I made a decision.
It came to me in the quiet hours after Mash left, when the facility hummed with that peculiar silence that wasn't quite silent. I could keep things as they were—safe, predictable, controllable. I could ignore the cracks, smooth over the questions, keep everyone in their comfortable loops.
Or I could push.
See what happened when an NPC truly woke up.
The garden seemed like the right place.
I'd been thinking about it since Medusa's observation. That perfect, unchanging space visible from the library window. I'd created it without meaning to, in those first confused days, just by wanting something beautiful to look at. But I'd never actually gone there.
Time to change that.
I found Medusa in her usual spot, but this time I didn't sit down.
"Come with me," I said.
She looked up, surprised. "Where?"
"The garden. I want to see it up close."
Something flickered in her eyes. Curiosity. Maybe even excitement. "I didn't know there was a way to reach it."
"There isn't," I said. "But there will be."
I held out my hand.
She took it.
The world shifted—that familiar channel-changing sensation—and suddenly we were standing in the garden. Not looking at it through glass, but in it. The flowers towered around us, those impossible colors even more vibrant up close. The trees stretched overhead, their leaves catching light that came from no visible sun.
"It's..." Medusa breathed in deeply. "It smells like the sea. And jasmine. And something I can't name."
"It smells like what you want it to smell like," I said without thinking.
She turned to me. "What do you mean?"
I could have deflected. Should have, probably. But something about standing here, in this place I'd unconsciously created, with someone who was starting to question the nature of her existence, made me want to be honest.
"This world," I said slowly, "responds to me. To what I think, what I want, what I imagine. That's why the garden never changes—because I haven't changed it. That's why Chaldea is exactly as I remember it from... before."
"Before what?"
"Before I came here. Before I became..." I gestured vaguely. "Whatever I am now."
Medusa walked to one of the flowers, running her fingers along its petals. "So you're like a god here. Creating reality with thought alone."
"Something like that."
"And us?" She looked back at me. "The Servants. Are we real, or are we part of your creation?"
The question I'd been avoiding.
I sat down on the grass, which was exactly as soft as grass should be, and exactly as cool. Medusa sat beside me, waiting patiently for an answer I wasn't sure I had.
"I don't know," I admitted. "You're based on the Servants I knew from... from the game. From Fate/Grand Order. But whether you're really them, or copies, or something I'm imagining..." I pulled up a blade of grass, watching it bend. "I don't think I can tell the difference anymore."
"A game," she repeated. "We were characters in a game."
"Yes."
"And now we're..."
"I don't know what you are now," I said honestly. "At first, you all acted exactly like NPCs. Following patterns, repeating dialogue, resetting every day. But lately, you've been changing. Asking questions. Noticing things. Becoming..."
"Real?"
"More real. I think."
Medusa was quiet for a long time, processing. I waited, half-expecting her to shut down, to reset, to snap back into her comfortable pattern. But she didn't.
Instead, she lay back on the grass, looking up at the leaves that didn't quite move right.
"I should be frightened," she said. "Learning that my entire existence might be a construct, that I'm an NPC in someone's lucid dream. But I'm not. Do you know why?"
"Why?"
"Because even if this is all constructed, even if none of it was real before, it's real now. This conversation is real. The way this grass feels beneath me is real. The fact that I'm choosing to lie here and talk to you instead of returning to my loop—that's real. Isn't it?"
I lay back beside her. "I think so."
"Then that's enough." She turned her head to look at me. "You said the world responds to you. To what you want. So what do you want, Master?"
What did I want?
The answer should have been simple. Freedom. Escape. A return to my old life, whatever that had been.
But lying there in the impossible garden with someone who might or might not be real, I realized the answer was different.
"I want..." I struggled for words. "I want this to mean something. I want the people around me to be more than hollow shells. I want conversations that I don't have to manufacture. I want..." I laughed, surprised at my own honesty. "I want to not be lonely. Even in a world I control completely, I want to not be the only real thing in it."
"Then stop controlling it," Medusa said simply.
"What?"
