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Within the Liyuen woods lived a story as old as time: the draconic Morax who hid himself within the caves during the Archon Wars, waiting for his next prey to come. Rumours said, during those times, humans were snatched out in mid air. Other times they talked about the dragon turning mortals into gods themselves, human bodies becoming hosts for spirits which the dragon created himself. Like that the Yakshas were born, his little gods that were not really gods, hunters who were not really human. With them he tore down the war with his bare hands, his claws which extended so far and wide that not even the economics of the city could escape his grasp. That's why they named the coins after him: their great god Morax and the great coin Mora.

Of course those were just hoaxes. Zhongli had never once actually snatched a man nor had he infused them with a soul. Souls were hard to come by and besides, his Yakshas were more physical than they were spirits. Taken from the earth itself, Morax had simply made their bodies from clay, infused them with his Geo powers until they became a life of their own. As the Celestias did, Zhongli had capabilities of raising life from the dead, but no more than a few before his complexion became ashen. Such things were the limitations of a demigod body.

But sometimes - just sometimes - Zhongli got dreams where he was not an Archon but a shadow - a small entity which was not quite small and not quite real either. In those dreams a hand had plucked him from the light itself and dropped him onto the earth, where he descended as a wrecking star. He knew that much for his body still felt the reverberations from when he crashed into the earth.

That did not stop the humans from spreading rumours though. Such was the reality of ethereal beings, begotten by the fate where humans had not learned the art of scribing stories yet. The truth of their existence was as tightly kept as the ocean could hide its body - that was to say that they were too obvious to miss and too vast to understand. If the mortals had found long ago how to explain their divinity and destroy their worship, everyone might be a heretic: foolish challengers who thought they could be gods.

But that was a story for another time. Such things owned too much nuances and too little details. All Zhongli knew about his critics were that they were bolder than him.

Stories could only be stories, and Zhongli could only ever be a mirage within his people's eyes. Though he came down once a year during his yearly ascensions, such things did not matter except for propriety. He was a God and Gods had to allow their people to worship, even if it exhausted him. This was the price of fighting for humanity. For slaughtering lives in the name of necessity.

*

Then the stories became wilder, and more ridiculous. His Yakshas were not really Yakshas, but bastard Archons bred among humans themselves. Morax became a snarling dragon before he became a sane, well-spoken god in his later years. The Goddess of Salt became his lover, though lover was the furthest thing he would describe his old friend, and Morax had inevitably killed her to avoid getting too attached.

So many silly stories, so much incredulous time. 

Yet Zhongli took in the stride. As he walked through the Liyuen streets itself, the cobblestones streaked with mild gold between their cracks, he stared at the buildings in which the humans built, the large temples darker than blood and more revered than his existence. Deep-scented joss sticks wafted out from the front doors, the smoke so dark that it sometimes bled through the city, clinging against the tarp which covered the long winding stores. Street vendors hollered - sometimes in Liyuen, sometimes in Teyvatian - their voices carrying like a symphony that the only way to appreciate them was to close your eyes.

On those days Zhongli allowed the stories to bleed through him, the people's whisper a constant herald. Here, the God lies in his slumber. Here, the land in which he walked. Here, where five Yakshas walked, their blades sharper than the mountains, their smiles more jagged than the ranges. He allowed these stories to exist for they served a purpose: that with every winding tale that existed within the streets a new layer to protect his identity. This came with the territory since Morax, by all technicality, only had a salamander's body expanded into mostrous proportions. What would people think if they saw his mortal body other than the presumptuous statues which littered around.

Today Zhongli chose to wander through the harbours, his eyes scanning through the streets as he watched fishermen cackle among their groups. Shopkeepers sat on their stools, aching legs crinkling with the weather. Their hands drifted over vegetables, fishes and fruits which they collected overtime, the things so fresh and ripe that Zhongli wondered if the earth responded to his prayers instead. Then he wandered before a stall just as the whispers caught against his ears.

"Did you know," a small ragtag boy said, "that in the woods lives a Fox who gives you food?"

"A Fox?" another girl exclaimed, and the boy shushed her. "A Fox?" she repeated, softer. "What kind?"

"The red kind."

"There's only red foxes in this world though."

Zhongli kept his face perfectly blank, his eyes falling upon a shop near the two children. He watched them from the side as they huddled closer together, their heights no more than his waist. He saw the boy smile, the thing so open and reverent that he found himself frowning. 

"He gives us food," the boy reiterated, fierce. "He cares for us when nobody else did."

"So he's like a robber of the rich?" 

"He's better than the robbers." The boy stuck up his chin. "He's a god."

At this Zhongli stopped looking at the golden brooches presented before him and turned towards the children. "Hello," he said, mildly, "I cannot help but overhear your conversation. You said there was a fox in the forest?"

