The end of the world didn't arrive with a divine lightning bolt crossing the skies, nor with the sound of celestial trumpets announcing the final judgment. There was no cosmic warning, no moment of clarity where humanity could prepare for its extinction. For me, the end of the world arrived with the smell of burnt ozone, the epileptic flicker of red emergency lights, and the suffocating heat of human blood spilling onto the polished metal of Chaldea.
My name is Fujimaru Ritsuka, though some here nicknamed me Gudako. Until just a few hours ago, I was nothing more than an ordinary girl. A civilian with a Magic Circuit count barely decent enough to be recruited as "Master Number 48." I was the bottom of the barrel, the filler number to meet a quota in a project designed to save humanity's future. I wasn't a scholar trained by expert magi, I didn't have a centuries-old magical lineage, I didn't even understand half the technical jargon the elite magi spat out in the hallways of this facility high in the snowy mountains of Antarctica.
I was just me. And perhaps because of that, when everything went to hell, my mind couldn't process it right away.
I remember waking up confused. I remember meeting Mash and Fou. I remember talking to the mysterious engineer Lev Lainur.
I remember the central command room, a marvel of technology and sorcery combined. I remember the constant hum of CHALDEAS, the soul model of the Earth, glowing with a comforting blue. I remember falling asleep during Director Olga Marie's speech, and the subsequent scolding from Olga that sent me back to my room. I remember talking to Dr. Romani and having a quiet conversation with him.
Then a tragedy occurred and my thoughts drifted to how her scolding saved my life. Or, rather, condemned me to witness the nightmare that would unfold seconds later.
The explosion wasn't just a roar; it was like a tremor announcing itself before becoming an earthquake. The ground beneath my feet shook with such extreme violence that I was thrown against the hallway wall. The sound was deafening, an acoustic shockwave that burst eardrums and turned the facility's air into a solid mass that crushed my lungs. The lights flickered and died, instantly replaced by the infernal glow of flames devouring the pristine hallways. The smell of burnt flesh, melted plastic, and carbonized wires invaded my nostrils, making me retch.
I ran, ignoring the Doctor's calls. Despite my fear and my animal survival instinct telling me not to run towards danger, I ignored it; I had to know how Mash was. I returned to the command room, or what was left of it. The glass dome was shattered. CHALDEAS, once a vibrant blue sphere representing humanity's future, was now stained a sickly crimson red, like a bloodshot eye glaring at us with contempt. Debris covered everything. Crushed bodies, limbs protruding from under twisted steel beams, blood forming puddles that reflected the flames. The elite magi, those who were supposed to save the world, were dead.
And while I was searching for her, that's when I saw her.
Mash Kyrielight. The girl with pale pink hair and a soft voice I had met just hours before. She was trapped under a massive block of concrete and metal. I ran to her, falling to my knees, tearing the skin on my hands as I uselessly tried to move the rubble. Blood gushed from her wounds, staining her pristine uniform. Her eyes, once full of silent curiosity, were now losing their light.
"Mash... hold on, please... I'll get you out of here..." my own words sounded pathetic, empty. It was impossible for me to move that. Tears of frustration gathered in my eyes, mixing with the soot on my face.
The central computer system began its countdown. The mechanical voice, devoid of all empathy, announced the start of the Rayshift. The Masters' life support system was failing. We were about to be sent to a point in space-time with no guarantee of survival, and if we were going to die, at least I would die with someone. Mash looked at me, and with her last breath, she slid her hand over mine.
And then, the world disappeared into a sea of white light.
The transition wasn't a magical, smooth journey. It was a sensation too strange to describe, but I felt a tingling all over my body, lost my orientation for a few seconds, and then when I opened my eyes, the freezing air of Antarctica was gone.
In its place, my lungs filled with black smoke, ashes, and the unmistakable stench of ancient death.
I coughed violently, rolling onto rough ground. Asphalt. I was on cracked asphalt. I struggled to my feet, my legs trembling like leaves in a hurricane. I looked up and what I saw froze the blood in my veins.
I was no longer in the underground facility. I was in a modern city, but it wasn't the civilization I knew. The skyscrapers were decapitated, the streets were cracked as if a massive earthquake had shattered the very foundations of the world. Rusted, burnt-out vehicles blocked the avenues. But the worst was the sky. There were no clouds, no sun, no stars. The sky was a dark, bloody red, with a enormous black hole in the center, surrounded by a halo of distorted light. It looked like the literal depiction of hell painted by a demented artist.
