IBHJ 1354

"There you are, Ritsuka-chan."

Ritsuka's voice came out flat and deadly. "What did you think you were going to do to my Mash?"

Something flickered across the Beast's face. "I can't believe you're looking at me like that.”

"I asked you a question. What were you going to do to my Mash?"

"Mash doesn't matter. She never did. I'm here for you. My other half. We belong together."

Ritsuka started walking forward, slow and deliberate.

"Senpai, no!" Mash struggled to push herself up, blood still seeping through her armor. "She's here to hunt you down!"

"Get somewhere safe, Mash."

She stared at Ritsuka's back, then forced herself to speak through gritted teeth. "I want to fight with you, Senpai! Let me—"

"You're too weak. You just get in my way." Ritsuka didn't even look at Mash properly, just glanced at her with that cold, empty stare. "Weaklings should know their place. Go hide somewhere."

The silence stretched between them.

"Don't make me say it again."

Mash's shoulders shook. "I... I understand."

She could barely get the words out. Clutching her broken shield to her chest, she stumbled backward, trying desperately not to let the tears fall.

"How touching." The Beast's laugh was light and cruel. Without warning, she flicked her finger. Lightning crackled through the air, aimed straight at Mash's unprotected back.

Ritsuka moved.

Crack.

The bolt shattered against her bare palm like glass. She didn't even flinch.

The Beast's confident expression faltered. "You actually raised my other half this far?"

By every calculation, Ritsuka should have been helpless against her. A fragment couldn't stand against the whole. But somehow, impossibly, the girl had nurtured that darkness inside her into something that could match—maybe even surpass—the original.

"Getting nervous?" Ritsuka glared at her. "Too bad. I've already lost everything that mattered to me. My friends, my family, everyone I ever cared about—gone. And now you want to take the last person I have left?" Her voice cracked with fury and pain. "I'm done. I'm so damn tired of losing people!"

The air around her started to warp and twist. Her rage was so intense it was bending reality itself.

But the Beast just smiled. "Scared? Oh no, Ritsuka-chan. I'm impressed. Now I finally understand why I was put to sleep. Why half of my essence was planted inside you."

She pointed directly at Ritsuka's heart.

"You were always meant to be the real Beast VII. Not me. That emptiness inside you—it's bottomless, isn't it? All that hope you carried, all that grief, all that crushing despair... it's been feeding the Beast this whole time. And now that hollow space is going to swallow you whole."

Her smile widened.

"Welcome to your true nature, Beast of the End."

After hearing this, Ritsuka’s body froze, her muscles refusing to obey. Something was moving inside her—something that made her skin crawl and her stomach turn. It felt like something was clawing its way up from the bottom of a deep, dark well.

"Ritsuka!" Mash's screamed.

Why was she yelling like that? What was wrong? Ritsuka couldn't figure it out until she followed Mash's horrified stare downward.

And froze.

Where her heart should have been, there was nothing. Just a black void that seemed to swallow light itself.

"That's what your soul really looks like," the Beast said softly.

Dark tendrils began pouring out of the void—thick, oily things that moved like they were alive. They spread across her skin, wrapping around her face, her arms, her throat. Swallowing her inch by inch.

Mash tried to run to her, but the Beast casually waved her hand and sent the girl crashing into a tree.

"Stop it!" Ritsuka fought against the spreading darkness, but it was like trying to swim through tar. "Don't you dare touch her!"

"Of course not. That's exactly what you want, isn't it?" The Beast reached out and stroked Ritsuka's cheek with surprising gentleness. "You're going to absorb me. Become the real Beast—the one that finally ends this broken world. Then we can all go back to where we came from. No more pain. No more loss. Just peace."

She grabbed Ritsuka by the shoulders, ready to drag her away.

BOOM!

Starlight exploded down from the sky like a falling comet. The Beast's barrier deflected it, but she was already frowning. "A Holy Sword? The King of Knights?"

A figure made of black mud appeared right in front of her. The sword in his hands looked simple enough. But when it moved, it cut through more than just air. It carved through the very fabric of reality.

CRACK!

The Beast's protective barrier shattered like glass.

Her eyes went wide with recognition. "Death Lines? That ability... are you Shiki?"

The mud figure attacked again.

This time, she saw it coming—another slash aimed directly at her death line. A pure chill shot through her spine as she desperately called on the Lord of Salvation's power. An inverted vortex erupted around her body, wrapping her death lines in protective energy. The blade missed by inches.

Cold sweat dripped down her face. One second slower and she would have been completely erased—not just killed, but wiped from the Root itself.

"You're not Shiki at all. You're the Inheritor of the Vortex. You should have followed my Master to the Origin Era!"

Shirou said nothing. Seeing that her death lines were now becoming blurry, he shifted tactics. The old man's records flowed through him as he prepared to unleash a Multi-Dimensional Cannon that could strike across parallel worlds.

But the Beast had already seen enough. She wasn't sticking around for this fight.

She grabbed Ritsuka and tried to bolt.

"Running away? I don't think so."

"You're not the one I'll be fighting." The Beast slashed her hand through the air, tearing open space itself. An inverted vortex bloomed in the wound—blazing with white light. Something enormous began pushing through from the other side. The air itself started to shake.

"Grrrooooaaarrrr!!"

The roar nearly shattered their eardrums. A massive white beast exploded out of the portal, its body covered in swirling vortexes, placing itself between Shirou and the Beast.

"Fou?"

Shirou stopped dead in his tracks.

The creature was twisted and savage now, barely recognizable under all those distorted vortexes. But there was no mistaking that familiar presence, that aura.

It really was Fou.