The boy reeled back in surprise. The girl squeaked and shuffled behind the boy.

"Um," the boy said.

"Do not worry," Zhongli said. "I'm not accusing you of anything. I was just curious."

"You want to know about the Fox?"

Zhongli nodded, his hands already folding behind his back. "If you may," he said.

The boy gave him another look again, his black-sooted face so pitiful that Zhongli found himself slowly slipping towards his pockets. Only to realise he probably didn't have any mora.

He still knew that he probably could make do, though. "I will buy you food," he added, to which the boy's eyebrows furrowed further. "I will get it now, even. What do you want?"

The boy kept frowning. "What's wrong with you?"

"A story for food," Zhongli reiterated, raising an eyebrow. "Is that not good enough for you?"

The boy kept on inching back, but clearly food was something no sane person might turn down. So he nodded his head slowly, his mouth shaping, "A bun."

"A bun?"

"Yeah."

Zhongli brought the boy towards a familiar pork bun shop, ordering two and sending the bill to his workplace. He was sure the accountants could handle it. "So the fox," he repeated when the boy dug into his bun.

"He lives in the forest," the boy said. "He's got red hair."

"Red hair?"

"Orange, probably." The boy wrinkled his lips. "I don't know. It looks weird under the light."

A fox, thought Zhongli. None of his Yakshas looked foxy.

"What else did the fox have?"

The boy narrowed his eyes. "Why?"

"Perhaps I might know about it."

"I dunno, mister," the boy said. "You're kind of weird."

Zhongli sighed. "Will you or will you not tell me?"

The boy kept on chewing again before he said, "He had blue eyes. And wore all white."

"White?"

"He's not like a ghost or anything." The boy shrugged. "I'd know if he was a ghost. He was pretty real."

"All white," Zhongli reiterated. So not his shades. He is not mine. "And where specifically in the woods did you find him?"

"If I tell you," the boy said, "are you gonna find him?"

Perhaps. Maybe. And if the fox was harmful, he would kill him himself.

"Yes," said Zhongli. "Maybe he will give me food."

"I doubt it." The boy looked him up and down. "You look too rich for his taste."

*

"So a fox," Zhongli said on a particular day, his hand curling over his teacup as he felt the heat spread through his hands. Alatus, who always came to visit his office once in a while, stopped twisting his spear just at the side of the room.

"What about a fox?" Alatus asked. His eyes swivelled towards Zhongli.

"There is a story," Zhongli explained, his sight still focused on the tea's mist, "about how there lives a fox in the forest who gives food to children."

"And how do you know it's children?"

"Perhaps the poor in general." Zhongli tilted his head. "I do not know. All I know is that there is a spirit who lives in the woods and I have never heard of him before."

Alatus did this thing where he always stood ramrod straight when he thought of an answer. As if his false confidence might draw something out from his luminescent body, sometimes the only thing which he needed in the midst of war.

"I have not heard of that tale," admitted Alatus at last, his frown unbecoming. "If I have, I would have sought out this fox myself."

"I thought the same." Zhongli sipped his tea. "But as of currently, there is a boy who knows about him, and maybe the rumours have spread already. Perhaps he is real, perhaps he is not, but to have a story spread through the streets - they must have some source, no?"

"Of course." Alatus frowned deeper. "Isn't that common sense?"

"Indeed. So perhaps we should seek the fox ourselves?"

"Either way works." Alatus looked at him. "If we must rid the fox, what is the difference? He exists and if he harms the citizens, it is our duty to banish him, is it not?"

Indeed, thought Zhongli. He knew Alatus was often never wrong in his considerations.

"I will find him," said Zhongli. "And I will see what else he has done. Maybe there is more to this story elsewhere in town."

"Maybe," said Alatus. "I will hunt for his tales, too."

*

And so the hunt began. Zhongli found more stories circulating the tea houses, the stories of the Fox jostling up here and there, the brief whispers about children fawning over him. Other stories included strange forms in which the fox took - a red ghoul, a too-large beast, a smiling man with scimitar eyes. The last was a curious detail, as if the Fox himself was permanently smiling, his joy radiating so broadly that it made him look almost threatening. Zhongli imagined a man sitting in the middle of the darkness, his lips curved into a blade.

But the stories even from the children did not denote anything harmful. If anything the man coaxed people who were starving out into the woods and proffered them food. On better days he gave them gold - something which Zhongli was concerned where he snatched them from - and pressed them into their hands. He might have disbelieved it too if not for his tea house owner telling him all about him, his wrinkled hand presenting the gold outwards.

"And this is...?" Zhongli had asked him that day, folded over his familiar rooftop tea-table as he sipped on a cup. The tea master had simply smiled sheepishly, his hand scratching behind his head.

