"We could even... let this piece of news slip, casually, to the Einzbern family. Make them believe that Caster's threat is greater than ours."
Every single sentence Seiji Fujiwara spoke was like an invisible thread, pulling every piece on the board into the weave.
He was building a game.
A chaotic, inescapable trap that would sink everyone into mutual suspicion and mutual hostility.
And he himself could hide behind this fog of chaos and calmly accomplish his true objective.
"...What a... vicious plan."
When she'd heard out his entire scheme, Rin Tohsaka couldn't hold back a sigh.
For the first time, as she looked at Seiji, her eyes carried a trace of an emotion called fear.
This man... what on earth went on inside his head?
He seemed to care nothing at all for so-called morality or rules.
He was like the most brilliant con artist, the most cold-blooded schemer, savoring the process of toying with people's hearts.
"I object!"
A firm voice cut through the silence of the living room.
It was Shirou Emiya.
He stood, staring at Seiji with eyes full of anger and disappointment.
"This is too much! Using deception and conspiracy to frame people... that's not something an ally of justice should do!"
"An ally of justice?"
Hearing the phrase, Seiji let out a scornful laugh from the bottom of his heart.
But the expression on his face stayed gentle and harmless.
He turned, and in a tone brimming with helplessness and sorrow, said to Shirou:
"Emiya, I know you're kind-hearted, that you can't accept methods this dirty. But please understand. This is a war. Not a dinner party. If we cling to that naive justice of yours, then all of us will die. Saber will die, Miss Tohsaka will die, the teacher will die, and you... you'll die too. For one person's justice, must everyone who trusts you be buried alongside you? Is this... what you call an ally of justice?"
His words struck straight at the heart, syllable by syllable.
Shirou's face went pale in an instant.
He opened his mouth, but found he couldn't refute a single word.
That was true...
If his own "justice" would get everyone killed...
then was that "justice" still "justice" at all?
The conviction his adoptive father Kiritsugu Emiya had instilled in him since childhood, the belief long since rooted deep within him, wavered violently for the first time.
Beside them, Saber watched Shirou's pained expression, then glanced at Seiji's "compassionate" face.
Her heart, too, was full of conflict.
Rationally, she knew Seiji's plan was the most efficient and the most correct.
But emotionally, she was the same as Shirou. She couldn't accept this kind of "dishonorable" victory.
That heart of hers, the heart of the King of Knights, was once again caught in the agonizing tug between ideal and reality.
Watching the two of them sink into self-doubt and pain, a cold smile that only he could read flickered deep in Seiji's eyes.
The most effective way to destroy a person was never through the body.
It was through their convictions.
When the "ideal" they took pride in was ground to dust by reality, what they had left was only a hollow shell, easy to manipulate.
And this was exactly what he did best.
Night fell over Fuyuki City again, but tonight's darkness seemed deeper than usual.
Seiji sat alone in an isolation chamber within the underground Workshop of Tohsaka Manor. The room was normally used for handling highly contaminated or unstable magecraft materials, but right now it had become the perfect stage for the birth of his "fake."
He set the ancient samurai doll squarely at the center of a small magic circle drawn in cinnabar. The doll's features looked uncanny in the candlelight, its hollow glass eyes seeming to gaze into some dimension that didn't exist.
"...Then, let's begin."
Seiji drew a deep breath. His hands began to form seals along an extremely intricate yet fluid path. What he chanted was no known incantation of magecraft, but a twisted spirit-language he had "created" himself, blending Eastern onmyou arts with Western Kabbalistic mysteries.
[System command: initiate concept descent program.]
[Target: the name of Hassan-i-Sabbah.]
[Vessel: base-body doll.]
[Constructing temporary Saint Graph...]
As his chant rose, the mana inside the Workshop began to flow in an abnormal way. It wasn't gathered, but "torn apart" and "recombined." An unsettling, rust-like odor spread through the air.
He pushed his spiritual force into the surface layer of that ceaseless, surging sea of information called the Throne of Heroes. He had no power to truly touch those great souls. All he meant to do was "steal."
