Mercy Reborn (Warhammer Fantasy x Genshin Impact)

[DefenderGerson]

The hospice of the White Dove stood by the river in Altdorf, and for three days its doors had not closed.

Zenka Badurius had stopped counting the beds. There were not enough beds anyway. The wounded lay on straw, on cloaks, on the bare stone of the chapel floor, and the sisters stepped between them with bowls of water and strips of linen that were no longer clean.

"Sister." A hand caught her sleeve. A halberdier of the Reikland, by the colours on what was left of his coat. His leg ended below the knee. "Sister, is it true? They're saying the city's lost."

Zenka knelt and lifted the bandage. It was soaked through again.

"Lie still," she said.

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have." She pressed fresh linen to the wound and held it there with both hands. "Lie still and let me work."

He laughed, a thin sound, and closed his eyes. Zenka kept pressing. She whispered the old words under her breath, the ones every novice learned before she learned to boil a needle.

Lady of Mercy, hear the ones who suffer. Lady of Tears, do not turn your face away.

For months now, praying had felt like speaking through a wall. She still said the words. She still believed them. But the warmth that used to answer, that small soft feeling in her chest like a hand on her shoulder, had been gone since winter.

'You are still there,' she told herself. 'You are only far away.'

The halberdier's hand slipped from her sleeve. Zenka looked down. His chest had stopped moving.

She stayed with him a moment longer anyway. That was also one of the old rules. No one should leave this world alone.

---

"They say she's free."

Mother Agathe said it quietly, as if the words might break. She was the oldest sister in the hospice, grey-haired and sharp-eyed, and in eleven years Zenka had never seen her hands shake. They shook now as she tied off a bandage.

"Who says?" Zenka asked.

"Travellers. A priest from Nuln. They say she was taken, held somewhere no mortal should go, and that someone brought her out." Agathe pulled the knot tight. "They say she is weak. That she needs time to heal."

"Time." Zenka looked at the windows. The sky over Altdorf had been the wrong colour for weeks, a sick yellow-green by day and no stars at night. "Is there any time left?"

Agathe did not answer. She moved to the next bed.

---

The cold came just after midnight.

Zenka noticed the water first. She dipped her cloth into the bowl and it came out stiff. A skin of ice had formed across the surface, thin as paper, in a room full of fires.

Then her breath began to fog. Then the candles bent low, all at once, as though something had breathed on them from very far away.

The flies went quiet.

There had always been flies in the hospice, no matter how hard the sisters scrubbed. Zenka hated them. Now they dropped from the walls and the windows and lay on the floor like scattered seeds, and the silence they left behind was worse than the buzzing.

Outside, the bells of Altdorf stopped ringing.

Someone in the courtyard screamed. Zenka went to the window. The dead were standing up. Soldiers who had been laid out under sheets that afternoon were rising stiffly to their feet, sheets sliding off their faces. Their eyes glowed a pale, cold green.

"The river gate," Mother Agathe said behind her, and her voice was steady again. "Everyone who can walk. Now."

"The ones who can't walk..."

"Zenka." Agathe took her by the shoulders. "Help the ones who can walk. That is what we can do. Go."

---

They were halfway to the river gate when the light came.

It began at the altar, small and white, like a candle someone had just lit. Then there was a dove, sitting on the altar rail as if it had always been there. Then the dove was gone, and a young woman stood in its place.

She wore white. Her hair fell loose around her face, and her eyes were wet with tears that never quite fell. She was not tall. She was not dressed in armour or crowned in gold. She looked like any of the novices Zenka had trained, a girl of eighteen or nineteen who had been crying a long time.

The sisters fell to their knees. Zenka fell with them. She did not decide to; her legs simply folded.

'It's her. It's really her.'

Then Zenka looked closer, and her joy turned to something colder.

The light around the Lady was wrong. It flickered like a candle in the wind, bright and then thin and then bright again. Faint marks still lay across her skin, pale and healing, like the shadows of old sores. Around her right wrist was a ring of raw, reddened skin, as if something tight had been clasped there for a very long time and only recently taken off.

When the Lady took a step forward, she stumbled.

'She's hurt,' Zenka thought. 'Who could hurt her?'

The Lady caught herself on the altar rail. She looked at the sisters kneeling on the floor, at the wounded on their straw, at the dead man Zenka had just left. Her tears spilled over at last.

"Go," she said. Her voice was soft, almost a child's. "Please."

Then she turned toward the great doors of the chapel and walked to stand in front of them, between the doors and the river gate where the sisters would run.

As she passed, something drifted down from her shoulders. A single white feather turned in the air, slow and light, and landed in Zenka's open hands.

---

The doors did not burst open. They simply opened, as if they had always belonged to him.

He was taller than the doorway, and he bent nothing to pass through it. A crown of black iron sat on a skull that had been dead for thousands of years. Green fire burned where his eyes should have been. The cold rolled off him like water off a cliff.

Zenka knew the name. Every child in the Empire knew the name, from stories told to make them behave.

Nagash.

He looked down at the Lady in White. He did not look at anyone else. To him, Zenka understood, the rest of them were not there at all.

"So," Nagash said. His voice was not loud. It did not need to be. "The Plague Father has left little of you."

The Lady did not answer. She stood with her hands at her sides. Her light trembled.

"I have taken gods greater than you," Nagash said. "All that lives will end. All that ends is mine. You know this, little goddess. You have watched the dead go to your father's gate since the beginning."

"Mother," someone whispered behind Zenka. "Mother Agathe, we have to go."

Zenka could not move. She was holding the feather so tightly her fingers hurt.

'Fight him,' she begged silently. 'Please, Lady. Just once. Fight him.'

The Lady did not fight.

She looked up at Nagash, at the cold crown and the green fire and the long dead face, and she began to weep. Not for herself. Zenka could see it plainly, the way she had seen it in Mother Agathe's face a thousand times, bent over beds where nothing more could be done.

She was weeping for him.

"You are so cold," the Lady said softly. "So cold, and for so long." She lifted one hand, as if to touch his, the way a healer touches a wound. "Did no one ever try to heal you?"

For a moment, a single moment, the green fire in his eyes was still.

"I need no healing," said Nagash.

The Lady smiled at him through her tears. It was the saddest thing Zenka had ever seen.

"Maybe in a better time..." she said.

Nagash reached out.

Zenka did not see what happened next. Mother Agathe's hand closed on her collar and dragged her backward, and the world became stone and shouting and the river gate's iron bars. But she saw the light. She saw it pulled from the chapel the way a candle flame bends into a draught. It stretched and thinned and went out.

And then there was nothing.

---

They ran along the riverbank in the dark. Behind them, Altdorf was burning green.

Zenka prayed as she ran. She did not mean to. The words came the way breath comes.

Lady of Mercy, hear the ones who suffer.

Nothing answered. Not the faint, far-off warmth of the last few months. Not anything. It was like calling into an empty house and hearing your own voice come back off the walls.

'She's gone,' Zenka thought, and the thought was too large to hold. 'She's gone. There's no one there.'

The ground shook. Ahead of them, the sky split open.

It did not look like lightning. It looked like a tear in cloth, a long bright wound across the dark, and through it poured a light so clean and so strange that Zenka had to shield her eyes. The river lifted toward it. The stones of the bank lifted toward it. The air itself began to pull.

"Zenka!" Mother Agathe's hand was in hers. "Hold on! Hold on to me!"

Zenka held on. She held on with one hand, and with the other she held the feather, and she would not let go of either.

The pull grew stronger. Her feet left the ground.

She felt Agathe's fingers slip, one by one, and then they were gone.

"Mother!"

There was no answer. There was only the light, rushing up to meet her, and the wind, and the long fall.

Zenka closed her eyes and pressed the feather to her chest.

It was still warm.

 

[DefenderGerson]

Shalya woke up screaming.

She did not know she was screaming until the sound filled the room and came back to her off the walls. Her face was wet. Her blanket was on the floor. Her hands were reaching for something in the dark, something white and warm that had been there a moment ago and was gone now, swallowed up by the cold.

"No," she sobbed. "No, no, give her back..."

The door banged open.

"Shalya!"

Mira stood in the doorway with a broom raised over her shoulder like a spear. Her hair was a mess. She was wearing one boot and half of her Knights of Favonius uniform, buttoned wrong, and her eyes were already scanning every corner of the room for an enemy.

There was no enemy. There never was.

Mira lowered the broom with a long sigh. "Same dream?"

Shalya nodded. She could not speak yet. Her throat was too tight.

Mira crossed the room in three strides and sat on the edge of the bed. She did not ask anything else. She just pulled her little sister against her shoulder and held on, the way she had done since they were children.

Footsteps came down the hall, slow and heavy. Their father appeared in the doorway with the grey blanket already in his arms. He did not need to fetch it. It lived folded on the chair beside Shalya's door, because it had been needed so many nights that no one bothered to put it away anymore.

Mori was a tall man, pale, with dark hair tied back and the stillness of someone who spent his days among graves. The raven on his shoulder ruffled its feathers and let out a tired croak.

"I know," Mori told the raven quietly. "I know."

He wrapped the blanket around Shalya and Mira both, and put one large hand on top of Shalya's head.

Last came their mother. Vérène carried a cup of warm milk with honey, and she held it out without a word. Her eyes, grey and sharp behind her reading glasses, moved over her daughter's face as if she were reading a page.

"Drink," she said. "Then tell me, if you want to."

Shalya drank. The milk was too sweet. It was always too sweet. It helped anyway.

"It was the same," she whispered at last. "The cold place. And the king."

Mira's arm tightened around her.

"He was so cold," Shalya said. "He didn't have a heart. He didn't have anything. And he took..." She stopped. She did not know what he took. She only knew it had been hers, and that it was gone, and that losing it hurt more than anything she had ever felt awake.

Vérène took the empty cup and set it down. "Did you see his face?"

"No. Just the cold." Shalya wiped her eyes on the blanket. "I'm sorry. I woke everyone again."

"Don't," Mira said firmly. "Don't apologise for that. Ever."

"But you have training at dawn..."

"Then I'll be tired at training. Eula can mock me. I'll survive."

Shalya laughed, a small wet laugh, and the room felt warmer.

Something tapped on the window.

All four of them turned. On the sill outside, pale against the dark blue of early morning, sat a white dove. It tilted its head at Shalya. Then it settled down and tucked its feet under itself, as if it meant to stay.

Shalya's shoulders loosened. Her breathing slowed. The last of her tears dried on her cheeks.

"Your friend is back," Mira said.

"She always comes," Shalya said softly. "After the dream. She always comes."

No one in the family thought this was strange anymore. The dove had been coming for years. It came after every nightmare, sat on the sill until sunrise, and then flew away toward the cathedral. Mira called it Shalya's guard. Vérène called it a curious case of animal behaviour. Shalya just called it her friend.

Only Mori said nothing at all. He stood very still and looked at the dove for a long time, with an expression none of his daughters could read.

'Why do I feel like I know you?' he thought.

The raven on his shoulder made a low, uneasy sound.

---

Breakfast in the house near the cemetery gate was always loud, and this morning was no different.

"I'm fine," Shalya insisted for the fourth time, through a mouthful of bread. "Really, I'm fine. Please don't worry?"

"You said that yesterday," Mira said.

"And I was fine yesterday!"

"You cried on the stairs yesterday."

"That was a different thing! I stepped on Papa's raven!"

The raven, perched on the back of Mori's chair, gave her a look of deep personal injury.

"I said I was sorry," Shalya told it.

Mira snorted into her tea. She was dressed properly now, every button in the right place, her spear leaning by the door. In uniform she looked older and harder, the knight who had risen through the ranks so fast that half of Mondstadt whispered about it. At the breakfast table she still stole the last sausage from her sister's plate when she thought no one was looking.

"Mira," Vérène said, without looking up from her book.

Mira put the sausage back.

"Strange," Mira said after a moment, to change the subject. "I had a dream too, actually."

Shalya perked up at once. "Really? What kind?"

"Nothing like yours. Just..." Mira frowned into her cup. "An eagle. A big one, flying over a land I've never seen. It was hot there. Dry. There were white walls and the sea was very blue." She shrugged, embarrassed. "Silly. I've never even been south of Liyue Harbour."

"That's not silly," Shalya said. "That sounds beautiful."

"It felt like home." Mira's frown deepened. "Which is the silly part."

Mori set down his spoon. He did not speak often at breakfast. When he did, everyone listened.

"I dreamed of the gate again," he said quietly.

The table went still for a moment. Mori had dreamed of the gate for as long as his daughters could remember. A great black gate, he said, and a garden on the other side of it, and ravens on every branch. He never said what was behind the gate. Once, when Shalya was very small, she had asked him, and he had only smiled and said, "In time."

Vérène closed her book.

She did this very rarely. She was a woman who read at breakfast, read at dinner, and was known at the Knights' library for reading while walking up stairs. Lisa had once bet her a week of tea that she could not go a full day without a book. Vérène had won the bet and then read three books the next day out of spite.

Now she set the book aside, and she looked at Shalya, and something in her calm face had changed.

"The cold king," she said. "With no heart."

Shalya nodded slowly.

Vérène was quiet for a moment.

"I had that dream too," she said.

Nobody moved.

"Last night?" Mira asked.

"Last night. And before." Vérène folded her hands on the table. "I saw a place full of light, and a cold that put it out. I did not see what was taken. But I knew it was something I loved more than anything."

Mori turned his head and looked at his wife. She looked back at him. For a long moment neither of them said anything, and Shalya had the strange feeling that they were having a whole conversation without words.

"Well," Mira said loudly, standing up and grabbing her spear. "This family is very strange, and I'm going to be late. Jean will give me that tired look. You know the one."

"The one where she hasn't slept in three days?" Shalya asked.

"That's the only look she has." Mira ruffled her sister's hair on her way to the door. "Go help Barbara. Be good. If anyone bothers you, tell me their name."

"Nobody bothers me!"

"Tell me their name anyway."

The door closed behind her. Shalya giggled and finished her bread.

Across the table, her parents were still looking at each other.

---

The Cathedral of Favonius was the tallest building in Mondstadt, and in the morning light its white stone almost glowed. Shalya climbed the long stairs two at a time, her little Hydro Vision bouncing at her hip on its silver chain.

She had received it three years ago, on a day she could still barely explain. She had been sitting with an old woman at the church who was dying of a fever, holding her hand, crying because there was nothing to be done. One of her tears had fallen onto the old woman's wrist.

There had been a flash of blue. Then the Vision was in Shalya's lap, cool and bright, and the old woman's fever was gone.

The old woman was still alive. She sold flowers near the city gate now, and she gave Shalya a Cecilia every time she passed.

"Shalya! Good morning!"

Barbara waved from the cathedral doors, bright and cheerful in her deaconess dress, her blonde twin-tails swinging. She was the most popular person in Mondstadt. People came to the church just to hear her sing, and Shalya did not blame them.

"Good morning, Barbara!"

"You look tired." Barbara bent a little to look into her face, which Shalya tried not to take personally. Everyone bent a little to look into her face. "Bad night?"

"Just a dream." Shalya smiled. "I'm all right now. What do we have today?"

Barbara clapped her hands. "Lots! Two adventurers from the Guild got into a fight with some slimes. A fisherman cut his hand. Oh, and there are a few people with colds. The wind has been very strange lately."

Shalya nodded. Everyone had noticed the wind. For weeks now there had been sudden gusts strong enough to knock carts over, and the farmers in Springvale talked about a huge shadow in the sky. The knights said not to worry. That made people worry more.

They worked through the morning together. Barbara sang to the patients waiting their turn, and Shalya cleaned wounds and wrapped bandages and listened to people talk. That was the part she liked best, if she was honest. Not the healing. The listening. People told her things they did not tell anyone else, and she did not know why.

Around midday, an elderly woman came in leaning on a cane. She looked at Shalya, smiled warmly, and patted her on the head.

"Oh, what a sweet little helper," she said. "Where's your mother, dear? Are you waiting for her?"

Shalya puffed up her cheeks. "I'm the same age as Barbara!"

The old woman looked at Barbara. Then she looked at Shalya. Then she laughed and gave her a sweet from her pocket.

"Of course you are, dear."

Barbara was trying very hard not to laugh behind her hand.

"It's not funny," Shalya muttered, unwrapping the sweet.

"It's a little funny."

"It happens every week."

"It's because you're cute!"

"I don't want to be cute. I want to be taken seriously." Shalya put the sweet in her mouth. "This is very good, though."

---

The fisherman came in just after that.

He was a big man with a red beard, and he had wrapped his hand in a dirty rag that was already dark with blood. He grinned at them as if it was nothing.

"Just a scratch," he said. "Gutting knife slipped."

Barbara unwrapped the rag and winced. It was not a scratch. The cut was deep, across the palm.

"I'll get the water," Barbara said. "Shalya, can you hold this?"

Shalya took the fisherman's hand and pressed a clean cloth over the wound. He tried to keep smiling, but she could see the pain behind it, and the worry. A fisherman needed his hands. If this healed badly, he could not work.

'Please,' she thought. 'Please let it be all right.'

Her eyes stung. She was crying again. She always cried when people were hurt. It was embarrassing, but she had never been able to stop it.

A tear slipped off her chin and fell onto the fisherman's palm.

At her hip, the Vision flared. Not the soft blue glow it gave when she used Hydro for small things. It was bright, almost white, and for one heartbeat Shalya felt warmth rush out of her chest and down her arms like a river breaking its banks.

Under the cloth, something changed.

"Huh," said the fisherman. "That's... it doesn't hurt anymore."

Shalya lifted the cloth. The deep cut was not gone. But it had closed into a thin pink line, as if it had been healing for a week instead of a minute.

She put the cloth back down quickly.

