The street stretched ahead like a scar through Fuyuki's corpse. Broken storefronts gaped on either side, their interiors gutted by fire and whatever corruption had consumed the city. Griswald walked down the center of the road, each footstep crunching against gravel and glass that seemed impossibly loud in the silence.
His hands shook. He shoved them into his pockets. Pulled them out again. The runes on his arms hummed beneath his sleeves—dormant, waiting for the violence that would wake them.
Bait.
The word kept circling his skull. He was bait. Walking meat designed to draw the attention of something that could level a city block with a single volley. The plan made tactical sense and Griswald had agreed because agreeing was the only option that didn't involve everyone dying.
Following through proved far harder than simply agreeing.
But everyone was in position. Everyone except the one person who needed to keep walking.
Griswald counted his steps. Fifty-three. Fifty-four. His grey eyes swept the rooftops, searching for movement in the hellish light that passed for sky here. Nothing. The ruins sat patient and dead around him.
Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine.
He heard it.
That sound. That specific, singular whistle that had carved itself into his memory during their first minutes in this singularity. Air splitting apart ahead of something that moved too fast for the eye to track.
Griswald ran.
No hesitation. No freeze. The plan demanded immediate flight—draw the Archer's attention, keep moving, don't die—and his body obeyed before his mind could manufacture objections. His feet pounded cracked asphalt. His arms pumped. Wind roared past his ears.
The first arrow struck the ground where he'd been standing. The impact kicked a plume of debris twenty feet into the air. Concrete fragments pelted his back. He ducked left, cutting between two overturned cars, and heard the second arrow punch clean through both vehicles in a single shriek of torn metal.
Fast. So goddamn fast.
A third arrow came from above. That impossible curving trajectory he remembered from before—a crimson streak that arced over the buildings and plunged straight down. Griswald threw himself sideways. Rolled. Gravel shredded his palms.
The arrow cratered the road three feet behind him. Shrapnel bit into his calf. Pain. Sharp and immediate. Not deep enough to slow him.
Griswald scrambled upright and kept running. His lungs already burned. His calves screamed. But the whistling came again—multiple tones now, harmonizing into a chord of approaching death—and fear proved a better motivator than fitness.
Four arrows struck the building to his right in rapid sequence. The wall collapsed outward. Brick and mortar cascaded across his path. Griswald vaulted a chunk of masonry, caught his foot on a steel rod, and staggered but didn't fall.
Behind. Above. Left.
The Archer was testing angles. Probing. Each volley came from a slightly different direction, triangulating his movement patterns.
He's learning how I dodge.
Griswald cut right. Dove through a shattered storefront window. Glass tore his sleeve. He crossed the darkened interior in four strides—shelves overturned, merchandise rotting—and burst through the back door into an alley.
The arrow was waiting.
It was embedded in the wall at the alley's far end. Not quivering. Just lodged there, its crimson glow casting bloody light across the narrow passage. A trap designed with the casual contempt of something that considered him prey.
Griswald skidded. Reversed. The arrow detonated.
The shockwave caught him in the back. Threw him forward through the store again. His shoulder clipped a support column. Something cracked—the column, not him, though the distinction felt academic as he hit the floor and slid across broken tile.
Now.
He reached for the runes.
Heat erupted across his arms. The carved symbols blazed white, drinking the kinetic energy that should have shattered ribs. The pain remained—a deep, resonant ache that told him the protection had limits—but he stood. Drew breath. Moved.
The next volley came as he reached the street. Six arrows in a spread pattern, covering every escape route with geometric precision. Griswald picked the smallest gap and threw himself through it. One arrow grazed his thigh. The runes flared, converting what should have been a severed artery into a shallow gash that bled but didn't cripple.
He was running out of street. The road ahead terminated in a collapsed overpass—a wall of rubble and twisted rebar that blocked forward movement entirely. The kill box Cú had identified on their reconnaissance. The place where Archer would commit to maximum firepower, confident his prey was cornered.
The place where the trap would spring.
Griswald stopped. Turned. Faced the direction the arrows had been coming from.
His chest heaved. Blood ran from his thigh and palms. The runes on his arms flickered—dimmer now, their charge partially spent. Behind him, the overpass wreckage sealed off retreat. Above, the crimson sky offered no shelter.
Griswald's knees wanted to buckle. His every instinct screamed at him to find cover, find a hole, find anything between himself and what was coming. Instead he stood in the center of the road, visible, exposed, exactly where he needed to be.
Look at me. Keep looking at me.
Griswald stood in the open kill box, chest heaving, blood dripping from his thigh and palms, and nothing happened. No massive volley. No sky-blackening barrage. Just silence stretching taut as wire across the ruins.
Then a single arrow screamed in from the east.
He dove left. The projectile struck where his torso had been and detonated, kicking a geyser of fractured concrete into the air. Before the debris settled, another came from the west. Different angle. Different trajectory. Testing, always testing.
Griswald rolled and came up running. The runes on his legs ignited.
Heat flooded his calves and thighs. The carved symbols ignited and his stride lengthened. The ground blurred beneath his feet. Not superhuman speed. Nothing close. But faster than his body had any right to move, each step carrying him a fraction farther than physics allowed.
