"What kind of foul substance is this?"
At a distance from the battlefield but not so far as to be safely away, Kayneth had deployed Volumen Hydrargyrum at full coverage. The mercurial substance had wrapped him entirely in a sphere—a Mystic Code capable of withstanding even the demolition of a building.
It was a collection piece worthy of being a family heirloom, and yet he had built it himself before the age of twenty-five. Across the entirety of the Clock Tower, he was a genius without peer. Given that, jealousy was unavoidable.
But against the contamination of All the World's Evil, the masterpiece he had so prided himself on was being eaten through like paper.
In that moment, Kayneth felt the first edge of dread. A cup leading to the Root? This was clearly a trap meant to lure a genius like him into the open and kill him.
Infant-sized hands crawled up his pant leg, all the way to his chest. In despair, all he could manage—before he was dragged under—was a furious curse: "Lancer, where are you, you useless—"
"My lord, I'm here!"
Gáe Dearg, the Crimson Rose of Exorcism, shattered the bindings on Kayneth's body. Thanks to Yimi having blasted Lancer well clear of the field earlier, he was able to reach Kayneth at the critical moment.
But the result was that the spear shaft used to free Kayneth—and the entire arm holding it—were instantly fused into the mud, seamlessly enveloped. No amount of stabbing with his second spear could pry them loose.
"My lord, this Holy Grail War no longer holds any meaning. Please—use your final Command Spell to order me to protect you!"
"Even at the very end, you have to make a pretty speech of it. People like you are precisely the kind one can never fully trust." Kayneth raised the hand bearing his Command Spell.
From start to finish, he had not once placed any real trust in his Servant. Sola's one-sided infatuation. Lancer's own legend of dalliance with the betrothed of his lord Fionn. Even, in their few private exchanges, Lancer's quiet admission that he held no desire for the Grail at all. All of it added up.
Every Servant summoned into the Holy Grail War carried, in life, a wish of their own. There were no exceptions. Look at that Ruler—even she was loudly insisting the Grail was hers. And here Lancer was, claiming he didn't want it. If that wasn't a lack of sincerity, what was?
"My lord—look out!"
The black mud was not simply filth. Like a living thing, it homed in first on the hand bearing the Command Spells, intent on engulfing Kayneth from the top down.
Without hesitation, Diarmuid severed his own trapped arm with his shorter spear. A weapon designed for thrusts performed, in that one moment, an extraordinary cut.
He shoved Kayneth bodily forward, knocking him a few paces clear, and took the next wave of mud meant for his lord.
"Lancer, you—"
"My lord, my true name is Diarmuid. Forgive my discourtesy—" Diarmuid mirrored what he had just done. With the last of his strength, he swept Gáe Buidhe across and severed Kayneth's hand. "The wound from the Yellow Rose of Mortality cannot be healed. But when I die, or when this spear is destroyed, the 'curse' will fade with it."
Kayneth ground his teeth and clutched the stump of his arm. "You finally did something human at the end, Diarmuid. People like you—I will never understand you, not from start to finish."
"Run, my lord! My only wish was to serve you faithfully to the very last. Nothing more. With this… I am content…"
The mud closed over him.
"Nothing but pretty speeches—you bastard! Did I tell you to die here?" Kayneth tried to use a Command Spell, only to remember that the severed hand was the one that had borne them.
Where could he run to anyway?
The Grail differed from the records Lord El-Melloi II had researched and from the precedents he had studied. This time, the Grail was fully unsealed, and—since Saber had not damaged it earlier—the contamination spilling out was at its full and complete saturation.
"Ah…"
Something seemed to pull at the mud. Against the pitch black covering the ground, an endless radiance bloomed in the night sky, replacing the absent sun.
"Ruler's Noble Phantasm?"
The first to register the change was Ritsuka, standing at its center. Warmth poured down across her face—an utter, untroubled comfort she had not felt since the burning of human history.
But the Noble Phantasm felt slightly different from the one Jeanne had wielded. Like fire stripping cotton, the black mud retreated wherever the light reached.
So it had this effect too?
Ritsuka half-closed her eyes and turned toward the kitten at the center of it all. A single hand rested lightly on top of Yimi's head.
"Why are you sighing again?" the kitten asked, baffled. She reached up to grab at the saint's robes—her hand, of course, passed straight through.
"He really came…" Doctor Roman, who had been shooed to one side for not having deep enough magecraft credentials, finally found a chance to speak.
This was nothing like the Noble Phantasm they remembered.
Embracing love and mercy in equal measure. The Anointed One whom Ritsuka had once glimpsed in a dream, gazing with pity at the black mud the world had cast out.
At its core was nothing but an ordinary young man onto whom every evil of the world had been forcibly heaped.
Finding she couldn't touch him, Yimi looked up toward the endless light. She could faintly see, beyond it, what seemed to be another "Person"—standing outside the world, tightly bound to her Divinity and to the saint beside her—looking down through layer upon layer at her small figure.
This was an anomaly she had not encountered in the previous worlds. Perhaps it was another effect drawn out by this world's tendency to materialize Noble Phantasms.
"It can't be. He's not… is he?" Waver, his Servant having been defeated and the Reality Marble dispersing, pointed a shaky finger near the kitten, then realized the gesture was rude and hastily clenched his hand shut.
Weren't they supposed to be Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Who had spread that fake intel? The outcome of this Holy Grail War had been decided before it ever began.
Irisviel found her own hands folding in front of her without thinking. Having only just earned the right to pursue her own happiness, she prayed—for her daughter, and for her husband, whose dream was still so innocently pure.
"Jesus?"
There was a doctrine that God exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—three persons in one.
"What in the world is this Ruler?"
How could the Holy Grail War possibly continue?
A Servant with a Noble Phantasm like this, casually holding the Spear of Longinus—this self-styled Ruler was nothing as simple as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse she had first presented as.
She merely stood there, looking down. The mud staining the earth withdrew of its own accord. It looked like purification—and also like the simple expulsion of misfortune.
The Grail rose into the air on its own. The saint's silhouette extended a hand and brushed it gently. What he touched was the extra Servant dragged into the Third Holy Grail War: Angra Mainyu.
There was no hesitation, no drag. Even after the last inch of black mud receded, the radiance did not dim. This time the kitten didn't need the saint's prompting. The Divinity around her had not yet fully overwhelmed her, and she bent down to retrieve the spear.
Some of the absence of joy and grief seemed to be lifting. Once the saint had departed, the now-purified and fully charged Grail descended slowly into Yimi's small hand.
She glanced at it. She still couldn't muster the slightest interest. She rose on her tiptoes and held it out to Ritsuka.
"Yimi." Ritsuka came back to herself and looked down at the little girl.
"Who exactly is he to you?" Roman asked, voicing the question pressing on everyone's mind.
"The Old Geezer." The kitten raised a paw.
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