The heavy, iron-wrought gates of Vaucouleurs groaned open, marking the dawn of the final crusade.
A thousand surviving soldiers of the French militia marched out into the scorched wasteland. They were battered, their armor dented and faces streaked with soot, yet they moved with singular, unwavering purpose. At the vanguard rode Jeanne d'Arc, her silver armor gleaming defiant against the gloom. She held her holy flag high, its golden radiance acting as a beacon of hope that pierced the suffocating, ash-choked sky. Alongside her marched the Servants, moving in rigid, disciplined two-man tactical cells.
But their Fujimaru did not march beside them.
Miles away, high above the bruised clouds, Fujimaru operated as an undetectable phantom. Combining high-tier runic reinforcement with advanced spatial concealment, he cast Fly and Invisibility. He completely erased his mana signature, suppressed his life force, and masked his physical presence. Tearing through the sky at supersonic speeds, he became a silent ghost orchestrating the Dragon Witch's downfall.
He arrived to Lyon find the same crushing desolation that plagued all the corrupted territories a sprawling sea of shattered ruins drowned in lingering curses. At the epicenter of the chaos loomed the colossal, grotesque anatomy of Demon God Saleos.
Fujimaru descended, effortlessly bypassing the Pillar's twisted perception. Because he carried zero killing intent and was not actively channeling an offensive spell, the Demon God's passive defenses remained dormant. He landed directly at the base of the massive, pulsating pillar of flesh. Slowly, deliberately, he pressed his gloved hand against the rotting tissue.
"Silent Delay Boosted Magic: Gate."
A complex, multi-layered spatial etched itself into the Demon God's flesh. It was heavily amplified, completely invisible, and bound to a strict time-delay. Because it was merely a dormant transport beacon rather than an attack, the city's self-destruct fail-safe did not trigger.
Without making a single sound, Fujimaru pushed off the tainted earth and vanished back into the sky, leaving Saleos completely oblivious to the explosive death sentence now fused to its core.
He became a blur across the French countryside, executing his infiltration circuit with cold, mathematical perfection.
In Bordeaux, he slipped past swarms of patrolling familiars to plant the second invisible seal directly onto the core of Demon God Ipos. In Montluçon, he glided through the dense, toxic miasma, tagging the writhing mass of Demon God Botis. Finally, descending upon the ruined harbor of Rouen, he silently etched the fourth and final spatial matrix onto Demon God Bathin.
Four cities. Four Demon God Pillars. Four dormant, city-killing singularities perfectly rigged to his command.
The board was set. The trap was absolute.
With his mission flawlessly executed, Fujimaru shifted his trajectory. Pushing his magic to their maximum velocity, the invisible phantom tore across the sky, racing to catch up with Jeanne d'Arc and the marching French army just as the towering, dark spires of Orleans finally breached the horizon.
The dark spires of Orleans pierced the bruised sky like the jagged teeth of a dying beast.
At the edge of the corrupted wasteland, the French militia finally ground to a halt. A heavy, suffocating aura bled from the capital city, thick enough to choke the breath from mortal lungs. Swarms of black-scaled Wyverns circled the peaks of Jeanne Alter's palace, forming a living hurricane of draconic malice.
But the true nightmare stood at the absolute edge of the city limits.
Waiting for them was Vlad III. The Lord of Impalement stood with his arms crossed, his heavy black coat billowing in the toxic wind. Behind him, thousands of massive, blood-red stakes jutted from the cursed earth a grim warning to any who dared approach. His crimson eyes locked onto the advancing army, glowing with the absolute, immortal authority granted by his Demonic Defender of the State (EX Rank).
"Halt!" Jeanne d'Arc commanded, raising her hand. The militia obeyed instantly, their spears trembling slightly in their hands.
"So this is the vanguard," Archer murmured, stepping up beside her, his sharp eyes analyzing the sheer volume of chaotic mana radiating from the vampire king. "Even from here, his Saint Graph feels completely unassailable. He's tied directly into the city's leylines."
"He's a literal fortress," Cú Chulainn grunted, spinning his staff. "If we charge him conventionally, those stakes will turn this army into a pincushion before we even scratch the city walls."
Suddenly, the air directly beside Mash violently displaced.
With a sharp crack of displaced atmosphere, Fujimaru dropped his Invisibility. His boots hit the scorched earth, kicking up a small cloud of ash. The azure runic circuits on his skin were glowing fiercely, venting the excess heat from his supersonic flight.
