"Archer. Your 'bestow a favor' plan seems to have failed spectacularly."
"Ah... well. It was just a plan. No plan survives contact with reality at a hundred percent success rate. I assumed Saber's Master would be as clueless as you and stay out in the open, but she actually hid inside a warehouse. Lost my line of sight entirely. All I could do was prepare a bombardment angle."
"Hehe..."
"Oi, oi, oi — don't give me that smug little laugh, Master. At least half the plan worked, didn't it? The Assassin took the bait. Came out of hiding. That's intelligence we didn't have an hour ago."
Amber leaned against the bridge railing, arms crossed, watching Archer squirm with the quiet satisfaction of someone who'd finally caught their know-it-all Servant being wrong about something.
But she didn't push it. There were bigger things to think about.
"Although," Archer continued, rubbing his chin with a frown, "the quality of this generation's Assassin is... disappointing. Failing an assassination on an unprotected Master? That's embarrassing. I was ready to bombard the warehouse directly if Saber's expression suggested his Master was already dead."
"So cold."
"So practical."
Amber sighed. The wind up here was brutal — the kind of cold that got inside your bones and set up permanent residence. But the view was unmatched. From their position on the elevated bridge, they could see the entire dock district laid out below them like a war map. The warehouse where the Assassin had struck. The pier where Saber and Lancer had fought. The distant glow of the city beyond.
"Alright," she said. "So is there still a reason to ally with Saber?"
"Absolutely." Archer nodded without hesitation. "His combat power is within a manageable range — strong enough to be useful, not so strong he'd be a threat if he turned on us. And plans are meant to be adapted. If I help him eliminate the Assassin now, that still counts as a favor. Different delivery, same result."
"Then should we—"
"Hold on to me, Master!"
Amber didn't even get to finish the sentence.
One moment Archer was casually leaning against the bridge railing, arms crossed, the picture of relaxed confidence. The next he was moving — explosive, violent motion, his massive frame twisting as he seized Amber around the waist and threw himself sideways.
The reason arrived a half-second later.
BOOM.
The bridge shook. Not a tremor — a full, bone-jarring convulsion, like a giant had punched it from below. The sound hit Amber's ears at the same time as the shockwave hit her body: a deep, thundering crack that she felt in her teeth and her chest and the base of her skull.
Then another.
And another.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Cannonfire. Real, honest-to-God, Age-of-Sail cannonfire — and not one cannon. Dozens. A full broadside, hammering the bridge from below with the relentless, rhythmic fury of a warship unleashing everything it had.
Amber's consciousness flickered. The impact had slammed her against Archer's chest hard enough to rattle her brain inside her skull, and for a terrifying moment the world dissolved into white noise and ringing silence.
What — what is—
She couldn't think. Couldn't process. The bombardment was everywhere — explosions ripping into the bridge's surface from end to end, black iron cannonballs tearing through reinforced concrete like it was plaster, throwing up geysers of dust and debris and twisted rebar.
The barrage lasted nearly two minutes.
Two minutes of uninterrupted hell.
When it finally stopped, the silence that followed was somehow worse.
Amber opened her eyes.
The bridge was destroyed.
Not collapsed — the reinforced concrete had held, barely, preventing a full structural failure. But the surface was cratered beyond recognition. Massive impact holes pockmarked every inch of visible road, some deep enough to see the steel framework underneath. The red-painted railings were scorched black. Cars that had been crossing the bridge were overturned, alarms shrieking, glass scattered across the asphalt like snow.
Smoke drifted everywhere. Thick, acrid, carrying the smell of gunpowder and burned metal.
And below — sitting on the black water of the harbor like it had sailed straight out of a history book — was a ship.
A sailing ship.
Three masts. Black hull. Gun ports running the length of both sides, still smoking from the broadside that had just turned the bridge into a warzone. She flew no flag, but she didn't need one. The design was unmistakable — an eighteenth-century warship, bristling with cannons, crewed by shadows, her bow cutting through the still water with the quiet confidence of a predator that owned every inch of ocean she touched.
