"Everything is Tokiomi Tohsaka's fault."
Rei Ao's lips curled into a faint, mocking smile.
There was some teasing in that line, sure. But in light of what Sakura would do in the future, putting it that way didn't seem wrong.
So he went on, openly derisive:
"Tokiomi Tohsaka—an arrogant, willfully blind fool who'd rather trust an outsider's one-sided story than his own daughter's instincts and accusations."
"Honestly, a man like you won't be missed when you die."
"What did you say?!"
Such blunt, cutting words—practically a curse—were a first for Tokiomi Tohsaka. It was like someone lit a fuse; already seething because his daughter talked back and an outsider had butted in, he blew up on the spot.
A vein throbbed at his temple.
His usual poised elegance nearly shattered.
His knife-sharp gaze locked hard onto Rei Ao.
As head of the Tohsaka family, when had he ever suffered such humiliation?!
"Heh."
Facing Tokiomi's fury, Rei Ao only let out a cold snort.
The contempt in that sound made Tokiomi even angrier.
"What's wrong—hit a nerve?"
"Every word your daughter, Rin Tohsaka, just said is true."
"Matou Zouken—an old monster who's clung to life for five centuries with bug magecraft—covets Sakura's Imaginary Number attribute. He wants to remake her into a 'Lesser Grail' that can bear the souls of Heroic Spirits summoned for the Holy Grail War."
"His ultimate goal is to use the Grail's power to fulfill his long-perverted dream of 'materializing the soul,' and he may even seize Sakura's body as his new vessel."
Rei Ao's voice was clear and cold, stripping bare the filthy, bloody purpose Matou Zouken hid under the fig leaf of "adoption."
"I'm curious."
Rei Ao watched Tokiomi's shifting expression with interest, continuing to apply psychological pressure.
"If—and I do mean if—"
"If you believed all of this right now, if you understood the irredeemable abyss you personally pushed your daughter into—"
"You, Tokiomi Tohsaka—what would you choose?"
"Would you cling to that laughable 'magus pride' and your deal with a tiger, and march straight into the dark?"
"Or would you finally wake up—and protect your own flesh and blood, even if it costs you everything?"
"…"
Tokiomi fell silent.
His face kept changing, his lips pressed tight; it was obvious he was wrestling with himself.
Rei Ao's words were a hammer, pounding at his entrenched assumptions and beliefs.
On one hand, reason and the family's teachings told him he couldn't lightly trust some nobody of unknown origin. The man could be sowing discord.
On the other hand, Rin's earlier accusations, Matou Zouken's odd stupor just now, and Rei Ao's firm, detail-rich account… all of it was like a cluster of sharp thorns lodged in his heart—impossible to ignore completely.
In the end, years of rigid adherence to "magus codes" and "family interests," buoyed by blind faith in his own judgment, smothered that weak flicker of fatherly intuition.
He raised his head.
His eyes grew sharp again, wary and hard.
In a low voice he demanded, "Who are you, really?!"
"You appear out of nowhere, spouting deceitful nonsense!"
"Why should I believe your one-sided claims?"
"Old Man Matou has been an ally of House Tohsaka for years—a renowned elder in the world of magecraft!"
"And you—a skulking nobody who might not even be here in person—what gives you the right to grandstand before me?!"
"Father…"
Those words snuffed out the last faint ember of hope in Rin Tohsaka's heart.
She held her sister Sakura tight, eyes filled with deep disappointment and pain.
Even with evidence this solid, her father still wouldn't believe?
To him, were the Tohsaka family's face and a magus's rulebook really more important than his daughters' safety and happiness?
Sakura Tohsaka didn't fully understand everything the adults were saying. But she could feel her sister's sorrow and her father's coldness.
Her small body trembled in Rin's arms, violet eyes brimming with tears.
"Heh. Hopeless idiot, through and through."
Rei Ao shook his head, the mockery on his face deepening.
He looked at Tokiomi like one might look at a pitiable worm—lost in his own world and refusing to wake up.
"Since you're that stubborn—so foolish you won't open your eyes to reality—"
"Then I'll 'waste' a few words. For you, and for these two young ladies who still have a conscience, let me tell a story."
Rei Ao's voice leveled out, carrying the weight of history and a tone that brooked no doubt.
"A story about Makiri Zolgen."
And a story about how time corrodes ideals—how the lofty decays into obsession.
And how that obsession dragged a magus lineage—and this very city of Fuyuki—into the first turn of a tragic, ever-repeating whirlpool.
His gaze seemed to pierce time and space, back to a land five hundred years ago.
Five centuries ago, there was a young man named Makiri Zolgen.
He was born to a family of magi, yet he held an ideal that even magi of his age would have called naive—perhaps even noble: "to abolish all the evils of this world."
Not merely catching villains and punishing crime,
but striking at the root—erasing the inborn, inescapable "karma" of humanity: the wellsprings of selfishness, greed, envy, hatred… all negative impulses of the heart.
To realize this seemingly impossible dream,
he chose the path of "materializing the soul."
He believed humans cannot shake off "evil" because they're shackled to a limited, fragile body. If the soul could be made material—freed from the body's constraints and housed in a vessel with broader spirituality—
then humanity could evolve into a higher order of sentience—and eliminate "evil" at its very root.