The air in the shattered throne room was thick, laden with the dust of pulverized stone, the ozone of released magic, and the sickly-sweet stench of corruption emanating from the open wound on Cu Chulainn Alter's chest. Leonel breathed in short, painful gasps; each inhalation burned his lungs as if he were inhaling gunpowder. Nightingale's stimulant kept total collapse at bay, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. His body was a battlefield of agonies: a hammering headache that pulsed in time with his racing heart, muscles trembling from sustained effort, and a deep coldness in his gut signaling the absolute exhaustion of his Magic Circuits.
Through the fog of his own fatigue, he saw his enemy. Cu Alter was no longer the impassive nightmare statue. He staggered, a titanic silhouette that was wounded and furious. His adaptations, once fluid as water, were now spasmodic, erratic. The glow signaling the change flickered over his corrupt skin like a defective strobe light, unable to stabilize into a coherent defense. He was cornered by the relentless logic of the cycle Leonel had imposed, a deadly dance that had worn down not only his body but the very coherence of his Saint Graph.
"He's... almost..." Leonel's voice was a hoarse whisper, barely audible over the beast's bestial growl and the crunch of rubble. He leaned more weight on Mash, whose gaze was fixed on the enemy, her shield still firm but her breathing labored as well. Around him, his Servants formed a tense semicircle. Kiyohime, with her kimono torn and breath ragged. Mordred, using Clarent planted in the ground for support. Artoria Alter, impassive but with a thin line of sweat on her temple. Jeanne Alter, the fire in her eyes reduced to weary embers. Nero Bride and Tamamo, exhausted but with determination intact. Drake, leaning against a broken column, her pistol smoking. Even Nightingale, the paragon of clinical efficiency, showed a stiffness in her shoulders that betrayed extreme tension.
"Last cycle..." Leonel forced the words out, swallowing blood and bitterness. His mind, the tool that had kept him alive until now, felt as if it were full of broken glass. Every thought was a cut. But it still worked. He calculated the timings, the chaotic flicker of Cu Alter's adaptations, the window of vulnerability that would open... and close forever in seconds. "Everyone... ready for the Noble Phantasm... on my signal..."
He concentrated the last of his will, feeling the bonds connecting him to his Servants tighten, channels through which no river of mana flowed anymore, only a tenuous thread, dripping precious energy. They were going to bet everything on one last coordinated volley. A massive attack that, with luck, would pierce the residual defenses and send the changing specter back to the throne from which it should never have been ripped with such distortion.
However, in the instant Leonel opened his mouth to give the final order, something changed.
Cu Chulainn Alter stopped growling. His panting breath ceased. A sudden, unnatural calm fell over his battered figure. Then, from the depths of his being, from the black, frost-rimmed crack Artoria had opened in his chest, energy began to emanate.
It wasn't the corrupt, bestial darkness of the Alter. It was something... older. More calculating. More hateful.
A visceral sense of déjà vu, cold as steel submerged in ice, shot through Leonel. He knew that energy signature. He had felt it before, permeating the fields of France, emanating from that abomination of tentacles and eyes: Andras. The Demon God Pillar.
But this was different. Denser. More concentrated. As if the essence of a Pillar wasn't being summoned from afar, but germinating from within Cu Alter's shattered Saint Graph, feeding on his corruption, his fury, and his imminent defeat.
"No..." Leonel muttered, panic—a luxury he couldn't afford—showing its claws at the edges of his consciousness. "Not again!"
There was no time for Tezcatlipoca's analysis. It was pure instinct, the instinct of a cornered animal seeing the hunter load a new and more terrible weapon. The meticulous strategy, the adaptation cycle, the window of opportunity... all of it was swept away by a primordial need: Stop that from completing!
"FORGET THE SIGNAL!" he roared, his voice tearing in his throat. "NOBLE PHANTASM! NOW! EVERYTHING YOU'VE GOT, ON HIM, RIGHT NOW!"
It was a brusque, desperate order, lacking the tactical elegance that characterized him. But the urgency, the rawness of the terror in their Master's voice, galvanized the Servants as no strategy could have.
