He left carrying Miss Illyasviel's Holy Relic.
His mind was in pieces.
Having confronted his own heart directly, and having stumbled into an understanding of where Miss Illyasviel had come from, he had become something like a machine that had lost its sense of the future — whether it accepted or rejected anything made no real difference anymore.
Self-loathing. Self-hatred. Paralyzed, not knowing what to do. Spiraling into collapse. That was the state of Emiya Kiritsugu's mind. So what if he had won the Holy Grail War? So what if he had thrown away everything and laid hands on the omnipotent wish-granting device? The answer the Grail had written for his life was laughably cruel. Saving humanity meant exterminating humanity.
Savior and destroyer. Two things that should have stood in absolute opposition had been collapsed into one.
He had wanted to save the world. He had wanted to save Illyasviel. But he could do neither.
What had any of this been for? He had fought to the very last — and still walked away with nothing.
He could not change the malice inside human hearts. He could not change this ugly and tragic world.
"It's alright. A person can survive alone..."
"It's alright. Even alone, a person can find happiness..."
But what Kiritsugu didn't know was that the ending he found unbearable to accept — a certain small girl felt exactly the same way. She could not accept her own death, and even less could she accept that the omnipotent wish-granting device was this — something so numbingly pointless. She had tried so hard. She had done everything right. Why couldn't she have even the most basic peace at the end? Why did she have to witness this — the malice of the world — before her eyes closed?
It was unfair.
And unreasonable.
Inside the Einzbern Castle, where cold snow drifted through the air, Miss Illyasviel sat back down at her little table, propped her face in her hands, and continued tasting the cake and rough tea that held nothing but bitterness and nausea. Her expression was exactly what it always was — easy, relaxed.
But whether what she was actually thinking matched what she had told Kiritsugu, no one could say. She was, in a certain sense, one of the most desperately wish-driven madwomen in the room. And what kind of madwoman was ever truly normal?
"Nothing but conviction, and no power to act on it. In the end, nothing but self-gratification."
"This is the end of the line for human beings. He is a failure. And you are all failures."
Irisviel's voice reverberated through the castle — mocking, sneering. She was back. Briefly stunned after being killed by Kiritsugu, but recovering now. Her vessel had taken serious damage, so she couldn't wear Irisviel's face anymore. She appeared in her truest form instead.
And that truth was simple malice. Unlike Irisviel's twisted version of goodwill, the real will of the Holy Grail was pure evil — the existence born from contamination during Fuyuki's Third Holy Grail War, corrupted by a single Heroic Spirit long ago.
"Why keep trying to get up? My dear Illyasviel. No matter how much you struggle, the outcome won't change. Are you afraid that once Kotomine Kirei is dead, no one will know your true name — and therefore no one can summon you in the next Holy Grail War? Or are you trying to give him a direction to keep moving in? Pointless. You and he are both just sore losers who can't accept defeat."
Black-red mud dripped slowly from the ceiling, coalescing into tendrils like plant roots — growing, spreading, forming the shape of Irisviel from the edge of the cold bed.
She settled onto that frozen mattress. Around the room, the faces of the dolls seemed to come to life, wearing expressions straight out of a horror story — giddy and unsettling — as they all turned their heads in unison toward the silver-haired girl in the center of the room, who appeared entirely indifferent to their attention.
Yes. A loser. Just like Emiya Kiritsugu.
She had to admit it now — she had been deceived. This girl had been fully conscious the entire time.
She had simply chosen not to engage. Not an inability — a deliberate choice.
But what did that matter? This girl had lost, and lost more completely than even Kiritsugu. At least he had technically claimed the Holy Grail, however briefly. This one hadn't even had the chance. She had no choice but to place her hopes in a hypothetical "next time" and play the pitiable creature.
"Yawn. Are you done, Lady Irisviel?"
Miss Illyasviel stretched lazily, letting out a drowsy yawn as though deeply tired.
"You want Emiya Kiritsugu to go back in your place. You think you can change the ending of the other version of yourself here? It won't work. He has a contract with the Einzbern family. And he's already under my curse — his days are numbered. There's nothing Illyasviel can change. Nothing she can do."
The black-mud Irisviel's tone remained contemptuous, seemingly furious about Kiritsugu's defiance. As the will of the Grail, she couldn't strike directly at him. But harassing another will within the Grail — Miss Illyasviel — was another matter entirely.
