FATE/STAYNIGHT

WARRIOR

Ep.9 foeshadowing

On the quiet road, during the time when the moon began to shine high in the sky alongside the darkness,
below at the base of a mountain near the Ryuudou Temple, there is a small road that has been empty during this hour.
The earlier incident, with its light and many explosions above, had now quieted down.
But amidst that stillness, a figure appeared.

A girl with purple hair and a frail figure walked out from a dark alley into the middle of the road, where light from a streetlamp illuminated her. Her gentle face and smooth skin were clearly visible.
She slowly looked up, revealing nearly emotionless purple eyes, no different from the rest of her expression.

"Sakura" Rider appeared behind her, materializing from her spectral form into a tangible presence. "Yusuke is safe now."

"Is that so... Thank God." Sakura placed her hand over her own chest before turning slightly to Rider. "You can go now. Thank you for helping Rider.

At the end of her words, Sakura turned her back and began to walk away.

"May I ask something?" Rider's question halted Sakura in place. "Sakura, what are you really thinking? That kid is the anomaly in the Holy Grail War. He's dangerous. You know this."

Hearing the question, Sakura lowered her head a bit. As her hair fell forward, hiding her face from the light, making it impossible to see her emotions—she seemed utterly melancholic.
But within the shadows, a faint smile slowly crept onto her lips.

"Senpai Yuusuk... is Senpai's friend. If I protect him, that wouldn't be so strange, would it?" Sakura suddenly lifted her face as she answered the question.

"I understand now," Rider said softly before disappearing into the mist, leaving only Sakura amidst the empty road.

In that moment, Sakura slowly revealed a face filled with happiness…

Inside the living room of the Emiya household, a meeting of familiar Servants and Masters—Rin, Shirou, and Saber—all sat around a table, listening to what Archer had discovered. It caused Rin, his master, to furrow her brows.

"A strange Lancer? A new Lancer!?" Rin shouted, expressing her confusion."What's all this about? "
Both Saber, Shirou, and Yuusuke had the same puzzled expressions.

"Ah… I'm not sure if it disguised itself or if it's a completely different person, but the one I encountered used twin spears and had a different personality for sure. Archer glanced at Rin. "It's nothing like the one we met at the school, Rin."

"Then someone intends to break the rules of the war…?" Saber spoke in a low, worried voice. "Summoning two Servants of the same class but different Heroic Spirits—this shouldn't be possible unless someone interfered with the Grail directly."

"I don't know." Archer raised both eyebrows, his face tense. "But it seems the Grail hasn't acted on anything… yet."

The tension in the room grew, with everyone feeling cornered by the current situation. They had no answers, only more mysteries piling up.

"Then—" Rin broke the silence.

"What is it, Tohsaka?" Shirou turned to her, waiting for an answer.

"Nothing, but—" Rin crossed her arms. "In times when strange things like this happen, there's only one person who can give us answers."

"You mean... Kirei Kotomine?" Shirou replied.

Rin nodded confidently. Shirou, Archer, and Saber all seemed assured that they might finally get some answers to this chaos. Only Yuusuke glanced around in confusion before asking.

"Wait a minute! Who's that?"

"The overseer of the Grail War is a priest. He's at the church in the center of the city," Rin explained while walking along the sidewalk. "Also, he's my senior when it comes to magecraft."

"The overseer, huh? Then there shouldn't be anything to worry about," Yuusuke replied as he quickened his pace to keep up with Rin.

"Not necessarily," Rin sighed, her face showing displeasure. "I don't trust him."

"Ah…." Yusuke recoiled slightly after seeing Rin's reaction.

The two continued walking north, step by step, until they stopped in front of a particular location.

A tall gate with intricate engravings marked the entrance. A sturdy palisade fence surrounded the church at the center, its sharp tips adding a sense of quiet authority. The white walls of the church gleamed softly, its pointed spire stretching toward the gray sky. A smooth granite path led directly to the arched entrance, inviting yet strangely desolate. Despite the beauty of the scene, the area was unnervingly quiet, devoid of people or life.

"Let's go," Rin said briefly before opening the gate and stepping inside.

Once inside the church, aside from the neatly arranged furniture and the light streaming through the stained glass windows adding the shiny reflection to the interior, the statue of an angel standing still in front of them looks like the owner of a place that's gratefully welcoming both of them. It felt like any ordinary church with nothing particular. But there was something heavy and oppressive about the atmosphere, devoid of living things... as if something was not right.