There was no coordination. There was no synchronicity. There was a cataclysmic eruption of pure power and desperation.
"CLARENT... BLOOD ARTHUR!" Mordred was first, unleashing the crimson light dragon from her sword with a furious cry.
"LA GRONDEMENT DE LA HAINE!" Jeanne Alter followed instantly, conjuring a pillar of black fire and pure hatred that shot toward the shattered ceiling.
"RHONGOMYNIAD!" Artoria Alter released the true name of her spear, not a surgical thrust, but a torrent of cold, authoritarian energy seeking annihilation.
"FLAMMULA DRACONIS!" Kiyohime's blue breath transformed into a serpentine whirlwind of spiritual flames.
"AESTUS DOMUS AUREA!" Nero Bride and Nero, in a rare moment of perfect unity, superimposed their Domus Aurea, not to create a theater, but to concentrate and direct all the light of the sun and marble into a blinding ray of imperial heat.
"TAMAMO-NO-MAE... FORMATION OF THE EIGHTFOLD PLEAS!" Tamamo, from the rear, traced her Ofuda with frantic movements, channeling ancient curses and pure damage boosts that amplified every attack.
"THE LION OF CALCUTTA!" Nightingale's voice didn't shout; it cut the air like a scalpel. Her Noble Phantasm wasn't offensive in the traditional sense, but a surgical halo of pure white light materialized around Cu Alter, not to heal, but to isolate, to mark the area of annihilation, to define the boundaries of a lethal operating field.
"BON VOYAGE, SWEETIE!" Drake, with a fierce smile, fired her pistol, and the Golden Wild Hunt emerged in a spectral stampede of golden prows and cannon fire, ravaging everything in its path.
"LORD CAMELOT!" Mash, protecting Leonel, did not attack, but the glow of her shield intensified, a beacon of defense amid the offensive apocalypse.
It was a holocaust of light, sound, and pure destruction. Colors merged into a blinding white followed by a roar that seemed to shake the very foundations of the Singularity. Leonel, protected by Mash, was knocked down by the shockwave, the world reduced to a high-pitched ringing and unbearable pressure on his chest. He felt his already-exhausted Magic Circuits crack. It was a physical sensation, as if the veins of his soul were fracturing. The connection with his Servants became painful, a stripped wire conducting pure agony.
When the light dissipated and the roar became a distant rumble, the throne room... had simply ceased to exist. What remained was a huge, smoking crater, its edges the melted remains of walls and columns. In the center, where Cu Chulainn Alter once stood, there was only a mound of vitrified rubble, smoldering and silent.
An absolute, profound silence took hold of the place. Only the crackle of cooling stone and Leonel's ragged gasps.
"Did... did we do it?" murmured Elizabeth Báthory, her voice trembling, breaking the spell.
Leonel, helped by Mash to his knees, scanned the crater. There was no trace of the beast. No sense of that oppressive corruption. There was... nothing. The summoning attempt, whatever it was, had been interrupted.
An overwhelming relief that almost made him faint flooded him. He closed his eyes, a weak, tremulous smile appearing on his cracked lips. They had won. On the verge of collapse, without magic, without strategies, but they had...
"LEONEL!" Romani Archaman's voice, bursting from the communicators with a shrill urgency, cut his momentary respite like a knife. "A massive magical energy signal! It's concentrating right at your location, at the crater's epicenter! It's not residual, it's growing!"
The relief froze and shattered in Leonel's stomach. He opened his eyes abruptly, the stimulant's hyper-lucidity turning into terrifying clarity. He looked towards the mound of rubble.
At first, he saw nothing. Then, a speck of darkness, deeper than shadow, denser than night, appeared in the air right above it. It didn't emanate from the ground. It materialized from the void, sucking up the little light that remained. The speck grew, spinning, becoming a silent black vortex. From the vortex began to sprout familiar and horrifying forms: tentacles composed of yellow eyes and tiny teeth, segments of stony and corrupt flesh, burning runes of a language that made the mind bleed.
