The first thing he noticed was the cold.
Not a biting chill, but something deeper—the cold of dislocation, like waking up mid-fall, stomach churning and limbs too light. The scent of wet grass filled his nose, earthy and clean, too vivid. His back ached against the soil, muscles twitching like they didn't belong to him.
His eyes opened slowly, light cutting into them like razors. The sky above was pale, cloudless, painfully bright.
He blinked, once. Twice.
Alive?
Shirou—no. Who was he now? The name Emiya Shirou echoed in his mind, familiar but fragile, like a plate reassembled from shards. There were other memories too. A fire. A wish. A sword breaking. A woman wickedly as she pushed him and waved at him.
His head throbbed.
He pushed himself up with a groan, breath coming shallow. The world tilted. Gravity felt... wrong. The park swayed around him—benches, gravel paths, a fountain—everything sharp and hyperreal, like looking through glass too thick.
He didn't have time to piece it together.
A voice, far too loud for the quiet park said, "Would you die for me?"
He turned, slowly.
A young couple stood in the center of a stone fountain. The boy—excited, brown-haired, clearly nervous—was holding hands with a dark-haired girl who looked shy until her smile widened and she repeated the question when the boy was clearly confused at her words. They looked like background noise from a dream. Except—
His breath caught.
That girl. Her face. Her voice.
Déjà vu slammed into him like a wave as that same girl changed. Black feathers bursting from her back, her outfit changing alongside her features, becoming more mature. No longer a shy girl stood, instead a young malicious woman floated.
No.
"Move!"
The shout wasn't planned. Neither was the way his body lunged forward, muscles screaming. He was still dizzy, vision swimming—but his feet knew what they were doing before his brain caught up. A spear of light shimmered in the air, aimed straight for the boy's chest.
He tackled him aside just in time.
The light struck his side. A sharp pain bloomed, fiery and immediate, tearing through muscle like molten wire.
He didn't scream. He couldn't. His body was too focused, already moving through the pain.
Steel flashed into his hands, Kanshou and Bakuya, summoned without thought—twin white and black blades singing with familiarity.
The woman—no, the Fallen—looked surprised. Then irritated. Her wings spread wide, halo cracking like glass.
He dropped into a stance, staggering slightly from the injury. Blood dripped down his side, warm against the cold wind.
The guy stared at him in shock, uncomprehending.
And Shirou—Shirou still didn't know where he was.
But none of that mattered right now.
He had seen someone about to die, and he had moved.
Just like always.
The Fallen floated above the fountain, wings spread wide and gleaming like obsidian knives. Her expression had twisted into something smug and cruel, and she lazily formed another spear of light in her palm, like this was just another amusement.
Shirou kept his grip tight on Kanshou and Bakuya, knuckles white, but the burning in his side was growing sharper. His vision was starting to blur again—not from blood loss yet, but from something else. A throb in the back of his skull.
A memory.
A voice.
"In return, I'll grant you seven cards. Use them wisely—or foolishly, I don't care. They're tied to your soul, but they won't work the way you think."
His eyes widened slightly.
The goddess. The one with the mocking smile. The one who had pushed him off the edge and waved as the world collapsed around him.
"A gift in the shape of fate itself. Pick a card, any card, Shirou~"
He reached instinctively into his pocket, barely registering the motion, and felt the crisp edges of something rectangular. Cards. Smooth, humming faintly with power. He curled his fingers around them, but—
His moment of distraction cost him.
Another spear of light—this one faster than the last—slammed into his shoulder.
He cried out, stumbling to his knees as the pain ripped through him, hot and jarring. His left hand nearly went numb. Bakuya slipped from his fingers and clattered to the stone.
The fallen laughed. "Still standing? You're persistent, I'll give you that."
His teeth clenched. Blood trickled down his arm.
With a grunt of pain, he threw Kanshou with all the strength he had left. The curved blade spun through the air, forcing the fallen to dodge mid-cast, her spell fizzling.
It bought him seconds.
Seconds were enough.
His fingers fumbled, grabbing one of the cards at random. It pulsed against his palm, resonating with something deep in his core—his very nature, the Grail pulsing inside his chest.
"I don't care which one," he rasped, voice raw. "Just… help me. Help him."
He held the card aloft, pouring magic into it recklessly, without structure or sense. Just intent. Desperation. The air began to hum. The card grew hot in his hand, then unbearably bright.
The light erupted, a pillar of golden energy screaming skyward.
