[Drunken Prayer]

"Creak—"

Avalon, Birmingham, the empty Sacred Heart Hospital.

The boundary between dream and reality had never been as blurred as it was now. The sharp smell of disinfectant that usually hung in the corridors had been replaced by a cloying, exotic fragrance. The slightest lapse in concentration, and one's will would dissolve into dreams and pleasure. Layer upon layer of gauzy veils formed an invisible barrier for anyone who approached.

Inside a room on the top floor, the only door leading to the corridor swung open from the outside. A middle-aged doctor in a white coat hurried in, looking around anxiously.

He could hardly wait.

His gaze shifted from the disappointing sight of the bed to Horn by the window. The anxiety in his eyes turned to surprise, then delight.

"Thank goodness, Mr. Lancaster, you're still awake!"

"Everyone in this hospital, doctors and patients alike, has inexplicably fallen unconscious. I've knocked on doors all the way here, and you're the only one who answered!"

"I'm so glad I found you!"

His eyes flashing crimson, the doctor rushed over in delight, as if to give Horn a warm embrace.

Utterly sincere.

What greeted him was an even more sincere, even more fervent volley of bullets!

"Bang—"

Five sharp gunshots overlapped, merging into a single burst in the blink of an eye. The muzzle flame flared hot enough to redden the barrel, but even fivefold recoil—something the designer had never accounted for—couldn't shake the hands holding the gun.

That was because a flame greater than any mundane one had taken control of the firearm, turning it into an extension of his fingertips.

[Flame of Destiny] blazed to life.

In less than a second, two shots hit the head and three the chest. The five scorching bullets struck almost simultaneously, shrieking into fragile flesh and fulfilling the purpose for which they were born.

A gift for a long-awaited reunion.

A small gift, but one given with great affection.

Meeting the passionate gift head-on, the middle-aged doctor couldn't help but reel backward in surprise. The bullets' momentum sent his off-balance body staggering, and bursts of blood bloomed where they struck.

"Thud—"

A heavy thump rang out. The middle-aged doctor, whose name Horn still didn't know, fell onto his back. His crimson eyes remained half open, still filled with confusion and incomprehension.

"When did he—"

That was the last thought in his mind.

Flexing his numb, trembling fingers, Horn had barely begun to relax when his gaze fixed on the doorway.

Another young doctor hurried up from the stairs. Blood still stained his gloves, and the stench of it clung so thickly to his white coat that it seemed he had just come from an operating room—or a slaughterhouse.

Then another, and another, one after the other.

Men and women, tall and short, fat and thin—their faces all wore the same expression of delight.

—I'm so glad I found you!

"Go to hell."

Rarely swearing, Horn faced the crowd gradually closing in through the open doorway. He took one slow step backward, then another, until he felt something cold and hard press against his back.

He was already against the window, with nowhere left to retreat.

He recalled the number of floors in the hospital and estimated his height above the ground. Horn decisively abandoned the idea of jumping, then gritted his teeth, raised his pistol with its final bullet, and pressed it at an angle against his temple.

He would rather die than become one of those monsters.

"Clap, clap, clap."

Faced with such a resolute scene, the puppets in identical white coats didn't stop approaching. Instead, they smiled warmly and even applauded.

Like patient, indulgent adults watching a disobedient child.

Because tentacles of tangled flesh rose from the floor and wrapped around the reddened muzzle. Gently, slowly, carefully, yet without allowing any resistance, they took the gun from Horn's hand, as if afraid the child might do something foolish.

In another setting, the scene might even have seemed tender. Here, it was nothing but the helplessness of a nightmare.

Tentacles bound his legs, too, stifling any chance of jumping. In the deathly silence, Horn stiffly looked down.

Twisting, knotted, crawling and writhing, the middle-aged doctor—shot six times—rose from the doorway in a grotesque manner no human could manage. A look of delight still lingered on what remained of his face.

Inside his hollow skull, in the viscous gel, the deep-brown eyeball that had been lying dormant blinked as if waking. Unhurriedly, it turned toward Horn.

