The bullets cut through the sky like wrath given form—ripping through air with the scream of torn parchment and thunderclap shockwaves in their wake.
Kotaro's body moved before his mind did—an instinct honed by years in shadows. His figure blurred sideways, vanishing in a blink. The first bullet carved a trench into the earth where he'd stood a heartbeat ago, its aftershock rattling leaves from the trees.
Saitou, however, faced the assault head-on.
The great blade at his side rose, shining with a faint blue enchantment. Metal met metal—and shattered.
The first bullet split in two upon the blade's edge, sparks exploding in the air like firecrackers. Yet even splintered, the projectile retained its fury. Fragments tore across Saitou's side, carving through armor and flesh alike. He staggered with a hiss, pain flashing across his face like lightning across a stormy sky.
Shirou, perched in the trees with eyes like a hawk's and calm like a winter pond, watched closely.
They reacted fast. Faster than most. Not enough to stop me. But enough to slow me down.
He adjusted his aim.
The armor Saitou wore shimmered with runes of reinforcement, but even magic had limits. A crack had already split one of the curved blades on his back, and his arm—the one that caught the blow directly—hung oddly, bone likely fractured under the strain.
Kotaro, by contrast, remained untouched.
His movements were precise, clean. Not fast like a sprinter, but swift like a falling shadow. He disappeared and reappeared between trees like mist curling through roots. Smoke bombs exploded at his feet—plumes of darkness rolling out like ink in water, blotting the forest with silence.
And then they were gone.
Shirou narrowed his eyes, exhaled, and stopped shooting. The smoke had become a curtain, thick and laced with minor illusion charms. He could see the edge of it—the shimmer where magic danced—but not the targets within.
"Not bad."
He adjusted his scope again, eyes scanning for heat signatures or sudden movement. There was nothing. No ripple, no breath.
But underground…
A faint pulse of mana. Just a whisper.
Kotaro had gone subterranean—clever, and more than that, trained for escape and evasion in ways most mages never were.
Down below, Kotaro pressed his palm against the cool dirt wall of the tunnel, his breath steady despite the danger. Saitou sat beside him, clutching his wounded side, jaw clenched against the pain.
"This will not last," Kotaro muttered, voice low. "But it will do."
Above them, small, dark creatures skittered forth from enchanted scrolls—hornets and spiders the size of a child's thumb, each with a single rune glowing like a lantern behind their eyes. They surged out like a plague and dispersed into the woods—eyes and ears for their master.
Kotaro closed his eyes, magic flaring subtly behind his lids. Every spider's step, every hornet's wingbeat became a note in his mind's song.
But Hawk Eyes—his most precise detection spell—remained dormant. He dared not activate it now. Not with bullets like thunderbolts waiting to punch through his skull.
"Judas warned us," he murmured, speaking more to himself than to Saitou. "No heroics."
Saitou winced, wiping blood from his chin. "So we wait?"
Kotaro nodded. "Pegasus squad is en route. Ten minutes. We hold the line."
Saitou grimaced but gave a sharp nod. He wasn't broken yet.
The two crouched in silence. The earth above them trembled faintly, as if sensing the predator waiting in the trees. Time passed slowly in moments like this.
And in the canopy above, Shirou crouched motionless—watching, waiting.
He knew they hadn't retreated. This wasn't a fight to kill anymore.
This was a battle of time.
Saitou's breath came in shallow, steady draws—sharp from pain, but precise, practiced. Blood still streaked the edge of his ribs, but it had stopped flowing. Darkness rippled across his arm like smoke drawn in reverse, suturing torn skin together with a magic that hissed faintly as it sealed the wounds.
He knelt in the half-light of the burrow, fingers curling around a pair of fresh blades drawn from the arsenal at his back. The old ones, cracked and chipped by bullet fire, lay discarded beside him like dead limbs. These new swords gleamed faintly, humming with a dark enchantment—a quiet promise of violence yet to come.
"Tell me the direction," Saitou said, low and clipped, a trace of anger curling in his voice. He did not look at Kotaro. "I've had enough of hiding like rats."