Steal the faint, insignificant scraps of the "concept" represented by the name "Hassan," the trace it had left in human history.
"...With a fake's body, bear a faceless name."
"...With a false life, perform a true death."
"...Before the mountain gate, be a sacrifice to chaos."
As the last syllable dropped, he slammed his palm down on the crown of the doll's head.
A surge of ink-black mana erupted from inside the doll in an instant. The doll, lifeless until now, slowly moved.
Its joints made a teeth-grinding creak, creak. It rose from the ground, and within those hollow glass eyes a faint, ominous crimson light flickered to life.
A "wraith," weak enough that it couldn't even be called a spiritual body, pieced together purely from "malice" and "concept," had been born.
"Go," Seiji said, his voice without a trace of feeling. "Go and fulfill your one and only mission."
The doll, like a machine that had received its highest command, turned stiffly, passed through the wall, and became a black shadow nearly invisible to the naked eye, racing toward Ryuudou Temple.
...
Ryuudou Temple, before the mountain gate.
The long stone steps looked especially still under the moonlight.
Medea stood on the corridor of the main hall, gazing down at the city below the mountain.
Her mood was foul. Lancer's sudden appearance, and that Archer spying on her Workshop, had filled her with a strong, offended anger.
Suddenly her powerful magecraft perception caught a trace of something wrong.
A faint spiritual body, yet one full of the aura of a "Servant," was approaching fast up the mountain-gate steps.
"Assassin...?"
A cold killing intent flashed in Medea's eyes.
"What a... reckless little insect."
She couldn't even be bothered to act herself.
She only lifted her hand lightly.
In an instant, the defensive Bounded Field spread across Ryuudou Temple's mountain gate, formed of Age of Gods runes, activated.
Thousands of arrows of light made of pure mana rained down like a storm, converging from all directions on the black shadow that had dared to intrude on her domain.
The "fake Assassin" cobbled together from a doll couldn't manage even a proper resistance.
Under the first wave of light, its body was riddled with holes.
But it didn't stop.
Driven by Seiji's absolute command, it dragged its ruined body forward, step by step toward the gate.
From its mouth came a soundless roar.
Its mission was to "die" before the mountain gate.
"You still want to come closer?"
A cruel smile appeared on Medea's face.
She increased her mana output.
A thick pillar of mana, like a column of light, descended from the sky and struck the doll with precision.
This time, not even a scrap of debris was left.
The "fake Assassin" was wiped from this world completely.
Once it was done, Medea turned and walked back into the depths of the main hall, as if she'd just swatted a fly.
She had no idea that her "perfectly reasonable" act of defense had been seen by countless pairs of eyes.
...
On a hilltop across from Ryuudou Temple.
The blue Lancer stood with his magic spear over his shoulder, watching everything that had just happened with keen interest.
"Oho? That witch really is hot-tempered."
"Took out Assassin the moment he showed up?"
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Now this is going to be quite a show."
A low voice came from the shadows behind him.
"Lancer, spread this information around. Let everyone know that Caster is a brutal witch who breaks the rules and cuts down anyone who tries to approach her."
"Yes, yes, my Master," Lancer drawled. "What a... twisted little order."
...
At the same time.
Inside the Einzbern castle.
Illya sat in her enormous, throne-like chair, swinging her little feet.
A bird-shaped familiar tasked with surveillance flew back and projected a short clip of footage before her.
In the footage was exactly the scene of "Assassin" being blasted to dust by Medea.
"Mmm..."
Illya watched the clip and tilted her head, an innocent yet cruel smile crossing her face.
"That purple lady is amazing."
"Looks like before we beat Saber, we'll have to deal with this disobedient bad child first."
"Right, Berserker?"
The mountain-like giant beside her let out a low, agreeing roar.
...
Inside the command vehicle.
Seiji watched calmly as the point of light representing "Assassin" vanished completely from the screen.
A satisfied smile spread across his face.
"Step one, complete."
