Wrought King of Iron

Chapter 31: As Long as you Smile at the End

What was that back there? I can't seem to forget it no matter how much I try. All those times in which the world seemed incomplete. 

I'm missing something. I need to find it. What it is that's just so... wrong.

Pouring everything I had in to thinking and remembering, I started to break through some sort of barrier. Information began to flood my mind, about events that never happened, and memories that weren't mine, but were mine.

As this was happening, my head started to ache, and an intense pain was surging through my brain. It felt like I was getting a migraine and I began to lose consciousness. Despite being the first day of school, and the first period of the day, it seemed like I would pass out within the first few minutes. But, right before losing consciousness, I tried to find in my jacket an object of importance to me. I didn't know what I wanted to grab hold of, but my body desperately wanted it. Yet I could not attain it, and passed out.

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Yet again, I'm here. This is where I always am. Standing over death itself. Every time I fall asleep, Fuyuki in flames greets me. Why? Why now, of all times? Why am I shown this?

'Shirou Emiya, the Spider Slayer. That is your destiny.' I suddenly heard a voice behind me. 

As I turned to look behind me, the scenery completely changed. I was now standing in a barren wasteland, of flat land and dirt for several miles. The floor was cracked, and the sky was red. It was covered in blood.

There was an elderly man before me, dressed in black robes, with white hair, and red eyes. I know this man.

'Zelretch? What are you doing here?' My brain started to ache once again.
Holding my head, I said, 'Wait, how do I even know who you are. I've never even met you, yet I recognise you so distinctly.'

'This barren wasteland is your future, Shirou Emiya. You will kill the Spider, and in the wake of that battle, everything you have and will ever love will be gone. Nothing will be left behind that makes this future worth living for. The land will be destroyed, and countless people will die. Yet, at the end of it, you will still be there. Just like back then, when everything changes, and leaves you behind, where will you be? Standing over death itself, alone.'

Looking beyond him, I could see a trail of bodies. It wasn't just a single line of bodies. There were hundreds, if not thousands of corpses scattered across the land. And at the end of this blood-soaked region, lay a massive corpse of a monster. 

In the future, my future; the future that I am supposed to bring about, so many people will die?

I looked down, and there was a body. Not one of the indiscriminate masses, but of my father. I dropped to my knees, and reached my hand out to his corpse.

Suddenly springing to life, the body sat up, and brought its bloodied hand up to my face, smearing my cheek with his blood.

'Why? Why did you lie? Why would you tell me you would fulfil my dream, and yet be the cause of all this suffering? You should have saved them! You promised me that you would save them for me!'

His words cut me deeply. I made Kiritsugu a promise, but it looks like I wasn't able to keep it at the end.

Kiritsugu's body went back to being motionless, and slumped over me.

Looking up to the old man, I asked, 'Tell me it isn't true?'
I wanted to deny this end with my very soul.

He replied with, 'If you decide to challenge that beast, you will be repeating that first hell of yours. Do you want to lose everything again? You don't have to meet such a tragic end. The future awaiting you is purely that of suffering. But it doesn't have to be this way. If you take my hand, you won't ever have to go back to that path. You won't have to challenge that beast, and you won't have to suffer. You can just stay here, in this utopia where you have her.'