Emotion was rare for them—especially so early after the experiment. But that was beginning to change.
Once, not long ago, they had been little more than vessels—obedient shadows bound by the Angels' Ring, a cruel enchantment that had suppressed not just their thoughts, but their very will. But Judas had changed that. Modified it. Freed them, if only slightly. Enough that consciousness began to flicker back into place, like lanterns lighting along a darkened street.
This was their third mission since then.
Kotaro remained still, eyes shut, breath slow as he connected with his familiars—hornets, spiders, and other creatures of dusk. But the feedback was wrong. Scattered. Damaged.
He opened his eyes.
"They're gone. The insects were destroyed," he murmured, voice cold as winter stone. "But I caught a trace. Follow my lead."
With no more words, he launched from the tunnel, smoke already curling from his lips. It was thick, oily, and black as ink, spreading like a living mist across the ground and wrapping around the trees. The moment he landed, he continued to exhale, spreading the darkness with each breath.
The forest seemed to vanish into the gloom.
But Kotaro wasn't blind. The smoke was his own—the magic within it woven from his very soul—and within it, he could see. Every movement in the fog registered in his mind as a ripple, a disturbance in a silent pond.
Saitou, on the other hand, saw nothing.
Until Kotaro reached out with a single whisper of union magic, and their minds touched.
Clarity bloomed. Saitou's vision cleared, and the world—blotted by darkness only a moment ago—lit up with ghostly outlines, fed by Kotaro's senses. They ran in perfect tandem now, shadows through shadows, their breath steady, their hearts thundering.
The gunfire had come from ahead. Now, the only answer to their approach was silence.
Saitou was the first to strike.
Twin arcs of darkness surged along his blades as he dashed forward. With one fluid movement, he released the energy in a cross-shaped burst, slicing through the dense trees like they were made of paper. Bark, roots, and branches were cast aside like so much debris.
Kotaro followed, mouth glowing with a wicked ember of magic. He exhaled—once—and the flame was born.
It wasn't fire as mortals knew it. It was black and slow, a crawling heat that devoured light itself. It spilled over the remains of the forest like a tide of tar, turning wood to ash in seconds.
They weren't meant to kill the target. But Judas had made one thing clear: Shirou could survive this.
So they didn't hold back.
But what they found wasn't a body.
The weapon lay in pieces, ruined and half-melted. Strings of fine wire glittered in the fading embers—a trap. The real Shirou was long gone.
Saitou narrowed his eyes, his voice dry. "He ran. The target is too careful."
Kotaro said nothing. He was already scanning, eyes flicking back and forth as he searched for signs, but the forest was ruined. Their own attacks had scorched any trace the enemy might've left behind. Frustration tightened his jaw.
He opened his mouth to call off the Pegasus squad—but fate moved faster.
A presence. A breath of danger.
Both men reacted in an instant, calling on darkness to wrap around them like armor. Twin barriers erupted around their bodies, magic layered in interlocking waves of protection.
And then the world exploded.
The sound was like a collapsing star—light, fire, and pressure all at once. The forest floor split apart, throwing trees into the sky like toys. The barrier cracked in a heartbeat, and the force of the blast hurled them like leaves in a storm.
Saitou smashed through the remains of a tree, his body tumbling through bark and branches, while Kotaro was flung in the opposite direction, his form crashing into the dirt and rolling to a stop in a heap.
Silence returned in the wake of the explosion.
Saitou's arm was gone. The one he'd raised to deflect the blast was severed mid-bicep, the wound charred and raw. His ribs were shattered, lungs struggling for air, but his legs held. Barely. He gripped one of his swords for balance and forced himself upright.
Kotaro didn't move.
He lay crumpled, his armor cracked, his chest scorched black from the heat. Blood oozed from the corner of his mouth.
Saitou turned toward him, teeth gritted in pain. "No," he muttered, limping over and dropping to his knees. His hand flared with dark magic—gentler now, tuned for healing—and he pressed it against Kotaro's chest.
The smaller wounds closed first. Cuts sealed, bones reset—but the deeper injuries… those needed a true medic. And time. More than he had.