"Here's the water!" Barbara came back with a bowl and a fresh roll of bandages. "Let me see?"

"It's not as bad as it looked!" Shalya said, too fast. "It just needs wrapping. Lots of wrapping."

Barbara gave her a curious look, then shrugged and smiled. "Well, that's lucky! Hold still, sir."

Shalya wrapped her own hands in her apron and tried to stop them from shaking.

'That was too much,' she thought. 'That was much too much. Visions don't do that. Barbara's Vision doesn't do that.'

It had happened before. Not often. Only a few times, and only when she cried. Each time she told herself it was nothing, that maybe her Vision was just a little stronger than most. Each time a small voice in her chest said it was not nothing at all.

Something buzzed past her ear.

Shalya froze.

A fly. A fat black fly, circling lazily over the bowl of bloody water. It landed on the rim. It rubbed its little legs together.

"Eek!"

Shalya leapt backward so fast she knocked over a stool. She ended up pressed against the far wall with her hands over her face.

"Get it away, get it away, please, get it away!"

The fisherman stared at her. Barbara stared at her. The fly, unbothered, took off and drifted out an open window.

"It's gone," Barbara said gently. "Shalya, it's gone. It was just a fly."

Shalya lowered her hands slowly. Her heart was pounding. Her skin was crawling all over, as if something rotten was very close.

"I know," she whispered. "I know it's just a fly. I don't know why I'm like this."

'Why am I so scared of them?' she thought. 'It doesn't make any sense.'

But somewhere very deep, under the part of her that thought in words, there was a memory she could not reach. A cage. A smell. A long, long time of buzzing in the dark.

She shivered and picked up the stool.

---

Across the city, in the Knights of Favonius headquarters, Mira stood in front of a desk piled with paperwork.

"Reports of strong winds near Windrise again," Jean said. She looked exactly as tired as Mira had promised. "And two more farmers claim they saw something very large flying over Stormbearer Mountains. I need someone to take a patrol out tomorrow."

"I'll go," Mira said at once.

Jean looked up. "You were out last week."

"I'll go again." Mira stood straighter. "With respect, Acting Grand Master, if something is threatening Mondstadt, I want to see it with my own eyes."

Jean almost smiled. "You sound like Eula."

"Please don't tell her that. She'll be insufferable."

---

In the library, Vérène sat across from Lisa with a cup of tea she had not touched.

"You're quiet today, darling," Lisa said, turning a page lazily. "Usually you've corrected three of my citations by now."

"I'm thinking."

"About?"

Vérène looked out the window, toward the cathedral. "About dreams," she said. "And whether two people can share one."

Lisa raised an eyebrow, but for once she did not tease.

---

And at the cemetery outside the city walls, Mori knelt beside a fresh grave and set down a bunch of white flowers.

All around him, his ravens sat on the headstones. There were more than usual today. Dozens of them. They did not caw or squabble the way they normally did.

They were all facing the same direction. East, and a little south, toward the far mountains on the edge of the world.

Mori looked where they looked. He saw nothing but sky.

"What is it?" he asked them quietly. "What are you waiting for?"

The ravens did not answer. They only watched.

---

The sun was going down when the bitter man came into the church.

Shalya was alone in the hall, putting away bandages. Barbara had gone to rehearse with the choir. The man who came in did not kneel at the statue or light a candle. He sat down hard on the end of a bench and stared at nothing.

He was old, with a scarred face and a missing ear, and he smelled of the Angel's Share. Shalya had seen him before. He came in sometimes, sat for an hour, and left without speaking to anyone.

She brought him a cup of water. He did not take it.

"Are you hurt, sir?" she asked.

"Not the kind of hurt you can fix, girl."

She sat down at the other end of the bench and waited. She did not push. That was another thing she had always known how to do, without anyone teaching her.

After a long time, he spoke.

"My son went out with the Knights' expedition. Years ago." His voice was rough. "Never came back. I came here every day and prayed to Barbatos. Every day. You know what I got?" He laughed, and it was an ugly sound. "Nothing. Wind. Gods don't answer. Nobody ever helped me and nobody ever will."

Shalya looked down at her hands. Her eyes were stinging again.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Don't be sorry. Just don't lie to me and say it gets better."

"I won't lie to you."

She did not know what else to say. She sat there with him while the light turned orange and then red on the cathedral floor. She thought about her own nightmares, about reaching for something warm and finding only cold, and she thought that maybe she understood him a little.

The old man stood up at last. He looked at her, and some of the hardness in his face had gone soft and tired.

"You're a strange child," he said.

"I'm the same age as Barbara," she said automatically.

He almost smiled. Then the smile went away. "I'll stop coming here someday. I'll stop hoping. It's easier."

The words came out of Shalya before she could think about them. They came from somewhere very far away, somewhere older than her, and they tasted of tears.

"Maybe in a better time..."

She stopped. The old man was staring at her.

So was she. Inside, she was staring at herself.

'Where did that come from?'

A cold feeling crept up her back, as if someone had opened a door onto winter. She had said those words before. She was sure of it. She had said them to someone who was cold, so very cold, and it had been the last thing she ever...

The feeling slipped away like water through her fingers.

"Better time," the old man repeated slowly. He shook his head and walked to the doors. At the threshold he paused, without turning around. "Maybe," he said gruffly. And he was gone.

Shalya sat alone in the red light for a long while.

---

That night, the dream came again.

It always began the same way. Light, warm and endless, and a feeling of being loved by more people than she could count. Then the cold. Then the king with no heart, tall and dark, reaching for her. Then the light going out.

Shalya braced herself for the moment she always woke up screaming.

It did not come.

Instead, the dream kept going.

She was falling. No, someone else was falling, and she was watching from very far away. A young woman in a white habit, tumbling through a sky made of light. Her hair was loose. Her face was streaked with tears and soot. Clutched to her chest, held so tightly her knuckles were white, was a single feather.

A white feather.

The young woman was calling out. Her voice was thin and lost in the roar of the light, but Shalya heard it anyway.

"Mother!"

Shalya's heart turned over.

She did not know this woman. She had never seen her before in her life. And yet she wanted, more than she had ever wanted anything, to reach out and catch her.

'Hold on,' Shalya thought. 'Please hold on.'

The light swallowed the falling woman, and the dream ended.

---

Shalya opened her eyes.

She was not screaming. For the first time in years, she was not even crying. She lay very still in the dark with her heart beating fast and her hand stretched out toward the ceiling, as if she had been reaching for something.

"...Who are you?" she whispered.

No one answered. The house was quiet. No footsteps in the hall, no Mira with her broom. For once, she had not woken anyone.

Shalya sat up and looked toward the window, the way she always did, for her friend.

The windowsill was empty. The dove was gone.

In its place lay a single white feather, glowing faintly in the moonlight.

 

[DefenderGerson]

The dice hit the table, bounced twice, and came to rest.

Six and six.

"Ehe~" Ran Le leaned back in his chair and spread his hands. "Would you look at that. Lucky me."

Around the table, four Mondstadt men stared at the dice as if the dice had personally insulted their mothers. It was the fifth double six in a row. The pile of mora in the middle of the table had been very large an hour ago. Now it was sitting in front of Ran Le, and it was even larger.

"Again," growled the biggest man. He had arms like tree trunks and a face like a closed door.

"Ah, I'd love to," Ran Le said, already sweeping coins into his pouch. "Really, I would. But my mother always told me, 'Little Le, quit while the table still likes you.'"

"Your mother," said the big man slowly, "was a cheat."

"She was," Ran Le agreed cheerfully. "A very good one. Then she ran off and left me on the docks of Liyue Harbour with nothing but these." He held up the dice between two fingers. They were old bone, yellowed, the pips worn almost smooth. "Best inheritance a boy could ask for. Gentlemen, it's been a pleasure."

He was out the back door before the big man finished standing up.

The night air of Mondstadt was cool and smelled of dandelions and wine. Ran Le walked quickly down the stone streets, jingling his pouch and humming a Liyue harbour song. He was nineteen years old, lean and quick, with sharp eyes, a grin that made shopkeepers count their stock twice, and a short Liyue blade at his hip that he used far more often to cut purse strings than to fight.

He did not have a Vision. He had never wanted one. What he had was luck, and luck had never failed him once in his whole life.

It was a good night. He had won enough to eat for a week.

So why did he feel like this?

He stopped on a bridge over the canal and looked down at his reflection in the dark water. The feeling was there again, the one that always came after a big win. Heavy and sour, sitting in his chest like a stone.

Guilt.

'Why do I always feel guilty when I win?' he thought. 'I've cheated half of Liyue and never lost a minute of sleep. So why?'

But he knew why, or at least he knew where it came from. The dream. The one he'd had since he was a little boy. A young woman with tears in her eyes, so many tears, looking at him not with anger but with something much worse. Kindness. And the taste of salt on his lips, as if he had drunk her tears.

He never saw her face clearly. He only knew that he had done something terrible to her once, and that she had forgiven him.

Ran Le shook his head hard and laughed at himself.

"Getting soft, Little Le," he muttered. "That's what too much Mondstadt wine does to you."

He rolled the dice on the bridge rail out of habit. Six and six.

Behind him, two drunk men were talking loudly as they stumbled past.

"...I'm telling you, cut my hand to the bone and she fixed it in a minute! Little thing, works at the cathedral with Barbara. Cried the whole time, though."

"The crying healer? My wife says she's a saint."

"She's a child, is what she is."

Ran Le caught the dice and went very still.

A healer who cried.

He didn't know why his heart was suddenly beating so fast.

---

"You're going to be fine," Shalya said firmly. "Don't move. Let me see it."

The young man sitting on the bench in front of her was holding his left arm and groaning dramatically. The sleeve of his Liyue-style coat was stained a deep, bright red. He had stumbled into the cathedral just after noon, clutching the arm and gasping about a terrible accident with a sword.

"It's bad," he moaned. "Very bad. I might lose the arm. I might lose my life. Oh, the pain. Oh, the cruel world."

Shalya's eyes were already filling up. She hated seeing anyone hurt. "Shh. Don't talk. Just let me look."

"Is that... are you crying?" He peeked at her from under his messy dark hair. "For me? Ehe~ How sweet. Lucky me, getting stabbed in Mondstadt, where even the healers are pretty."

"Please hold still."

"I'm holding still! I'm so still! Look at how still I am!"

She rolled up his sleeve carefully, bracing herself for something terrible.

There was no wound.

There was a lot of red, sticky and sweet-smelling. But under it, his arm was completely, perfectly fine. Not even a scratch.

Shalya looked at the arm. Then she sniffed. Then she looked at him.

"Is this... berry jam?"

The young man's grin froze.

"It's a very rare Liyue medicine," he said, "that looks exactly like jam."

"It's jam."

"...It's jam," he admitted.

Shalya wiped her eyes on her sleeve. She should have been angry. Barbara would have been angry. Mira would have thrown him down the cathedral steps by now. But when Shalya looked at this ridiculous boy with jam all over his arm and his guilty, hopeful face, all she felt was a strange bubbling warmth.

She started to laugh.

She laughed so hard she had to sit down on the bench beside him. She laughed until her eyes were wet again, but in a good way this time.

"I'm sorry," she gasped. "I'm sorry, it's just... you came all the way here... with jam..."

He stared at her. "You're not angry?"

"Why would I be angry? You're not hurt. That's the best news I've had all day!" She wiped her eyes again and smiled up at him. "It's all right. I forgive you."

Something happened to his face then. All the cheek and grin fell out of it at once, and for just a second he looked like someone had punched him in the stomach.

'I forgive you.'

He had heard those words before. In exactly that soft voice. He was sure of it.

Shalya felt it too, a little tug somewhere deep inside her, like a thread being pulled. She had said those words to him before. Hadn't she? No, that was silly. She had never seen him in her life.

They sat there looking at each other for a moment too long.

Then Ran Le shook himself and the grin came back, a little shakier than before. "Ehe~ Well. That's a first. Usually when people catch me, they hit me." He held out his clean hand. "Ran Le. From Liyue. Professional... businessman."

"Shalya." She shook his hand. "Do you always pretend to be stabbed to meet people?"

"Only very special people." He winked. "I heard there was a healer at the cathedral who cries when she works. I had to see for myself. And I have to say, the stories didn't do you justice. Trust me, I've seen a lot of pretty girls in Liyue, and..."

"How old are you?" Shalya asked.

"Nineteen. Why?"

"Then you should know better than to flirt with girls in a church."

He blinked. Then he looked at her more closely: her small size, her round face, the way her feet didn't quite touch the floor from the bench. His expression shifted into horror.

"Wait. Wait, wait. How old are you? Are you even... is your mother around? Should I be talking to her instead?"

Shalya puffed up her cheeks.

"I'm the same age as Barbara!"

---

He did not leave after that. He tried to, twice, and both times he ended up back at the door, asking her some new question. Where was she from? (Here. Born in Mondstadt.) How long had she been a healer? (Always, it felt like.) Did she always cry? (Yes. It was embarrassing. Please don't mention it.)

Finally, while Shalya was rolling bandages, he leaned against the wall beside her and lowered his voice.

"Say, little healer. Have you ever been on an adventure?"

"An adventure?"

"A real one. Ruins. Monsters. Treasure." He spread his hands like a storyteller. "There's an old Domain out near Wolvendom. Cecilia Garden, the locals call it. Ancient ruins from before the old god of the storms fell, full of water and mist and very old, very valuable things. Nobody's cleared it in years."

Shalya's eyes went wide. She had heard stories about Domains, of course. Everyone had. But she had never been outside the city walls further than the farms of Springvale.

"Why do you want to go?"

"The treasure, obviously." He grinned. "But I'm a careful businessman. And a careful businessman knows you never go into a dangerous place without a healer. Just in case." He paused. "And I can't think of a better healer in all of Mondstadt."

It was flattery. Shalya knew it was flattery. She was not stupid.

But an adventure. A real adventure.

"I'll have to ask my family," she said.

Ran Le's grin got a little wider. "Of course! Of course. How bad could they be?"

---

Dinner at the house by the cemetery gate was very quiet that evening.

It had not been quiet at first. It had been loud and warm and normal, with Mira complaining about patrol duty and Vérène correcting her grammar and Mori's raven trying to steal potatoes. Then Shalya had said, brightly, between bites:

"Oh! A nice boy from Liyue invited me to clear a Domain with him tomorrow."

And everything stopped.

Mira's fork was halfway to her mouth. It stayed there. Vérène slowly lowered her teacup. On the back of Mori's chair, the raven froze with a potato in its beak.

"A boy," said Mira.

"Yes."

"From Liyue."

"Yes."

"Invited you."

"Yes, to Cecilia Garden! He needs a healer, and he says..."

"Name," said Mira. "Now."

"Mira..."

"Name, Shalya. And age. And address. And what he does for a living."

"His name is Ran Le, he's nineteen, I don't know where he's staying, and he's a businessman."

Mira put her fork down very carefully. "What kind of businessman?"

Shalya hesitated, which was a mistake.

Vérène folded her hands on the table. Her voice was perfectly calm. That was always the most dangerous voice.

"How did you meet him, dear?"

"He came to the cathedral."

"Was he hurt?"

"...Not exactly."

"What does 'not exactly' mean?"

Shalya looked down at her plate. "He pretended to be stabbed. With jam."

There was a long silence.

"With jam," Vérène repeated.

"It was very funny!"

"He came to a church," Vérène said slowly, like a judge reading out the charges, "with a false wound, to deceive a healer, in order to gain her sympathy. And then he invited her alone into a dangerous ruin." She tilted her head. "Interesting."

"When you say it like that, it sounds bad."

"It is bad," said Mira. "It's extremely bad. Shalya, if anyone makes you cry, I will personally end their career. And possibly their country."

"He didn't make me cry! He made me laugh!"

"That's worse!"

From the head of the table came a soft, steady scraping sound.

Everyone turned. Mori had taken out the whetstone he used for his grave-digging tools and was sharpening the edge of a shovel. Slowly. Carefully. He did not look up. He did not say anything at all.

The raven dropped its potato and sighed.

"Papa," said Shalya. "Papa, please put the shovel down."

"I'm only cleaning it," said Mori mildly.

"At dinner?"

"It needed cleaning."

Scrape. Scrape.

Shalya looked around the table at her family. At Mira's thunderous face, her mother's calm judge's eyes, her father's shovel. She knew they loved her. She knew they were only afraid for her because of the nightmares, because she was small, because they had always had to protect her.

But for once, just once, she wanted something for herself.

She put her hands flat on the table and lifted her chin.

"I'm going," she said.

Mira opened her mouth.

"I'm going," Shalya said again, more quietly, but there was something in her voice that made her sister close her mouth again. "I've never been anywhere. I've never seen anything outside these walls. I spend every day healing people who come back from places I've never been. I want to go. Just once. Please?"

The table was silent.

Vérène and Mori looked at each other across it. That silent conversation again.

Finally, Vérène sighed. "Mira. Don't you have a patrol near Wolvendom this week?"

Mira's eyes lit up with a terrible light. "I do now."

---

Ran Le arrived at the city gate at dawn, whistling, with a pack on his back and his dice in his pocket.

He saw Shalya waiting by the bridge in a travelling cloak, her Vision glinting at her hip. He waved and grinned.

Then he saw who was standing beside her, and the grin died.

She was tall. She wore the full armour of the Knights of Favonius, polished until it shone. A long spear rested on her shoulder. Her arms were crossed, and her eyes were the coldest thing Ran Le had ever seen, and he had once tried to pick the pocket of a Qixing official in the middle of winter.

"Ran Le," Shalya said happily. "This is my big sister, Mira!"

"Ehe~," said Ran Le weakly. "Hello, big sister."

"Don't call me that," said Mira.

"Hello, Knight Mira."