An arrow punched through a wall to his right. He cut left. Another curved down from above in that sickening parabolic arc. He changed direction mid-stride, feet skidding on loose gravel, and felt the heat of the projectile's passage against his back as it cratered the asphalt behind him.
Why won't you commit?
The Archer was fighting conservatively. One arrow at a time. Two at most. Probing shots from rotating positions, never staying in one location long enough for an ambush to work. Each volley arrived from a different compass point, as if the bastard was circling the entire district while maintaining fire.
Griswald's teeth ground together. The plan had been simple. Draw Archer into a concentrated attack—the kind of massed volley that would fix him in position for the seconds Cú and Mash needed to close the gap. But the Archer would not take the bait. He was to controlled. To disciplined. Now he is refusing to overcommit.
Three arrows in quick succession. One from behind, one to his left, and one overhead. Griswald's legs burned as the runes pushed him through the gaps. The first arrow shattered a fire hydrant, sending a column of stagnant water skyward. The second embedded itself in an overturned car and detonated, shrapnel pinging off the runes on his forearms—white flares of absorbed force that left his bones aching. The third curved past his shoulder close enough to singe the fabric of his sleeve.
He stumbled. Caught himself. Kept moving.
Where are you, Cú? Where's Mash?
They should have struck by now. The plan called for Griswald to hold the Archer's attention for two minutes—maybe three—while Cú traced the firing positions through his concealment runes and Mash closed from the opposite flank. It had been longer than three minutes. Far longer. Griswald's internal clock had dissolved in the adrenaline, but his body kept its own count through the burn in his lungs and the acid eating through his quadriceps.
Something had gone wrong. Or maybe nothing had. Maybe the Archer was simply too careful, too mobile, never lingering in one spot long enough for Cú to get a lock. Maybe the plan had always been optimistic and nobody had wanted to say so.
An arrow struck the ground ahead of him. Not behind—ahead. A lead shot, anticipating his trajectory. Griswald planted his right foot and reversed direction. The runes screamed against his shins. The arrow exploded. Shrapnel peppered his back. One fragment bit into his shoulder blade, shallow but sharp. The arm-runes flickered but didn't activate—the hit came from behind, outside their protective geometry.
Keep moving. Just keep moving.
Two more arrows. These came simultaneously from nearly opposite directions—a pincer that left him a corridor barely three feet wide. Griswald threw himself through it. His hip clipped a chunk of overturned curbing. Pain lanced up his side. The runes on his legs pulsed, compensating, converting stumble into controlled skid.
Another arrow. He pushed off a broken lamp post and sprinted. The projectile struck the metal behind him. The lamp post folded in half with a shriek of tortured steel.
The Archer was adapting. The shots came faster now, the intervals between them shrinking. Still controlled—still one or two at a time—but the precision had tightened. Each arrow landed closer. Each gap he squeezed through narrowed by inches.
Griswald's right leg seized. A cramp, or the runes overheating, or both. He staggered. An arrow screamed past his ear—so close he heard the fletching whisper—and punched through a storefront window in a shower of ancient glass.
He forced the leg to work. The rune on his right calf burned against his skin like a brand. The glow had shifted from white to amber. Not a good sign.
Hold on. Just hold on.
His right leg gave out.
The rune on his calf sputtered—amber to dull red—and the muscle beneath it locked solid. Griswald pitched forward, hands scraping asphalt, and for one crystalline moment he lay face-down on the broken road waiting for the arrow that would end it. The whistle. The impact. The nothing after.
It didn't come.
He lifted his head. Blood from a cut above his eyebrow ran into his left eye, turning half the world crimson. His arms trembled. His breath came in ragged, wet gasps that tasted of copper and dust. The runes across his forearms had gone from amber to a sullen orange that pulsed in time with his heartbeat, each pulse dimmer than the last. Cú had warned him the protections weren't infinite. The stone carvings imposed meaning onto reality—but reality pushed back.
He should be dead. The thought arrived with clinical detachment, as if someone else had performed the calculation and handed him the results. Any human being—mage or otherwise—standing in the open against a Heroic Spirit's sustained fire for this long should be a smear on the pavement. Only Cú's runes had kept arrows from finding his heart, his throat, his skull. And now those runes were fading.
Griswald pressed his palms flat against the ground and pushed. His right leg screamed. His left leg merely ached.
Then the night split open.
A column of blue fire erupted from a building four blocks east. It punched through the roof and boiled upward into the crimson sky, scattering embers and burning debris in a radius that swallowed the surrounding structures. The heat reached him even at this distance—a dry, scouring wave that cracked the sweat on his face.
No arrows followed. The silence that had wound itself tight around the ruins snapped like a cut string. Griswald listened. Nothing whistled. Nothing curved through the air on impossible trajectories. The killing precision that had dogged his every step simply stopped.
Mash and Cú had found the Archer.
Griswald stood. His right leg buckled and he caught himself against a tilted street sign, hanging there for a moment while his body catalogued its damages. The plan was clear. Explicit. Drilled into him by Cú's sharp tongue and Olga's sharper glare over the past hour. Once the engagement began, he was to withdraw. Find Ritsuka and Olga at the fallback point six blocks south. Stay alive. Stay out of the way.