"I know it sounds crazy, but the rumours are true," he said. "There really is a fox in those woods, and he gives people gold if they struggle. We were, ah, going through some tough times when I heard a whisper in the dark and he coaxed me out of my bed. It was a really bright night, with the moon in the sky."

Zhongli circled the idea around his head, his hands around twisting around the invisible tension in his hand.

When Alatus eventually reported during the next time he met, he said the same thing. "He is benevolent," his Yaksha said. "I have not heard a single person who did not call him good. He helps people and gives them aid."

"But why?" Zhongli asked. "What drives him?"

"I don't know." Alatus frowned deeper. "But I know he also selectively chooses who gets to see him. Nobody who is well off has seen him before, and only the struggling have seen him in person. The strange thing is nobody has ever seen him except under the moonlight, so I believe that only during the middle of the month does he show his face."

Zhongli frowned again, his hand pressing against his forehead.

"A fox in the woods," he said. "A man who only shows up once in a blue moon."

"Quite literally," said Alatus. "I have not heard of such a specific appearance in my life."

"He is not mortal, that is for sure," said Zhongli. "Is there any knowledge where he particularly spawns?"

Alatus tilted his head upwards at that, eyes narrowing into a squint.

"An alcove," he said at last. "Cleared where the trees once stood. The gap where the moonlight shines the brightest."

The brightest, thought Zhongli. Let it be that the Fox remained just as poetic, too.

"I will go," he said. "The next time the moon arrives."

Alatus shot him a look. "Are you sure? Perhaps I could go instead."

"No." Zhongli shook his head. "He has been helping my people. It is only fair I treat him the same."

"Unless he's a monster."

"Then that is a different story altogether." Zhongli stood up from his seat, arms folding over his chest. "If he so much as lifts a finger against me, then he will know - I will not fear to smite him where he stands."

*

So on the next full moon Zhongli rose from his reading as he glanced out his windows, the sleeping city glinting before him in wisps of grey and silver. Lights snuffed out one by one as windows pulled close while blackened curtains rippled in the dark. He pulled open his room's window, stared down at the long fall towards the ground.

He stepped onto the edge and hopped out. His feet hissed against the ground, the sound so bare that not even a cat might pick it up. 

He walked through the streets until he found himself at the edge, where the trees grew taller and darker, their shadows stretching far. Here the more rickety homes stood in great succession, their wooden surfaces scratched and battered as though from the war itself. Zhongli knew, in great detail, which home had survived the Archon Wars long ago, and the others who were poor imitations. One could feel it in their bodies, in the way the earth stilled even in their most torn-down temples. The wind whipped against Zhongli's body before it lowered into a soft whistle, the sound almost like a long-lost melody hummed by a dead Archon.

It might as well have been. Here, an Archon had died, too, the last time Zhongli stood here.

He walked towards the mouth of the woods as the darkness engulfed him. His steps took him through long winding pathways, the earth so rubbled it crackled under his touch. He kept walking until the woods darkened to the point of no sight, his eyes sharpening in order to even manoeuvre through the thickets.

Only the occasional reprieve came from the moon itself, piercing through the too-many layers of leaves hovering above him, thick enough to be a tarp. Here the moonlight freckled against the grass, patterns which sometimes gave shape, sometimes did not. It almost looked like it was trying to envision something for him, though - as if the Celestias still gave him hints from time to time: a tinkling in the dark, a laughter which sounded neither man or woman. Zhongli ignored them until, finally, something shifted.

It felt strange to feel any ripple in powers since after the Archon War. In those days shifts of powers were obvious: one could feel Barbatos from a mile away with how the wind suddenly cut through the air or how Raiden crackled through the air as though a real, palpable strike against one's tongue. Those days had been the most furious - days of sleeping on the cold hard ground, curling up against dead bodies so that one never noticed an Archon hiding among them. Zhongli remembered those days - remembered the cold bodies which pressed against him - his eyes shut tensely, the world even tenser than he was.

Those days were over, but the memory was not. Like anything else the only thing eternal in this world was their remembrance.

Zhongli paused as he felt out the power for a second. It did not feel like anything powerful - like a thunder strike or an overwhelming pressure - but just a soft, gentle caress. Like a hand coaxing out weak animals. It was no wonder nobody feared to meet this creature: he felt too kind, too gentle, to be anything dangerous.

But it also felt unreal. Like something pulled out from the void, shaped into something that wasn't meant to be. Zhongli couldn't put a finger upon it except that it felt too kind and too tense, too bright and too dark. How does something like this exist?, he thought, and finally saw him.