"Senpai!" Mash gasped, relief washing over her face as she tightened her grip on her shield. "You made it!"
"Barely," Fujimaru exhaled, adjusting his collar as he stepped to the absolute front of the formation. His cold, predatory gaze locked directly onto Vlad III in the distance. "The infiltration was successful. All four spatial matrices are planted and dormant."
Jeanne gripped her holy flag tightly, her sapphire eyes reflecting the dark spires of the city she had once sworn to protect. "Then... the trap is set?"
"It is," Fujimaru confirmed, his voice devoid of any hesitation. He raised his right hand, his command spells glowing with a dangerous, brilliant crimson. "Mash, Jeanne. Deploy maximum defensive perimeters immediately. When I pull the trigger, the shockwave is going to hit us like a tsunami."
"Understood!" Mash rushed to the front, slamming the base of her massive cross-shield into the dirt. "Lord Chaldeas: Virtual Noble Phantasm Pseudo-Deployment: Foundation of Human Order (D Rank)
While Jeanne planted her flag, igniting her spiritual core to form a tertiary barrier of golden light to protect the mortal soldiers behind them.
"Luminosité Eternelle: God is Here With Me (Barrier A Rank)"
Vlad III watched the defensive scrambling from afar, his brow furrowing in aristocratic confusion. Why were they locking down into a heavy defensive formation? They were the invading force.
He didn't have time to deduce the answer.
"Checkmate," Fujimaru whispered.
He snapped his fingers, pulsing a singular, heavily compressed surge of mana through the leyline network.
Trigger: Gate.
Miles above the absolute center of Orleans, the sky violently tore open. Not one, but four colossal, jagged spatial rifts ruptured the heavens simultaneously. The deafening sound of tearing space eclipsed even the roars of the Wyvern swarm.
Vlad III looked up, his crimson eyes widening in sheer, paralyzing horror.
Plummeting from the void, directly into the airspace of the Dragon Witch's palace, were the four remaining Demon God Pillars. Saleos, Ipos, Botis, and the final unnamed horror forcefully uprooted from their respective cities and teleported into the absolute heart of the enemy stronghold.
Before the grotesque abominations could even orient themselves to their new surroundings, Fujimaru plunged his hand into the empty space beside him and drew The Pentagram.
The cutlass hummed with blinding, sky-blue light. Fujimaru didn't need to cross the distance; the spatial matrices he had planted on their cores were directly linked to his blade.
He swung the sword in a single, devastating horizontal arc.
"Execute."
Through the spatial link, the absolute curse of Instant Death struck all four Demon Gods simultaneously. The colossal entities froze mid-air, their massive life forces extinguished in a microscopic fraction of a second. They began to crumble into black ash.
And then, four overlapping, city-killing fail-safes activated at the exact same time, directly on top of Jeanne Alter's throne room.
And then, four overlapping, city-killing fail-safes activated at the exact same time, directly on top of Jeanne Alter's throne room.
The first second, the wind completely stopped.
Vlad III, stationed at the outer limits of the city, instantly recognized the apocalyptic density of the mana compressing above the palace. Abandoning his post, the Lord of Impalement launched himself into the air, tearing through the sky to place himself directly beneath the epicenter of the descending doom.
The second second, the ground began to melt like wax beneath the heat of an artificial sun.
Vlad plunged his hands toward the earth and his gaze toward the heavens, forcing his immortal Saint Graph to its absolute breaking point by invoking two Noble Phantasms simultaneously.
"Kazıklı Bey: The Lord of Execution (Anti-Army B)"
With a violent, tectonic earthquake, a massive forest of thousands of colossal wooden stakes erupted from the melting earth. Operating like apex predators, the stakes wove together at supersonic speeds, rushing upward to form an immense, heavily layered canopy over the palace.
"Kazıklı Bey: Bloodstained King Demon (Anti-Unit B+)"
Sacrificing wide-range destruction for concentrated, absolute power, Vlad weaponized his own anatomy. Deadly stakes made of his own hardened bone, flesh, shadows, and hair violently erupted from his body, firing upward like a ceaseless barrage of anti-air artillery.
The third second, the air itself caught fire.
An endless, torrential tide of stakes rushed upward, intercepting the descending singularity point-blank.
The fourth second, the sky split wide open, and the piercing screech of an unknown entity echoed from somewhere beyond the boundaries of reality.