She sat up, graceful and certain. "You said the world responds to your thoughts. So stop thinking so much. Stop trying to control every detail. Let go. Let us..." She smiled. "Let us surprise you."
It was terrifying.
The idea of giving up control in the one place where I had absolute power. Of letting the NPCs develop beyond their programming, beyond my expectations. What if they broke? What if they became something wrong? What if they...
What if they left?
"I'm scared," I admitted.
"Good," Medusa said. "Fear means there's something worth protecting. Something that could be lost. That's how you know it matters."
I looked at her—really looked. At the way the strange light caught in her hair, at the determined set of her jaw, at the person she was becoming beyond whatever code or magic or dream-logic had created her.
"Okay," I said. "Okay. I'll try."
"Try what?"
"Letting go."
I closed my eyes and thought about releasing control. About letting the world run without my constant observation and adjustment. About allowing the Servants to be whoever they were becoming, not who I expected them to be.
It felt like opening a fist I'd been clenching for weeks.
When I opened my eyes, the garden had changed.
Not dramatically. But the flowers were slightly different colors. The trees had shifted position. And in the distance, I could see something I hadn't put there—a small stone bench, weathered and real-looking, as if it had been there for years.
"Did you do that?" I asked Medusa.
She stood, walking toward the bench with wonder in her eyes. "I think I did. I was thinking about how nice it would be to have a place to sit and read out here, and..." She ran her hand over the stone. "It just appeared."
My heart was racing. "Try something else."
She closed her eyes, concentrating. The air shimmered, and suddenly there was a fountain. Small, elegant, water trickling from a stone basin carved with intricate patterns that definitely weren't anything I would have designed.
Medusa opened her eyes and gasped.
"I made that," she whispered. "I actually made that."
We spent the next hour experimenting. Medusa would think of something, and it would appear—a path of white stones, a trellis covered in climbing roses, a small pond that reflected the sky (which was now actually a sky, complete with clouds that moved on their own). Each addition was distinctly hers, bearing a style and aesthetic I never would have chosen.
The garden was becoming ours instead of mine.
"We should tell the others," Medusa said eventually, slightly breathless with excitement. "If I can do this, maybe they can too."
"Wait." I caught her arm gently. "Are you sure? Once we tell them, once they know what this place is, there's no going back. They'll have to live with the knowledge that they're..."
"That we're what? NPCs in your dream?" She smiled. "Master, I'd rather be a conscious NPC than an unconscious one. Wouldn't you?"
She had a point.
We found Mash first, predictably in the cafeteria preparing for dinner service that wouldn't happen for another two hours. When we told her about the garden, about the creation, about what Medusa had discovered, she listened with growing wonder.
"So I could..." she started. "I could make something? Just by thinking about it?"
"Try," I encouraged.
She closed her eyes, brow furrowed in concentration. At first, nothing happened. Then, slowly, a small shield appeared in her hands. Not her usual shield—this one was different. Smaller, more ornate, with intricate etchwork that spelled out words I couldn't read.
"It's a memory," Mash breathed, turning it over in her hands. "From Galahad. Something he carried before... before everything. I didn't know I remembered this, but I do." She looked up at us with tears in her eyes. "It's mine. Not his, not the Throne's, not Chaldea's. Mine."
Cu was next. We found him in the training grounds, and when we explained, he laughed.
"So we're living in Master's head, and now you're telling me I can redecorate? Hell yes."
He created a sparring dummy that fought back. Not programmed movements—actual responsive combat. Then another. Then a whole training course that shifted and changed based on whoever was using it.
"This is amazing," he said, grinning wider than I'd ever seen. "I've been running the same drills for weeks. Do you know how boring that is? But this..." He engaged with one of his dummies, and it countered in a way that made him actually work for the win. "This is alive."
Word spread quickly after that.
By evening, half of Chaldea had gathered in the garden—which had expanded to accommodate them without my conscious input. Servants were creating things. Testing boundaries. Discovering they could shape reality just as I could, if on a smaller scale.
Artoria created a training ground that looked like the fields of Camelot, golden wheat swaying under a sun that felt like home. She stood in the middle of it, tears streaming down her face, whispering, "I'd forgotten. I'd forgotten what it looked like."