The Fox was as the rumours said - a vivid white which glinted against the moonlight, his pallid complexion a fine porcelain. His hair, which had been in the shadows for a while, came out into a fiery copper, blazing so bright it looked like flames itself. But it was his scimitar eyes that Zhongli fell upon, the permanent curve which made him look almost young, the glinting pupils swivelling towards Zhongli almost immediately.

"Ah," he said. "So you can see me?"

Zhongli paused at the mouth of the trees, the small clearing which the man stood out of a stage for the stranger himself. His face remained that plaintive smooth expression before it cracked into a smile, his expression even more dazzling than when he was simply staring. Zhongli blinked at the man.

"Are you the Fox?"

The man blinked. "What?"

"The Fox. The ones everyone has been talking about."

"Ah." The man relaxed again, his finger tapping against his chin as he grinned. "Right. That's what they call me, yeah?"

Zhongli noted the way the white gave way into a suit, the way it hugged against the man's body with streaks of red splashed against its design. He noted the way his boots remained dark against the ground, darker than whatever his material could ever be shaded as. Zhongli frowned and found himself staring at the Fox again.

"Are you a spirit?" asked Zhongli. When the man blinked at him, "I meant it literally."

"Well, I hope you are," said the man, "because everyone tends to ask it as a rhetorical question."

"Am I being rhetorical?"

"No?" the man's voice pitched before he scanned Zhongli's face again and huffed. "No. Wow, you actually meant your question."

"My name is Zhongli," Zhongli said simply. "Do you have a name?"

"If I tell you," the man drawled, "will you hex me?"

Zhongli studied the man again, noting how the shadows beneath his feet writhed. "You are not quite human."

"No?" the man grinned. "How can you guess?"

"Your shadows." Zhongli noted how one shadow drew towards the woods, so unnaturally long that not even the moon might excuse it with its light. "They are not quite still."

"I suppose they're not. Happens to the best of us, right?"

"What happened to you?" Zhongli did not quite know what the man was, but he knew this - that at some point, he must have been human. "You are not... physical."

"Oh, is that how you talk with strangers?" When Zhongli gave him another look, "I'm kidding, I'm kidding! No, I'm not physical, but I do have a body. Are you some shaman? Do you want something from me?"

Zhongli frowned. "Why would I want something from you?"

The man blinked, and smiled wider. "Oh, are you not struggling?" When Zhongli shook his head, "You don't want gold?"

"Why would I need gold?"

"Well, if you're here you must know right?"

"I do not want gold," said Zhongli. "Or your food."

"But I have so many! Besides, I don't eat." The man spread his fingers, his body so wide open that Zhongli could absolutely just slash through his chest. "I don't need the things that I hunt. And I don't need the goods which I sometimes find on the road."

"You hunt?"

"Not people," the man said quickly. "Like, pheasants or something. Sunsettia fruits."

"Why are you hunting?"

"I'm bored!" the man huffed, folding his arms. "You can only wander through these woods so much before you go crazy. I don't like sitting in the same spot, you know?"

So the man was bound into this place, but he was no grieving spirit. "Your body," said Zhongli immediately.

The man blinked. "What?"

"Do you know where your body is?"

"Why would you want to know where my body is?" At Zhongli's expression, "You can't exorcise me. Or put me at peace. I am not joking when I say I cannot find my body."

"Why would you not know where your body is?"

"Because it's gone!" the man shook his head, hand pressed against his forehead. "It's dust. Vanished. Even if I wanted to find it, I can't. I can't even name the last thing which happened to me! But I can tell you it sucked," he added the last part with a grimace. "It's like staring at a void or something. Like feeling too much pain and too little at the same time."

Zhongli frowned deeper, staring at the man. So the Fox was certainly no harmful spirit - that he knew as much - but the feeling... 

"Perhaps," he said slowly, "I can do something?"

The man stared at him, blank. "You want to do something?"

"I want to try something. Perhaps this might work."

"Oh, um. Just a fair warning - again, the shamans couldn't do anything."

"I am not a shaman," corrected Zhongli.

"Okay, priest, monk, whatever. But they haven't been able to do anything."

Zhongli raised his hand. "Come," he said. "Let me try."

The man gave another long suffering sigh, walking towards Zhongli with surprisingly very audible steps. He certainly was somewhat corporeal, but in a way that Zhongli couldn't understand. The shadows writhed viciously, drawing out further, further onto the grass, where it drew out like roots stretching towards the dark, snarling in a way that Zhongli could only imagine was too ghoulish if it ever became audible. The man paused just before him, eyes glancing over Zhongli.

"You have very pretty eyes," the Fox said, quite simply.

Zhongli blinked. "Oh. Thank you."

"Sure you're a normal person?"

Zhongli sighed as he held out his hands. "Your name," he said. 