"Better." She looked him up and down, slowly, as if measuring him for a coffin. "Shalya tells me you're a businessman."

"That's right."

"I asked around last night. A man matching your description won three hundred thousand mora at dice in the east tavern. Five double sixes in a row."

"I'm very lucky."

"Nobody is that lucky."

"I am." He pulled the bone dice from his pocket and showed her. "Want to see?"

Before he could roll, Mira's hand shot out and snatched them from his palm.

"Hey!"

"I'll hold these," Mira said, dropping them into her belt pouch. "For safekeeping."

"Those are my inheritance!"

"Then you'll be very careful not to do anything that makes me lose them in a river." She turned on her heel and started walking. "Come on. Wolvendom is half a day's walk. Try to keep up, businessman."

Ran Le stared after her. Then he looked at Shalya, who was trying very hard not to giggle.

"Your sister," he said, "is terrifying."

"She's very nice once you know her!"

"Does anyone survive long enough to know her?"

Something black flapped overhead. Ran Le looked up. A raven was circling above the gate. As he watched, it landed on a lamp post and fixed him with one beady eye.

Behind the raven, in the shadow of the city wall, a tall pale man in dark clothes stood perfectly still, holding a shovel.

He did not wave. He just watched.

Ran Le swallowed and hurried after the sisters.

---

Cecilia Garden lay in the green hills near Wolvendom, where the trees grew thick and the wind smelled of pine. The entrance was a ring of old stone with a monument at its centre, carved with symbols none of them could read.

It was sealed.

"An Anemo seal," Mira said, examining the monument. "It needs wind energy to open. Did you think of that, businessman? None of us have an Anemo Vision."

Ran Le scratched his head. "Ah. That is a small problem."

"So we came all this way for nothing," Mira said, sounding pleased about it.

"Wait." Shalya pointed. Around the clearing, half hidden in the grass and rocks, were four smaller stone shrines. Inside each one, something glowed faintly. "What are those?"

"Seelie courts," Mira said slowly. "I've read about them. The little lights are Seelies. If you free them and lead them home, sometimes they open old doors."

It took them most of the afternoon. One Seelie was buried under rubble that Mira smashed apart with a Geo strike from her spear. One was guarded by a camp of hilichurls, which Mira and Ran Le cleared together, though Mira spent the whole fight shouting at him to stop hiding behind her.

"I'm not hiding! I'm flanking!"

"You're flanking behind me!"

"It's a very advanced Liyue technique!"

He was not completely useless. Shalya was surprised. He fought dirty, quick and low, with his short blade and his feet and a handful of sand thrown in a hilichurl's eyes. And he was lucky. A club that should have hit him slipped from a hilichurl's hands. An arrow that should have struck him went wide. A rock he tripped over sent him rolling exactly out of the way of a charging brute.

"How does he do that?" Mira muttered.

"Luck!" Ran Le called cheerfully, from under the brute.

The third Seelie was behind a rock pile, which Mira broke. But the fourth was locked behind a wall of swirling wind, and none of them could get through it.

"We need Anemo," Mira said. "We don't have Anemo. That's it. We go home."

Ran Le stood in front of the wind barrier with his hands on his hips. Then he held out his palm to Mira.

"Give me my dice."

"No."

"One roll. Just one. If it doesn't work, you can keep them forever."

Mira narrowed her eyes. Then, slowly, she took the dice from her pouch and dropped them into his hand.

Ran Le kissed them, closed his eyes, and threw them at the barrier.

They clattered on the stone. Six and six.

And at that exact moment, a great gust of wind came roaring down out of the north. It was one of the strange, wild winds that had been troubling Mondstadt for weeks, the kind that knocked over carts and sent farmers running for cover. It slammed into the little shrine, swirled around the barrier, and blew it apart like a candle.

The Seelie inside floated out, glowing happily.

Mira stared. Shalya stared.

Ran Le picked up his dice, tossed them in the air, caught them, and put them in his pocket.

"Ehe~" he said. "Lucky me."

"That," said Mira, "was not luck. That was the weather."

"Luck is the weather. Trust me."

---

The inside of Cecilia Garden took Shalya's breath away.

They came down a long stair into a vast cavern of blue. Waterfalls poured from cracks high in the stone, falling in silver ribbons through a mist so thick it glowed. Old pillars stood in the water, carved with the same symbols as the monument outside. In the centre, raised above the flooded floor, was a great round platform of stone, ringed by braziers that still burned with gold fire, though no one had lit them in a thousand years.

It was cold, and damp, and very old. But it was not frightening. It felt to Shalya like a place where people had once come to pray.

"An altar," she whispered.

"For what god, I wonder," Mira said quietly.

Ran Le was not looking at the altar. He was looking at the walls, where things glittered in the stone: old ornaments of silver and blue glass, set into carvings. Treasure.

But before anyone could move toward it, the water around the platform began to bubble.

Slimes. Blue, wobbling, glowing with Hydro energy. Dozens of them. Behind them, wading out of the mist, came hilichurls in masks and feathers, waving staffs that dripped with water.

"Samachurls," Mira said, and lowered her spear. "Shalya, stay behind me."

"I can help!"

"Your Vision is Hydro. So are they. Water doesn't hurt water." Mira's voice softened, just a little. "Stay behind me and keep us standing. That's how you help."

Shalya nodded.

It was a long, hard fight. The slimes kept coming. The Samachurls danced and chanted and sent waves of water crashing across the stone. Mira held the line in front of her sister like a wall, her spear flashing gold with Geo light, shouting "Hold the line!" every time a slime got too close. Ran Le darted around the edges, slashing at the Samachurls' staffs and somehow never getting hit.

Shalya healed. Every time Mira staggered, every time Ran Le got clipped by a wave, Shalya was there, with her hands glowing soft blue. Her tears fell. Her Vision flared.

Then the water in the centre of the room heaved up, and up, and up.

The slime that rose out of it was as big as a house.

"Oh," said Ran Le. "Oh, that's not lucky."

It hit Mira first. A great wet blow that sent her flying across the platform. She landed hard against one of the braziers and did not get up.

"Mira!"

Shalya was running before she knew it. She threw herself down beside her sister. Mira's eyes were closed. There was blood on her forehead, and her arm was bent the wrong way.

The tears came all at once. Shalya pressed both hands to her sister's chest.

'Please. Please. Not her. Not my sister. Anyone but her.'

The Vision at her hip did not just flare this time.

It blazed.

White light poured out of it, so bright it lit the whole cavern, every waterfall and pillar and carving. Shalya's tears fell onto Mira's face and seemed to glow as they fell. The broken arm straightened with a soft click. The blood on her forehead was gone. Mira's eyes snapped open.

For one moment, Shalya thought she heard the sound of wings. Many wings. Doves.

Then the light faded, and it was just a cavern again.

Mira sat up slowly. She touched her forehead. She looked at her arm. Then she looked at her little sister, crying over her, and something moved in her eyes that Shalya did not understand.

'Eagle,' Mira thought, out of nowhere. 'An eagle, standing over a dove.'

"I'm fine," Mira said hoarsely. "I'm fine. Don't cry. Shalya, don't cry."

On the other side of the platform, Ran Le was standing perfectly still, staring at Shalya. He had forgotten the giant slime entirely. He was looking at the white light fading from her Vision, and at the tears on her face, and his mouth was moving silently.

'I know that light,' he thought. 'I know it.'

The giant slime reared up behind him.

"Ran Le!" Shalya screamed.

He turned. The slime came down.

And missed. By a hair's width. Because Ran Le's foot slipped on a wet stone at exactly the right moment, and he fell flat on his back as a mountain of water crashed down where his head had been.

Mira was already up and running. She leapt over Ran Le, spear blazing gold, and drove it straight into the heart of the slime with a cry that echoed through the whole cavern.

"Eagle of the South, descend!"

The slime burst like a bubble. Water rained down on all three of them, cold and shining. And then the cavern was quiet.

Ran Le lay on his back in a puddle, soaked to the bone, looking up at the mist.

"Ehe~" he said faintly. "Lucky me."

Mira looked down at him. Then, after a long moment, she held out her hand.

He stared at it.

"Don't make it weird," she said.

He took her hand, and she pulled him to his feet.

---

They came back to Mondstadt after dark, tired and wet and carrying a sack full of old silver ornaments that clinked with every step. Shalya was so tired she was half asleep on her feet, and Mira ended up carrying her on her back for the last mile.

At the city gate, Ran Le stopped.

"I'll take my share and go," he said. "Thank you, little healer. Thank you, Knight Mira." He bowed, very low, Liyue-style. "It was the best day I've had in a long time."

Shalya mumbled something sleepy that might have been goodbye.

Ran Le walked off into the city with his half of the treasure.

Mira watched him go. Then she handed her sleeping sister to the guard at the gate with strict orders to carry her home at once, and she followed him.

She kept to the shadows. She had done this kind of thing on patrol a hundred times. He did not see her.

He did not go to the taverns. He did not go to the merchants who bought old treasure, or to his inn. He went down into the lower part of the city, to a narrow street behind the cathedral, where a small, shabby house stood with its windows full of candlelight and the sound of children's voices coming through the door.

The orphan house. The sisters of the church ran it. Mira had walked past it a hundred times without ever really looking.

Ran Le stood outside it for a moment. Then he took a heavy pouch from his sack, the larger of the two, and set it on the doorstep. He knocked twice, quickly. By the time the door opened, he was already around the corner.

Mira stood very still in the shadows.

'Huh,' she thought.

She followed him a little further, to a cheap inn near the east gate. Before he went in, a man stepped out of the alley beside it. He was tall and pale, and he wore a grey coat in the style of Snezhnaya. He said something to Ran Le in a low voice. Ran Le laughed and spread his hands. The man did not laugh. He held up a piece of paper and tapped it, twice.

Ran Le handed over the rest of his treasure. All of it.

The man in grey counted it, slowly. Then he nodded and walked away into the dark. Ran Le stood alone in the street with his empty sack and his shoulders slumped, and for a moment he did not look like a cocky young cheat from Liyue at all. He looked tired. And young. And very alone.

Mira watched until he went inside.

Then she walked home, frowning all the way.

She did not tell anyone what she had seen. Not yet. But the next morning, when Shalya asked her at breakfast what she thought of Ran Le, Mira was quiet for a long time.

"He's a cheat," she said finally. "And a liar. And a coward who hides behind women in a fight."

Shalya's face fell.

"But," Mira added, very reluctantly, staring hard into her tea, "he's not the worst person I've ever met."

From the head of the table, Mori looked up from his breakfast. He put down his spoon.

And very slowly, without a word, he put the whetstone back in his pocket.

---

That night, in his tiny room at the inn, Ran Le sat on the bed and rolled his dice on the blanket.

Six and six.

Six and six.

Six and six.

He did not even feel like he was winning anymore.

He kept seeing that white light pouring out of her little Vision. He kept seeing her face, wet with tears, bent over her sister. He kept hearing her laugh in the cathedral, and her soft voice saying, I forgive you.

He closed his eyes, and the dream came, even though he was not asleep.

A chalice of white silver. Something cold and sweet inside it, tasting of salt. A young woman in white, standing before him, her eyes full of tears. And her voice, gentle and sad and full of love, saying the words he had been hearing his whole life without knowing why.

I forgive you.

Ran Le opened his eyes. His hands were shaking.

'Who are you?' he thought. 'Who are you, and what did I do to you?'

He rolled the dice one last time, without looking.

When he finally looked down, they had landed on their edges. Both of them. Standing perfectly upright on the blanket, as if waiting for an answer.

He did not sleep for a long time.

 

[DefenderGerson]

The cemetery outside Mondstadt's walls was the quietest place in the whole city, and Mori liked it that way.

Every morning he walked the rows of headstones with his raven on his shoulder. He pulled the weeds. He wiped the moss from the names. He laid fresh flowers on the graves that no one visited anymore, because he believed that every soul deserved to be remembered by someone, even if that someone was only the man who kept the grass short.

It was peaceful work. Slow work. Silent work.

BOOM.

A fountain of dirt shot up into the air behind the old chapel, followed by a puff of red smoke, followed by a high, delighted voice.

"Waaah! That one was SO big!"

Mori closed his eyes.

On his shoulder, the raven let out a long, tired croak.

"I know," Mori said. "I heard it too."

He set down his trowel and walked around the chapel.

Behind it, in a crater about the size of a bathtub, stood a very small girl. She wore a red coat and a red hat with a feather in it, and she had pointed ears and bright, sparkling eyes. A plush toy with a round body hung from her backpack. In each hand she held something round and red with a little fuse sticking out of the top.

She was looking down into the crater with an expression of pure scientific joy.

Mori did not make a sound. He never did. He simply came up behind her, the way he came up behind everything, quiet as a shadow, and stood there.

The little girl turned around.

She looked up. And up. At the tall, pale man in black, with the dark circles under his eyes and the raven on his shoulder and the long, long face that had not smiled since breakfast.

"KYAAAAAH!"

She dropped both bombs.

Mori moved faster than anyone would have believed. He caught one in each hand, an inch from the ground, and stood there holding them with their fuses fizzing.

The little girl stared at him with her mouth open.

Mori looked at the bombs. Then he walked calmly to the edge of the cemetery wall and tossed them, one after the other, over it and into the empty field beyond.

BOOM. BOOM.

He walked back, brushed his hands off, and looked down at her.

"This is a cemetery," he said quietly. "Please do not explode the dead."

The little girl's eyes went very wide. Then very, very sparkly.

"Mister," she breathed, "you caught Klee's Jumpy Dumpties! Both of them! Nobody ever catches them! Not even Master Jean!"

"Your name is Klee?"

"Uh-huh! Klee is the Spark Knight of the Knights of Favonius!" She stood up straight and saluted, very proudly. Then she peered at him. "Mister, why do you look so sad?"

"I don't look sad."

"You do! You look super, super sad. Like a rainy day. Like when Klee's in confinement and nobody comes to play." She tilted her head. "Is somebody being mean to you?"

"Someone," Mori said, "just blew a hole in my cemetery."

Klee looked at the crater. Then she looked back at him with enormous, guilty eyes.

"...Klee's sorry."

Mori sighed. He could not help it. He had two daughters. He knew that look. It was the look of a child who was sorry right now and would do the exact same thing again in about four hours.

"Go home, Spark Knight," he said, more gently. "Before someone finds out you're here."

Klee nodded quickly and ran off between the headstones. At the gate she stopped and turned around.

"Mister! What's your name?"

"Mori."

"Mister Mori!" She waved with both arms. "Klee's gonna make you smile! Klee promises!"

Then she was gone.

Mori stood alone among the graves. The raven on his shoulder made a low, worried sound.

"Yes," Mori said. "That's what I'm afraid of."

---

On the other side of the city, Mira was standing on top of the Springvale windmill with her eyes shut, trying very hard not to look down.

"You're doing great!" called a cheerful voice from below. "Just open the glider and jump! Easy!"

Mira did not open her eyes.

It was the most humiliating secret of her life. She was a Knight of Favonius. She had risen through the ranks faster than anyone in years. She could hold a line against twenty hilichurls. She had fought a slime the size of a house in Cecilia Garden only last week.

And she had never earned her gliding license.

In Mondstadt, the city of wind, this was like a fisherman who could not swim. Nobody was supposed to know. Nobody had known, until yesterday, when Eula had found Mira's empty license file in the records office and laughed so hard she had to sit down.

"You?" Eula had gasped. "The great Mira? Who can't fly? Oh, this is going in my book of vengeance. Not as a grudge, as a gift."

So now Mira was here, on top of a windmill in Springvale, being taught by Amber.

Amber was an Outrider of the Knights of Favonius and the three-time gliding champion of Mondstadt. She was bright and energetic and she talked very fast, and she had greeted Mira that morning with a salute and a cheerful "Outrider Amber, reporting for duty!" Mira liked her. She was also slightly terrified of her, because Amber did not seem to understand that there was such a thing as being afraid of heights.

"Did you read the manual?" Amber called up.

"I read it," Mira called back stiffly. "Twice. Cover to cover."

"Great! Then you know everything!"

"I have some questions about it."

"Sure!"

Mira finally opened her eyes, looked down, regretted it, and pulled the little book out of her coat. She opened it to a page she had marked.

"On page twelve, it says that the young knight flew over the mountains on the back of a golden dragon and rescued the princess from the tower of clouds."

There was a pause from below.

"Yep! That's a great part."

"I am trying to understand how this applies to the technical use of a wind glider."

Another pause. A longer one.

"Um," said Amber. "Can you read me the title on the cover?"

Mira turned the book over. "The Adventures of Sir Windblown and the Sky Princess."

"...Oh no."

"Is that not the manual?"

"That is not the manual," Amber said. "That's my favourite storybook! I must've grabbed the wrong one off my shelf! Oh, Archons, I'm so sorry! Did you really read it twice?"

"Cover to cover," Mira said grimly. "I took notes."

Amber burst out laughing. She laughed so hard she had to lean on the windmill. After a moment, to her own great surprise, Mira started laughing too.

"Okay," Amber said finally, wiping her eyes. "Okay. Forget the book. Forget everything. Gliding isn't about books anyway. It's about feeling the wind. You've just got to trust it."

"I don't trust things I can't see," said Mira.

"Then this is going to be a really long day," said Amber cheerfully. "Jump!"

Mira jumped.

She opened the glider exactly as she had been told, in a careful, tactical, perfectly correct way. She held her arms exactly where they were supposed to be. She calculated the wind speed and her angle of descent and the distance to the haystack below.

Then the wind shifted, and she went sideways into a pigpen.

---

"Klee," said Jean, "brought you a cake?"

The Acting Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius sat behind her desk, which was covered in so much paperwork that Mori could barely see her over it. She looked as though she had not slept in a week. Mori suspected she had not.

