Emiya Shirou disliked the old church on a hill. The building, still solemn in its stained glass windows, its arches and high belltower, the transcendent white of its columns and walls, wasn't much different from any other Catholic church. It held the kindly peace of any house of God, and the parishioners were welcoming and harmless. Had Shirou ever gone to a Mass, he wouldn't have had a complaint.

But the shade of his old enemy, Kotomine Kirei, seemed to linger there, in the faint scent of incense and the haunting tones of the organ; he could almost hear the deceased priest's voice, low as a rolling drum, whispering truths he didn't want to hear. And walking towards its doors at night, the long beams of solitary light cast from its windows, reminded him of that fateful night he found himself drawn into the Fifth Holy Grail War—only later to find this very church held his greatest enemy.

It was unfortunate, then, that Shirou increasingly found himself sitting in the church's pews in the night long after darkness had fallen on Fuyuki. Not because of any Holy Grail War; that chapter of his life had long since closed. Not because of Kotomine or his kin; the new priest was much more generic and Shirou wondered whether the kindly old man even knew of Magic Circuits or the rather irreligious mayhem of his predecessor. And not because of Rin, for though Shirou loved her, he had yet to determine whether marriage, as it were, was where his future lay.

It was a corollary of his current question, in fact; for Shirou was not defined by his love for Rin. He defined himself by a deeper purpose.

Shirou wanted to save everyone—as much as any individual human could.

He had long asked himself the question of how to save everyone, and it was only through the tribulations of the Fifth Holy Grail War that he began to see an answer. Archer, his own future self, had traveled that path and ended alone, dead, on a lonely hill, killed by the people he sought to save.

He couldn't save everyone. As his old man Kiritsugu had once said, on a late evening before he died: "Saving one person means failing to save another." Shirou had to face this impossibility—this fake ideal he had inherited from Kiritsugu and its futile end in his future which Archer showed—and he found his own answer: that fake though he was, there was one real thing worth pursuing.

Even if everything else was a lie, and even if all his work ended in shambles, there was something beautiful he loved, more than anything else, something worth all the effort he could give: the beauty of this ideal that Kiritsugu showed him.

Even if it was impossible to save everyone, the ideal of saving everyone was beautiful. Beautiful enough to live for; and it was with the help of Rin and Saber that Shirou realized he could pursue this ideal without necessarily dying for it, as Archer had.

But love is a curious thing. It's never content with mediocrity; it's never happy simply knowing enough. Love is a thirst for a greater good, and Shirou thirsted for this ideal the more he lived it out. He wanted to know more. He wanted to do more. He wanted to give more. He wanted to be more.

So Shirou found himself sitting there, alone in the dark of night, staring at the shadowed cross hidden behind the altar of the church, pondering the many questions that seemed to really be one question.

What was the truth behind the beauty of his ideal?

Of course there are a thousand reasons why that ideal is beautiful. It is beautiful because it makes people happier. It is beautiful because of the many joyful lives that can be lived where they would have ended otherwise. It is beautiful because of the dreams that can be fulfilled. It is beautiful for the billions of reasons which are each individual soul that's saved.

But Shirou knew there was something more—some secret at the heart of the world that he was missing. Beauty is always like that: a veil through which we glimpse something wonderful, but only its shadow; the true form is hidden from us. 'Love at first sight' is really a glimpse at someone's beauty, a glimpse of their bodily veil; it awakens the thirst to know the person behind the veil. The beauty of nature, too, is a wondrous veil draped over all creation; even as we see it and delight, we feel there is more to its goodness that we can't grasp in our hands. Like sand, it slips through our fingers, and we are left with only its pleasant sensation and an aching love.

The ideal was blindingly beautiful to him, and so the truth itself must be immeasurably great. Shirou didn't feel he needed to know, just as one doesn't need to know why one shouldn't kill in order to avoid killing—the truth is evident in that dark, silent place in our hearts called the conscience, inscribed with truths a priori. But he still wanted to know. Even as his heart was at peace, gazing happily at that beautiful veiled ideal, he wanted to know the truth that lay beyond it.

Yet others who lived for this ideal of saving the world all tended to have a similar end. Archer had been sentenced and hung, alone and forsaken on a hill. Saber had been mortally wounded at the Battle of Camlann and sought the Holy Grail while dying, alone on a hill. Shirou looked up at the shadowed figure on the crucifix in the church and realized he, too, sought to save the world—and died forsaken on a hill.