It was a Demon God Pillar. But not like Andras. This one was more compact, its energy more concentrated, its presence more... personal. It wasn't a force of unleashed demonic nature; it was a tool of vengeance, an extension of a perverse will that had observed them, that had learned from their previous defeat. The energy it emanated was overwhelming, a physical pressure that made the air weigh like lead and a buzz of pure terror resonated in their bones.
"Damn it..." Leonel spat, the taste of ash and defeat filling his mouth. He stood up unsteadily, pushing Mash's arm away. "Positions! Everyone, defen...!"
The order died on his lips. His Servants, heroically, were already moving, forming a defensive line in front of him. But Leonel could see it. He could see the tremor in Billy's hands, the extreme pallor of Geronimo, the weary gleam in his lovers' eyes. And he could feel it: the well of his own magic was dry, scraped to the last drop. To demand a prolonged fight from them now, against that, was to condemn them to annihilation. They had no strategy. No energy. Only desperation.
The Demon God Pillar completed its materialization. It was a twisted column of nightmare, about ten meters tall, its countless eyes all focusing, with a cold, malevolent intelligence, on Leonel. A mental roar, a word in the language of demons meaning "ANNIHILATION," struck their minds.
And it attacked.
A tentacle composed of eyes lashed out like a whip, too fast for the normal eye. Mash interposed herself, and Lord Camelot resonated with an agonizing metallic sound as it absorbed the blow. The Shielder was shoved back several meters, her boots furrowing the melted ground.
"We can't hold this!" Mordred shouted, swinging Clarent against another tentacle trying to flank them.
Leonel knew it. He knew it with an absolute, devastating certainty. They had survived the beast, only to be crushed by the hand that moved it. A deep bitterness, a cold fire of impotent rage, ignited in his chest. He would not surrender. He would die standing, giving orders, fighting until his heart burst. But the shadow of Goetia loomed over them once more, reminding them of their insignificance.
It was at that precise moment, when despair was beginning to poison even the bravest hearts, that the space between them and the Demon God Pillar... rippled.
It wasn't a sound. It was a change in air pressure, a shift in reality as subtle as it was lethal. And then, she was there.
She didn't appear in a flash of light. She didn't emerge from a portal. Simply, one moment she wasn't, and the next, she was part of the landscape, as if she had always been there, observing from the shadows she now materialized. Scáthach.
She wore her tight purple suit, her long, straight hair like a mantle of starry night, her crimson eyes shining with a light not of this world. She walked. She didn't run, didn't lunge. She took a few slow, deliberate steps, with the grace of a panther who knows it owns the territory. She placed herself directly between the Servants' defensive line and the monstrous Pillar, giving them her back with absolute, obscene confidence.
The atmosphere changed instantly. The Pillar's oppressive terror didn't lessen, but now it faced something else: a presence. An ancient authority, cold as tomb steel and sharp as the edge of oblivion. The Land of Shadows seemed to spread at her feet, a realm of death and eternal training she brought with her wherever she went.
"What a nuisance, Leonel," her voice said. It wasn't loud, but it cut through the Pillar's mental roar and the combatants' gasps like a dagger. She spoke with a measured cadence, a touch of mundane annoyance that contrasted grotesquely with the apocalyptic scene. She slightly turned her head, her crimson eyes finding Leonel's for an instant that for him felt like an eternity. "You fought well against my old disciple. You defeated him with cunning and will, exploiting the clumsiness of his borrowed power. A praiseworthy achievement."
She paused, and her gaze turned towards the Demon God Pillar, which seemed to have halted its advance, its multiple eyes now fixed on this new, most dangerous variable. "But his cowardice... or rather, his stubbornness to defeat you, left a sight far uglier than I anticipated." Infinite disdain permeated her words. She spoke of Cu Chulainn Alter and the Pillar as a teacher speaks of a particularly disastrous pupil who has dirtied the classroom.
Then, she looked back at Leonel. And this time, her gaze wasn't one of distant evaluation. It was predatory. Intense. A gaze that not only scrutinized, but claimed. "You passed my test, Leonel. You survived my ambush, kept your calm, improvised. You are strong. Stronger than your fragile body suggests. You are worthy."