"Ah." The Fox smiled. "It's Childe."

"Last name?"

"Tartaglia. Pretty common name, actually."

And distinctly Snezhnayan. Zhongli reached out, grasping against skin too wobbly to be held. "Childe," he said. "Tell me what you feel."

His power plunged before Childe could even shoot back a smart comeback, the man's eyes widening as Zhongli pushed, pushed the gold from his veins. Pushed the earth and the sun and the mountains which forged his body. The power grew so ethereal, so powerful, within his chest that he would not be surprised if his eyes glinted sunlight, his veins shimmering gold just beneath his suit. Childe gasped something sharp, his eyes glowing equally bright, his hair an incandescent candlelight gleaming against the sky. It illuminated against the tree branches, the red so vivid that it tasted like summer.

Zhongli felt things he had once felt in old stories: his writhing power, the bond which forged between him and his Yakshas, the old tales where he twined with them and felt everything for a brief fleeting moment. That was what he did with this man in that moment, the power which remained old and carnal like time, the familiar soul-reaching touch which sought for something which he understood. Instead he found something - empty. So vastly empty that his own power reeled from it, the darkness writhing and hissing at his power like an anathema to its own existence. Zhongli tasted something ashy and bloody and tangy against his tongue that he pulled back immediately, his hand falling towards his side as Childe stepped back himself, pressing against his chest.

"What," Childe said tightly, "was that?"

"You," Zhongli started and stopped. His mouth remained dry from the taste itself. "You - how long have you been here?"

"What?" Childe furrowed his brows. "How would I know? If I knew I'd tell you!"

"You do not know?"

"What was that," Childe repeated again, his voice blunt and sharp. "You did something and my body kind of shook and- Your name was Zhongli, right? Mister Zhongli?"

"Your soul is too dark," continued Zhongli. "Too dark. You have been here too long."

"Mister Zhongli," said Childe again, more tightly. "I need to warn you."

"No, you must-"

But Childe's image rippled again. Zhongli had not noticed it initially, but now that Childe made a face which Zhongli had seen on so many soldiers, his face shifted. He glanced down at Childe's feet. "You-"

But Childe just hissed again, his hand grasping against his chest.

"Next moon," Childe said quickly. "Next moon, here-"

And then he was just gone - as if he just blipped from the earth itself. Zhongli lurched forth, his power already seeking against the ground where Childe once stood.

But the taste in the air was gone. As if without the Fox himself, the gentleness drained from the forest itself, that tender caress turned into a muted silence. It felt like a blade, slicing off the rope and letting it wither onto the ground. The Fox remained an illusion, a mirage, which Zhongli almost felt like he created it himself. 

If not for that cruel taste on his tongue. The dried up bitterness. Zhongli tasted it again, winced, and reeled back. It tasted familiar. It tasted like war - like an old enemy finally greeting him after years of hiding in the dark.

*

"He came from the Abyss."

Alatus paused at the door, shadows streaking over his face. Zhongli remained stone, his hands curved over his desk.

Alatus shifted. "Are you sure?"

"He has the Abyssal taint," said Zhongli. "So foul that it's the only thing keeping him alive."

"So? Shouldn't we just exorcise him?"

"He has no body," said Zhongli, and Alatus' face twisted.

"It's in the Abyss?" And when Zhongli did not respond, "The boy came from the Abyss and his body was never returned?"

"It is only conjecture." Zhongli pressed his lips. "But if I am right..."

Alatus exhaled another breath. "He will die."

Zhongli knew. He knew very well what happened to bodies separated from their spirits. He also knew the Abyss, so deep and feral that the sheer energy became a poison even towards him. Even Archons who stayed in there long enough became creatures they did not recognise.

Alatus folded his arms. "So what do we do? We cannot keep him in this world for long."

"I don't know," said Zhongli honestly. He could look into books. He could seek out old friends, if they even dared approach him during these times. "I will meet with him though. Check if he remains stable."

"Do," said Alatus. "If he starts losing his sanity, then..."

I must exorcise him, thought Zhongli. He'd have to completely eradicate him.

That was worse than death itself.

Zhongli curled his fingers. "I will monitor him. For now, he seems unaffected by the poison."

"He will not for long," said Alatus. "We both know what happens to humans lost in the dark."

*

The next full moon Zhongli found himself standing in the same alcove, the trees hissing around him in little whispers. The leaves almost made out words, brief sentences that bespoke about their witnesses. What have these creatures seen, thought Zhongli, that I do not know? He knew - just like he knew his own existence - that their very presence bound itself with his body. It was only the fact that he could not focus his attention everywhere that the Fox's presence did not alert him. Or perhaps the very Abyss' taint kept him hidden, just like how the entrance towards that dark land remained a mystery. 

