Chapter Text
I : He Smells the Sea, Sky, Death and the Moon
The dampness of London was an old friend that Shirou Emiya had long stopped trying to warm away.
In the small, third-floor flat near the Clock Tower—a place Rin had leased for her time at the Clock Tower —the only sound was the steady noise of the rhythmic, steady scrape of a whetstone against a cheap stainless-steel kitchen knife.
Rin had been away on a long research expedition to the Middle East for the past two weeks, leaving Shirou alone with his thoughts. Without her bustling around the apartment or scolding him for overworking his circuits, the flat felt far too big and far too quiet.
He didn't need the whetstone to sharpen the blade—a passing thought and a mere whisper, could make the cheap metal cut clean even through the toughest steel—but the physical motion kept his hands busy.
It kept his mind grounded in the present.
Because when his hands were still, the vision in his dream returned.
It was always the same vision, vague yet painfully sharp. He couldn't see the landscape clearly—he had never been there, after all—but he could feel the phantom sensation of a distant, endless morning.
Somewhere beyond the world, warm light bathing a hill he had only ever heard of in legends, a familiar figure stood alone.
He thought of her golden hair, flowing freely in the cool breeze, her emerald eyes shining with a quiet, unwavering purity, and her posture straight and noble—yet softened by a serene, gentle patience.
Artoria, Shirou thought.
He could see her looking toward a horizon she couldn't cross, bound by a promise they had made to one another under the setting sun of Fuyuki.
Neither of them knew how many centuries or lifetimes it would take, nor how many worlds he would have to walk before his soul was allowed to reach her.
Just the quiet, agonizing reality of a king waiting for her sheath, and a boy endlessly searching for his sword.
The knife gleamed under the solitary overhead bulb, reflecting the face of a man carved out of stubborn survival.
The white fringe of his hair—bleached by the constant, burning toll of his magic circuits forcing swords into existence—fell slightly over his face. He looked into the steel's reflection and saw his own mismatched eyes staring back.
The left; a remnant of his original soft, warm bronze.
And the right; a cold, hardened steel-grey, forever altered by the endless projection of forged iron.
Shirou traced the knife's edge with his thumb, feeling the sharpness of the knife he had daintily worked on to ease his troubled mind.
It was a mundane task, completely devoid of magecraft, yet it helped him ease his mind and ward off the silence of the empty flat swallowing him whole.
Then suddenly, the ambient mana in the room didn't just shift—it collapsed.
Space turned inside out with the sickening sound of wet parchment tearing. The humidity of London vanished, replaced instantaneously by the smell of ozone, dry parchment, and vintage wine.
The air fractured into geometric prisms, shimmering with a blinding, kaleidoscopic brilliance that made Shirou's eyes burn.
Shirou didn't jump. He didn't even drop the whetstone from shock. He simply let out a long, heavy exhale through his nose, setting the knife and the whetstone down on the wooden table.
"You're tracking mud onto the floor, Zelretch," Shirou said softly, not bothering to look up.
"A harsh welcome for an old benefactor!" A voice, rich with theatrical bravado and sharp enough to cut glass, echoed from the center of the distortion.
Out stepped Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg. The Wizard Marshal looked as insufferably immaculate as ever, clad in his dark cape, leaning lightly on his jewel-encrusted cane. His crimson eyes gleamed behind his spectacles with the precise, terrifying intelligence of a predator that viewed reality as a particularly low-stakes chessboard.
"I don't recall asking for a benefactor," Shirou replied. "And the last time you dropped in 'just to check on my progress,' I spent three months in a labyrinth made entirely of brass clockwork, fighting mechanical hydras."
"And you built a wonderful copper tea set out of their remains, if I remember correctly," Zelretch chuckled, taking an uninvited seat on the edge of Shirou's desk. The wizard swept a dismissive hand through the air.
"Details, my boy. Mere scenic detours on the grand highway of existence."
"What do you want?" Shirou asked directly. He knew better than to play verbal games with the Master of the Second Magic.
"Direct. I respect that. Age has made you pragmatic, Shirou Emiya," Zelretch's smile faded slightly, replaced by something far more dangerous: genuine interest. "Tell me... how's the progress of your search?"