"Three cakes," said Mori.

He set them on the one clear corner of her desk, in a row.

The first was a normal strawberry cake, a little lopsided, with too much cream.

The second had been a cake shape on the outside. It was now a blackened crater on a plate.

The third was decorated with icing to look like a small round creature with a big smile and two little stubby arms. Mori had not touched it.

"The first one," said Mori, "was a cake. I ate it. It was good."

"I'm glad," said Jean faintly.

"The second one was not a cake. It was a bomb with cream on it. It took the corner off the Ragnvindr family headstone."

Jean put her face in her hands.

"The third one," Mori went on, "is Dodoco."

"Dodoco?"

"Her toy. She told me." Mori looked at the cake for a long moment. "I don't know what to do with it. I can't eat it. It's smiling at me."

Jean lifted her head and looked at the tall, grim man in front of her desk, the cemetery keeper whom half of Mondstadt was too nervous to talk to, standing there holding a plate with a smiling cake on it as if it were a delicate and dangerous problem.

Her mouth twitched.

"Mister Mori," she said, "I'm very sorry for the trouble. I'll make sure Klee is confined for the headstone. But I think you should know something."

"Yes?"

"Klee only causes trouble for people she likes." Jean smiled, tired but kind. "If she's making you cakes, it means she's decided you're her friend. I'm afraid that's not something you can stop."

Mori was silent.

"Is there a way to make her un-decide?" he asked finally.

"No," said Jean. "There really isn't."

On Mori's shoulder, the raven sighed.

---

Ran Le had been waiting all week for this.

Mira was busy. Everyone in Mondstadt knew it. The great Knight Mira was out in Springvale learning how to glide, and from the rumours, the lessons were not going well. Which meant that for one whole afternoon, the scariest big sister in Teyvat was not standing next to Shalya with a spear.

He found Shalya on the cathedral steps at the end of her shift.

"Little healer!" He bowed with a flourish. "What a coincidence! I was just passing by!"

"You've walked past four times," Shalya said. "I saw you from the window."

"I was passing by very carefully." He grinned. "I was wondering. Have you eaten? I know a place. The Angel's Share. Best tavern in Mondstadt. Just dinner. Just food. Trust me!"

Shalya hesitated. "I don't drink."

"Then don't drink! They have juice. They have very good juice. I hear the owner is famous for it."

She hesitated a moment longer. Then she thought of the jam, and the dungeon, and the way he had laughed when he fell in the puddle, and she found herself smiling.

"Just dinner," she said.

"Just dinner!" Ran Le agreed, delighted. "Ehe~ Lucky me."

---

The Angel's Share was warm and busy and smelled of wood and wine. Ran Le found them a small table near the back, under the stairs. He ordered a bottle of dandelion wine and a plate of everything. Shalya ordered grape juice.

The grape juice was brought to their table by a tall, red-haired man in a dark coat, who set it down in front of Shalya with great care.

"Fresh this morning," he said. "From Dawn Winery."

"Thank you," Shalya said shyly.

The red-haired man looked at Ran Le. It was not a long look. But it was the kind of look that made Ran Le feel suddenly very aware of his pockets, and every dice game he had ever played, and the possibility of being thrown through a window.

Then the man walked away.

"Who was that?" Ran Le whispered.

"Master Diluc," Shalya whispered back. "He owns the tavern. And the winery. And maybe half of Mondstadt."

"He's very... intense."

"He's nice! He donates to the orphan house." She sipped her juice. "This is so good."

Ran Le relaxed. He poured himself a cup of wine and leaned back and started telling her stories. Liyue Harbour, the docks, the time he sold a Millelith officer a "genuine adeptus feather" that was actually from a pigeon. Shalya laughed in all the right places. She had a nice laugh. It made something in his chest feel warm and uncomfortable at the same time.

He was just getting to the best part of the pigeon story when someone at the next table started laughing too.

Not with them. At them.

Ran Le turned. At the next table, alone, sat a young man in green with a little flower in his cap and a lyre resting beside his cup. He looked about Ran Le's age, maybe younger. He was holding his stomach and giggling helplessly.

"Ahaha! Sorry, sorry!" said the bard. "I didn't mean to listen. But a pigeon? You sold a Millelith a pigeon? That's wonderful! And the way you're trying so hard to impress her! It's like a ballad! A very silly ballad!"

Ran Le's face went hot. "I'm not trying to impress anyone."

"Of course not," said the bard. "Ehe~"

"Ehe~," said Ran Le automatically, at the exact same time.

They both stopped. They stared at each other.

"...Hey," said the bard slowly. "That's my line."

"That's been my line since I was six!"

"Well, it's been my line for much longer than that."

"You don't even look older than me!"

"Ehe~"

"Stop that!"

Shalya was hiding her face behind her cup, shaking with silent giggles.

Ran Le stood up. He was a little bit flushed from the wine, and a lot flushed from embarrassment, and a boy from the Liyue docks did not let anyone laugh at him in front of a pretty girl.

"Bard," he said. "Do you drink?"

The bard's eyes lit up like stars. "Oh, I love that question."

"Then here's a challenge. You and me. Cup for cup, dandelion wine. Last one sitting up wins." Ran Le pulled out his old bone dice and slapped them on the table. "If I lose, you get these. My lucky dice. Best inheritance in Teyvat."

"And if I lose?"

"You pay for dinner. And you never say 'ehe' again."

The bard considered this very seriously.

"That," he said, "is the most terrible bet I've ever been offered." He grinned and pulled his chair over. "I accept! The name's Venti, by the way. A humble bard."

"Ran Le. A humble businessman."

"Ran Le, please," Shalya said, worried. "You don't have to..."

"Don't worry, little healer." Ran Le winked at her. "I've never lost a bet in my life. Trust me."

---

He lost.

He lost very, very badly.

The first five cups went fine. Ran Le drank with the confidence of a man who had been drinking on the docks since he was fifteen. Venti drank with the cheerful ease of someone drinking water.

By ten cups, Ran Le's face was bright red, and Venti had not even blushed.

By fifteen cups, Ran Le was holding onto the table with both hands, and Venti was humming a little song and tapping his foot.

"How," Ran Le slurred, "how are you doing this?"

"Practice!" said Venti brightly. "Lots and lots of practice."

Ran Le reached for the dice. He did what he always did when things went wrong. He rolled them.

They hit the table, bounced, and stood up on their edges.

He rolled again. Edges.

Again. Edges.

He stared at them. In his whole life, his dice had never once failed to give him what he needed. They were always lucky. He was always lucky. But here, at this table, across from this smiling bard, his luck just... stopped. As if the dice did not know who they were supposed to listen to.

Venti was looking at the dice too. For just a moment, the laughter went out of his face, and something very old and thoughtful looked out instead.

Then it was gone. "Ehe~ Looks like fortune's taking a nap. Your cup, Ran Le!"

Ran Le drank his twentieth cup. Then he put his head down on the table, very gently, and did not lift it again.

"Ran Le!" Shalya was out of her chair at once. "Ran Le, are you all right?"

"Fine," mumbled Ran Le into the wood. "M'fine. Winning. I'm winning."

"You're not winning! You're very, very not winning!" Shalya put her hands on his back. Her eyes were already filling with tears. She hated seeing anyone in pain, even foolish pain. Especially foolish pain. "Hold still. Let me help."

Her hands glowed blue. Water magic, soft and cool, ran through him like a stream through a hot field, washing away the worst of the wine. Her Vision gave a small flicker. Blue, then white, then blue again.

Ran Le lifted his head, blinking. His eyes were clearer. "Oh. Oh, that's... much better. Little healer, you're a miracle."

Across the table, Venti had gone very still.

He was not looking at Ran Le anymore. He was looking at Shalya. At her hands, and her tears, and the little white flicker in her Vision. His face was quiet and gentle and very, very old, in a way no young bard's face should ever be.

'Ah,' Venti thought. 'So that's what you are. I did wonder. All these years, I wondered.'

He said nothing about it.

Instead, when Shalya looked up, he smiled at her kindly.

"You're a good friend to him," Venti said. "And you're very kind, little one. The kindest kind of kind." He picked up his lyre and played one soft note on it. "Mondstadt's winds have carried stranger things than you, you know. And they always carried them home in the end."

Shalya blinked. "What do you mean?"

"Ehe~" said Venti. "Nothing at all! Just a bard's babbling."

A shadow fell over the table.

They all looked up. Master Diluc was standing there, arms crossed, looking down at the empty bottles. Twenty-one of them. Then at the young man half-collapsed on the table. Then at the very small healer in the cathedral apron, who was trying to hold him upright.

Then, for a long time, at Venti.

"Out," said Diluc.

"But Master Diluc," said Venti, "we were just..."

"Out."

Venti grabbed his lyre, saluted cheerfully, and vanished through the door in a gust of wind. Ran Le tried to stand, wobbled, and grabbed Shalya's shoulder to stay upright.

"The bill," said Diluc.

Ran Le looked around. The bard's chair was empty. The bard's half of the bill was very much not paid.

"...That cheat," said Ran Le weakly. "That cheat."

"Your dice," said Diluc, holding out his hand.

"Not the dice!"

Diluc looked at him.

Ran Le gave him the mora. All of it. Every single coin he had.

---

The sun was low and orange over Springvale when Mira climbed the windmill for the twelfth time.

She was covered in hay and mud. There was a little bit of pig on her boot. She had crashed into a haystack, a fence, a well, a small cart of sunsettias, and the pigpen, twice. She had missed every single ring on the practice course. Amber had stopped laughing around the eighth crash and had started to look a little worried.

"Maybe we should try again tomorrow?" Amber called up.

"No," said Mira.

"You're tired! You've been at it all day!"

"No." Mira stood on the edge of the windmill. "Once more. I can do it. I have to do it."

She looked out at the rings, glowing faintly in the evening light, floating over the fields in a long line toward the lake. She looked at the glider in her hands. She did the calculations again. Wind speed. Angle. Distance.

And then, because she was too tired to do anything else, she stopped.

She stopped calculating. She stopped thinking. She just stood there and felt the wind on her face, warm and steady from the south.

'Trust the wind,' Amber had said.

She did not trust the wind. She had never trusted anything she could not see.

But for one strange moment, standing there with her eyes half closed, Mira remembered something she had never done. She remembered the feeling of wind under great wide wings. Of rising on a hot updraft over white walls and a blue sea. Of looking down from a great height at a battlefield, seeing every soldier, every line, every weakness, all at once, clear as a map.

She remembered being an eagle.

Mira jumped.

The glider opened. The wind caught it. And Mira flew.

She did not fight the air this time. She let it carry her. She swooped through the first ring, then the second, banking smoothly, rising and falling with the currents as if she had been born on them. The fields slid by beneath her, golden in the sunset. For a heartbeat, they were not the fields of Springvale at all. They were dry golden hills under a burning southern sun, and there was a sea beyond them, and somewhere far below, a little white dove was waiting for her to come home.

She went through the last ring and landed on the grass by the lake, light as a feather, without a single stumble.

Amber's mouth was hanging open.

"That was..." Amber ran up to her, waving her arms. "Mira! That was perfect! That was better than perfect! Where did that come from? I've never seen anyone fly like that on their first real try! Not even me!"

Mira did not answer. She was standing very still, staring at her hands. They were shaking.

'I've done this before,' she thought. 'Not with a glider. Never with a glider. But I've done this before.'

"Mira?" Amber said. "Are you okay?"

Mira looked up at the sky, where the last of the sunlight was fading.

"Yes," she said quietly. "I think I am."

---

It was nearly dark when Mori found Klee.

He had gone back to the cemetery to put the Dodoco cake in the shed, where it would be safe and where it would stop smiling at him. And there, sitting by one of the old graves near the back wall, with her knees pulled up to her chest and Dodoco in her arms, was the Spark Knight.

She was not making any bombs. She was not laughing. She was just sitting there, very small and very quiet.

Mori stood beside her for a while without speaking. Then he sat down on the grass next to her, folding his long legs awkwardly.

"You should be at home," he said. "Jean will worry."

"Master Jean said Klee has to be in confinement for the headstone," Klee mumbled into Dodoco. "Klee said sorry. Klee snuck out anyway."

"Ah."

They sat quietly. A breeze moved the grass between the graves.

"Mister Mori," Klee said finally. "You take care of people who go away, right? That's your job?"

Mori looked down at her. "I take care of the people who are resting here. Yes."

"Do they..." Klee hugged Dodoco tighter. "Do they get lonely? When nobody visits?"

"I visit them," said Mori. "Every day."

"That's good." Klee nodded slowly. She was quiet for a long time. Then, very small: "Klee's mom went away."

Mori went very still.

"She's an adventurer," Klee said. "She goes on big, big adventures, and she leaves Klee with Master Jean, and she always comes back. She always says she'll come back. But it's been a long time this time. And sometimes at night Klee thinks..." Her voice wobbled. "What if she doesn't come back? What if she went away like the people here?"

Mori did not answer right away.

He looked down at the little girl beside him, and something happened inside him that he did not understand. It was like a door opening. A great dark door somewhere deep in his chest, the door from his dreams, with a garden beyond it and ravens on every branch. And through that door, for one moment, he could see. Not with his eyes. With something older than eyes.

He saw all the souls that had passed through Mondstadt. He saw the gate, and who had gone through it, and who had not.

And Klee's mother had not.

She was far away. Very far, somewhere he could not see clearly, bright and loud and full of life like a firework. But she was alive. He knew it the way he knew the sun was warm. As surely as he knew his own name.

The door in his chest closed again, quietly.

Mori reached out, slowly, and put one large hand on top of Klee's red hat.

"Not yet," he said softly. "It is not yet her time."

Klee looked up at him with wet, wide eyes. "How do you know?"

"I know," said Mori. "Trust an old cemetery keeper. I always know who comes through my gate. Your mother has not come through it. She is alive, and she is far away, and she is probably blowing something up."

Klee stared at him. Then she laughed, a small, wet, hiccuping laugh, and wiped her nose on Dodoco.

"That sounds like Mom."

"Then go home, Spark Knight. Go home and wait for her. She will come."

Klee jumped to her feet. She threw her arms around Mori's middle, very quickly and very tightly, the way only small children can.

"Mister Mori isn't scary at all!" she announced. "Klee knew it!"

Then she was gone, running off between the headstones toward the city lights, with Dodoco bouncing on her backpack.

Mori sat in the grass for a long time after she had gone.

'How did I know that?' he thought, staring at his own hands. 'How did I know?'

The raven landed on his shoulder and pressed its head against his cheek, gently, the way it had never done before.

---

It all went wrong at once in the main plaza, about twenty minutes later.

It started with Klee.

On her way home, running along the rooftops, as she always did, because the streets were too slow, Klee was so happy that she forgot to be careful. And when Klee forgot to be careful, things tended to fall out of her backpack.

Three Jumpy Dumpties tumbled out over the edge of a roof and bounced, merrily, down into the plaza.

At that exact moment, Ran Le was coming up the street from the Angel's Share, leaning heavily on Shalya's shoulder. He was much more sober than he had been, thanks to her, but his legs still had their own ideas about which way was forward.

"I'm fine," he was saying. "I'm completely fine. I can walk. Watch. Watch me walk."

"You're walking into a lamp post," Shalya said.

"The lamp post is walking into me."

At that exact moment, Mira was gliding in over the city walls from Springvale. She had decided, on the way back, that she had earned one victory flight. Just one. Over the plaza, past the cathedral, a nice long swoop to show the whole city that the great Mira could fly after all. Eula would hear about it. Everyone would hear about it.

And at that exact moment, Mori was walking home through the plaza, lost in thought, with his raven on his shoulder and his shovel over his arm.

The first Jumpy Dumpty hit the ground, bounced, and burst into a ring of tiny red mines.

The second one landed in the fountain.

The third one landed right at Ran Le's feet.

"Oh," said Ran Le, looking down. "Oh, that's not lucky."

BOOM.

The blast threw Ran Le and Shalya sideways. The blast from the second bomb sent a great wave of fountain water up into the air. The wave caught Mira's glider mid-swoop and slapped it out of the sky. Mira came down like a stone, straight toward the plaza. Mori looked up just in time to see his eldest daughter falling at him out of a cloud of red smoke and water.

Everyone landed in the fountain.

There was a tremendous splash. Water went everywhere. A flock of pigeons exploded off the cathedral steps. Somewhere on the rooftops, Klee clapped both hands over her mouth.

For a long moment, nobody moved.

Then, slowly, the fountain began to settle.

Shalya sat up in the water, coughing. Her hair was soaked. Her apron was soaked. She was sitting in the shallow fountain pool with her legs folded under her, and she was not alone.

Ran Le had landed right next to her. He was sitting up too, dripping, with his hair plastered over his eyes. And his hand was resting on her shoulder.

He had grabbed it as they fell, to steady her. To keep her from hitting the stone. He had not let go.

Shalya looked at the hand. Then she looked at Ran Le. Her face went pink. Then red. Then a red so deep it went all the way up to the tips of her ears.

"R-Ran Le," she squeaked. "Your hand..."

Ran Le pushed the wet hair out of his eyes with his other hand. He looked at Shalya's face. He looked at his own hand, still on her shoulder. He realised.

"Ah," he said. "Ehe~ Sorry. I just, I was trying to..."

He stopped.

There was a spear point resting very lightly against the left side of his neck.

It was long and gleaming and glowing faintly gold with Geo energy, and at the other end of it, rising out of the water like a vengeful sea goddess, stood Mira. Her hair was full of fountain water. Her glider was in pieces. There was still a little hay on her boot.

Her eyes were the coldest thing Ran Le had ever seen.

"Remove," said Mira, "your hand."

