The words hung in the air like a grenade with the pin pulled. Griswald's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. His brain ran the sentence through every framework of magical theory he'd absorbed in his years of study, and each one rejected it.
"That's not possible."
He said it flatly. Not as a challenge. As a statement of fundamental reality. Like saying gravity pulls downward or fire burns.
"A Servant is a copy of a Heroic Spirit summoned from the Throne of Heroes. Ritsuka isn't dead in the historical sense. She hasn't accomplished anything that would qualify her for the Throne. She's a first-generation mage with no lineage, no legend, no conceptual weight. She can't just become a Servant because her body was destroyed."
Da Vinci's enigmatic smile didn't waver, but her eyes sharpened. The mechanical bird on her shoulder tilted its head, gemstone eyes clicking as they refocused.
"You're correct on every count." She pushed a strand of chestnut hair behind her ear. "By every known mechanism of Heroic Spirit manifestation, what happened to Ritsuka Fujimaru is impossible. The Throne requires a legend. A concept crystallized through human belief. She possesses none of these qualifications."
"Then how?"
"We don't know."
The admission came without embarrassment. Da Vinci crossed her arms beneath her chest, the movement drawing the fabric of her red and blue dress taut across her curves. Her expression carried the particular brightness of someone encountering a problem genuinely beyond their immediate comprehension. For Leonardo da Vinci, that constituted something close to ecstasy.
"What we do know," she continued, "is what our instruments confirm. Her spiritron composition is identical to a Servant's. Not similar. Identical. The Saint Graph readings, the mana density of her spiritual core, the layered structure of her existence. Every diagnostic we possess reads her as a fully manifested Servant we just don't really know anything else."
Griswald pressed his palms against his eyes. The fluorescent light above carved white lines through his fingers.
"So she's a Servant. But you don't know what class. What skills. What Noble Phantasm. Anything."
Dr. Romani (Or is it director Romani now?) drummed his fingers on his knee. His brow furrowed and his lips moved silently for a moment before sound emerged.
"Nothing. Our instruments detect her Saint Graph but cannot parse its contents. It's like looking at a locked box and confirming it exists without being able to open it." His voice dropped to a mutter, almost to himself. "If I didn't know better, I'd say she has some form of Presence Concealment affecting her information rather than her physical form. The data is there. It simply refuses to be read."
He shook his head, dismissing the thought before it fully formed. Da Vinci picked up the thread without pause, her heels clicking once against the floor as she shifted her weight.
"For now, Ritsuka is under intensive observation. We have her in a monitored suite with round-the-clock sensor coverage."
Griswald lowered his hands from his face. His grey eyes found Da Vinci's amber ones.
"What are you worried about?"
The question came out steadier than he felt. Something about the way they kept circling the topic without landing told him the real concern hadn't been spoken yet. Da Vinci's smile thinned by a degree. The playful light in her gaze cooled toward something more clinical.
"Several things. But primary among them, beyond the impossibility of her existence as a Servant in the first place, is how she's sustaining herself."
She let the statement breathe. Griswald waited. His analytical mind was already assembling the pieces before she continued.
"Servants require substantial mana to maintain their manifestation in the physical world. Without a continuous supply, they deteriorate and eventually dissipate. This is fundamental." Da Vinci raised one finger, the blue glove catching the light. "Mash, as a Demi-Servant fused with a living human body, requires significantly less mana than a full Servant. Her biological form provides a natural anchor that reduces the maintenance cost. Your contract sustains her comfortably."
A second finger rose.
"My own mana requirements are negligible. My Territory Creation skill at its current rank allows me to generate the vast majority of what I need from the environment itself. I am, for all practical purposes, self-sufficient within Chaldea's walls."
She lowered her hand. The mechanical bird ruffled its wings.
"But Ritsuka has no Master. No contract. No biological body to anchor her form. No Territory Creation or any identifiable skill that would explain self-sustaining manifestation, unless she has an extremely high independent manifestation skill. By every rule that governs Servant existence, she should have dissipated within hours of materializing." Da Vinci's eyes narrowed with focused intensity, her voice dropping half a register. "She has been stable for thirty-one hours. Her mana reserves have not decreased by a single unit. Something is feeding her. Something is keeping her here."
The words settled into Griswald's stomach like cold iron.
