When the world still basked in borrowed light—179 days to dusk.
The streets of London churned with life.
They pulsed—not with joy or urgency—but with the quiet violence of motion, the collision of countless souls brushing past each other with stories half-formed and never shared. Neon flickered in puddles like trapped stars. Engines snarled and wheezed like dying beasts. And above it all, the sky stretched in bruised silence, a slate smeared with the last remnants of sunlight—faint, fading, unwilling to leave.
Shisan moved through it like a specter.
He didn't walk. He drifted. Each step featherlight, as if he feared anchoring himself too firmly in a world that wasn't his. His coat—borrowed, ill-fitted, too large in the shoulders—whispered with every motion, clinging to the damp air like a shadow made fabric. The city smelled of wet stone, rusted railings, and restless souls. It was alien. Unyielding. And terribly alive.
He hadn't slept in days.
Nor had he eaten. But there was no hunger. No weariness. Just a hollow stillness where sensation should be. A vessel, emptied. Not broken—but scorched clean.
Zelretch's voice still haunted the edges of his thoughts.
"This story ends in a grave far from your home."
That grave felt closer by the hour.
His reflection no longer aligned with memory. Sometimes his own name felt strange in his mouth. Stray words appeared in his mind—half-familiar terms from a world that wasn't his. And worse still, he dreamed in borrowed voices. Some laughing. Some weeping. None his own.
He was beginning to forget the smell of Yuchan's cooking.
That thought—more than any fear of death—made him pause.
At the edge of a gallery window, he stopped. It wasn't the variety of paintings that drew him in. It was the light. Warm. Steady. Gentle, casting a halo through glass like a ward against the dark.
Inside, beneath pale walls and gilded frames, a whirl of impossible color swirled on canvas.
The Starry Night.
His breath caught.
Brushstrokes bled upward, spilling into a sky too alive to be still. It was imperfect. Raw. It trembled with grief. With wonder. With a beauty too honest to separate from the pain beneath it.
In its haze, he saw a mountaintop.
Yuchan's voice, animated and breathless beside him, tracing constellations in the sky with her fingers. Telling stories of gods and gatekeepers. Of long-dead suns whispering secrets through time. Her hands flared with excitement. Her smile was so wide it could swallow sorrow.
She had smiled like she owned the cosmos.
He smiled too, despite everything.
Then the crowd shifted behind him.
A shoulder brushed his. A presence too familiar.
He turned.
His eyes widened. "Hiroyuki?"
The boy blinked. Dressed in modern layers. A bag slung over one shoulder. His gaze sharp with caution, not recognition.
"…Do I know you?"
The question stung harder than it should've.
Shisan froze. The recognition had been reflex—an echo from when he wore Claudius's skin. But now he was himself. Or something like it.
"No," he murmured. "Sorry. I… mistook you for someone else."
Hiroyuki's gaze narrowed, scanning him. A flicker of suspicion sparked in his posture. Not enough to reach for a weapon or mutter a chant. But enough to remember the face. To file it away.
A thread worth tugging later.
Shisan vanished into the crowd before it could knot around him.
His chest pounded once. Then again. Then fell silent.
He doesn't know me. Because I'm not Claudius anymore.
And yet…
It had been a full day. A cycle of dawn to dusk.
Still no swap.
That shouldn't have been possible. The rhythm was always exact. Predictable. Relentless.
He should've collapsed hours ago—drained by hunger, seized by sleep. But there was nothing. Just this eerie equilibrium. A silence that wasn't peace. A calm that wasn't rest.
And then—he felt it.
A presence behind him.
Old. Familiar. Threaded into his bones like a scar.
"Claudius," he said softly, without turning.
"Follow me."
There was no need for questions. Not now.
They walked side by side in silence, weaving through London's veins, past sleeping stone and watchful gargoyles, until the spires of the Clock Tower loomed above them—an impossible geometry, dissecting the sky like scripture scrawled in steel.
They entered without words.
The halls were empty. The silence was cathedral-deep.
Their footsteps echoed, solemn and surgical.
Eventually, they arrived at the training gym. The same room where Welter had once tested his reflexes—when he still wore Claudius's face. But now, it was hollow. The weights were gone. No blades. No teachers.
Only stillness.
Until a voice cut the air.
"About time."
She sat atop a steel beam high above, one leg swinging lazily. Her coat—crimson silk and matte obsidian leather—hung like a banner over black pleats sharp enough to slice. Twin pigtails framed a face that looked too young, too amused, and too dangerous to be standing still.
Her gaze pinned them both like insects in amber.
"Took you long enough to notice you're bleeding into each other."
Shisan's breath stilled.
He knew that voice.
Not long ago, in the fogged silence of a narrow alleyway, a red blur had struck him like judgment. A single blow. No words. Just authority in motion.
Same height. Same voice. Same fire.
"You," he whispered.
Her smirk deepened. "So you do remember."
"You're the one who knocked me out."