Ran Le opened his mouth to answer.

There was something resting very lightly against the right side of his neck too.

He turned his eyes, slowly, without moving his head.

It was the edge of a shovel. A very clean, very well-sharpened shovel. And holding it, standing perfectly still in the fountain with water running off his black coat, was a tall, pale man with dark eyes and a raven on his shoulder.

The man said nothing. He did not need to.

The raven, however, leaned forward and looked Ran Le right in the eye. Then it opened its beak and, very clearly, croaked.

Ran Le sat in the fountain, with a spear on one side of his neck and a shovel on the other and his hand still frozen on the shoulder of a very red, very wet little healer.

"Ehe~," he said weakly. "Good evening, Knight Mira. Good evening, Mister... Shalya's father, I assume. Lovely weather. Lovely fountain. I can explain. I can explain everything. Trust me."

"Papa! Mira!" Shalya waved her hands frantically. "It's not what it looks like! He was helping! He caught me!"

"You took my sister," said Mira slowly, "to a tavern."

"For dinner!"

"There are twenty-one empty bottles on the table at the Angel's Share," Mira said. "I flew over it. I counted."

"Those were a contest!" Ran Le said desperately. "With a bard! I lost! I lost very badly! I lost everything! Please, I have nothing left to lose but my neck!"

Mori leaned forward, just a little. The shovel did not move.

"Your hand," Mori said quietly. "Is still there."

Ran Le removed his hand so fast he nearly fell backwards into the fountain again.

Up on the rooftop, a small red figure peeked over the edge.

"Um," Klee called down, in a very small voice. "Klee's... sorry?"

Everyone looked up at her.

Then, from the end of the plaza, came the sound of running footsteps and a very, very tired voice.

"KLEE!"

The Acting Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius had arrived.

---

It was a long time before the Knights finished cleaning up the plaza.

Klee was taken back to headquarters for a very long confinement. Ran Le was escorted to his inn by two knights, with Mira walking close behind him with her spear and a look that promised there would be further conversations. Shalya went home wrapped in her father's coat, still pink all the way to her ears, and refused to say a single word to anyone about what had happened in the fountain.

At the house by the cemetery gate, Mira told the whole story at the dinner table, loudly, with gestures.

Vérène listened to all of it with her chin in her hand. When Mira reached the part about the hand on the shoulder, she raised one eyebrow.

"Interesting," she said.

"Mother!" wailed Shalya, and hid her face in a cushion.

Mori said nothing at all. He simply reached into his pocket, took out his whetstone, and set it on the table in front of him.

Mira nodded in deep approval.

---

Much later, when the house was dark and everyone was asleep, Mori heard a small knock at the kitchen door.

He opened it. There was no one there. Only a small, slightly crooked cake sitting on the doorstep, with a note tucked under the plate in big, uneven letters.

FOR MISTER GRIM MAN. THANK YOU FOR TELLING KLEE ABOUT MOM. KLEE HOPES YOU SMILE ONE DAY!!! (THIS ONE IS A REAL CAKE KLEE PROMISES)

There was a little drawing of Dodoco at the bottom.

Mori looked out into the dark street. He thought he saw a small red hat disappearing around the corner, back toward the Knights' headquarters, where it was certainly not supposed to be.

He picked up the cake. He carried it inside and set it on the kitchen table, and he sat down in front of it, alone in the dark.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then, carefully, he cut a small piece and ate it.

It was a real cake. Strawberry. Too much cream. A little burnt on one side.

And there in the quiet kitchen, with only the raven to see, Mori smiled.

The raven tilted its head and looked at him for a long, long moment, as if it had been waiting a very long time to see that.

Then it fluffed its feathers, tucked its head under its wing, and went to sleep.

 

[DefenderGerson]

"He sold me a horse," said the first merchant, "that turned out to be a donkey."

"It was a horse," said the second merchant, "when I sold it."

Vérène looked at the first merchant. Then at the second. Then at the animal tied up outside the window of the Knights' records office, which was chewing a flower box and was, very clearly, a donkey.

"Tell me," she said to the second merchant, "how a horse becomes a donkey."

"It's a rare condition."

"Is it."

"Very rare. Mostly in the spring."

Vérène took off her reading glasses, folded them, and set them on the desk. She did this very slowly. Both merchants went quiet.

"A lie and a truth sound the same," Vérène said, "until you weigh them." She turned to the second merchant. "You will return his mora. All of it. You will take back your donkey. And if I see your name on my desk again, I will make sure the Knights see it too. Is that clear?"

The second merchant opened his mouth. He looked into her calm grey eyes. He closed his mouth.

"Clear," he said.

"Good. Next."

The two men shuffled out. Through the open door, Vérène heard someone clapping slowly.

"Darling," said Lisa, leaning in the doorway with a cup of tea. "That was ruthless. I think I'm in love."

"It was a donkey, Lisa."

"It was a very rare donkey. Mostly in the spring." Lisa came in and dropped into the chair on the other side of the desk. "You've been busy all morning. Settling disputes. Fixing the Knights' contracts. Scaring merchants. Do you ever rest?"

"I'm resting now."

"You're reading three books at once."

"Two. One of them is a notebook."

Lisa leaned over curiously. "Ooh. A secret notebook? What's in it?"

Vérène hesitated. Then she turned it around and slid it across the desk.

It was a small black book, worn soft at the corners. Inside, page after page, in Vérène's neat, careful hand, were dates. And next to each date, a few lines.

Shalya. Cold king. Flies. Cage. Woke screaming.

Mira. Eagle. Southern sea. White walls.

Mori. The gate. Ravens. Garden.

Myself. Libraries without end. Scales. An owl.

The dates went back years. Twelve years. Fifteen. More.

Lisa turned the pages slowly. She stopped teasing.

"Dreams," she said quietly.

"Every dream this family has had, as far back as I can remember." Vérène looked out the window. "For a long time, I thought it was nothing. Families share things. Habits. Fears. But the dreams have been getting stronger, Lisa. All of us. All at once. As though something is coming closer."

"And what do you think it is?"

"I don't know." Vérène took her notebook back and closed it. "That's what frightens me. I always know."

---

Ran Le was counting his money in his room at the inn when the knock came.

It did not take long to count. He had eleven mora. Diluc had taken everything else after the drinking contest, and the grey-coated man had taken everything before that.

He opened the door with his best grin. "Ehe~ Room service? I didn't order anything, but I'm always open to..."

The grin died.

The man in the grey coat stood in the hallway. Behind him were two more men in heavy Snezhnayan uniforms, with masks over their faces and weapons at their belts.

"Ran Le," said the man in grey politely. "May we come in?"

"I'd really rather you didn't."

They came in anyway.

The man in grey sat on the only chair. He took a folded paper out of his coat and smoothed it on his knee. Ran Le recognised it. He had signed it two years ago in Liyue Harbour, on a very bad night, when the orphan house by the docks was going to be closed and he had needed money fast.

"The Northland Bank is a patient institution," said the man in grey. "But our patience has a price. Your debt has grown."

"Grown? I paid you everything I had last week!"

"That covered the interest." The man in grey tapped the paper. "The debt itself remains. And it has increased, as the contract allows. You now owe us four times what you borrowed."

Ran Le stared at him. "Four times? That's not a loan. That's a robbery!"

"That is the contract." The man in grey stood up. "You have until tomorrow at sunset. If you cannot pay in mora, you will pay in another way. You will come with us to Snezhnaya, and you will work for the Bank until the debt is cleared." He smiled thinly. "I am told the mines are very cold this time of year."

He walked to the door. The two masked men followed. At the threshold, he paused.

"Oh. And Ran Le? Don't think about running. We have friends in every city between here and the Harbour. And we know you've grown fond of a certain family by the cemetery gate." He tipped his hat. "It would be a shame if they were troubled by your debts."

The door closed.

Ran Le stood in the middle of the little room for a long time.

Then he picked up his dice, rolled them on the bed, and did not even look at what they showed.

---

He left at dawn.

He did not say goodbye to anyone. He packed everything he owned into one small bag, which did not take long, and he walked down the empty streets toward the city gate while the sky was still grey.

It was better this way. He told himself that over and over. If he ran, the Bank would chase him, and not the family. Not Shalya. They would forget about him in a week. Mira would be happy. The cemetery keeper would put his whetstone away for good. And Shalya would...

He did not let himself think about what Shalya would do.

The gate was in front of him. The bridge, and the road beyond it, and the long grey hills.

"You're leaving."

He stopped.

Shalya was sitting on the stone rail of the bridge, wrapped in her travelling cloak, her small feet swinging over the water. She looked like she had been there for some time.

"Little healer," Ran Le said weakly. "What are you doing here? It's barely morning."

"I couldn't sleep." She hopped down from the rail. "And the innkeeper told Barbara, and Barbara told me, that some scary men in masks went up to your room last night." She looked at his bag. Then at his face. "You're leaving."

"I'm a traveller. Travellers travel. It's very normal." He tried to grin. It did not work. "It was fun, Mondstadt. But it's time for Little Le to go somewhere new. Trust me."

"No," said Shalya.

"No?"

"No, I don't trust you. Not about this." She stepped closer. "What's wrong? Please, tell me the truth. Just once."

He looked at her. At her small, stubborn, worried face. And the thing he had been carrying in his chest for two years, heavy as a stone, finally cracked.

He told her everything.

The orphan house by the docks in Liyue, where he had grown up after his mother left. The year it was going to close. The night he went to the Northland Bank and signed the paper without reading it properly, because he was desperate and seventeen and stupid. The way the debt had grown and grown, no matter how much he paid. Why he cheated at dice. Where the money from Cecilia Garden really went. And the man in grey, and the cold mines of Snezhnaya, and the threat against her family.

When he finished, he could not look at her.

"So," he said to the ground. "That's the great Ran Le. A liar, a cheat, and a coward who's about to run away. Go on. You can say it. Your sister was right about me."

Shalya was quiet for a long moment.

Then she reached out and took his hand.

He looked up, startled. She was crying. Of course she was crying. But she was smiling too.

"You gave everything you had to children who needed it," she said softly. "That's not what a coward does."

"Shalya..."

"You're not running away." She tightened her grip on his hand and turned around, and started walking back into the city, pulling him after her. "You're coming home with me. Right now. We'll fix it together. Please?"

"Your family will kill me."

"They won't. Probably." She thought about it. "Papa might. A little."

"That's not comforting!"

But he let her pull him along, through the waking streets, toward the house by the cemetery gate.

---

It felt very much like a trial.

Ran Le stood in the middle of the kitchen with his bag at his feet. Around the table sat the three people in Mondstadt who frightened him most.

Mira sat on the left with her spear across her knees. Mori sat on the right, with his raven on his shoulder and his whetstone on the table in front of him. And in the middle, with her hands folded and her reading glasses on, sat Vérène.

Shalya stood beside Ran Le, still holding his hand. She had refused to let go the whole way home. Mira had noticed this immediately. Her eye had twitched.

"Tell them," Shalya said. "Everything. Like you told me."

So he told them.

It was harder the second time. Much harder, with three pairs of eyes on him. But he told them about the orphan house and the debt and the contract and the man in grey. He told them about the mines in Snezhnaya. He told them about the threat against their family, and he apologised for it, and he meant it.

When he finished, the kitchen was very quiet.

"So," Vérène said slowly. "You came to our daughter with a false wound. You took her into a dangerous ruin. You took her to a tavern and drank twenty bottles of wine..."

"Twenty-one," said Mira.

"Twenty-one bottles of wine. And now you have brought the Northland Bank to our door." Vérène tilted her head. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

Ran Le opened his mouth.

"He gives his money to orphans."

Everyone turned. It was Mira who had spoken. She was staring very hard at the table.

"After Cecilia Garden," Mira said, without looking up. "I followed him. He took the biggest part of the treasure and left it on the doorstep of the orphan house behind the cathedral. Then the man in grey took the rest." She scowled. "I didn't say anything because I didn't want to. But it's true."

Ran Le stared at her. "You followed me?"

"I'm a knight. Following people is my job."

"Knight Mira," said Ran Le, "that's the nicest thing you've ever said about me."

"It wasn't nice. It was a report." Mira's ears were slightly pink. "Don't make it weird."

Mori had not said a word. He sat with his large hands flat on the table, looking at Ran Le with his dark, unreadable eyes.

Then, very slowly, he picked up the whetstone. He looked at it. And he put it in his pocket.

"He gives to children," Mori said quietly. "That is enough."

Shalya let out a breath she seemed to have been holding for an hour.

Vérène looked at her husband, and then at her eldest daughter, and then at the boy from Liyue still standing nervously in the middle of her kitchen. Something in her calm face softened.

She held out her hand.

"The contract," she said. "Do you have it?"

"They have the original. I have a copy." Ran Le dug in his bag and handed her a creased, crumpled paper. "But it won't help. I've read it a hundred times. It's legal. Every word."

Vérène unfolded the paper. She adjusted her glasses. She read it once, quickly, from top to bottom.

Then she read it again, very slowly.

Then she smiled.

It was not a warm smile. It was the smile of someone who has just found exactly the thing they were looking for. Mira, who had seen that smile only twice in her life, quietly leaned away.

"Every word legal, you say," said Vérène. "Ran Le. Sit down. Have some breakfast. And tell me, when exactly is our friend from the Bank coming back?"

---

The meeting was at sunset, in a small office in the Knights of Favonius headquarters.

Vérène had arranged it. She had arranged everything. She had gone to Jean that afternoon, and to the records office, and to the library, where she and Lisa had spent three hours pulling old books of Mondstadt law down from the shelves. Now she sat at one side of a long table, with a stack of books in front of her and her notebook open.

Jean sat at the head of the table, looking tired but very interested.

Ran Le sat behind Vérène, trying very hard to look like a respectable person. Shalya sat next to him. Mira stood against the wall with her spear, and Mori stood in the corner, in the shadows, where he could see everyone.

The man in grey came in exactly on time. His two masked soldiers followed him.

He looked around the room. At the Acting Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius. At the knight with the spear. At the tall pale man in the corner. His smile grew a little thinner.

"I was told," he said, "this was a simple matter of payment."

"It is," said Vérène pleasantly. "Please, sit."

He sat. He laid the original contract on the table. "Ran Le owes the Northland Bank this sum. Four times the original loan, as the contract states. If he cannot pay..."

"Clause four," said Vérène.

The man in grey stopped. "I beg your pardon?"

"Clause four. The interest." Vérène turned the contract toward herself without asking and laid one finger on the page. "The contract was signed in Liyue. But the debt is being collected in Mondstadt, from a man living in Mondstadt. Under the laws of Mondstadt, which the Knights of Favonius enforce, no lender may charge interest above one tenth of the loan in a single year." She opened one of her books to a marked page and turned it so Jean could see. "The Charter of Free Commerce, section eleven. It has been the law for over five hundred years. Your interest is forty times higher."

Jean leaned forward and read. Her eyebrows rose. "That's correct."

"That," said the man in grey, "is a Liyue contract. Liyue law..."

"Clause nine," said Vérène.

He stopped again.

"Clause nine says that any dispute over this contract shall be settled under the laws of the city where the borrower lives." Vérène looked up at him over her glasses. "Your own bank wrote that clause. I assume to make it easier to chase borrowers who run. He lives in Mondstadt. So Mondstadt law applies. Your bank's own words."

The man in grey's face went very still.

"And then," said Vérène, "there is clause twelve."

She laid Ran Le's crumpled copy beside the original. She put one finger on each.

"Clause twelve," she said, "is not in his copy."

The room was silent.

"His copy, the one he was given and signed, has eleven clauses. Yours has twelve. Clause twelve is the one that allows the debt itself to grow, and the one that allows the bank to take a debtor to Snezhnaya for labour." Vérène's voice did not rise at all. It did not need to. "The ink is different. The hand is different. It was added after he signed." She folded her hands. "In Mondstadt, that is called forgery."

Something happened then. Ran Le felt it. Everyone in the room felt it.

The air changed. It became very still and very clear, like the moment before a bell rings. The light from the window seemed to tilt, very slightly, as though the whole room were resting on a great invisible scale, and the scale was slowly, slowly coming down on one side.

On the windowsill, unnoticed by anyone but Mori, an owl landed. Grey and silent, with eyes like two coins. It folded its wings and watched.

Vérène looked across the table at the man in grey. Her eyes were calm and grey and very, very old.

"A lie and a truth sound the same until you weigh them," she said quietly. "I have weighed yours. Bring me your case, if you still have one."

The man in grey opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

He looked at the two contracts. He looked at the law book. He looked at Jean, who was writing something down with a very serious expression. He looked at the knight with the spear and the tall man in the corner.

"The bank," he said at last, very stiffly, "will accept repayment of the original sum. Without interest. As a... gesture of goodwill. Between our nations."

"How generous," said Vérène. "And clause twelve?"

"...Will be struck from our records."

"In writing, please. Acting Grand Master Jean will witness it."

He wrote it. His hand shook a little.

When it was done, Vérène sat back. The stillness in the room faded. The light was only light again. When Mori looked back at the window, the owl was gone.

---

It might have ended there, quietly, if one of the masked soldiers had not been so angry.

He was young, and he had been told this would be easy, and now he had watched his superior humiliated by a woman with reading glasses. On the way out, in the corridor, he turned back and grabbed Ran Le by the collar.

"This isn't over, Liyue rat..."

Mira moved.

It was one motion. The butt of her spear came up and around, and the soldier's feet went out from under him, and he fell backward. His head struck the stone corner of the doorframe with a terrible sound.

He did not get up.

"Mira!" Jean was on her feet.

"He grabbed him first!" Mira said. But her face had gone pale. The soldier was lying very still, and there was blood on the floor under his head. Quite a lot of blood.

