When she opened her eyes, all she saw before her was a blazing sea of fire.
Flames engulfed the entire mountain, surging skyward and dyeing the already murky, dim heavens a fierce orange-red, like fiery clouds at dusk—both terrifying and breathtaking in their beauty.
Okita Sōji blinked, slowly coming back to herself as she stood amidst the inferno, confusion etched across her face.
"This is…?"
Everywhere she turned, the world was nothing but raging fire, leaping and crackling high into the air.
She remembered that she had only just been summoned, fought and defeated a troublesome modern magus, and afterward followed her Master back to his home.
Though questions had been burning inside her, she saw how tired her Master looked, so she let him rest. She herself had sat down to meditate.
And then—what?
One blink later, and somehow she was standing here in this blazing nightmare.
Okita lifted one foot, meaning to step forward and take in more of her surroundings.
A sharp crack echoed beneath her.
Startled, she looked down. What lay underfoot was a charred, blackened corpse.
The body had been burned for so long that its flesh was nothing but brittle charcoal. There wasn't a single patch of intact skin left—not even the face could be recognized.
She swept her gaze across the ground around her.
Bodies.
Scattered in twos and threes across the scorched earth, they lay twisted and lifeless.
All of them had been reduced to carbon husks, features erased beyond recognition. Some were clearly men, others women. There were old figures hunched with age, and there were also small forms—children no older than seven or eight.
Roughly thirty corpses in all.
Not a single one still drew breath.
From the state of their bodies, Okita could tell they had been burned alive. Before death, they must have endured a torment beyond imagining.
Then, step… step…
A sound of shuffling footsteps echoed from ahead.
"…Traitor!"
A wavering figure emerged from the flames.
The man's armor hung in tatters, his entire body wrapped with bandages that obscured his features. His voice, however, was cracked and ancient, like the rasp of a man far past his prime.
His eyes blazed with pure hatred as he glared at Okita Sōji, as if he could shred her to pieces with his gaze alone.
"You traitor! Our clan gave everything to you—our knowledge, our strength, our loyalty… even our magical crests! All of it, handed to you! And this… this is how you repay us?!"
He pointed a trembling finger at the bodies strewn across the ground, his voice breaking into a roar of fury.
"Ha… hahaha!"
Suddenly, Okita clutched her head, a deranged laugh spilling from her lips.
No—this wasn't her. She realized it at once. This laugh, this madness, belonged to the one whose perspective she was reliving.
"Hahahahahahahahahahaha!"
"That's right! This—this is the result of raising me for five long years. Are you satisfied, you decrepit old fool? Ah, what a shame I can't see that face of yours contorted in rage. It would've made the performance perfect!"
The voice rang out with hideous glee, each syllable like the jeer of a demon dragged from the pits of hell.
Okita could feel the truth—this person, whose body she now inhabited, was trembling not from fear, but from uncontrollable excitement.
He delighted in the slaughter of his clan. He was overjoyed. He was intoxicated.
Death was his amusement. Destruction, his pleasure.
He was, without a doubt, a true devil in human form.
Okita opened her eyes once more.
What greeted her now was not fire and corpses, but the present world—a wide, traditional Japanese estate. The wooden plaque at the front gate bore two large characters: Aozaki.
This was her Master's home.
The night before, after leaving Mount Enzō, they had returned directly here. Roy had retired to rest, while she had leapt onto the roof, keeping watch as she meditated.
Somehow, without meaning to, she had fallen asleep.
She tilted her head back toward the sky. Though thick clouds covered the heavens, faint sunlight filtered through. Dawn had come.
"How strange… Servants shouldn't even have the capacity for sleep."
Okita rose lightly from the roof, careful not to make a sound that would disturb anyone within.
"Could this be a side effect of being forcibly summoned by Master through the Greater Grail? And that dream just now… was it truly a dream, or someone else's reality?"
She couldn't tell.
But if it were just a dream, it had felt far too real.
"Saber. What are you doing up there?"
The voice broke her thoughts.
Okita looked down from the roof to the front courtyard, where Roy had stepped out of the house.
Despite the chill of a winter morning, the boy wore only a thin T-shirt beneath a long coat. His hair, pure white, fluttered in the dawn breeze.
He raised his head, crimson eyes cold as winter frost, gazing straight at her.
"I was keeping watch, Master, in case of an ambush!"
The swordswoman leapt gracefully down from the roof, landing before him with a bright, eager smile. The cowlick on her head bounced lightly in the wind.
"Saber."
"Yes, Master!"
"Until the Holy Grail War officially begins, you are not allowed to materialize."
"…Eh?"
Okita froze for a moment, her mind going blank before she processed his words.
"Master doesn't want people to know it was me who fought underground last night, right?"
It made sense. By now, Bazett would likely have recovered and reported everything.
Roy's face had not been exposed, but Okita's certainly had—she had fought openly against Bazett. If she showed herself now, it would be the same as declaring Roy the intruder. That would bring him no end of trouble.
"That's part of it," Roy said, expression flat.
"But the main reason is that I have other plans. For you, this should not be difficult."
"I understand."
Okita nodded. She wasn't entirely sure what her Master's plan entailed, but staying in spirit form was hardly an impossible task.
It was a shame she wouldn't get to freely explore this era, but the Holy Grail War would officially begin soon anyway. Until then, all she had to do was remain hidden. Easy enough.
"Then it begins now," Roy said, turning back toward the house.
"Yes, Master," Okita replied obediently.
She was just about to dematerialize when the dream returned to her—the mountain swallowed in fire, the thirty lives reduced to ash.
The Greater Grail's knowledge was clear: the bond between Master and Servant was not only one of prana and contract. It could also carry threads of cause and effect.
When the bond grew deeper, the Master might sometimes experience fragments of their Servant's past in dreams.
Servants, being already dead, had no need of sleep. And without sleep, they could not dream.
Thus, what she had seen could not possibly have been her own dream.
It had to be… her Master's.
Then that inferno, that massacre—was it truly only a dream? Or was it something else?
"Master…" she breathed aloud without meaning to.
Roy paused and looked back at her. "What is it?"
"…No. Nothing."
Okita hesitated, then shook her head. A moment later, her form dissolved into particles of light as she shifted into spirit form.
Roy frowned slightly at her sudden silence, but asked no further questions. He simply turned away and walked toward the kitchen.