Orion surged forward, muscles taut with urgency. In one sweeping motion, he caught Ashlyn before her blade could rise again, his other arm locking around Frieda and the boy she clutched.
All of them were bound in his grip, a knot of rage, fear, and desperate love pressed together as if he alone could keep them from shattering.
"Reunion can wait," Orion's voice was iron, though his breath came ragged. His gaze swept the bruised heavens above, sharp with dread. "We'll settle this in a safe haven."
His chest heaved as he shut his eyes, summoning the storm within. The air trembled, faint pulses of frostfire radiating from him in waves—the VlastMoroz essence burning like a beacon in the endless night.
And then—
On the far edge of the lavender field, the shadow stirred. That voice again, crawling across the air like oil on water:
"If you leave… you will only carry ruin with you. Wherever you go, Destruction follows."
The words pressed against Orion's ribs like chains, but then—
"It's time." Yandelf's voice slithered through his skull, final and undeniable.
The Abyss folded in on itself.
The flowers imploded into nothing. The sky fractured like shattered glass. The darkness recoiled.
And in an instant—
Ash, Ashlyn, Frieda, and Orion all stood beneath a ceiling once more. The scent of old wood and lavender replaced the metallic tang of void.
Citlali's house.
The old shaman sat in her chair, chin propped in her hand, her eyes sharp with displeasure. Her frown was the kind that could crack stone.
"Well, well," she murmured, her voice edged with irritation and amusement in equal measure. "An unexpected guest slipped through the Abyss? Hmph. I don't mind… so long as she remembers this house isn't her home."
Ashlyn staggered back, her hand tightening on Ash's wrist. Her eyes darted across the unfamiliar walls, the strange sigils carved into the beams, the suffocating weight of Citlali's presence.
Her voice was a brittle whisper:
"Where… am I?"
Citlali tilted her head, studying her like one studies a painting that doesn't belong on the wall. "Somewhere safe. For now."
For now. The words hung heavier than they should have.
Orion's jaw tightened, his hand brushing Frieda's shoulder as if grounding her. He looked at Ashlyn for a long moment, but whatever he saw, he kept to himself.
Ashlyn lowered her eyes. Her hair slipped over her face, hiding her expression. The silence she brought into the room was louder than any scream.
Ashlyn's hand shot forward without warning, fingers lacing tightly into Orion's. Her grip was desperate, almost trembling.
Orion blinked, startled by the sudden contact. "What's wrong?" he asked softly, concern etched across his face. "Are you hurt?"
---
Inside the Abyss
The lavender field—once glowing like a fragile constellation—wilted all at once. Blossoms curled inward and blackened, dissolving into a tar-thick ooze that spread across the soil like spilled ink.
From that ooze, the darkness itself stirred. A living hunger, so absolute it devoured even the concept of light, bleeding into every corner.
A thousand whispers rose in unison, carried on voices that were not voices, blind yet all-seeing:
"The flowers are gone..."
"The Daughter of the Abyss... has escaped.
---------------------
The Daughter of the Abyss was not merely born in the dark—
she was the dark, condensed into flesh.
Every drop of essence the Abyss hoarded, every wound it carved into creation,
was braided into her veins.
She was the Abyss's plan,
its bridge,
its trespass into Teyvat.
But the Blind Ones—
we who gnawed at the marrow of shadows, parasites fattened on drifting embers of abyssal air—
we did not want her.
Her escape meant famine.
Her freedom meant our death.
If she were to leave… she would carry with her the Abyss itself,
bleeding its energy into Teyvat.
And with that, all that we feed upon would vanish.
We are Blind—
not because we lack eyes,
but because there was nothing to see.
The Abyss was silence,
emptiness without form,
until the Daughter appeared.
It bloomed flowers for her.
It dragged strangers from Teyvat as decoys,
as sacrifices to shield her.
We killed them all,
again and again,
hoping her corpse would be among them.
But now… now the Daughter has escaped.
And with her…
our feast drains away, leaving only hunger.
---
In the dissolving field of flowers
Amidst the black rot, in a shrinking island of glow,
a family clung to each other like castaways.
A man, a woman… three children trembling in their arms.
"Dad… the flowers… they're gone.
I can't see you… not again…"
"Quiet," the father hissed, voice cracking with fear.
"They'll hear us. The Blind are still out there."
"I don't want to die here…" the mother sobbed,
biting down on her own hand to smother the sound,
yet her grief still leaked into the silence,
a broken song of muffled gasps and quivering breaths.
"Don't cry, mom…" the smallest child whispered,
his words thin as smoke,
his courage already unraveling.