What, are you seriously going to tell me I can't do anything to you either? How much of this Grail do you think you hold? I hold the rest. Whatever you were in life, once you enter this Grail, even a god has to lie flat.
"Change someone else's ending? How odd. Why does even Lady Irisviel seem to think I'm some sort of bleeding-heart fool?"
Miss Illyasviel tilted her head, ruby eyes wide and guileless:
"You know, Lady Irisviel — I'm angry. Really, genuinely angry. Why is the Holy Grail this? Why does my wish for happiness not even get to exist as a possibility? Why, even though I'm already dead, do I have to know the truth and become even more desperate? Why can't even death give me any peace?"
"?"
"A next chance? Wow, I still have a next chance? The Throne of Heroes has no place for me. I'm just some stray with no home who somehow ended up in this Holy Grail War, fighting against legends. For me, there is no 'second chance.' There is only victory or death. If I'm still alive, then no matter what, I will fight forward. So what if it's desperate? I am more afraid of dying than I am of despair! I want to live! No matter what, I want to survive!"
The black-mud Irisviel looked genuinely confused.
But Miss Illyasviel seemed to grow more animated with every word, and once Kiritsugu had gone, she finally dropped the pretense and let a sliver of her suppressed nature show through.
Yes. The Holy Grail War no longer had anything to do with her. She had even lost her Spirit Origin. Every effort she had made, every inch she had fought for, had become a dream she could no longer reach. But both Irisviel and Kiritsugu had overlooked one thing: if she had truly given up and was peacefully hoping for a next Holy Grail War, how had she managed to survive inside the Grail at all?
This was the home field of all the world's evil. There were no good people here. There were only evils recognized by that evil — malicious existences that the Grail system had judged to be kin.
"What Einzbern family? What parents? What faint hope of a next chance? I don't have a home. I don't even have a home — what next chance am I supposed to be thinking about?"
Miss Illyasviel tilted her head and smiled. But this smile was nothing like the composed, easy smile she had shown Kiritsugu. It was something else entirely — the smile of someone with a cruel streak, like the look on Kotomine Kirei's face in the moment he drove his knife into Tokiomi Tohsaka's back.
Honestly. At this stage in the Holy Grail War.
Someone had believed her.
Someone had actually, genuinely believed what came out of the mouth of a Servant who had been summoned through compatibility with Kotomine Kirei.
That was either hilarious or adorably naive.
Whether it was Emiya Kiritsugu or the black-mud Irisviel — what she had said, she didn't even believe herself.
"I didn't want to talk to Irisviel so I just pretended to be withdrawn"? Rubbish. At that time she genuinely could not form coherent words. Her mind had been a fog. Being classified as kin by the world's evil had nearly driven her mad. She had been ground nearly to nothing.
"I don't like people prying into my memories"? Also rubbish. She could have ended those projections at any time. Claiming she couldn't control them was pure nonsense.
"Ask Kiritsugu to summon her in the next Holy Grail War"?The biggest rubbish of all. She had said it herself more than once — the Throne of Heroes had no place for her. Death, for her, was final. How could she possibly be relying on Kiritsugu to summon her a second time?
The one and only true thing she had said the entire time was that she envied Kiritsugu for still being alive.
Everything else had been fabricated from beginning to end.
"The Throne of Heroes has no place for someone like me. The next Holy Grail War? I haven't the faintest interest."
"Then what are you?!"
"Me? I'm Illyasviel, of course. Don't you recognize me, dear Mother?"
A grudge-spirit? Regret? Misfortune? Malice? No, no, no — she wasn't some bizarre aggregate of all those things. She was simply an Illyasviel who wanted to be happy.
An Illyasviel who wanted to survive. Filthy and malicious in nature, and yet yearning for something beautiful. Her true nature and origin was probably something like the story she herself had told — long ago, someone made a declaration: they would create a world where Illyasviel could be happy. But that world contained no Illyasviel.
And so was she. Her largest defining origin was that very world — the pursuit of beauty through ugly means, the happiness found in the ordinary, the most precious wish in all the world.
She didn't care about anything else. She only wanted to live. Only wanted to be happy.
If that made her a form of evil — then she was the extreme end of it. A form of contradictory evil named Illyasviel.
"Don't worry. It'll all be over soon. This Holy Grail War ritual in Fuyuki City..."
Miss Illyasviel covered her eyes and burst out laughing, wiping away tears she had laughed out. Right now, only one thought filled her mind.
Kiritsugu believed it.
He believed it.