The endless stakes made physical contact with the quadruple fail-safe. The stakes began to instantly vaporize, turning to ash faster than Vlad could regenerate them. The sheer, overwhelming output of four overlapping Age of Gods singularities was too much for even his EX-Rank immortality to withstand. The shield was breaking.
The fifth second—
BOOOOOOM!!!
Absolute destruction. It wasn't just ordinary magecraft; it was a phenomenon from the Age of Gods, an event modern magi could only describe as absolute anarchy. Everything in its radius—buildings, earth, stone, and lingering spirits—was utterly vaporized. The entire capital of Orleans was wiped out in a storm of black and red flames, snuffed out like a candle by a giant's breath.
But as the apocalyptic inferno finally cleared, a singular, impossible sight remained in the center of the miles-wide, glassed crater.
A lone patch of scorched earth, exactly one hundred meters in radius, had survived. Within that tiny sanctuary stood the ruined throne room, the Holy Grail, and the remaining enemy Servants.
Hovering above them was a charred, bleeding, and grotesquely twisted dome of stakes.
To maintain that 100-meter sanctuary against the blast, Vlad III had been forced to do the unthinkable. To fuel his absolute regeneration and keep the Kazıklı Bey stakes growing faster than they were being vaporized, he had willingly shattered his pride as a hero, a king, and a devout man.
He had activated the Noble Phantasm he despised more than anything else in existence.
Legend of Dracula: The Succession of Blood (Anti-Unit Self A+)
Standing amidst the smoking ruins of his stake fortress, Vlad III was no longer the regal Lord of Impalement. He had fully embraced the myth, transforming into the ultimate monster. His physical strength had skyrocketed to terrifying heights, his wounds healing in a blur of twisting shadows and cursed blood, and his eyes glowing with an unholy, hypnotic crimson light.
He had saved the Dragon Witch, but the cost was absolute. He was now a true vampire, cursed with a fatal weakness to sunlight and holy weapons. Also the Demonic Defender of the State (EX Rank) had been sealed meaning he will not immortal anymore.
Descending from the bruised sky, the Chaldean strike force landed at the edge of the 100-meter sanctuary.
Jeanne d'Arc planted her holy flag into the ash, her sapphire eyes narrowing as she felt the vile, corrupted aura bleeding from the transformed king.
Fujimaru stepped forward, his coat snapping in the thermal wind, his azure circuits glowing fiercely against the desolate gray backdrop. He looked at the monstrous, bleeding form of Dracula, and then past him, to the smoldering balcony where Jeanne Alter stood in absolute shock.
"Damn you!"
Jeanne Alter's voice was a ragged, demonic shriek that tore through the suffocating silence of the glassed crater.
Her anger completely bypassed rationality, mutating instantly into raw, violent power. Driven by her Avenger (B Rank) class skill, the sheer magnitude of her hatred physically thickened the air, warping the residual heat of the blast. The dark flames surrounding her charred armor flared into a blinding, corrupted crimson. Her spiritual core, which should have been drained by the shockwave, instead pulsed with boundless, overwhelming energy. Under the terrifying effects of Self-Replenishment (Mana) (A+ Rank), the world itself bled magical energy into her, restoring her to maximum output in a matter of seconds.
"You think you've won because you broke my walls?!" she screamed, her golden eyes burning with apocalyptic fury. She raised her tattered, cursed flag high above her head, the fabric violently snapping in the thermal wind. "I am the Dragon Witch! The sky itself belongs to me!"
She ignited her supreme authority: Dragon Witch (EX Rank).
The 100-meter sanctuary violently trembled. A shockwave of pure draconic mana erupted from her flag, resonating far beyond the borders of the destroyed capital. From the distant horizons, from the surviving outer territories and un-shattered forests miles away, a deafening, unified roar echoed in response.
The pale, ash-choked sky turned black once more.
Thousands of Wyverns, heavily reinforced by her EX-Rank buffs, abandoned their distant posts and converged on Orleans. Their muscles bulged with corrupted mana, their scales hardened to the density of steel. They blotted out the sun, forming a massive, screeching vortex over the crater.
But the Wyvern swarm was merely the herald.
The atmospheric pressure violently plummeted, making it difficult for the Chaldean Servants to even breathe. The black vortex of Wyverns physically parted, giving way to a shadow the size of a mountain descending from the stratosphere.
BOOOOOOM!
The earth fractured and shattered beneath the sheer weight of its landing, the kinetic shockwave throwing a massive cloud of molten stone into the air.