"Where is he?" Rin glanced around the empty church with a look of surprise.

"Out shopping, maybe?" Yuusuke joked slightly as he walked toward the Golden altar, decorated by 6 candles. It's placed in front of an Angle statue. It was covered in a thick layer of dust. As it wasn't being cleaned in 1-2 days.

"That guy… I rarely ever see him step outside," Rin murmured as she circled the church before stopping in front of a door. "Maybe he's in the middle of prayer."

Creak!

Suddenly, Yuusuke heard the sound of wood scraping above them, breaking the silence. The noise echoed, prompting him to quickly look up.

But when he glanced around, there was nothing—only emptiness.
Yet he could feel it. Something had just passed above their heads.

And as he looked closely, he saw a shadow.

It was turning back to look at him—from the upper window of the church. Though it wasn't clear, he could tell.
It was smiling.

"Hurry up, you dummy!" Rin said again, but Yusuke remained unresponsive, still staring blankly into space. She shouted once more, louder this time, "Yusuke!?"

"Ah!?" His consciousness snapped back instantly, and he turned abruptly toward Rin with a bewildered look.

"You! You nearly gave me a heart attack. Rin sighed before speaking in a calmer tone. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Yusuke replied, turning back to look, only to find emptiness and an open window. Maybe he is thinking too much.

Yusuke and Rin walked down a dim hallway behind the church door they had slowly entered. The short corridor led them down to a lower-level room.

The basement was old and surrounded by bathtubs resembling coffins. Tables, chairs, and cabinets were in a state of decay, so deteriorated that their original forms were no longer recognizable. But even that didn't compare to the overwhelming stench filling the room.

"It smells like something died," Rin said with a disgusted expression, covering her mouth with her hand as nausea overtook her. "What on earth is Kirei doing!?"

"More like an entire nest of rats died," Yusuke added, his face grim. Although the putrid smell made him want to vomit, he forced himself to endure it and walked deeper into the basement.

The farther they went, the stronger the smell became, as though they were approaching something dreadful.

"M—" Suddenly, both of their eyes widened. It wasn't just shock—it was pure horror at what they saw before them.

Dozens of decaying, unrecognizable bodies were submerged in bathtub-like coffins, lined along the hallway.

"So this is where the smell is coming from," Yusuke said grimly. He had fought countless monsters and seen many corpses they had killed in cold blood, but he had never seen anything as horrifying compared to this.

He turned to Rin, who was frozen in place, eyes wide as she stared at the corpses, unmoving as she started to get lost in thought from the pure horror of the scene in front.

"Rin!" Yusuke's voice jolted Rin out of her shock.

"Ah… alright," Rin exhaled deeply, breathing in and out several times before turning to Yusuke. "We need to look for some clues first."

"And Kirei?" Yusuke asked.

"We'll find that bastard later. I want to know what happened here."

A few minutes later, the two of them began to explore the room. Yusuke walked toward a bookshelf, its structure resembling a wall, while Rin scanned the books stacked on the shelves.

As she swept her eyes across the rows, Rin's attention fell on a peculiar book unlike any other.

It was a large purple book, roughly the size of an iPad screen and so thick it barely fit in her hands. The cover was bare, with no designs or illustrations, only bold letters in the center spelling the title: "Ramunda."

She didn't sense any magical power emanating from it, yet… It called out to her, inviting her to open it.

Unable to resist her curiosity, Rin opened the book and began reading.

What she found shocked and amazed her at the same time.

The book spoke of Second Magic,dimensional gates, parallel worlds, and the multiverse—universes similar to theirs and universes completely unlike anything they knew, even in fundamental laws.

"What… is this?" Rin muttered in disbelief as she continued reading. Eventually, she reached a page with detailed descriptions of alternate universes, their inherent dangers, and even methods of traveling between them.

"This is… impossible…" she whispered. Part of her wanted to leave the book behind, yet another part was desperate to take it with her.

"Rin!" Yusuke's voice came from behind the bookshelf. Rin rolled her eyes, hesitating for a moment before deciding to close the book and carry it with her.

"What is it!?" Rin asked as she stepped behind the bookshelf, only to freeze in place at the sight before her.

Yusuke stood rigid, pale-faced, pointing slowly toward something behind a shelf.

"I hope this isn't your so-called overseas," Yusuke said, his voice shaky.

Rin took another step forward, only to feel her breath catch again.