The man in grey had gone white. The other masked soldier was kneeling over his comrade, shouting his name.

And then Shalya was there.

She did not stop to think about who he was or what he had done. She did not think about the Bank, or the threats, or the mask. She only saw someone hurt, and she went to him, the way she always did. She dropped to her knees on the bloody stone and put her hands on his head.

Her tears came at once.

"Please," she whispered. "Please, not like this."

Her Vision did not flicker this time. It blazed, white and pure, so bright that everyone in the corridor had to shield their eyes. The light poured out of her hands and over the fallen soldier like water. And there, for just a moment, Ran Le saw something in the air above her. The shape of wings. Many white wings, folded around her like a cloak.

The light faded.

The soldier gasped, coughed, and opened his eyes. He sat up slowly. He touched the back of his head. There was blood in his hair, but under it, the skin was smooth and whole.

He looked at Shalya, kneeling beside him with tears on her face. He took off his mask with shaking hands. Underneath, he was very young. Younger than Ran Le.

"Why?" he said hoarsely. "Why would you..."

"Because you were hurt," said Shalya simply, wiping her eyes. "That's all."

The young soldier stared at her. Then he bowed his head, very low, and said nothing more.

---

Nobody noticed Barbara.

She had come to the headquarters to deliver medicine from the cathedral, and she had heard the shouting, and she had come running down the corridor just in time to see Shalya kneel beside the fallen soldier. She had stopped at the corner, out of sight.

She had seen everything.

She had seen the light. Not the soft blue of a Hydro Vision, the light she knew from her own hands every day. Pure white light, brighter than anything she had ever seen in the cathedral, brighter even than the statue of Barbatos in the morning sun. She had seen a head wound that should have needed weeks of care close in a few heartbeats.

And she was almost sure, almost, that she had seen wings.

Barbara stood very still at the corner of the corridor, holding her basket of medicine, with her heart beating very fast.

She had worked beside Shalya for years. She knew her. Sweet, small, teary Shalya, who was scared of flies and got mistaken for a child every week. Barbara had seen her heal people a hundred times. She had always thought Shalya was just a little bit better at it than most.

'That wasn't a Vision,' Barbara thought. 'No Vision does that. I don't think anything does that.'

Shalya looked up just then, wiping her eyes, and saw her standing there.

For a long moment, they looked at each other.

"Barbara," Shalya said uncertainly. "Did you..."

Barbara smiled. It was her bright, cheerful, idol smile, the one she used for crowds. It was very good. Only someone who had known her for years would have seen that it did not quite reach her eyes.

"I brought the medicine," she said. "Is everyone all right?"

"Yes," said Shalya. "Everyone's all right."

"Good. That's good." Barbara set the basket down. "I'll see you at the cathedral tomorrow, okay?"

She walked away down the corridor before Shalya could answer.

She did not say anything to anyone. Not that day. But that night, Barbara sat alone in the cathedral for a very long time, looking up at the statue of the Anemo Archon, with her hands folded in her lap.

'Who are you, Shalya?' she thought. 'What are you?'

The statue, as always, did not answer.

---

The family paid the original debt together that week.

It was not a small amount. Mori sold a few old things from the cemetery shed. Mira gave up her savings for a new spear. Vérène, who had very quietly been paid a great deal over the years for her legal advice, made up the rest without saying a word about it.

When it was done, Mira marched into Ran Le's room at the inn and slapped a piece of paper on his table.

"What's this?" he asked.

"A bill," said Mira. "You owe us. All of it. Every coin."

He looked at the number. Then he looked up at her.

"With interest?"

"No interest," said Mira fiercely. "We're not the Northland Bank." She turned toward the door. Then she stopped. "And no more cheating at dice. If you need money, you work for it. Honestly. The Adventurers' Guild is always hiring."

"Honest work," said Ran Le slowly, as if the words were in a foreign language. "Ehe~ That's going to be a new experience."

"You'll survive."

"Knight Mira." He stood up. "Thank you."

She did not turn around. "Don't make it weird."

But she was smiling when she closed the door.

---

That evening, for the first time, Ran Le was invited to dinner.

Not invited by Shalya. Invited by Vérène, which was a very different thing. He arrived at the house by the cemetery gate in his cleanest shirt, with his hair combed for the first time in living memory, holding a small bunch of Cecilia flowers he had picked himself, without stealing them.

Mira opened the door. She looked at the flowers. She looked at his hair. Her eye twitched.

"Come in," she said. "Sit where I can see you."

It was the loudest, warmest, strangest dinner of Ran Le's life.

Vérène asked him sharp questions about Liyue law and seemed delighted when he answered them badly. Mori said almost nothing, but kept quietly putting more food on Ran Le's plate whenever it got empty. Mira glared at him across the table every time he looked at Shalya, which was often. Shalya laughed at everything he said, even the things that were not funny.

Halfway through, there was a knock at the door. When Mori opened it, Klee was standing on the step, holding a cake almost as big as she was.

"Klee heard Mister Mori was having a party!" she announced. "So Klee made a cake! It's a real cake! Klee promises! Mostly!"

"Mostly?" said Mira.

"It's ninety-five percent cake!"

Mori looked down at her. Then, very gravely, he stepped aside and let her in.

The cake was ninety-five percent cake. The other five percent went off in the garden at about nine o'clock, very loudly, and took a rosebush with it. Nobody minded much. Klee was confined the next day, but she said it was worth it.

Later, when the dishes were done and Klee had been carried home asleep on Mori's back, Ran Le stood on the doorstep to say goodnight.

"Thank you," he said to Shalya. "For not letting me run."

"Thank you for staying," said Shalya.

They stood there a moment. Behind them, in the lit window, three heads were very obviously not watching.

Ran Le leaned down. Shalya's eyes went wide.

He kissed her very lightly on the top of her head, the way you would kiss a sister or a friend, quick and gentle.

"Goodnight, little healer," he said, and walked away down the dark street with his hands in his pockets, whistling a Liyue harbour song.

Shalya stood on the doorstep, as red as a sunsettia, with both hands pressed to the top of her head.

Behind her, in the window, someone made a sound like a kettle boiling over. It was Mira.

"I'm going to end him," Mira said.

"No, you're not," said Vérène.

"I'm going to end him a little."

On the windowsill outside, the white dove sat in the dark, watching. It tilted its head at Shalya. And for one moment, if anyone had been looking, they might have thought it looked happy.

---

That night, they all had the same dream.

Not almost the same. Not similar. The same.

Shalya saw it. Mira saw it. Mori saw it. Vérène saw it. All four of them, asleep in their own beds in the house by the cemetery gate, at the same moment.

For the first time, the dream did not come in pieces. It came whole.

They saw a city burning under a sick green sky. A hospice full of the dying, and young women in white moving between the beds. They saw the dead rise in the courtyard. They saw a light come down at the altar, a dove, and then a girl in white with tears in her eyes, flickering like a candle in the wind, weak and hurt and still standing.

They saw the doors open, and the cold come in, and a crowned king of bones who was taller than the doorway.

They heard the girl in white say, gently, through her tears: "Maybe in a better time..."

And they saw the light go out.

Mira saw it from very high above, as if from the sky, and she screamed in the dream and could not reach her. Mori saw it from somewhere dark and quiet, a gate, and he saw the light come toward his gate and then not come, swallowed instead into something cold and hungry that was not his, and he felt a grief so huge it had no bottom. Vérène saw it as if from very far away, and very long ago, and she knew, the way she always knew things, that the girl in white was her own daughter.

And Shalya saw it from the inside.

---

They woke at the same moment.

Mira sat up so fast she hit her head on the shelf above her bed. Mori opened his eyes in the dark and lay perfectly still, with his heart pounding. Vérène woke without a sound and reached at once for her glasses.

Shalya did not scream.

For the first time in her life, she woke up from the dream and did not scream at all. She lay in the dark with tears running silently down her face and her hands pressed over her heart, and she whispered to the ceiling:

"That was me."

One by one, they went downstairs.

Nobody called anyone. Nobody needed to. Mori lit a single candle in the kitchen. Mira came in a moment later, rubbing her head. Then Vérène, with her notebook. Then, last, Shalya, small and pale in her nightgown, with the grey blanket around her shoulders.

They stood around the kitchen table in the candlelight, all four of them, and looked at each other.

Nobody said anything. There was nothing that needed to be said. They had all seen it. They all knew.

At last, Vérène sat down at the table. She opened her black notebook to a fresh page. She picked up her pen. Her hand, which never shook, was shaking.

She wrote one line.

We are not who we think we are.

Outside, the windowsill was empty. The dove was gone.

---

Across the city, in a small, cheap room at an inn near the east gate, Ran Le was also having a nightmare.

His was different.

In Ran Le's dream, he was running down a long dark corridor, and behind him, much too close, was a skeleton. A very, very large skeleton. With a crown. And it was hungry.

"No!" Ran Le shouted, running faster. "No, no, no! I'm not tasty! I'm all bones too! We're basically the same! Professional courtesy!"

The skeleton opened its jaws.

"I'm too young and handsome to be a snack!"

It ate him.

It ate him in one bite, and the inside of the skeleton was dark and cold and smelled terrible, and Ran Le landed in a heap somewhere in the middle of it, and then the dream changed.

Now he was running across a frozen field in a howling blizzard. And behind him, this time, was a man. A huge man, as broad as a door, in a great white wolf pelt with the wolf's head pulled over his own like a hood. His beard was full of ice. He carried an axe as big as Ran Le.

And he was furious.

"COWARD!" the wolf man roared, and the whole sky shook. "YOU KNEW! YOU SAW THE CRACK IN THE SKY, AND YOU SAID NOTHING! YOU DID NOT WARN THE GATEKEEPER! COWARD! THIEF! COME BACK AND FACE ME!"

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Ran Le shouted over his shoulder. "I've never warned anyone about anything in my life! That's not my brand!"

"COWARD!"

"YES! THANK YOU! I KNOW!"

A white wolf the size of a horse burst out of the snow in front of him. Ran Le screamed, turned, slipped on the ice, and fell.

He fell out of bed.

He landed on the floor of his little room with a thump, tangled in his blanket, and lay there gasping in the dark.

"Not real," he told the ceiling. "Not real. Not real. Giant skeletons are not real. Angry wolf men are not real."

He lay there a little longer.

"...Why did he say 'gatekeeper'?" he whispered.

The dice on his bedside table, which had been sitting quite still all night, rolled off the edge onto the floor beside his head. One after the other.

Both landed on their edges.

Ran Le stared at them for a very long time.

"I'm going back to bed," he announced to no one, and climbed back in, and pulled the blanket over his head, and did not sleep at all.

---

 

[DefenderGerson]

The feather was still warm.

That was the first thing Zenka knew. Before the light, before the voices, before she even knew she was awake. The feather was in her hand, pressed against her heart, and it was warm.

She opened her eyes.

The sky above her was blue. Not the sick green of Altdorf's last night. Not the bright, terrible light of the tear. A clean, clear, ordinary blue, with clouds drifting across it, and the sun high and warm. She could hear wind in grass. Birds. Running water, somewhere close.

And voices. Many voices, some way off, speaking all at once. She could not make out the words.

Zenka sat up slowly. Every bone in her body ached. Her white habit was torn and stained. Her hair was loose and full of dust. She did not know where she was. She did not know how long she had been lying here, or whether she had just fallen out of the light a moment ago, or whether she had been here for days, or weeks, or longer, and had only now woken up properly for the first time.

She did not know anything.

She looked down at the feather. White and soft, and glowing very faintly, even in the sunlight.

Her lips moved before she could stop them.

"Lady of Mercy," she whispered. "Hear the ones who suffer."

Nothing answered. Nothing had answered since that night.

She closed her eyes and said it again anyway.

"Lady of Tears. Do not turn your face away."

The wind moved through the grass. The voices in the distance grew louder, closer. Footsteps, many of them. Someone was shouting.

And then, out of all those voices, one voice cut through the rest. Loud and rough and cracking down the middle, as though the man shouting had not used it for a very long time, or had used it too much.

A voice she knew.

A voice she had not heard since the last days of Altdorf, when she had stood at the gate of the White Dove hospice and watched her big brother walk away down the road with the warrior priests of the Hammer. A great tall crest of black hair. A warhammer in one hand and that ugly dented iron club in the other. Not looking back, because he never looked back. He had gone to a war she had been certain he would never come back from.

"ZENKA!"

Her eyes flew open.

"ZENKA BADURIUS!"

She knew that voice. She would have known it anywhere, in any world.

'Bad,' she thought. 'Bad.'

She turned.

"...Bruder?"

---

End of Arc 1: A Better Time

 

[DefenderGerson]

Arc 2: The Rememberers

He came over the rise at a run, and he did not slow down.

Zenka had time to see the crest of black hair, wilder than she remembered and grey with dust, and the warhammer swinging in one fist. Then her brother hit her like a falling wall and lifted her clean off the ground.

"Bruder," she said into his shoulder. "Bruder, you're crushing me."

He did not put her down. He held on, and she felt him shaking. Bad Badurius did not shake. She had seen him walk home with three cracked ribs and complain only that his supper was cold. But he was shaking now, and she held on to him until it stopped.

When he finally set her on her feet, he held her at arm's length and looked her over the way he looked at everything: fast and hard, from top to bottom, counting. The torn habit. The scraped hands. The dust in her hair.

"Hurt?"

"No."

"Lying?"

"A little," she admitted. "Scrapes. That's all."

He grunted. From Bad, that meant he believed her.

More people were coming over the rise behind him. Thin people, ragged people. Imperial coats with the colours faded out of them. A woman with a baby wrapped against her chest. Men with spears and halberds and farm tools held like spears. They stopped a little way off and stared at Zenka in her white habit, and Zenka stared back.

"Is she one of ours?" someone called.

Bad did not turn around. "She's mine."

He sat down in the grass, quite suddenly, as if his legs had decided it for him. Zenka sat down beside him. Beyond a line of sandy hills, she could hear the sea.

"Where did you come from?" Bad asked.

"Altdorf."

His face changed. "Altdorf."

"The hospice. The last night." She looked down at her hands. "There was a light in the sky, like a tear in cloth. It pulled us up. I fell."

"When?"

"Last night. I think." She frowned. "Or this morning. It was dark there. It's noon here."

Bad was quiet for a moment. Then he turned his warhammer over and showed her the haft. Just below the iron head, someone had cut a row of small, careful notches into the wood. She counted them. There were nineteen.

"I fell nineteen days ago," Bad said. "Out east, past the mountains. Same light. Same tear." He ran his thumb along the notches. "Either the sky is slow, or you are."

"I've always been slow," said Zenka. "You told me so every morning."

It was an old joke, and he almost smiled at it. Almost.

Then she told him.

She had meant to wait, to find the gentle words she had learned at so many bedsides. But the words came out of her the way the prayer had on the riverbank, without asking permission.

"Bad. The Lady came to the hospice. At the very end."

He waited. He was good at waiting, when it mattered.

"She was hurt. Something had hurt her, badly, and she was so weak, and she came anyway. She stood in front of the doors so we could run." Zenka's voice did something she did not allow it to do in front of patients. "Nagash came for her. She didn't fight him. She cried for him. And then he..."

She could not finish it. She did not need to.

"I can't hear her anymore," she whispered. "I pray, and there's no one there. It's like calling into an empty house."

Bad said nothing for a long time. At last he looked at the feather in her hand. "That hers?"

"It fell from her shoulders."

He reached out and touched it with one rough fingertip, very carefully, the way he used to touch the lute their neighbour gave her, as if it might break. Then he pulled his hand back and frowned at it.

"It's warm," he said.

"It's always warm."

He looked at the feather a while longer. Then he looked out toward the sea.

"I can't hear Him either," he said.

Zenka turned. "Sigmar?"

"Every night since I fell. The Litany. All of it, the long way, the way Father Aldric made me learn it." He shrugged one heavy shoulder. "Nothing. Not even the feeling. You know the feeling."

She did know it. The hand on the shoulder. The warmth that answered.

"Maybe He's only far away," she said, and heard how thin it sounded.

"Maybe," said Bad.

Neither of them believed it, and neither of them said so.

"Did anyone else come through?" she asked after a while. "From the hospice. Mother Agathe?"

Bad shook his head. "No sisters. You're the only one in white."

She closed her eyes. She had known. She had felt Agathe's fingers slip, one by one. But knowing a thing and hearing it said aloud were two different wounds.

Bad was watching her. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, and he did not quite look at her.

"Zenka. At the end. In Altdorf." He stopped. "You didn't see any of it, did you? The fighting."

It was the old question. He had asked it after every bad night of their lives, ever since she was ten years old and he was fifteen and he had promised her, bleeding, in the corner of a frontier shack: I won't let you see.

"No, Bruder," she said. "I didn't see you."

Something in his shoulders let go.

"Good," he said, and stood up, and held out his hand to pull her to her feet. "Come on. You'll want to meet the others. And you'll want to see the sign."

"What sign?"

Bad's face darkened. "You'll see."

---

The camp lay in a hollow behind the sand hills, where a stream came down out of a green valley to the sea. There were perhaps sixty people, with shelters of cloaks and driftwood, a fire pit ringed with stones, and a row of fish drying on a line. It looked like every refugee camp Zenka had ever seen on the roads of the Empire. But the grass was too green, the flowers were the wrong shapes, and the trees bore heavy red fruit that the children had already learned to climb for.

Most of the people were Imperial. But on the far side of the fire sat a group who kept a little apart, and when they spoke to each other, it was not in Reikspiel.

"Bretonnians," Bad said. "Peasants. They came over the Grey Mountains last year, running from some war of their own. Then the end came, and they ran again. They fell through with us."

"Do they speak any Reikspiel?"