His legs moved north.
Not a conscious decision. Not a calculated tactical choice. His body simply turned toward the fire and his feet started walking and by the time his brain caught up to scream that this was phenomenally, categorically, irredeemably stupid, he was already running. Over rubble. Through dust. Past the gutted shells of homes where two hundred thousand people had lived four days ago.
The fire had spread. Three buildings burned now, their frames skeletal against the glow. Griswald rounded a corner and saw Cú leaping across the rooftops—a blue streak trailing runic light, staff spinning, moving with the fluid grace of someone born to violence. The Caster landed on a collapsing chimney, kicked off before it crumbled, and caught the edge of the adjacent roof one-handed.
His gaze swept downward. Found Griswald standing in the street below like an idiot.
The smirk appeared. That infuriating, knowing curl of the lip that made Griswald want to apologize and throw a punch in equal measure.
"Couldn't stay away, huh?"
Griswald opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"I—the plan—"
"Stupid move." Cú dropped from the rooftop. Three stories. He landed in a crouch that barely bent his knees, the fur-lined cloak settling around his shoulder. His staff planted against the ground. Those narrow eyes studied Griswald—the blood, the failing runes, the leg that wouldn't straighten. "Don't hate it though."
Griswald's chest heaved. "What happened? You were supposed to engage two minutes in. It was—it felt like—"
The smirk dropped.
Cú's expression didn't harden so much as empty. The amusement drained from his features like water through cracked stone, leaving behind something flat and tactical that belonged on a different face than the one Griswald had grown accustomed to.
"Tell you on the way."
Before Griswald could ask on the way where, Cú closed the distance in a single stride. One arm hooked beneath Griswald's shoulders. The world lurched. His feet left the ground. Cú's body coiled like a spring and the rooftop rushed toward them—wind, vertigo, the sick drop in his stomach—and then they were up. Tiles cracked under the impact. Cú didn't pause. Another leap. Another rooftop. The burning city wheeled below them in streaks of orange and red and the deep corrupted black of whatever poison had killed Fuyuki.
Griswald clung to Cú's shoulder. The Caster's arm was iron around his ribs. Each jump carried them forty, fifty feet, the gaps between buildings swallowed in single bounds that defied the body making them.
Cú's voice cut through the wind as they sailed between rooftops, matter-of-fact as if he were discussing the weather rather than a tactical disaster.
"Archer's not like the others. The corruption hit his Spirit Origin, sure—but it didn't eat his brain. Saber just stands there guarding the Grail like a statue. Lancer was a rabid dog. But this one?" Another leap. Griswald's stomach dropped. "This one thinks."
They landed on a sloped roof. Tiles scattered. Cú didn't break stride.
"The moment you stepped into that street, he knew something was off. You were too deliberate. Too exposed. No sane Master walks into a kill box like that without their Servant." The Caster's grip tightened around Griswald's ribs as they cleared a gap that would have killed a normal man. "Every arrow he fired wasn't meant to kill you. He was mapping the trap. Probing for my concealment runes, checking sight lines for your Servant. Each shot was a question, and every time you dodged he got an answer."
Griswald's gut twisted. All that running. All that terror. And the Archer had been studying them.
"So he never committed."
"Not once. Kept rotating positions, kept the shots light, never stayed anywhere long enough for me to get within striking distance. Smart bastard. Frustrating smart bastard." Cú vaulted a chimney stack, boots barely touching the brick. "Mash and I couldn't find a window. Every time we thought he'd settle, he'd relocate. Could've danced like that all night."
"Then what changed?"
Cú's stride faltered. Not physically—his legs never missed a beat—but something in the rhythm of his speech hitched. A half-second pause that said more than the words that followed.
"You fell."
The sentence hung between them.
"Mash saw it. From three blocks out, through two collapsed buildings and a wall of smoke, she saw you go down." Another jump. The burning buildings were closer now, their heat pressing against Griswald's skin. "She broke. Just—broke. Abandoned position, abandoned the plan, went straight for Archer like a launched missile. No shield wall, no defensive posture. Pure aggression."
Griswald's chest tightened around something that wasn't exertion.
"I did my best to back her up. Threw everything I had at the rooftop he was perched on—fire, binding runes, concussive blasts. Forced him to move. But Archer's running now, and your girl is right on his heels."
"Can she catch him?"
"Normally? No chance." Cú's lips split into a grin so wide and so filthy it belonged in a gutter. "But it seems your Shielder's been drinking something out of some stretchy little rubber thing, and whatever's in it is giving her one hell of a boost."
The heat in Griswald's face had nothing to do with the fires.
"I—that's—"
"Didn't say a word." The grin didn't shrink. "Don't need to."
Griswald swallowed whatever mortified response was climbing his throat. The embarrassment was real but distant—a surface flicker across deeper waters. Mash was fighting alone. Mash had broken formation because she watched him fall. Everything else could wait.
They crested a tall apartment complex and the battle opened up below them like a wound.
The Archer moved across the rubble-strewn boulevard in controlled, backward strides. Griswald's first clear look at him stole the breath from his lungs.
