The first thing Barbatos noticed was that the wind was wrong.
One moment, he had been sprawled atop the roof of Mondstadt's cathedral, half-dozing in the warmth of the sun, the whisper of his own Anemo currents lulling him deeper into the haze brought on by one glass of dandelion wine too many. The next, he was standing upright, fully awake.
The stone beneath his feet was not Mondstadt's white marble but a strange inlay of dark rock and gleaming metal. And the wind… it carried scents he had never known, resin and forge-smoke, gold burnished by age, and a crisp edge like air that had never touched Teyvat.
Before him stretched a hall of vast proportion, vaulted ceilings heavy with goldwork, banners rich with colors foreign to his eyes. The place radiated a proud history, its grandeur built not for song and dance, but for honor and power.
Barbatos turned slowly, braid brushing his back. "Where…?" His voice echoed faintly in the stillness.
Here, the slow erosion he had carried in Teyvat's endless years was absent. No tension in his limbs, no heaviness in his chest. Out of habit, he raised a hand. Air curled to his fingers instantly, dense, strong, obedient. Far stronger than the currents he'd commanded even at the height of his reign.
"What in Celestia's name…" he murmured. This was more than mere command over wind. There was a resonance beneath. For a moment, he swore time itself shivered at his grasp.
"The… Time of a Thousand Winds?" He let the currents slip away, unsettled. Power without purpose was a dangerous gift.
He scanned the chamber again. No familiar faces. No trace of Mondstadt or Teyvat. Even the furthest winds he could summon failed to brush the edges of his homeland.
A faint smile tugged at his lips. "Well… this is new."
Practicality returned quickly. He had nothing, no Mora, no wine, no roof. And the strangers in this stern, gilded realm would not fill his cup merely for a pretty face and a song they did not know.
Best not to speak his true name here. Names had power, especially a god's, and there was no sense handing it over to the wrong ears. Instead, he whispered the one he wore when he walked unnoticed among mortals:
"Venti." He tested the shape of it in this foreign air. "Yes… that will do."
Questions abounded, why he was here, how his strength had not only returned but transformed, and what force could cast him so far beyond the sky he knew. But questions, as he knew well, did not buy drinks.
"Well then," he said with a grin, "if I am to live, I will live as I always have, sing for my supper, play for my drink, and sleep where the breeze takes me."
He lightly spun his lyre, plucking a teasing melody that curled through the air like smoke. "A bard's trade is universal… Ehe."
He learned quickly that Asgard was not the easiest place for a penniless bard. Warriors here wanted songs of valor and conquest, not summer skies and cider. His first performance had earned only polite confusion
But Venti adapted. His verses began to echo with the cadence of ancient sagas, his melodies riding subtly on wind until they seemed to fill every corner of the mead halls. Soon, the warriors tapped their fists in rhythm; gold disks clinked into his pouch.
He drifted feast to feast, staying just long enough to earn coin and bottles of dark mead before disappearing again into the city's winding golden streets. In quiet moments, he tested the change in himself. Commanding the wind was no more taxing than breathing, but now, a thought could slow the fall of a leaf, or lengthen the last flicker of a candle's flame.
And so Asgard knew him only as Venti: a green-clad bard with a silver tongue, quicker fingers, and the knack of vanishing with the morning breeze. But when the wind swept high over the city's golden spires, some swore it carried laughter, warm, elusive, like the sound of the world itself sharing a secret it would never tell twice.
And Venti... kept walking.