The snapped pencil lead clattered softly against the dark edge of the wooden desk, rolling across Fuyuki’s mapped coastline before coming to a rest in the crease where the Mion River met the sea.
Kiritsugu stared down at the broken graphite tip.
His fingers lingered on the wooden barrel.
The pressure in his knuckles slowly released, but the tension across his jaw remained tight.
His thumb rubbed over the raw wood edge where the lead had sheared off.
“I need to check the supply crates in the lower workshop,” Kiritsugu said, his voice dropping into the dry tone of an operative reviewing an inventory list.
“The firing pins for the Contender need cleaning, and the silver wiring for the circle perimeter hasn’t been calibrated.”
Irisviel watched his shoulder muscles flex beneath his dark coat.
She caught the slight twitch in his gloved right hand—the subtle flex of muscles over the back of his hand where the red Command Seals lay hidden.
‘He’s retreating again,’ she thought.
‘Pushing him now will only force him deeper into his shell.’
“Go,” Irisviel said softly.
Kiritsugu gave a quiet nod.
He turned on his heel, his heavy leather boots making a dull scrape against the stone floor before he pushed open the heavy oak door and walked out into the vaulted corridor.
Irisviel lingered in the quiet room for a moment, listening as his footfalls grew faint down the hallway.
The wood fire popped in the hearth, sending a tiny shower of sparks against the iron screen.
She pulled her woolen cloak tighter around her shoulders, turned away from the workshop stairs, and made her way toward the eastern wing where the nursery lay.
The stone walls in this corridor were cold, lined with faded tapestries that smelled of dry wool and ancient dust.
Her fingers pressed into the cold brass handle of the heavy nursery door, and the latch gave a soft click.
When she pushed the door inward, the biting chill of the castle yielded to the room’s gentle heat.
Bright winter sun filtered through high glass panes, catching dust motes in the warm air.
Illyasviel sat cross-legged on a thick woolen rug near the window, surrounded by carved wooden figures.
Her silver hair spilled over her red velvet shoulders, catching the bright light like spun thread.
She leaned forward, small knees pressed together, carefully placing a block of pine.
“Mama!” Illya looked up, a smile breaking across her face as she held up a tiny wooden horse.
“Look!
The knight got a horse now!
Papa said he’s going to check on the snow knight outside when he comes back, but this one stays inside where it’s warm.”
Irisviel crossed the room, the hem of her long white skirts sweeping over the rug.
She sank to her knees beside her daughter, her skirts rustling against the heavy wool weave.
Her long, pale fingers rested against the soft curve of Illya’s cheek, feeling the gentle, rhythmic pulse beneath the child’s warm skin.
‘Human skin,’ Irisviel thought, her thumb brushing over the fine down near Illya’s ear.
‘Not the cold, rigid flesh of the vats.’
“He’s a very grand knight, Illya,” Irisviel said, keeping her voice smooth and warm.
Illya leaned into her mother’s palm, resting her chin on Irisviel’s knee while her tiny fingers clutched the carved wooden horse.
“Are you and Papa going away soon?
I saw the big wooden boxes near the courtyard gates this morning.”
‘She doesn’t know,’ Irisviel thought, looking into her daughter’s clear red eyes.
‘Kiritsugu wants to change it, but…
I won’t grow old with him.
I’m just a vessel.
Seven souls, and my body breaks.’
The reflection of the window pane mirrored in Illya’s pupils.
‘I won’t see her grow up,’ she thought.
“We have a long journey to make, Illya,” Irisviel whispered.
She leaned down, pressed a kiss to the crown of Illya’s head, and breathed in the scent of milk, cold air, and soap.
“But everything Papa and I are doing is so that this castle opens its gates for you one day.
So you can walk out into the sun whenever you choose.”
“I’ll wait right here,” Illya said, setting the wooden knight firmly atop its horse with a small clack.
“I’ll make ten more snow knights to guard the door until you get back!”
