Chapter 1: Past Life and Present Life
Tick. Tick. Tick…
In the darkness, that sound echoed steadily—like something was quietly working, unseen.
Today was the second day since Zouken Matou left to discuss the Holy Grail War rituals with Tokiomi Tohsaka. Which meant that damned old worm wasn't home.
For Ritsuka, it was an opportunity that might never come again.
On the attic floor of the Matou estate, a black-haired boy—who had been waiting for this moment—continued his work. He lay prone, raising one arm as he slowly dragged a fingertip coated in a viscous medium across the wooden boards. His expression was absolute concentration, like a sculptor patiently carving out his masterpiece.
Scrape… scrape…
That was the sound of mana being set into motion.
And when the final stroke fell with controlled precision, the previously dull floor revealed the faint, glimmering lines of a magic circle in the dim room.
Ritsuka didn't pause. He immediately reached out and placed six candles around the circle's focal points, one by one, according to the pattern.
Fwoom—fwoom—fwoom!
The instant the match's spark dropped, several clusters of ghostly blue flame leapt up.
These were soul-lights—common flames used in spirit invocation rituals. They reflected the strength of the soul. And the material burning within them wasn't merely wax. More often, it was the caster's blood… or rather, a medium—something used to better connect to the soul.
As the flames rose in sequence, six gemstones set in the corners began to glow. Then Fujimaru Ritsuka lay down in the center of the circle and closed his eyes. His body was painted with a special sacrificial pattern—an intricate design drawn using pigments made from the blood of six magical beasts.
This was a kind of offering from humanity's ancient age—an offering to nature, to gods. It was an old, pure ritual. Not complicated in itself. As long as the price was sufficient, it could bring the desired result to the highest degree—much like the principle of equivalent exchange often cited in alchemy.
But miracles were never free.
If you wanted something, you had to give something.
And precisely because it was so effective, magi often forgot such rituals—or dismissed them outright.
Because the sacrifice demanded by this rite was not limited to offerings. It included the caster.
It wasn't rare for someone to obtain the answer they sought halfway through… only for their soul to be taken away by a god, a devil, or some unknown presence.
And the more you offered, the more you might receive—yet in most magi's eyes, the ratio of cost to gain was simply not worth it.
Yes, there were those who believed in "Hear the truth in the morning, and die content by evening." And it wasn't unheard of for someone to survive.
But the number of survivors was vanishingly small.
And even those who lived typically suffered wounds that could never fully heal.
Many prodigies—taking shortcuts—ended up ruined.
Among magi, if a hundred people dared to use themselves as sacrifices in a spirit-invocation exchange, it would already be a miracle if two survived. Most died in ways no one ever truly understood.
So the ritual was condemned—classified as a crooked path, dismissed as folk sorcery or witchcraft.
After all, magi cherished their lives.
But what they feared wasn't death itself.
They feared what death meant: failing to reach the Root, failing to fulfill an obsession, having their dream cut off forever.
Yet no matter how you looked at it, for Ritsuka, this "reckless" ritual—dangerous enough to annihilate a soul—was still the only road left.
Because through all these years of struggle in hell, he had learned something deeply and painfully:
How small he was.
How powerless.
Against Zouken Matou, that bottomless old monster, he couldn't see even a sliver of hope for victory. Trying to resist that mage's den with the strength of a child was simply impossible.
After so long living under the old worm's gaze, he knew exactly how cautious the creature was, how vile. He understood clearly: if he remained under that control, he would never get his chance.
If he continued to submit, he wouldn't just lose the chance to take revenge.
He would become a toy—handled and shaped at will.
And in the end, the only destination waiting for him would be destruction.
So while he still had a window, he was going to gamble everything.
Ritsuka didn't know why, at the edge of death or in half-conscious haze, he always heard strange voices—as if something were guiding him.
Nor did he know why he had "coincidentally" found such a book in the Matou family's library—
But this was an opportunity.
His last opportunity.
If this world truly had such a thing as fate…
Then perhaps this was what it looked like.
Of course, he hadn't ruled out the possibility that all of it was an elaborate trap laid by Zouken—intended to make him cooperate in his own death, fall into a snare, become an even better puppet.
That was why, before beginning, Ritsuka had already poured gasoline outside his room and set a timed ignition.
Two hours.
If, after two hours, he couldn't get up—couldn't break free from the ritual—then a raging fire would erupt, spreading from his room to the Matou estate's gas lines.
And then Fuyuki would witness its largest gas explosion in history.
If it came to that…
Even if he died—
He would not let that old worm have even a fraction of what it wanted.
His life might have been nothing but misery and regret…
But his death would not be like a puddle of mud.
If he had to die, then he would die in a sea of vengeance—burying everything he had, along with the Matou family's accumulated secrets, in the same inferno.
And when that happened…
The sight of Zouken Matou raging and frothing with fury would surely be magnificent.
This was his final struggle.
His final proof that his will would never bend.
Succeed—and live.
Fail—and die with dignity.
A resolve like iron.
—
Time continued to pass.
The ritual circle was complete now, and at that moment the pendulum clock on the wall swung again, as if to declare that there wasn't much time left.
Whether this was Zouken's trap or fate's invisible hand no longer mattered.
For Ritsuka, there was only one thing left to do:
Hold his breath.
Wait.
Quietly wait for the ritual to drag him into that unknown torrent.
Soon, his thoughts sank into dead silence.
As the ghostly blue candle flames extinguished one by one, a glow began to seep from his body—answering the gemstones' radiance. A thin, nameless mist slowly rose throughout the room.
The ritual had truly begun.
The instant the candlelight died—
Countless shards of memory slammed into his mind.
A tidal flood, out of control.
