The Knight of Treachery froze, her teeth bared and her hand raised as if to strike the offered palm away.
But as she looked at Kairi Sisigou's tired, scarred face, she realized something. He wasn't mocking her. He wasn't pitying her. He was just a guy trying to help his injured partner up from the dirt.
She was a knight. She knew the difference between an insult and an act of basic decency. Treating him like an enemy right now was just childish.
Her raised arm hovered in the air for a second before she slowly lowered it. Her fierce, rabid expression melted into a look of tired annoyance.
"Tch."
She clicked her tongue, letting out a heavy sigh.
"Don't bother," she muttered, her voice surprisingly subdued.
Before Kairi could ask what she meant, her body began to dissolve. Starting from her boots, she broke apart into a cloud of shimmering, golden particles that drifted upward and vanished into the night air.
[Don't forget, Master,] a voice echoed directly inside Kairi's mind. [We Servants can enter spirit form. I don't need to walk.]
Kairi blinked at the empty space, his outstretched hand grasping nothing but air.
"Right. Magic ghosts. I completely forgot about that," he muttered to himself, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment.
The shock of the ambush and the sheer panic of seeing his top-tier Servant crippled in the first five minutes had completely scrambled his brain. He let out a long, weary breath and slapped his cheeks to wake himself up.
He couldn't afford to be rattled. His Servant hadn't been killed, just badly injured. As long as her Spirit Core was intact, they were still in this war.
"Alright, Mordred," Kairi said aloud, turning away from the ruined forest.
[Where are we going?] she asked in his mind.
"To church. We have a priest to meet."
[...Huh?]
…
The Next Morning:-
The interior of the Romanian church was cool and quiet, the morning sun filtering through the stained-glass windows to cast colorful patterns across the stone floor.
Kairi sat alone in one of the wooden pews, his heavy leather jacket and tinted sunglasses making him look entirely out of place in the holy building. His face was grim, heavy with the weight of the previous night's disaster.
Standing near the altar, facing him, were a man and a woman.
The man wore the dark, traditional garb of a priest, though his appearance was striking: tanned skin, stark white hair, and a gentle, almost serene smile. This was Shirou Kotomine, a priest sent by the Eighth Sacrament Congregation of the Holy Church to act as the neutral overseer for this Great Holy Grail War.
However, "neutral" was a strong word.
Standing beside the priest was a woman radiating a suffocating, majestic aura. She wore an elegant, dark gown trimmed with gold, and her long, silky black hair cascaded down her back. Her pointed, elf-like ears and sharp golden eyes gave her an otherworldly beauty.
She was Semiramis, the legendary Wise Queen of Assyria. And she was Assassin of Red, Shirou Kotomine's Servant.
The fact that the supposedly neutral overseer had summoned his own Servant was the first reason Kairi didn't trust them.
"So, if I understand correctly," Shirou began, his voice calm and polite. "You were ambushed immediately after completing the summoning ritual, and the enemy possessed overwhelming strength?"
"That's right," Kairi said, crossing his arms.
"Are you certain it was a Servant of the Black Faction?"
The question came from Semiramis. She looked down at Kairi with an arrogant, dismissive gaze. To her, a Saber getting crushed so quickly meant either Kairi's Servant was weak, or the Black Faction had summoned a monster like Hercules.
"It wasn't a Servant of the Black Faction," Kairi replied, his tone dark.
"Then who?"
"It wasn't a Servant at all."
The words hung in the quiet air of the church.
"Not a Servant?" Shirou's smile faded slightly.
"Saber confirmed it," Kairi continued. "There was no Spirit Origin. No familiar traits. It was a living, breathing human."
The silence in the church deepened.
Semiramis narrowed her golden eyes. Shirou's expression grew serious. The implications were staggering.
The Yggdmillennia clan, the Black Faction, was strong, but they were just modern mages. The idea that a modern mage could fight a top-tier Saber in close combat, break her defenses, and nearly kill her in a matter of seconds broke every established rule of magecraft.
It meant there was an unknown variable on the board. A third party, or a secret weapon the Black Faction had kept hidden.
"We know nothing about them," Kairi admitted, frustrated. "Not their numbers, their goals, or their true identity."
"It cannot be a simple human," Semiramis reasoned, refusing to accept the impossible. "We must not rule out the possibility that the Black Faction summoned a Servant with a high-level concealment skill. A skill capable of masking their Spirit Origin completely. An Assassin, perhaps."
"That is a logical assumption," Shirou agreed, nodding slowly.
He turned his attention back to the rugged necromancer sitting in the pews. He could see the tension in Kairi's shoulders. Kairi had refused to let his Saber materialize for this meeting, citing "injuries," but the necromancer was intentionally hiding the true extent of the damage.
He didn't trust them. And in a war like this, trust was a fragile commodity.
"However, we can investigate this mysterious entity later," Shirou said, stepping down from the altar and taking a seat in the pew next to Kairi. His friendly smile returned. "Right now, the priority is your Saber's condition."
Kairi tensed. "I told you, she needs time to heal. I was hoping one of the other Red Masters had a Caster or a healer."
"You are naturally cautious, Sisigou. That is good," Shirou said gently. "But we are allies in this Red Faction. We need your Saber at her full strength."
"I have a solution."
Kairi looked at the priest skeptically. "Really?"
….
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