Shit, what am I doing?
I looked down at the girl in my arms. I had broken through the wards easily enough and saved her. Now all I could do was run. I had no plan beyond flight. Panic pressed at my chest like cold hands. I hadn't been this reckless in a long while. Usually I'd try thinking everything ten steps ahead.
The girl in my arms stirred. Her eyes fluttered open. They were still hollow, that same sad, empty gaze that had grabbed something ugly and familiar inside me. I rubbed at her head with the heel of my hand. Her lashes trembled. She blinked once, slow and dazed.
"Senpai, what are you doing? Where are we going?" Her voice was soft, confused, like a child waking from a bad dream.
I kept running. My feet moved on. I didn't really have a specific place I was going. I carried us past lamplight and garden hedges, over a stone wall, and into a narrow alley where the sound of the street fell away. I did not answer. Words would have slowed us down. I felt the blood humming in my temples. I cursed myself. I had rescued her, but rescue meant responsibility now. There was no turning back.
She shifted in my arms, embarrassed and ashamed all at once. Her face burned under the moon. I could feel the tremor in her body. Even now, after what I had seen, she pulled herself inward as if she could hide from shame inside her own skin. Watching her do that made something twist in my chest. How could she bear it? How could anyone?
"Is there anywhere you want to go?" I asked finally, my voice low. The question felt cheap, like offering shelter to someone already drowning.
She hesitated. For a sliver of a second she thought of going to the Emiya household, but she swallowed it. I could see the mixing emotions on her face. She leaned her forehead against my chest and exhaled, small and defeated.
"No," she said in a meek voice full of despair. "Just take me home."
The words made me feel a pit of anger. Take her home. After what had happened. She believed she should return to the place that was hurting her. That was the sickness of it all. She had already accepted it all. She had been suffering in silence. She had already accepted that this was her fate.
I felt heat rising in my throat. Anger is an ugly, useful tool. It sharpened the edge of my reasoning. I could not let her go back. I would not allow it.
Then something streaked past the opening of the alley, a flash of motion and the wiggling sound of worms. I whirled faster than I could think and thrust a small fireball into the space behind us. It detonated against a wall in a pale bloom of light. The sudden flash illuminated something that had been waiting.
Worms spilled from the shadow beside the doorway. writhing like pale, slick maggots of magic. Wherever they touched the stone, the mortar blackened. Not long after them, a man stepped into the alley. He moved like he was folded in on himself. He smelled like dust and sickness.
Sakura froze in my arms. Her whole body went rigid. Her pupilless eyes opened a bit that way that made everything in her small face look sad and uncomfortable. I tightened my grip without thinking. Her skin felt like it was cold. It was a mix of fear and the chilly weather outside.
"Sakura, do you know who this is?" I whispered in her ear. My voice was sharp. She did not answer at first. Then a dry, rasping voice came from the man.
"So, you are the intruder who dared to take what belongs to my family." The voice was thin and amused and full of old cruelty.
I straightened, enough to see him in the dim light. The old man looked barely alive. Skin like stretched parchment, hair like faded threads, eyes like coal dust. He wore the rot of age visible for anyone who had the misfortune to see him. There was a smell of earth and worms around him, the kind of stench that makes air sour. He carried himself as if the whole world had wronged him.
"You think you can steal my heir and walk away?" he said, and there was that cold little smile. I could not tell whether his voice held anger or pleasure. It sounded like a man who had grown fond of cruelty.
"Yeah," I said, my tone flat. "And what of it?" I let my hand rest on the small of Sakura's back so she knew I was there. Her shoulder trembled. She hugged herself as if holding her pieces together.
He laughed and the laugh sounded like an old man's coughing fit. "To think the man who broke into my house would question me after taking someone from my family." His eyes flicked to her and lingered like a man admiring a prize. "It seems the world keeps producing idiots who mistake themselves for saviors."
My jaw tightened. "She would have been assaulted and I stopped it." There was a warm, hot thing in my chest. It was not just anger. It was the memories of the past like how Eris had vanished and left me in mentally despair. And how the world could be petty and brutal and small. I had not been able to stop all of it then with my sister but I could stop this now.
The old man's laugh turned into something like a cough. "If only you knew," he said. His voice slid into a slow, mocking softness. "She cannot live without it. If she is denied it, she will die."
The alley became quiet and cold. Sakura's face twisted with fear and shame. She shrank away from his words as if those words burned. I felt my vision narrow to the single point: I would not let him own her. I would not let him define her.
"She's not an object," I said. My voice was quiet but hard. "She's a person. And I refuse to hand her back."
The old man's face drew into a shadowed grin. "You are defiant. Bold for an intruder. This family has its own ways and I assume you are a magi. So you should know. But you think you can carry her away and hide? She is the Matou heir. She is tied to this line. It is not merely custom. It is necessary."
Sakura's voice broke through then, her voice was trembling and small. "Senpai, you do not have to do this. I will go with him. I do not want to burden you." The way she said it was like a knife in the gut. She has thought that the burden of this guilt and shame was her duty. Her shoulders rose, then fell. Tears threatened to come out but retreated; she didn't know whether she could cry or not.