Shirou's jaw tightened. The air in the apartment grew noticeably colder. "You know how it progresses. It doesn't."
"Because you are searching within the boundaries of a world that has closed its doors," Zelretch said, his cane tapping once against the floorboards.
Thud.
"The Utopia is not a destination on a map, Shirou. It is a concept. A reward. And the door to that distant haven remains sealed to those whose souls are bogged down by the weight of unfulfilled oaths and lingering regrets."
Shirou stood up, his posture rigid. "If you came here just to lecture me on the impossibility of my dream—"
"I came to offer you a key," Zelretch interrupted, his voice dropping an octave, carrying the terrifying weight of a True Magician. "Or perhaps, a lock worth opening."
The kaleidoscope pattern behind the old man expanded, swirling into a projection of a blue-and-green marble suspended in the dark—a Earth, but subtly... wrong. The flow of ley lines across its surface didn't simmer and fade like an illusion.
They thrummed, thick and golden, wrapping around the western hemisphere like a burning grid.
"Look," Zelretch commanded. "A world that is a mirror image of this one except for one simple yet profound difference. In this world, the Mystery did not retreat into the Reverse Side. The Gods did not fade into mere concepts or starved phantasms. They endured."
"The Age of Gods... never ended?" Shirou muttered, disbelief etched on his face.
"It shifted," Zelretch corrected, a manic glint in his eye. "It migrated. As the center of Western civilization moved, so too did the Gods. In particular, the Greek Pantheon did. It currently rests in the young, brash nation across the Atlantic. America. The gods live among mortals, dallying with them, spawning half-breed children who fight, bleed, and die in an endless cycle to keep the ancient horrors of their mythos at bay."
"And why are you showing me this?" Shirou asked, his brow furrowing. "If the gods are active, what use would that world have from a stray magus from Japan."
"Doesn't it?" Zelretch leaned forward, his hands resting on the pommel of his cane. "That world is entering a period of profound crisis. The ancient foundations are cracking. Innocents—children who have committed no crime other than inheriting the blood of deities—being marched into a meat grinder of prophecy and ancient spite."
"It needs someone. Someone who knows the hardship of the path. Someone who can guide them, help them if needed."
Red met Bronze and Steel.
"It needs a hero."
Zelretch paused, letting the silence stretch between them. He watched Shirou's eyes—watched the familiar, tragic spark of the Hero of Justice ignite behind the tired steel.
"You seek Avalon," Zelretch said, his tone eerily gentle. "You wish to stand again beside the King of Knights. But tell me, Emiya... do you truly believe your current self could walk into that paradise? A soul burdened by the fatigue of a thousand meaningless conflicts?"
Zelretch paused, his crimson eyes gleaming behind his spectacles with a sharp, cold light as he leaned forward on his cane.
"I think you know better than anyone how that comes to an ending."
The words hit Shirou like a physical blow.
In an instant, the memory flashed unbidden behind his eyelids—a desolate hill under an iron sky, an endless desert of rusted blades, and a red-mantled shadow standing alone, drowned in bitter regret.
Archer.
The ghost of what he could become if he let the fatigue erode his soul, if he let his ideal turn into nothing more than a mechanical reflex.
Shirou's jaw tightened, his fingers clenching into a white-knuckled fist at his side as the steel-grey in his right eye burned with a dangerous, quiet fire.
Shirou's fist clenched tightly at his side. "Zelretch..."
"To reach the distant utopia, one must be a hero," Zelretch said, his voice ringing with absolute certainty. "Not a weapon. Not a survivor. A hero who has faced the absolute darkness of the world, unblemished by despair, and remained pure. Go to this world. Lend your steel to those who are fighting against the cruel, uncaring fate. Help them survive the storm."
The old vampire stood up, the kaleidoscopic portal opening wide behind him, a howling wind of dimensional displacement whipping through the small apartment.
"Fulfill the call of fate in that land, Shirou Emiya," Zelretch called out over the roar of the dimensional tear. "And perhaps... the everlasting utopia will finally open its gates for you."
Shirou looked at his worn hands. He felt the familiar, dull ache in his chest—the eternal ache of a vow made under a still starlit sky and a burning sky. He closed his eyes, took a single, deep breath, and let it out.
