The forest was quiet.
But Kurono wasn't.
He stirred, breathing shallowly beneath Shirou's cloak, his brows drawn tight, mouth half-open in a silent scream.
Then the nightmare began.
He was back in the white lab—a sterile, too-bright place that reeked of alcohol and incantation ink. The floors were spotless, polished like a mirror, reflecting every flicker of movement like ghosts. The air was cold and dry, humming with enchantments that sealed the room like a tomb.
He tried to move, but steel bands locked him in place—arcane restraints laced with burning sigils etched into his skin. He remembered this part too well.
The priests—they didn't wear black robes or carry holy symbols. They were men and women in white coats, faces blank as chalk, eyes hidden behind glinting spectacles. Their hands were clean. Their voices, calm.
As if what they were doing wasn't monstrous.
The first crack came suddenly—his forearm, snapped neatly with a precision spell. He screamed. They noted the volume.
The second break was the tibia. Then the clavicle. One by one, bones shattered beneath spells woven with divine authority. His blood spilled in bright ribbons, pooling neatly at the base of the ritual circle.
They watched.
Measured.
Recorded the healing speed.
"Subject K-72: Recovery exceeds baseline. Increase mana flow. Proceed to stress test."
He begged. He sobbed. He choked on his own magic. But the white lab didn't care. It didn't listen. It never had.
He gasped awake, heart thundering like hooves against the walls of his ribs. The trees above didn't look like ceiling tiles. The air wasn't antiseptic. There was grass beneath him—not steel.
Shirou, nearby, stirred but didn't move.
Kurono didn't speak. He couldn't. He simply buried his face into his hands and forced his breath to slow.
Eventually, exhausted, he drifted off again.
This time, the dream changed.
He stood in an arena carved from black stone. No sky above, just a red haze and the sound of gates creaking open.
The monsters came first—goblins with needle teeth, slimes that reeked of decay, orcs wielding crude axes and roaring bloodlust. He fought them with instinct and the black fire the priests had grafted into his soul. He burned, bled, and killed.
Then came the wyverns—serpentine beasts with jaws that crackled lightning and wings that blotted the dream-sky. He fell two before the others turned away, wary.
The tests escalated.
The knights arrived next—hulking figures in heavy armor, faces hidden behind cruel visors. They moved with uncanny coordination, wielding weapons laced with dark magic.
Just like him.
Kurono didn't notice it at first. His body reacted on its own now—strike, burn, break. He didn't think anymore. Thought was dangerous. Thought made room for guilt. Thought made it real.
He cut them down. One after the other. Each opponent tougher, smarter, faster than the last.
The seventh knight fell to his blade, screaming as cursed steel pierced the heart.
Kurono stepped back, panting, when the body collapsed—and the helmet split open upon hitting the ground.
The face beneath was Japanese.
A boy.
No older than him.
Eyes wide in shock. Lips trembling. Face splattered in blood—Kurono's or his, he didn't know.
He froze.
The world slowed.
He saw then—all of them. Every knight. Every fighter. The strange casting gestures. The hints of hesitation. The way they reacted to pain and fear like humans, not monsters.
They hadn't been monsters.
They were people. His people.
And he had killed them.
He woke with a scream this time—sharp and raw, bursting from his throat like a spell gone wrong. His hands trembled violently. He clutched at the grass like it would anchor him to reality, to the here and now.
Tears fell silently.
Guilt curled around his heart like a serpent.
Shirou, already awake, didn't say a word. He just shifted beside him, offering quiet presence and warmth.
Kurono didn't need words.
He needed time.
And he needed to remember who he was before they made him a weapon.
------------------------
Shirou and Kurono rested, hidden beneath a canopy of moss-covered trees and guarded by illusion runes faintly etched into the surrounding area. The calm was fragile—like mist before the sun—but it was all they had.
Elsewhere, their enemies had no intention of giving them peace.
The forest edge was marked by silence broken only by the rustling of leaves and the whisper of incantations. Kotaro, kneeling on the earth, narrowed his eyes. His fingers glowed faintly with violet threads of mana as he traced the outlines of faint boot imprints.
"The target is meticulous," he murmured, half to himself, half to the silent man beside him. "Even the displaced grass blades have been magically restructured to hide their path."
Saitou grunted. "But not enough to fool you, huh?"
Kotaro's lips curled into a thin smirk. "He covered the physical trail expertly. But magic leaves behind a residue—traces of intent, will, even emotion. Mana is like breath. It always lingers."
With a whispered chant and two fingers pressed to his temple, Kotaro activated Magic Eye – Tracer Form. The world shifted—colors blurred and bled into each other, traces of magical auras forming luminous threads across the forest floor.
But then he frowned.
"...He left false trails," Kotaro muttered, scanning the glowing strands. "Every direction's radiating equal mana flux. He knew I'd be using this. Clever."
Saitou tensed. "Then what now?"
Kotaro responded by forming a series of rapid hand signs and then slamming his palm into the earth. A low pulse of magic spread out in a ten-meter circle. From the ground, shadows coalesced and took shape—four crows, each etched with runes along their wings and eyes glowing a faint indigo.
"Yatagarasu Variant – Soul Seekers." Kotaro's voice was calm but focused. "Each will follow the mana echoes. They'll split and report back."
As the crows flapped into the sky and darted in four directions, Kotaro sat cross-legged, hands locked into a seal, focusing his senses through the familiars. Saitou stood behind, ever-vigilant, hand resting lightly on the hilt of his blade.
Minutes passed in silence.
Then one of the crows vanished—its link severed by a sharp burst of violent disruption.
Kotaro hissed softly. The sudden backlash jarred his focus. He steadied his breathing and checked the memory from the destroyed familiar.
