IBHJ 1370

The cave yawned before them, a black mouth carved into the hillside that seemed to swallow the afternoon light. Mash shifted her weight, shield ready at her side.

"This is it?" she asked, glancing toward Manaka.

Manaka studied the entrance, her usual cheerful demeanor replaced by something more focused. "From here, we need to watch ourselves. Stay close."

"Yes. But are you sure it's in there?" Mash gestured toward the cave mouth. "It looks like a normal cave."

The entrance did look disappointingly mundane. Concrete reinforcement around the edges, probably installed decades ago.

"You don't sense it?" Manaka's voice carried a note of surprise. "The Grail's presence?"

Mash frowned, reaching out with her senses. "I'm not picking up anything unusual."

"This is Mount Enzou's great cavern. The Three Families hollowed it out when they were chasing the Third Magic." Manaka started walking toward the entrance, her footsteps echoing off the concrete. "They tapped into Fuyuki's ley lines, built their ritual chamber right into the mountain itself."

"Chaldea's records mention this place." Mash fell into step beside her. "Miyu came through here, didn't she? But I thought Shirou destroyed the whole system."

"He did." Manaka paused at the threshold, one hand resting against the stone. "But destruction isn't always permanent. Tell me, what do you think the Holy Grail actually is?"

"The cup that held the Holy Spirit's blood? It grants wishes, supposedly." Mash hesitated. "Though after what Mordred told me about the Eternal Empire, I'm not so sure about the granting part."

"What if I told you there never was a cup?"

The question hung between them. Mash waited.

"No gods, no demons, no holy relics." Manaka said. "Just people, projecting what they needed onto empty void. They wanted something pure, so they created the Holy Spirit. When that wasn't enough, they imagined it left behind a cup that could make everything better."

"So the Grail is..."

"The crystallization of human desire. The need to believe something out there can fix what's broken." Manaka stepped into the cave. "But desire corrupts everything it touches. The moment people started fighting over salvation, they created its opposite—the Antichrist."

"But Mordred said Mr. Shirou already destroyed the Antichrist."

"He destroyed the Holy Grail, but the Antichrist cannot be destroyed. Shirou's arrow can destroy concepts and rewrite reality, but it can't change what people are. And people created both the Holy Spirit and its shadow."

Mash stopped walking. "What does any of this have to do with Ritsuka?"

The question Manaka had been dreading. She turned to face her companion, weighing how much truth she could bear to share.

"I think the Lord of Salvation is using the Greater Grail system to turn her into something she was never meant to be. Other dimensions, other Holy Grail Wars, all feeding into one purpose." The words tasted bitter. "Making Ritsuka into the Antichrist."

Mash's hand flew to her mouth. "That's impossible."

"Is it?" Manaka's voice went quiet. "I've known something was wrong since I first met her. The emptiness inside her, it's... vast. Bigger than even mine was, and that's saying something."

"During the Eternal Empire crisis, I could have absorbed the Beast from her. I chose not to." Manaka's fingers curled into fists. "Part of it was fear that the extraction would kill her, like it did with Goetia. But mostly I suspected it was a trap. That the Lord of Salvation wanted me to try."

"I hoped I was wrong." The admission felt like swallowing glass. "Some friend I turned out to be. I saw the signs and did nothing. That's why I gave up on going to the Origin Age. I realized I couldn't just walk away from this—from her. I just hope it's not too late."

"Whatever happens in there, don't stop moving." Manaka caught Mash's eyes, holding her gaze. "No matter what you see."

The warning sent ice through Mash's veins. "What are we walking into?"

"Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

Mash studied Manaka's face, looking for answers that weren't coming. Finally, she nodded. "I understand."

"Stay close." Manaka turned toward the cave entrance. "We're going in."

Mash adjusted her grip on the shield. Senpai, she thought, please be okay.

The moment they crossed the threshold, the air changed. Thick, oppressive, wrong in ways that made Mash's skin crawl. But nothing could have prepared her for what waited inside.

The cavern stretched wide, carved hollow like the inside of a massive skull. Across the ground, something dark moved—not quite liquid, not quite smoke, but malice given form. It flowed toward the center in sluggish currents, drawn by something that made Mash's stomach turn.

At the heart of it all stood a tree. Massive, hollow, its bark glowing with sickly light. And suspended within its empty trunk, wrapped in shadows thick as silk, was a cocoon.

Inside that cocoon, Mash could make out a familiar silhouette.

"I see." Manaka said. "They've created a pocket dimension. No wonder Gaia couldn't track this place down."

"Senpai!" The word came out of Mash's lips as she lurched toward the tree, every instinct screaming to reach the cocoon.

A tendril of dark mud whipped toward her from the side.

Manaka's hand slammed into Mash's shoulder, yanking her backward just as the corruption struck her shield. The sound was wrong—not metal on metal, but something hungry dissolving something pure.

Mash stared at the shield in her hands. Where the mud had touched, a chunk of Galahad's supposedly indestructible shield had simply... vanished. Eaten away like sugar in acid.

"Thank you." The words came out shaky.

"Save it." Manaka's eyes tracked the streams of malice flowing around them. "I've never seen evil this concentrated."

Slow, deliberate applause echoed from the center of the cavern.

Beast VII stepped into view beside the cocoon, hands coming together in appreciation. "High praise from Miss Manaka. How unexpected."

The Beast's gaze shifted between them, amused. "I have to ask—weren't you supposed to be in the Origin Age since you're trying to replace my Master as the new Lord of Salvation?" One elegant gesture toward the cocoon. "Instead you're here, playing hero for his pet project. How wonderfully sentimental."

Manaka met the Beast's stare without flinching. "Someone has to."

The Beast went completely still. "...Why?"

"Because she's the first friend I ever had who acknowledge and actually cared about me."

"Friend?" The Beast laughed. "How pathetic. You think she cares, but Ritsuka's heart is a void. There's no room in that emptiness for anyone, not even you."

"You're the fool here."

Something dangerous flickered across the Beast's features. "What did you just say?"

"Words don't matter. Actions do. Intentions do." Manaka took a step forward. "Tell me something—you were born from Olga Marie, weren't you? Do you even have a heart to speak of?"

The Beast's smile froze.

"Get Ritsuka out of here!" Manaka shouted to Mash, then launched herself forward as black mud spiraled around her body like armor.

The Beast raised one hand. Reality twisted, and inverted vortexes tore open in the air around them. The massive tree pulsed with sick light, then erupted.

Spikes of corrupted wood burst from its trunk, each one thick as a sword blade. They punched through Manaka's defenses like they were made of paper, driving deep into her body and lifting her off the ground.

Blood—real, human blood, not the endless black corruption—ran down the glowing branches. The tree began to pulse brighter, pumping something vile into her wounds. Manaka's back arched, every muscle seizing as whatever poison it carried flooded her system.

Her protective mud scattered like smoke. She hung there, suspended by the spikes that had pierced clean through her, her face twisted in agony she couldn't voice.