"How heartless, Mr. Lancaster. You didn't even give me a chance to prove myself before you shot me so decisively. Did you never consider the possibility that you might be mistaken? Or would you not care, even if you were wrong?"

"—At what point did I give myself away?"

"Was the timing too convenient? Or was I too warm in my greeting? Or... did you know from the very beginning?"

"How strange. You're still a mortal, so you shouldn't have sensed anything. You shouldn't even have woken up."

"As I thought..."

Crimson threads extended from the wounds still oozing thick blood, leisurely covering the bullet holes and replacing the torn flesh and ruined vocal cords. A mouth stretching across half his face opened and closed, speaking in a hoarse, aged voice like a nightmare made real. He exclaimed in dawning realization:

"—Just as I thought! Noble blood truly is something else, and so is the Path of Sunset! No wonder that fool Belloc died by your hand. The mysteries of the [Grail] really are endless!"

Yeah, right! If that were true, how could I have ended up in such a sorry state? I'd have used my royal connections to bring in warships and artillery and hit you with a full-scale bombardment long ago.

With a bellyful of grievances and nowhere to vent them, Horn said nothing and struggled blindly.

The tentacles wrapped around Horn's joints tightened, binding him securely. The sticky, hoarse voice continued, still brimming with delight and gratitude.

"Whatever happens, Mr. Hohenheim Lancaster, you won't escape. Fate must have guided me, bringing me to you at just the right moment, Mr. Hohenheim."

"How could the Burnt Offering be complete without [Ember]? I was about to lose hope, but you—who appeared right before my eyes at just the right moment—completed the final piece of my ritual. All my efforts will finally have been worthwhile."

"Finding someone so suitable—what a stroke of luck!"

"Fate, you son of a—" Horn hurled a string of colorful curses in both Avalonian and Chinese.

The old pervert's heartfelt confession nearly made his eyes roll back. Horn could no longer hold back, and used the only part of his body still free to express his feelings, cursing the enemy to his face in his beautiful native tongue.

Saliba waved a hand. In high spirits, he magnanimously forgave Horn's little outburst in his moment of panic, motioned for the nurse beside him to fetch the anesthetic, and picked up the syringe himself.

Then Horn, whose body had been forcibly hauled over, felt a chill at his neck. His vision went black, and he passed out on the spot.

Watching with satisfaction as the parasites he'd brought hoisted the tightly wrapped Horn with all hands on deck, Saliba withdrew his attention from the makeshift body and turned to the more important matter.

In the prepared ritual chamber beneath Sacred Heart Hospital.

After hanging up the landline, Frank Mills removed the badge on his chest—the one marking him as deputy director of the Prevention and Suppression Bureau's Birmingham Branch—and casually tossed it into the Blood Pool before him. Expressionless, he watched it slowly sink into the viscous crimson.

Just like his life.

As if recalling some distant, unpleasant event from long ago, Frank could still vaguely remember his original wish and why he had embarked on the [Heart] path.

Back then, the young man with a scalpel and hemostats had only wanted to use the power of an Unceasing Heart to prolong other people's lives, one moment at a time.

Until wounds were healed, diseases driven away, and lives carried on.

Driven by that desire, Frank's First Seal, [Arrow Puller], progressed by leaps and bounds. He earned the commendation of the [Tigris Teaching Seat] and became a [Surgeon].

Before he was thirty, Frank advanced to the Second Seal. Full of confidence yet keenly aware of the scarcity of medical resources, he accepted an invitation to serve at the newly established Prevention and Suppression Bureau branch in Birmingham, treating even rarer injuries and fighting more tangible diseases.

And so time passed.

The war that swept across the entire Western Continent began—

"A war will be described and remembered again and again, until it becomes art and history." That was what a writer might say. In the trenches, Frank saw only death in the flesh.

Death, death, death, death.

Gunshot wounds, crush injuries, death by infection, death by suffocation.

Death as far as the eye could see.

Too many lives were fed into the Wheel of Strife, wasted for nothing, turned into fuel for the war, all to make that meaningless, unclean flame burn brighter.