"Where... where am I?" I whispered to the hot wind. Ashes fell around me like a macabre snowfall.
I remembered the brief information Mash gave me, the lessons that could barely be considered basic. Singularity F. The city of Fuyuki in the year 2004. The place where supposedly everything started to go wrong. I didn't know what had happened to the city beyond the fact that humans had disappeared, but I could only compare this city to an immense, silent cemetery.
A noise snapped me out of my stupor. The crunch of bones echoing against the pavement. From the shadows of the burning alleyways, humanoid figures emerged. They weren't human. They were reanimated skeletons, wielding rusty swords and broken shields, with an unnatural blue fire burning in the empty sockets of their skulls.
I stepped back, my breath quickening into short, shallow panic attacks. I didn't know how to fight. I had no offensive magic, no weapons. I tripped over a piece of concrete and fell onto my back, scraping my palms. The skeletons raised their weapons, ready to execute the intruder. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the fatal blow, waiting for the end of the world to finally claim me for good.
A deafening blast of wind and metal tore through the air.
I opened my eyes. A figure stood between death and me. A girl dressed in form-fitting black and purple armor, wielding a massive shield, cross-shaped and of ridiculously huge proportions, almost as big as herself. With a single spin of that monument of metal, she shattered the skeletons as if they were made of fragile porcelain.
The girl turned towards me. Pink hair waving in the burning breeze, a single visible eye, lilac and bright, watching me with concern.
"Senpai. Are you injured?"
"Mash?" my voice was a barely audible thread. I couldn't believe it. I had seen her die under the rubble. I had felt her pulse fade.
"Yes. It's me," she replied, her voice firm and calm, very different from the shy girl in the facility. She extended a gauntleted hand to me and helped me to my feet. "In the final moments in Chaldea, a Heroic Spirit offered me a contract. To save both our lives, he fused with me. I am now a Demi-Servant. And you are my Master, Senpai."
She was alive. Mash was alive. I hugged her, not caring how hard and uncomfortable her armor was, not caring if it was appropriate. She tensed at first, clearly not knowing how to react to physical contact, but then relaxed her shoulders and returned the gesture subtly.
However, there was no time to celebrate. We were in hostile territory, in a dead city that burned without being consumed. We began to walk, moving stealthily through the ruins of Fuyuki city. Mash explained how her senses had been amplified, how she felt the residual magical energy permeating every burnt brick and twisted lamppost. I, for my part, was just trying not to collapse from fatigue and overwhelming stress.
We walked for what seemed like hours under that unchanging red sky. The silence of the ruined city was oppressive, a constant weight on the eardrums, only interrupted by the crackle of eternal flames devouring entire buildings. Every shadow seemed like a threat, every flash of light made me jump.
Suddenly, a sound tore through the silence.
"AAAAAAHHHHHH! Get away from me! I am the heiress of the Animusphere! Don't touch me!"
The scream was shrill, piercing, and laden with absolute terror. We both stopped dead. I knew that voice. It was authoritative, bossy, always trying to sound superior, but now it was broken by panic.
"It's Director Olga Marie!" I exclaimed, forgetting stealth and starting to run towards the source of the sound. Mash didn't hesitate for a second and followed closely, her huge shield ready.
We turned a corner into what was once a wide commercial intersection. There, surrounded by a dozen shapeless shadows — wandering ghosts and creatures of darkness that seemed born from the melted asphalt itself — was Olga Marie Animusphere. She was on the ground, crawling backwards, throwing useless bolts of magical energy with her trembling fingers. Her elegant uniform was dirty with ash, and her usual expression of superiority had been replaced by a look of fear and frustration born of desperation.
"Mash, now!" I shouted, pointing at the group of monsters.
"Understood, Master!"
Mash leaped with an agility that defied gravity and the enormous weight she carried. She landed like a meteor in the center of the enemy formation, striking the ground with the base of her shield. An expansive wave of physical and magical force burst from the point of impact, disintegrating the nearest shadows and throwing the others through the air. With a couple of fluid and precise movements, Mash cleared the area, reducing the threats to glittering dust that dissipated in the hot air.
I ran towards the Director. "Director! Are you alright?"
Olga Marie blinked, staring at me as if I were a ghost. Her breathing was ragged. Suddenly, her defensive attitude resurfaced like a protection mechanism. She jumped to her feet, frantically brushing the ash from her clothes.