When he opened them, the doubt was gone. Only the blade remained.
"Just don't throw me into an ocean this time," Shirou sighed, stepping forward.
Zelretch laughed—a booming, delighted sound that echoed across realities. "No promises, my boy! No promises at all!"
As Shirou stepped into the blinding light of the Second Magic, the portal snapped shut behind him.
Left alone in the empty, quiet apartment, the lingering shadow of the Wizard Marshal looked at the spot where the young man had stood. The humor faded from Zelretch's face, leaving behind the cool, detached solemnity of an immortal observer.
"To reach Avalon, one must be without sin..." Zelretch whispered to the empty room, turning his head toward the dark window. "Prove your steel once more, boy. Show those gods and people who have forgotten, what it truly means to bear the weight of humanity."
He gave a sharp, mischievous grin, and then the air shattered around him in a swirl of brilliant, prismatic light.
A heartbeat later, the kaleidoscopic glare dissolved into nothingness, leaving behind no sound, no trace, and no presence.
The transition between worlds was not gentle.
It never was with Zelretch. It felt less like walking through a door and more like being loaded into a cannon and fired through a brick wall made of quantum mechanics and multiversal logic.
Shirou hit the ground on his feet, his boots skidding across smooth, polished stone. His knees bent automatically, absorbing the kinetic impact, his hands hovering inches from the floor, ready to trace shield or blade at a millisecond's notice.
The sensory overload hit him immediately.
That was the only word for it.
The air in this world didn't just contain mana; it was saturated with a heavy, golden pressure. It felt like breathing underwater compared to the thin, starving atmosphere of the world he was born into.
The ley lines beneath his feet didn't hum—they throbbed like the pulse of a sleeping titan.
Shirou stood up slowly, adjusting his dark, reinforced coat. He looked around.
He was standing in a quiet, dimly lit display hall. High above him, vast steel trusses held up suspended aircraft—a Wright brothers' flyer, an early jet fighter, a sleek space capsule.
Glass display cases lined the walls, containing flight suits, historic gauges, and brass instruments.
A museum, Shirou analyzed instantly, his eyes scanning the signs.
National Air and Space Museum. Washington D.C.
At least he landed me indoors this time, Shirou thought dryly.
He took a step forward, intending to find an exit and gather information about his location and the local timeline, when his senses suddenly spiked.
A scent hit his nose—so sharp, so concentrated, that he could almost taste the salt on his tongue. It was the smell of a raging tempest out at sea, of deep water crushing down under atmospheric pressure.
A divine signature, Shirou recognized, his eyes narrowing. No... a child of the sea.
He looked down toward the museum floor, but his reinforced vision caught only empty air where the scent was thickest. Whoever was moving down there was entirely invisible to the naked eye.
Yet, physical sight was only one piece of the puzzle. Not to Shirou, who possessed the bizarre, instinctual ability to literally smell the ambient signature of magic and energy.
"Honestly, Shirou," Rin's voice echoed in his mind, sharp and fond from a memory back in Fuyuki, her arms crossed as she shook her head at him. "Normal mages use formal aria or structural sight to detect hidden bounded fields. You just twitch your nose like an overgrown bloodhound. It's completely absurd."
A faint, fleeting smile crossed his lips before vanishing into the cool discipline of a veteran. Absurd or not, it worked.
He couldn't see the person wearing what was clearly a powerful conceptual concealment, but the pungent ocean scent moved through the hall with unmistakable purpose, cutting a sharp path past the display cases.
Shirou didn't hesitate, silently falling into step along the upper balcony, following the invisible trail of salt and roaring waves.
His footfalls became entirely silent as he blurred across the polished floor, moving from the shadow of a lunar module to the upper mezzanine overlook.
And then he saw them.
Below him, in the grand atrium of the museum, a scene was unfolding that made Shirou freeze.
There were five teenagers down there—just children, really.
For a man whose very soul was a wasteland filled with the weapons of ancient legends, the contrast was jarring.
Shirou had glimpsed the lives of countess heroes: grand kings, tragic champions, and legendary demigods who had walked the earth during the Age of Gods.
In the memories etched into those divine blades, those figures were always larger than life, weathered by war, steel-willed, and forged into absolute weapons by adulthood and blood.
