“I only manifested here,” the goddess within Filia answered carelessly, “because power I’d left in this world from the start activated.”
“Power?”
“That’s right. A blessing I bestowed on this world.”
“. . .?”
Her existence here was the result of a blessing to the world.
Haruri’s face made it plain that she did not understand what the goddess meant. Filia shrugged and continued.
“Of course, it would probably be a curse to those blasphemers.”
“You mean . . . the goddess Ishtar’s power resides in that ‘vessel’?”
“Not just my power; my personality too. Although they’re basically the same thing to beings like us. . . . This body just had a program in it, you know. It was easy to overwrite. I think she’s a sacrificial priestess prepared as a final terminal to receive the Grail’s power, or something like that.”
The goddess seemed uninterested in her vessel’s origins. She returned the topic to herself as she stared happily at jewelry.
“There was a time when we could manifest in our proper forms, but if this were back then, the humans in this town would have burst and died a long time ago.”
“Modern human bodies can’t withstand the magical energy of the Age of Gods. . . .”
Haruri had heard something like that before.
The age when gods and humans had coexisted was over, and magical energy was vanishing from the world. Humanity had adapted to that environment, and their bodies could no longer withstand their original one.
Haruri did not know if it were evolution or regression, but just as humans could not survive in too high an oxygen density, they had already begun to part ways with the world of magecraft.
And not at the societal level—with the exception of mages and magecraft-users who actually continued to use magical energy.
“Well, the environmental changes and my inability to manifest are for different reasons.
Even if you recreated the same environment and tried to summon me . . . I suppose it would be noble if I thought of it as a sacrifice, but there’s really no point if there aren’t any humans to praise me in exchange for protection.”
“Then why go to the trouble of manifesting in an era like—”
“I told you, I bestowed a blessing on the world. It just activated successfully.”
At that point, the goddess narrowed her eyes and flashed a bewitching smile.
“I can hardly believe that something like this could really happen. . . . I’d like to applaud the me back then.”
“?”
“You see, when I was insulted by a blasphemous king and that piece of junk threw my divine beast’s entrails at me, I seared a blessing into the world. I kept going until I dissolved into the human order and vanished.”
Fear is beauty, and beauty is primordial fear.
That was how it seemed to Haruri when she looked into Filia’s eyes.
Her keen features made Haruri’s blood run cold. They were just too beautiful—if she had been the object of their hatred, Haruri felt sure that not only would she be unable to resist, she would actually feel grateful.
The perfected rage and hatred of a goddess of beauty.
To be precise, a “vestige” of the passions of the deities who once ruled this planet were reigniting an ancient wrath within the vessel called Filia.
“If those two ever returned to this planet and reunited . . .”
Faced with a miracle she had arrived at amid an infinite expanse of possibilities, the being who called herself a goddess wore a smile so beautiful that it would freeze the heart of anyone who saw it.
“I would devote my divinity and soul . . . to protecting humans.”

Fate/Strange Fake: Volume 6, Chapter 18 ("As Dream and Reality are Both Illusion I")