The holiday season arrives at True Cross Academy, and Rin and his friends kick things off with a combined birthday and Christmas party. More happy news comes as they are invited to Kyoto for the New Year's wedding of Shima's older brother. But underneath the festivities runs a feeling of great uneasiness--tension grows between Yukio and Rin as they question the circumstances of their birth and who their mother really was. Elsewhere, Lightning continues to press the suspects of his investigation of the Illuminati. Sooner or later, something's got to give.