Blue light swallowed everything.
Griswald felt himself pulled apart and reassembled in the same instant. The collapsing ceiling, the burning CHALDEAS, Mash bleeding beneath the rubble—all of it dissolved into a tunnel of swirling azure energy. Stars fell past him. Through him. Pinpricks of light that left trails across his vision like tears in reality itself.
No sound. No sensation. Just the endless blue and the falling stars and the distant certainty that he was somewhere between alive and dead.
Then the tunnel spat him out.
Griswald hit the ground hard. Concrete scraped his palms. Dust filled his lungs. He coughed, rolled onto his side, and forced his eyes open.
Ruins.
The word felt inadequate for what surrounded him. A city had stood here once. Griswald could see the skeletal remains of buildings clawing at a sky stained the color of dried blood. Streetlights bent at impossible angles. Cars lay overturned and gutted, their metal husks rusted as though decades had passed in moments. Smoke rose from a dozen distant fires, black pillars supporting a ceiling of ash and crimson clouds.
He pushed himself to his knees. Glass crunched beneath his weight.
"Where..." His voice came out raw. Broken. "Where am I?"
No answer. Just the distant crackle of flames and the groan of settling debris.
Griswald staggered upright. His legs trembled. The medical coat he'd been wearing was torn, singed at the edges, stained with—
Mash's blood.
The memory hit him like a physical blow. Her being pinned beneath the rubble. The life drained from her eyes. The way she'd smiled even as everything collapsed around them.
"Mash?" He spun in place. Debris everywhere. Shattered glass. Twisted metal. No lavender hair. No violet eyes. "Mash!"
His shout echoed off broken walls and returned to him unanswered.
Griswald stumbled forward. The street stretched before him like a wound, asphalt cracked and buckled, lined with the corpses of a city he didn't recognize. Signs in Japanese hung askew from storefronts. A convenience store's windows had been blown inward. A bridge in the distance had collapsed into whatever river it had once spanned.
Japan. He was in Japan. But which city? When?
The wrongness intensified. Griswald's magical senses—limited as they were—screamed warnings he couldn't interpret. Something watched him. Something waited.
He heard it before he saw it.
A whistle. High and sharp. The sound of air being displaced by something moving fast.
Griswald turned.
Red filled his vision.
Hundreds of projectiles. Crimson bolts flew towards him; they hung in the air bloating out the sky a constellation of death arranged in perfect formation that screamed toward him.
He couldn't move. I couldn't think. His body had forgotten how to respond to imminent annihilation.
This is how I die.
Metal sang.
Something massive interposed itself between Griswald and oblivion. The arrows struck—shattered—dissolved into motes of fading crimson against an immovable wall.
Griswald fell backward. His hands found rubble. His eyes found—
Her.
The woman stood with her back to him, legs braced wide, both hands gripping the inner handle of a shield larger than she was. The cross-shaped barrier hummed with power, its surface rippling where the last arrows had struck. She held it like it weighed nothing. Like she'd been born to stand between destruction and everything fragile behind her.
Griswald's breath caught.
She wore armor. If armor was the right word for what clung to her body. A sleeveless bodysuit in deep navy and black hugged every curve with precision that left nothing to imagination. The material gleamed like polished obsidian, segmented panels tracing the architecture of her torso. Purple accents caught the hellish light. Her shoulders were bare—pale skin stretched over lean muscle—while long gloves extended past her elbows in seamless dark fabric.
Her stomach was exposed. A deliberate gap in the armor revealed the flat plane of her abdomen, the subtle definition of muscle beneath cream-white skin. Below, thin straps connected the bodysuit to her thighs, garter-like bands drawing the eye downward to boots that reached her knees, reinforced and glossy.
She turned.
Lavender hair. Violet eyes. The same delicate features Griswald had memorized over two years of quiet conversations and shared silences.
But different.
Mash Kyrielight looked at him with an intensity he'd never seen. Her usual reserve had burned away, replaced by something fierce. The meek girl who once struggled to meet his gaze was gone.
"Senpai."
Her voice. The same voice. But carrying weight it hadn't possessed before.
"Mash?" Griswald's own voice cracked. "Is that—you're alive? How are you—what happened to—"
"There's no time." She shifted her grip on the shield. Her eyes scanned the ruins behind him. "More are coming. I can feel them."
"More what? Where are we? What's going on?"
Mash stepped closer. The armor's lack of coverage became more apparent with proximity. The high cut of her bodysuit. The way the material stretched across her chest. Details Griswald had never allowed himself to notice now presented themselves with aggressive clarity.
"Singularity designation F." She positioned herself at his side. Shield raised. Ready. "Fuyuk, Japani 2004. And we're under attack."