"One does. Market Reikspiel." He pointed with his chin. "Mathilde."

Mathilde was a broad woman with sunburnt arms and a face like a closed fist. She looked at Zenka's white habit, then at Bad, then back at the habit, and something in her face eased very slightly.

"Sister," she said, in heavy Reikspiel. "Good. We have sick."

"Show me."

That was how Zenka spent her first afternoon in the new world: on her knees in the sand, doing the work. A boy with a fever. A man whose arm had gone hot and swollen around a cut. An old woman who only needed someone to sit with her and hold her hand and tell her, in a language she did not understand, that it would be all right.

Zenka prayed as she worked. She could not stop herself. Lady of Mercy, hear the ones who suffer. Nothing answered. So she boiled the water and cleaned the wound and held the hand anyway, because that was also something you could do, and the Lady had always said so.

A grizzled old soldier with one eye and a Reikland sash came and squatted beside her while she worked. He had the look of a man who had been a sergeant for so long that he had forgotten how to be anything else.

"Otto Krieg," he said. "Reikland Fourth, back when there was a Reikland." He nodded at Bad, who was standing at the edge of the camp with his arms folded, glaring at the hills. "We'd all be dead without him. Three times now. You should know that."

"Three times?"

"First night, jelly things. Round, bouncing. You stab one, it bursts into water." Otto scratched his beard. "Then little masked men with clubs. Then big masked men with axes. The Exalted put them all down."

Across the camp, without turning, Bad said, "Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't call me that."

Otto grinned at Zenka. "Second Exalted of Sigmar," he said, not quietly. "He hates it."

"I know," said Zenka. "He sent the letter back."

"I sent three letters back," said Bad.

Then he walked over, took Zenka by the sleeve, and led her up the slope behind the camp to a crossroads in the grass, where a wooden signpost leaned in the wind.

Zenka stared at it.

The letters were black and pointed and tall, with little hooks and tails, exactly like the lettering in the old temple books of Wörth. For one wonderful moment her heart leapt.

Then she tried to read it, and the moment fell to pieces.

The letters were almost right. That was the worst part. Each one looked like a letter she knew, the way a stranger in a crowd looks like a friend until he turns around. But they did not make words.

"The first day," Bad said darkly, "we cheered. Otto cried. He thought we'd landed somewhere in Nordland." He put out one thick finger and laid it on the first line, the way he had read everything all his life, slowly, letter by letter. "That's an S."

"Is it?"

"Could be." The finger moved. "That's... no." It moved again. "That one's just rude."

"Bad, how long have you been reading this sign?"

He did not answer that.

"It's not ours," he said finally. "None of it's ours."

They walked back down to the camp in silence. At the bottom of the slope, Bad stopped and pointed toward the beach.

"One more thing," he said. "There's someone else. Not ours either."

Far down the shore, at the edge of the water, a single figure stood alone with a fishing line.

"Came out of the hills two days ago," Bad said. "Talks some tongue nobody knows. Doesn't steal. Doesn't beg. Catches his own fish and eats them by himself." He paused. "He's got a sword. And he knows how to stand."

From Bad, that was both high praise and a warning.

"Is he dangerous?"

"Don't know yet," said Bad. "So don't go near him."

---

Zenka went near him at sunset.

She took a heel of hard bread from Otto's stores and walked down through the sand hills to the shore.

He was younger than she had expected. About her own age, maybe younger. Long golden hair tied back in a braid, eyes like gold coins, plain white and brown travelling clothes worn thin at the edges. A sword at his hip, as Bad had said. He was standing very still at the water's edge, holding a line out into the waves, and he did not turn around as she came, though she was sure he knew she was there.

She sat down in the sand a little way off, the way you sit near a wounded animal, and waited.

After a while, he looked at her. At the white habit. At the bread in her hands.

She held it out.

He hesitated. Then he came and took it, with a small nod that was almost a bow, and sat down a little way off from her, the same careful distance, and ate.

"Zenka," she said, and touched her own chest.

He looked at her. She did it again. "Zenka."

He understood. She saw him understand. And then, instead of saying his own name, he lifted one hand and pointed straight up, at the evening sky, where the first stars were coming out.

Zenka looked up. Then back at him.

"From up there?" she asked, though he could not understand her.

He nodded anyway.

She sat with that for a moment. Then she lifted her own hand and pointed up, too.

"So am I," she said.

He looked at her for a long time. He had the face of someone who had been alone for much longer than two days. She knew that face. She had seen it in a hundred hospice beds.

Then the line jerked in his hand.

It jerked hard, so hard it nearly pulled him off his feet, and he was up at once, leaning back, both hands on the line. It was not a fish. Fish did not pull like that. Out beyond the rocks, the sea was turning in a slow white circle, like water going down a drain, and the line ran straight into the middle of it.

Zenka did not think. She ran to him and grabbed the line behind his hands and pulled.

The sea pulled back. The boy said something sharp in his own tongue. Zenka set her feet in the wet sand and leaned her whole weight on the line, and together, step by step, they dragged whatever it was out of the circle and through the waves and up onto the shore.

It was a girl.

A very small girl, smaller than any child should be, limp and soaked, with white hair plastered across her face and a dark cape spread out on the sand behind her. The cape was full of stars. Real ones. Tiny points of light that drifted across the dark cloth like sparks.

Zenka did not stop to wonder at it. She had pulled drowning children out of the Reik before. She dropped to her knees, rolled the little girl onto her side, and pressed hard on her back with the flat of her hand. Once. Twice. Three times.

Water came out, a great deal of it. Then a cough. Then another.

The girl's eyes opened. They were dark and bright at once, like the sky in the cape.

She looked at Zenka. She looked at the boy. Then she rose up off the sand.

She did not stand up. She rose, straight up into the air, and floated there at the height of Zenka's head, dripping, with a little crown of rose-gold turning slowly above her hair.

Zenka sat down hard in the surf.

The floating girl began to talk. She talked fast and bright and without stopping, waving her small arms.

"Whew! Paimon was SO sure that was the end! First Paimon got super tired, and then there was this big whirlpool, and then glub, glub, glub... and then you fished Paimon out! You saved Paimon's life! Both of you!"

Zenka understood none of it. She only stared.

The little girl pressed both hands proudly to her chest. "Oh! Right! You don't know who Paimon is. Paimon is Paimon! Paimon!"

"Paimon?" Zenka said.

"Yes! Paimon! See, you're smart!"

The boy looked at her. Something in his face shifted, very slightly. For the first time since Zenka had sat down beside him, he almost smiled.

"ZENKA!"

Bad came down the sand hill like a landslide.

He had his hammer in his fist and murder in his face, and Otto was running behind him with a spear, and behind Otto came half the camp. The floating girl shrieked and shot behind the golden-haired boy.

"Eek! Who's THAT? Why is he so big? Why is he so ANGRY? Don't let him smash Paimon!"

The boy's hand went to his sword.

"Away from it!" Bad roared. "Zenka, away!"

Zenka got up out of the surf and stood directly in front of the boy and the floating girl and spread her arms wide.

"No."

Bad stopped. His hammer did not drop. "That's a daemon."

"She was drowning, Bruder. I just pressed the sea out of her. Daemons don't drown."

"You don't know that."

"I do." She did not lower her arms. "I've seen what drowning looks like. That's what it looked like."

Behind her, she could feel the boy standing very still, his hand on his sword, waiting to see what she would do. In front of her, Bad was breathing hard. The two of them looked at each other over her head. She could not see the boy's face. She could see Bad's, and she saw the moment he took the boy's measure and the boy took his.

Bad lowered the hammer. One inch.

That was when the Bretonnians arrived.

They came down the sand hill behind the Imperials, Mathilde at their head, and they saw what the Imperials had not stopped to see. A small glowing girl hanging in the air above the evening sea, with water streaming from her white hair, a crown of light above her head and a cloak full of stars.

Mathilde's face went white. She dropped to her knees in the wet sand.

"La Dame," she breathed. Then louder, her voice cracking: "La Dame du Lac!"

All around her, one after another, the Bretonnian peasants fell to their knees. They bowed their heads. Some of them were crying. An old man pressed his face to the sand.

The floating girl peeked out from behind the boy's shoulder.

She looked at the kneeling peasants for a long moment. "Huh? Why are they all... oh. Ohhh."

Her whole face lit up like a lantern. She floated out into the open, put her small hands on her hips, and lifted her chin very high indeed.

"Hehe! Finally! Someone around here who knows how to treat Paimon properly!"

The golden-haired boy put his hand over his eyes.

"It's not a lake," said Otto, to no one in particular. "It's the sea."

Nobody listened to him.

Zenka lowered her arms slowly. She looked at the kneeling peasants, at Mathilde's wet face, at the old man with his forehead in the sand, and something twisted under her ribs.

She remembered kneeling. She remembered the chapel floor, cold under her knees, and the light at the altar, and her legs simply folding.

'That isn't her,' she thought. 'That isn't their Lady.'

And then, more quietly:

'But they need someone to kneel to. We all do. And there's no one left.'

---

Supper that night was fish stew, thin and mostly water. Sixty hungry people sat around the fire watching the pot, and the floating girl, who had followed the boy up to the camp as though she belonged there, hovered directly over it, sniffing with great interest.

"Mmm, fish stew! Is there enough for Paimon? Paimon only needs a little bit. Okay, a medium bit. Okay, a big bit, but Paimon almost drowned today, so it's only fair!"

Bad watched her for a long time. Then he said, very seriously, to no one:

"How much meat do you suppose is on a thing like that?"

"Bruder!"

Otto choked on his spoon. Several of the Imperials laughed for the first time in nineteen days.

The golden-haired boy had not understood a single word. But he looked at Bad's face, and then at the floating girl hanging over the stewpot, and then at Bad's face again, and he made a small, thoughtful sound in his throat that was very nearly a laugh.

The floating girl looked from Bad to the boy. Then at the sixty hungry faces turned toward her in the firelight. Her eyes went very wide.

"W-wait. Why is everyone looking at Paimon like that?" She shrieked, shot across the fire, and hid behind Zenka. "Paimon is NOT on the menu!"

---

Paimon woke Zenka at dawn by floating directly over her face.

"Zenka!" she said, very pleased with herself for remembering it. "Get up, get up! It's lesson time! Paimon is going to teach you how to talk properly. You and him both. Paimon is a very good teacher, you'll see!"

She tugged Zenka's sleeve and pointed down the beach, where the golden-haired boy was already sitting on a flat rock, waiting.

That was how the lessons began.

Paimon did not speak Reikspiel. She did not even try. She simply pointed at things and named them, loudly and clearly and many times, and waited with her arms folded until they said the word back.

"Sea!" She jabbed a finger at the water. "Say it! Sea!"

Zenka said it back. The boy said it back.

"Good! Sand! Fish! Sky! And this is a sword. No, don't move it away, Paimon's teaching!"

Zenka found that the words stayed. They stayed the way songs stayed. She had taught herself the lute by ear in three weeks once, as a girl, and this was the same. You listened to the shape of a thing and the shape stayed. By midmorning she was saying the words back before the boy did, and Paimon was clapping and turning little circles in the air.

The boy was nearly as quick. He did not seem surprised by any of it. He listened to each word with his head a little tilted, as though he had done this many times before, in many places. Zenka wondered how many. She did not know how to ask.

Halfway through the morning, he pointed at Paimon, raised his eyebrows, and asked a question.

Paimon told him a word. A long one.

He repeated it, carefully, pointing at her.

Paimon went bright red from her collar to her crown.

"HEY! Paimon only taught you that so you'd know what NOT to call Paimon! Take it back! Paimon is not emergency food! Paimon is a guide! A very important guide!"

The boy only nodded, as if satisfied, and turned back to the sea. Zenka would not learn what the word meant until the next day. When she did, she laughed for a long time.

Bad sat on a dune a little above them, sharpening a stake for no reason Zenka could see and pretending not to listen. Once she heard him mutter one of the new words under his breath. He said it completely wrong. She did not tell him.

Paimon heard him too. She squinted up at him. "Hmph. That one's Grumpy Hammer. Paimon has decided."

After the midday meal, Paimon drew in the sand.

She drew letters. Tall, black, pointed ones, with little hooks and tails. Zenka looked down at them and burst out laughing, and could not stop, and had to put her face in her hands.

The boy looked at her, puzzled.

"Hey! What's so funny?" Paimon put her hands on her hips. "Paimon's handwriting is very nice, thank you very much!"

"No, no," Zenka said, still laughing, wiping her eyes. She pointed up toward the crossroads, toward the sign. "My brother. He's been reading that sign for nineteen days."

They could not understand her. But up on the dune, Bad heard her, and he threw his stake into the sand and walked away.

---

In the afternoon, Paimon took them up the valley.

"Come on! Paimon wants to show you something! It's a surprise!"

She floated ahead, looking back every few steps to make sure they were coming. The boy followed. Zenka followed the boy. And Bad, of course, followed Zenka, with his face saying clearly that he was only out for a walk.

The path climbed past a lake so still and blue that it looked painted, and out onto a high green shelf of land with the whole valley spread below it.

There, on a great block of pale stone, stood a statue.

A hooded figure in grey stone, taller than three men, with great carved wings folded behind it and a sphere held out in its hands, as if offering something to whoever came before it. The stone was old and worn by wind, but someone had cleared the grass around its feet.

Paimon floated up beside it and spread her arms, like a guide in a cathedral.

"Ta-da! This is a Statue of The Seven! This one is for Barbatos, the Anemo Archon. That's Mondstadt's god!" She patted the stone. "Barbatos."

Then she said another word, slowly, one they had learned that morning. She had taught it by pointing up into the sky and pressing her small hands together, the way people pray.

God.

Zenka looked up at the stone face under the hood. "A god," she said. "Your god. This land's god."

Paimon nodded hard. "And he's not just a statue, you know. He's real! He's alive!" She pressed her hand flat against her chest and tapped it. Tap, tap, tap. A heartbeat. She walked in the air, little steps. Then she pointed east, far over the hills. "All the Archons are alive. Well, Paimon's never actually met one. But everybody says so!"

"Mondstadt," she said, and tapped her heart again.

Zenka understood.

"Alive," she whispered. "You mean he's alive."

Paimon could not have understood the word. But she understood Zenka's face, and she nodded.

Behind them, Bad had stopped walking.

The golden-haired boy stepped up to the foot of the statue. He looked up at it for a long, long time. His face was very hard to read. Slowly, he lifted one hand toward the stone, as if he meant to touch it. Then he stopped, with his palm a finger's width away, and held it there.

Zenka watched him, and thought she understood that too. He was not looking at it the way a man looks at a god he wants to pray to. He was looking at it the way Bad looked at a door he might one day have to kick down.

After a moment, he lowered his hand. Paimon floated close and spoke softly. "We'll go to Mondstadt. Not yet, though. First you need to learn to talk properly. Paimon can't do all the talking forever." She paused. "...Okay, Paimon could. But still."

He nodded, once.

Zenka knelt down in the grass in front of the statue.

She did not decide to. Her knees simply folded, the way they always had. She took the feather out of her sleeve and held it in both hands against her heart, and she bowed her head before a stranger's god in a stranger's land, and she prayed to her own.

Lady of Mercy, hear the ones who suffer. Lady of Tears, do not turn your face away.

The wind came up the valley. It moved through the grass around her and lifted the edges of her habit and touched her face, warm and gentle and smelling of flowers. It was a kind wind. She could feel that. Whoever this god was, he was kind.

But he was not her.

'You're kind,' she thought, looking up at the stone face. 'Whoever you are. I can tell. But you're not her, and you're not listening for me.'

She stayed on her knees until the wind died away. Nothing else answered. When she finally stood, Bad was standing just behind her. He had not knelt. He was looking up at the statue with his jaw set.

"Not ours," he said.

"No," said Zenka.

Bad looked at the statue a moment longer. Then he turned and started back down the path without another word, and she knew better than to follow him too closely.

---

By the third day, Zenka had enough words.

Not many. Not the right ones, most of the time. But enough to sit with Paimon by the fire at noon, with half the camp crowded around them, and turn Paimon's quick bright chatter into slow, careful Reikspiel. Mathilde sat at her elbow and turned the Reikspiel into Bretonnian. It was slow, but it was the best they had.

Zenka missed half of what Paimon said. But this was the shape of it.

"Okay! Listen up, everyone!" Paimon floated over the fire like a teacher at the front of a schoolroom. "This whole land is called Teyvat. And this part is Mondstadt! Wind, freedom, and wine. Lots and lots of wine. The big city is that way." She pointed east. "There are seven nations, and seven gods. The Archons! Mondstadt has Barbatos. Down south there's Liyue, and Liyue has Rex Lapis. Liyue is all rocks and Mora." She rubbed her fingers together. "Mora is money. Paimon likes Mora."

Several of the Imperials laughed when Zenka translated that. Paimon looked pleased.

"And some people get a Vision!" She shaped a little gem in the air with her hands. "It's a shiny little stone. If you have a really, really, REALLY big wish, the gods might give you one. And then you can do this!" She flung her arms out. "Whoosh! Wind! Or fire, or water, or lightning..."

"Who gives them?" Zenka asked. "The Archons?"

Paimon pointed straight up, past the clouds. "Celestia." She frowned, as though the word had a bad taste. "Paimon doesn't really... um. Anyway!" She brightened at once. "Is there any more of that fish?"

When Zenka finished translating, nobody said anything for a while.

Then Otto said, slowly, "Seven gods."

"Yes."

"Seven living gods. Walking about. Handing out jewels." He scratched his beard. "And they answer? When you pray?"

Zenka asked. Paimon tipped her head from side to side, considering.

"Hmm. Yes!" A pause. "...Sometimes. Paimon thinks."

Otto laughed. It was not a happy laugh.

