The night was still long.
And while Amber and her Emperor were settling into their stolen villa on the other side of the city, Crystal was standing over a shallow grave and trying very hard not to throw up.
Vivian's body lay in the dirt.
Lancer had buried her — quickly, efficiently, with the practiced ease of a warrior who'd seen enough death to treat it as routine. But the ground was thin here, near the docks, more gravel than soil, and the burial was shallow. Not quite enough to hide the damage.
The places where the throwing knives had struck — both thighs, one shoulder — still glowed with a faint, sickly purple luminescence. The poison, even in death, hadn't fully faded. It pulsed beneath the skin like something alive, something that had finished its work and was now simply... lingering.
And her face.
Crystal couldn't stop looking at her face.
The expression frozen there wasn't peaceful. It wasn't serene. It was twisted — contorted into a mask of pain and resentment and something worse than both. The face of someone who'd died slowly, in agony, knowing exactly what was happening and unable to do anything about it.
Crystal's stomach lurched. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth and swallowed hard.
She'd spent the entire first day of this war playing pretend. Casting herself as the heroine. Treating the Holy Grail War like the opening chapter of a romance novel — handsome Servant, bags of money, destined for greatness.
Vivian's face was the end of that fantasy.
"Lancer," Crystal said, and her voice came out smaller than she'd intended. "Am I... going to die like that too?"
Lancer stood beside her, his twin spears planted in the ground at his sides, the runic wrappings dim in the moonlight. His expression was unreadable — the calm, steady mask of a warrior who had already processed the death in front of him and filed it away.
But his voice, when he spoke, was gentle.
"No, Master. I won't let that happen. I swear it upon my spears."
He paused. Something shifted in his eyes — something old and honest and unexpectedly vulnerable.
"My wish is a simple one. All I've ever wanted was to find a lord willing to accept my loyalty. A master worth serving. Worth dying for." The ghost of a smile. "That wish has already been fulfilled."
Crystal's chest tightened.
"But if you want to withdraw," Lancer continued, his voice dropping, "then use a Command Spell to order me to end myself. Once your Servant is gone, you'll lose your eligibility as a participant. The system won't target a non-combatant. You'll be safe."
"No."
The word came fast. Hard. No hesitation.
"I'm not running away," Crystal said. "And I'm not letting you die. I have a reason I need the Holy Grail. A real reason. Not the money. Not the fantasy. Something that matters."
She didn't elaborate. Lancer didn't ask.
But he saw it — that flicker in her eyes. Something deeper than infatuation. Something that had been hiding underneath the boy-crazy, romance-novel exterior this entire time, waiting for a moment serious enough to surface.
Heroic Spirits were, by nature, extraordinarily sensitive to the people around them. Not in the emotional sense — though many were that, too — but in a more fundamental way. They could read intent. Feel sincerity. Distinguish genuine devotion from empty flattery with the same precision that they could read a battlefield.
And what Lancer felt from Crystal, underneath all the silliness, was real.
She was flighty. Shallow. Easily distracted by a handsome face. But her feelings toward him — the loyalty, the attachment, the stubborn refusal to abandon him even when self-preservation was the smarter play — were absolutely sincere.
For a Servant whose entire legend was built on loyalty given and loyalty betrayed, that meant everything.
"Very well, Master." Lancer straightened. His grip on his spears tightened, and the runic wrappings flared with a pulse of blue light. "Then I swear upon my weapons: I will protect you, and I will secure victory in this Holy Grail War. No matter what comes."
Crystal nodded. Then, because she was still Crystal, she threw herself into his arms and buried her face against his chest.
Much of the tension in her heart dissolved almost immediately.
Partially because of the reassurance.
Mostly because Lancer's chest was incredibly firm.
But before Crystal could escalate the situation — and she was absolutely about to escalate the situation — an unexpected voice from the shadows caused Lancer's body to go rigid.
His spears were up and aimed in less than a heartbeat.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Don't attack! I'm just a regular crew member!"
The figure that stumbled out from behind a nearby tree had both hands raised in surrender. He was dressed in period-accurate eighteenth-century sailor's clothes — striped shirt, short trousers, a bandana wrapped around his head. And he was grinning with the manic energy of someone who knew he was about to get stabbed and had made peace with it.
One of Blackbeard's crew. A fragment of his Noble Phantasm — a summoned aspect of the Queen Anne's Revenge, given form and voice.
"Who are you?" Lancer's voice was ice. His spear tip hovered an inch from the sailor's throat. "And why were you skulking in the shadows?"
"Skulking? Me? No, no — I just happened to be passing by and noticed you two lovebirds having a moment. Thought I'd wait for a natural break in the conversation before—"
"Lovebirds~" Crystal murmured from somewhere against Lancer's chest, a dreamy smile spreading across her face.
"Master. Please."
"Right. Sorry. Continue."
The sailor cleared his throat. "Anyway — I'm just a messenger. Part of the Captain's Noble Phantasm. Kill me or don't, doesn't really matter. I'll just poof into sparkles either way."
