The world, seen through Haki, had little to envy from the one others perceived with their eyes. Emrys had reflected on this hundreds of times already, but the thought had returned with particular force over the past few days, as he crossed entire landscapes, forests, hills, and endless plains without ever needing to slow down for fear of stumbling.
It had now been six days since he had left Dubs's forest.
Six days of almost uninterrupted walking, punctuated by short breaks only when his mind, rather than his body, demanded a little respite. Over the past few days, he had gotten into the habit of sometimes stopping simply to let his Haki drift across the surrounding kilometers, methodically mapping every hill, every river, every isolated hamlet he encountered along his path, one way or another of continuing to train while moving toward a destination that was still unclear.
He had encountered a few cautious travelers along the way, itinerant merchants who quickened their pace upon sensing his presence approaching, entire families fleeing inland with whatever they had managed to take with them in a handful of hours, their empty gazes belonging to those who had already lost everything once and feared losing it all again. He had also encountered countless traces of battles that had already taken place: charred fields stretching as far as the eye could see, roads torn apart by impacts that no human weapon could have produced, and sometimes even freshly dug graves along the roadside, simple mounds of earth without a single stone to identify them, as if no one had had the time, or the courage, to linger any longer than necessary.
The war was no longer some distant abstraction, something people talked about around a forge fire while sipping on a distracted thought. It was everywhere, woven into the landscape itself, like a scar that would never truly stop bleeding.
He particularly remembered one encounter, on the fourth day, with an old man sitting alone by the side of a road, surrounded by the charred remains of what must have been his cart. The man had not tried to flee when he sensed Emrys approaching, merely turning his head in his direction, a lifeless gaze resting upon the hooded figure that had just appeared out of nowhere.
"Another kid who's going to get himself killed for a cause beyond his understanding," he had murmured, more to himself than to Emrys, before turning his eyes back toward the horizon.
Emrys had not known what to answer at the time. He had continued on his way, allowing the old man's words to cling to him longer than he would have liked, a hint of doubt slipping into his determination, so carefully built over the previous five years.
He also thought about that night, on the fifth day, when he had come across the remains of a military camp hastily abandoned, tents still standing but empty, campfires extinguished for days, an oppressive silence violently contrasting with what he imagined the normal life of a Stigma outpost to be. He had found no bodies, no clear sign of what had forced the camp to be evacuated so hastily, only the diffuse feeling that something terrible must have happened nearby, something the survivors had preferred to flee rather than face.
And so Emrys continued forward, guided by his Haki, which effortlessly mapped the two hundred meters surrounding him at all times, vaguely searching for a direction to follow, a Stigma outpost where he could present himself, without ever finding the certainty necessary to truly commit to one. Every time he thought he had identified a sensible direction, a new rumor, picked up from a traveler or a weathered sign by the roadside, would call his route into question, leaving him wandering a little longer than expected through that battered countryside.
It was late afternoon, on the seventh day, that he felt something change.
First, a sound, distant, carried by the wind. Screams. Then, a few seconds later, a sharp smell of smoke that stung his nostrils, different from that of an ordinary campfire.
He activated his Haki to the maximum of its range, deliberately pushing beyond the passive two hundred meters to reach its limits, accepting the dull headache that immediately began to form behind his temples.
What he sensed sent a chill through his blood.
A village. Small, fifty buildings at most, nestled at the bottom of a valley he had not yet reached. And all around it, dozens of hostile presences, some familiar, that formless reddish mass he already knew so well. But there were others as well, ones he had never encountered before. Thinner silhouettes, dull gray, moving with a coordination the red demons had never displayed. Others were blue, flying above the village with an almost feline agility. And farther away, an orange mass, larger than all the others, motionless, as though it were observing rather than directly participating in the massacre.
Emrys froze for a moment, his heart pounding wildly.
An entire village. Under attack. Right now.
All those years spent training, refining every aspect of his power, every nuance of his Haki, resurfaced all at once, as if his own body already knew, before his mind had even finished processing the information, what he had to do.
He did not hesitate for more than two seconds.
His hand plunged into his bag, his fingers closing around the cold mask he had never used outside of the few tests carried out in the training clearing. He placed it over his face without slowing his pace, feeling the familiar wave of metallic heat instantly spread throughout his body, the black plates closing over his arms, torso, and legs, the tattered scarlet cloak unfolding behind him like the dark wings of a raptor diving upon its prey.
For the first time, he was going to wear this armor in battle. For the first time, its true worth was going to be put to the test.
