"Who dares attack the Matou estate?!"
From the darkened hall emerged a bald, hunchbacked dwarf of a man. His limbs were shriveled like those of a mummy, yet his sunken eyes gleamed with a sharp, unsettling light. A foul, rotting stench wafted from him as he hobbled forward in a dull indigo-and-gray kimono, leaning on a wooden cane.
Though his frail frame seemed disproportionate to the pressure he exerted, today his luck was rotten—utterly so.
"With such eyes and such terrifying magical power… you cannot be a magus. You must be a Servant belonging to one of the Masters," the insect user stammered. His tone was less bravado than the desperate rationality of one trying to suppress his fear. "The Holy Grail War forbids attacking ordinary people. If you do this, the Church's supervisor will not let you off…"
"Makiri Zolgen…"
"What?!"
The girl before him, shrouded in darkness, bore beauty that even five centuries of his jaded existence could not dismiss. Yet the words from her lips froze him to the marrow.
"A magus who has lived five hundred years. Abandoned his original body, and shaped new shells from magical insects."
When Satsuki's golden Tenseigan fell upon him, the ancient magus felt—for the first time—his very soul tremble. Before those eyes, his past, his present, and his future were all laid bare. And then, contemptuously, discarded.
For one long accustomed to shadows, it was like being cast suddenly into blazing sunlight, filled with terror and loathing he had not felt for centuries.
Suppressing his fear, he forced a twisted smile and tapped his cane upon the floor. In response, Berserker's body flared with light. Those machine-like eyes turned silently toward Satsuki, his right hand lifting. Six floating spheres merged into a single massive energy mass, which he hurled at her.
Satsuki's eyes widened faintly. These were no ordinary energies—they bore the divine authority of a god.
But it was wasted. As a Servant, Berserker's true strength could not be fully realized.
With a casual wave of her hand, Satsuki erased the blast midair.
After all, she wielded authority over energy itself. Before her, even the projection of a god was laughably weak. Such an outcome was inevitable.
Yet there was value in it. Through her Tenseigan, she discerned his origin.
"From one of the Lostbelts the Chaldeans spoke of, perhaps?"
The sight left the decrepit "Zouken Matou" aghast. He had taken part in the creation of the Grail War itself, alongside the other founding magi. Since his son had summoned this Servant, he had recognized at once its overwhelming strength. Its spiritual foundation was on a plane unlike any Servant of past wars. Such a being could have swept the Grail War with ease.
But the scene before him shattered his understanding completely.
As he tried to force Berserker into further combat, a strange power abruptly severed their link. The magical energy from his painstakingly altered circuits dissolved into nothingness, erased by some force in the air itself.
There was no mistaking it—only the Heroic Spirit before him could do this.
This incomprehensible reality broke what little reason he had left. Rage twisting his face, he glared at Satsuki—heedless of the gulf between their powers.
But this time, his gaze should never have been fixed upon another person—least of all upon her.
Least of all upon Satsuki.
That look made her brow crease. In the next instant, she ignored the Berserker preparing to strike again and unleashed the Vipralopa Domain. Not merely erasing the old man's magical energy as before, but annihilating every one of his magic circuits. Even Berserker faltered, his supply of mana disrupted, his form nearly collapsing into spirit state.
Not every Servant was a Grand Caster. And this head of the Matou family—this insect master—was only sustaining a puppet body made from magical insects. Within the Vipralopa Domain, he could not even muster the mana to keep that body alive.
"W-who are you?! Why do this to me?!"
Zouken Matou could not comprehend what he saw. He had acquired the finest specimen for his experiments, and his inept son had successfully summoned and bound this powerful Berserker that had slumbered like a machine in the cellar. It should have been fortune upon fortune. Why then had everything collapsed tonight? Why could he not even preserve this body?
"Do you want to know why I treat you this way, insect?"
Satsuki raised one hand. Her forefinger pressed down lightly, as though crushing an ant.