Tall. Broad. Built like something forged rather than born. Dark, segmented armor hugged a frame of dense, sculpted muscle—plates of black and gunmetal fitted close across his chest and shoulders, angular and sharp-edged, designed for violence without sacrificing speed. His upper arms were bare, tanned skin traced with red vein-like markings that glowed faintly in the firelight, branching across the muscle like cracks in heated steel. White hair—short, stark, almost luminous against the dark armor—framed a face of hard composure. Amber eyes burned beneath it, one side of his features etched with those same crimson marks. A tattered dark red cloth trailed from his waist, snapping behind him like a war banner as he moved.
In his hands he held a bow that was nearly as long as he was tall—an elegant, recurved weapon of black and red that he drew and loosed with mechanical precision. Arrow after arrow screamed from the string, each one a streak of crimson light aimed at the blur of navy and purple that refused to stop closing the distance.
Mash.
She was fast. Faster than Griswald had ever seen her move. Her shield caught arrows mid-flight, deflecting them into walls and pavement where they detonated in staccato bursts of shrapnel. She closed ground with each deflection—ten feet, fifteen—boots hammering rubble, her body low and driving forward behind that massive cross-shaped barrier.
The Archer loosed three arrows in a fan pattern. Mash angled her shield, caught all three on its face, and used the explosion's concussive force to launch herself forward. She covered thirty feet in a heartbeat. The Archer's eyes widened—the first crack in that composed mask—and he leapt backward onto a collapsed wall, drawing again.
Griswald saw it then. Dangling from Mash's lips, pinched between her teeth as she charged—a torn, translucent rubber membrane, its contents half-drained, slick and glistening in the firelight.
A condom. Still hanging from her mouth like a ruptured wineskin.
She bit down. Swallowed. She blazed violet, raw power flooding her limbs, and she surged forward again.
The Archer retreated across the boulevard in measured backward strides, bow singing, and Mash ate the distance between them like a thing starved.
Every arrow he loosed, she answered. A spiraling cluster of crimson projectiles fanned wide to catch her flanks—her shield swept left, then right, deflecting each one into the rubble where they detonated harmlessly against already-dead concrete. He switched to heavy penetrators, single bolts glowing white-hot with concentrated mana, each one striking with enough force to crater the street. Mash planted her feet and took them on the shield's face. The impacts drove her boots backward through gravel, carving twin furrows in the asphalt—but she held and found her rhythm.
Absorb.
Advance.
The Archer's amber eyes narrowed. He drew three arrows simultaneously, held them at different angles against the string, and released. They split into nine mid-flight, fanning into a swarm that covered every approach vector. Mash dropped low, let two sail over her head, deflected four with a spinning sweep of her shield, sidestepped two more, and took the last on her gauntlet. The projectile shattered against the dark armor. Sparks cascaded across her bare shoulder.
She didn't flinch.
Griswald watched from the rooftop, mouth open, chest still heaving from the run. This was not the desperate scramble he remembered from their first minutes in Fuyuki. No frantic blocking. No buckling knees. No whispered apologies for shields raised a fraction too slow. Mash moved with a fluid certainty that made the Archer's killing precision look almost pedestrian—reading trajectories before the arrows left the string, positioning herself where the gaps would be before the gaps existed.
She was winning.
"Well now."
Griswald glanced sideways. Cú stood at the roof's edge, staff planted, watching the battle below with an expression Griswald couldn't parse. Not his usual smirk. Not the flat tactical mask he'd worn during the rooftop sprint. Something between the two—a strange, searching look that belonged to someone watching a puzzle rearrange its pieces into an unexpected shape. His narrow eyes tracked Mash's movements with an intensity that had nothing to do with admiration and everything to do with calculation.
"What?" Griswald asked.
Cú didn't answer immediately. His gaze followed the Archer as the white-haired Servant vaulted a collapsed wall, gaining distance, bow already drawn for another volley. Mash pursued without hesitation. Shield forward. Boots hammering rubble. His eyes went to Griswald for a moment before darting back to the fight.
"Plan might still work," Cú murmured. Half to himself. The words carried the cadence of someone fitting a thought together in real time, testing its weight before committing.
Griswald stepped closer. "What do you need?"
The question came out harder than he intended. Firmer. Something in his chest had solidified during that rooftop sprint—during the fall, the silence where an arrow should have killed him, the knowledge that Mash had broken formation because she saw him go down. He was done lying on pavement waiting for rescue. Done being the variable that complicated every equation.
Cú's strange expression cracked. The smirk returned—smaller than usual, but genuine.
"Go help your Servant."
"That's it?"
"That's everything." Cú was already turning, cloak swirling, staff spinning into a ready grip. "Keep Archer's attention forward. Both of you. Don't let him look behind." He crossed the rooftop in three strides, heading back the way they'd come. "And kid—"
He paused at the edge.
"—trust her."
Then he was gone. A blur of blue and gold sailing across the gap between buildings, vanishing into the smoke and firelight.
Griswald stared at the empty space where Cú had stood. No explanation. No tactical breakdown. No smirking lecture about the inadequacies of modern mages.
Just go help your Servant.
He looked down. The battle had moved half a block south. Mash closed on the Archer's position with relentless pressure, her shield catching everything he threw. The Archer's composed mask had cracked further—his retreating strides were longer now, more urgent, each volley fired faster than the last.
