The sun had yet to rise. The quiet town still lay wrapped in darkness, the only sound the faint creak of wooden shutters and the distant steps of a night guard changing shifts.
At the clinic, most patients still slept peacefully. But outside, one figure was already moving, body slick with sweat, red hair catching faint silver light from the moon.
Shirou Emiya lowered himself into another set of push-ups, the patient's gown he wore tied in places so it wouldn't hang loose during exercise. His breathing came steady, each exhale misting faintly in the cool dawn air. Sit-ups followed, then more push-ups — the familiar rhythm of an old habit he had never abandoned, not even in this new world.
It had been two days since the visions. two days since fragments of truth, alien and unbearable, had carved their way into his mind. In that time, doubt had crept into every thought, gnawing at the path he had once clung to so stubbornly.
And yet… his body moved. Every morning he slipped quietly from his bed, careful not to wake the others or draw Niamh's and Eithne's attention. He hid his full recovery from them — not out of malice, but because he knew their questions would follow, and with them the risk of exposing more of his secrets. So instead he trained in silence, timing his sessions while the town still slept, worrying only about the chance of passing a drowsy guard.
The repetition helped. The burn of muscle and the rhythm of motion dulled the storm in his head, at least for a little while.
But once the movements slowed, the thoughts always returned.
'The path I chose… the dream I borrowed from Father… is this really what gives me purpose? Or have I just been clinging to it because I had nothing else?'
The fire of Fuyuki had taken everything from him. In its ashes, there was only one thing left: the man who had pulled him from hell. Kiritsugu's dream of becoming a hero of justice had become his own, not because he had truly desired it, but because he had nothing else.
Shirou clenched his fists against the dirt floor, sweat dripping down his nose.
'I survived when they didn't. Why? What right did I have to live when so many burned?'
It was an answerless question — one that had haunted him since childhood. To bury that guilt, he had chosen salvation for others. If he couldn't save the people of that night, then he would save someone else. He would make their deaths mean something.
But now… now that he had seen those visions — other paths, other versions of himself who had walked further and fallen deeper — he felt the ground beneath that conviction start to shake.
He had never owned a dream. He had lived a dream borrowed from another man.
And the more he clung to it, the more hollow it began to feel.
But the visions wouldn't leave him.
Shirou had seen pieces of something greater — fragments of his father's struggle, and shards of other selves who had walked paths his feet had only just begun to tread.
Each version of himself had made choices he could scarcely accept, and yet they had persevered in their own way. Some reached their ideals, if only for a fleeting moment; others fell into ruin. And though many of those images were fragmented, a handful stood out with terrible clarity.
He remembered the duel against Archer—and now, at last, he understood what he had glimpsed in that battle. A version of himself who had walked too far down the path of saving others, only to become a Beast of Alaya. A slave bound for eternity. Archer was no longer saving lives; he was deployed by Alaya to extinguish threats before they could bloom into disasters. And when those threats were tangled with others, Alaya's decree was merciless.
Shirou had seen that face in Archer's stance, felt that cold inevitability in his eyes, and understood that if he followed his own borrowed dream all the way through, he might not become a hero. He could become something else—a beast forged by others' expectations.
Future kings, conspirators, entire factions—anyone involved was condemned. Innocents were not spared. Collateral lives, children, families… they all fell by his blade, as though their only crime was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. By then, Archer had killed far more innocents than he ever did wrongdoers. Each swing of the sword was a betrayal of his ideal, the dream that once gave him strength becoming a curse that chained him tighter than any set of manacles.
That's what it means to be betrayed by your ideals… Shirou realized, the thought leaving a cold weight in his chest. To devote himself completely, only to learn too late that saving everyone had demanded he become their executioner.
And this was the dream he borrowed. The one he held as his only compass, even now.
But then there were others.
One Shirou had abandoned his dream of saving everyone, choosing instead to save a single woman — to place her life above his own and above all others. He saw that version clearly: smiling even as his body collapsed, swords jutting through his flesh from the strain of wielding borrowed power, holding Sakura close with a tenderness Shirou had never allowed himself.