"And you don't know what."
"No." Da Vinci's smile returned, but it carried an edge now. Sharp as glass. "We do not."
Griswald sat with the information for a long moment. The hum of Chaldea's ventilation system filled the silence between them. He turned the problem over in his mind, examining it from angles that kept sliding away from the one conclusion that mattered most.
"Does it matter that much?"
Both Romani and Da Vinci looked at him. He pushed his glasses up his nose and met their gazes with something that wasn't quite defiance but refused to be dismissed.
"She's alive. She's here. She's still with us. Unlike..."
The name caught in his throat like a fishhook. Olga. Her face as the golden light swallowed her. The way her fingers had slipped through his. The sound she'd made. He couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence. The word just sat there, unspoken, filling the room with its absence.
Romani's hand moved to the ring on his finger. He turned it once. Twice. His green eyes held something raw and unguarded for a fraction of a second before the professional mask reassembled itself. Da Vinci's mechanical bird went still on her shoulder, its gemstone eyes dimming as if in deference to the silence.
They knew. They all knew who he meant. Nobody said her name.
Romani exhaled through his nose. He leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, and when he spoke his voice carried the careful weight of someone who had rehearsed these words while waiting thirty-one hours for Griswald to wake.
"We are glad Ritsuka is still with us. Genuinely. Every person we didn't lose is a miracle I refuse to take for granted." His fingers interlaced, knuckles whitening. "But we need to understand what she is now. For several reasons that aren't academic curiosity."
Griswald waited.
"The first reason is security." Romani straightened, and for a moment the absent-minded doctor vanished entirely. What replaced him looked older. Harder. "Ritsuka is a Servant. Servants have Masters that summon them. Something is sustaining her existence, providing mana she has no natural means of generating. We don't know what that something is."
The implication landed in Griswald's chest with the force of a physical blow. His mind flashed to the cave beneath Ryuudou Temple. To Lev's immaculate suit and patient smile. To bombs hidden for years beneath the feet of people who trusted him.
"You think she could be compromised."
"I think we had a trusted colleague murder a hundred and eighty-seven people three days ago." Romani's voice held no accusation. Just the terrible, exhausted pragmatism of a man carrying a facility of survivors on his shoulders. "I think an unknown entity sustaining a Servant inside our last remaining stronghold, while we cannot identify that entity or its intentions, is a scenario I cannot afford to ignore."
Griswald opened his mouth to protest. To defend Ritsuka. The words died before they formed. Because Romani was right. He hated that Romani was right.
"We're not treating her as a threat," Romani added quickly, reading Griswald's expression. "She has full access to the common areas. She's comfortable. She's being treated with dignity. But until we understand the mechanism keeping her manifested, I can't in good conscience pretend nothing is wrong."
Da Vinci uncrossed her arms and stepped forward. Her heels clicked against the floor with measured precision, and the motion drew Griswald's attention to the way her hips swayed beneath the structured panels of her dress. Even delivering grim news, she moved like a painting in motion. All deliberate grace.
"The second concern," she said, her amber eyes pinning him with their calculating warmth, "is whether Ritsuka can still function as a Master."
Griswald's head snapped up.
"She was a Master candidate," Da Vinci continued, raising one finger in her characteristic lecturing pose. "One of the few who demonstrated compatibility with the FATE system. That compatibility is extraordinarily rare and we have lost every other candidate who possessed it. If Ritsuka retains the ability to form contracts and sustain Servants, she would be invaluable to our mission."
"But she's a Servant now," Griswald said slowly. The gears turned behind his grey eyes. "Servants can be Masters. It's documented. Rare, but documented."
"Correct." Da Vinci's smile carried approval. The expression of a teacher whose student caught the nuance without being led. "However, the reason it remains rare is practical rather than theoretical. A Servant functioning as a Master must generate enough mana to sustain both their own manifestation and the manifestation of any Servants they contract with."
She held up both hands, palms up, miming a balance scale.
"The mana cost is enormous. Most Servants who attempt it can barely maintain a single contracted Servant whilst keeping themselves stable. They operate at diminished capacity, their skills degraded, their combat effectiveness reduced. It is, in almost every documented case, a net loss in total fighting strength."
"And we don't even know where her current mana is coming from," Griswald finished.
