Antarctica, Chaldea.
Sometime after the "Great Light Ring" disintegrated, the bleached Earth began to return to normal.
Inside Chaldea, the staff members who had been incinerated along with human history suddenly began to move again.
Looking at the desk in front of him, a returned staff member rubbed his eyes in a daze.
He couldn't help but mutter to his friend standing next to him:
"Hiss! Is it just me, or did it feel like a flashbang just went off right in front of my face?"
He only meant it as a casual comment, but his friend suddenly looked shocked:
"You felt that too?!"
Hearing this, the first staff member froze:
"Wait, so you did too?"
A third person nearby overheard them. Realizing something, he turned to a fourth person who was also listening.
"You too?" x2.
After exchanging a knowing look, the entirety of Chaldea suddenly erupted into chaos.
"Wait, where did the candy on my desk go? Who steals candy?!"
"Why is my ID badge on the floor?"
"Holy crap! Why is the door to the Command Room broken? Wait... did someone pry it open with a crowbar?!"
"Eh? When did my computer get all these new activity logs?"
***
The Rayshift Room, which also housed CHALDEAS.
The staff members who had been standing closest to this room when Lev triggered the explosion looked around with faces full of question marks:
"What? You guys just felt like you got hit by a flashbang?!"
"I felt like I got blinded and violently launched into the air at the same time!"
"That's nothing! I swear I literally saw my own arm get blown off by something!"
Another staff member who was near the blast zone waved his arm around, turning it into a competition of who suffered more.
"You call that suffering? I saw a chunk of concrete the size of my dorm ceiling crashing down, and it stopped exactly 0.01 millimeters away from my face!"
"You're... definitely making that up, right?"
***
(Author's Note: Why didn't they die? In FGO, aside from Mash being critically injured by debris and subsequently saved by Galahad, there isn't a strict explanation for what happened to the rest of the staff here. Anyway, in my story, the exact moment they were caught in the explosion, their bodies were converted into spirit particle data, which is how they barely survived. Consider it my own headcanon—after all, the Incineration of Humanity never actually reached inside Chaldea in the original plot.)
***
Amidst the chaotic clamor.
"...Final Operation: Grand Temple of Time. Participants: 1. Returned... 0?"
Romani Archaman, who had also appeared in the Command Room, stared blankly at the text displayed on the main screen.
His voice was barely a whisper, his confusion instantly drowned out by the loud discussions of the other staff members.
Subconsciously feeling a deep sense of unease, Romani rubbed the middle finger of his right hand.
But he only felt empty air.
In an instant, Romani's expression shifted to pure panic. Moving as fast as he could, he ripped off his white right glove.
Five slender fingers appeared in his line of sight.
'The ring... is gone?'
Staring at his completely bare middle finger, Romani frantically patted his other fingers and rummaged through his pockets in disbelief.
At the exact same time Chaldea descended into heated discussions.
Olga Marie, sitting in the Director's chair in the Command Room, nearly fell flat on her butt because her chair had been moved slightly.
Flustered, she steadied herself. Still in a bit of a daze, she assumed someone was playing a prank on her and immediately grew annoyed.
Ready to chew someone out, she looked up—and immediately spotted several items on her desk that she had absolutely no memory of placing there.
A notebook and a pen. They looked like standard Chaldea-issued supplies.
A mug. She definitely didn't put that there. It looked like someone had been drinking from it.
A half-mask. It looked surprisingly stylish...
An eyepatch? Completely ordinary.
And this small knife...?!
It has to be some kind of incredibly rare Mystic Code, right?! It definitely is!
Quickly glossing over the first few items, her eyes locked onto the golden dagger that clearly wasn't a normal object. Olga Marie's eyes went wide.
Although she had taken over her father's position somewhat hastily, she still held high status in both the Clock Tower and Chaldea, and her talent as a Magus was nothing to scoff at. She could tell at a single glance that the [Golden Blade of Intrusion] was no ordinary weapon.
"Wait! When did the main screen get turned on? And what is it displaying... Final Operation: Grand Temple of Time?"
The main screen was massive. It didn't take long for the staff to notice the text displayed on it, prompting several surprised shouts.
Just as she was about to pick up the [Golden Blade of Intrusion] for a closer look, Olga Marie was startled by the shouts and quickly looked up at the screen.
That screen was rarely used because lowering it blocked their real-time monitoring of CHALDEAS, interfering with their work. Unless absolutely necessary, no one would bother pulling it down.
But no one cared about that minor detail right now. Everyone was completely captivated by the text on the screen.
"Is this... Japanese?
"Did one of the staff members from Japan set up a prank?"
"Are you serious? The operating system on my console has been changed to Japanese too! Is someone actually pranking us?!"
Looking at the complex characters on his screen, a staff member immediately turned to the nearest Japanese coworker.
"It wasn't me! I have nothing to do with this! Don't go making wild accusations!"
The accused coworker frantically waved his hands in denial.
"That's probably impossible, right? I just checked, and it looks like every single operating system in this room has been changed to Japanese."
Hearing the commotion, Olga Marie glanced at her own main console and realized it had also been completely reconfigured into Chinese.
"Wait! There are a ton of new operation logs on my computer! Everyone, check your consoles immediately!"
A staff member who had noticed the deeper issue looked at his screen with growing dread. Realizing this was no simple prank, he urgently yelled to the rest of the room.
The Command Room fell dead silent. Everyone immediately focused on their own computers. Even those who didn't usually work in the Command Room couldn't help but lean in to look.
Even Romani jogged over and stood behind Olga Marie, staring intently at the screen in front of her.
Olga Marie didn't pay attention to Romani. She also realized that their collective "daze" was no accident. Something they had no knowledge of must have happened during the time they couldn't remember. She rapidly pulled up the logs on her computer.
"Chaldea operational uptime... has increased by 268 days?!"
"Wait! It looks like Chaldea has completely desynchronized from real-world time! According to the logs, only 114 days have passed in the outside world?!"
"There are 16 new unscheduled Rayshift logs!"
"The anchoring coordinates include Singularity F: Fuyuki! The First Singularity: France! The Second Singularity: Rome! The Third Singularity: The Age of Discovery... The Seventh Singularity: The Age of Gods, Uruk!"
"And the final one... the coordinates for the Grand Temple of Time!"
"There are also partial observation images stored here..."
***
Listening to her subordinates' reports and looking at the data on her screen, Olga Marie felt her heart pound harder with every second.
What kind of organization were they? The Chaldea Security Organization!
Ever since they predicted the future disappearance of humanity via CHALDEAS, the facility hadn't stopped running for a single day. Theoretically, none of these massive shifts should have escaped their observation. But what was the undeniable reality presented before her?
To put it bluntly, while every single one of them was completely unaware, 268 days had been stolen from Chaldea, and 114 days had been stolen from the Earth!
It was as if that entire period of time had been completely deleted from their existence, leaving behind only the cold, hard data stored on their computers.
Suddenly remembering something crucial, Olga Marie hurriedly shouted to the room:
"Lev! Where is Lev?!"
She distinctly remembered Lev being in the Command Room right before everything went dark.
Hearing the Director's question, everyone in the room exchanged confused glances and shook their heads, indicating they hadn't seen him.