Griswald found the fire escape. Rusted metal groaned under his weight. His right leg screamed with every rung—the dead rune on his calf a cold spot amid the ache—but he descended. Hit the alley floor. Rounded the corner into the boulevard.
Mash saw him first.
Her visible eye—the one not veiled behind lavender hair—went wide. Joy and terror collided in that single violet iris, each emotion fighting for dominance across features still locked in combat focus.
"Senpai!"
The word rang across the shattered street.
The Archer heard it. His head snapped toward the sound. Those amber eyes—burning with corruption, traced with crimson marks that mirrored the veins along his bare arms—found Griswald standing in the open. Alone. Unshielded.
His bow turned.
The string drew back. A single arrow materialized between his fingers, brighter than any he'd fired before, its tip condensing light into a point so concentrated the air around it warped.
Aimed directly at Griswald's chest.
Then arrow screamed toward his chest.
Griswald's eyes went wide. His body locked—muscles seizing, lungs frozen mid-breath, every nerve firing a single unified signal that translated roughly to this is how you die. The point of condensed light filled his vision, warping the air around it into a heat-shimmer lens that made the ruined street behind it ripple like water.
Then Mash was there.
He hadn't seen her move. One heartbeat she was forty feet away, mid-stride, shield angled against the Archer's previous volley. The next she stood between him and the arrow, planted like a pillar driven into bedrock. Her shield filled the world and the arrow struck its center with a sound that cracked the air itself.
The detonation kicked a shockwave outward. Griswald's feet left the ground. He hit the street on his back, slid three feet, and gasped as the impact drove what little air remained from his lungs. Chunks of asphalt rained around him. Dust billowed. Through the haze he saw Mash still standing, boots gouged six inches into the road, her arms locked rigid against the shield's grip. The metal surface glowed cherry-red at the point of impact.
She turned her head. Lavender hair swung across her face. That single visible eye found him—wide, searching, brilliant with panic.
"Senpai, are you—"
"He's running."
The words came out flat and immediate. Not brave. Not commanding. Just the observation his eyes had made before his brain could dress it up in anything softer. Past Mash's shoulder, through the dissipating dust cloud, the Archer had already pivoted. His tattered red cloth snapped behind him as he moved—not the controlled backward retreat of before but a genuine withdrawal, long strides carrying him south along the boulevard. His head stayed turned, amber eyes locked on the two of them over his armored shoulder, bow held loose at his side.
Watching. Calculating. Even in retreat the bastard was gathering information.
"Mash. Engage."
She didn't hesitate. Her boots exploded from the cratered asphalt and she launched forward, shield tucked against her leading shoulder, driving toward the Archer like a battering ram loosed from its chains. The distance between them shrank—thirty feet, twenty, fifteen—
The Archer's bow came up. Drew. Released.
Two arrows. One at Mash. One curving wide around her shield in a shallow arc aimed at the man standing unprotected in the street behind her.
Mash read the trajectory. Her charge broke. She pivoted, planted, and swept her shield through a hundred-eighty-degree arc that caught both projectiles—the direct shot on the shield's face, the flanking arrow on its edge. Twin detonations rocked her sideways. By the time the smoke cleared, the Archer had gained another forty feet.
He fired again. Three arrows this time. Two at Mash, one threading the gap between a burned-out car and a toppled streetlight, aimed squarely at Griswald's midsection.
Mash abandoned her advance. She threw herself backward, interposing the shield between the flanking arrow and Griswald. The projectile struck and detonated. She caught the remaining two on the recovery—one deflected high, one absorbed on the shield's lower quadrant. Her boots skidded. Gravel sprayed.
The Archer gained another thirty feet.
He's using me.
The realization hit Griswald like a physical blow. Every arrow aimed at him forced Mash to choose—advance or protect. She chose protect every time, without hesitation, without calculation. The Archer had seen her break formation when Griswald fell. He saw the pattern clearly now. All he had to do was threaten Griswald and Mash would heel.
Arrow after arrow. The pattern repeated with mechanical cruelty. Two at Mash, one at Griswald. Mash retreating to shield him. The Archer gaining distance. Opening the gap. Bleeding their momentum dry one volley at a time.
Griswald's hands clenched at his sides. His nails bit into already-torn palms.
Why did Cú send me down here?
The question burned. Cú had watched this fight from the rooftop. He'd seen Mash's capabilities, tracked the Archer's patterns, calculated the angles with that sharp tactical mind. He knew what would happen if Griswald inserted himself into the engagement. Knew the Archer would exploit the vulnerability. Knew Mash would sacrifice her offensive pressure to protect a Master who couldn't protect himself.
I'm making it worse. I'm the reason she can't close. I'm the anchor dragging her—
Another arrow curved toward him. Mash intercepted. The Archer gained ground.
Trust her.
Cú's last words. Spoken at the rooftop's edge with that small, genuine smirk. No tactical explanation. No contingency plan. Just two words that meant nothing and everything.
Griswald stopped.
His legs stopped trying to find cover. His arms stopped reaching for walls to hide behind. His body stopped flinching at every whistle and crack. He stood in the open street, blood on his face, runes guttering on his forearms, and watched Mash fight.