"Of course I'm alright! I was just... just evaluating the combat capabilities of the local entities!" she lied brazenly, though her hands were still trembling and her voice threatened to break at any moment. She looked at Mash, and then at me, her eyes widening. "Fujimaru? What are you doing here? You weren't authorized for the Rayshift! And... Mash? Are you a Demi-Servant now?"
Before we could explain to her that, in fact, the entire world had exploded and this was our only lifeboat, a sharp beep started sounding from the communicator mounted on Mash's suit wrist.
A blue holographic panel projected into the smoke-filled air. The image flickered with stressed static for a few seconds before stabilizing. The face of a man with orange, messy hair and deep bags under his eyes appeared on the screen. He wore a medical coat over his Chaldea uniform.
"Calling Master Number 48! Fujimaru Ritsuka! Answer, please, answer!" Dr. Romani Archaman's voice sounded desperate, almost on the verge of tears.
"Doctor Roman!" I shouted, feeling such deep relief that I almost fell to my knees again. Seeing a familiar face, knowing someone at the base had survived, was like a lifeline in the middle of a dark ocean.
"Ritsuka! Oh, thank God, you're alive! And... Mash! Your vital signs... are you transformed? That means the contract worked!" Romani let out a long sigh of relief, rubbing his face with his hands. Then, his eyes widened as he saw the third person. "Director?! You're alive! The readings said your physical body had been...!"
"Shut up, Romani!" Olga Marie interrupted him, crossing her arms, trying to regain her aura of command. "I demand a situation report immediately! Where is Team A? What happened to the facility? And explain to me why we are in this ruin that's supposed to be Fuyuki!"
Doctor Roman's expression darkened instantly. The little joy that had been in his eyes disappeared, replaced by a gravity I had never seen in him. In the following minutes, he gave us the worst possible news. The explosion wasn't an accident; it was sabotage. Chaldea was half destroyed, the personnel almost completely annihilated. All the elite Masters, Team A, were in critical condition and on the verge of death.
Olga makes the decision to freeze the Masters with cryogenic preservation.
And the worst part: that perhaps the only way to return to Chaldea was to investigate the cause of the anomaly that had caused Fuyuki City to be destroyed, and in order to restore it, we had to resolve the anomaly we were in: Singularity F. A point in the past that had been corrupted, a Holy Grail War that never ended, altering the flow of time.
"You have to investigate the point of magical convergence," Romani instructed, typing furiously on his terminal back in Antarctica. "There's a vortex of extreme energy in the center of the city. It's probably the corrupted Holy Grail. I also detect something guarding it, probably a Servant. You have to..."
Romani stopped talking. His hologram flickered violently and the alarm on his console started blaring, the piercing beep filtering through our communicator.
"Roman? What's happening?" Olga asked, losing patience.
"M-massive magical energy readings! Immense! They're off the scales!" The panic in Romani's voice was absolute. "This isn't a normal Servant! The prana levels are absurd! It's like an entire volcano of magical energy is walking towards you! Run! You have to get out of there now, mi-!"
The transmission didn't cut out. The sound from the communicator was simply drowned out by something much more immense.
The air changed. No, it wasn't just the air. It was as if gravity itself had suddenly increased. I felt an invisible, crushing physical pressure descending on my shoulders. My knees gave way and I fell to the ground with a gasp, feeling like I was suffocating. The oxygen suddenly seemed thick, heavy, poisonous.
I looked at Director Olga Marie. She was on her knees on the ground, her hands clenched near her heart, her eyes wide with primitive terror. She was hyperventilating, unable to articulate a single word for a few moments. This wasn't the fear of being in danger; this was the terror of our biological body realizing we are a tiny prey and the supreme predator has just caught us entering its territory.
Mash stepped forward, placing herself between us and the darkness of the main street from where the sensation was coming. Her armor creaked under the tension. She grasped her massive shield with both hands, her knuckles turning white.
"Master... Director..." Mash's voice trembled, something I had never heard in her since her transformation. Despite her nervousness, her determination to protect us was stronger. "Please... get behind me. Don't move!"
Olga and I had tried to get up and try to ignore our primitive fears, and when we were about to succeed...
From the shadows of the dense smoke and flames, two red, glowing eyes emerged. They weren't the eyes of a human, nor even those of a warrior. They were pits of bloodthirsty madness.