The first volley came before Griswald could form another question.
Crimson streaks tore through the smoke-choked air. Dozens of arrows materialized from nothing, a wall of death converging on their position. Mash moved. Her shield swept upward in a fluid arc that caught the leading edge of the barrage. Metal screamed against whatever impossible material comprised that cross-shaped barrier. Sparks erupted. Arrows shattered into fading motes of red light.
"Stay behind me!"
Griswald pressed himself against her back. The heat of her body registered through the torn fabric of his coat. Another volley. This one came from the left. Mash pivoted, boots grinding against broken asphalt, and intercepted it mid-spin. The impact drove her back half a step.
"We need to move," she said. "There's cover ahead. An alley."
"I can't even see where they're coming from!"
"Neither can I."
A single arrow punched through the dissipating cloud of its shattered predecessors. Not a volley this time. One projectile, glowing brighter than the others, moving faster. Mash caught it on the shield's center. The force lifted her feet from the ground. She slammed back down, knees bent, absorbing momentum that should have sent her flying.
Griswald's mind raced. Combat magecraft. Someone was firing at them with projection magic or something similar. The arrows weren't real—they couldn't be—but they sure hit like they were.
"Go!" Mash grabbed his wrist. Pulled. They ran.
The ruins blurred past. Griswald's lungs burned. His legs screamed protests he ignored. Behind them, he heard the whistling. Always the whistling. That high sharp sound that meant death was chasing.
Mash spun without breaking stride. Her shield came up. A cluster of arrows—eight, maybe ten—detonated against it in rapid succession. She stumbled. Recovered and kept running.
"Almost there!"
The alley materialized between two collapsed storefronts. Narrow. Dark. The kind of space that would limit firing angles. Griswald dove for it.
Something screamed past his ear.
Heat seared his cheek. He hit the ground rolling, fetching up against a dumpster that had seen better centuries. Mash landed beside him, shield raised, blocking the alley's entrance.
Three arrows struck it in quick succession. Then nothing.
Silence stretched. Griswald's heartbeat thundered in his ears.
"Are we—"
The arrow came from above.
It curved. Impossible trajectory. A crimson comet that arced over the buildings and plunged straight down toward Griswald's skull. Mash threw herself sideways. Shield up. The impact drove her to one knee.
Another volley. These came from the alley's far end—Griswald hadn't even noticed it opened onto another street. Mash twisted. Blocked. Sparks showered across her exposed shoulders. One arrow grazed her arm. Blood welled.
"Mash!"
"I'm fine." She wasn't. He could see her breathing harder now. The shield's movements had slowed. Fractionally, but enough to notice. "Stay low."
A single projectile screamed through the gap between shield and wall. Griswald threw himself flat. It passed close enough to singe his hair before embedding itself in brick and exploding.
Debris rained down. Dust filled the air.
Mash coughed. Raised the shield again. Another volley—this one from three directions simultaneously. She spun, caught two clusters, missed the third. An arrow struck the ground inches from Griswald's hand.
"SENPAI!"
Griswald watched her intercept another curved shot. Her arms shook with the impact. Sweat glistened on her forehead. The fierce intensity in her eyes had dimmed, replaced by something closer to desperate determination.
He was killing her. By existing. The arrows are aiming for him! She was having to protect him. Every arrow she blocked just drained her further.
"Let me help. I can—"
"I got it Senpai." She blocked again. Again. Again. "Your specialty is healing and if you die, I won't have any mana to fight whoever is attacking us off."
What was she talking about. Griswald usually could keep a cool head under presser a necessity when you work in both medicine and magic but now his mind reeled, unable to process what she was suggesting as death rained down.
Another volley. Mash caught it. Her knees buckled. She forced herself upright through will alone.
"There has to be something," Griswald said. "Some way to—"
Whistling. Louder now. A sound like a hundred arrows singing in harmony.
He looked up.
The sky had turned red. Not with sunset. With projectiles. A constellation of death arranged in perfect formation, blotting out the ash-clouds above.
She saw it too. Her shoulders squared. Her grip tightened on the shield's handle.
And then the world spun.
Mash's arm hooked around his waist. Griswald's feet left the ground. The alley walls blurred past—brick, shadow, brick—and then they were crashing through an old doorway Griswald missed in the madness.
Glass shattered. Wood splintered. Griswald's back hit something hard. A floor. Tile, maybe. Cracked and dusty.
Mash landed on top of him.
The shield came up. She positioned it above them both, angling the massive cross-shaped barrier to form a ceiling of protection. Her body pressed down against his—chest to chest, hip to hip—pinning him to the floor with her weight.