"Precisely." Da Vinci lowered her hands. "If an unknown source is sustaining her, would that source also sustain contracted Servants? Would contracting Servants destabilize whatever mechanism keeps her anchored? We cannot answer these questions without first understanding what she is."
Griswald had nothing to say about that. How could he. The logic was airtight, each piece fitting into the next with the mechanical precision of a clock counting down to something he didn't want to name. He sat in the silence for a moment, his fingers pressing into the armrests of his chair until the knuckles went white.
"So that makes me the only person at Chaldea who can summon Servants."
It wasn't really a question. The shape of it had been forming since Romani started talking, assembling itself from the debris of everything they'd told him. No Master candidates survived. Ritsuka's status was unknown, her ability to contract uncertain, her very existence sustained by something they couldn't identify. Which left...
Romani and Da Vinci looked at each other.
The glance lasted perhaps two seconds. In that span, Griswald watched an entire conversation pass between them in microexpressions. Romani's jaw tightened. Da Vinci's chin dipped by a fraction. Some agreement reached, some threshold crossed, some burden accepted. When they turned back to him, their faces had settled into the particular arrangement of people delivering news they wished they didn't have to.
"As of this moment," Romani said, his voice measured and quiet, "you are the only person in existence capable of summoning and sustaining Servants."
The words landed like stones dropped into still water. Each one spreading ripples that interfered with the last.
"The few mages who survived the bombing are support staff. Technicians. Researchers. None of them possess the circuit configuration required for rayshift compatibility." Romani's fingers found his ring again and turned it.
The ventilation hummed. Somewhere distant, metal groaned as damaged infrastructure settled.
Griswald's mouth opened. His lips formed the beginning of a question that his throat refused to complete. The words stacked up behind his teeth like a traffic jam.
"Do you want me to..."
He couldn't finish. The sentence had too many endings. Too many implications. Each possible completion carried a weight that pressed against his chest and squeezed the air from his lungs. Go back out there. Fight more Servants. Risk dying in a collapsing reality. Leave the safety of these walls for another nightmare landscape where things with the power of gods wanted to kill him.
Romani looked at him.
The doctor's green eyes held something Griswald had never seen there before. Not the cheerful deflection. Not the absent-minded professor routine. Not even the brief hardness from moments ago when discussing security concerns. This was regret. Pure and unvarnished. The face of a man asking something he knew he had no right to ask.
"Yes."
One syllable. It fell between them like a guillotine blade.
Griswald let out a low sound. Not quite a word. Just a breath shaped by the understanding flooding through him. A soft "ah" that carried the weight of everything clicking into place. The puzzle completing itself whether he wanted to see the picture or not.
He was it. The last Master. The third-rate mage from a declining family whose applications to the Clock Tower had been rejected three times. The man Lev Lainur had called unimportant. The person least qualified for the job in any rational assessment of talent and ability.
He was all that stood between humanity and permanent extinction.
The absurdity of it almost made him laugh. Almost.
Nobody spoke. The silence stretched like taffy, thin and fragile, threatening to snap. Da Vinci watched him with those calculating amber eyes, her body perfectly still except for the mechanical bird adjusting its footing on her shoulder. Romani sat frozen, his ring halfway through another rotation, waiting.
"Yes," Romani said again, softer this time. As if repetition might sand down the edges of what he was asking.
Da Vinci stepped forward.
"We have confirmed that the rayshift system remains functional," she said. Her voice carried its usual melodic confidence, but pitched lower now. Gentler. "I have spent the past thirty-one hours conducting repairs and diagnostics. The FATE system, the coffins, the Spiritron transfer protocols. All operational, or close enough that I can guarantee safe deployment within forty-eight hours."
She raised her hand, one finger extended in her lecturing pose. The gesture was familiar. Grounding.
"There are seven Singularities. Seven points in human history where something has been altered so catastrophically that the timeline cannot sustain itself. These are the anchors of the Incineration. The pillars holding up the architecture of humanity's destruction." Her finger traced a line through the air as if drawing on an invisible board. "If we can resolve them, as you resolved Fuyuki, there is a chance to reverse what has happened. To restore the proper flow of history and undo the Incineration entirely."
"A chance," Griswald repeated.
"A chance." Da Vinci's smile returned. Thin. Honest. "Not a guarantee. I refuse to insult your intelligence with false certainty."