She paused again, and the next words fell into the icy silence like stones carved into the world's bone:
"You are worthy of being my disciple."
And then, with a smile that was merely the slight curving of her lips but contained unnamable promises and dangers, she added:
"And possibly... my husband."
A shiver that had nothing to do with Rhongomyniad's residual cold ran down Leonel's spine. It was a primal sensation, of prey recognizing the apex predator. Before he could process the full meaning of those words, the possessive instinct of his brides exploded.
"WHAT?!" was the indignant and jealous chorus. Kiyohime let out a growl, her reptilian eyes blazing with fury. Tamamo and Nero physically interposed themselves between Leonel and Scáthach, their gazes murderous. Jeanne Alter ignited black fire in her hands. Mash tightened her grip on her shield, confused between loyalty and a new, strange alarm. It was a chaotic and emotional display of fierce protection.
Scáthach didn't even pay them any attention. Her laugh was a low, husky sound that seemed to vibrate in the very air. She disdained the threat they represented, not for lack of power, but because at that moment, they simply weren't relevant to her panorama. Her focus was divided between the monster before her and the interesting prey behind her.
She turned her face, dismissing the drama, towards the true disturbance. Her hand clenched in the air. And space tore with a sound like silk being ripped at a cosmic level. From that rift in reality emerged Gáe Bolg, the cursed crimson thorn spear, dripping shadows and flashes of dark runes. She didn't summon it. She reclaimed it from her own domain.
"Don't worry," she said, and this time her tone was different. Flat. Professional. Lethal. It was the voice of the Queen of the Land of Shadows, the instructor of heroes, the god-slayer. "I'll take care of this enemy."
And then began what, for Leonel and his exhausted Servants, could only be described as a demonstration.
The Demon God Pillar, as if regaining its senses before the tangible threat, unleashed a volley of ocular tentacles, each moving at supersonic speeds, weaving a net of death that would have shredded an army of normal Servants.
Scáthach did not dodge.
She faded.
It wasn't a quick step. Her image flickered and reappeared three meters to the left, right at the blind spot between two tentacles. Gáe Bolg, in her hands, was not a heavy weapon. It was an extension of her will, a brush with which she painted death. She twirled the spear, a seemingly casual movement, and the thorn tip traced a perfect arc. Where it passed, the tentacles simply... disintegrated. They weren't cut, not severed. Gáe Bolg's runes, the curse of impossibility to heal, canceled their very existence at the point of contact, reducing them to motes of dark dust that dissipated before touching the ground.
The Pillar roared, an explosion of corrupt energy emanated from its central body, an area attack designed to pulverize everything within a fifty-meter radius. A purple warning flash preceded the demonic shockwave.
Scáthach saw it coming. She showed no hurry. She took a step back, then another. And then, just as the shockwave was about to reach her, she leapt. It wasn't a high jump. It was a sideways, almost offhand movement that nevertheless carried her outside the attack radius with millimeter precision. The explosion roared past her back, shattering what remained of the crater, but only stirred her hair.
Before the debris raised by the explosion could fall, she was already moving again. She charged. Her advance wasn't a furious charge; it was the relentless approach of a storm. Her feet didn't seem to touch the ground; she glided over shadows, her figure a purple blotch against the Pillar's darkness.
The monster's eyes fired concentrated beams of yellow energy, dozens at once, creating an impossible-to-dodge field of death.
Scáthach did not try to dodge them all. She went through them. Gáe Bolg became a crimson whirlwind around her. Every spin, every thrust, every sweep, intercepted a beam, deflecting or nullifying it with a crack of broken energy. She advanced through the infernal fire as if walking through rain, without a single drop touching her. Her movements were pure economy of motion, every action with a purpose, no waste, no flourishes. It was the essence of combat raised to a lethal art form.
She reached the base of the Pillar. The monster, sensing imminent danger, tried to crush her with its bodily mass, a block of flesh and eyes that fell like a mountain.
