The boy succumbed to his knees. Will broken.

Mind shattered.

Body wounded.

Even his ideal withered away as if returning to its original owner.

The Knight in Red was lean, swords clenched tightly in his hands. He gazed down at the boy.

...

Only silence greeted him. The Knight didn't even need to deal the finishing blow. The last few slashes-no, the entire battle had sliced away at the boy's essence.

The battle had been his last stand. And now with the fight's end, the boy's end had arrived as well.

Truthfully, even with all the disdain, he carried in his heart, the pitiful sight in front of him made something ache within him.

Was it self-pity? Were the wounds on the boy's body too pitiful even for him? Or was it that part of him that mourned the end of the ideal he had fought for, even after rejecting it-no, even after getting rejected by it?

He cared not for it. The thought entered the premises of his mind, and acknowledged, went away to nothingness.

For the man, all that remained was the end of the war. His war.

But...

Though, by all means, life should have left the boy's body, something still clung to it.

Through incomprehensible means, the head which had bowed in defeat lifted itself. The numb lips trembled in effort and the blank eyes stared into his.

And then-

The boy smiled.

Archer's eyes widened. That smile... He had seen it last-

The fire which forged him. Burning away everything he once was, he was saved by that man whose smile inspired him in his mortal days and haunted him as a guardian.

And the boy who had perished carried the same smile,

The trembling lips cracked open.

'At least, I saved you...'

With that, the boy's body returned to his ceaseless and unliving shell. The soul vanished.

...

Archer turned to look at Saber. Her face was stoic and her sword remained faithfully at her side. He looked up at the ceiling.

'He.'

A foreign sound escaped his mouth, against his will. He couldn't be blamed for it though.

His body remained intact. By his estimates, his body should hold on for half a day. But the thought mattered little to him. In the first place, he didn't want to persist in the world any second longer.

The fact that he remained in this world only meant one thing.

He had failed.

No, rather there had been no chance of success from the beginning. No matter what Heroic Spirit EMIYA had done, the outcome would have been the same.

Regardless of his endeavors, EMIYA wouldn't be freed from his curse. He would continue as a guardian, and spend eternity as a mindless servant, indiscriminately killing everyone, every time he is summoned.

'Hehehehehe!'

But it wasn't his servitude that brought him despair. Even if this image of him disappeared, the memory won't go to the Counter Guardian EMIYA. It would simply remain as a small bit of knowledge; a feeling in his bones that regardless of what he did, only resignation and regrets would greet him.

But he would continue to strive for it like he had done once for his ideal. The thought alone would keep him 'alive'.

So, no. The despair of his fate didn't break his will. But it was the realization.

That Emiya Shirou was doomed from the very beginning, since the day he inherited Emiya Kiritsugu's ideal-no, since the day he had been saved from his inescapable fate.

For that smile and his desire for it had been grafted at his very essence. The ideal was the way through which that smile could be realized.

The ideal and his yearning for that happiness had become Emiya Shirou's soul. Even if Emiya Shirou's will broke, his body crumbled and his mind ruptured, so long as the remnants of his ideal-his soul weren't truly broken, molded into something unsightly, EMIYA would continue as a guardian.

He no longer had any purpose of remaining in this world. Accomplishing what he had wanted, EMIYA finally let go of his essence. His body flickered away and his mind began to numb.

There truthfully was no respite for Emiya Shirou. A boy looking at his future longingly and the Future looking at the past and his regrets. Even after coming to the past, he couldn't change a thing.

'Truthfully, Emiya Shirou can never fulfill his oath.'

The Knight in Red disappeared, never to return to that world.