She caught an arrow on her gauntlet. Sparks cascaded. She didn't flinch. Another came from the left—she read it before it arrived, shifting her weight, presenting the shield's broadest face. The impact rocked her. She absorbed it. Advanced two steps.
The Archer fired at Griswald.
Mash moved. Shield up. Deflection. Back to the Archer. Two steps forward.
Again. Arrow at Griswald. Mash intercepted. Two steps forward. Arrow at Mash. Deflected. Three steps forward. Arrow at Griswald. Shield. One step. Two. Three.
The pattern held. Arrow at Griswald. Mash intercepted. Two steps forward. Arrow at Mash. Deflected. Three steps forward. The gap between Shielder and Archer narrowed by inches, by feet, by the stubborn geometry of a girl who refused to let either threat go unanswered.
The Archer adapted.
His volleys shattered their rhythm. Instead of the methodical two-for-Mash, one-for-Griswald rotation, he began firing in staggered bursts—three arrows at Mash from different elevations, then a half-second pause, then two at Griswald from angles that forced her to lunge rather than pivot. He started bouncing shots off walls, using ricochet trajectories that curved around her shield's edge. One arrow struck the ground at Mash's feet and detonated upward, kicking gravel into her visor line. She blinked. He punished the blink with a penetrator aimed at her exposed shoulder.
She caught it. Barely. The deflection sent her stumbling right, opening a lane to Griswald that the Archer threaded with a spiraling bolt that would have taken his head if she hadn't thrown her shield arm across the gap at full extension, blocking it on the shield's face. The impact twisted her wrist. She bit down on a sound that wanted to be pain.
The Archer's feet moved backward. Steady. Measured. His amber eyes burned with focused intelligence, tracking both targets simultaneously, adjusting fire rates and angles with the cold efficiency of a machine designed for killing. Each volley forced Mash to choose a different response. Each response cost her a fraction of positioning, a fraction of momentum, a fraction of the advantage she'd built through sheer aggression.
His right boot came down on bare asphalt.
The rune detonated.
Blue fire erupted beneath the Archer's foot in a column of concentrated force that swallowed his lower body and hurled him back towards them. His composure shattered. Arms windmilling, bow wrenching sideways, tattered red cloth igniting at its trailing edge—the Archer pitched through the air in an uncontrolled tumble.
He twisted mid-flight. Caught himself on one hand against a slab of fallen concrete. Rolled. Came up in a crouch, bow already rising—
Cú Chulainn burst through the smoke behind him.
The Caster's grin split his face from ear to ear—not the wry smirk or the knowing curl, but something feral and unhinged and ancient that belonged on the face of a man who'd spent his whole legend running toward things that could kill him. His long blue hair whipped behind him. His staff blazed with stacked runes that turned the weapon into a torch of concentrated blue fire. His eyes were wide and bright and absolutely, completely alive.
"GOT YOU THIS TIME, ARCHER!"
The roar echoed off every broken wall in the district. Cú's sandaled feet hammered rubble as he closed the gap from behind, staff spinning, cloak billowing, that maniac grin never wavering.
The Archer spun. Bow up. String drawn. Arrow forming between his fingers—
"Nowhere to run!"
Cú planted his staff against the shattered street. Both hands locked around the wood. The runes carved along its length ignited in sequence—base to tip, each one brighter than the last, each one pouring power into the symbol above it in a cascading chain reaction that made the air itself vibrate. The temperature plummeted. Then spiked. Griswald's skin prickled with static charge dense enough to taste.
Cú's voice dropped. Not louder. Deeper. The words that left his mouth were not modern language. They were old. Older than the legend that bore his name. They resonated in Griswald's sternum, in the roots of his teeth, in the marrow of bones that had never heard the tongue of druids but recognized its authority nonetheless.
"Is cill tine mo dhraíocht."
"Fathach tine, glas agus beo."
"Díoghaltas na ndéithe."
"Teampall a ghlanann an t-olc ó ghnóthaí an chine dhaonna."
"An té a leagann gach rud…"
"Fear an Tuí — an Dóiteoir Deiridh!"
The ground answered.
Timber erupted from the earth. Not growing—assembling. Massive logs of pale wood punched upward through concrete and asphalt, locking together with sounds like cannon fire. Cross-beams slotted into vertical supports. Joints fused with explosive cracks. A skeleton of wood took shape with impossible speed, rising ten feet, twenty, fifty, a hundred—still climbing, still building, the structure blotting out the crimson sky as it ascended.
Griswald's neck craned back. And back. And back.
The thing stood as tall as any skyscraper he'd ever seen from the ground floor. A colossus of raw timber shaped into the rough approximation of a human form—trunk-thick legs rooted in the demolished street, arms of interlocking beams spread wide enough to shadow an entire city block, a head of knotted wood crowned with antler-like branches that scraped the belly of the burning sky. Its surface crawled with blue fire. Runes blazed across every beam, every joint, every splinter of its titanic frame, casting the ruins below in light bright enough to erase shadows entirely.
Its chest was hollow.
A cage of interwoven timber ribs formed the cavity where a heart should have been—an enclosure large enough to swallow a house, its bars spaced just close enough that nothing inside could escape. The cage gaped open like a mouth waiting to feed.