His temples throbbed with brutal pain as the memories surged and crashed, wave after wave, as if they would split his skull apart—crush the self he called "Fujimaru Ritsuka" into dust.
But he had no retreat.
He clenched his teeth, seized the last remnants of mana, and forced his consciousness to hold.
He began, with painstaking precision, to peel away the excess memories belonging to "Matou Ritsuka."
Eyes shut, he manipulated his mana as delicately as possible—guarding his self in the midst of that roaring tide.
In that raging sea of memory, he was like a drowning man clawing desperately for a lifeline, rifling through chaotic fragments, searching madly for what he needed.
To him, watching these memories was like watching an endless film—far more complete than the scattered flashes he'd seen before.
But time was limited.
He couldn't watch it properly, step by step.
So within the limits of what he could endure, he accelerated—scanning through the dense ocean of memories at top speed, hunting for truth.
"Birth time—skip. Birthplace—skip. Biological parents—skip. My sister… Fujimaru Rikka. Then…"
"First time I liked someone—skip. First confession—skip. Parents died—skip. I died—skip. Skip, skip… keep skipping! Faster—keep going!"
"—Found it!"
[The Special Organization for the Preservation of Human Order: Finis Chaldea. Commonly called the Human Order Security Organization Chaldea, or simply Chaldea. A workshop of magecraft built in a place free from any nation's interference—and capable of keeping its secrets.]
[Its purpose was to ensure that human history could continue—enduring, resilient, unbroken. Regardless of whether one studied magecraft or science, researchers from all fields gathered there. It was both a research institute and an observatory. It observed a world that could not be fully grasped by magecraft alone, nor comprehensively measured by science alone. It existed to prevent humanity's extinction—Bad End—built jointly by multiple nations.]
In that vast sea of memory, Ritsuka's eyes snapped wide open.
He had finally found the record he was desperate to see.
He stared greedily—consuming the answers he had long sought.
"Name: Fujimaru Ritsuka. Clock Tower—Department of Spiritual Evocation. Rank: Pride-class magus. Chaldea A-Team magus and Master. Special-invite elite Master. Best friend: Kadoc Zemlupus. Sister: Fujimaru Rikka. Once had a crush on a coworker—Ophelia Phamrsolone. Hated: Beryl Gut. Favorite junior: Mash Kyrielight. Friend and member of the 'Merlin Support Squad': Romani Archaman. Teacher: Lev Lainur Flauros—died in the Chaldea control room explosion. Age at death: eighteen!"
"And more—there has to be more!"
His consciousness collided violently within the memory sea.
Ritsuka roared and surged forward, forcing himself to reach deeper into the hidden truth.
"Let me see it—let me see it! Don't stop! Give it to me—keep going!"
At last—
Crossing that endless ocean, after bitter struggle, he finally glimpsed the full shape of what he had been chasing.
"Found it! The Holy Grail as a special enhancement item—break Servants past their level cap. Grail Ascension. Noble Phantasm strengthening. Embers farming. Challenge quests—there's more, there's more…"
"The Garden of Sinners novels have been published. Author: Kinoko Nasu."
"Fate/Zero novels have been published. Written by Gen Urobuchi."
"You immoral monster KOTARO—can you just die already?!"
"The official Fate game Fate/Grand Order is approaching the finale of Part 2's story!"
"Brothers, charge! Take down Solomon together! Tear the Demon God Pillars apart! Save Human Order!"
"Waaah—Doctor, Doctor, please come back! We can't live without you!"
"AAAAAAAH—!!"
The deeper he read, the more the flood of memory tore through him.
His brain had already reached its limit.
If he kept going, there would be only death.
He raised both hands to cover eyes that were now bleeding uncontrollably.
Yet he still forced them open.
He stared—hard—at the kaleidoscope of memory fragments, the countless slices that, in mere minutes, could reconstruct the jagged course of a person's life.
To him, those memories weren't "stories."
They were blood-soaked reality.
He wasn't originally from this world.
He had already died.
He died when Chaldea was suddenly blown apart—blasted into the sky by his own teacher, Lev.
But even earlier than that—
In a life before that life—
He had died of sudden congenital heart failure.
And then he had transmigrated into the TYPE-MOON world he knew so well, becoming this world's baby Fujimaru Ritsuka, growing up alongside his sister—Gudako—Fujimaru Rikka.
Only because the years had been so long—
Or perhaps because some unknown force had sealed away that sleeping memory during his transmigration—
Everything remained buried…
Until now.
And at last, the crack opened wide, spilling every truth in front of him, raw and merciless.
He was Fujimaru Ritsuka—
A transmigrator who had arrived a long, long time ago.
Even for him, this was a shock.
But the memories proved it beyond doubt.
Still…
So what?
To the "original" him, and to the current Fujimaru Ritsuka, it made no difference.
He felt no confusion.
He wouldn't question "who am I?"
Because he is Fujimaru Ritsuka—this world's Fujimaru Ritsuka—someone who had fully lived through birth, growth, and death.
And now…
This, too, was a new life.
Maybe it was a past world recorded on the Quantum Time-Lock.
Maybe it was a false Singularity.
But none of that mattered anymore.
Both lives were real.
The warmth of family was real.
The suffering he was living through now was real.
And his determination—to crawl out of hell and reclaim the light—was real.
If he could grit his teeth and survive the insect pit…
Then what could possibly still break him?
So—
There was nothing left to fear.
"Perfect… Subarashii."
After understanding everything, Ritsuka shot up from the center of the circle. He wiped the blood from his eyes and stretched his hand toward the dim ceiling above.
His voice carried the metallic taste of blood—
Yet it shone with a startling brightness.
"Now… I think… I finally understand it all!"
"My name is—and will forever be—Fujimaru Ritsuka."
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 60)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 80)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 60)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 64)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter10)
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