But the demigods standing in the hall below weren't seasoned warriors carved out of marble.
They were simple teenagers. They were exhausted kids wearing winter coats, leather jackets, and slouch hats, forced to carry the crushing weight of divine blood before they had even lived their lives.
Shirou's mismatched bronze and steel-grey eyes softened slightly, a deep, familiar ache stirring in his chest.
They're no different than we were, he thought, his jaw tightening as his mind flashed back to Fuyuki. Just kids thrown into a war they didn't ask for.
He shook off the thought, letting his senses rapidly dissect the group, his nose instantly mapping the distinct divine signatures and physical appearances of the party:
First was the boy with messy black hair and sea-green eyes wearing a heavy winter coat over a faded orange shirt. He radiated that intense, crushing aura of salt water, crashing waves, and deep ocean storms. Shirou realized that this was the child of the sea he had been tracking through the museum halls.
Beside him stood a girl with spiky black hair, piercing blue eyes, and a punk-ish leather jacket over silver-studded clothes. She exuded a harsh, crackling aura of ionized ozone, scorched pine, and impending lightning—a daughter of the Sky.
Glancing nervously between them was a curly-haired boy in a slouch hat and corduroy pants, smelling distinctly of damp forest earth, wild clover, and nature spirits.
Standing quietly near the edge of the group was a paler girl with dark eyes and olive skin, wearing a floppy silver cap pulled low over her hair. She carried a subtle, icy aura of dry earth, grave dust, and a touch of moonlight. A child of the Underworld and a member of the Hunt.
And standing at the head of the group was a tall, slender girl with sharp, hawk-like eyes and a silver tiara resting on her dark hair. She exuded an ethereal, crisp aura of freezing mountain, warm sunset, and a prominent aura of moonlight. A Nymph perhaps? And a member of the Hunt.
They were backed against a massive, marble fountain near the main entrance. And facing them was the source of the structural panic echoing through the building's concrete foundations.
It was a lion. But calling it a lion was like calling a nuclear reactor a campfire.
The beast was the size of a garbage truck. Its fur wasn't fur at all—it was a shimmering, seamless weave of spun gold that caught the ambient light of the museum display bulbs and turned it into a blinding, metallic halo.
Its eyes burned like molten copper, and every time its massive paws struck the floor, the reinforced concrete cracked like cheap porcelain.
The Nemean Lion, Shirou's mind provided instantly, pulling from the vast repository of mythic concepts stored within his soul
At the sight of the creature, a specific weapon within his Unlimited Blade Works began to vibrate with a violent, heavy pulse—a massive, unrefined slab of stone that looked more like a piece of a ruined temple than any proper blade.
Recognizing its first and most famous trial, the phantom stone hummed with an ancient, instinctual hunger. The memory of the beast's impenetrable golden hide—and the champion who had crushed it with raw, bare-handed power—surged through Shirou's mind like a sudden jolt of electricity.
"Hold the line!" the girl with the silver tiara commanded, her voice ringing out like a silver bell as she and the daughter of the Underworld climbed the Apollo Capsule.
They began firing a hail of silver arrows flew with lethal, superhuman accuracy, aiming for the beast's eyes, chest, and flanks.
Clang! Clang! Clang-clang-clang!
The arrows hit the golden hide and simply... shattered into pieces. They bounced off like toothpick thrown against an armored battleship, its remains skittering harmlessly across the marble floor.
The Lion roared.
The sound wave was physical. It shattered the glass display cases fifty yards away, showering the hall in a rain of crystal shards. The mortal tourists who hadn't already fled were collapsed on the ground, clutching their ears in agony.
"It's not working!" the boy with the ocean scent yelled, raising his bronze sword into a high guard. "The coat is totally invulnerable!"
"Keep shooting!" the girl with the snake shield barked, stepping in front of the younger boy. She thrusted her spear forward. The bronze tip struck the Lion's shoulder.
A shower of golden sparks erupted, but the blade didn't even leave a scratch on the golden pelt. The impact drove Thalia back two feet, her boots leaving black rubber skid marks on the floor.
The Lion sneered—a terrifyingly intelligent, human expression—and reared back. Its massive right paw, capped with claws that resembled curved iron girders, swept down toward Thalia's exposed flank.