Griswald's chest constricted. The fluorescent light above seemed to narrow, the walls of Romani's office pressing inward like the collapsing cavern beneath Ryuudou Temple. His breathing hitched. Caught. Released in a short, sharp burst that didn't carry enough oxygen.
The memories hit him in sequence. Not gently. Not as distant recollections he could examine with clinical detachment. They crashed through him with the visceral immediacy of lived experience. The arrows punching through brick beside his head. The heat of the Wicker Man's flames against his skin. Saber Alter's sharp golden eyes finding him across the chamber. The sound Olga made as her fingers slipped through his.
His breath came faster.
"Do you... do you understand what you're asking me?"
The words tumbled out wrong. Too high. Too fast. His voice cracked on the last syllable and he hated it but couldn't stop it. His hands gripped the armrests of his chair and his knuckles had gone from white to translucent.
"You want me to go back out there. Into places like that. Into things worse than that." A laugh escaped him. Brittle. Fractured. "Those were worse, you said. Seven of them. Larger. You said larger."
"Griswald." Romani leaned forward but Griswald couldn't hear him over the roaring in his ears.
"I'm not qualified for this." The words poured out now, a dam breached. "I'm not. Do you know who was? Kirschtaria Wodime. Ophelia Phamrsolone. Scandinavia Peperoncino. Daybit Sem Void. Beryl Gut. Hinako Akuta. Kadoc Zemlupus. They were the ones who were qualified and they are all DEAD!"
His lungs burned. Each breath came shorter than the last, arriving before the previous one had finished leaving. The room swam at the edges.
"I wasn't the backup. I wasn't the backup's backup. There was no situation that they thought was bad enough to include me as a possible options in case it got bad." His glasses fogged from the rapid breathing and he couldn't see properly but he couldn't slow down. "You're not asking the second string. You're not asking the bench. You're asking the person who was in the stands. Who was just watching."
Da Vinci's lips parted but Griswald's spiral had its own momentum now, a wheel spinning free of its axle.
"I almost died. Multiple times. Against one corrupted Servant in a contained environment with a Caster-class ally carrying me through every engagement." The words came between gasps now, his chest heaving.
His father's face surfaced in his mind. The quiet disappointment that never needed to be voiced because it lived permanently in the set of his jaw and the way his eyes slid past Griswald at family dinners. His mother's brittle smile when explaining to guests that their middle child was "pursuing practical applications" while his siblings demonstrated actual magical talent.
The Clock Tower rejection letters. Each one progressively shorter, as if the admissions board couldn't be bothered to waste additional words on his inadequacy. The last one had been a single paragraph.
The other mages at Chaldea. The way conversations quieted when he entered the staff lounge. Not hostility. Worse. Indifference. The absolute certainty that nothing he said or did would ever register as significant.
"Every person in this facility is more qualified than me," he heard himself saying, though the voice sounded distant now, muffled by the cotton filling his skull. "Every researcher. Every technician. Every janitor who mops the corridors at night probably has stronger circuits than I do. You could pick anyone. Anyone at random. Blindfolded. Throw a dart at the personnel roster and wherever it lands would be a better choice than..."
His vision tunneled. Black at the periphery, closing inward like a camera iris. His fingertips tingled. His heartbeat hammered against the inside of his ribs like something trapped and panicking, which felt appropriate because he was trapped and panicking.
"Griswald."
Romani's voice. Closer now.
"I barely survived that place. It was small. You said small. A minor Singularity. And I barely..."
Hands. On his shoulders. Firm. Warm. The pressure grounded him in his body just enough to register that Romani had crossed the distance between them and was crouching in front of his chair, green eyes level with grey ones.
"Look at me."
Griswald's gaze darted left. Right. Searching for an escape route that didn't exist. The hands on his shoulders squeezed. Not painfully. Just present. Undeniable.
"Look at me, Griswald."
He looked.
Romani's face filled his field of vision. Close enough that Griswald could see the faint dark circles beneath his eyes, the individual strands of salmon-pink hair that had escaped his ponytail, the slight tremor in his jaw that he was working very hard to control. And his smile. It sat on his face like something that hurt to maintain. A smile that understood pain so intimately it could wear it as an expression.
"I understand."
Two words. They cut through the static in Griswald's skull with surgical precision.
