[PART 1]
London's sun was buried beneath its permanent thick fog — as always, as it had ever been. Inside the El-Melloi family's private dining room, even the candlelight seemed reluctant to burn too brightly.
Reines El-Melloi Archisorte sipped her tea. Unhurried. Her sharp eyes drifted across the table toward Waver Velvet — her adoptive elder brother, Lord El-Melloi II — who was staring at his cigar like a man contemplating his escape route.
"Brother looks tired," she said at last, ever so sweetly.
"I'm fine."
"Of course." Reines set her cup down with a deliberate, delicate clink. "Then why did the esteemed Lord El-Melloi II use his veto rights to block information access on a foreign teenager? Even the senior Enforcers can't pull up the file."
Waver didn't answer. His cigar smoke drifted upward, slow and unbothered.
"Four Dead Apostles from an ancient faction," Reines continued, as though reading off a menu, "reduced to dust in a single night in Antwerp. No witnesses. Not even a trace of ash." She rested her chin on the back of her hand. "And the name that keeps appearing in every Enforcer report since that night... is Nyx."
Silence.
"So then," Reines smiled, "is my brother — the one who can't fight — still alive because of that child?"
Waver exhaled slowly. "...Have you ever stopped talking, even once?"
"No." Reines lifted her cup again. "Answer the question."
[PART 2]
Six months ago. The Port of Antwerp, two in the morning.
Waver had never been particularly proud of his combat abilities.
But he had always known when a situation was beyond saving — and that night, as the Dead Apostles' Bounded Field sealed tight around the warehouse district, he knew with perfect clarity that this was one of those moments.
Two Enforcers were already down. A third had been taken hostage in a manner he preferred not to recall. Four ancient vampires stood in a circle — creatures who had lived for centuries, eyeing his team like diners perusing a menu.
Waver gathered what remained of his Prana. One last spell. It wouldn't be enough, but at least—
Crash.
Something fell from the roof of the warehouse, twenty meters up. Not floating, not using any spell — just falling, hitting the concrete with full weight, and rising to stand in the middle of the circle as though gravity was a rule that applied to everyone else.
A teenager. Rumpled black jacket. Blue hair, disheveled. Empty hands.
"Run!" shouted the last Enforcer standing. "They're not ordinary Wraiths—"
The teenager was already moving.
Waver had witnessed Servants in combat. He knew what speed beyond human limits looked like. But there was something different here — not graceful or efficient speed, but something more primitive. More dangerous. The boy didn't fight like a trained mage, nor like a disciplined knight. He fought like something that had long lived in a place where losing meant dying.
A silver longsword rose from behind his back.
One Apostle fired a corrosive laser — an attack that could reduce steel to slag in seconds. The teenager didn't dodge. He blocked it with the back of his bare hand.
His body was launched. He hit a steel container, punched through the first wall, the second, and vanished into the dark.
He's dead, Waver thought.
The cloud of smoke and debris slowly parted.
A pair of blue eyes burned through it.
The teenager rose. His jacket was torn in half, blood ran from his temple, and his shoulder was visibly no longer where it was supposed to be. But his aura hadn't weakened — if anything, it had sharpened, as though something inside him had simply decided this didn't qualify as a defeat yet.
He ran back in.
The fight wasn't pretty. Waver watched, barely breathing — the boy slashed, kicked, bit when both hands were pinned. He absorbed every blow as though his body were something replaceable, as long as this moment could be won. One Apostle was slammed into the concrete with a force that should have been impossible for someone his age; the vampire's body shattered like a ceramic statue.
But four against one is a statistic that doesn't care about courage.
A black claw punched through his stomach from behind. Another Apostle struck his chest — Waver heard the sound of breaking bones from ten meters away. The boy's body was hurled across the dock, hit a mooring post, and went still.
The Dead Apostles laughed.
"Foolish human..." One of them approached slowly, its severed arm already fully regenerated. "You think courage can close the distance between our species? Look — your wounds don't heal. Whereas we..."
