Finally, he whirls, turning to leave the way he came. He cannot speak, and he cannot kill me. All he has left is to leave. To deny me his self. If he walks out that door, I will never see him again.

"You will be back in half an hour," I say.

He is gone before I see his reaction.

Again, I have done something monstrous. Something needlessly cruel to a person who had only ever been kind to me. Regret fills my mouth like bile, but I force it down. I will need him in the days to come. I will need him, if not by my side, then at my command.

Hassan-i-Sabbah will not fall easily. Not even to me.

I don't know if that trick will work again.

I don't know if Caster will find some loophole that allows her to kill me.

I don't know if the Einzberns will have something up their sleeves to undo what their magic began.

I sink back down into the bed.

The Holy Grail War cannot be halted. It cannot be denied.

The true purpose of the Heaven's Feel is to open a door. To punch a violent hole through space and time and reality to reach the point where everything began and to which everything will return. The Origin. The Spiral of the Root.

What is God, but the name given to the Root of all things?

A rot that takes hold in the root will spread to the branches in time. The rot must be cut away for the greater good.

I will break the cycle.

I will free humanity from the threat of annihilation for sins it knows not.

Alpha and Omega.

The beginning and the end.

I am the Angel of Death.

Through the power of the Grail, I can reach the Creator.

And if I can reach Him?

I can kill Him.

So once again, I'm not really committing to a schedule, so I'm not sure when I'm posting again. Just know that I am working, more is coming, and it definitely won't be another three months before you hear from me again.

Next chapter: The Sleeper Stirs

Stay safe, everybody.