Caren stood at the door.
Risei Kotomine's voice was hoarse. "Kirei... where did he go?"
Caren did not answer him. Even facing her own grandfather, she was blunt. "The Command Spells. Give them to me."
"As the overseer, you still have the Command Spells left over from past Holy Grail Wars, don't you?"
Risei Kotomine froze, looking at the girl standing before the altar.
She was only seven or eight, yet her eyes held none of a child's innocence.
There was only a kind of emptiness... no, a sacred serenity. Just like Kirei, she had the makings of a saint...
Risei Kotomine's lips moved as he recalled the words of the Bible:
"You must become like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven."
He wept in repentance. "Caren..."
He handed the Command Spells to her.
"Were you... sent by the Lord?"
Caren took the Command Spells and left without a word.
Risei Kotomine knelt on the floor, watching this scene.
He cried and smiled.
"O Lord... You have not forsaken us..."
Caren looked up at the fiery red sky outside the window. "...How beautiful."
The trembling figures of Hassan of the Hundred Faces knelt and looked up at King Hassan. The old man followed Caren without a word.
It was not yet time. The girl needed to prove she was independent. When that time came, the contract between him and her would naturally be established.
Outside the Great Hollow, the flames had already spread across the entire mountain.
Red firelight illuminated the night sky, as though the whole world were burning.
The stakes that had fallen from the sky had long since been swallowed by the flames, leaving only charred remains swaying in the wind.
Cú Chulainn stood at the foot of the mountain, looking up at that sea