Another version had done the same, but for a little sister. Raised not as family but as a tool, she was meant to be the key to humanity's salvation. Yet that Shirou chose differently. He treated her as a person, not a tool as a means to an end.
When she was taken to fulfill that destiny, he refused to surrender her. Even if it meant such acts are considered evil, he chose to save her. In his desperation, he used the Grail — not for glory or power, but to send his sister away, to another world where she might finally live without chains.
What followed was a hopeless battle. His enemy wielded the might of kings, and he was struck down, body torn and broken. But he had bought enough time. He smiled through the pain as his sister disappeared into the unknown, content in the knowledge she would not be alone anymore and find happinness.
Both of those Shirous, despite the ruin that followed, had carried the same expression Kiritsugu wore on that night of fire: a smile born not of saving the world, but of saving the one most precious to them.
And that was what unsettled him most.
These visions weren't illusions. They were truths — possibilities carved into him through the Eye of Truth. And he could not dismiss them. He could not look down on those choices as wrong, because in those fleeting moments those other Shirous had found their purpose. Their smiles were proof.
That knowledge tore at him. The ideal he had clung to all his life — to be a hero of justice, to save everyone — now wavered. He wanted to deny those paths, to reject them, but at the same time he couldn't shake the feeling that they were just as real, just as valid as his own.
And in that contradiction, Shirou felt the emptiness inside him widen.
'If even I could smile like that… would saving everyone still matter to me??'
The thought lingered like ash in his throat, leaving him unable to breathe.
---
Even after venting his frustrations in the field, Shirou's mood hadn't improved. A half-hour break later, with dawn settling in, he returned to his ward for a change of clothes before heading toward the public baths to wash away the sweat and grime.
He had already familiarized himself with the layout of the village and knew exactly where the men's bathhouse was. There was no need, at least not today, to announce his full recovery. Tomorrow… or maybe the day after, he would tell them.
The building's interior greeted him with a sense of nostalgia. Shirou had grown up in a traditional Japanese house, so anything remotely resembling an onsen felt familiar, almost comforting. The stone paths, the makeshift tiles, the channels of flowing water at the edges of the room — all of it was reminiscent of home. The only thing missing was a proper hot spring pool.
"This seems more luxurious than I expected for a public bath…" he murmured, stepping further in.
It was then he noticed he wasn't alone.
On the far side of the chamber, bent over with a mop in hand, someone was diligently scrubbing the marble floor. Shirou blinked, trying to identify the figure.
"Ehh… Emiya-kun?"
The voice froze him. A woman's voice — familiar, warm, and definitely not supposed to be here.
For a split second, Shirou's mind blanked.
Up until now, Niamh Keegan had always been the nurse in her uniform — modest, plain, practical. The white fabric softened her presence, painting her as warm and dependable, someone easy to relax around. But stripped of that layer, he realized just how misleading that impression had been.
Her figure was far more striking than he would have ever guessed. The loose uniform hadn't done her justice. Beneath it, she carried the kind of proportions that would have drawn stares in any street of Fuyuki: a narrow waist, long legs, and a chest fuller than he would have expected from someone who bustled about the clinic with a light step. Her skin looked almost luminous against the curl of steam, smooth and pale like porcelain warmed by firelight.
Shirou swallowed, throat dry. It wasn't lust that struck him, but the raw surprise of seeing someone he had come to think of as a cheerful caretaker suddenly revealed as… well, a woman.
It felt contradictory — almost jarring. Niamh, with her careless giggles and airheaded way of brushing aside anything too complicated, had always seemed almost childlike in her mannerisms. And yet, the body before him told a different story entirely.
That dissonance caught him off guard more than anything else. His eyes darted away, but the image had already burned itself into memory.
"…Keegan-chan?"
The two stared at one another, silence stretching thin. Shirou stood in nothing but a towel at his waist. Keegan stood in a skimpy swimsuit, mop in hand, her face already turning crimson as realization set in.
Her nurse-like gentleness shattered in an instant.
"Kyaaaaaa!"