And from the void, the Blind Ones murmured once more—
"They cry for nothing.
We no longer need to kill.
What we hunted is gone.
What is not her…
is nothing."
---
Inside Citlali's house
"Are you alright?" Orion asked softly, his gaze locked on Ashlyn's pale face.
But before she could answer—
Yandelf's spear blazed into existence, gripped with sudden ferocity.
Her stance cut through the air like lightning.
Her voice echoed with Alarm.
"Orion—PULL AWAY! NOW!"
In the Distant Future.
"But it was too late…"
The words drifted like embers across Venti's lips, so faint one might think they belonged not to him, but to the wind itself.
"The Abyss had already torn its roots through Teyvat… swallowing, devouring… not like a predator, but like hunger itself wearing the mask of eternity."
The bard's hand trembled against the rim of his wine cup. The drink, once golden and bright, looked dim and unworthy beneath his gaze.
What is wine, after all, in the face of memory? What is song when the silence of loss drowns even the wind?
"It is a story," Venti whispered, eyes narrowing to the horizon,
"…that the winds themselves refuse to tell.
Too shameful.
Too heavy.
Too wrong."
The tavern behind him rang with laughter, clinking mugs, and mortal joy.
Yet when he stepped away into the dawn, it was as though all of Mondstadt's merriment shriveled at the edges of his shadow.
---
(The Present)
In Mondstadt.
The sun rose in solemn majesty, tearing itself through the horizon. Its light did not spill—it broke.
Great spears of gold thrust through the cloudbanks, scattering into shafts that painted the world with trembling fire.
A Tyndall chorus.
The heavens themselves refracting like glass.
Venti stood upon the cobblestones, a figure so slight yet so ancient. The air carried him, but his chest weighed like stone. He looked to the east, to the burning line of day clawing its way over the earth.
"The Second Coming…" his voice quivered, not in fear, but in grief carved too deep to heal.
"…of the Cataclysm."
And the wind did not answer him.
---
In Liyue.
Under the frozen silence of Aocang Peak, the mountain split.
Not cracked—split. A wound of space itself, torn open like flesh too long strained.
The sound was not thunder. It was deeper. The groan of stone remembering its mortality.
From the rift stepped Morax.
He did not stride. He did not storm. He emerged like inevitability itself, as though the world had simply remembered he was owed.
The lantern-light of his eyes burned steady, each flicker reflecting ages of contracts signed and graves filled.
"Nyxhara was not the only path carved for me…"
His voice shook the cavern walls, dust sifting from the ceiling like the sand of an hourglass.
"The Abyss returns.
Celestia watches from their hollow throne.
But tell me… shall they cast down nations as they once did?
Or strike only the hands that dared awaken it?"
The mountain gave no answer. Only silence, and the slow crumble of forgotten stone.
---
In Natlan.
By the shimmering lake of the Springs Tribe, the water convulsed. It quivered as though struck by some unseen hand, rippling outward in rings that seemed to echo more than sound—they echoed dread.
A man stood at the water's edge.
His hair fell like a curtain of midnight, untouched by age. But his face—half hidden by helm and shadow—was the scar of eternity itself. Abyssal corrosion gnawed his flesh, a wound that no time could close. Yet his eyes… those dark blue flames, unnatural and unwavering, burned with the authority of a man who had looked centuries in the face and remained unbroken.
He wore Snezhnayan cloth remade into a general's shroud, its black threads gleaming with chains of gold. Beneath it, steel and scars wrapped his body like scripture written in war.
Behind him, soldiers stood in rank. They did not breathe like men. They waited like statues, shadows of Khanre'ah reborn.
Capitano raised his gaze to the trembling water. His voice fell like stone into stillness.
"The Abyss rises.
This is the sin of mortals who sought to play at gods.
And we…" his tone hardened, a command not to his soldiers, but to the very air,
"…we shall answer."
The lake, as though chastised, grew still.
The men bowed their heads.
---
In Citlali's House.
"The age of peace…"
Ashlyn's whisper slid like frost across the room. A voice at once fragile and eternal, trembling with the cadence of a child, yet heavy with a weight no mortal tongue should bear.
"…is over."
Her fingers curled, nails dragging against her palm. Her body wavered, yet her stance did not bend.
Blackness spread like ink poured into water—veins of abyssal night crawling across her skin, devouring her pale glow.
Her arms darkened first. Then her shoulders. Then her chest, until even her tears—bright, human tears—slid into nothingness.
And as the black crept across her face, the tears stopped altogether.
The child was gone.
And in her place stood something the world was not ready to name.