Lives he saved on the first day were dead by the second. Those he saved on the second day never saw the sun rise on the third. Phlogiston Bombs dropped by bombers shattered the soldiers' sanity. Alcohol, cigarettes, and more alien things hastily pieced them back together. The cycle continued for four whole years.

Again and again, Frank sent the lives he had saved with his own hands back into the meat grinder of war. Kneeling in a trench gouged open by some colossal force, listening to the dying murmur, Frank—on the verge of advancing to the Third Mark, [Healer]—lay beside the corpses. Exhausted and knowing it was all in vain, he looked up at the night sky, lit by fires that never ceased by day or night, devoid of stars.

He had never felt so lost.

"I was just a kid who thought of himself as a doctor. I thought I'd become a hero, so I went to war. Just now, a bullet hit my enthusiasm. Mom, I'm lying in a trench. I can't come home today."

The enemy, his allies, his comrades, and finally himself.

Was there anything that could last?

And so the riddle posed by the [Gate of the Stag] grew harder to solve as Frank's outlook changed. The Third Mark, once so close at hand, now seemed impossibly far away.

What right did a man who couldn't heal himself have to heal others?

Had anything I done mattered?

Now, the question that had troubled him for so many years seemed to have finally found an answer.

"I can't save everyone, and not everyone needs saving."

"Life born of error is destined to return to nothingness. Only pleasure and pain can lift us from our inevitable end. The Great Mother never forgets any sacrifice."

"Let your blood raise me higher."

"No matter the cost. No matter who must pay it."

Frank swept his gaze over the Blood Thirsters, fast asleep under the effects of the large quantity of high-quality Sedative Potions he had acquired, and smiled sincerely. In the candlelight, his neat teeth gleamed coldly.

"Drip."

A drop of crimson liquid fell to the ground. Its echo ricocheted around the narrow ritual chamber, finding no way out, and merely sent ripples across the surface of the Blood Pool.

Loosening his jaw, Frank opened his mouth. Blood was nearly overflowing from it, but the familiar pain helped him recall the words that great one had taught him amid blood and drunkenness. With a tongue almost bitten through, he uttered a few indistinct words in Fuchino Language.

"Feast upon your soul!"

As soon as the words—also known as "Words of Desiccation"—rang out, the scent of alcohol and revelry inexplicably filled the air. The Blood Thirsters, fast asleep under the effects of the Sedative Potion, opened their crimson eyes and unconsciously repeated the hoarse, enticing words in shrieks and murmurs.

"Crimson souls, thick and soft, wrapped in a velvet Cocoon, bright as the sun, vivid as blood. Rubies, pomegranate seeds, the fruit of Eden, the eyes of a white rabbit!"

"Beneath that downy layer flows a sincere longing. Countless threadlike thoughts weave joy, covering the torrent of desire, embracing it as the Red Cup once embraced humanity. Grip a spoon fashioned from the senses, dig inward, watch desire pierced and overflowing ardor spill into your mouth. They blossom upon my tongue."

"Its sweetness is more than a delight on the tongue. It's molten rock, enough to melt a person, sweeter than any lovemaking, more potent than any wine! Compared to it, those are nothing but parlor tricks that fool the senses, leaving one numb and languid!"

"It spreads within, crosses bone, saturates muscle, and passes through every vein, hot as a furnace flame, surging like a tide. It flows through every taboo and fear, casting off tangled shackles, and reveals the self in its most primal form!"

"It may come from afar, or from a memory buried deep in my bloodline. Perhaps it touched me deeply long ago, at some moment in a past life, some instant I never perceived. Perhaps only in a dream."

"The deepest sweetness comes from this clarity, from being wholly aware of every moment. When I'm completely immersed in this boundless fullness, I know that every worry and anxiety will vanish, regardless of history or eternity."

"Because in this very moment, the only thing that exists is this endless revelry and drunkenness!"

[The Rite of the Cup usually involves piercing screams. We must reproduce these sounds as closely as possible to obtain the pulsating power they provide.]

[Prayer of Intoxication!]

[Opening Ceremony]