The fire didn't hurt anymore.
It had stopped being pain a long time ago.
Now it was just heat. Endless, suffocating heat, wrapped in smoke and ash and red light. Buildings cracked. The ground shifted. Somewhere behind him, something exploded — not loud anymore, just distant.
The boy walked.
Step by step. Barefoot. Burned.
He didn't know where he was going.
He didn't remember where he'd come from.
His name?
It was fading.
His family?
Already gone.
His world was narrowing with every step — shrinking into fire and noise and a body that barely worked.
"Keep walking."
That was the only thought left. A half-broken loop in his mind. A single instinct.
He didn't know why. He didn't know who had told him to keep walking.
But he obeyed it. Because it was all he had.
He passed a burned car. A twisted sign. A skeleton of a home that still stood for some reason, stubborn and hollow.
A gust of heat knocked him off balance. He staggered. Fell to one knee. The ground was hot enough to burn through his skin. He didn't feel it.
Everything in him wanted to lie down.
To stop.
To let the world swallow him whole.
Just a little longer.
Keep walking.
But even that voice — that command — was starting to go quiet.
His body shook. His arms hung limp. His thoughts came in broken images.
A woman's voice. A man's laugh. A backyard. Someone calling his name—
'What was my name?'
He couldn't remember.
He was nothing now.
Just a small, ruined thing in a sea of fire.
Then he heard it.
A voice — not the fire's, not the scream of steel or sirens.
A human voice.
"Hey—!"
He blinked.
Turned, slowly, vision flickering.
A figure ran through the smoke. Black coat whipping behind him. One arm limp at his side, one leg dragging. His face twisted in pain with every step.
But he was coming closer.
Toward him.
The boy watched, frozen.
His body couldn't move anymore.
Kiritsugu Emiya's lungs burned.
His vision blurred. His leg was nearly gone. His quirk had torn muscles, fried nerves —
He had pushed his quirk far past its limit.
Time dilation, spatial acceleration — bursts of motion so precise they tore his muscles, ripped his tendons. He moved like a bullet through the blaze, warping the space around his limbs in sharp bursts, leaping gaps others couldn't cross.
And now, every step was agony.
But he saw him.
A boy. Alone. Staggering through hell.
Alive.
Barely.
Kiritsugu fell to his knees in front of him, gasping. His hands grabbed the boy's shoulders, desperate to confirm he was real.
He was.
Burned. Weak. But breathing.
The moment hit like a hammer.
"You're alive…"
And then—
He broke.
Tears spilled down his soot-streaked face, unbidden, unstoppable. Sharp, ugly sobs punched out of his chest.
He pulled the boy close. Held him against his coat.
He didn't care about the pain in his ribs, or the screaming in his legs.
He didn't care that he could barely breathe.
All that mattered was that this boy was still alive.
The boy blinked slowly.
The world felt quiet now.
Warm, yes — but not the killing kind. Not the fire.
It was a different kind of warmth.
Someone was holding him.
Tight. Safe.
He looked up.
The man — this stranger — was crying and smiling at the same time.
A broken, shaking smile. Nothing pretty. But it was real.
A smile that said, "I found you. You're safe now."
And for a moment — a flicker — the boy felt something else.
Not pain. Not fear.
Hope.
The man was still crying when he whispered:
"I've got you. You're okay."
The boy's lips moved, barely.
Not a word.
Just a question forming in his heart:
'Who is this man?
Why does he look so happy… even though he's crying?
Why does it feel like the whole world stopped for him just now?'
And then —
A thought bloomed in the smoke.
Small. Quiet. Fragile.
A wish.
"One day… if I can… I want to smile like that too."
"If I can save someone… and they live… maybe I can smile like him."
And in that moment—
Something lit inside him.
The air shifted.
A low hum vibrated through the air.
Symbols — glowing, geometric — spun around the boy's chest like phantom machinery. Rings of energy. Sigils. Gears turning in slow orbit.
Kiritsugu recoiled, stunned.
"What…?"
The space around them shimmered — heat rising in patterns, not chaos.
And then—
Blades.
Flickering outlines. Half-formed weapons made of light and memory. A small dagger. A cracked short sword. A glint of something curved like a scythe.
They floated above the boy's back like ghostly wings.
Kiritsugu's eyes widened.
"It's his quirk…"
The boy — still unconscious, barely breathing — was glowing.
Not with fire.
With something else.
A power that had waited until the exact moment he made a wish.
And Kiritsugu understood.
This child hadn't just survived.
He hadn't just been rescued.
He had awakened.
Not because of hate.
Not because of fear.
Because he saw soming beautiful.
Because he wanted to save someone.
Because he saw a smile — and wanted to give one like it to someone else.
Because he saw a future hero.
Kiritsugu's breath hitched again.
He pulled the boy close, tears still streaking down.
"I'll protect you."
"No matter what happens… I'll raise you right."
"You won't walk through fire alone again."
Later, the fire would be declared a disaster of national scale. Countless dead. Dozens missing. Only one child found alive deep inside the epicenter.
The press called it a miracle.
The doctors called it a quirk awakening under extreme trauma.
But Kiritsugu knew the truth.
It wasn't pain that had awakened the boy.
It was hope.
The boy wouldn't remember much of that night.
But he would always remember that smile.
And the wish that followed.
.
.
.
The boy wouldn't remember much of that night.
But he would always remember that smile.
And the wish that followed.