She couldn't bring the shield around in time. And the boy, was too far out of position to intercept.
They're going to die, Shirou's mind calculated with cold, detached precision. They don't understand the concept behind the beast. They're trying to overpower a conceptual absolute with raw force.
In the space between one heartbeat and the next, Shirou made his choice.
He didn't think about Zelretch's vague warnings. He didn't think about his search for Artoria, or whether this world was a test. He only saw a young girl about to be crushed by a monster from an ancient age.
His magic circuits snapped open.
Twenty-seven lines, operational.
Structural analysis, complete.
"Trace, On."
Percy Jackson thought he was about to watch Thalia get torn in half.
He lunged forward, his lungs burning, reaching out with his mind to try and tear the water out of the museum's decorative fountain to smash into the monster. But he was too slow. The giant golden claw was already descending, cutting through the air with a horrific, roaring sound.
Then, the world turned bright green.
A sound like an electric grid short-circuiting echoed through the hall. Sparks of harsh, green lightning erupted from the air ten feet above the monster.
Then, a figure dropped out of the sky like a falling meteor.
CRASH!
The figure slammed down squarely on the lion's outstretched arm. The sheer force of the kinetic impact drove the beast's massive paw into the marble floor, burying it three inches deep in shattering stone and saving Thalia by a fraction of an inch.
"What the—?!" Thalia gasped, stumbling back, her terrifying shield wobbling in her grip.
Percy froze, his mouth hanging open.
Standing on the lion's pinned arm was a man. He wore a dark, form-fitting armored top beneath a high-collared, blood-red shroud that flowed softly around his shoulders, his fringe of hair bleached a stark, snow-white.
But it wasn't his attire that made Percy's demigod instincts scream—it was his eyes.
They were completely mismatched: the left a warm, human bronze, but the right a cold, hardened steel-grey that gleamed with the piercing, lethal light of an endlessly sharpened blade.
And in his hands, he held two swords.
They weren't Celestial Bronze. They weren't made of any material that Percy knew. Nor did the weapon seem Greek.
They were short, curved falchions—one coal-black with a red grid pattern, the other blindingly white with a subtle, delicate etching along the spine. They radiated no divine power, yet the air around them hummed with a strange, unnatural weight.
"Hey! Get back!" Percy shouted, his voice cracking. "Mortal weapons don't work on that thing! Its coat is—"
The lion roared in fury, raising its left claw to turn the intruder into red paste.
The red-haired man didn't move his body. He simply flicked his wrists.
Clang!
The black sword hit the descending claw at an impossible angle. The red-haired man didn't try to block the blow head-on—he used the curved spine of the black blade to slide along the monster's claw, redirecting the immense physical force sideways into the marble floor.
The ground beneath them detonated in a spray of stone dust.
Before the beast could recover its balance, the man stepped inside its guard.
The white sword flashed like a stroke of lightning.
SLASH!
The white blade didn't bounce off the impenetrable golden coat.
With impossible, fluid speed, Shirou shifted his stance, his arm becoming a blur of steel. He didn't aim for a single heavy strike to pierce the hide; instead, he executed a blinding salvo of microscopic, highly precise slashes along the contours of the beast's neck and shoulders—finding the precise points where the fur parted with movement, angled so sharply that the edge bit into the skin beneath.
Slash. Slash. Slash.
Fine, shallow red lines bloomed across the monster's golden coat.
The Nemean Lion froze, its golden eyes widening in sheer, bewildered shock. For thousands of years, no weapon had ever so much as scratched its invulnerable pelt.
Yet here stood a mortal, delivering a flurry of light cuts that actually drew dark, shimmering monster blood—ichor—that beaded along its fur and splashed onto the sleeve of Shirou's red shroud.
Behind him, Percy and the others stared in complete disbelief.
"Did he just... cut the lion?" Thalia breathed, her voice laced with shock as the monster let out a confused, furious roar of genuine pain.
With a harsh grunt, the man kicked off the monster's snout and flipped backward through the air, landing lightly beside Percy and Thalia.
The lion stumbled back, thrashing its massive head violently, growling hard. For the first time since the fight began, the invulnerable beast looked terrified.