Scáthach crouched slightly, then pushed with her legs. She jumped vertically, not away, but towards the falling mass. At the last possible instant, she twisted in mid-air, her body contorting with supernatural flexibility, and passed grazing the Pillar's stony skin. As she did, Gáe Bolg drove its tip in and tore a deep furrow along the monster's flank, from top to bottom. It wasn't a cut. It was a dismantling. The corrupt flesh, hardened to resist Noble Phantasms, yielded to the cursed spear like butter to a red-hot knife. A geyser of dark energy and yellow pus erupted from the wound.
She landed silently, not a drop of the disgusting fluid on her. The Pillar, now grievously wounded, went into a frenzy. All its eyes closed for an instant, then opened, glowing with a concentrated sinister light. Its body began to vibrate, to accumulate energy for something big, likely a self-destruction attack or a final power flare.
Scáthach gave it no opportunity.
She stood tall, holding Gáe Bolg with both hands. The offhanded attitude was gone. Now her posture was that of a hunter who has cornered her prey and is about to deliver the final blow. A palpable aura of power, ancient and terrible, began to emanate from her. The air around her distorted, shadows lengthened and writhed as if saluting their queen.
"You have been a nuisance," she said, speaking directly to the Pillar as if it could understand. "And my time is valuable. No more games."
She raised Gáe Bolg above her head. The crimson spear began to glow with an inner light, dark runes spinning around it at incredible speeds. It wasn't Cu Chulainn's Noble Phantasm. This was something more primal, more brutal. Gáe Bolg Alternative.
"GÁE BOLG!" Her voice did not shout. It declared.
And she threw the spear.
It wasn't a throw with brute force. It was a gesture of release. Gáe Bolg did not fly in a straight line. It disappeared from the point of release and, in the same instant, the space in front of Scáthach, at the center of the Demon God Pillar, opened.
There was no prior hole. Simply, the reality at that point yielded, and from its heart emerged the spear's tip, followed by the rest, as if it had always been there, piercing the monster from the inside out. But it wasn't a simple thrust.
It was an event.
A vortex of pure force and curse, the color of old blood and eternal night, exploded from the point of impact. It wasn't an outward explosion, but a directed annihilation implosion. The vortex expanded, swallowing entire segments of the Pillar. The stony flesh, the eyes, the tentacles, everything was sucked toward the epicenter and disintegrated at a conceptual level. There were no remains. No residual energy. Only void. A void in the shape of a perfect cylinder that went straight through the center of the Demon God Pillar from side to side, a clean, round hole the diameter of a small building, through which one could see the distorted sky of the Singularity on the other side.
The Pillar's roar was cut off abruptly. Its remains, the structure left around the perfect hole, began to collapse silently, fading into specks of dark light dust that disintegrated before hitting the ground. In seconds, there was nothing. Only the hole in the air, which slowly began to close, stitching itself together as if reality were a healing wound.
Scáthach lowered her arm. The space beside her ripped open again, and Gáe Bolg, clean and pristine, reappeared in her hand before vanishing into runes. She breathed once, deeply, as if she had just performed a moderately demanding exercise.
Then, she turned around.
The silence among Leonel's Servants was absolute, broken only by the faint hiss of cooling stone. They had witnessed something that transcended combat. They had seen a legend walk, and a monster that would have annihilated them being erased from existence with the ease with which one crushes a bothersome insect. Respect, awe, and a deep, primal fear mingled on their faces.
Scáthach ignored all those gazes. Her crimson eyes found Leonel's once more, who was pale, trembling, but with eyes wide open, trying to process the monumentality of what he had just witnessed.
She walked towards him. Her steps were silent, but each one resonated in Leonel's heart like a war drum. Tamamo, Nero, Kiyohime, Jeanne Alter... all tensed, but something in Scáthach's presence, in her absolute indifference to any threat they might pose, paralyzed them. It wasn't that they weren't powerful. It's that, at that moment, before her, they were invisible.
She stopped in front of Leonel, who was still leaning on Mash. She looked down at his eyes. A terrible and beautiful smile played on her lips.
"Well fought, Master," she said, her voice now an intimate whisper that only he seemed to hear. "But now it's my turn to claim my payment for the intervention."