"I understand what has been placed on you. I understand the weight of it. The enormity." Romani's thumbs pressed circles into Griswald's shoulders, slow and deliberate. "I understand looking at what lies ahead and knowing that people will rely on you to see them through it. That their lives depend on choices you haven't made yet, in situations you can't predict, against enemies you can't comprehend."
Griswald's breathing stuttered. Still too fast. Still ragged. But the rhythm of Romani's voice worked against the spiral, each sentence a handhold driven into the cliff face.
"I understand the terror of knowing the shoes you must fill were never meant for your feet. That the role you've inherited was designed for someone else. Someone stronger. Someone more prepared. Someone who had years to ready themselves for what you're facing with days."
Romani's green eyes held Griswald's grey ones. Steady. Unblinking. Refusing to let him look away.
"And I am telling you, with absolute certainty, that you will not go through it alone."
The words landed somewhere deep in Griswald's chest. Below the panic. Below the self-loathing. In the place where things were kept that he didn't have names for yet.
"We will be here. Every step. Every Singularity. Every moment you feel like you cannot do this. You will not face it in solitude." Romani's hurt smile deepened but didn't break. "I know what that isolation feels like. The weight of responsibility you never asked for. The impossible expectations from people who cannot understand what they're demanding. I know it. And I refuse to let you carry it the way..."
He stopped. Something flickered behind his eyes. A door opening and closing in the span of a heartbeat, fast enough that the glimpse behind it was just impression. Just shadow.
"I know what it feels like," he finished quietly.
Griswald's vision blurred. Heat gathered behind his eyes, stinging, insistent. He pulled his glasses off with one shaking hand and pressed the heel of his palm against his eye socket. The tears came anyway, sliding past his fingers, warm and honest and completely beyond his control.
He wiped at them with the back of his wrist. Pushed his glasses back onto his face with fingers that still trembled. Drew a breath that went deeper than the last dozen combined.
"I suppose," he managed, his voice thick and uneven, "being thrust into leading all of Chaldea overnight must be quite terrifying as well."
He looked at Romani through wet lashes. The man who had been a cheerful, procrastinating doctor three days ago. Who hid in his office watching idol videos and avoiding paperwork. Who now bore the title of Acting Director because everyone above him in the chain of succession was dead.
"You know what it's like. Because you're going through it too."
Romani's smile tightened. The hurt in it shifted register, from empathy to something else. Something Griswald couldn't identify. The doctor's hands stayed on his shoulders for a moment longer, steady and warm, before one lifted to briefly squeeze the back of Griswald's neck.
"Yes," Romani said. The word came out half-formed. Thin as paper. "That's exactly it."
His green eyes dropped for just a fraction of a second to the ring on his finger. The motion was so brief, so practiced in its concealment, that Griswald missed it entirely. When Romani looked back up, the hurt smile had reassembled itself into something more functional. More director-shaped.
"We're both in roles we never imagined for ourselves." He straightened, releasing Griswald's shoulders. "So we'll figure them out together. Along with everyone else who survived."
Da Vinci had not moved during the exchange. She stood with her arms crossed, her weight on one hip, watching them both with an expression that Griswald couldn't parse. Her amber eyes held something warm and something sad, existing simultaneously without contradiction.
Griswald's breathing had slowed. Not calm. Not steady. But no longer the frantic gasping of minutes ago. His chest ached from the exertion and his eyes burned and his hands still shook against the armrests. But the tunnel vision had receded. The walls had stopped pressing inward.
Griswald drew another breath. Deeper this time. The trembling in his hands had subsided to a faint vibration, barely noticeable unless he looked directly at them. He removed his glasses, wiped the lenses against his sleeve, and replaced them. The world sharpened back into focus. Romani's office. The cluttered desk. Da Vinci's still figure by the wall. The mechanical bird preening its copper feathers.
"I just don't know if I can do this."
He said it quietly. Not the frantic spiral of before. Not the gasping, desperate denial. Just a statement. Honest and flat and stripped of everything except truth. He met Romani's eyes, then Da Vinci's, and let them see the uncertainty sitting there without trying to dress it in anything.
Da Vinci uncrossed her arms. She took a measured step forward, her heels marking the tile with a soft click.