“Make sure they guard you well,” Irisviel said.
She forced a smile as she pushed herself up from the rug.
She backed out of the nursery slowly, her gaze lingering on her daughter playing in the golden patch of sunlight, before stepping back into the cold stone corridors of the keep. New chapters come out on NovelPing first.
By the time Irisviel returned to their private suite, Kiritsugu was already there.
He stood near the hearth, his fingers wrapped around a ceramic mug of black coffee sitting on the mantelpiece.
The map on the desk had been rolled up, secured, and weighted down with a brass compass.
Before either of them could speak, a sharp, double knock echoed off the oak door—the precise strike of an Einzbern homunculus servant.
Kiritsugu turned from the fire, his eyes narrowing slightly as his left hand settled into his coat pocket.
“Enter.”
The iron latch lifted with a heavy click.
Two tall, pale homunculi stepped into the suite.
Their silver hair was pulled back tightly into severe, identical buns, and their dark wool coats were dusted with fresh mountain snow.
Between them, suspended by thick leather straps, they carried a long, narrow trunk crafted from dark heartwood, bound across its corners with heavy iron bands.
Frost clung to the iron handles, evaporating into faint wisps of steam in the heat of the room.
They crossed the stone floor in sync, their leather boots striking the flagstones at the same instant.
They lowered the heavy case down on the central table with a solid thud that rattled the brass candlesticks.
Neither servant spoke.
They bowed together, their yellowed eyes staring straight ahead at the wall, before stepping back toward the hallway and pulling the heavy oak door shut behind them.
The latch dropped back into place.
Irisviel walked over to the table, her hand hovering an inch above the frosted iron bands.
A faint hum radiated through the dark heartwood—a subtle vibration that made the tiny hairs on her forearm stand up.
“It came directly from the Cornwall excavation site,” Irisviel said.
“Lord Acht’s couriers brought it up from the lower gates just now.”
Kiritsugu moved to the opposite side of the table.
His gloved fingers caught the cold metal of the brass latches, slick with melting frost.
With a firm, downward flick of his wrists, he popped both clasps open.
The brass snapped with a sharp ring.
The dark timber creaked as he swung the lid back on its iron hinges.
Inside, resting on a bed of faded midnight-blue velvet that smelled faintly of salt, ozone, and old dust, lay a sword sheath.
Constructed of solid, burnished gold, it radiated a quiet brilliance in the firelit room.
Intricate lines of glowing blue enamel were inlaid down its entire length, forming geometric flourishes and delicate vine patterns that shifted under the flickering light of the hearth.
It resembled a sacred regalia—an object meant to be borne before emperors and high kings.
Engraved down the center of the gold were runes from a lost age.
They were elf-script, delicate and razor-sharp, carved with a precision impossible for human hands or modern machinery.
“I didn’t think he actually managed to find it,” Kiritsugu said.
His voice was steady, but his hand hovered a fraction of an inch above the gold, unmoving above the velvet.
Irisviel reached into the box with care, her fingers sliding beneath the metal, wrapping around the throat of the scabbard.
The weight was dense and cool.
She lifted it into the light.
The gold repelled the dust, and the blue enamel remained smooth, unfaded, and without a single hairline crack.
“Why isn’t there a single scratch on it?” Kiritsugu asked, watching the mirror finish as the firelight glinted off the polished surface.
“Is this genuinely an artifact unearthed from fifteen hundred years ago?”
“It is a Noble Phantasm in conceptual form,” Irisviel explained, holding the heavy weight balanced across her open palms.
“As a physical object, it would have degraded long ago beneath the soil of England.
But as a catalyst for a Servant summoning, it exists as a preserved mystery.
It does not decay.”
She turned the sheath slightly, letting the hearthfire reflect off the deep blue enamel.
“The legends say that simply wearing this scabbard cures the wielder’s wounds in seconds and halts the natural aging of their flesh,” she continued softly.
“Though, of course, that function requires a constant supply of magical energy from its true, original owner.”