It was a true dragon of apocalyptic proportions. Its scales were as black as the void, absorbing the light around it and radiating a suffocating aura of pure malice that dwarfed the Demon God Pillars. Its massive wings folded against its back like the sails of a phantom galleon.
But the most striking, terrifying detail was located at the absolute center of its chest a massive, glowing blue crest, pulsating with ancient, overwhelming mana.
In the Chaldean vanguard, Siegfried's breath caught in his throat. His golden eyes widened, and the cursed dragon blood pumping through his veins began to boil in violent resonance. He looked down at his own chest, where the exact same blue symbol glowed through the gaps in his armor.
"Fafnir..." Siegfried whispered, his grip tightening around the hilt of his greatsword until his gauntlets creaked.
Jeanne Alter stood behind the colossal beast, a manic, triumphant smile stretching across her face as the Evil Dragon of legend roared, a sound that threatened to tear the very sky asunder.
"Tear them to pieces!" Jeanne Alter commanded. "Leave absolutely nothing left!"
The vortex of Wyverns circling the ruined sky shrieked in unified, deafening bloodlust. Folding their leathery wings, the corrupted beasts dive-bombed the perimeter, raining a storm of fangs and toxic breath upon the terrified French militia.
But the true terror did not come from the skies it came from the earth.
Despite its mountainous size, Fafnir moved with terrifying, physics-defying velocity. The Evil Dragon blurred forward, closing the distance to the Chaldean vanguard in a fraction of a second. Its massive right claw swung in a devastating horizontal arc.
Siegfried raised Balmung just in time, but the sheer kinetic force of the colossal beast was overwhelming. The impact launched the Dragon Slayer backward like a cannonball, sending him crashing through the glassed rubble of the crater. Fafnir didn't hesitate. With a thunderous beat of its wings, the black dragon launched itself into the air, pursuing Siegfried into the desolate ruins.
The fated, one-on-one deathmatch between the Dragon and the Slayer had begun.
Back at the epicenter, the chaos continued to escalate. From the shadows of Jalter's surviving vanguard, Atalanta stepped forward. Her normally fierce green eyes were completely blank, drowned in the dark mana of the Dragon Witch's control.
Drawing her bow, she aimed a single, brilliantly glowing arrow toward the heavens.
"Phoebus Catastrophe: Complaint Message on the Arrow! (Anti-Army B+)"
The sky above the 100-meter sanctuary shattered into a blinding array of green light. Thousands of magically charged arrows descended like a torrential downpour, seeking to impale the entire army in a single strike. The rain of arrows smashed endlessly against the barrier of Jeanne and Mash, shattering into harmless sparks of green mana.
Standing amidst the storm of her own failing arrows, Atalanta's expression twisted into a feral sneer. Her combat instincts immediately recognized that an Anti-Army bombardment was useless against this fortress.
She needed to change her approach. She needed single-target, absolute lethality.
"Agrius Metamorphosis: Boar of Divine Punishment (Anti-Unit Self B+)"
A horrifying, cursed aura erupted from her body as the pelt of the Calydonian Boar consumed her Saint Graph. Her class violently shifted from Archer to Berserker. Her verdant green hair rapidly bleached to a stark, ghostly white. Thick, beastly armor of pitch-black and corrupted pink manifested across her arms and legs, while her torso remained exposed, radiating a suffocating, feral heat.
Atalanta Alter had arrived.
Name: Atalanta Alter
Class: Berserker
Attribute: Earth
Gender: Female
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Class Skills:
Beast Enhancement (B Rank): All parameters are raised by two ranks. Despite granting strength equivalent to an A-ranked Madness Enhancement, the skill's user can remain calm, without losing their reason. However, due to Wild Beast's Logic (B Rank), and there is no way to escape from its shackles.
Independent Action (A Rank): One is able to act even with the absence of their Master. However, in a situation where one decides to use Noble Phantasms and the like that requires an enormous amount of Magical Energy to consume, backup from their Master is necessary.
Personal Skills:
Crossing Arcadia (A Rank): Unmatched mobility across the battlefield. She can fluidly sprint, bound, and vault over any obstacle or enemy in her path with the blinding speed of a wild beast.
Self-Evolution (EX Rank): An improvement skill towards oneself that exceeds Self-Modification. She continues to evolve by the second in order to overcome any kind of obstacle towards the accomplishment of an objective. However, due to being too much specialized for said objective, it holds the demerit of having less applicability than Self-Modification.