The ground shook with every step the creature took. As it approached and the firelight illuminated its figure, my mind refused to process what I was seeing. It was a giant, a colossus of muscles sculpted in dark bronze and pulsating veins that glowed with reddish energy. It stood easily over two and a half meters, maybe three. Its skin seemed invulnerable, hardened by millennia of mythical battles. It was covered in leather straps and metals, but the most terrifying thing wasn't its size, but what it dragged in its right hand.
A sword. No, that wasn't a sword. It was a massive chunk of carved rock or bone, larger than Mash's entire body, crude, brutal, a monumental club designed not to cut, but to crush mountains and annihilate entire armies.
"B-Berserker..." Olga Marie whispered, her teeth chattering. "The class of madness... a mindless monster. But this pressure... this means... this Servant must not be just any one... but who...?!"
The giant stopped about twenty meters from us. The red eyes fixed on our position. And then, it opened its maw.
It didn't utter a word. It didn't issue a war challenge. It let out a roar.
The sound was not of this world. It was a sonic shockwave that shattered whatever broken glass remained in the surrounding buildings. The wind generated by the cry temporarily extinguished the street fires and threw ash and debris in our faces. I had to cover my ears, feeling a sharp pain, as if needles had been driven into my eardrums. The very will of this Servant was violence incarnate. It was a natural disaster in human form.
Without warning, the giant vanished from my sight.
There was no time to blink. A fraction of a second later, the asphalt where it had been standing exploded into a crater, and the beast was already in front of us, suspended in the air, lifting its massive stone sword to deliver a blow that would split the street in half.
"AAAAAAAH!" Mash let out a war cry, channeling all the prana from her circuits, planting her feet on the ground and raising her shield to intercept the divine attack.
The impact occurred.
The sound was like two continents colliding. An explosion of compressed air burst from the point of collision, lifting chunks of asphalt and throwing me backwards, rolling violently across the ground.
But Mash didn't stop it.
It was heartbreaking to see how the perfect defense she had demonstrated just seconds ago was treated as a joke. The brute, raw, monstrous force of the Berserker was too much. Mash was swept from the face of the earth. She shot off to the side like a ragdoll abandoned in a hurricane. Her armored body crashed through the shattered storefront of a building thirty meters away, disappearing into a cloud of dust and debris with a dull metallic crash.
"MASH!" I screamed, terror paralyzing my heart.
I spun around sharply. The giant had landed heavily, cracking the ground even more. In front of it, barely two meters away, was Olga Marie. The Director was left exposed. She was sitting on the ground, her gaze vacant, her hands trembling in the air as if trying to shield herself from an avalanche with open palms. She was completely broken by fear.
The Berserker looked at her with those bloodshot eyes. It grunted slightly, raising the monstrous stone slab once more. The shadow of the weapon covered Olga's trembling body. Time seemed to slow down, becoming thick as tar. I saw the giant's muscles tense. I saw dust fall from the weapon's blade. I saw Olga close her eyes and let out a choked scream, waiting for imminent annihilation, waiting to be reduced to a red stain on Fuyuki's pavement.
I wanted to run towards her, I wanted to scream, I wanted to use a Command Spell to summon Mash, but my body wouldn't respond. Panic had me pinned to the ground. The stone axe descended like the guillotine of the gods.
The impact came. The shockwave shattered the asphalt within a ten-meter radius, raising a thick curtain of dust, smoke, and fire. The roar left me temporarily deaf, a constant high-pitched whine buzzing in my head.
"Director!" I shouted, coughing from the dust cloud, tears blurring my vision.
But when the wind began to dissipate the smoke and ashes, the scene revealed before my eyes defied all logic. It challenged all understanding of the magical and physical world I had just begun to learn.
Olga Marie was alive. She was still curled on the ground, paralyzed, arms over her head, but unharmed. The massive stone sword hadn't touched her. It had stopped mere centimeters from her face.
I rubbed my eyes, trying to understand what was happening. In front of Olga, and a couple of meters in front of me, with his back to me, stood someone.
It wasn't a Servant summoned by a magic array. There was no summoning circle, no flash of prana particles responding to a desperate call. He simply... appeared.
It was the figure of a young man, rather a young adult with a robust build and broad shoulders. He wore casual clothes that clashed absurdly with the end of the world. An immaculate white jacket, with some dark details. He had the jacket's hood pulled up over his head, which, combined with the dim light and his slightly hunched forward posture, cast a dense shadow that almost completely hid his face.
But the most shocking thing, what left me breathless and completely paralyzed my brain, was how he had stopped the attack.