Outside, the sky fell.
Arrows punched through the building's walls like they were paper. Red streaks tore through brick and mortar, trailing dust and debris. The ceiling above them cracked. Plaster rained down. One projectile ripped through a support beam three feet from Griswald's head.
But the crumbling structure did something. Deflected trajectories. Absorbed momentum. Arrows that should have struck with lethal precision instead carved wild paths through collapsing architecture.
Mash caught what remained.
Her shield sang with impacts. One. Three. Seven. A rapid percussion of death meeting immovable defense. Each strike drove her body harder against his. Her breath came fast against his neck. Hot. Desperate.
Griswald's hands found her waist without conscious decision. Steadied her. The armor's gap exposed the warm skin of her stomach, and his fingers brushed against it—soft, impossibly soft—before he could register what he was touching.
Heat flooded his face.
Not the time. Definitely not the time.
Another volley struck the shield. Mash grunted. Her thigh pressed between his legs. The high cut of her bodysuit left nothing between his hand and the curve of her hip but a thin strip of dark material.
An arrow screamed through the wall to their left. Mash twisted. Caught it on the shield's edge. The motion ground her body against his in ways that short-circuited rational thought.
"Stay down," she breathed.
As if he had any choice. As if he could move with her weight pinning him and her face inches from his and her violet eyes burning with that fierce intensity he'd never seen before today.
The barrage continued. Arrows punched holes in what remained of the walls. Dust filled the air. Somewhere above them, a structural beam groaned and gave way, crashing down in a cascade of debris that Mash deflected with a sweep of her shield.
Griswald felt her heartbeat against his chest. Rapid. Strong. The rhythm of someone fighting to survive.
His own pulse answered it.
Then—silence.
The arrows stopped.
A heartbeat passed. Two. Griswald held his breath. Mash remained motionless above him, shield raised, body tense.
From somewhere in the distance—far beyond the ruined building, beyond the collapsed streets—a sound rolled across the devastation.
An explosion.
Not like the arrows. This was deeper. Louder. The kind of detonation that came from something massive meeting something equally massive with violent intent. A shockwave followed, rattling what remained of the walls around them.
Dust billowed through the gaps in the architecture. A plume rose in the distance, visible through a hole in the ceiling. Massive. Mushroom-shaped.
Mash's grip on her shield relaxed. Fractionally.
"Another Servant," she murmured. Her voice came out hoarse. Exhausted. "Must have used us as a distraction. Flanked the Archer while they were focused on..."
She trailed off.
The fierce warrior who had thrown herself between death and Griswald began to fade. He watched it happen in real-time—the tension bleeding from her shoulders, the intensity dimming in her eyes, replaced by something softer. More familiar.
Mash looked down at him.
Violet eyes widened.
"S-Senpai!"
The old Mash—his Mash wallflower that he thought he knew so well—snapped back into existence with whiplash speed. She scrambled off him, armor scraping against tile, face flushing a shade of pink that rivaled the distant fires.
"Are you hurt? Did any of them hit you? I tried to block everything but there were so many and the building was collapsing and I couldn't see if—"
Her hands found his shoulders. His chest. Patting him down with frantic urgency, checking for wounds with the same nervous energy she'd shown during their first meetings in Roman's office.
"I'm fine," Griswald managed. "Mash, I'm—"
"Your cheek!" She leaned closer. Too close. Her breath ghosted across his skin. "There's blood. One of them grazed you. I'm so sorry, I should have been faster, I should have—"
"It's nothing. A scratch."
"Let me see." Her fingers touched his jaw. Tilted his head. Gently. The same hands that had held a shield against impossible bombardment now trembled against his skin. "It doesn't look deep but we should clean it. Is there pain anywhere else? Your back hit the floor hard. Did you feel anything crack? Any trouble breathing?"
Griswald caught her wrists. Stilled her frantic examination.
"Mash."
She froze. Violet eyes met grey.
"I'm okay," he said. "Because of you. You saved my life."
The pink in her cheeks deepened. She looked away. Down. Anywhere but at him.
"I just... I had to protect you. You're my Master now. It's my duty to—"
"Your arm."
Griswald released one of her wrists. His hand found the wound on her bicep—the arrow graze she'd dismissed as nothing. Blood had traced a path down her arm, staining the dark material of her glove.
"You're hurt."
"It's superficial. Servants heal faster than humans. I'll be fine in—"
"Let me see."
Now it was his turn to examine her. Griswald shifted to a sitting position, one hand still holding her wounded arm, the other reaching for what little medical supplies he always carried on his person. Old habits. Two years of treating patients had built reflexes that kicked in regardless of circumstance.