He spread his hands in a casual shrug.
"But the reason I'm here is simple: the Captain wants an alliance. Berserker is a problem. A big problem. Bigger than any one faction can handle alone. So the Captain is proposing a temporary partnership — pool our resources, take down Berserker together, and then go back to trying to kill each other afterward like civilized people."
He grinned.
"If you're interested, the Captain suggests meeting tomorrow at three PM. Second floor of the Maid Love-Love Café in the commercial district."
Silence.
Crystal blinked. "The what?"
"The Maid Love-Love Café. It's a — you know what, it doesn't matter. Three PM. Second floor. Be there or don't."
Lancer's spear hadn't moved. His eyes were locked on the sailor with the cold, evaluative focus of a predator deciding whether something was prey or not.
But after a moment, he glanced down at Crystal.
This wasn't his decision to make. Alliances between factions were a matter for Masters, not Servants. His role was to advise, to protect, and to execute. The choice belonged to her.
"Master? What do you think?"
Crystal straightened up. Wiped her eyes. Made an effort — a visible, genuine effort — to engage her brain instead of her hormones.
"I think... yeah. We should go. If they're reaching out, it means Berserker scared them enough to ask for help. And anything that scares a pirate is probably worth taking seriously." She paused, then turned to the sailor. "Can you share some intel on Berserker first? Before we commit?"
The sailor stared at her.
Lancer stared at her.
A small, awkward silence settled over the scene like a dropped blanket.
"I, uh... didn't expect the young lady to be so... direct," the sailor said carefully. "But let's save the intel exchange for after the alliance is official, yeah? Don't want to give away the goods before the deal is signed."
He tipped an imaginary hat.
"Three PM. Maid Love-Love Café. Don't be late~"
With that, he turned on his heel and walked away. As the night breeze caught him, his body began to dissolve — breaking apart into glittering motes of magical energy that scattered like fireflies and vanished into the dark.
Crystal turned her pleading gaze up to Lancer.
This was another one of her better qualities, buried underneath everything else: she knew what she didn't know. When it came to things beyond her understanding — tactics, strategy, the politics of a Holy Grail War — she didn't pretend. She didn't insist on "following her lead" or making decisions based on ego. She looked at the person who knew more than her, and she asked.
"What do you think?"
Lancer considered for a moment. His eyes tracked the fading remnants of the sailor's magical signature, then swept across the dock district — the ruined warehouses, the cratered pavement, the distant glow of fires still burning from the night's battles.
"We didn't get any useful intel on Berserker," he said slowly. "But the fact that Rider is willing to propose an alliance tells us something important: Berserker's strength genuinely frightened them. A pirate doesn't ask for help unless the alternative is the bottom of the ocean."
A pause.
"Of course, we can't rule out the possibility that it's a trap. But the information deficit we're operating under is dangerous. Meeting them — even if we go in cautious — gives us a chance to gather intelligence on both Rider and Berserker. Two factions' worth of data for the price of a conversation."
He looked down at her.
"However, we won't do exactly as they've asked. They said three PM. We arrive early. Scout the location. Prepare contingencies. If it's a trap, we'll know before we walk into it."
"Okay." Crystal nodded firmly. "I trust you."
Lancer's expression softened. Just a fraction.
For all his legendary combat prowess, Lancer's strategic mind was sharper than most people gave him credit for. It was simply that most of the time, his tactical analysis boiled down to "I'm faster and stronger than everyone — just charge." But when the situation demanded nuance, the brain behind those spears was more than capable of delivering it.
In any case, Crystal's anxious heart finally settled. The fear from Vivian's grave. The uncertainty about the alliance. The creeping terror of a war that had stopped feeling like a game — all of it quieted, if only temporarily, beneath the steady reassurance of Lancer's confidence.
She had the invincible spearman on her side.
The handsome, invincible spearman.
And now that the serious conversation was over...
"So, Lancer," Crystal said, her voice dropping into a register that Lancer had learned to recognize as dangerous. "I listened to your strategy. I agreed to your plan. I think that means you owe me one."
"Master... what are you—"
"That cut on your chest. From the fight with Saber earlier." Her eyes were locked on the slash mark visible through the torn fabric of his battle suit. "It looked deep. I need to check it."
"That's... really not necessary. Servant bodies are composed of magical energy. As long as the wound isn't catastrophic, it will repair itself through natural mana regeneration. There's no need to—"
"Take off the armor."
"Master—"
"I said take it off. I need to inspect the wound. For medical purposes. Very important, very professional medical purposes."
"You are not a medical professional."
"Take. It. Off."
The "medical inspection" that followed was not, by any objective standard, medical in nature.
But Crystal was thorough. She was very thorough.
And somewhere in the shallow grave nearby, Vivian's body lay in the cold earth — already forgotten by the living, already irrelevant to a war that had moved on without her.
Nobody mourned for long in the Holy Grail War.
There wasn't time.