I was dead.
I know this because I remember the taste of iron in my mouth, the weight of fate pressing down on my shoulders, and the sound of carrion birds circling above me as I bound myself upright to a stone so that even death would not see me fall. I remember smiling through shattered ribs and torn sinew, defying gods and prophecy alike.
And then
I woke up.
The first thing I felt was wrongness, this was not the typical summoning I was used to. The throne in which I was part of, an eternal chain I could have thought was an eternal binding. The cold lifeless gazes of countless 'magus' eternally looking at an hound in contempt, always so sure that the command seals they have would guide them in winning the grail.
This is new, the hum of a sigil was not in sight. The holy grail which I would not even touch without a ten foot pole, the corrupted grail where I could experience war with legends who match my own was not within my senses. I am finally free. I am FREE, the shackles of the infernal grail is gone.
I am experiencing my senses again, my senses when I was still made of flesh and bones. Not pain. Not cold. Not even the numb whispers of the Other Side I had come to know too well as a Servant summoned and dismissed across countless wars. No, this was different. This was weight. The honest weight of flesh and bone resting against the earth. The breath in my lungs did not vanish after a count of seconds. My heart beat not as a spiritual core, but as a living thing. The hound of Culann now walk the plains again.
I lay beneath a tree in full bloom, pink petals drifting down like quiet snowfall. The sky above me was an impossible blue, unmarred by the smoke of battle or the glow of bounded fields. Somewhere nearby, I heard laughter. Human laughter.
deliberating as I sat up in one smooth motion.
My body responded instantly, too instant in ways I was not used to. Muscles coiled and ready, reflexes honed sharper than any mortal blade. I looked down at my hands.
Calloused. Scarred. Real.
I flexed my fingers, feeling the familiar hum beneath my skin. Mana prana flowed through me, steady and deep. Not borrowed from a Master. Not leaking away with time. It was mine. The world still breathes, THE AGE OF THE GODS HAVE STILL NOT YET ENDED.
"…Hah."
A short laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
I was whole.
I reached behind my shoulder, half-expecting absence.
My fingers closed around the shaft of my spear.
Gáe Bolg answered me.
The weapon rested against my back as naturally as my own spine, its dark crimson barbs faintly warm, as if remembering bloodshed older than the world itself. I could feel it no, them. Spear and man, bound by oath and death and something far deeper than summoning circles ever allowed.
Scáthach's voice echoed in my memory, sharp as the wind off the Isle of Shadows.
"If you master this spear, Setanta, you will never truly die."
I exhaled slowly.
So this was not the Throne. Not a Grail War. No Command Seals tugged at my spine, no invisible leash tying me to a magus trembling with contempt and ambition.
This was something else.
I stood.
The world sharpened around me. I could hear footsteps dozens of paces away, smell the faint tang of ozone and was that brimstone? the taste of something foul in the air, like rot hidden beneath incense.
I frowned.
This place was layered. I could feel it. The surface was mundane cars in the distance, the buzz of electricity, voices carried by the wind but beneath it lay a deeper current. Old. Dangerous. Crawling with things that watched humanity the way wolves watched sheep.
"Devils"
"…So," I murmured, resting one hand on Gáe Bolg's shaft. "A land of monsters pretending to be civilized."
Fitting.
A scream cut through the afternoon.
Sharp. Young. Human.
My body moved before thought caught up.
I crossed the park in a blur, petals scattering in my wake. The source revealed itself at the edge of an alley with three figures hemming in a schoolgirl. They looked human at first glance. Too human.
Their shadows bent the wrong way.
One of them turned as I approached, eyes glowing a sickly green.
"Well now," it hissed, voice layered and wrong. "Another one wandered in-"
I didn't let it finish.
I stepped forward and thrust.
I did not invoke the spear's true name. I did not need to.
Even restrained, Gáe Bolg is a curse made steel.
The point punched through the creature's chest, and I felt the familiar inversion the world correcting itself so that the heart was already pierced before the strike had begun. The body froze, convulsed, and then collapsed into ash.
The other two shrieked.
One fled.
The other lunged at me in blind rage.
I caught it by the throat with my free hand and slammed it into the wall hard enough to crater concrete. Its illusion shattered on impact, revealing twisted flesh and writhing black veins.
"Listen well," I told it calmly. "I am Cú Chulainn of Ulster. Hero. Hound. Lancer."
I drove the spear through its skull.
Silence returned.
The girl stared at me, frozen in shock.
I turned, lowered the spear, and gave her what I hoped passed for a reassuring smile.
"Run home," I said. "And forget what you saw."
She did not argue.
When she was gone, I looked at the fading ash, then at the city beyond the alley. Towers of glass and steel. Power lines humming like ley lines stretched taut. Invisible eyes watching from Heaven, Hell, and places that had no right to exist.
I felt it then a tug, faint but insistent.
The interest of gods.
Not from a Master but from factions looking to bolster their strengths. Those gods who always see puny humans as below them always looking for them as a source of energy a source of faith. I almost can't hide the displeasure from spreading to my face just thinking about gods who think themselves as above from humans always looking at their gilded throne, those who think of them as immortal, as the untouchables.
"…Tch," I muttered, rolling my shoulders. "So that's how it is."
I had lived once as a man, died as a legend, and been reborn again and again as a weapon.
Now I stood in a world that did not know my name, yet bled just as easily.
If monsters hunted humans here—
Then this world would learn what it meant to loose the Hound.
And this time, I would choose who I fought for.