He ran even faster, racing down the slope leading into the valley, his mind already focusing on the next question, almost more pressing than that of the armor itself.
Drainda, or a Projection?
The question crossed his mind with an almost unsettling clarity, given the urgency of the situation. Drainda remained his most reliable weapon, the one he had trained with relentlessly, the one that carried his own signature rather than that of a borrowed hero. It was the one he should have chosen, logically, if his main objective remained to improve, to forge his own technique far from any borrowed memories.
But lives were at stake. Right there, right now, barely a few hundred meters away.
This isn't the time to think about my little martial identity problem. This is the time to save as many people as possible, as quickly and efficiently as possible.
The decision made itself, almost before he had consciously finished formulating it.
A Projection. The most effective, the most devastating one he could invoke without expending an amount of magical energy that would leave him vulnerable once he arrived.
He thought, for a moment, about all the borrowed memories sleeping somewhere within that inherited memory of Emiya. Hundreds of weapons, hundreds of heroes, each with their own specialties, their own tragic stories engraved into the metal of their legends.
One name imposed itself upon him almost instantly, as though his own instinct had already chosen it long before his consciousness had finished going through all the possible options.
No. Not something wide-ranging. Not something that would mow down everything in its path indiscriminately.
There are villagers in there. Innocent people caught in the middle of the chaos, probably running in every direction without knowing where to take shelter. If I summon a weapon designed for raw power, to cut through an entire mass with a single strike, I could just as easily hurt the people I'm supposed to protect as the demons themselves.
He then thought of another name, another legend sleeping within those memories borrowed from Emiya.
Hrunting.
He remembered, through those fragments of memories that only half belonged to him, that blade with violet reflections, thin and slender, its sheath covered in almost hypnotic interwoven patterns, three diamond-shaped openings running along the blade like sleeping eyes waiting to open. A sword with a tragic history, once lent to a hero by a man who secretly hoped for his failure, and yet one that only failed at the last moment
Its peculiarity did not lie in its raw power, but in something else, something far more valuable in a situation like this.
It always lands the most precise strike possible. No matter the target, no matter the chaos around it, the blade always finds the perfect angle, the exact weak point, without ever deviating toward what should not be touched.
Exactly what I need, right now.
He reached the edge of the village, his legs still carrying him forward, and extended his hand in front of him, allowing his magical energy to concentrate with an intensity he had never before needed to summon so quickly.
"Trace On."
A flash of violet light burst from his palm, and the next instant, a thin and slender sword materialized between his fingers, its gray blade with almost amethyst reflections catching the last rays of twilight, its three diamond-shaped openings seeming almost to vibrate with an energy of their own as he closed his hand around the hilt.
Far lighter than the odachi he had briefly considered, Hrunting settled into his palm with almost disconcerting ease, as though it had always been waiting, patiently, for this precise moment to find a worthy wielder again.
Before him, the village was already burning in places, screams echoing between half-collapsed buildings, human silhouettes fleeing in every direction while the demons—red, gray, blue, that orange mass still motionless in the distance—continued to sow destruction without the slightest sign of slowing down.
One of the gray demons, closer than the others, suddenly turned its head toward him, its dull yellow eyes narrowing, a thin mouth opening to reveal a row of sharp teeth.
"A new toy has just arrived," it said, in a perfectly understandable language, its voice hoarse but strangely composed, almost amused, violently contrasting with the chaos raging all around. "The others had never tried to resist us with such confidence before."
Emrys felt a wave of surprise pass through him. He knew, in theory, that gray demons possessed intelligence far superior to that of their red cousins, capable of communicating in a language common to all races. But hearing it with his own ears, here, now, in the middle of a village in flames, suddenly made the threat far more tangible, far more real than any theoretical explanation ever could have.
"Then be the first to find out what it feels like," Emrys replied, his voice strangely calm despite the turmoil within his own heart, his grip tightening around Hrunting's slender hilt.
He did not wait for a response.
His legs propelled him forward, fueled by all the power his Reinforcement could provide, the armor following each of his movements with a fluidity that confirmed, in a fraction of a second, everything Dubs had promised. The tattered cloak billowed behind him like a living shadow, the hood concealing his face from anyone who might have tried to read the slightest trace of fear or hesitation in it.
He charged straight toward the heart of the chaos, Hrunting shining with a violet glow in the fading light of twilight, ready to find, again and again, without ever deviating, the exact point where it needed to strike.
The battle was about to truly begin.