Kiritsugu watched the light play across the gold.
‘A constant supply of mana…
so if the Servant powers it, the Master benefits from direct recovery,’ Kiritsugu thought, his mind mapping out line-of-fire coverage, distance, and heavy impact survival.
“So if the summoned Heroic Spirit provides the mana, the object itself can be used directly as a defense for the Master.”
Irisviel let out a soft breath, a faint smile touching her lips as she watched his jaw set. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
‘A miracle in his hands, and he’s already turning it into armor,’ she thought.
‘Always the assassin.’
“You convert everything into a tool so quickly, Kiritsugu,” Irisviel said.
“Because everything in this war is a tool,” Kiritsugu said.
His face hardened, the soft expression he had worn outside in the courtyard vanishing.
His profile against the firelight became sharp, angular, and merciless.
“It doesn’t matter how famous a Heroic Spirit was in life.
It doesn’t matter how many songs were written about them.
Once they are summoned as a Servant, they are a weapon to be wielded by the Master.
Anyone who enters this war holding romantic illusions about legendary heroes is going to die in the first week.”
Irisviel didn’t flinch.
‘The assassin’s armor is back on,’ she thought.
“Grandfather gave this to you because he believes you are the only Master capable of winning with it,” Irisviel said, setting the golden sheath carefully back down onto its bed of dark velvet.
“Is that so?” Kiritsugu said, a slight scowl pulling at the corner of his mouth.
“Are you dissatisfied with Lord Acht’s gift?” Irisviel asked, a subtle spark of amusement in her crimson eyes.
“He spent vast fortunes and sent teams of excavators through Britain for decades to pull that out of the earth in Cornwall.”
“Dissatisfied?
No,” Kiritsugu said, leaning his hands flat on the wooden table beside the case, the wood creaking beneath his weight.
“He provided an absolute trump card with the purest lineage possible.”
He paused, staring down at the ancient elf-script carved into the gold.
“My issue isn’t the artifact,” Kiritsugu said flatly.
“It’s the compatibility.
A Servant’s personality is normally shaped by the Master’s own mental framework when there is no catalyst involved.
But when a catalyst is this specific, the selection process is bypassed.
We are guaranteed to draw one exact individual.”
“You are worried about making a contract with the King of Knights,” Irisviel said.
“Of course I am,” Kiritsugu said.
“Look at me, Iri.
Is there a single man in this world who stands further away from the code of chivalry than I do?”
He straightened up, pacing a slow step away from the table toward the fire, his boots making a distinct crunching sound on a stray bit of hearth grit.
“Fair and honorable combat is a luxury invented by fools,” Kiritsugu said, his voice dropping into a flat, detached monotone.
“When you enter a fight where the only outcome is life or death, you don’t challenge people to duels on an open field.
You shoot the enemy from behind while they sleep.
You strike when they are distracted.
You pick the time, the place, and the angle that guarantees their death before they even realize they are in a fight.
Do you really believe a legendary knight king is going to follow orders like that?”
Irisviel remained quiet, looking down at the gleaming gold resting inside the wooden box.
‘He shoots from the dark,’ she thought, picturing his sniper rifles, his explosive charges, and his quiet cruelty on the field.
‘And Arthur Pendragon fought under banners on open grass.
They’ll hate each other the second the King appears.’
She looked up at his hunched silhouette against the roaring fire.
‘And yet…
maybe a broken killer is the only one who needs a knight’s shield.’
“It might be a difficult match,” Irisviel admitted quietly.
“But this is the sheath of the Promised Sword of Victory.
As a Saber-class Servant, the King of Knights represents the strongest, most stable class in the Holy Grail War.”
Kiritsugu stopped near the hearth and looked back over his shoulder at the table.
“I know,” Kiritsugu said.
The gold sheath lay inside its velvet bed, shining with a cold, pristine light.
It was the ultimate relic of the legendary sovereign of Britain—King Arthur.