"I'll keep you alive," Saitou whispered hoarsely. "Just… hold on."
He reached out again, trying to connect to the Pegasus squad. But Kotaro, unconscious, had luckily never relayed the command for them to stop the dispatchment.
So he waited, crouched beside his partner, as smoke curled around the broken trees and silence claimed the forest once more.
-------------------
While smoke still curled from the distant battlefield, Shirou and Kurono had already slipped far into the forest's winding trails, their breath fogging in the brisk air as branches lashed against them like accusing fingers.
Shirou didn't look back.
His mind raced as fast as their feet, calculating, discarding, weighing risk after risk. They were still too close to the Laboratory. Too close to the place where monsters in human skin were born, and magics that bent the soul were treated like tools. He knew full well that in a world like this—where spells could cleave mountains and teleportation could bend space—distance was a fragile illusion.
"We can't fight here," he muttered under his breath, mostly to himself. "Not now."
It wasn't just the two pursuers they'd escaped from. There could be more, he knew. Silent sentinels hidden beyond the trees, watching and waiting. Engaging them might mean revealing his hand… or worse, giving them a trail.
No, Shirou thought grimly. Better to vanish.
That's why he had left behind a trap, not a confrontation. A decoy. A clever one, layered in flame and steel. He'd forged a blade using the embers of his own magic—a false relic—and then laced it with others hidden beneath its hilt, an arsenal disguised as a single weapon. It wasn't explosion magic, but it would act like it.
He had hoped they would rush it, drawn to its glow. They hadn't seen him, but he'd seen enough of them. The way they had hidden themselves, cloaked in dark magic and illusions—it was clear. They were hunters, not soldiers. They would not waste time testing the blade. They would destroy first, question later.
Kurono had said nothing about the decision. Perhaps it was because he, too, understood. He was a warrior trained for war, not espionage. But he respected Shirou—respected the sharp, unblinking mind that had saved his life before—and followed without hesitation.
To increase their pace, Shirou whispered words of old magic, brushing his fingertips over their boots. Accélérer. The world became a blur. The trees zipped past, the sound of birds and wind like static in their ears.
Eventually, the sound of running water reached them—the hush and murmur of a river winding like a silver serpent through the undergrowth. Shirou, breathless but resolute, took out a knife and slashed at the base of a tall, straight tree. It fell with a mighty groan and crashed to the forest floor.
He turned to Kurono, voice calm but edged with urgency.
"Kurono, I'll need your mana."
The other man blinked. "Alright… what do I do?"
Shirou appreciated that he didn't question it. In battle, doubt was a slow poison.
"Just don't resist."
Kurono gave a nod, steady and trusting.
Shirou sat behind him on the fallen log and placed a hand between his shoulder blades. A warm, pulsing sensation followed—like drawing energy through a living wire. Kurono's mana was… different. Wilder, rawer. But strong. Strong enough.
He channeled it carefully, as he had been taught. Illya. Sakura. He could almost hear their voices in his mind—gentle, guiding, always there to support him when he struggled to bring form to the weapons in his soul.
The artificial circuits embedded in his body hummed as he activated them, drawing strength into his inner world—the Unlimited Blade Works—not to summon, but to hide.
A shimmer passed over them, like light bending through heat. Their bodies, their log, even their shadows faded from sight. Invisibility, cast through another's energy. Not easy. But he managed it.
Then he lifted them both with a subtle flex of his fingers, a windless force propelling the log forward down the river's winding path. It hovered just above the water, a silent ghost in a land of sound.
Shirou stared ahead, his eyes narrowing. "I don't know where the river ends. But it'll lead to the sea eventually."
Kurono, quiet beside him, was beginning to grasp the unspoken plan.
"If we find a port town," Shirou continued, "we'll find crowds. People. Stories. And ships. From there… maybe allies. Maybe a way out."
His voice was steady. But in his chest, behind all the magic and calculation, he felt the smallest throb of hope.
A port town was freedom. It was anonymity. And for two fugitives running from the darkness… it might just be salvation.