She dropped the mop, closed the distance in a blur of speed Shirou hadn't thought possible from the usually mild-mannered caretaker, and raised her hand with the deadly precision of a seasoned slayer.
"Wait, Keegan-chan—!"
PAK!
The slap detonated against his cheek. The sheer force launched him backward, towel flapping helplessly as he was blasted out of the doorway. He hit the cement floor outside with a graceless thud, staring at the ceiling in dazed disbelief.
In his mind's eye, he could almost see Archer standing over him, arms crossed, that smug smirk practically radiating schadenfreude.
"…Curse my E-Rank Luck," Shirou groaned, trying to raise his head only to slump back to the ground in exhaustion.
---
"I'm truly sorry, I didn't realize the bathhouse was closed for maintenance."
Shirou knelt outside the curtain door, forehead pressed against the floor in a proper Japanese dogeza.
"It's alright," came Keegan's voice from the other side, soft but still flustered. "Now that I think about it, you can't really read, can you? We should… fix that at some point. But still, I'm surprised you came to the bathhouse this early. I thought with your injuries you'd give yourself some slack, Emiya-kun."
Despite the curtain separating them, both were burning from the recent incident. Shirou's encounters with women had been limited to Rin, Saber, Sakura…Ayako… — and Taiga, though she hardly counted. None of them had ever prepared him for this.
"Yeah… even I'm surprised myself. Haha…" His awkward chuckle did nothing to hide the memory of how exposed that swimsuit had been. For all his iron will and hardened mental fortitude, he was still a teenage boy.
"Shirou-kun?"
"Yes?"
"…Just so you know," her voice wavered, softer and softer with each word, "I don't usually wear swimsuits like that. Mine just wasn't laundered yet, so I had to borrow Eithne-sama's set."
"Ohh. That's… unexpected. I didn't think Eithne was the type to wear those kinds of swimsuits."
Silence. Shirou instantly regretted saying anything. 'Why did I say that?' He wanted to facepalm himself right then and there. The mood sank into even thicker awkwardness.
When Keegan finally stepped out from behind the curtain, now fully clothed, she tried to recover the mood with a teasing grin — though the twitch at her lips betrayed her lingering embarrassment.
"But still… not that I'd mind, but there are proper steps that need to be taken first."
Shirou groaned, dragging a hand down his face as if wiping away his blunder. "I'm telling you, Keegan-chan, it was an accident. And maybe say that again when your face isn't bright red like a fresh ripe tomato."
Keegan froze, realizing she'd been caught. Her cheeks flared crimson as she turned away, but a soft giggle escaped her lips.
"Hehe… I'm just glad you're back to your usual self, Emiya-kun."
"My… usual self?" Shirou repeated, baffled, as her laughter lingered in the air.
"Yeah, for the past week you've been down in the dumps," Keegan said, crossing her arms with a huff. "We even thought you'd caught some illness. But when we checked, you were perfectly healthy. Then, when we asked what was wrong, you just said, 'Everything's fine.'"
Her eyes narrowed knowingly. "But I could tell you were faking it. You're way too obvious when you try to play dumb."
Shirou blushed embarassed, realizing he'd been seen through. "Sorry… a lot of things have been weighing on my mind lately."
"No shit, Sherlock." Keegan giggled teasingly before her tone softened. "Care to share your thoughts?"
'Should I even say anything?'
He didn't know much about Keegan-chan. Not really. Just fragments — her easy smile, the way she fussed over patients without complaint, the small kindnesses she offered without asking for anything in return. She was cheerful, airheaded at times, and far from the type of person he would normally bare his heart to.
And yet…
There was something about her warmth that felt genuine. The same instinct that had carried him through battle whispered that she could be trusted. That, at least in this small corner of his endless doubts, he didn't need to pretend.
Finally, he exhaled.
"…How does one know the path they've chosen is the right one?"
Keegan blinked at him, thoughtful for a moment… then broke into a bright smile. "Beats me, hehe."
"Huh?"
Shirou stared at her, dumbfounded. He'd expected something insightful, maybe even comforting. Instead, she'd brushed off the heavy mood like it was nothing.
