Aftermath

Shirou was once again in a familiar place. He was working day in and day out, toiling away at his job.

The only enjoyment he could get his hands on was anime and manga. They represented a totally different world, a world where he could enjoy his life.

*Rring* *Rring*

His alarm was going off. It was time to go to work.

Getting off his bed, Shirou started getting changed. After going through a wardrobe that only contained white suit shirts and black pants, he started getting changed.

Inspecting himself in his mirror, he noticed that his eyes had bags underneath them. He had stayed up several nights ago binging on anime, and the work he had to do in the following days had forced him to go without sleep.

As he finished putting his clothes on and fixed up his tie, his hand suddenly started tingling.

Looking down, he saw the hand covered in red. A bright red, which invoked a feeling a disgust. Not only that, his hand was no longer a hand. Instead, it was a clump of blades.

The blades started spreading… all the way until it reached his neck.

Then, it started to invade his head…

---

Shirou woke up disturbed. He had been dreaming of the same thing for several days now.

He did not understand what it meant. Was it guilt? Or a sign of things to come? In any case, he wanted it to stop.

He needed it to stop. His mental state in the past few months had been horrible. He was no longer the Shirou he used to be. Yet, the fact that he was aware of this meant his old personality was still hiding somewhere within him.

All it needed was a little push, before it would return.

But Shirou didn't know how to push it. For now, he was stuck as a battle-crazy kid.

Ever since that Matou incident, a rift had opened up between Kiritsugu and Shirou. There was no good reason for it, but it just happened. Kiritsugu didn't like the fact that Shirou was so ruthless and was waiting for him to apologize.

However, as mentioned, was stuck in his crazy mode.

As such, Shirou was spending most of his time away from home and visiting Sakura at the hospital.

Sakura had been in a coma ever since she was rescued from Zouken. The damage that the Crest Worms had done to her was already so extensive that she would require a few months to recover, even with the help of Shirou's Healing. In order to use his Healing, he had to stay close to her, which meant he spent all of his time at her bedside.

It had been four months already. Sakura would be waking up at any minute now.

In these four months, Shirou had hunted down the remnants of the Matou family that had escaped or weren't present on that day.

The most exciting kill was Shinji's. He had been begging for his life as his bodyguards were being chopped to pieces.

The most enjoyable part was when his private 'part' had been chopped off. Similar to the first time they met, Shirou was forced to apply Healing to Shinji to keep him awake.

This time, there was no saving and loading. Instead, Shirou slowly chopped away at Shinji's body.

Sometimes it was a nail, and other times it was a whole finger. Then, it would be a slice of his arm, or his entire hand. He slowly made his way inwards, towards his body.

The constant Healing meant that the wounds would close before he had the chance to lose too much blood.

With the sound of a wailing Shinji as a background, Shirou began to carve up Shinji's torso.

After he was done, 'Shinji' was nothing but a heap of flesh that would need to be censored on television.

However, instead of puking in disgust, Shirou instead revelled in the feeling of… power.

Yet it was also at this moment that Shirou had noticed his own change. After that, he started having those dreams.

---

A slight movement from the bed woke Shirou up from his contemplation.

Immediately starting his Healing Magecraft again, he found that this time, her body was much more accepting of his Prana. Taking this as a good sign that her Magic Circuits were recovering, he kept sending more Prana, as if he was trying to probe out a path.

Sakura's body kept on absorbing the Prana.

After absorbing around 2000 units, it seemed like it was still nowhere near full.

Shirou tried to retract his Prana, fearing overconsumption. Yet, he could not. His manipulation of it only proved to increase the suction force. Eventually, he ran out of Prana.

Luckily, Avalon was practically a battery for Prana.

It started releasing the Prana it had absorbed, channelling it through Shirou's Magic Circuits.

Yet again, his Circuits were being improved.

It wasn't until halfway through Avalon's storage that Sakura finally stopped absorbing.

At that moment, Shirou's consciousness was sucked into something.

---

Shirou woke up in a dark space. There was no ground – in fact, there was nothing at all. The Void. That would be the most apt to describe it.

Falling, falling, and falling. Nothing happened for a good 10 minutes. At least, according to Shirou, it was 10 minutes. There was absolutely no sense of time in this mysterious space.

Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, Shirou closed his eyes again and fell asleep.

When he woke up again, he was on the ground. All he saw was a large Parthenon, with around 35 pillars. The pillars were in bad shape. They were decrepit, and most of them were falling apart.

Shirou assumed that they were Sakura's Magic Circuits.

And instead of having a pattern like Shirou's, the pillars were covered in numbers. Imaginary numbers.

That was Sakura's elemental affinity, before the Matous forcefully changed it to Water.

After breathing a sigh of relief, Shirou started to work. Since this wasn't his own soul, there was no Avalon, and he wouldn't be able to control the Prana. The most he could do was supply Prana, which would create more blocks for the pillars, then place them physically on each other.

It would take a very long time, but when he was finished, Sakura would wake up.