Wild Beast's Logic (B Rank): Combat thinking derived from turning into a beast. Although she does not employ skillful maneuvers, speed thinking for the sake of swiftly killing the opponent accelerates. By coordinating with the Self-Evolution skill, the rate of enemy defeats increases even further.
Stats:
Strength C++ | Endurance C++ | Agility A+ | Mana B | Luck E | NP B+
Noble Phantasm:
Tauropolos Skia Thermokrasia: The Arrow that Eclipsed The Somber Sky (Anti-Unit A)
Consuming the Tauropolos used as an Archer, all magic power is poured into a single blow. Instead of an arrow, it should be called a ballistic missile. The devoured enemy is taken into the sticky substance's "darkness" and forcefully absorbed. To resist it, an extremely powerful anti-magic skill is necessary.
Using activated Crossing Arcadia (A Rank). She vanished.
To the mortal eye, she didn't even leave an afterimage. Moving at the blinding speed of a wild beast, Atalanta Alter tore across the battlefield. Her accelerated mind calculated the microscopic, shifting gaps where Mash and Jeanne's overlapping magical barriers perfectly met.
She slipped through the defensive dome like a ghost.
Before anyone could even blink, a heavily armored, clawed hand shot forward, violently clamping shut around Georgios's throat.
"Ghk—!" The holy saint choked, his eyes widening in shock as the Berserker's terrifying grip effortlessly lifted him off his feet.
With a feral, earsplitting snarl, Atalanta Alter didn't stop moving. Using her immense momentum, she dragged the heavily armored Rider violently backward, pulling him entirely out of the sanctuary and plunging them both into the chaotic, burning ruins of the outer crater.
The Chaldean vanguard had just been fractured.
Name: Alexandre Dumas
Class: Caster
Attribute: Earth
Gender: Male
Alignment: True Neutral
Class Skills:
Territory Creation (E Rank): The ability to create a terrain advantageous to one as a magus.
Item Construction (Revision) (EX Rank): Revise the history of an existing object by writing their story, increasing their "Rank" to the level of a pseudo-Noble Phantasm. Since objects with A Rank already have a complete story, Dumas cannot strengthen them further. The Skill fluctuates between E and A+ depending on the object.
Personal Skills:
Era Observation (A Rank): The Skill to observe not humans, but the flow of time and incorporate it into his works. Because he pours this power into the novels he writes rather than into his own attitude, it has little effect on his personal life.
Gourmand (A Rank): A Skill representing a wide range of knowledge, from junk food to palace cuisine, with technique and keen sense of taste to match. Includes hunting and fishing techniques for cooking.
Innocent Monster (E Rank): A Skill given to Servants whose true history and existence have been distorted, affecting their appearance and abilities.
Stats:
Strength C | Endurance D | Agility E | Mana EX | Luck A | NP B
Noble Phantasm:
Musketeers' Masquerade: O' Musketeers, Challenge the Windmills (Anti-Unit A+)
A support-type Noble Phantasm, it allows Dumas to strengthen the target by revising their lives with his personal experiences or moments from hit literary work. Since the ability is about empowering those who face overwhelming power, it usually only works on humans. It can only be used a limited amount of times per summoning and only once per person.
Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine: The Long Unended Epicurean Saga (Anti-Object A)
Ability to increase the "Rank" of existing objects and granting them the status of pseudo-Noble Phantasms through the act of personally writing their stories. This appears to be time-consuming and if an object already possesses Rank A or higher, Dumas cannot strengthen them further as their stories are already complete, meaning he has nothing to add to them.
While the battlefield descended into a series of chaotic, isolated deathmatches, one Servant remained deliberately removed from the frontline slaughter.
Alexandre Dumas was no warrior. As a Caster, his physical parameters were abysmal, but he was a true, unparalleled Support. Standing safely behind the Chaldean lines, he observed the apex of the ruined crater, his sharp, observant eyes analyzing the very foundation of the Dragon Witch.
He saw right through her. He saw the cracks in her existence, the hidden secrets of her Saint Graph that no one else could perceive.
Jeanne d'Arc Alter was not a true Heroic Spirit. She was a fabricated anomaly, a hollow existence born entirely from Gilles de Rais's twisted wish upon the Holy Grail. She was the embodiment of a single, tragic question: What if the Holy Maiden's faith had completely crumbled as the flames consumed her at the stake?