Keegan giggled, scratching her cheek. "Hehe, yeah, complicated stuff like that isn't really my thing. Every time Eithne or Mae start talking about their big brain ideas, it's like listening to gibberish. So whenever I try to think about stuff like that, I just go: 'Screw it, too much trouble.'"
Shirou deadpanned at her. "And why are you saying that like you're proud of it?" while giving her the kind of look one usually reserved for idiots — the kind of look he'd long since perfected thanks to dealing with Taiga.
"Teehee." Keegan stuck her tongue out, making a playful face.
Shirou sighed deeply, but a small smile tugged at his lips. "For someone I gathered the courage to share my thoughts with, you weren't any help at all."
Niamh puffed her cheeks, stamping her foot lightly against the floor. "Hey, that's rude, you know!" She crossed her arms, but the blush on her face ruined the seriousness she tried to project.
Shirou shook his head, his voice softening. "Even then… thanks. I needed that."
Her brows furrowed, head tilting like a curious cat. "Huh? What's that supposed to mean?"
For a moment, Shirou just looked at her — really looked at her. The nurse who could fluster him with a slap one moment and lift the heaviness in his chest the next without even realizing it. Maybe that was what made her different.
A smirk crept across his face as he pushed open the curtain to the bath. "What about using that airheaded brain of yours for once, and you'll figure it out?"
"Hey! Rude again!" Keegan stuck her tongue out once more, this time more playfully, as Shirou disappeared behind the curtain.
Shirou walked a small smile lingered as he walked deeper inside. For some reason, he suddenly understood why Archer found so much joy in teasing people with sarcasm.
---
By noon, the sun hung high overhead. Shirou lay beneath the shade of the same tree on the hill, the breeze stirring faintly through his red hair.
His thoughts circled endlessly, still gnawing at questions of purpose and path. But thanks to the morning's chaotic mishap, his mood had eased, if only a little. Even so, he found himself sighing often, exasperated by the weight of overthinking.
The breeze shifted, rustling the grass where Shirou lay beneath the tree. His mind, still looping over the same doubts, finally fell silent. Enough. He would get nowhere if he kept gnawing on questions without answers.
Instead, he shifted inward.
With a steady breath, he let his consciousness sink — down past muscle, down past nerves — into the makeshift circuits now lining his body.
They thrummed faintly under his command. His "new" magic circuits were little more than nerves reforged into pseudo-pathways. Quality-wise, they weren't inferior to his originals, but their structure was unstable, prone to friction. Whenever prana surged through them, heat built up in his body like kindling stoked by a fire. In light use, it was tolerable. In battle, with spells cast back-to-back, it was torture — like being roasted alive from the inside out. Perhaps that flaw came precisely because these circuits were stitched from his nerves; a body was never meant to carry prana this way, and each invocation scraped him raw from the inside.
Which meant, for Shirou, they were a weapon of last resort. Push them too far, and he risked permanent damage.
"…I'll just have to manage," he muttered.
With that, he let his focus slide deeper, his consciousness drawn into the inner world that had been changing ever since those visions.
Steel and ash spread endlessly. Familiar — yet not.
Where his Reality Marble had once been a barren plain of swords jutting from the ground beneath a broken sky, now a rift yawned within it: a vault, a treasury that did not belong to him. Golden light streamed out like the glow of molten metal, casting long shadows across the swords.
The King's Treasury.
Weapons and relics floated suspended in the air as if cradled by invisible threads. Blades, staves, armors, chalices — each piece radiated a brilliance that felt ancient, absolute. The treasury of Uruk, the pride of Gilgamesh, woven into Shirou's reality when the visions tore at his soul.
Shirou stepped closer, eyes moving from one artifact to the next.
But the inscriptions carved into pedestals, or engraved into blade and scabbard, remained beyond his grasp. They were written in cuneiform, the wedge-script of Mesopotamia, a tongue long dead to history. Symbols that told stories he could not read.
So instead, he reached for what he knew: the method of Tracing.
His circuits hummed.