"We understand." Her voice carried no judgment. No disappointment. The amber of her eyes held only the steady warmth of someone who had calculated this response long before it arrived. "We cannot compel you to go, Griswald. This is not something that we can be forced upon an unwilling participant."
She paused. Her fingers found a stray strand of chestnut hair and tucked it behind her ear with unhurried precision.
"Which means Mash will lead the operations."
Griswald's head snapped toward her. The motion was sharp enough that his neck protested, a muscle pulling tight along the left side. His grey eyes fixed on Da Vinci's face with an intensity that hadn't been there seconds before.
"What do you mean?"
"Mash has already been informed of the situation." Da Vinci's expression remained composed. Neutral. The kind of deliberate blankness that could mean anything. "She has agreed to enter the remaining Singularities."
"Alone?"
His voice climbed. Not to the panicked register of his earlier breakdown, but to something harder. Something with an edge.
"As of the current operational assessment, yes. Without a Master to accompany her, she would deploy solo with remote support from Chaldea's communication systems. Her Demi-Servant nature allows her to maintain manifestation without a Master's physical proximity, though at significantly reduced capacity. It is not ideal, but it is..."
"No."
The word came out before his conscious mind authorized it. Blunt as a closed fist. Griswald was on his feet, his chair scraping backward across the floor tiles. His hands had stopped shaking entirely. The tremor replaced by something rigid. Something that held.
"I am not going to let her go alone."
The image filled his mind unbidden. Mash in that ruined city. Her shield raised against arrows that never stopped coming. The way her movements had slowed as his inadequate mana failed to sustain her. The sound of her body hitting rubble when Saber Alter's pulse launched her across the cavern. How hard she'd fought. How much she'd bled. How she'd thrown herself between him and death again and again without hesitation or complaint.
And the thought of her walking into something worse. Something larger. Seven of them. Alone.
"She nearly died protecting me." His jaw set. The angular lines of his face hardened into something that didn't look like the stammering third-rate mage who'd been hyperventilating minutes ago. "She fought a corrupted King of Knights with broken ribs and depleted reserves because I couldn't give her enough. I will not sit here in safety while she walks into the next nightmare by herself."
Da Vinci's smile widened.
It spread across her features with the slow satisfaction of a chess player watching their opponent move exactly where they'd planned. The enigmatic curve of her lips deepened, warm and knowing and entirely unapologetic.
Griswald saw it. He recognized what she'd done. The manipulation so clean and precise it was almost beautiful. Give him the out. Let him refuse. Then show him what his refusal would cost.
He didn't care.
Griswald let out a breath through his nose. He sank back into his chair, the adrenaline draining as quickly as it had surged, leaving him hollow but resolved. A decision made. Irrevocable.
"What happens next?"
Romani and Da Vinci exchanged a glance. The doctor settled back behind his desk, his posture easing by a fraction now that the crisis had passed its peak.
"Several things, in sequence," Romani said. He ticked them off on his fingers. "First, we need to speak with Ritsuka when she wakes. Her perspective on what happened during the Singularity's collapse, anything she experienced during the transition, any information about her current state that our instruments cannot detect. She may have insights we lack."
"Second," Da Vinci picked up seamlessly, "we must identify and lock onto the next Singularity. SHEBA's observation capabilities are damaged but functional. Once we isolate the temporal coordinates, we can gather intelligence. Historical context. Potential threats. The era, the location, the nature of the distortion. We will not send you in blind the way Fuyuki happened."
"Preparation," Romani added. "Proper preparation. Equipment. Communication protocols. Contingency plans. Everything we should have had before and didn't because nobody expected what happened."
Griswald nodded. The analytical part of his mind latched onto the structure. Steps. Sequence. Order imposed on chaos. Something he could hold.
"But first."
Romani's voice shifted. The professional cadence fell away. Da Vinci's smile faded. The mechanical bird on her shoulder went still, its gemstone eyes dimming. The room's temperature seemed to drop by several degrees, though nothing physical had changed.
"But first," Da Vinci echoed, her voice soft. "There is something we need to do."
Griswald looked between them. Their faces held the same expression. Quiet. Heavy. The particular gravity of something that could not be postponed or dressed in gentler language.
"What?"
Romani's hand found his ring. He turned it once. His green eyes met Griswald's.
"We need to attend a funeral."