Before Leonel could ask, protest, or even think, Scáthach's hand moved. It wasn't a fast movement, but it was inevitable. Her fingers, cold as the marble of a tomb, closed around the back of his neck, not with strangling force, but with absolute, possessive firmness.
And then, she leaned in.
The kiss was not romantic. It was not passionate in the traditional sense. It was a marking. An act of primal possession. Her lips met his with firm, dominant pressure. And then, he felt a sharp, brief pain. She had bitten his lower lip, not playfully, but with enough force to break the skin, so that the blood, his blood, stained both their lips.
It was a bestial, ancient gesture, speaking of claiming, of marking territory, of binding destinies with a seal of blood and pain. It lasted only a few seconds, but for Leonel it was an eternity of shock, of a strange mix of vulnerability and a terrible attraction to the absolute power this woman represented.
When Scáthach pulled away, there was a drop of crimson blood at the corner of her mouth, which she slowly licked with the tip of her tongue, her eyes shining with predatory satisfaction. Leonel stood there, stunned, his lower lip throbbing, the small wound burning, the taste of iron and something else, of shadows and eternity, in his mouth.
Chaos erupted around him.
"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!" "LET GO OF HIM, WITCH!" "MASTER!" The jealous, furious protests of his brides finally found voice, and a chorus of outrage and unleashed power rose up. They crowded around Leonel, putting themselves between him and Scáthach, their weapons and powers flashing.
Scáthach only laughed. A low laugh, genuinely amused this time, like an adult watching children play war. She didn't even bother to look at them. Her eyes remained fixed on Leonel, on the mark she had left on his lip.
"Keep that mark, Leonel Herrera," she said, her voice losing volume, as if she were already departing. "It is your promise. And mine. We will meet again soon, in that place called Chaldea. When the time comes, I will claim you. As a disciple... and as the rest."
And then, as she had arrived, she began to fade. Not in a flash of light, but disintegrating into purple shadows and dark runes that dissolved into the air. "Rest. You won this battle. The Singularity... is correcting itself."
As the last mote of her presence vanished, the world around them began to blur. A familiar hum, that of Chaldea's Rayshift system, filled the air. The reality of distorted Washington D.C. began to unravel like a dream, lines and colors melting.
Leonel, still reeling from the kiss, the bite, the display of power, and the overwhelming weight of Scáthach's promise/threat, barely felt Tamamo's and Mash's arms holding him as the translocation enveloped them. He saw his other Servants, each with expressions of relief, extreme fatigue, and, in the case of his lovers, a deep and jealous worry, also beginning to fade.
The last thing he saw, before the whiteness of the Rayshift covered everything, was the smoldering crater, and in his mind, the indelible image of Scáthach, standing before the abyss, erasing a demon with the ease of one writing their name in the sand, before turning and claiming him with a kiss that tasted of blood and intertwined futures.
The return to Chaldea was a whirlwind of muffled lights and sensations. When materialization was complete in the Rayshift room, Leonel fell to his knees, the physical, magical, and emotional exhaustion hitting him full force now that the adrenaline and stimulant had worn off. Doctors and assistants rushed over, but the image of Da Vinci and Romani approaching with faces of concern and relief was blurry.
Someone, perhaps Nightingale with her unperturbed efficiency, wiped his face with a cold cloth. And when the cloth passed over his lips, it came away stained a bright red.
Leonel touched his lower lip with his fingers, feeling the small but unmistakable mark of Scáthach's teeth. A shiver ran through his body, but it wasn't entirely fear. There was a spark of something more, of anticipation, of a challenge accepted deep within his being.
Poor Leonel. He didn't fully understand what had happened, nor what that bite truly meant. But deep in Chaldea's sub-levels, within the intricate mechanisms of the summoning system, something had been activated. A unique catalyst, composed of the blood of a Master marked by the Queen of Shadows, of his will proven in battle, and of the promise made on an apocalyptic battlefield, now pulsed like a dark seed, waiting for the right moment to germinate.
The American Singularity was over. But for Leonel Herrera, a new and far more personal chapter of training, claim, and divine power had just been promised with a bloody kiss. And Scáthach was not one to forget her promises.