"A spell-bound arrow," he muttered. "Too precise to be a monster. That's a marksman."
Saitou raised a brow. "Another summoned one?"
"No." Kotaro's gaze turned grim. "That was Robin Hood. He's out here too, hunting someone—or something—else. That path is a dead end."
He severed the connection to that direction and turned to the remaining crows. One found only silence, the other looped back.
The fourth crow, however, continued forward—and then shifted into a rapid dive, signaling active pursuit.
"There," Kotaro said, standing up and dusting off his robe. "They were clever, but not perfect. The magic echoes were disguised well, but they missed one detail—residual distortion from the explosion they caused at the lab. The crow locked onto it."
He touched the communication earring embedded in his ear. "White Sacrament, this is Kotaro. Trail locked. Target confirmed. Engaging pursuit. Standby for update."
A distorted voice buzzed back: "Acknowledged. May the Judgment guide your blade."
Saitou cracked his knuckles and smiled. "Time to hunt."
Together, they vanished into the forest, trailing behind the crow that soared overhead—its glowing eyes locked onto the path only a fool or a genius would try to mask.
Shirou and Kurono's peace was nearly over.
The hunt had begun.
High above the treetops, a solitary crow glided on currents of windless air—silent, swift, and far too purposeful to be ordinary. Its feathers shimmered with an oily sheen, unnatural in the early morning light, and its eyes glowed faintly violet. Shirou's gaze narrowed.
That crow was no bird.
It danced through the sky as though tethered to an unseen mind, scanning, searching. It wasn't random. It was tracking.
"A familiar," Shirou murmured under his breath, the corners of his lips tightening.
He knew that spellwork. There were countless tracking enchantments in the magical world—each as varied as the mages who cast them. His own variant took the shape of slender, ethereal swords, drawn toward their quarry like compass needles. This crow was different, but its purpose was the same.
Silently, he activated Hawkeye, the enhancement spell that sharpened his vision until he could count the veins on a dragonfly's wings from a hundred paces. His pupils contracted, and the world shifted—colors dulled while outlines burned with clarity. And then he saw them.
Two figures—moving quickly, deliberately—through the underbrush several kilometers east.
Shirou recognized their uniforms, even from afar. Not the fabrics, but the posture. The bearing. The subtle stiffness of movement that only came from training—the kind done behind closed doors in places people weren't meant to survive. The unmistakable residue of experimentation.
"Subjects," he muttered grimly. "Like Kurono."
But there was a difference.
Their eyes.
Even at this distance, Shirou could feel it—the cold, empty gleam of minds long since broken, of purpose twisted beyond reason. Whatever part of them had once been human had been sealed away or shattered entirely. Puppets wearing skin.
"I can't help them now," Shirou thought. "Their minds are gone."
He stepped back from the tree trunk and glanced at the small rise in the earth where Kurono lay curled, his breath shallow and troubled, his face damp with sweat.
"Kurono," Shirou whispered, kneeling and shaking his shoulder gently but firmly. "Wake up. We have to move."
Kurono jolted upright, eyes wide with residual panic from dreams he couldn't quite recall. But Shirou's expression—grim, focused—spoke more loudly than words. No questions were asked.
Without another breath wasted, the two were off.
They bounded from tree to tree in silence, boots landing lightly on mossy bark, careful to avoid rustling leaves or snapping branches. Magic would have been faster, but magic left trails—and they could not afford to be found again so easily.
After the fifth leap, Shirou rolled his shoulders and focused. He didn't summon his usual gear—his simple, functional Archer's armor—but something more. A pulse of shadow and steel surged from his core as Berserker Lancelot's armor enveloped his body. The transformation was near silent, the obsidian plates sliding over his limbs like liquid night, glinting faintly beneath the canopy. It wasn't his strongest suit, but it balanced power and sustainability.
Any stronger, and he risked burning through his reserves in a single battle. And they still didn't know how many enemies lurked in these unfamiliar woods.
Kurono, observing silently, followed suit.
His expression didn't change, but his magic stirred—coiling like smoke around his limbs, whispering old commands remembered from countless mock battles in the lab. A black mist enveloped his frame and solidified into crude, jagged armor. It didn't gleam. It absorbed light. It looked brittle, as if chipped together from broken pieces of something once noble—but it held.
Shirou cast him a glance, nodding once.
"You've worn armor before."
Kurono's voice was flat, quiet. "Every day. For years."
There was pain in that statement, buried under layers of numb acceptance. Shirou didn't press.
Instead, he summoned his weapon.
A towering anti-tank rifle shimmered into being in his hands—massive, beautifully lethal, with runes etched along the barrel and glowing circuits humming softly beneath the metallic surface. It was a custom projection—an improvement on the standard model, enhanced with magical amplification and enchanted recoil dampeners.
It didn't sing like his bow, but it struck like a immortal's hammer.
He crouched against a slanted tree branch, setting the stock into his shoulder, scope aligning with his magically enhanced eyes.
He saw them again—moving quickly, too quickly. The tracking crow still guided them, flitting ahead. Shirou exhaled slowly, finger tightening on the trigger.
Boom.
The rifle thundered like a dragon's roar, the recoil barely shifting his stance. The first shot tore through the trees, aimed not for the heart or head, but the midsection—less movement, more mass.
Boom.
A second shot. Then a third.
Each round was a question posed in steel and speed. Would they dodge? Deflect? Die?
He watched.
He waited.
And deep inside, he braced for what came next—because if the shots failed, it meant they'd have to fight. And if they had to fight… then Kurono would need to face the kind of pain that couldn't be measured in wounds.