There, on the ground, it is Kirei's lifeless body.

The priest's corpse lay motionless, blood pooling on the floor, his face contorted in terror as though the last thing he saw before death had been a demon in its physical form.

The only clue to his cause of death was a single wound. a sharp puncture mark in the center of his chest, directly over his heart. Piercing inside, leaving a big hole that he can see through from his body to the wall beneath him.

"Looks like he has been dead for 1 or 3 days at maximum," Yusuke said, his face hardening once more. The atmosphere around them made it clear—something dangerous was nearby.

Outside the church, the side area was a dense forest; no human would ever dare to step inside if they didn't want to get lost, completely free from any surveillance, regardless of where one came from.
Yusuke stepped out of the deep forest, carrying a few twigs. He approached Kirei's body, which was already buried under some logs.
Then he threw the twigs in his hand down before stepping back.
At that moment, Rin pulled out a red gem from her pocket, crushed it, and hurled it onto Kirei's body.
Blue flames instantly erupted, quickly consuming only Kirei's body and the wood fragments. But like magic, the flames stopped at only a woods, and Kirei's body was not even spread to a green grass below.

"We destroy everything inside so no one finds this horror again..." Yusuke said, with a worried expression, before turning to Rin. "What should we do next?"

He noticed her clenching her left fist tightly, just as tightly as her right hand, which held a purple book. Her tense face and the sweat dripping down her forehead showed how she was feeling.

"I don't know," Rin said softly. "Everything feels like a dead end right now—this new Lancer, Kirei, and you..."
Her final words sent a chill down Yusuke's spine. He suddenly remembered that he shouldn't even be here. But the battles made him so accustomed to it all that he began to wonder—perhaps he was the cause of all this chaos...

"Me, huh?" Yusuke muttered, but as he was about to say more, his eyes caught the book in Rin's hand.

"What's that?"

"Oh, this?" Rin said, showing him the purple book titled Ramunda. "I found it in the basement. It's about dimensional travel—a magic book connecting to other worlds."

"Other dimensions?" Yusuke paused before repeating the phrase again, "The multiverse."

"Something like that," Rin said, gripping the book tightly. "I suspect it might have something to do with you."

"Well, it's good you took it," Yusuke said, crossing his arms briefly.
But the moment he finished speaking, a chill ran down his spine as though something was glaring at them murderously.

"The fire will stop once the body's gone, right?"

"Yes," Rin replied briefly.

"Let's hurry. I have a bad feeling about this."

As Yusuke and Rin began walking away from the area, a figure sat on the roof of the nearby church. It was a blond-haired man with glowing red eyes, watching them intently.
Gilgamesh stared at Kirei's burning body, which was almost reduced to ashes.

"They don't seem to realize yet that something has changed in this war," he said as he stood up, his face filled with confusion."a change wouldn't affect my plans… I just need to move faster than before."

"Even though…" Gilgamesh leaned his back against the cross adorning the roof. "Who killed Kirei?"

"Shirou, where are you going?" Saber asked urgently as she stepped through the door, seeing Shirou putting on his shoes at the front door of their house.

"I'm going to pick up Sakura. She's getting discharged from the hospital today," Shirou replied immediately.

"Wasn't Yusuke supposed to pick her up?"

"Well, he went with Rin, didn't he? They'll probably take a while," Shirou said, looking up as he grabbed his black coat.

"Besides, I want to check on Issei. He's been unusually quiet today, so I thought I'd go check on him."

"You really won't let me come with you?" Saber asked with a stern expression. "Yesterday, Yusuke was captured as well. It's better not to underestimate the situation, Shi—"

"Yeah, yeah, I'll be quick; don't worry. See you later." Shirou waved goodbye before stepping out of the house.

Several hours had passed, and Shirou was walking toward the hospital where Sakura was staying.
Today, the streets were unusually quiet and empty—perhaps it was the cold weather keeping people indoors.
Even though it seemed a little strange, Shirou didn't think much of it as his thoughts consumed him.

Yusuke... From a stranger, he had become Shirou's friend in just a few days, embodying everything Shirou wished to be—strength, skill, and talent. But there was one thing Shirou still couldn't understand: Yusuke's heart.

'Don't be so naive, Shirou.'

Every word that came from Yusuke's mouth echoed in his mind.

'If you keep fighting when you're already at your limit, that's not bravery—it's stupidity.'

They were words of scorn that Shirou had heard before, time and time again.