He had to find that entrance. He had to do something with the lost boy too gone in that world.

Eventually, he felt the shift in the air. It was so mild that he barely registered it, but once noticed became an all-consuming mist around his senses. The brief touch in the air, almost cottony, descended upon his shoulders.

Then the Fox appeared.

"Hello Mister Zhongli," said Childe. "I hope you haven't been waiting long?"

Zhongli stared at the smiling man. "How long have you been in the Abyss?"

Childe's face twisted. "What?"

"The Abyss. Everything about you screams of it."

Childe made another face, something between a grimace and a question, before he scratched his head. "Sorry, I don't really know what you're talking about?"

"You don't?" That changed everything. It was one thing for a man to be lost in the Abyss, another thing for a man to not even know what the Abyss was. "You truly do not know what the Abyss is?"

"What's that?" Childe shrugged. "I've never heard of something like that. It kind of sounds like a fairytale."

"It is not a fairytale," said Zhongli. "It is a real phenomena and the taint exists on your body. The only reason why you are here is because of it - that somehow, your body has adapted to such poison and kept it there. Perhaps that is why you disappeared last time - because of my invasion."

"Yeah about that." Childe narrowed his eyes at him again, mouth straightening into a firm shadow. "What was that anyway? I didn't know you could do that."

Zhongli's face blanked, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. "It is an old power," he admitted at last.

"What kind? Nobody's done that before."

Zhongli wasn't sure if humans would be fine with knowing he was an Archon, so he settled for a, "It is something taught in the most obscurest texts. Something which only well-trained individuals are allowed."

"That's not an answer," said Childe, even when his face turned wry. "You're not gonna tell me, are you?"

Zhongli dipped his head. "I apologise. There is only so much I can tell."

"Well," said Childe, tucking his hands by his side. "If that's the case, then tell me something else about yourself. If you do, we'll be on equal footing."

Zhongli blinked. "Why would I tell you something about myself?"

Childe shrugged. "Humour me."

Zhongli thought about many things - about how he travelled this earth himself; about how its existence was a distant mirage from himself though he subconsciously knew everything about it; about how he had lived for so long that the sun and moon waned, the wars rebuilding and wrecking entire kingdoms. He thought about being an old dragon before he learned about his mortal body, the wind and his scales a singular existence so blended he thrived in it with all his heart. He thought about living.

"I think the world is lovely," he admitted at last.

Childe huffed. "You think the world is lovely?"

"Quite."

A smile, so brief it flickered over Childe's face like a candlelight. "That's good enough I guess. Well here's an extra from me: I have three siblings."

"You do?"

"Yeah." Childe's face turned wistful, his head turning towards the moon. "Though I don't know how long since I've seen them or been around them for that matter. I'm not sure anything that happened to me after that, but I do remember this - being with them when I was younger, sitting by the fireplace as I read them stories." His face drifted at that, his eyes clouding over."They were so young, you know? So young I barely remember their faces now."

Zhongli thought about being a mortal who fell into the Abyss, a man who wandered through the darkness and forgot everything he had experience. He thought about the thousands of humans who went through the same fate, unsure about the years which passed, clawing through the violence. He thought about the fact that Childe had probably not known how fast his time had passed down there, sometimes stretched out for decades until they returned to their youthful bodies, displaced from their bodies and their minds.

He thought about the fact that Childe's youthful body probably looked like him now - lithe, pale, alive. And so very lost.

"You will find your siblings," Zhongli said at last - for whose benefit he did not know. It was more likely that Childe's siblings were probably older now, or long gone from when Childe remembered them. "One day, perhaps you might be able to read them stories again."

Childe's eyes closed. "I hope so."

"You will."

Childe kept his eyes closed, his head tilted up towards the moon. Like that his hair gleamed a metallic sheen, slicing shadows across his face so precise their it made him look older, more exhausted. His throat bobbed before he opened his eyes again and grinned at Zhongli.

"Indulge me," he said. "Why don't we go for a walk?"

"Where?" Zhongli asked. He shifted upon his spot. "Are you able to walk beyond the forests?"

"Nope," Childe said cheerily, his body swivelling towards the darkness. "But you'll be surprised what you can find in here. Besides, what if another child comes looking for me? I have to give him something."

"Why do you do that?" asked Zhongli even though he might have predicted the answer - the children reminded him of his siblings. Or perhaps he simply was reminded of things that Childe himself did not deign to tell Zhongli.

Childe hummed. "Maybe because I wanted to? Again, I'm just bored."

Childe drew him across the pathways, so encroached that Zhongli barely noticed them. He saw the way the weeds dug into the earth, chewing their way through the pathways and clambering themselves against barks. Small patches of mould appeared here and there, mostly mouthing against roots, little fungi dotting upon them in brown and gold and yellow. Occasionally Childe pointed out at certain plants, talking about their odd properties, the way some squeezed out vicious liquid useful for blocking wounds.