A terrible force pinned the decrepit body to the ground. The crest worms bursting from him were flattened into pulp under immense gravity.
From what remained of his mouth came a scream of despair, raw with pain.
"Ahhhhhhh—why… why…?"
The agony was not natural. His body was only an artificial shell, yet Satsuki had deliberately woven into him a debuff—Agony Beyond Endurance. Every nerve burned with inescapable torment.
"It is simple. I know all of your deeds, and I reached a conclusion."
Berserker's mana channels were nearly severed by the Vipralopa Domain, but Satsuki shifted the [Three Divine Kings' Sacred Wheel] in her hand. The Brahma Creation Wheel surged with power, filling Berserker with energy even as it tore the Command Spell's authority from Zouken's soul.
The pain of that soul-rending was worse than dismemberment. Zouken could not even scream now, sinking into death's abyss.
"Centuries, and you gained nothing. A rotting soul in a decayed shell, unwilling to die without leaving a mark, so you turned yourself into insects, parasitizing others to extend your life. And when opportunity came, you squandered it. The girl you defiled with your crude modifications—pathetic to the point I cannot even call it magecraft."
"This… this is… the reason you kill me?"
"No. Of course not." Satsuki's voice was calm. "Your failures stem from limited vision and power. You were not entirely a fool."
"The true reason I kill you—lies in the purpose behind your pursuit of immortality."
"M-my… purpose?"
Most of his face was already crushed, leaving only a quarter intact, one eye rolling to look upon her.
"All the World's Evil. Whatever the outcome, it so happens my Master is that very Evil. Tell me—should I let you live?"
Her finger pressed down.
In an instant, Zouken Matou's body was pulverized into dust.
With the collapse of the insect user disguised as Zouken Matou, Satsuki withdrew the Vipralopa Domain she had set around the area.
Berserker, his mana supply channels altered, was now temporarily under her control. She had intended to use her Tenseigan to trace back the Servant's origin in the Lostbelt he once belonged to, but his true body in that world possessed unusual authority. Her vision revealed nothing useful—only a warped, crimson wasteland.
"It seems your true body holds some power. To let you retire so easily would be far too dull."
As she thought this, the doors of the Matou mansion creaked open. Out stepped a sickly man.
To Satsuki's sight, his body was little better than the old worm she had just crushed. Crest worms had devoured most of his flesh and fused into his nerves. But the infestation had not lasted long enough to erase his human self-awareness entirely.
Still, his left side was almost paralyzed. His arm and leg hung useless. His left eye was blind, the muscles dead. His hair had turned completely white, his skin ashen like a ghost. Beneath his hood was a face nearly ruined beyond recognition.
"Ha… ha… dead. That bastard finally met his end. But…"
"But how could he die so easily?!"
His voice rasped, shredded by the torment of crest worms gnawing endlessly at his body. The only thing keeping him upright was the blazing fire of hatred in his heart, and a faint hope for the future. Yet even he could not tell whether his pain gave him despair—or strength.
Every step was agony, yet by sheer will he reached the remains of what Satsuki had crushed. There, he stomped hard upon a scrap of gray-blue clothing and the powdered remains of a wooden cane.
"Not enough. That man too! That bastard who dared send Aoi's child into such a hell!"
His heart screamed for revenge—absolute and inescapable.
"Kariya Matou." The words came flat and cold from the side. "A life of pain. A destiny of sorrow."
"You…!"
Kariya had noticed the strangely captivating Servant before, but when the crest worms within him had shrieked at his grandfather's destruction, he had been forced to stumble out in his broken state. The sight of those relics had nearly torn away his reason completely.
Only now did he truly focus on this uninvited visitor in the dead of night.
"Are you here to kill me?" A faint smile twisted his ruined face. "That's fine. My life won't last much longer anyway… it's just a pity, for Sakura…"
It seemed his mind was on the verge of collapse. He had entered the Holy Grail War as a pawn, staking his own body in exchange for that little girl's safety. Yet now the one who betrayed him was dead before fulfilling the deal. A blessing, and at once a curse.