Bad had been sitting at the back of the crowd, apart, the way he always did. Now he spoke up, without moving.

"Ask her about Sigmar."

Zenka turned to Paimon and did her best. She said the name. She said the word for god. She made the shape of a hammer with her hands, and then a crown, and then she pointed at Bad.

"Sig... mar?" Paimon tried the name out carefully. "Sigmar..."

She thought about it very hard, with her small face screwed up. Then she shook her head.

"Sorry. Paimon's never heard of him." She glanced at Bad, and her voice went smaller. "Is he Grumpy Hammer's god? Grumpy Hammer looks sad now. Tell him Paimon's sorry. Really sorry."

Zenka told him. Bad nodded once. Then he got up and walked away down to the stream, and no one in the camp watched him go, because they all knew better.

Mathilde tugged at Zenka's sleeve. She wanted to ask about la Dame. Zenka asked.

Paimon beamed. "Paimon's the Lady of the Lake now? Hehe. Tell them yes!"

Zenka declined to translate that.

Then, because she could not help it, she asked her own question.

She asked it badly. She said god, and then woman, and then water, because she did not know the word for tears. She drew lines down her face with her fingertips. She made the shape of a small bird with her hands and let it fly. She laid her hand over her heart, and then on Mathilde's sunburnt arm, gently, the way you lay a hand on a patient.

Paimon watched all of it very seriously.

"A god who cries?" she said. "With a little bird? Who takes care of people?" She thought for a long time. "Mondstadt's god is all wind and freedom. And wine! Mostly wine, actually. But a crying goddess..." She shook her head slowly. "No. Paimon's never heard of one like that. Not in Mondstadt. Not anywhere."

Zenka nodded and smiled and said the word for thank you. Then she went and sat by the boy with the fever and put a cool cloth on his forehead and held his hand, and did not cry, because there were patients watching.

---

That evening, the camp slept early. Paimon fell asleep in the middle of a sentence.

"...and that's why Paimon should get the biggest piece of fish tomorrow, because Paimon is the teacher, and teachers need lots of... need lots... of..."

She curled up in the air beside the fire like a cat, wrapped in her cape of stars. The Bretonnians had made her a little nest of driftwood and dried grass, which she had pretended to be too grand for and then climbed into at once.

Zenka sat by the fire. After a while, the golden-haired boy came and sat on the other side of it.

They talked.

It was a strange kind of talk. Neither of them had a single word of the other's language. So they talked in the third tongue, the one they had both learned on the same beach in the same three days, stopping often, drawing in the sand with sticks. It was like two children talking. It was the best conversation Zenka had had in a very long time.

He told her about his sister.

He did it with a stick in the sand. He drew two figures, side by side, holding hands. He drew a third figure, above them, apart. He drew a line from the third figure down to one of the two. Then he scratched out that one, carefully, until there was only a mark in the sand where she had been.

"Sister," he said. It was one of the words. Then he said another word, a name, in his own tongue, very softly, as if it were something he kept wrapped up and did not take out often.

"Lumine."

Zenka looked at the drawing. At the third figure, alone at the top.

"God?" she asked.

He looked at her. Then he nodded.

"What's your name?" she asked. She had learned how to ask it on the second day. "Your name."

He was quiet for a moment. Then, slowly, he shook his head. Not unkindly. Not as if he did not trust her. Just as if his name were a thing that belonged to one other person, and that person was not here.

He pointed at himself and said Paimon's word for him instead. Zenka had heard Paimon use it a hundred times already.

"Traveller."

She did not press him. She had sat with too many grieving people to press.

Instead she took the stick from his hand and drew her own picture.

She drew a woman, small and slight, with a little bird beside her. She drew a tall figure with a crown, much taller, looming over her. She started to draw the line between them. Then her hand stopped, and she could not make it move, and after a moment she scratched both figures out completely.

She spoke in Reikspiel. She knew he could not understand. She said it anyway.

"A god took someone from me too."

He looked at the scratched-out sand. Then at her face. He did not understand a single word. She could see that he understood all of it.

After a long time, the Traveller spoke. He spoke slowly, in Paimon's words, picking each one up as if it were heavy.

"Maybe," he said. "I... am not... for this world."

He was looking into the fire. He did not look as if he expected an answer.

Zenka opened her mouth.

The words were right there. They rose in her chest all on their own, soft and sad and certain, the last words she had heard in the chapel at Altdorf before the light went out. Maybe in a better time. She felt them sitting on her tongue, the way the prayer sat there, waiting to be said.

She closed her mouth again.

They were not hers to say. She did not know why she was so sure of that. She only knew that they belonged to someone else, and that she was keeping them for her.

So she said the simplest thing she had, in the little tongue they shared.

"You are not alone."

The Traveller looked up at her across the fire. For a long moment he did not say anything at all.

Then he nodded. Once. And that was enough.

---

The drums started an hour before dawn.

Zenka woke to them. Low and heavy and close, a slow thudding beat coming down the valley in the dark, and under it, voices. Chanting. Rough, wordless, many.

Bad was already on his feet. She had never once in her life seen him wake up. He was simply asleep, and then he was standing, with the hammer in his hand.

"Zenka," he said. "Rocks."

She did not argue. She had never argued, not once in all the years. She got up and went.

There was a great pile of grey boulders at the seaward end of the hollow, half buried in the sand, and that was where Bad had told them all to go, on the very first night, if the masked men came back. Zenka gathered the children as she went. The woman with the baby. The old woman who only needed her hand held. The boy with the fever, whom she carried herself. Mathilde came with two of the Bretonnian girls, and between them they half dragged, half carried the man with the swollen arm.

Behind them, she heard Otto shouting the men into a line.

At the edge of the firelight, the Traveller was drawing his sword. Paimon was hovering at his shoulder, wide awake now. He pointed firmly at the rocks.

"No way! Paimon's staying right here with you! What if you need Paimon? What if..."

He pointed again.

"Paimon is a very brave guide, you know! Paimon can..."

He looked at her.

"...Fine." Paimon flew to the rocks. "But Paimon's watching!"

She landed beside Zenka in a huff, muttering, and then immediately floated up to peek over the top of the biggest boulder. Zenka settled the fever boy against the stone, made sure the baby was quiet, and then did the thing she had done every bad night of her life since she was ten years old.

She turned her back to the fight.

She sat down facing the sea, with the feather held against her heart, and closed her eyes.

'I won't look,' she told her brother silently, the way she always did. 'You keep your promise, and I'll keep mine. Just be alive at the end.'

The drums came closer.

Beside her, up on the rock, Paimon gasped.

"Hilichurls! So many hilichurls! And two big ones, with axes... oh no. Oh no, oh no." A thud, somewhere out on the sand. "Grumpy Hammer just hit one so hard it FLEW! Did you see that? Zenka, did you... hey. Why are your eyes closed?"

"I can't watch," Zenka said.

"What? Why not? It's amazing!"

Zenka did not have the words to explain. A frontier shack. Three cracked ribs. A promise. She only had one word that was close enough.

"Promise," she said.

Paimon was quiet for a moment. Then Zenka felt something small settle against her shoulder.

"Okay," Paimon said. "Then Paimon will watch for you. And Paimon will tell you when it's over. Paimon promises too."

---

Bad Badurius walked out to meet them.

There were more than he had thought. Forty, maybe more, pouring down the valley in the grey before dawn with torches and clubs and crude wooden shields, their faces hidden behind those blank, staring masks. Short, most of them, and bandy-legged, and loud. Behind them came two big ones, much bigger than the rest, broad as doors, with great shields of lashed timber and axes the size of a man.

He had fought the masked men twice already. They were not orcs. They were not beastmen. They did not stink of the Dark Gods the way Chaos things stank. He did not know what they were.

It did not matter.

"Chaos or daemon," he said to the dark. "Whatever. Bring it on."

Behind him, Otto's line of spears and halberds and pitchforks was shaking. He could hear it. Sixty people's worth of grief, standing in the sand with weapons they barely knew how to hold, on a shore at the end of the world. Behind them, the rocks. Behind the rocks, Zenka.

He started walking forward. He did not run. He never ran at the start.

The first of the masked men reached him, and he hit it, and it went away. The second one, the same. The third came from the side with a burning club, and he took the club on his forearm and hit the third one, too.

That was how it always started. Slow. Heavy. Each blow like lifting a sack of grain. He had been tired for nineteen days. Since before that. Since the sky had turned green and the end had begun.

But he kept walking. And something began to build.

He could not have described it to anyone. Father Aldric had tried to give it names. Righteous Fury, the old man called it, and the Hammer of Sigmar, and a dozen other names out of a dozen dusty books. Bad had never needed the names. He only knew what it felt like. Every blow came a little easier than the one before. Every breath a little deeper. The world got smaller and clearer, until it was only the next mask and the next club and the next step forward.

He muttered the Litany under his breath as he went, flat and fast, the way he had learned it, like a man counting. He did not expect an answer. He said it anyway.

Somewhere to his left, steel flashed.

The boy from the beach was fighting.

Now Bad knew how the boy fought. The boy fought the way water runs downhill. No waste. No noise. A sword so quick and light it was like watching a needle go through cloth. He did not shout. He did not seem angry. He simply moved through the masked men as though he had done this in a great many places, against a great many things, and they were all much the same to him in the end.

'Good,' Bad thought. 'Good sword.'

Then the first big one reached him.

It did not swing its axe. It came shield first, a wall of timber and iron and muscle, and it hit Bad full in the chest and lifted him off his feet and threw him back across the sand.

He landed hard. The breath went out of him. For a moment the sky above him was grey and wide and very far away.

He heard Otto's line cry out. He heard it begin to break.

And behind it, small and far and clear, from among the rocks at the edge of the sea, he heard a baby start to cry.

Bad got up.

He did not decide to. He was simply lying down, and then he was standing. That was how it always went, when there was someone behind him. That was the only way it ever went.

He started walking again.

And the hammer lit.

It began in the iron head, the way it always did. A thread of gold, then a glow, then a crackling corona of light that ran down the haft and over his fist and up his arm. It was the light from the Dragon Ogre in the foothills. The light from every bad night since. Gold, and hot, and smelling of a storm about to break.

It had come. Even here. Even in this place, at the end of the world, under the wrong moon.

'So you're here,' Bad thought, and something in his chest twisted hard. 'You're here. Then talk to me. Just once. Say something.'

The light only burned. Brighter and brighter. It did not speak.

The big masked man raised its shield. Bad hit the shield.

The shield was not there anymore.

The big one went backward across the sand the way Bad had gone, and did not get up. All along the line, Bad heard the shaking stop. He heard Otto's men stop breaking. He heard them straighten, and lift their spears, and shout. He did not look back. He had never needed to look back. They always found their feet, when he was walking forward.

The masked men were all around him now. He planted his feet, lifted the hammer high, and turned.

He turned the whole of himself, hammer at the full length of his arms, once, twice, three times. Gold light poured off the iron in a ring, and the air around him cracked like a thunderclap, and when he stopped turning there was a wide, clean circle of empty sand around him and masked men scattered across the dunes beyond it, groaning, crawling, running.

The second big one was fighting the boy.

The boy was fast, much faster than it. But its shield was huge, and every quick, light cut of his sword skidded off the lashed timber, and the axe kept coming down. Bad saw the boy slip in the wet sand. He saw the axe go up.

He was already moving.

He came in from the side and brought the hammer down on the big shield with every bit of gold left in him. The timber burst. The big one staggered, open, arms flung wide.

The boy did not need telling. He was up off the sand before the splinters landed, and his sword went in once, quick and clean, and that was the end of it.

It went quiet after that. The last of the masked men were running back up the valley in the grey light, dropping their torches as they went. The drums had stopped. Somewhere out on the beach, a single torch hissed and went out in the surf.

Bad stood in the middle of the trampled sand, breathing hard. The boy stood beside him.

They looked at each other.

The boy said something in his own tongue, low. Bad had no idea what it meant.

"Good sword," Bad said.

The boy did not understand that, either. But he nodded. And Bad nodded back.

Then the light went out of the hammer, all at once, like a candle pinched between two fingers.

Bad's knees went. He sat down in the sand, quite suddenly, the way he had sat down beside Zenka on the first day, and stayed there.

---

Zenka heard the quiet before she heard anything else.

She kept her eyes closed. She kept them closed while the last shouts faded, while the drums did not start again, while the sea went on washing in and pulling back. She did not open them until she heard Paimon come tumbling down off the rock beside her, talking so fast that the words fell over one another.

"It's over! Paimon kept her promise! And Zenka, you missed EVERYTHING! He went GOLD! All gold, like lightning! Boom! And then he spun around and spun around and they all went flying everywhere, and then he smashed the big one's shield, and the Traveller went whoosh..." She flung her arms wide, and her eyes were enormous. "Is Grumpy Hammer an Archon? Is he secretly an Archon?!"

Zenka laughed. It came out of her shaky and wet, but it was a laugh.

"No," she said. She did not have the word for brother yet. So she said it in Reikspiel, and touched her own heart. "No. He's mine."

"Zenka."

His voice. Rough and tired and just around the edge of the rocks. Not coming any closer.

"Done."

She got up. She did not look at the sand where the fighting had been. She went to the wounded first, because that was the work, and only when all of that was done did she go and find her brother.

He was sitting in the sand at the edge of the camp, with the hammer across his knees, staring at nothing. He looked the way he always looked afterward. As though someone had pulled a plug out of the bottom of him and let everything drain away.

She sat down beside him and put a piece of bread in his hand.

"Eat."

He looked at the bread as though he had never seen bread before.

"Bad. Eat."

He took a bite. Chewed. Swallowed. He did not look at her.

"It came," he said, after a long while.

"What did?"

"The light. Here. Same as at home." He turned the hammer over on his knees and looked at the iron head, which was only iron now, dark and cold and dented. "Same as the Dragon Ogre. Same as every time."

Zenka was quiet a moment. "Then He's with you."

"Then why won't He talk to me?"

She did not have an answer. She had no answer at all. She had been carrying the same question since the riverbank in Altdorf, and she had not found an answer to it either.

So she did the only thing she knew how to do. She put her hand on his arm, gently, the way you lay a hand on a patient, and left it there.

"Eat the bread, Bruder," she said.

He ate the bread.

---

On the fourth morning, Paimon and the Traveller left.

Paimon announced it at breakfast, with a great deal of pointing.

"We're going to find the Seven! All of them! Somebody took the Traveller's sister, and the Archons are gods, so they have to know something. But first we'll explore a little. Along the coast, and over the hills. He still needs lots of practice talking." The Traveller gave her a look. "He does! And then, Mondstadt!"

She turned, very grandly, and pointed east over the green hills for the whole camp to see.

"Mondstadt's that way! Big walls, and knights who protect people, and a huge church, and the food! Paimon's heard the food is amazing. They'll help you there. Probably! Definitely probably!"

Zenka turned it slowly into Reikspiel for the others.

"When the sick can walk," Bad said, from the back. "Not before."

Zenka translated that. Paimon nodded, approving. "See? Grumpy Hammer does say smart things sometimes."

They walked them down to the shore to say goodbye. Half the camp came. The Bretonnians came all together, and at the water's edge they knelt in the sand one last time. Paimon floated above them and waved her small hand slowly back and forth over their bowed heads, like a queen at a parade.

"Bye-bye, everyone! Be good! Your Lady of the Lake is very proud of you!"

The Traveller took hold of the edge of her starry cape and towed her away.

Paimon came to Zenka last.

She hovered in front of her, suddenly a little shy, and pointed at the white feather in Zenka's hands.

"Paimon's giving you a name," she said. "A nice one! Paimon only gives ugly names to people who annoy her. You never annoyed Paimon. Not once." She pointed at Zenka, firmly, the way you name someone. "Feather."

Zenka understood. It was a gift.

"Thank you, Paimon," she said.

Then Paimon turned and pointed at Bad. "And HE'S Grumpy Hammer. That one's not a nice name. But Paimon means it nicely. Mostly."

Bad looked at Zenka. "What did she call me?"

Zenka pressed her lips together very hard.

"Zenka."

"Grumpy Hammer," she said.

Otto laughed so hard he had to sit down. Bad looked at the little floating girl for a long moment with no expression at all. Then he grunted.

Paimon decided, apparently, that this meant he liked it.

The Traveller came last.

He stood in front of Zenka for a moment at the edge of the sea, with the morning light on his golden hair, and he did not say anything. Then he held out his hand, and she took it.

"Mondstadt," he said, in the little tongue. And then a word they had learned on the third day. "Again."

"Again," said Zenka.

Then he turned to Bad. They looked at each other over her head, the way they had on the first evening, when Bad had raised his hammer and the boy had put his hand on his sword. It was a different look now.

Bad nodded once. The Traveller nodded back.

Then he and Paimon walked away up the shore, the boy on foot and the girl floating beside him, talking and talking and waving her arms, until they rounded the headland and the sand hills hid them from sight.

Zenka stood at the water's edge for a long time after they had gone.

The sea washed in around her feet and pulled back. The wind came off the water, cool and clean, smelling of salt. Behind her, the camp was waking. Somewhere, the baby was laughing now instead of crying.

In her hands, the feather moved.

It lifted in the wind, the way feathers do. It turned on her palm, once, twice, slowly, like the needle of a sailor's compass. And then it was still.

It was pointing east.

Zenka looked up. East, over the green hills and the strange stone valleys, toward a city she had never seen, with high walls and a big church and a god of the wind who was alive.

She did not know why the feather would point there. She only knew that it was warm, and that for the first time since the riverbank in Altdorf, she wanted very much to follow something.

"Lady of Mercy," she whispered. "Hear the ones who suffer."

Nothing answered.

But the wind, for a moment, blew toward the east.