"That is not herbal leaf," interjected Zhongli at some point, eyeing the thin leaf which Childe plucked off a plant.

"I'm pretty sure it is," said Childe even as he rubbed against the surface, the glossy sheen a dark shimmer against his palm.

"No. You see the way the veins stretch? A herbal leaf would be more precise, angles aligning quite neatly."

Childe gave him a raised eyebrow. "You know a lot about the forest, Mister Zhongli."

"It is also a part of my education," said Zhongli, though Childe's face was already so stretched from smiling he might as well be slitting his face into half. "I promise you, it is not at all that uncommon."

"First your power," said Childe. "Now your extensive knowledge about herbs. Is there anything else I must know about you?"

Zhongli thought about it for a while. "I'm good at history."

Childe shook his head. "It was a rhetorical question. But you should be careful about who you tell people about things."

Zhongli honestly did not care if he told Childe about things or not. As far as he knew, Childe was most likely stuck in this form for a while and lost to the world. And even if he did get back his body, there were either one of two scenarios: that his body was so tarnished that he could not go back into it without immediately dying, or that he was living in such a deranged state that he could not even be called human. All ways Zhongli would have to rid of him anyway - destroy him so completely that the only solace was allowing Childe to ascend towards the Celestias, so as long as he kept his soul intact. That was impossible if he continued to have his body in the Abyss, but such things were for future Zhongli to worry about, and thus something not worthwhile worrying for now.

Zhongli stared at Childe as he caroused through the pathways. "Do you feel strange?"

Childe barely looked over his shoulders. "Hm?"

"Your body, I mean. Your form right now."

Childe paused in his steps for a second, a hand pressed against his belly. "You know," he said. "I never really thought much about it."

"Does it hurt?" asked Zhongli. "If you stay in this form?"

"Not really." Childe resumed walking, Zhongli tagging along with him. "I don't know. It kind of feels... normal? Like walking with an actual body."

"You do not feel anything strange? Like an influx of sensations or anything?"

"No." Childe glanced at him. "Why? Trying to figure out something?"

"No." Zhongli shook his head. "No, I just wondered if it disturbed you in any way."

"Hmmm." Childe's fingers came towards his sides, where he thumbed against his belt. Zhongli only then noticed the small blade which strapped against his side, the sheath so inconspicuous he only thought it a decoration. "I don't think so? Honestly, I feel pretty much at peace all the time. Or at least that's how I feel constantly - like nothing could ever hurt me."

"Not even when there's danger?"

"Especially when there's danger." Childe's teeth flashed. "Honestly, if I'm being blunt, I just feel antsy all the time. I feel like I could fight on forever, though I don't think that's a good idea." Childe tapped his head. "It kind of feels like I'm used to it. Like before I came into this form, that I was someone who liked fights all the time."

Zhongli believed it. Childe looked like someone who might have even found thrill in it, too. 

"Still," continued Childe, "I can't say it's pleasant. The only other time I feel anything is, well, when that thing happens."

"That thing?"

"When I get pulled." Childe huffed. "When I feel like I'm being unravelled at the core, though it's something difficult to explain."

Zhongli understood what he meant. He felt like that too when the Celestias made him, when spooled and unspooled his body until it became perfect. Like ripping.

Zhongli's mouth pulled into a grim line. "You must tell me when it happens."

Childe grinned. "Oh I will. It's pretty obvious when it's happening actually."

They came towards a clearing, something which Zhongli had not registered until they found themselves staring at a broad plain, stretching towards the mountains. Here the jagged edges looked softer, the horizon a more inviting sliver. The sky opened up like someone threw open the windows and tore down the edges, seeking out so far and wide that he might as well see the stars which sat so far, their bodies a smokescreen of dust and light. Zhongli's head tilted upwards, his breath coming out in wisps.

"I have not seen the sky like this for so long," said Zhongli.

"Yeah?" Zhongli could hear Childe's laugh. "Well you should come out more often. It's really pretty out here, you know?"

"You've been visiting here?" 

"Mostly." Childe shifted on his feet. "It's the furthest I can go. I can't go beyond the plains other than a few steps through the grass. After that I just get a headache."

Zhongli glanced at Childe. "So you're confined to the shadows."

"If that's what you call the woods, yeah." Childe bent his head. "It's kind of sad, you know? Seeing all this space but not being able to go beyond that."

Zhongli exhaled another breath. As if the situation was not terrible enough.

"I am sorry," said Zhongli. "I do not know how else to say this."

Childe chuckled at that. "What are you sorry for? You didn't cause this."