The Wicker Man tilted forward.
Not slowly. Not with the ponderous grace of something its size should have possessed. It dropped—belly-first, arms spread, the full catastrophic mass of a structure that should have weighed thousands of tons plummeting toward the street with the cage yawning wide beneath it.
The Archer's mask of composure didn't crack. It disintegrated. Every arrow vanished from his hands. Every calculated angle abandoned. His body coiled and he ran—not the measured tactical retreat of before but a full, desperate, flat-out sprint south along the boulevard, red cloth streaming behind him, armored boots pulverizing rubble with each stride.
"MASH!" Cú's voice tore through the thunder of the Wicker Man's descent. "STOP HIM!"
His staff swept forward. Runes detonated along its arc, each one vomiting a concentrated beam of blue-white fire that lanced across the Archer's path. The beams struck the ground ahead of the fleeing Servant—one, two, three—erupting into walls of flame that forced him to dodge left, then right, each correction costing him speed, costing him distance, funneling him into a narrowing corridor of fire and rubble.
Mash moved.
She crossed the distance in a dead sprint that ate pavement in seven-league strides, shield tucked, body low, every ounce of mana burning through her limbs. She cut the angle. Intercepted the Archer's path. Planted her feet in the center of the boulevard and drove her shield forward with both hands.
It caught him square in the chest.
The impact lifted the Archer off his feet. His armor buckled at the sternum. His body flew backward—ten feet, fifteen—boots dragging furrows through gravel before he found purchase and skidded to a halt.
He looked up. The Wicker Man's shadow swallowed the sky above all four of them.
The cage came down.
Timber crashed into the earth with a sound that split the world. The boulevard cratered. Buildings on either side of the street simply ceased to exist, pulverized by the shockwave of impact. Dust and debris erupted in a wall that raced outward in every direction.
Inside the cage, darkness. Then fire. Blue runes ignited along every bar, every beam, flooding the enclosure with light that burned cold and absolute. The timber ribs locked into place overhead, sealing the space. The bars were close enough to touch—massive logs thicker than Griswald's torso, slotted together with runic precision that left no gap wider than a fist as the timber dug into the ground connecting under the soil.
Four figures stood inside the Wicker Man's chest.
Mash. Shield raised. Breathing hard. Her single visible eye darting between the Archer and the cage walls, processing.
Cú. Staff planted. Grin undiminished. Sweat running down his temples, the only sign that summoning a structure the size of a skyscraper had cost him anything at all.
Griswald. Hands shaking. Legs barely holding. Blood drying on his face.
And the Archer. Standing in the cage's center, bow at his side, amber eyes moving from bar to bar to bar with the quiet precision of someone already calculating his next move.
All around them the Wicker Man burned.
Blue fire crawled across every surface—every beam, every joint, every splinter of ancient timber—casting the cage's interior in light that pulsed like a living heartbeat. The flames licked the walls and climbed the bars but the wood refused to blacken. Refused to char. Refused to do anything except glow, the runes carved into its grain drinking the fire and converting it into something that was not heat but authority. The cage existed because Cú Chulainn said it existed, and no force within its walls—not even the fire that birthed it—could unmake what his words had built.
The space inside was smaller than Griswald expected. Forty feet across, maybe fifty. The timber ribs arched overhead in a cathedral dome of interlocking logs, each one thicker than a man, each one blazing with stacked runes that turned the enclosure's ceiling into a constellation of blue-white script. The floor was cratered asphalt and packed earth, the street they'd been fighting on moments ago now sunken and compressed beneath the Wicker Man's colossal weight. Shadows didn't exist here. The fire eliminated them—every angle illuminated, every surface exposed, nowhere to hide and nowhere to run and nowhere to be anything other than exactly what you were.
Cú Chulainn laughed.
Not the smirk. Not the knowing chuckle. Not even the feral battle-grin from his charge. This was a full, unrestrained, belly-deep laugh that bounced off the burning walls and filled the cage with a sound so purely delighted it bordered on unhinged. His staff rested against his shoulder. His head tilted back. Tears—actual tears—gathered at the corners of those narrow, gleaming eyes.
"Ha!" He wiped his face with the back of his glove. "Do you have any idea—" Another laugh interrupted the sentence. He tried again. "—any idea how long I've wanted to do that to you?"
The Archer said nothing. His amber eyes moved from bar to bar. Measuring.
Cú didn't care. The laughter kept spilling out, each wave feeding the next, a man so thoroughly pleased with himself that the burning cage around him might as well have been a warm hearth. He pointed at the Archer with his free hand, finger jabbing the air between them.
"Even back then—even when our Masters' wills were aligned and we fought side by side like good little Servants—I wanted to drop this thing right on your smug head." He wheezed. Planted his staff to steady himself. "Every single time you opened your mouth with that snarky bullshit, I thought, one day, Hound. One day you'll get him inside the pyre."
The Archer's expression remained flat. Composed. He glanced at the timber ribs overhead, then at the burning walls, then at Mash and Griswald who got behind Cú's shoulder.
"Charming accommodations." His voice was dry as old bone. "Though I notice we're all in here together. Was this the plan, or did you just want to keep me company?"