The teenager knelt. Blood pooled across the dock floor, black beneath the moonlight.
His hand reached into his jacket pocket.
Not a talisman. Not a magic staff. A pistol — unfamiliar design, silver-bodied, bearing no manufacturer's mark that Waver had ever seen.
"A lead bullet?" the Apostle sneered. "How pathetic."
But the teenager didn't aim it at his enemy.
He pressed the muzzle to his own temple.
"Don't—!" Waver shouted without thinking.
"Per... so... na."
BANG.
Waver would never be able to describe precisely what happened next. Not because he didn't witness it — but because something in his perception instinctively refused to process the scene as anything within the bounds of normal.
The gravity across the entire port detonated. Not a metaphor — the concrete floor cracked downward, the surface of the water around the docks was forced upward, and the atmospheric pressure dropped so violently that Waver felt his blood nearly boil beneath his skin.
Then something appeared.
Waver had read descriptions of entities beyond the reach of ordinary Magecraft. Had stood before artifacts from civilizations long extinct, built to honor forces whose names weren't spoken carelessly. Had stood in Fuyuki and watched a Heroic Spirit take form.
None of it had made him feel this — a cold that crept from his spine to his fingertips, as though every part of his consciousness had suddenly, acutely registered how small he was before something that existed entirely outside of any human scale.
THANATOS.
The figure was immense. Surrounded by iron coffins orbiting it like satellites, its chains rang with a frequency that felt like glass shattering inside the skull. Waver watched one of his Enforcers simply collapse — not from any attack, only from hearing that sound.
The Apostles who had been laughing couldn't move.
The sword fell.
It wasn't only their bodies that were destroyed — Waver could feel the difference. A Dead Apostle that died by ordinary means left residue behind: traces of Prana, something that could be validated, catalogued, archived. This left nothing. As though all four creatures had simply never been here at all.
Under twenty seconds.
The silence that remained felt like ears still ringing after an explosion.
The cold blue aura slowly receded. The teenager stood amid the wreckage, his jacket in tatters, blood dried at his temple. Those blue eyes looked at Waver with an expression that — for reasons he couldn't name — read as simply, deeply exhausted.
He walked over.
"Are you Lord El-Melloi II?" His voice was calm. A routine question, like confirming a delivery address. "I was hired for a rescue mission."
Waver stared at him for a long moment.
"...What's your name?"
"Yuki Makoto. Most clients call me Nyx."
[PART 3]
Back in the dining room, Waver stubbed out his cigar in the ashtray.
"After that night," he said, "we talked for quite a while on the edge of the dock, waiting for the medical team. He didn't say much. But when he did speak, he always went straight to the point."
Reines waited.
"I laid out the situation — that his name and abilities had certainly been recorded by various factions after what happened. That without protection from an institution recognized by the Association, he would become a target. Not because they feared him, but because they wanted to know what he was." Waver paused. "He listened. Didn't interrupt. When I finished, he asked one thing."
"What?"
"'What will it cost me?'"
Reines raised an eyebrow.
"Not in terms of money," Waver said. "He was asking what I expected in return. He'd been through it before, apparently — people offering things because they wanted something else." His tone shifted slightly — something even Reines rarely heard from him. "I told him nothing. That I simply didn't want to feel indebted to someone who'd then be killed a month later because no one had protected them."
"And he believed you?"
"Not immediately." Waver picked up his tea, cold by now. "But he accepted. On one condition — he didn't want to come to London. He wanted to enroll in school."
"...School."
"High school. In Tokyo." Waver looked at Reines flatly. "He said the system there was practical for an orphan. Merit-based scholarships, independent dormitories, not many questions about background."
Reines was quiet for a moment. Then, slowly, her smile spread.
"Did he know about your debt?"
