Without Me, Shirou Emiya, the Way of the Sword Would Have Known an Endless Night

(4,600 words)

"Tohsaka, can you draw out as much power from the Jewel Sword as possible?" Shirou Emiya asked Rin Tohsaka. "I'll use a spell to strengthen your body."

"I can, but..." Rin Tohsaka fell silent.

She noticed the blood on Shirou Emiya's white robe and his loose hair. Right now, he looked exactly like he did on the poster she had found while searching the room. Even the sword mark between his brows matched.

"Are you still Shirou Emiya?" Something about him had felt off to Rin Tohsaka for a while now. "The Shirou Emiya I know wouldn't say such strange things."

"Of course I am." Shirou Emiya nodded, then said helplessly, "I've been influenced a little, I suppose. But those were still my words."

Saber walked over and asked worriedly, "Is it the influence of your past-life memories?"

"Well... Saber, you can't take what you saw in those memories at face value." Shirou Emiya sighed. "I'll explain everything slowly once this is over."

"I understand." Saber nodded. Whatever had happened in a past life, to the Shirou Emiya of the present, those memories were only shadowy images. What mattered was now.

In one fragment of memory, she had seen a man in a top hat say, "Only by choosing each other through endless cycles of reincarnation can they remember their past. But they're destined to meet without ever being together. The world won't allow them to meet again."

From what she had read in those novels, even in parallel worlds, Shirou Emiya and Illya had missed each other for one reason or another.

She looked toward Sitónai and EMIYA, then shook her head regretfully.

Red A: "?"

Sitónai: "?"

Rin Tohsaka was releasing a gray, luminous stream of magical energy through the Jewel Sword. As time passed, its