"Had to make an impression," she said, vaulting down in one smooth motion. Her boots touched the floor like falling feathers. "You were snooping too close to the Clock Tower. Too many questions. You're lucky I found you first. Others wouldn't have been so… patient."
Claudius's voice was clipped. "You two met before?"
"Sort of," she said, brushing imaginary dust from her coat. "Let's just say I gave him the 'early admission' tour."
She stepped between them, hands on her hips, radiating the kind of confidence that didn't ask permission to exist.
"My name is Rin Tohsaka. From this moment on, I'm your instructor. Zelretch's orders."
Claudius stiffened.
Rin exhaled through her nose like a teacher addressing unruly apprentices.
"You've both been walking around like headless chickens. Do either of you even know what's on your lower backs?"
Claudius blinked. "What?"
Shisan looked lost. "Our… backs?"
Rin rolled her eyes. "Seriously? Not even a twinge of curiosity?"
She turned and tapped her own lower back. "Zelretch placed a seal on both of you. While you were unconscious. It was the only thing keeping your souls from snapping like overstretched threads."
Shisan flinched. "A seal?"
Claudius's voice was low. "Without telling us?"
"You were unraveling," Rin said sharply. "Your souls were phasing in and out like broken circuitry. He didn't have time to ask."
She stepped forward, eyes hardening. "But here's the problem—the seal's breaking. It was never meant to hold this long."
Shisan's voice was barely a breath. "What happens if it fails?"
"You merge," Rin said simply. "Piece by piece. Each missed swap, each sleepless night, every moment without mana stability—you dissolve into each other. Not two souls trading places. One being. No identity. No anchor."
Claudius's skin went pale. "You're saying… we'll become one person?"
Rin's tone was cool as glass. "No. I'm saying you'll become something worse. A chimera. Not Claudius. Not Shisan. Just echoes in the same body, screaming over one another until there's nothing left."
A long silence.
Then—
Shisan squinted and leaned ever so slightly, trying to peer at Claudius's lower back.
Claudius didn't even glance at him. But his voice was glacial.
"Don't."
"I just want to see it."
"You'll live without the visual confirmation."
"You need to reinforce the seal," Rin cut in, clearly not for the first time. "Eat. Sleep. Restore your circuits. Let the body decay, and the seal decays with it."
Claudius frowned. "That's it?"
Rin smirked. "That's the minimum. If you want to stay alive long-term, you'll need more than protein bars and a nap."
She reached into her coat and tossed two scrolls. They unrolled midair like serpents shedding their skin, landing with a whisper before their feet.
"Two maps. Two tests. Two chances."
Shisan knelt. One map pointed toward the outskirts of London. The other bore the unmistakable sigil of the Clock Tower.
"You've got six hours," Rin said. "The mana-reactive water at your destination only holds once summoned. Fail—and the seal fails. Your bodies blend. No coming back."
Shisan's jaw clenched. "Where does this lead?"
Rin didn't answer.
She turned slightly, adjusting her hair with practiced disinterest.
"Rin?" Shisan pressed.
She shrugged. "Time's ticking."
Claudius answered instead. "It's the old leyline wellspring near Bexley. Abandoned. Forgotten. Dangerous."
Shisan blinked. "A leyline…?"
Rin crossed her arms, smirking.
Claudius sighed. "Veins of mana beneath the world. When they intersect, they form wells. High-magic zones. Dangerous. Volatile."
"Like pressure points," Shisan murmured.
Claudius nodded. "Exactly. And that one? It's been sealed for a reason."
Shisan hesitated. Then:
"Where I come from… we had something like that. Aitheryn Veins. Magic that rose from the earth like breath. It moved. Shifted. It chose us—"
A sudden nudge.
Claudius.
A reminder.
Shisan caught himself. Paused.
"I meant," he muttered, "I read about something similar."
Rin tilted her head, gaze narrowing slightly.
She smiled. Too pleasant to be innocent.
"Well. Let's hope your bedtime stories covered mana surges and magical implosions."
She turned away.
At the far end of the gym, she paused without turning.
"Six hours," she said. "Then the water's gone. And so are your second chances."
Then she vanished into shadow.
Shisan didn't miss the flicker in her eye.
She knew.
And she'd remember.
Claudius tucked his scroll into his coat. Shisan held his loosely, fingertips lingering on the parchment as if it might burn him.
He felt it now—that warmth Rin had spoken of. Low. Smoldering.
A whisper not his own.
Claudius stepped toward the exit. He didn't look back.
"Let's not die separately before we figure out how to survive together."
Shisan snorted. "Try not to overthink yourself into a wall."
Claudius scoffed. Then he was gone.
Shisan stood alone.
The gym lights flickered. Dust danced in slanted beams of light. Outside, London breathed through stone and mana. And somewhere in the dark, the wellspring waited.
He rolled his shoulders and turned south.
A different path.
Different trial.
Same risk.
But for the first time in a long while, the road ahead didn't feel like exile.