Somehow, the thought seemed to lighten Shirou's heart. If the end of his journey was on the height of a hill, then he had already charged up it to defeat Archer. His own Reality Marble, Unlimited Blade Works, was a sunny hilltop, sprinkled with the beginnings of grass and surrounded by swords. If his journey to the hilltop was this very question, then perhaps he was closer to his Answer than he realized.

The church bell suddenly rang its long, doleful note, and Shirou blinked in surprise—the hour had gotten away from him. If he didn't leave soon, he'd be late for school the next morning. He gave a rueful smile to the altar as he slid out of the pew, thinking of how Kirei must be smirking at him from the grave. He could almost hear him saying: "Truly, you are at home here in this house of lost souls, Emiya Shirou. Rejoice! For these walls can hold even the impossible prayers you offer."

With a snort, he dismissed the fantasy and sat up, preparing to leave, but slowed as a troubling thought came to mind.

Hadn't he heard that phrase before?

He had been in this church for many nights, now, and he was finding it more and more—not ominous, precisely, but almost dreadful—a sense of something lurking beneath the surface. Something lurking beneath the veil. And he wondered, at times, whether it was a voice, whispering to him. Thoughts would enter his mind unbidden, with a surging tingle along his spine, the same he had always felt before that priest.

Kirei had a presence about him, one of an absolute—like an undeniable truth; and Kirei was the kind of soul who would have always chosen to be the most inconvenient truth for you to be unable to deny. He was always in the distance, watching, smirking, knowing that you avert your eyes because you are afraid of the truth he carried.

Perhaps that is why he became a priest, of all things: he wanted to carry the truths that most men feared to know. To announce the Day of Wrath and Judgment to souls living lives complacent in their sin. How ironic that he was the one who needed that message the most.

Shirou shook off these idle thoughts and moved to leave, sliding along the wooden pew to the end. Only when Shirou had finished standing from the pew, casting a long solitary shadow down the aisles ahead of him, that he noticed his shadow was not so solitary: there was another, stretching farther and taller.

And it was with a startled gasp that he whirled about and saw a figure standing at the entrance of the church. But not any figure. He had seen it before: in his dreams, in person, and even in this very church, during the Fifth Holy Grail War—

"Kotomine Kirei!" Shirou cried, shifting back a step, letting his magic circuits fill, the sudden stress shown in the sparks of blue lightning from his fingertips, as his signature "Trace on!" lay at the tip of his tongue, all but actualized.

The priest only gave a low chuckle, sending shivers down Shirou's spine.

"No, not he; Kirei is long dead. I am but his shadow given form."

So the shadow said, but Shirou would swear it was the man himself: the tone, his voice, the inflections, his appearance, and the threatening aura looming before him. But Kirei had died many months ago during the Fifth Holy Grail War; of that, Shirou was certain.

"Why are you here?"

The shadow's lips curled into a smirk, and Shirou felt certain this was not some fake. Even if it was only a shadow, Kirei was present here, in some form or fashion. And, in true Kirei style, his answer threw Shirou for a loop.

"To grant your wish, of course."

Granting his wish—Shirou knew what kind of wishes were granted by the Grail. He had heard about the Fourth Holy Grail War, albeit only recently. He knew of the wish Kiritsugu had and the distorted answer the Grail had given.

Surely the wishes granted by Kirei would be no different. Surely they would only be fake.

Perhaps his thoughts were written on his face, as the priest merely laughed.

"Are you not the victor of the Fifth Holy Grail War?" The priest spread his hands. "It is the duty of the victor to partake of the spoils. Even if he runs from it, or even if he repudiates it, history will say the same of any conqueror. Never was a village conquered without being pillaged. Never was a war won with no spoils. Never can a Holy Grail War be completed without a wish being granted."

The priest's words hung in the air, dense like the notes of the church organ. Shirou had the sense that he was there again, back in the Grail War, facing the hard truths offered him by the priest. Only this time, Saber was not waiting for him outside.

"I have no wish the Grail can grant, Kotomine. I only wish to save everyone, but you know as well as I do that Grail can't save anyone. It's blackened. Corrupted. And even if it could, the Grail doesn't exist anymore. We destroyed it."