For the most cunning villains ensnare their victims' hopes along with their lives. To resist such evil demands courage and sacrifice. And the laws of men seldom stand with you in such struggles.
Gathering her thoughts, Satsuki spoke evenly: "The girl beneath this house—you mean her?"
"You know?" Kariya's ruined eyes widened in shock. From her few words, this Servant revealed knowledge that pierced their secrets, each syllable carrying hidden weight. Against all reason, a fragile thread of hope flickered in his heart.
Satsuki paid no mind to the man's unspoken hopes. She lifted her hand, and the entire Matou estate rumbled with a deafening crash as its very foundations were torn from the earth.
Like Zouken's grotesque magecraft, the structure was monstrous. The upper half resembled a mansion, but the lower half hung beneath it like a massive tumor—an oval, parasitic chamber hundreds of meters wide. Zouken had reshaped it into a nest of worms.
"As expected of its master—disgusting and twisted. A hive that warps life, discarding humanity's essence for a laughable goal."
But to Kariya Matou, the sight was paralyzing. The scale of her power left him dumbstruck.
"Such strength?! Can a Servant truly reach such heights?"
He had braced himself for the Grail War, but before this overwhelming might, his mind faltered. Though he commanded a Servant, he could scarcely provide it mana. Most of the time, Berserker stood idle, draining his life force whenever he stirred. Even sustaining combat for a short time strained him. To imagine an output of this scale was impossible.
Meanwhile, Satsuki had already locked on her target. With a motion, she drew forth a small girl's form from within the tumor-like nest, tearing her free and bringing her to their side.
Then, with a squeeze of her hand, the entire Matou estate crumbled to dust midair under an unseen force.
Her attention fell upon the child. The Tenseigan had already revealed her condition, though no special vision was needed. A single glance at the vacant, broken eyes told of the brutal torment she had endured.
At her appearance, Kariya found strength he should not have possessed. Despite his ruined body, he staggered forward, placing himself between the girl and Satsuki.
"You're a Servant, aren't you? What do you want? If you must kill someone, kill me! I am Berserker's Master!"
Her answer was only a cold gaze. In the golden pupils of her Tenseigan, like six-petaled blossoms, Kariya found himself frozen, unable to move or speak.
"Your life has been wasted, yet at least learn when to hold your tongue."
With those merciless words, she lifted him by gravity until he hovered before her. "Here is my offer: I will restore this girl's life. I will purge her body of the crest worms and erase her memories of pain. In return, Berserker's ownership passes to me. If you agree—blink."
Kariya's eyes widened. Then, desperately, he began to blink over and over.
"Then it is settled."
Satsuki released her hold on him and turned her gaze to the girl. A flick of her wrist set the [Three Divine Kings' Sacred Wheel] spinning. Blue light flared—Authority of Status Manipulation—and bathed the child. At once, the worms' foul magic vanished as though it had never been. Her body and magical circuits were wholly restored, her very being cleansed.
Her complexion shifted, brighter than before, life returning where there had been none. Then Satsuki invoked the long-unused Judgment of the Ten Kings: Veil of Light and Shadow. Her eyes pierced into the girl's vacant gaze. Freed from torment, she at last drifted into a dream without pain.
Beside them, Kariya's eyes overflowed with disbelief. Released from her restraint, he crawled frantically to the girl's side, gathering her gently into his arms.
"Sakura… Sakura…"
Once, he had thought himself strong. The worms' torture he had endured. The sacrifice of life into mana for Berserker he had accepted. To save Sakura, he had long abandoned his own life. Nothing could deter his resolve to protect her. That was why he had agreed to his repulsive grandfather's terms, why he had joined the Grail War.
And now, at last, as he listened to the fragile, dreamlike sound of the girl's peaceful breathing, the tears he had long suppressed spilled from his eyes.