But instead of transforming him—The card shattered, like thin glass and the space in front of him rippled.
From the light stepped a figure, graceful and solid, clad in formal garments with battlefield practicality, white hair flowing behind her. A woman—unmistakably a Servant, but not one Shirou had meant to call. Elegant. Composed. Her eyes gleamed with quiet wrath as she took in the scene, then flicked toward him.
Her voice was calm. Too calm.
"Target identified. Hostile confirmed." She turned her gaze to the fallen angel. "Threat level: irrelevant."
Shirou's heart skipped. "Wait… you're—?"
Before he could speak further—
A scream.
The boy.
Shirou turned just in time to see him fall, a glowing spear of light impaled in his abdomen.
Time stopped.
His breath caught in his throat.
The fire that had once driven him as a boy, as a hero, flared up with a vengeance.
He reached for the Servant, hand bloodied, eyes burning. "Save him."
And the woman—Florence Nightingale—nodded once, like she'd been waiting for the command all along.
The winged woman sneered, wings spreading wide as she conjured another spear of light, now glowing hotter with rage than mockery. "You're a persistent little gnat. What are you gonna do now, huh?"
Florence didn't respond with words.
She moved.
No flash, no wasted motion—just sudden, surgical violence. Her figure blurred, and in the next breath, she was in front of the fallen, driving a scalpel-shaped construct of hardened light straight at the Fallen's ribs. The winged woman shrieked, forced to parry with a crude spear.
Florence pressed forward, each strike clean and deliberate—like she wasn't fighting, but correcting an infection. Cold fury burned in her pale eyes.
Shirou wasn't watching.
He had dropped to his knees beside the boy, blood still pouring down his own side, but his focus was entirely on the boy clutching at his stomach and gasping in agony.
"Hang in there—don't move," Shirou hissed, pressing his hand to the wound. Blood soaked through his fingers, hot and wet, and the boy groaned weakly beneath him.
That was when Shirou noticed it.
In the boy's other hand was a piece of paper, crumpled and bloodstained—etched with a magic circle that pulsed faintly with power.
"What is that…?" he muttered.
He didn't have time to think further. The circle flared, igniting with red light, and on the gravel path near them, another circle blazed to life—a much larger one, its runes unfamiliar but undeniably powerful.
From the heart of that circle, a woman stepped forth.
She was tall, graceful, with cascading red hair and an aura of composed nobility. Her school uniform looked ordinary, but the energy radiating from her was anything but. Her blue-green eyes widened as she took in the sight before her: a bleeding stranger shielding a dying boy, and a fight between a Fallen Angel and a silver-haired woman crackling with wrath.
"…What—" she started, but she didn't finish.
And it's then that he recognized her. Rias Gremory, a popular girl from school.
Shirou barely registered her presence. His vision swam, the blood loss finally overtaking adrenaline. He slumped forward.
Before Shirou could collapse, Florence was already at his side, catching him with steady arms. Her hands glowed faintly with golden light as she pressed them to his wounds, mending torn muscle and sealing ruptured vessels with practiced ease.
"You will not die here," she said calmly, voice clinical but fierce. "Not while I'm still standing."
Shirou winced, trying to speak. "Help… the boy…"
"Stabilized," Florence replied curtly, "but fading fast. You're still bleeding. Remain still."
But then he saw it—the glow of red light from the corner of his vision. He turned his head and saw the red-haired girl—Rias—kneeling beside the male, holding a chess piece between her fingers. Not just one—she was inserting more into the boy, already four pieces embedded into his body, each radiating infernal energy. The fifth one shimmered in her hand.
Shirou's breath caught.
He didn't understand everything, but he understood enough. He could feel it, the wrongness—this wasn't saving him, this was turning him into something else. There was no time for questions or context. It was power—imposed, not offered.
His body still ached, his side still pulsed with heat, but there was something else now. A gentle warmth, quiet and golden, flowing through him like a whisper beneath his skin. Avalon. Slowly knitting him together, but too slowly.
He clenched his fist. It wasn't enough.
And something inside him—the Grail, perhaps, or something even older—answered.
His hand moved without conscious thought, rising into the air. Light shimmered at his fingertips, and a set of chess pieces—white, luminous, almost translucent—appeared before him. Each one hummed with potential, and though he had never seen them before, he knew what they were.
A gift from the goddess.
His own Evil Piece set. He didn't know what it was, exactly, just knew that it would help him even if it changed him.
He grabbed the King piece without hesitation. It pulsed in his hand, recognizing him—not his body, but his soul. The moment stretched.