"Who... who are you?" Zoë Nightshade demanded, her silver bow trained on Shirou's back, her eyes wide with disbelief. "Art thou a son of Hephaestus? What magic is this?"
Shirou didn't turn around. He held Kanshou and Bakuya in a low, cross-guard stance, his breathing perfectly calm.
"Focus," Shirou said. His voice calm, steady, and devoid of panic—a voice that belonged on a battlefield, commanding soldiers. " Those cuts were barely skin-deep; it wouldn't have given it much damage."
"We saw what you did!" Thalia snapped, though her hand was trembling slightly on her spear. "You still managed to hurt it! If you can cut it, why aren't you finishing it off?!"
"Because cutting it won't kill it," Shirou replied coldly, his eyes locked on the thrashing lion. "I only did that to stun its pride, make it back off, and buy us space. Its pelt is still a conceptual absolute. You cannot hack your way through an invulnerable hide to reach its heart."
He shifted his weight, his mismatched eyes tracking the beast's rising rage.
"Every absolute defense has a structural flaw," Shirou continued, his tone authoritative. "Its hide ends where its insides begin. Its eyes, its inner mouth, and its throat are completely unprotected. It has to breathe to roar. When it opens its jaws... that will be our only true window to kill it.
Percy looked at the stranger, then at the bleeding monster, and finally at his own sword, Riptide.
"A throat shot..." Percy muttered. "We have to feed it something."
"Or shoot into its mouth," Zoë realized, her hawk-like eyes narrowing as she instantly caught on to the tactical assessment. She reached into her quiver, pulling a heavy hunting arrow. "Try to get its mouth open! We will shoot the mouth when the beast gapes!"
The Nemean Lion, realizing it was being surrounded by predators who had found its flaw, let out a desperate, guttural growl. It lowered its head, its golden eyes burning with pure hatred, directed entirely at the red-haired swordsman who had violated its invulnerability.
It charged.
"It's fast!" Thalia warned, bracing her shield.
"I'll draw its attention," Shirou said, his voice dropping into that chilling, mechanical cadence. "You, child of the sea."
Percy blinked. "Me?"
"Be ready when I open its mouth."
Before Percy could even answer, Shirou was gone.
He didn't run—he just disappeard. And the next thing they knew, He was already in front of the Nemean Lion, swords shinning under the light.
Using Reinforcement on his legs to the absolute limit of human flesh, Shirou blurred across the marble floor, leaving cracked stone in his wake.
He met the charging lion head-on.
"Is he crazy?!" the Hunter with the tiara screamed.
The Lion jumped towards him, openning its massive jaws wide, intending to swallow the tiny human whole.
That's it, Shirou thought.
"Trace, On."
In a flash of green light, the black and white short swords vanished from his hands. In their place, Shirou projected a massive, two-handed broadsword—a heavy, unrefined slab of black stone with a jagged edge: the raw weapon of the Berserker of Fuyuki.
As the blade materialized, it thrummed violently against Shirou's palms, vibrating with an ancient, primal excitement. It recognized the golden hide. It was ready for a rematch with its very first foe.
Instead of bracing for impact, Shirou launched himself straight over the charging beast.
Mid-air, he twisted his entire body with impossible, fluid acrobatic control. Using the lion's own immense momentum against it, Shirou brought the massive stone slab down with full, crushing gravity behind his shoulders, striking the beast squarely across the small of its back, using the strength of the mighty Heracles.
BOOM!
The blow didn't pierce the invulnerable golden pelt, but the sheer, monstrous kinetic force transferred through the hide like a physical shockwave. The lion let out a choked roar as its hind legs collapsed under the sudden, crushing impact, its body slamming hard into the shattered marble floor.
Shirou landed lightly on his feet behind the monster, as the stunned lion roared in pain and agony.
"Percy, now!" Thalia screamed.
Percy didn't hesitate. Pulling a foil packet of freeze-dried space ice cream from his coat, he hurled it with all his might directly into the lion's gaping, roaring jaws.
The monster snapped its mouth shut on instinct, swallowing the packet whole. A second later, its eyes went wide as the dry, powdery block caught in its throat. The Nemean Lion began to violently gag and hack, its massive body heaving as it tried desperately to cough up the space food.