He didn't use visible magic. He didn't conjure an iridescent shield. He didn't wield a mythical weapon.
He had stopped the cataclysmic impact of the enraged colossus using nothing but his bare right arm.
The silence in the area was absolute for an instant, broken only by the crackle of flames. The man in the white jacket was slightly bent, his feet sunk into the asphalt from the immense transferred pressure, but he hadn't retreated a single millimeter. He was holding the massive stone blade with the palm of his hand and his forearm.
However, the physical price of that impossible feat was there, raw and disturbingly visible. The stranger's right forearm was destroyed. The monster's monstrous force had wreaked havoc on the young man's human body. The sleeve of his jacket was torn off. I could see how the flesh of his arm had been brutally torn by the overwhelming weight and friction of the giant weapon. Blood gushed out in spurts, dripping thick and dark onto the boy's boots and the destroyed pavement. The worst was the bone. A thick, white splinter of fractured bone had pierced the skin and protruded at an unnatural, almost gruesome angle.
I clenched my teeth to stifle the whimper of fear from my body, my fists clenching helplessly. He had stopped a monster capable of destroying skyscrapers with his bare body. And now he was mutilated. The only reason I thought the stranger wouldn't die or go into shock from the pain was his calmness.
The young man didn't scream. He didn't fall to his knees. He didn't even seem particularly distressed about having his right arm turned into a mass of torn flesh and splintered bones.
Under the shadow of his white hood, he let out a sigh of vague annoyance.
The giant, the Berserker with divine strength, seemed bewildered. It growled, tightening its grip on its colossal stone axe, trying to press down, trying to crush this insignificant human who dared to block its path. The monster's muscles swelled even more, pumping more red magical energy, but the young man in the white jacket remained as immovable as the pillar of an ancient temple. Holding the murderous weapon with a shattered arm as if he were simply holding an umbrella in a storm.
Then, the young man acted.
With a fluid, lazy motion, he slid his left arm back. He didn't adopt a traditional martial arts stance. He simply clenched his fist.
The world seemed to change color.
I didn't feel magical energy. I didn't know what had changed, but I instinctively knew that something was shifting. Not that I had much magical knowledge anyway, so if there were a name for what he was doing, I wouldn't know it.
The sensation continued. I felt as if reality itself were holding its breath. As if the space around his left fist were compressing in a way that the laws of physics flatly rejected. The air around him vibrated, distorting with a heat that didn't come from Fuyuki's flames.
And then, he struck.
He threw his left fist directly at the Berserker's massive torso. The punch itself seemed normal for a fraction of a millisecond, casual, devoid of any dazzling technique, but the blow was at a speed I couldn't see.
I could only vaguely see that in the instant his knuckles impacted the giant monster's muscles... all of space collapsed.
A dazzling and terrifying flash burst at the point of impact. It was a lightning bolt, but not of pure light. They were sparks of absolute black, edged with a vibrant, menacing crimson halo. The flash of black light didn't propagate outward; it seemed to concentrate all the violence of the universe into a single point the size of an atom and then release it inside the Servant's body.
The sound wasn't an explosion. It was a dull blast, an explosion of air that burst out forcefully after the flash of light. The air pressure made me stagger, and poor Director Olga, who was closer, was pushed backward, making her roll on the ground again.
What I witnessed next was burned into my memory for the rest of my life.
First, there was a disgusting crunch of bones breaking like paper.
The immovable giant, the mountain of muscles and divine rage that had just crushed Mash like an insect and seemed to be death incarnate... folded in half. Its red eyes flew wide open, losing all their fury, replaced by the pure static of physical shock. Air was violently expelled from its lungs in a sharp wheeze.
And then, it flew.
The immense body of the Berserker, which must have weighed tons, was launched through the air like an artillery projectile fired from an electromagnetic cannon. The speed of the recoil was so absurd that white condensation rings formed, sound barriers breaking repeatedly in the air as the giant was propelled backward.
It crashed through the first ruined building, breaking reinforced concrete pillars and structural steel as if they were toothpicks. The sound of massive destruction arrived a second later, a deafening roar from the building's collapse. But the momentum of the impact didn't stop. The giant shot out the other side of the collapsed building, crossed the next street in the air, and smashed full-force into the second building, tearing through it as well. Finally, its catastrophic flight ended by brutally embedding itself into the foundations of a third structure more than three hundred meters away, which collapsed on top of it in a colossal cloud of dust, debris, and dark gray smoke.
Silence.