He sent out a piece of edited and encrypted "intelligence" through a covert channel.
The recipient was a low-level clerk at the Clock Tower he had bought off, one who specialized in selling information.
He was confident that within twelve hours, the news that "Caster brutally killed Assassin" would spread through the entire magus network of Fuyuki City.
A chaotic storm he had lit with his own hands was about to sweep across everything.
...
...
The day after the "fake Assassin" incident, the undercurrents of all Fuyuki City began to surge.
Caster's "atrocity" spread quickly through every channel.
Her already untrustworthy "witch" image was now firmly cemented. Every faction instinctively marked her as their top target to watch.
And within the alliance that had been the "instigator," the atmosphere grew strangely tense too.
In the dojo of the Emiya residence.
Shirou was practicing his half-baked "Reinforcement" magecraft over and over.
A discarded iron pipe turned hard under his injected mana one moment, then twisted out of shape the next as the mana slipped out of control.
His face was full of agitation and confusion.
Seiji's claim that "justice demands the sacrifice of justice" had lodged in his heart like a poisoned thorn.
The ideal he had believed in all his life, "becoming an ally of justice," wavered for the first time.
"...Kiritsugu."
He looked at his palms, scraped raw from practice, and murmured his adoptive father's name.
If it were that man, what would he do?
He would choose Seiji's plan without hesitation.
To save the many, he wouldn't shrink from sacrificing the few. Wasn't that the cruel path that man had walked his whole life?
Could it be that all this time, he had only been imitating that retreating figure, without ever truly understanding the hell that man carried?
"Troubled, Emiya?"
A gentle voice came from behind him.
At some point Seiji had come to stand in the dojo doorway. In his hands was a steaming cup of barley tea.
"I just... can't work something out, that's all." Shirou stopped practicing and sat down on the floor, somewhat dejected.
"Are you troubled about yesterday's plan?" Seiji walked in and handed him the cup.
Shirou didn't answer, which was as good as a yes.
Seiji sat down beside him, looked at the gaunt old tree in the courtyard, and slowly began to speak.
"Emiya, do you know? I was once just like you."
"Like me?"
"Yes." A nostalgic, faintly sorrowful look crossed Seiji's face. "I once believed too that as long as I kept doing the right thing, I'd surely get a good result. I once despised all schemes and trickery."
"Then... why?"
"Because reality taught me the most profound lesson." Seiji's tone dropped low. "My family was once a magus lineage too, neither great nor small. My father was a man like you, full of ideals and a sense of justice. He never fought with anyone, always did his best to help others."
"And the result?"
"The result was that when our family was at its most desperate, not one of the families who had once received his kindness lent us a hand. Instead, like a school of sharks that had caught the scent of blood, they devoured us until nothing was left."
"To his dying day, my father never understood why the justice he upheld his whole life brought an ending like that."
"From that day on, I understood."
Seiji turned his head and looked at Shirou with an extremely calm yet deeply sorrowful gaze.
"In this cruel world of magecraft, justice is the cheapest and most powerless thing there is."
"It can't protect the people you care about, and it can't defeat true evil."
"What can truly protect you, what can let you realize your ideal, is only power and means."
"Emiya, your wish to become an ally of justice, that ideal is magnificent. I admire you for it from the bottom of my heart."
"But please, think about it."
"What meaning is there in an ally of justice who can't even protect himself and his companions?"
"Your adoptive father, Kiritsugu Emiya, was a true hero. But he was a man who would kill his own family with his own hands in order to save the world."
"He understood better than anyone the heavy price the realization of justice demands."
"Have you... made your resolve? To shoulder that sin of justice, the one no one will ever understand?"
His words were like the most precise scalpel, cutting open Shirou's naive, fragile heart one stroke at a time.
Shirou's body trembled violently.
He wanted to argue back, but found he couldn't come up with a single reason to do so.
Because everything Seiji had said seemed to be entirely correct.
And all of it was taken in, from start to finish, by a small figure standing in the shadows in the corner of the dojo.
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