Morning came with birdsong.
I woke to sunlight streaming through unfamiliar windows and the smell of baking bread. For a moment, I forgot where I was—this wasn't my room in Chaldea, wasn't anywhere I recognized.
Then I remembered.
The door. The village. The real world that didn't bend to my will.
I sat up, rubbing sleep from my eyes. Around me, the others were stirring. Cu was already awake, stretching by the window. Medusa was carefully folding her blanket with precise movements. Mash was still asleep, curled on her side, looking younger and more peaceful than I'd ever seen her.
"Morning," Emiya said, appearing in the doorway with two mugs of something steaming. He handed me one. "The villagers are early risers. They've already got breakfast going."
I took the mug—tea, fragrant and hot—and sipped carefully. It burned my tongue a little. When had I last felt pain in Chaldea? I couldn't remember.
"How are you doing?" I asked him.
He leaned against the doorframe, looking out at the village beginning its day. "Honestly? Better than I thought I would. There's something... grounding about this. Having to work within limits again. Having consequences."
"You like having consequences?"
"I like knowing that what I do matters," he said. "In Chaldea, everything reset. Every meal I cooked disappeared. Every conversation ended and began again. But here..." He held up his mug. "This tea exists because I helped pick herbs this morning. Because I boiled water. Because you're drinking it. It matters."
I understood what he meant.
We gathered for breakfast in the common house—fresh bread, eggs, jam made from berries someone had foraged. The villagers ate with us, including us in their morning conversations without fanfare.
"You folks staying long?" asked one of the men, the one Cu had arm-wrestled the night before.
I looked around at my companions. We hadn't discussed it.
"We're not sure," I said. "We're sort of... figuring things out as we go."
"Aren't we all," Mira said with a laugh. She turned to Artoria. "You mentioned you knew about farming. We could use help in the fields if you're willing to work for your keep."
Artoria's eyes lit up. "I'd be honored."
Just like that, we had a purpose. Or at least, an option for one.
The day unfolded with surprising ease.
Artoria and several others went to work in the fields, and I watched her move among the crops with the same precision she'd used with a sword. Cu helped repair a fence that had been damaged in a recent storm, his strength making quick work of heavy posts. Da Vinci found herself drawn to the village's craftspeople, fascinated by their simple tools and techniques.
Mash and I ended up helping Mira with various tasks—fetching water from the well, mending torn clothing, watching the younger children while their parents worked.
It was mundane. Ordinary. Completely unlike anything I'd experienced in Chaldea.
It was wonderful.
"You're good with them," Mira commented, watching me help a small boy stack wooden blocks. "The children. You have a gentle way about you."
"I'm just... being myself, I guess."
"That's the best thing to be." She smiled. "Where did you say you were from again?"
"I didn't," I said carefully. "It's complicated."
"Most things are." She didn't press, just returned to her sewing with the comfortable silence of someone who understood that everyone had their mysteries.
Mash appeared at my elbow, slightly out of breath. "Master, can you come with me? There's something I want to show you."
I excused myself and followed her out of the village, up a small rise to the east. At the top, she stopped and pointed.
In the distance, I could see more villages. At least three, scattered across the landscape. And beyond them, what might have been a town. And beyond that, mountains rising blue and hazy against the horizon.
"It's huge," Mash said quietly. "This world. I was thinking about Chaldea—how contained it was. How we could walk from one end to the other in minutes. But this..." She gestured at the vast landscape. "This goes on. There's more and more of it. We could walk for days and not see everything."
"Does that frighten you?"
"A little," she admitted. "But also... it makes me feel small in a good way. Like I'm part of something bigger. Like there's room to grow, to explore, to become someone I haven't been yet." She turned to me. "Do you want to keep moving? See what else is out there?"
It was a good question.
Part of me wanted to stay here forever, in this gentle village with these kind people. It was safe, comfortable, real in a way that asked nothing more of me than to simply exist.
But another part of me—the part that had walked through that door in the first place—wanted to see what was beyond the next hill.
"I don't know," I said. "What do you want?"
"I want..." She struggled for words. "I want to know what I'm capable of. In Chaldea, I was always worried about being useful, being enough. But here, I could be anything. I could discover things about myself I never knew. But that also means leaving this place, these people." She looked at me. "Is it selfish to want both?"
"No," I said firmly. "It's human."
We stood there for a while, looking out at the endless world, both of us caught between the comfort of staying and the call of going.
That evening, we gathered in the common house again. The villagers had prepared a small celebration—apparently, helping with the fence repair had revealed structural problems that would have caused real damage if left unfixed, and they were grateful.
There was music. Simple instruments—a fiddle, a drum, a flute—but played with joy and skill. People danced, laughed, celebrated life in all its ordinary glory.
Cu pulled Mira into a enthusiastic dance that made her giggle like a young girl. Da Vinci was demonstrating some kind of card trick to a group of delighted children. Emiya and Artoria sat together, talking quietly, their body language relaxed in a way I'd never seen in Chaldea.
Medusa found me standing at the edge of the celebration, watching.
"You should dance," she said.
"I don't know how."
"Neither did I. But that man over there taught me." She gestured to one of the villagers. "It's simple. Just movement and rhythm. Nothing complicated."
"Maybe later."
She studied my face. "You're thinking about leaving, aren't you?"
"How did you know?"
"Because I am too." She looked out at the darkness beyond the warm lights. "This is lovely. Truly. But it's not... it's not what we came through the door for. Is it?"
"What did we come for?"
"I don't know yet. But I think we need to keep moving to find out." She smiled. "Though I wouldn't mind staying a few more days. Learning to dance. Helping with the harvest. Being normal for a little while longer."
"Yeah," I agreed. "A few more days sounds good."
But we both knew the truth.
We were wanderers now. Seekers. People who'd tasted freedom and couldn't go back to containment, even comfortable containment.
The question wasn't if we'd leave.
It was what we'd find when we did.
Later, when the celebration had wound down and people were drifting toward sleep, I stepped outside for air.
The stars were brilliant, undimmed by any artificial light. I stood there, breathing in the cool night air, feeling small and vast all at once.
"Master?"
Mash joined me, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders.
"Couldn't sleep?" I asked.
"Didn't want to. I was thinking about what you said—about being human. About wanting contradictory things." She looked up at the stars. "I've decided something."
"What's that?"
"I want to keep going. See more of this world. Find out who I am when I'm not following patterns or fulfilling expectations." She glanced at me. "But I want you to know—wherever we go, whatever we find, I'm glad you're here. I'm glad we're doing this together."
"Me too," I said.
"Even though you're not a god anymore?"
I laughed. "Especially because I'm not a god anymore."
We stood there together, two people under infinite stars, making the very human choice to walk forward into uncertainty.
And somehow, that felt more powerful than any reality-bending ability I'd ever had.
Because this was real.
This mattered.
This was ours.