What the hell—
On the deck of the ship, two figures stood at the railing, surveying their handiwork.
"How'd we do? Did we get them, Captain?"
The first voice belonged to a young man — early twenties, average build, with the eager energy of someone who'd never fired a weapon in anger before tonight and was finding the experience exhilarating.
The second voice belonged to someone else entirely.
"Who knows?" The Captain leaned against the railing with the lazy, boneless posture of a man who'd done this a thousand times before and found it about as exciting as brushing his teeth. "Queen Anne's Revenge fired every shell she had. If they're not dead after that, there's nothing more I can do."
"So... you think Archer's finished?"
"I think we gave it our best shot." The Captain shrugged. "And if we took out Archer, all the better. Control the water, control the war. Nobody can touch us out here."
"See? We're invincible!"
The Captain laughed — a big, rolling laugh that carried across the water. "Don't get ahead of yourself. The water is our home turf, absolutely. But it's also our cage. If we run into someone truly powerful — someone with the firepower to match us at range — we might not even be able to retreat."
"I don't think anyone can beat you on the water, Captain~"
"Hahahaha! Flattery? From you?" The Captain grinned — wide, rakish, the kind of grin that belonged on a wanted poster. "Sorry to disappoint, but sweet-talking doesn't work on me. I like beauties. Soft, supple, dangerous beauties."
"Honestly? Same."
The two shared a laugh — easy, comfortable, the camaraderie of men who'd found common ground in the middle of a war. Looking out at the smoking ruin of the bridge, neither felt a shred of guilt.
Only regret.
Regret that they couldn't confirm the kill.
But before they could dwell on it, a voice came screaming down from the crow's nest.
"Captain! Captain! The battle at the docks — it's over! Saber and Assassin took each other out!"
"What?!"
Both voices — Master and Captain — said it simultaneously, their heads snapping upward in unison.
The lookout scrambled down the mast, binoculars stuffed into his waistband, nearly falling twice in his excitement. He hit the deck with a thud, caught his breath, and launched into the report.
The poison had been in the daggers all along.
Of course it had.
Because that was what Assassins did. They didn't fight fair. They didn't duel. They didn't announce themselves and cross blades under the moonlight like honorable knights. They crept into the shadows, found the softest target, and used whatever worked.
Blades. Poison. Traps. Deception.
The method didn't matter. Only the result.
And Hassan of the Hundred Faces had been carrying poison on every single throwing knife.
The first one — the shoulder — had broken the skin and entered the bloodstream. The second — the calf — had doubled the dose. By the time Saito had answered the Command Spell and materialized in the warehouse, the toxin was already spreading through Vivian's body like ink through water.
She'd felt it almost immediately. A creeping lightheadedness that had nothing to do with fear. An inexplicable weakness in her limbs, like her muscles were forgetting how to work. A ringing in her ears that grew louder and louder until it drowned out the sound of Saito's blade crashing through the warehouse wall.
Then the bleeding started.
Not from her wounds. From her face. Dark, viscous blood — almost black — seeping from the corners of her eyes, from her nostrils, from the edges of her lips. The kind of bleeding that came from the inside. From organs failing. From a body that was shutting down one system at a time.
Vivian tried to call out. Tried to warn Saito. Tried to say something — his name, a warning, anything.
But her voice was gone. Her throat had closed. The only sound she could produce was a thin, wet gurgle that barely reached her own ears.
No. No, no, no—
She was dying.
Lying on the floor of a shipping warehouse, surrounded by scattered cardboard boxes and her own blood, Vivian felt the darkness creep in from the edges of her vision. Not the darkness of the room — a deeper darkness. A final one.
The last thing she heard was the sound of Saito's footsteps, receding into the night as he pursued the Assassin.
Then nothing.
Saito didn't know.
Not yet. Not while the rage was still burning and the Assassin was still breathing and every cell in his body was screaming kill kill kill.
Hassan of the Hundred Faces ran. Not with dignity — with the desperate, single-minded focus of a creature that knew it was outmatched and had exactly one priority left: survive. Bleeding from the wound Saito had opened across his torso, staggering, leaving a trail of dark blood on the concrete, the Assassin fled through the warehouse district like a wounded animal.