A simple bronze blade emerged first — primitive, rough, yet balanced. When he traced it, a flicker of knowledge filled his mind: the kind carried by Uruk's soldiers in Gilgamesh's wars, wielded by men who fought not for glory, but survival.
Next, his eyes drifted to a spear, its head leaf-shaped, its shaft reinforced with patterns. Tracing it pulled forth a haze of memory not his own — the tale of Enkidu, the wild man, wrestling beasts and hunting beside Gilgamesh with weapons like these, companions bound by fate until the gods themselves demanded his end.
Then a bow, its curve stiff and powerful, etched with faded carvings of storms. When Shirou traced it, he caught a faint resonance: Ishtar's divine wrath, arrows said to blot out the sky in rain, brought low by the will of a hero who dared to stand against the gods.
The stories came in fragments. None complete, yet each enough to remind him: every treasure here was more than a weapon. It was a story, crystallized in steel, bound to the glory of a king.
He would have to start small. Even if the mysteries of Uruk's age were sealed to him, he could still trace, still study, still learn. That was the duty of a magus: to reach for mysteries, even if the world called it impossible.
It was then, just as he prepared to dive deeper, that his senses caught something faint in the real world — the presence of someone approaching.
With a sharp breath, he snapped back — the treasury around him dissolving into drifting gold, like sunlight scattering through water. The brilliance faded, and in its place came the weight of reality: the whisper of wind through leaves, the rough bark at his back, and the cool shade of the tree where he lay.
"Shirou-kun!"
A voice pulled him back. One of the nurses stood nearby, hands folded politely. "Keegan-san is looking for you. She's waiting by the orphanage."
"Alright. Thanks."
Rising, Shirou dusted himself off and followed the path that led between the two buildings. The orphanage and clinic shared the same property, connected by a park that served as a bridge between them. Both institutions had their own side entrances opening into the grassy yard, children's laughter faintly carrying on the breeze.
At the orphanage gate, Niamh was waiting, waving her arm high with her usual enthusiasm.
"Morning, Shirou-kun!"
"Morning, Keegan-chan," Shirou replied flatly, unable to match her energy. "Why did you call me?"
"Ah—right, before that." She suddenly raised a finger as if remembering something important. "Nia."
"…Huh?"
"Nia," she repeated with a grin. "That's what my friends call me. I meant to tell you during our talk at the bathhouse this morning, but I kinda forgot."
Shirou blinked, unsure how to respond. Her insistence felt oddly personal. "Is that… fine?"
"Of course! I've already been addressing you by your given name, so it's unfair if I don't get the same treatment." She puffed her cheeks slightly, pretending to be offended.
He sighed, a wry smile tugging at his lips. "Fine, fine. Nia-chan, then."
"That's better!" she said brightly, pleased with herself. "Anyway…"
"Remember how I said you might need to work on your literacy?"
"…Literacy?" Shirou arched an eyebrow. "So you're calling me out here about that? Did you actually find a way?"
"Yup!" Niamh beamed, clearly proud of herself. "I was thinking—what better way to learn how to read than by joining the orphanage's lessons?"
Shirou: "…"
Nia: "…😊"
"…Pardon?"
Shirou blinked at her, sure he had misheard. "You mean to tell me… a seventeen-year-old is going to sit in a classroom with bunch of kids still learning their first letters?"
"Exactly!" Niamh answered without hesitation, smiling as though she'd just unveiled the most brilliant plan ever conceived.
For a brief moment, Shirou almost swore he saw a halo of light radiating behind her — like one of those saint portraits in a chapel, the kind that blinded reason.
'Is she pulling my leg, or is she just missing a screw somewhere?'
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Shirou realized he had no good response to that kind of smile.
"Come on, it'll be fun," she insisted, already grabbing his wrist.
And before he could protest further, she was dragging him through the orphanage's side door, down its hallway toward the small classroom where children's voices echoed faintly.
Shirou sighed in defeat, allowing himself to be pulled along. He knew he had no choice. Illiteracy in this world could become a far bigger problem than embarrassment. If he wanted to survive here, he'd need to learn.
Still, as the doors drew closer, he muttered under his breath:
'…I'm going to regret this, aren't I?'