The ruined building groaned around them. Somewhere distant, another explosion echoed—the unknown Servant still battling whoever had tried to kill them. Griswald pushed the chaos from his mind and focused on what he could control.
Mash's arm.
He guided her to sit against a partially intact wall, positioning himself beside her. The wound wasn't deep, but it bled freely. His fingers found the tear in her glove's material, widening it enough to expose the injury beneath.
Let me bandage the wound."
He reached for the supplies in his coat pocket. Gauze. Medical tape. Basic materials he'd carried out of habit, never expecting to use them in a burning hellscape that might have been Japan.
Mash nodded. Her earlier panic had subsided into something quieter. Watchful. She kept her eyes on the gaps in the walls, shield resting across her lap, ready to raise it at the first sign of danger.
As he finished wrapping her arm, Griswald pressed his palm against her skin and reached for his magecraft.
The familiar warmth spread through his circuits. Weak power—he'd never pretend otherwise—but refined through years of practice. He felt the wound beneath his hand. Mapped the damage. Traced the paths where blood had escaped and began the work of restoration.
It gave him time to think. The first real moment of clarity since blue light had swallowed him whole.
She called herself a Servant.
The word rattled around his skull, refusing to settle into sense. Servants were Heroic Spirits. Legendary figures summoned from the Throne of Heroes through complex rituals and astronomical amounts of mana. Chaldea had exactly one Servant on staff—Leonardo da Vinci, summoned years ago through means Griswald had never been privy to. The organization's entire purpose revolved around developing the technology to summon more.
But Mash wasn't a Heroic Spirit. She was a girl. A quiet, reserved girl who liked books and struggled with eye contact and had sat through countless medical examinations in Roman's office while Griswald checked her vitals.
"Mash." He kept his voice steady. Professional. The same tone he used with nervous patients. "You called yourself a Servant earlier. When you were explaining why I needed to stay alive."
Her shoulders tensed beneath his touch.
"I did."
"That shouldn't be possible." He continued working. The blood loss was not terrible but he needed her at 100 percent. "The only Servant at Chaldea is Da Vinci. I would have known if there were others."
Silence stretched between them. Griswald felt her pulse beneath his palm—faster now than the wound warranted.
"I'm not... exactly a Servant." The words came slowly. Reluctantly. Like she was pulling them from somewhere deep and painful. "I'm what's called a Demi-Servant."
Griswald's hand stilled.
"A what?"
"A human fused with a Heroic Spirit." Mash's voice dropped. She still wouldn't look at him. "The spirit's power becomes accessible to the host, but the human consciousness remains dominant. It's... it was an experimental procedure. Developed by the previous Director. Instead of having to waste so much energy creating and maintaining a corporal body, that energy can be used to increase a body that already exist and have more energy to spare"
Marinsbury Animusphere. The man who'd built Chaldea from nothing and died under circumstances no one discussed. Griswald knew he had his research all mages did but this…
He never thought it could be this.
"You were part of an experiment?"
"I was created for it." The admission came out flat. Empty. "Designer Baby. Genetically engineered to be a compatible vessel. They summoned the spirit when I was ten. Bound it to me. It never fully awakened until..."
She gestured vaguely at the ruins around them. The destruction. The impossible circumstances that had brought them here.
"Until the explosion," Griswald finished.
"Until you needed me."
The words hung in the dusty air. Griswald processed them while his magecraft worked, restoring what she'd lost drop by drop. A Demi-Servant. Raised in Chaldea's sterile corridors, subjected to procedures and experiments, treated as a project rather than a person.
All those medical checkups. All those quiet conversations in Roman's office. Had she known? Had she sat there, making shy small talk about books and un changing weather, while carrying the weight of a Heroic Spirit inside her?
"There." He withdrew his hand. The blood loss had been addressed—not perfectly, but enough. "You should be stable now."
"Thank you, Senpai."
"It's nothing. Honestly, this is about the most useful thing I can do with my magecraft. Replenishing bodily fluids. Blood, specifically, though the principle extends to other applications."
"That sounds valuable."
"It's niche." He checked the bandage. Tested its tightness. "Combat mages look down on it. Healing in general gets dismissed as secondary to offensive capabilities. But the fact that I could theoretically keep someone from bleeding out—that was one of the only reasons Chaldea accepted my application."
One of the only reasons anyone had accepted him for anything. The Von Garmisch family's perpetual disappointment, finally finding a use for his limited talents.
Mash flexed her arm. Tested the bandage.
"It doesn't feel niche to me." Her voice was warm. Genuine. "You just saved my life as much as I saved yours."
