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Now that the Black Hawk situation is resolved, it's time to talk about the Fall.
Picking up where we left off: after taking Archer's arrow to the chest and getting launched through the restaurant wall, Lily hadn't gone far.
Whether or not it was intentional — and watching the controlled precision of the shot, it almost certainly was — the force had been calibrated exactly right. Enough to separate her from Maverick. Not enough to do real damage. Her abdominal armor was scorched, the impact had rattled her teeth, but nothing was broken that mattered.
She landed clean.
The bright clang of her knight's boots hitting pavement rang across the empty street, and Lily was already in motion before the echo faded — Caliburn in both hands, planted foot, weight forward, charging straight back at the Archer who had been following at a run.
This time, he didn't raise the bow to block.
He sidestepped — fluid, unhurried, the move of someone who'd done this particular dance many times — and was up on the roof of a nearby residential building before Lily had completed her swing. He stood there, bow lowered, looking down at her with an expression that was complicated in ways she hadn't expected from an opponent.
"I know this is a terrible thing to say right now," he called down. "But — can we move somewhere else?"
Lily kept her stance. Her grip on Caliburn didn't loosen.
"There are too many people here." He gestured at the crowd of onlookers who had accumulated along the street's edges, phones out, filming. "You hesitated on that last exchange. You were thinking about them, weren't you?"
Lily's jaw tightened. She said nothing.
"I'm asking if we can fight somewhere there are no civilians. That's all."
"You betrayed your Master's trust to ambush us," Lily said. Her voice was level. "Why would I trust anything you say now? If you want me to believe you — show me proof."
The Archer was quiet for a moment. He looked out across the city, jaw set, working through something internally. Then he looked back down at Lily, and the vague frustration in his eyes resolved into something clear and decided.
He straightened.
"My name is Arash." The voice that came out wasn't soft anymore. It carried the weight of someone making a formal declaration — an old weight, the kind that came with history behind it. "I am a warrior in service to the great King Manuchehr. I swear by the name of my king — everything I have told you is true. Every word."
Lily stared at him.
"You're — that Arash?"
She knew the name. The Holy Grail transmitted knowledge to every Heroic Spirit it summoned — baseline context, enough to function in the world — and among the heroes of Western Asia, Arash the Archer needed no introduction.
The story was ancient. Persia and Turku, sixty years of war, two nations exhausted and neither able to claim final victory. The terms of peace required a single act: an archer would fire one arrow, and wherever it landed, that would become the border. The fate of two civilizations, determined by one shot.
Arash had volunteered.
He'd climbed to the top of Mount Damavand at dawn, drawn his bow with everything he had — everything, every last piece of himself, all of it channeled into a single arrow — and fired.
The arrow flew from the mountain at dawn. It landed on the banks of the Oxus River, seven hundred kilometers away, at noon.
Arash had given the act everything. The legend said there was nothing left of him afterward. Just the arrow, the distance, and the peace it had bought.
He was, in a very literal sense, the origin of the Archer class in Western Asia. The one who had defined what an archer could be.
Lily's stance dropped.
Not completely. Her hand stayed on Caliburn's hilt. But the aggressive forward lean released, and the hostility in her eyes gave way to something quieter.
"Alright," she said.
To the utter bewilderment of the phone-filming onlookers, the two figures transformed into a blur of motion and reappeared at the edge of the city, in an empty parking structure three blocks from the nearest residential building. Lily had left a brief mental note that Maverick would definitely pay for any property damage. Maverick might disagree with this assessment. That was a problem for later.
Arash resummoned his bow. An arrow materialized between his fingers, already nocked.
Lily raised Caliburn.
Neither of them had a particular need for the Holy Grail. Neither of them had been given a choice about being here. But their Masters had chosen this, and that obligation was real, and so they would fight with everything they had.
The silver magic wrapped around Lily's feet — Mana Burst activating in the moment before she moved — and her speed and strength jumped sharply as she closed the distance.
Arash was a catfish in oil.
That was the only way to describe it. Every attempt to land a clean hit passed through the space where he'd been. He used the bow to deflect her sword's force rather than absorb it, angling his body to redirect momentum, constantly sliding to her flanks — and when he reached her side, the arrow was already nocked, already aimed.
Pure. That was the word for it. No Noble Phantasm cluster, no elaborate skill set, no class compatibility giving him access to tools he hadn't earned. Just one bow, one Noble Phantasm, and a lifetime of perfect technique.
Which made him, paradoxically, harder to handle than someone with more variables.
Lily's Strength was C. Without Mana Burst running she simply couldn't match him. With it she could force the exchanges — but only just.
A burnt child dreads the fire, as the saying went. She wasn't losing to the same move twice.
So when Arash deflected her momentum and she felt the inertia carrying her past him, she made a decision and committed to it: she drove Caliburn straight down into the pavement with both hands.
The concrete cracked. The impact radiated outward in a shockwave, and the tremor — small but immediate — dropped the ground beneath Arash's feet by a few centimeters, just enough to shift his center of gravity. The arrow he'd been drawing tilted off its line.
Lily spun in the moment he retensioned the bowstring and struck the arrow.
The explosion that followed cleared them both backward through the dust — Arash retreating, Lily pressing forward, the space between them eating and regenerating in quick succession.
He landed. She was already there, Caliburn arcing for his neck.
Arash dropped his bow.
Both hands came up and caught her wrists.
The over-the-shoulder throw was textbook — Lily left the ground, arced, and landed hard across the parking structure's far edge.
Arash looked at the trajectory he'd committed to.
Looked at the direction she'd flown.
His face did the specific thing a face does when it realizes it has made an error that cannot be undone.
That's an amusement park.
A crowded one.
He'd been too deep in the fight. Hadn't tracked the surrounding geometry carefully enough. He made a mental note to work on that, which felt inadequate given the circumstances.
He was still processing the mistake when the magic connection to his Master severed.
Not diminished. Not strained. Severed — clean and total, the way it only went when a Master was dead.
Arash stood very still in the middle of the empty parking structure.
He hadn't liked his Master. He'd found his Master's approach to the Holy Grail War ethically unambiguous in its wrongness. None of that changed the fact that the connection was gone, and its absence sat in his chest like a missing tooth — notable, strange, the shape of something that should be there.
He was still processing when the sound reached him from the amusement park.
A battle cry. Furious, immediate, and carrying the very specific energy of someone who had been interrupted at the absolute worst moment.
"WHAT THE HELL?! WHO TOLD YOU TO CRASH IN RIGHT NOW?!"