"He calculated my monthly installments before agreeing to the protection arrangement," said Waver, in the tone of someone still unable to decide whether to be offended or impressed. "And very politely noted that he had no wish to become an additional financial burden."
Reines' laughter broke — not the polished, measured laugh she used in front of guests, but something genuine, slightly uncontrolled.
"Brother," she said at last, dabbing the corner of her eye, "I believe you've just found the only person in the world more self-aware about this family's finances than I am."
[PART 4] Finale
April. ANHS High School Building — Class 1-B.
Spring sunlight came through the windows, catching the dust motes drifting in the air. At the board, the teacher was explaining basic economics. For most students, it was tedious. For Makoto, it was soothing — a sound that filled the room without demanding anything of him.
Inside his consciousness, that quiet was disturbed.
"Master, when do we train again? I'm starting to rust in this place," came the familiar, rough voice. Cu Chulainn — Setanta — yawned broadly somewhere in his soul, leaning his spear against the wall of his subconscious like a man waiting for a bus. "Even those Enforcers were more exciting than this."
"Be quiet."
Scathach didn't raise her voice. She didn't need to. Her authority felt like the air pressure dropping before a storm. "Let him enjoy this. Peace is not something to be treated as a problem." A brief pause, and then — in a tone just slightly softer — "But don't let your instincts go dull, Yuki Makoto. I won't accept that as an excuse."
Makoto exhaled slowly through his nose. His hand kept moving — pretending to take notes, so the teacher had no reason to call on him.
His eyes drifted to the window.
He always came back to the letter, in moments like this. Not because he doubted what it said — but because there was something strange about it, knowing that someone had made a tremendous decision for him, and that the only thing he felt about it was... relief.
To my most cherished and admired Honored Guest,
Please forgive this presumption.
I know you didn't ask for it. I know that pulling your soul's 'card' from the pile of fate that was meant to be eternal was an act far beyond the bounds of my authority — and yes, my master Igor's eyebrows were raised in a manner that was very, very expressive. But after considerable deliberation (and a certain amount of protocol-adjacent chaos, for which I apologize), I found I could not accept that kind of ending for you.
You completed what was asked of you. More than that — you did it in a way I will never forget. But the world that took so much from you... I suspect it isn't quite done giving something back.
So I moved you.
In this new place, Nyx no longer whispers. You don't need to be a seal, a weapon, or anything other than yourself. Eat warm food. Sleep without nightmares. And claim the diploma you never had the chance to hold — not because it matters to anyone else, but because you once wanted it.
Consider this a supplementary request from me, with no deadline and no penalty for failure.
I wanted so much to come with you — there are so many things I wanted to show you, including the canned beverages that are apparently very popular in this era. But I know my presence would only disrupt the frequency of your new life, and that would be a terribly selfish thing, even by my standards.
Know this: among all the souls who have ever walked through the Velvet Room, you alone are the one who made this manufactured heartbeat of mine feel real.
That will never change.
— Elizabeth.
P.S. If you ever find a caramel-flavored canned drink — save one for me.
"Yuki-kun?"
Makoto gave a small start.
Ichinose Honami was watching him from the next seat over — her expression a mixture of concern and the effort not to look too concerned. "The teacher called your name just now."
"...Ah." Makoto looked forward. The teacher had already moved on, apparently deciding not to wait. "Thank you."
"What were you thinking about?" Ichinose asked quietly.
Makoto considered several answers.
"The convenience store," he said finally. "Something I want to pick up on the way home."
Ichinose laughed softly — the laugh of someone not entirely sure whether that was the real answer, but choosing to accept it anyway. "Ehh — so Yuki-kun thinks about things like that too."
Makoto didn't reply. He went back to writing.
Outside the window, spring in Tokyo carried on as it always did — indifferent, unhurried, unaware that there was someone in the corner seat of Class 1-B who had just begun a second life, and was choosing to spend his first day of it pretending to take notes on basic economics.
Maybe that's enough for now, he thought. Start here.