Griswald opened his mouth to deflect—old habits—but stopped.
His hand.
He looked down.
Red marks blazed against his skin. Three distinct shapes that hadn't been there before, arranged in an abstract pattern that seemed to shift when viewed from different angles. They glowed faintly, pulsing in rhythm with something he couldn't identify.
Command Seals.
Every mage at Chaldea knew what they were. The marks that bound Master to Servant. The proof of a contract forged between human and Heroic Spirit. Three absolute commands that could compel obedience, enhance abilities, or be spent in moments of desperate need.
"When did..." He turned his hand over. The marks remained. Vivid. Undeniable. "How did this happen?"
Mash's eyes found the seals. Something flickered across her face—relief, perhaps.
"The rayshift," she said quietly. "When the emergency system activated. It detected a Master signature and initiated transport. That Master was you."
"But I'm not—I was never supposed to be—"
"The system doesn't care about supposed to." Mash reached out. Her fingers hovered near his marked hand without quite touching. "It found someone with circuits. Someone compatible. Someone who could form a contract with a Servant in crisis."
The contract. Right. Servants needed Masters. Masters provided mana. Without that connection, a Heroic Spirit couldn't maintain physical form in the modern world.
"So when you manifested your powers..." Griswald stared at the seals. "When the spirit inside you finally awakened..."
"It needed an anchor." Mash's voice dropped to barely a whisper. "It needed you."
The marks burned against his skin. Not with pain—something deeper. A resonance that hummed through his magical circuits like a tuning fork struck against bone.
Griswald studied the Command Seals with the clinical detachment he'd learned to apply to impossible situations. Three distinct shapes arranged in a vertical pattern along the back of his right hand. The topmost seal resembled a stylized eye, its iris formed from concentric circles that seemed to spiral inward when he focused on them too long. Below it, the second seal took the form of interlocking chains—or perhaps serpents, their bodies weaving through each other in an endless knot. The third and final seal sat at the base of his fingers: a crescent moon cradling what might have been a drop of water. Or blood.
All three glowed with a soft crimson light that pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat. The edges of each seal weren't clean—they bled into his skin like ink spreading through wet paper, boundaries indistinct, as though the marks themselves couldn't quite decide where they ended and he began.
"This shouldn't have happened," he murmured.
The words tasted bitter. True, but bitter.
Griswald knew his potential. Had it measured, quantified, and ultimately dismissed by Chaldea. His aptitude to rayshift existed—barely but is aptitude to fuel a servant… The evaluation reports that he got when he first started had used words like "marginal" and "theoretically possible but practically inadvisable." The amount of mana required to sustain a Servant through someone with his circuits would be astronomical compared to other mages. Where talented mages could fuel their contracted spirits through passive generation alone, Griswald would need to actively channel everything he had just to keep a Servant materialized for long.
Chaldea had known this. They'd tested him alongside every other candidate during his first weeks at the facility. The results had been... definitive.
Low circuit count. Limited capacity. Inefficient mana transfer ratios. Recommend auxiliary support roles only.
The organization had looked elsewhere for their Master candidates. Even when the search dragged on for months, even when qualified applicants proved harder to find than anticipated, they'd never reconsidered him. Better to keep searching than to settle for someone who would drain himself dry trying to maintain a contract.
And now here he was. Command Seals blazing on his hand. A Demi-Servant sitting beside him in the ruins of a city that shouldn't exist.
"What do we do now?" Griswald forced himself to look away from the marks. Practical questions. Focus on practical questions. "Is there a way back to Chaldea? Some kind of extraction protocol?"
Mash opened her mouth to answer.
The scream cut through the devastated streets like a blade.
Female. Terrified. Close.
They moved without discussion. Griswald pushed himself upright, ignoring the protests from muscles that had spent too long pressed against broken tile. Mash rose beside him—slower than before, he noticed. Her movements carried a weight they hadn't when she'd first interposed herself between him and death.
"This way." She lifted her shield. The massive cross-shaped barrier seemed heavier in her grip now. "Two blocks east."
They ran.
The ruins blurred past in a haze of collapsed storefronts and overturned vehicles. Griswald's lungs burned. His legs ached. But he kept pace with Mash, driven by the echo of that scream still ringing in his ears.
Another scream. Closer now.
Mash stumbled.
Griswald caught her arm before she fell. Her skin was cold beneath his fingers. Colder than it should have been after the exertion of their escape.
"I'm fine." She pulled away. Kept moving. "Just tired."
But she wasn't fine. He could see it in the pallor creeping across her cheeks. The slight tremor in her shield arm. The way her breath came harder than the short run warranted.
The contract. The mana drain.
His circuits were already failing her.