Beside him, Shirou's eyebrow twitched violently, a look of profound, deeply offended horror crossing his face.
Is that... freeze-dried space food?!
As a dedicated home cook who held deep respect for every ingredient that ever graced a kitchen, the mere existence of dry, chalky, mass-produced "space meal" was a horrific insult to food everywhere.
But watching the legendary, invulnerable Nemean Lion—a Phantasmal Beast of ancient myth—actually begin to violently gag and hack, its massive body heaving as it tried desperately to cough up the dry block... Shirou could only stare in utter, stunned disbelief.
It's actually working?! he thought, his brain momentarily shutting down in disbelief at the sheer absurdity of the strategy. He's defeating a creature of legend with abominable junk food!
Before Shirou could even process the absurdity, six silver arrows whistled through the air in unison. The two Hunters fired with lethal precision, every single shaft flying straight into the lion's open, gagging mouth.
The beast reared back in agony, and Percy seized the moment. Sprinting forward, he lunged under the lion's jaw and drove the leaf-shaped blade of Riptide straight up into the soft roof of its mouth, pushing with everything he had until the bronze bit deep.
The Nemean Lion's body stiffened. A bright, golden light erupted from its eyes, ears, and the seams of its pelt. With a final, choked roar, the monstrous beast dissolved into a massive cloud of sparkling golden dust.
Where the invulnerable lion had stood just seconds before, only a shimmering, metallic golden coat sat folded on the marble floor like an oversized parka.
Percy collapsed backward onto his rear, breathing in ragged, heavy gulps as Riptide shrank back into a pen.
Grover rushed over immediately, his hooves clattering on the stone. "Percy! Are you okay? That was—you almost got eaten!"
Percy laid flat on his back, staring up at the museum ceiling, completely exhausted. "Grover..." he panted out softly.
"Yeah, man?"
"Remind me... to never tangle with overgrown pussy cats ever again."
Silence fell over the National Air and Space Museum.
The faint hum of the overhead lights and the sound of distant police sirens outside were the only noises left in the massive hall.
Percy rose up from his feet, wiping a smudge of monster dust off his forehead and stared at the pelt, then turned his head to look at the man who had turned the tide of the battle.
The man who suddenly appeared and saved their asses was standing a few feet away, his arms hanging casually at his sides. The massive jagged sword he had used was gone—dissolved into glowing, golden mana particles that drifted away into the air like fireflies.
Zoë Nightshade stepped forward, her silver bow still notched, though her aim was lowered slightly. Her eyes were sharp, calculating, and deeply suspicious.
"You. Who art thou?" Zoë demanded, her silver bow remaining trained on him, her sharp eyes narrowing in deep suspicion. "At first, I thought thou were a son of Hephaestus, but I realized I could sense no divine blood within thee. But now... I feel faint, strange traces of divinity clinging to thy soul—scattered and mixed, like a hundred faded pantheons echoing at once. Yet thou art no demigod from Camp Half-Blood."
She took a cautious half-step forward, her gaze flickering to his empty hands.
"Thou carry no Celestial Bronze or any blade a Greek demi-god should possess," she continued, her voice laced with genuine disbelief. "Thou summon weapons from nothingness, and possess martial skills and physical strength that exceed any camper I have witnessed in millennia. State thy name, stranger. Art thou a servant of Kronos?"
Thalia stepped up beside her, Aegis lowered, but her blue eyes intense, ready to strike at any moment if necessary. "Answer her, man. What and how did you do that with those swords?"
Shirou looked at the group of demigods. He saw their exhaustion, their fear, and the unmistakable weight of a desperate quest hanging over their shoulders. They were just kids—no older than Rin, Sakura, or himself when the war had started.
He raised his hand in a sign of surrender—empty and unthreatening—and let out a small, tired sigh.
"I'm not a servant of the titans," he said quietly, his voice echoing in the ruined hall. "Nor am I a child of a god."
The child of the sea stepped closer, his sea-green eyes locked onto Shirou's face. "Then what are you?"
Shirou looked up at the glass ceiling of the museum, where the gray afternoon light of this strange, divine America was shinning through.
"Just a traveler," Shirou replied simply. "And who owes a debt to a very annoying old man."