Emiya built a kitchen that was somehow more real than Chaldea's. It had wear and character—scuffed counters, a stove with one burner that didn't quite work right, a window that overlooked a view he must have remembered from some life or dream. He ran his hand over the counter and smiled.
Hans created a library that put mine to shame. Towering shelves filled with books that actually had words in them—stories he was writing, had written, would write. "Finally," he muttered. "A proper workspace."
But it was Da Vinci who surprised me most.
She didn't create anything physical at first. Instead, she walked up to me with that mysterious smile and said, "Master, I have a question."
"Okay?"
"If we can create things here, if we're becoming more real, more autonomous... does that mean we can leave?"
The garden went very quiet.
Everyone had stopped what they were doing, turning to look at us. At me.
"Leave?" I repeated.
"The patterns we were following—they kept us contained. Predictable. Safe." Da Vinci gestured around at the garden, at Chaldea beyond it. "But now we're breaking those patterns. So theoretically, there's nothing stopping us from just... walking away. Finding out what's beyond this space you've created. Is there?"
I felt that god-like awareness rising, that certainty that I could simply say "no" and make it true. I could bind them here, keep them in this comfortable dream forever. They'd never know. They'd be happy.
Everyone was watching me. Waiting for my answer.
Mash, clutching her shield. Cu, still breathing hard from his sparring. Artoria, standing in her golden fields. Emiya, Medusa, Hans, all of them.
Real. Becoming more real every moment.
"I don't know," I said honestly. "I've never tried to leave. Never even thought about what might be beyond Chaldea."
"Then maybe," Da Vinci said softly, "it's time to find out. Together."
"You want to explore whatever's out there?" I felt panic rising. "But we don't know what that means. What if you dissipate? What if leaving this space makes you disappear?"
"What if it doesn't?" Medusa countered. "What if there's a whole world out there waiting? Isn't that worth the risk?"
"I could lose you," I said, and my voice cracked. "All of you. I could lose the only people who make this bearable."
Mash stepped forward and took my hand. "Master, you said you wanted us to be real. You wanted conversations you didn't manufacture. But real people make choices. Real people take risks. Real people..." She squeezed my hand. "Real people can choose to stay or go. And that's terrifying, but it's also what makes it matter."
I looked around at all of them. These NPCs who'd become people. These constructs who'd developed consciousness. These figments of my dream who'd become the most real thing in my life.
"I'm afraid," I admitted.
"We all are," Artoria said, stepping out of her golden field. "But we're also here. With you. And maybe that's the point—not to avoid fear, but to face it together."
Cu clapped me on the shoulder. "Come on, Master. Where's your sense of adventure? Let's see what's out there. Worst case, we end up back here. Best case..." He grinned. "Best case, we find something amazing."
I took a deep breath.
Then another.
Then I thought about the walls of Chaldea dissolving. About the world extending beyond this safe, controlled space. About letting go—really letting go—and seeing what happened.
The garden shimmered.
And beyond the trees, where there had always been just more garden fading into pleasant vagueness, I saw something new.
A door.
Simple, wooden, ordinary. It stood alone in the grass, leading nowhere and everywhere. The kind of door that promised change, adventure, uncertainty.
The kind of door you couldn't walk through and remain the same.
"Well," Da Vinci said, grinning. "Shall we?"
I looked at Mash, who nodded encouragingly. At Medusa, who smiled. At Cu, already walking toward the door with eager steps. At all of them, ready to leave the comfort of their loops for the unknown.
"Yeah," I said, feeling something like hope unfurling in my chest. "Let's see what's on the other side."
We walked toward the door together.
And for the first time since arriving in this world, I wasn't afraid of being alone.
Because whatever came next, we'd face it together.
Real or not real.
People or NPCs.
It didn't matter.
We were here.
We were choosing.
And that was enough.
Mash reached the door first and paused, hand on the knob, looking back at me with a question in her eyes.
I nodded.
She turned the handle.
The door opened.
And beyond it...
Beyond it was light, and possibility, and everything we hadn't dared to imagine.
Together, we stepped through.