I felt rage at that moment. I imagined Sakura as if she were someone close to me I could never watch as someone close to me had to endure such punishment. To think she would sacrifice herself for a stranger. She would accept this as payment for daring to breathe. I could not let that be the end of her story. Not while I still had breath.
"I will kill you so Sakura can live a life without this pain," I said. I did not know I had said it until the words left me. The alley held grew tense, and they felt heavier than I expected. I put Sakura down on her feet and slid back two steps, setting myself for the fight to come.
The old man clapped his hands once. The worms around him came to life. They flung themselves toward me, a seething wave of black tsunami. Zouken Matou. The name clicked into place like a poisoned key. I had read about him in Luvia's library, in the crumbling margins of a book no one bothered to check twice. One of the founders of the grail was the parasite of the bloodline. I had not expected to meet him.
"You have stolen from my house. You have made me angry. You will suffer."
His worms crawled forward and struck at my legs, trying to latch on. I could feel the prickle of their taint; even from a distance they clung to my skin like mildew.
I had learned a dozen tricks in Luvia's library. Old techniques, tucked away in brittle pages. One of them is not used very much by magi but it fits the situation. The Ethereal Thread. That was what I called it. It's an improved version of the threading charm. I had stumbled across it in one of Luvia's forgotten books buried between other old magecraft books that no modern mage even bothered to read. It was unlike anything I had used before. It relied on threads of pure mana that could attach to the motion and intent of a living thing, bending it like a marionette in my hands though it did have weakness.
I did not have time to weave a full pattern, not with Zoukens worms advancing. Instead, I let out multiple single threads. I extended my fingers and imagined the threads stretching out, invisible and fine as silk, vibrating with the cadence of his worms. I could feel their body's With each thought, the threads intertwined with their motions.
The wave came at me. The worms lunged and I let them come. The threads had already connected to them. Sparks of black mana shot from the alley stones as the worms convulsed, shrieked with magic, and collapsed into ash. The air stank of burnt rot. They began to implode as I filled them with more mana than they could handle. My brain began to Trimble though I felt every individual worm. When using this technique you had to control them with your thoughts and because I didn't weave one big threat I had to attach a thread individually to each worm. If I gave them a single command to move my brain would likely implode in on itself. That's why I chose to simply fill them with as much mana as I could so they exploded.
Zouken's thin, cracked mouth opened. "What… trick is this?" His voice sounded almost human, almost incredulous. He had seen every form of modern magecraft the world had produced over decades, it was weird he could tell it was something he had seen but at the same time it was different this was something new. He snarled, fury laced with awe, and launched another volley, faster than before.
One worm struck my arm. Its touch was like ice crawling beneath the skin, burrowing into bone and spirit. It was a sickening, invasive sensation, the kind that left a taste of iron in the mouth. I gritted my teeth. I didn't want to cause unnecessary damage to the surrounding buildings and sakura but I wanted this to end already.
I leapt back, and used wind magic upward to evade the next strike. I had quickly weaved a layer of thread with my mana and cast it apon the army of worms. Quickly all movement ceased and the worms began to stand still then I gave out one mental command and the worms began to thrash and lash about as they all began to slowly die. The command I had given them was to die. Since these worms are low in mana and intelligence and willpower giving them a command like this was easy.
He turned, old eyes wide. "You…" His skeletal hand lashed out, trying to pull me with worm-magic, i just appeared in front of him and placed my hand in front of his face.
Zouken's eyes narrowed, pupils pinpricks of fury. "I wonder what is this magecraft" he hissed, trying to pull his remaining worms into himself, trying to reconstruct the link that bound them. His magic sizzled and broke under the interference.
I gathered my mana in my palms. I would end him right here right now a I let out a flashover the same fire spell I use to kill geese Zouken gargled, his body jerking as the fire tore through his body the worms that made his body up began to wiggle and scream in pain shredding the fragile coherence of his body and mind. His scream was a mixture of pain and anger, The worms recoiled at the same time, unmoving now, blackened ash at his feet.
The alley fell silent. Sakura, trembling, approached and wrapped herself around my waist. Her tears fell freely, she looked at the black ash fading and only felt a mixture of emotions. She didn't know what to really think or feel at that moment so she just cried.
I walked up to her and held her because there was nothing else to do. I had felt a little awkward doing this but I had killed a man who had tortured her freeing her from that house of oppression
"Senpai," she whispered, voice choking. "You didn't have to… but thank you." She said crying with a mixture of happiness and relief.
Her eyes met mine, and for the first time I had seen, they glimmered and showed with life "Thank you," she said.
We stayed in the alley for a while but I eventually just brought her to my master's mansion. Zouken was dead. I didn't know if this was a big thing or not. but for the time being nothing seemed off. Sakura was alive and well, and that right now that's all I cared for.
Every 10 power stones there will be an extra chapter
I wonder could anyone guess who the servant of this war will be they're from Mushoku