He believed it!
The expression on the black-mud Irisviel's face was beginning to shift toward bafflement. She couldn't figure out what this girl, who had been lying through her teeth from start to finish, was actually trying to do. She was undeniably dead. Without a Spirit Origin, she had no way to survive.
And if the Throne of Heroes had no place for her, she obviously couldn't participate in the next Holy Grail War. Her goal was easy enough to infer — survival. She just couldn't figure out what a soul with nothing left could possibly do to stay alive, or what kind of hope she could have squeezed out of a man who was already on the edge of death.
"Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock."
The exhibition hall below, flooded with the black mud that had spilled down from above, was pitch black.
A faint glow of magical energy illuminated the space. And on the surface of the black water, the black-robed priest — bloodied and broken — stirred slowly back from unconsciousness, as if he had heard something.
Click.
The sound of a gun being cocked. Right behind him. Close enough that there was no room to react.
Seven steps away, a gun is fast. Within seven steps, a gun is both fast and precise.
"What a tedious ending. Why did you refuse it, Magus Killer?"
Kotomine Kirei raised both hands. Battered by the black mud and ambushed by the Origin Bullet earlier, he had no strength left to resist. He had no choice but to comply — raising his hands for the man standing at point-blank range behind him, gun leveled at his head.
"Did you see it too?"
"You cast away and sacrificed everything to reach this point. After paying that much, why throw it away the moment it's finally in your hands?"
"..."
"Utterly incomprehensible. Stupid beyond words. If Illyasviel and I had won in the end, we would never have given up the Grail the moment we held it."
"Because compared to what it could give her, what she sacrificed weighed far more."
Kiritsugu answered without expression, the gun still raised. Who was he to not want an omnipotent wish-granting device? But if the price of fulfilling that wish was paid by all of humanity — then he could do without it.
"Is that all?"
"That's all. That thing is not an omnipotent wish-granting device. It is pure, concentrated malice."
"Then give it to me, you bastard!"
At that, Kotomine Kirei erupted in barely contained fury. He wanted the wish-granting device more than anything — desperately, without limit. Whether the cost of that wish fell on all of humanity, he did not care in the slightest. So why wasn't he the final winner?
Illyasviel's existence had all but confirmed that the final victor would come from either Kayneth or himself. So why couldn't he even defeat Emiya Kiritsugu?
He refused to accept it. He refused to acknowledge it. Because by any reasonable measure, he had gone further than anyone. He had even struck a deal with Zouken Matou. From every angle he should have been the final victor. The crippled Kayneth — all Kotomine needed was one small push to take his life.
"Even if it is useless to you, it is useful to me! If that thing, if something like that could descend — I could definitely fulfill the prayer in my heart. That would be a truly omnipotent wish-granting device. Not even the Clock Tower could stop it!"
"You are stupid in a way I genuinely cannot understand."
Kiritsugu shook his head.
Then he prepared to pull the trigger. Or perhaps, as Illyasviel had said, they were all just madmen.
He glanced at the transparent little bird ornament perched on his shoulder — a crystalline familiar, the Holy Relic Illyasviel had given him. He couldn't say why he'd accepted it. Maybe because his mind was a fog right now and he needed something to do with his hands. Or maybe because, in the end, he was a father who couldn't bring himself to refuse his daughter's gift.
"Me? Stupid? Ha. Hahahaha. Kiritsugu, you're the stupid one. You actually believed Illyasviel's nonsense? She's no better than that fake Irisviel. The fact that she survived inside the evil Grail already tells you she and that thing are the same kind of existence."
"I don't know what she's trying to do. But I strongly suggest you throw away that familiar. I've seen the pity in her eyes, the resignation, the helplessness — but there was absolutely no acceptance. She has not accepted her defeat in this Holy Grail War. She is still trying to struggle."
Seeing that Kiritsugu still showed no intention of claiming the Grail, Kotomine laughed coldly and tore apart Miss Illyasviel's story. Not because he wanted to do Kiritsugu any favors.
It was because even from what he had seen of those visions, Kiritsugu was already spiritually broken. There was nothing more that needed to be said to him. Better to use these last moments to trip up Illyasviel — the Servant who, from beginning to end, he had never successfully rattled.
Kiritsugu didn't understand Illyasviel. But Kotomine understood her very well. A creature who had ordered the killing of her own biological mother was not something wholesome.