Because she was merely a "What If" variant, she lacked a complex, established history. Her spiritual foundation was fragile and incomplete. This fundamental flaw was the exact reason she could not efficiently process the infinite magical energy of the Holy Grail she possessed. She was a leaking vessel, clumsily bleeding raw mana into the environment and wasting her own terrifying potential.
But because she was a blank page, she was the perfect canvas for the ultimate author.
Dumas smirked, manifesting a blank, leather-bound manuscript. His Noble Phantasm normally only possessed the power to rewrite and elevate the destinies of ordinary humans, not fully established Servants. But Jeanne Alter was different. She wasn't a legend etched into the Throne of Heroes; she was a fabricated character desperately waiting for her story to be written.
"Allow me to give you the one thing you lack, my dear villainess," Dumas whispered, his quill flying across the parchment at blinding speed. "A proper origin."
He activated his Noble Phantasm.
"Musketeers' Masquerade: O' Musketeers, Challenge the Windmills (Anti-Unit A+)"
An invisible, overwhelming wave of conceptual magecraft washed over the battlefield, bypassing the physical clash entirely and striking directly at Jeanne Alter's core.
Reality itself shuddered as Dumas literally rewrote her history in real-time. He took the grand, legendary exploits of the original, true Jeanne d'Arc the miraculous victories, the unyielding charisma, the divine authority over armies and forcefully grafted them onto the Dragon Witch.
He carefully twisted, darkened, and adjusted every single historical detail to perfectly align with her hateful, chaotic nature, effectively giving her the heavy, conceptual weight of a true, lived legend. At the center of the crater, Jeanne Alter gasped. The Holy Grail in her hand flared with a blinding, corrupted crimson light.
The raw, chaotic mana that she had been inefficiently wasting suddenly snapped into perfect, terrifying synchronization. The fabricated gaps in her Saint Graph were instantly filled by the dark, twisted history Dumas had just penned for her. The infinite energy of the Grail finally found a perfect, bottomless vessel.
The dark flames surrounding her did not just burn; they crystallized into a towering pillar of absolute draconic authority. Her presence expanded exponentially, crushing the atmosphere and forcing the surrounding rubble to disintegrate under the sheer pressure of her gravity.
Thanks to the grand author's rewrite, the fabricated shadow had become terrifyingly real. By finally possessing a complete history, Jeanne Alter unlocked her absolute, maximum potential, ascending to her ultimate form as the true, undisputed Dragon Witch.
As the Chaldean vanguard fractured into isolated deathmatches across the glassed, smoking crater, a much quieter, deeply personal tragedy was unfolding on the periphery of the 100-meter sanctuary.
Through the drifting black ash, a slender, elegantly dressed figure stepped forward. Chevalier d'Eon, the legendary spy and knight of France, raised a gleaming silver rapier and pointed the razor-sharp tip directly at Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
A silent, undeniable challenge to a duel.
Normally, the grand musician was a man of eccentric detachment. Mozart viewed war as nothing more than a crude orchestra, observing the violence with a calm, almost maddening composure. He was a pure Support Servant; taunts, threats, and provocations usually washed over him like meaningless noise.
But today, his rationality was completely shattered.
The death of Marie Antoinette had carved a hollow, bleeding void into his Saint Graph. The Queen of France had been his childhood affection, the radiant star of his memories. Knowing that she had been executed by her own people and having to witness her tragedy unfold once again in this Singularity left him raw, grieving, and dangerously vulnerable to provocation.
To see Chevalier d'Eon a Heroic Spirit who fundamentally represented the very French nation that had betrayed, standing before him as an enemy was a trigger he simply could not ignore.
Seeing the musician's usually bright eyes darken with a rare, quiet fury, d'Eon did not press the attack immediately. Instead, the knight lowered their stance and began to swiftly glide backward across the surface of the phantom lake, their gaze locked intensely on the Caster. It was a deliberate, tactical retreat, a lure designed to pull the key Support Servant away from Chaldea's defensive line.
And Mozart took the bait completely.
Without saying a single word, the usually rational Caster broke formation. He ignored the tactical commands of the Chaldean vanguard. His magical baton manifested in his hand, but the usually bright, whimsical notes of his mana twisted into something heavy, dark, and deeply discordant a requiem fueled by pure grief.
He followed the French knight into the obscuring smoke and toxic ash, walking further and further away until the sounds of the main army faded into the background.
The composer and the spy were now entirely alone amidst the scorched ruins of Orleans, abandoning the grand war to settle a duel of vengeance.