Rias had just begun to press the fifth piece into the young male's chest when she looked up, eyes catching the white glow emanating from Shirou's side. She froze, the piece still hovering over the boy's body.
Shirou locked eyes with her.
Then—without thinking twice—he pressed the King piece into his chest.
Light exploded.
Power surged through him, clean and untainted. It wasn't enitrely demonic—it was something else. Something stronger. His mind sharpened, his limbs steadied, and the pain faded into the background like a dying echo. He sat up straighter, spine taut with energy, clarity washing over him like a tide.
Florence turned, eyes narrowing in assessment, but said nothing.
Rias stared, genuinely stunned, the fifth piece still clutched in her hand.
Shirou took a breath—steady, for the first time since awakening—and spoke with new strength.
"Don't." His voice was low, firm. "Don't force those pieces into him."
Rias blinked. "He's dying. I don't have time to explain—"
"I'm not saying don't save him," Shirou said, raising a hand to stall her. "But not without his consent."
Her mouth parted slightly, eyes darting to the young male's unconscious face, then back to Shirou. She hesitated—and in that breath of silence, the fifth piece in her hand dimmed.
Florence looked at Rias, expression unreadable. "Do as he says," she said coolly. "Or I will stop you myself."
Rias's grip tightened on the chess piece in her hand as the light faded from it. Slowly, reluctantly, she pulled the others from the boy's chest—one by one—each piece vanishing in a soft red shimmer as the ritual collapsed, incomplete.
The magic circle beneath him flickered once... then went dark.
Shirou let out a breath of relief. But he wasn't done yet.
He turned toward Florence, eyes steady. "Can you heal him now?"
Florence glanced down at the boy, already analyzing pulse, blood loss, organ damage. "Yes. Now that his soul has stabilized and the interference has ceased, I can proceed."
Without needing further instruction, she knelt beside the young male, sleeves pushed back, her hands glowing with that clinical golden light. Her movements were precise, efficient. Purposeful. A battlefield nurse through and through.
Shirou leaned back, breath catching. The pain was returning in flickers—muted, dulled by Avalon, but not gone. Still, he stayed conscious, watching.
Rias turned to him, frowning—less angry than confused now. "What did you do to yourself?" she asked, her voice measured. "You were human just a few minutes ago. But now—" she stepped closer, gaze narrowing, "—I can feel it. You're radiating demonic energy on par with a high-class devil."
Shirou looked at her, sweat clinging to his brow. "I don't know," he admitted, voice hoarse but calm. "All I did was what I saw you doing. I had my own piece, don't know how, but it reacted to me. I didn't think. I just… pushed it in."
Rias gave him a searching look, eyes flicking over him like she was trying to decipher a puzzle. "That shouldn't be possible. The King Piece doesn't exist."
"Yeah, well," Shirou muttered, shifting slightly, "I'm learning a lot of things today that shouldn't be possible."
She folded her arms, tone cooling. "You stopped me from saving his life."
Shirou's eyes narrowed. "You tried converting him into something else. Without his consent. That's not saving—that's rewriting."
The silence that followed was tense, but not hostile. Just uncertain. Rias's lips pressed into a thin line. She didn't argue further.
At that moment, Florence stood, brushing her hands together. "Stabilized," she reported. "He'll need rest and sustained care, but the immediate damage has been reversed. He will survive."
Shirou exhaled a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. His shoulders slumped, the adrenaline bleeding from his limbs like the blood staining his side.
"Good," he murmured.
And then—darkness took him.
He collapsed backward, Florence catching him once more before he could hit the stone.
.
.
.
So while I was searching for the Build I first made by using the old Waifu Catalog template for the 'Waifu Catalog: Cursed with Care', I found another fic hidden in between my documents. I mean, I found it before, but ignored it then. Even if it had nasuverse characters, too, like the last fics I've posted. Also, when I saw the date, it seems it have been done in the same year, which tracks as I was Nasuverse obsessed then.
However!
This one is a crossover with High School DXD, which I vaguely remembered liking for the potential it had as a story background because all the lore, but I disliked because... well, everything was surrounded by the 'Power of Boobs' which I found stupid then. Still find it a bit stupid now, actually.
I had decided to ignore it then when I first found it, buuuuut I read it, like, all of it a couple of days ago. And even if it's set in that world, I kind of liked it when I re-read it.
(I think I just wanted a devil!Shirou with a peerage full of Servants.)