In the months following the conclusion of the War, much had been done. Rin had worked with her teacher in London, Lord El Melloi II, and the Greater Grail of Fuyuki was dismantled. The collective dream of the Einzbern and Matou and Tohsaka had ended.

But the priest only laughed. "Destroyed it?"

Darkness pooled about him, and Shirou soon realized it wasn't merely shadow—or, if it was shadow, it had become something more than the mere absence of light. It coiled and slithered about the ground, gathering into darker and darker pools like some insidious snake. And the priest continued to speak, his voice all the more sinister.

"The Greater Grail destroyed, yes; but it was never the Greater Grail that granted wishes. It granted a miracle, and from the miracle came power. But power alone could not do what the Grail did. Power alone could not save the world."

"Save the world?" A righteous rage rose in Shirou, boiling in his voice. "Who did the Grail save? The hundreds burned to death in their homes in the Fuyuki fire? The thousands who would've been victims of the overflowing Grail that Saber destroyed?"

Then the priest's eyes gleamed, and Shirou's stomach dropped. "Ah; but you never wished to save this world, Emiya Shirou. You only wished to be a hero. You only wished for the ideal—to save. Isn't that what you're seeking—that brilliant ideal of saving everyone? Why would it matter which 'everyone' you're saving? Was not your wish to be someone who saves, regardless of who needs it?"

"What are you saying, Kotomine? Of course I want to save this world. What other planet is there to save but this one? If I'm going to save everyone, it's going to be everyone around me, everyone in the world I live in!"

Kirei chuckled, watching Shirou with calm dark eyes. "And there is your problem: this world doesn't want to be saved. There is no opportunity for you to be the kind of hero you want to be, fighting evil to save them all. Don't you wish to live your ideal? Then, by necessity, it cannot be this world which you save; there is no threat to save it from. If there was, would you not have already done it?"

The priest spread his hands. "Where, then, are the souls you've saved, Emiya Shirou? Show them to me! What of the poor, who come in droves to this very church you lounge in, seeking but a single meal? Have you saved them from hunger? What of the wars in the Middle East? What of the torments of the oppressed? What of the scourge of human trafficking?"

Shirou could say nothing, and regret lay heavy in his heart—regret and a hard truth, the very kind which Kirei loved to shove in his face. He couldn't save them because he didn't know how. The modern world doesn't work like a Holy Grail War. There's no charging in to slay the wicked and save the innocent. No: if anyone had tried that, it was Kiritsugu, and Shirou had heard the end of that tragic story.

"So you cannot save this world, can you, Emiya Shirou? Your methods are useless. Your wish is unfulfilled. Even if it were possible, the mere fact you haven't done so indicates it's not the kind of world you want to save, even if you could. Your wish isn't able to be satisfied by this world. Hence, you will need to save a different one."

As if waiting for a cue, the pools of darkness began to rise. Shirou, with a shout of "Trace on!", brought Kanshou and Bakuya to bear, swiping at the darkness, but they only slid through like air. Whatever this was, it wasn't something physical. But as he tried to make his way forward out of the front entrance, it seemed to slow him down, clinging to him in dark tendrils, and once it hit his waist, he could barely move his legs at all.

"Emiya Shirou. Even now, your heart is not satisfied. Even now, your dream is unrealized. Even now, you wish for something greater—but this world cannot grant your wish. You know this, and so you've come here, to this church of God, night after night, offering a prayer you don't expect to be answered."

Shirou's heart began to beat faster as the tide of darkness rose, higher and higher, obscuring his vision, threatening to plunge him entirely beneath it—

"Rejoice, Emiya Shirou! For your prayer will be answered!" And the priest laughed. "You can only learn the truth of your ideal if you have the opportunity to live it; and that is your wish that I grant tonight, boy. Welcome the darkness, for soon you'll awaken in the world you've longed for: the mere remnant of a planet, drowning in evil, ripe for the rise of a hero."

The last thing Shirou saw was the smirking face of Kotomine Kirei before darkness covered him and all fell silent, and his final words sang him to sleep:

"And then the veil will lift, and you shall know the truth behind it."

A/N: Forgive me for the long delay in updating, but I took some time off writing to improve my writing abilities; as such, I've rewritten this story and continued where I left off. Please enjoy the new story. I have a few chapters past this one written already, so I should have a steady upload schedule for at least the next few weeks. Hopefully that buffer will be enough for me to consistently get weekly updates out for you all!