Cú's laughter tapered into a grin that split his face. He shrugged—an easy, loose-shouldered roll that belonged on a man lounging at a bar rather than standing in the ribcage of a burning colossus.
"You're just that special. Most people?" He jerked his thumb at the blazing walls. "I throw them in and let the fires handle the rest. Quick. Clean. Nothing personal." The grin sharpened. "But you're so squirmy, Archer. Couldn't pin you down all since I started hunting you. So you get the personal treatment."
The Archer's lips curved. Just barely. "Lucky me."
Cú's shrugged, his staff swung down from his shoulder. He leveled it at the Archer's chest, the carved runes along its length pulsing brighter. The laughter was gone from his voice now, replaced by something that was still warm but carried an edge beneath it. "Well… lets end this hunt shall we."
Mash shifted beside Griswald. Her shield rose. Her feet set wide, weight dropping into her stance, the cross-shaped barrier angled forward and ready. The fading glow of mana still clung to her limbs—violet traces that pulsed in time with her breathing.
The Archer studied the staff aimed at his chest. Studied Mash's shield. His gaze swept the cage—forty feet of sealed timber, burning bars on every side, the ceiling too dense to breach and the floor too solid to tunnel. His amber eyes completed their circuit and returned to Cú with something that might have been appreciation.
"You're right. This is a smaller space." That bare curve of his lips widened into something genuine. "Can't really gain any distance and long-distance fighting wouldn't be particularly useful in here, would it?"
Cú's grin held.
The Archer tilted his chin toward Griswald and Mash. A casual gesture, almost lazy. "Which is why you brought them. Close-quarters support. Your fire. Her shield. Smart."
His bow dissolved.
The weapon came apart in his grip like smoke dispersing—motes of blue mana scattering from the string, the limbs, the grip, each particle winking out as the elegant recurved weapon unmade itself between his fingers. His hands opened. Empty.
"Good thing, then."
His right arm extended.
Red mana poured into it.
It flooded the Archer's outstretched hand in a torrent of crimson light that coiled around his forearm and condensed between his fingers with a sound like a blade being drawn across stone.
Griswald's stomach dropped.
The feeling hit him before the weapon finished forming. Not fear—something older. Something that bypassed thought entirely and spoke directly to the animal buried in the foundation of his brain. Every hair on his body stood rigid, each follicle tightening against his skin like a thousand tiny fists clenching in unison. His scalp prickled. The back of his neck burned as if someone had pressed a heated coin against the vertebrae there. His skin crawled with voltage that had no source. The runes on his arms—already dim, already failing—flared once and went dark, as if the carved symbols had encountered something they refused to touch. The sudden absence of their warmth left his forearms cold, almost numb, and in that numbness he felt the truth of it settle into his bones like ice water filling a mould.
Something wants me dead.
Not him specifically. Not Griswald Von Garmisch, failed applicant, third-rate healer, the middle child nobody remembered. Something wanted everything dead. Every breathing thing inside this cage. Every pulse, every heartbeat, every warm and living body that dared to exist within reach of that crimson light.
It saturated the air inside the cage. Madness. Bloodlust. A killing intent so dense and so absolute it had weight, pressing against Griswald's chest like a hand, squeezing the rhythm from his heart until each beat felt like a labour, a conscious choice his body was being forced to make against its own survival instincts. His lungs refused to expand properly. The air itself had thickened—soupy, resistant, carrying with it a smell that shouldn't have existed: old iron and wet earth and something sweetly rotten beneath both, the scent of a wound that had been left to fester in the dark. He could feel it on his skin now, that intent, like humidity made from malice, clinging to every exposed inch of him, seeping through the weave of his uniform.
The blue fire on the walls flickered. The runes on the timber bars stuttered in their glow, fighting against a presence that corroded meaning itself. Griswald heard them—actually heard the runes—emitting a thin, high whine like glass being stressed past its tolerance, a sound that vibrated in his teeth and settled behind his eyes as a dull, spreading ache.
The mana solidified.
In the Archer's hand: a spear. Long. Crimson. Its shaft the deep arterial red of blood that has not yet learned it's been spilled. The blade was serrated—jagged teeth of condensed malice running along its edge in patterns that suggested not craftsmanship but hunger. The weapon existed in a way that made the air around it wrong, as if reality had developed a wound and the spear was the thing that refused to let it heal.
Griswald looked at Cú.
The laughter was gone. The grin was gone. The warmth, the irreverence, the playful ease that defined every interaction since the moment they'd met—all of it had been scoured from Cú Chulainn's face as if it had never existed. What remained was not cold. It was hot. Incandescent. A fury so pure and so compressed it had passed through anger and arrived somewhere beyond it—a place where the only expression left was the one carved into his features now.
Lips peeled back from his teeth. Not a snarl. A baring. The tendons in his neck stood taut as bridge cables. His pupils contracted to pinpoints inside irises that blazed with a light that had nothing to do with the runes on his staff. His posture dropped—shoulders forward, weight low, spine curved—the stance of something that walked on four legs before it learned to pretend otherwise.
The Hound of Ulster looked at the spear in the Archer's hand, and for the first time since Griswald had known him, Cú Chulainn was not smiling.
The Archer pointed the serrated tip at Cú's chest.
His smirk widened.