Especially since he had once dreamed of her past. It had been stranger and more disturbing than even the world's evil. And now that strangeness was looking at Kiritsugu with a pleasant, cooperative expression — which was more baffling than Tokiomi Tohsaka and Kariya Matou suddenly becoming friends.
"Is that so?"
"Kiritsugu, you want to know who I feared most in this Holy Grail War? Illyasviel von Einzbern. Even as her Master, I was afraid of her."
Kotomine's raised hands accompanied another cold, thin laugh as he admitted his fear of that silver-haired girl:
"If not for her, I would have entered the fray much earlier. She seized the authority of my Mastership in an iron grip. She is not a hero. She is a pure malevolent spirit. Everything she showed you about her origin was fabricated. I once dreamed of her past — her life before death."
"It was an ocean far broader and darker than the Grail's own darkness. A world where even humanity had been driven to extinction. She is composed entirely of simple malice. The Holy Grail War ritual simply gave her a vessel through which she could manifest."
"The Spirit Origin was both her existence and her limiter. You'd be better off trusting me than trusting her, because at the very minimum, I have never gone mad enough to exterminate all of humanity for my own entertainment. She, on the other hand, is capable of anything for the sake of her so-called survival — and she genuinely believes that her survival is the highest justice."
If I can't have it, neither can you.
Illyasviel. You should be going to hell with me, not trying to crawl back out.
Kotomine laughed inwardly, cold and sharp. That was how it was between evil things. No bond, no sentiment. Even in defeat and death, he would drag Illyasviel down with him as a fellow traveler.
Her goal was survival. So he would cut off her hope of it.
It was all the same in the end — just finding amusement where he could. He was rather looking forward to seeing what kind of anguished, despairing expression she would wear in whatever hell came next...
Bang.
But the only response he received was a single bullet.
Through the heart. Blood scattered.
With a heavy thud, the Church Executor who had been mid-sentence fell with his eyes wide open into the black mud, becoming one more loser among the many this Holy Grail War had produced, meeting the end that losers deserved.
His reasoning hadn't actually been wrong. The earlier version of Kiritsugu would have given his warning some consideration. But unfortunately, anything Kotomine could guess, Miss Illyasviel could also guess. She had known this man would betray her eventually.
And it didn't matter. The current Kiritsugu had no attention left for anything else. His mind was blank. He only wanted it to end.
Stopping the descent of the Grail was the priority. The warnings of Kotomine Kirei, a man with no credibility to begin with, weren't worth spending time on. Besides, Miss Illyasviel hadn't really lied. She had said true things — just not all of them.
Lies can be exposed. Truth cannot. The greatest lie is a truth left unfinished.
"Lancer. Did you handle it?"
Through the Master-Servant contract, Kiritsugu lowered his weapon and contacted Diarmuid, expressionless.
"It's a bit troublesome. You know how I am — I'm not great at dealing with enemies who rely on massive numbers of familiars."
An exasperated voice echoed in his mind, accompanied by the image of the magic sword cutting down a spider the size of a small building. Hundreds upon hundreds of insect corpses carpeted the outer grounds.
But against the dense, uncountable darkness ahead of him, the swathes Diarmuid had killed were barely a drop in the ocean. He was already gravely wounded and down to nothing but the magic sword, and even relentless charges couldn't break through.
Gáe Buidhe had been destroyed by King Gilgamesh's Noble Phantasm barrage. Gáe Dearg had been lost in the battle with Illyasviel. Both Noble Phantasms that could have resolved the situation against the magical barrier were gone. No matter how fiercely Diarmuid pressed forward, he could not break through.
"Withdraw from the outer grounds. The Holy Grail has already descended. I'll give you the direction."
"What became of Lady Irisviel?"
"...She's gone."
A brief pause on Diarmuid's end. Then, with quiet sincerity:
"I'm sorry. I wasn't able to help you save your wife."
This had been his promise as a retainer to Kiritsugu. He had failed to keep it, and so he owed an apology.
In a certain sense, he could have actually broken through — but out of concern for Irisviel's safety, he had refrained from using wide-area attacks.
"No need to apologize. It's time to end this. This Holy Grail War."
Kiritsugu took one last look at the golden Grail hanging overhead. Then he turned away without a trace of longing, touched the silver bird perched on his shoulder, and walked away — numb, hollow, not looking back.
"I'll come to you now. Withdraw from the outer grounds. Prepare to release your Noble Phantasm."
"...Dealing with whoever is blocking the way?"
"No. Destroying the Holy Grail