But why...

Why did Yusuke's words pierce him so deeply this time?

It felt as though everything Shirou had believed and fought for had been fundamentally wrong.

Clenching his left fist, Shirou questioned himself:

After all this time, he still didn't truly know who Yusuke really was...

"Honestly..."

Shirou loosened his fist and wants to know more about Yusuke; he wants to know if what so-called 'friend ' of his really likes...

I had to find out about you. yusuke

"Big brother."

A small voice called from behind, snapping Shirou out of his thoughts and back into reality.
When he turned around... a young girl with white hair and an adorable face stood in the middle of the road, dressed in a purple winter coat. Her crimson red eyes—like fresh blood—stared straight at him.

"You're... Illya!?" Shirou's eyes widened as he recognized her face. " What are you doing here!? "

"That's right, big brother. We've met once before." Illya spoke with a childlike tone, clasping her hands behind her back. "If you don't call out your servant, you might end up dead, you know?"

"What do you want!?" Shirou raised his voice and shifted into a cautious stance. "Where's your servant?"

"Oh... You didn't know?" Illya giggled. "Don't worry, big brother. We'll only fight at night."

She walked closer to Shirou and gently grabbed his arm with her small hand.

"Come with me, big brother. I'm bored."

"Wait! Aren't we enemies!?" Shirou protested, shocked with the friendly action of Illya.

"Hm? We're not fighting right now, are we?"

The cold wind blew across their bodies. Before he knew it, Shirou found himself sitting on a bench in a playground, watching Illya play alone on the equipment. There was no one else there—just her. Yet her face clearly showed she was happy.

"You... You look like an ordinary kid," Shirou muttered, furrowing his brow. "Why did you join the Holy Grail War? It doesn't seem like a place for someone like you."

Illya suddenly froze, her expression turning blank and emotionless as she looked down. But moments later, she smiled again and ran toward Shirou.

"There's no reason!" Illya hopped onto the bench beside Shirou. "I don't have any wish."

"Then why?" Shirou asked, confused.

"What about you, Shirou?" Illya leaned closer, crawling toward him on the bench.

"Uh..." Shirou folded his arms and looked down. "Honestly, I don't have one either."

"Huh!?"

"I just... I thought I wanted to protect others. I didn't want anyone to die—that's all." Shirou spoke confidently at first, but his face darkened with doubt. "I thought that's what I wanted..."

"Oh..." Illya smirked. "Starting to doubt yourself?"

"Huh!?" Shirou looked surprised at the sudden change in Illya's tone.

"Yusuke must be confusing you, huh?" Illya said softly, resting her hand on Shirou's lap and locking eyes with him. Strangely, her gaze froze his body in place. not by her beauty, but something Shirou can sense coming from just looking into her eye...mischievous "And it was a big mistake not to bring your servant with."

"What!?"

Before Shirou could finish, he felt an overwhelming force strike him from behind. The last thing he saw was Ilya's smiling face, which still lingered in his mind even after everything had gone dark.

"Sorry, Shirou... but it's necessary."

Footsteps echoed along the pathway outside the Emiya household. Rin and Yusuke had just returned from a chaotic day.

"The ice cream here's pretty good," Yusuke said with a small smile. "Honestly, the food here is amazing."

"Told you!" Rin smiled as she stopped at the front gate. "Once Shirou gets back, I'll take you to a shabu place."

Yusuke smiled back and waved goodbye, satisfied with the day.

But as they turned to step through the gate, Illya appeared on the road with her signature smile.

"Hey, Rin," she said, turning her gaze toward Yusuke with a small curtsy. "And the warrior... No, Yusuke, right?"

"Illya!" Rin immediately pulled out her gems, preparing to fight.

"Wait... How do you know me?" Yusuke pointed at himself, looking stunned.

"That doesn't matter right now," Illya replied, tossing a handful of photos onto the ground in front of him.

Each picture showed Shirou being tied to a chair, his eyes and mouth covered with cloth. Even though they were still images, Yusuke can sense that Shirou is struggling to move from the rope, and muffling under that mouth cover.

"Where did you take Shirou!?" Rin shouted angrily upon seeing the photos.

"Ah, Rin, that's so rude!" Illya pouted. "Shirou is fine. He's at my castle. If you want him back, come get him."

She turned her back and began walking away, leaving behind a final message that echoed through the cold wind.

"Yusuke... I'll be waiting for you too…."