The beast's roar had been silenced. The crunch of destruction ceased. Only the dull moan of the city's fire and the hot wind playing with the newly created rubble remained.
I slowly turned my head, my neck aching from the whiplash of the shockwaves. My eyes, wide with total disbelief, fixed on the young man in the white jacket.
He hadn't been moved by the explosion. In fact, he held his punching posture, his left hand extended, black and red smoke slowly evaporating from his scraped knuckles.
The Berserker's colossal weapon, losing its owner's grip, fell to the asphalt with a dull, heavy thud, shaking the ground around us.
The man exhaled long. He relaxed his posture, letting his left arm drop and staring intently at his own right arm. The limb he had used to block Olga's death sentence was ruined. The exposed bone gleamed macabrely in the light of Fuyuki's flames. Blood had formed a thick, dark puddle under his feet.
Any normal person, any magus, even a Servant, would be screaming in agony.
He, however, tilted his head slightly, the hood moving with him, and spoke with a surprisingly casual voice, with a mature tone, slightly hoarse but devoid of all alarm or pain.
"Huh... it's been a long time since I was damaged like this."
His words lacked the urgency of combat. He sounded like an adult commenting on a coffee stain on his new jacket, not an open fracture and massive hemorrhage.
And then, the second miracle of the night that I, as a novice, experienced occurred.
As I watched, paralyzed, the air around his ruined right arm began to hiss. A strange, translucent but dense vapor began to emanate from the open wounds on his arm.
The blood that was still flowing from his arm and falling towards the rocky ground stopped abruptly. I heard a wet, repulsive crunch that churned my stomach. The splintered bone protruding from his skin moved on its own, snapping back into its correct anatomical place with the brutality of a spring returning to its original tension.
Immediately after, the torn muscles began to knit themselves together, the red fibers closing like the zipper of a jacket. The pale skin reconstructed itself over the muscle, covering the wound without leaving even a scar. In less than three seconds, before my disbelieving eyes, a completely mutilated arm, on the verge of amputation, had become completely functional, intact, perfect. The only evidence it had ever been injured was the torn and bloody sleeve of his white jacket.
He moved the fingers of his right hand, opening and closing his fist a couple of times to check mobility. A slight crack of knuckles echoed in the calm air. Satisfied, he lowered his arms and his hands fell casually into the pockets of his white jacket.
Director Olga Marie was still on the ground, her eyes so wide they seemed about to pop out of their sockets. Her breathing was rapid and erratic, her elite mind from the Mage's Association completely short-circuiting as it tried to logically analyze the events that had just transpired.
I heard the sound of heavy footsteps and a metallic clinking coming from the ruins of the shop to the left. Mash emerged from the dust cloud, coughing, but surprisingly unharmed thanks to the incomprehensible properties of her shield. However, when she came out and assessed the battlefield... her expression froze.
She looked at the furrow in the earth, the abandoned huge axe, the path of destruction through three skyscrapers, and finally, at the hooded individual standing in the center of it all. Mash raised her shield, but her hands trembled. Her lilac eyes darted from the absurd destruction to the figure with his back to us, unable to decide what action to take towards this strange savior.
The adult man seemed to notice our collective presence behind him. He turned on his heels, moving with a lazy, feline grace.
The warm wind of Fuyuki ruffled his white jacket, but the deep shadow cast by his hood remained, darkening the upper part of his face. I could see his defined jawline, the lines of a young man's face, but his eyes remained hidden under the cloak of darkness made by his hood. He didn't emanate hostility. I didn't feel an overwhelming pressure coming from him. In fact, his presence was strangely calm, like the surface of a deep lake after a summer storm.
He looked at Olga, who was still trembling on the asphalt. Then he looked at me, still kneeling, scraped and dirty. Finally, he turned his head slightly to observe Mash, who stared back slack-jawed, gripping her shield tightly.
Silence weighed in the air. The distant roar of the fire seemed to have faded. The entire universe shrank to us three and this enigmatic savior of incomprehensible strength.
The hooded man pulled one hand out of his pocket, scratched the back of his neck under the hood, and with a soft, almost friendly tone full of genuine curiosity, broke the sepulchral silence of the apocalypse.
"Are you all alright?"
No one answered. None of us could articulate a single word at the end of the world.
.
.
.
AN: Honestly, this time I wanted to write a Fate story without the strange angle of my other story. This story is just for fun, and everything will depend on whether readers like it or not, so there is no set update schedule. Please comment with your opinions.
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