And behind him, relentless as death itself, came Saito.
"Formless, thus invisible. Flowing, thus infinite."
The words left his lips like a prayer. Or a curse.
"Therefore — my blade is invincible!"
Hassan was fast. Assassins were always fast. But Saito was furious, and fury made him faster. He closed the distance in seconds, his Noble Phantasm warping the space between them, his katana a streak of iridescent light in the darkness.
Hassan spun. Tried to dodge. Tried to slip sideways into the shadows the way Assassins always did — melt into nothing, vanish, become invisible.
Saito threw his scabbard.
It wasn't elegant. It wasn't a technique. It was the move of a man who'd spent his entire career fighting in narrow streets and dirty alleys, where "fair" was a word that got you killed. The scabbard spun through the air and cracked against Hassan's heel mid-stride.
The Assassin stumbled.
For one instant — one single, fatal instant — Hassan's balance broke.
Saito was already there.
"Formless!"
The blade came down in a diagonal arc — shoulder to hip, edge-first, driven by every ounce of rage and power a Saber-class Servant could channel into a single, perfect cut.
Hassan didn't scream.
There wasn't time.
The blade passed through the Assassin's body like it was passing through water. No resistance. No collision. Just the wet, sickening sound of flesh parting and the sudden, explosive spray of crimson that painted the concrete in a wide, arterial arc.
Hassan of the Hundred Faces split in two.
The halves fell in opposite directions, organs and viscera spilling across the ground in a grotesque pattern that looked, in the moonlight, almost like the petals of a dark flower.
Saito stood over the body, breathing hard, blood dripping from his blade.
"I have no quarrel with how Assassins fight," he said, his voice flat and empty. "That's your nature. Your purpose. But your greatest mistake—"
He flicked the blood from his katana in a single, sharp motion.
"—was laying hands on my Master. Now go to hell. And take your regrets with you."
Beneath him, the dying Assassin coughed. Blood bubbled from the ruined mouth behind the cracked skull mask, and from between the wet, rattling breaths came a sound that made Saito's blood freeze.
Laughter.
"Go together... then," Hassan rasped. Each word was a struggle, forced out through a throat that was barely connected to anything anymore. "Don't want... the road to hell... to be lonely... hahaha..."
"What—"
The feeling hit him like a sledgehammer.
His mana supply — the constant, invisible flow of magical energy that connected him to his Master, that kept him alive, that sustained his very existence in this world — vanished.
Cut off. Completely. Like someone had snipped a power cable.
The strength drained from his limbs. The color drained from his vision. The warmth drained from the air around him as the reality of what had just happened crashed into his consciousness with the force of a collapsing building.
Vivian was dead.
The poison. The poison. On the knives. In her blood. Working silently, invisibly, while he'd been out here chasing glory and revenge — killing the Assassin who'd already accomplished their mission the moment those daggers broke skin.
Hassan hadn't needed to survive the fight.
Hassan hadn't even needed to win.
All Hassan had needed to do was buy time. Stall. Keep Saito focused on the chase while the poison finished what the blades had started.
And Saito — stupid, furious, blind Saito — had taken the bait.
His hands began to shake. Then his arms. Then his whole body.
"You... bastard." His voice cracked. "What did you do to her? What did you—she's—"
The words wouldn't come. His throat was closing, not from poison but from something worse — the crushing, suffocating weight of failure.
"She's dead." The word came out broken. Raw. "Are you kidding me? You want me to die alongside gutter trash like you? Are you serious?"
Hassan's laughter faded to a wet rattle, then to silence.
The skull mask stared up at the sky with empty eyes.
Saito stood alone in the wreckage, his blade hanging at his side, his Master's mana vanishing from his spirit origin one percentage point at a time.
The countdown had started.
Without a Master, a Servant couldn't sustain themselves. Minutes. Maybe an hour, if he was lucky. Then he'd fade — dissolve back into the Throne of Heroes like he'd never been summoned at all.
He'd won the fight.
He'd lost everything else.
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