"I am sorry anyway," said Zhongli. "I hope one day you can go beyond this."

"Yeah?" Childe's eyes curved at him. "Well, me too. I hope I can go beyond this place."

Zhongli watched as Childe glanced towards the stars again, his eyes expanding into a distant marble, his pupils so crystalline and sharp that it made him look immortal. Perhaps in a way he was - immortal in a sense that the Abyss kept him in the clutches, while his true self - the only self that mattered - lived here, still untouched by its poison. Perhaps never to be touched at all. Zhongli hoped so. 

"Hey, Mister Zhongli," said Childe. "Would you like to meet the next moon? Of course you don't have to," he added that last part quickly, shoulders raising a margin. "It just gets kind of boring out here and, well, it's nice to have company."

"Of course," said Zhongli. "I would love to."

"You sure?" Childe smiled wryly. "You don't have to do it if you don't want to. I know you might feel bad and everything."

"No, Childe, I want to," said Zhongli. "It is not out of pity. I have enjoyed your company, too."

A breath wheezed out of Childe, as if squeezed out of it. "Okay," he said. "Okay, if you say so."

"Yes, I said so," said Zhongli. "I will meet you the next moon. If you would like."

"Of course I would like it. What else is there to do?"

Too many, but Childe had too many confines. So Zhongli tilted his head.

"We will see," he said. "Shall we go back?"

Childe exhaled again. "Please," he said. "If it's not too much."

*

They walked towards the clearing, their silence so calm and comfortable that by the time Childe's hand drifted towards his chest, Zhongli barely got a warning.

"Childe?" Zhongli turned towards Childe just as he paused, his breath coming out in terrible ragged gasps.

"It's happening," he said and his face turned white. "Archons, it always hurts-"

"Childe-" Zhongli said, but before he could even do anything, Childe unravelled again, in a way that made Zhongli flinch. His body dissipated into nothing, dragging away that pressure again, that comfortable blanket which fell upon Zhongli, the touch like a calming hand. The air became tasteless again.

Zhongli pressed his powers into the ground, feeling where Childe went. But like the time before, there was no hint, no remaining mark, which indicated where he might have gone. Not even the shadows which thrashed from beneath Childe, the creatures still so disturbing that Zhongli found himself sometimes glancing at them with a grimace, his hands already itching to wipe them off.

But he could not. Would not, for such things might have detrimental effects. And he did not want Childe to be ripped away from him again.

Zhongli exhaled. He turned away. The only thing was to wait now - to see Childe on the next moon, where the Fox will always appear.

*

This went on for months. For how many months Zhongli could not name. All he knew was that when the moon rose and the darkness fell, he appeared without fail at the same clearing. Always Childe spawned there, always he kept a smile on his face. 

"Wait long?" he said every time, and Zhongli could only huff and reprimand his audacity. He did not know why Childe was so concerned about him waiting when Zhongli could only ever do that. It was how Liyue grew the way it did, after all.

But still, it felt nice to have Childe appear every time. Or how he always seemed to ask after Zhongli's well being, as if his own was not held by a tenuous line. Zhongli always found himself falling into step by Childe without even needing to say anything, Childe already guiding him away from the clearing.

"Here's another place I like," Childe said quite often. He drew Zhongli through shrubs, too-low branches, veins of leaves creeping through the place. "I like to come here sometimes too. And if I'm lucky, there will be game."

"You still hunt?" asked Zhongli.

"Mister Zhongli," Childe laughed. "I am always hunting."

Sometimes Childe kept his hands clean and showed Zhongli little alcoves, caves and shrubs built in a way that it looked like a home. Other time Childe showed him small traps he laid, little animals caught within their grasp. Always Childe wrapped them in something neat - a large leaf, a cloth, things he scrounged up from the forests. And he always proffered them towards the needy, the ones who were brave enough to meet the Fox and bow before his existence.

"Hello," Childe greeted each visitor with a grin, his hands tucked behind his back. "Are you here for something?"

He always gave them when Zhongli hid himself in the dark. Zhongli often found himself watching as Childe tended to bow towards the height of whoever approached him - often orphans, sometimes desperate adults. He always gave them the same kind face, the same gentling aura that sometimes thickened into a palpable thing. Whenever he came back towards Zhongli he looked more at peace, his face softened at the edges where he looked young.

Sometimes Zhongli pointed it out. "It brings you joy," he said.

"Why wouldn't it bring me joy?" asked Childe. "Don't you find joy in helping people?" 

Zhongli couldn't say otherwise.

But Zhongli's most favourite times always came from Childe pulling him towards clearings where he always found himself at the forest edges; where his limits came into fruition but it did not matter, for every angle towards the vast openness tended to be different from each other. Here, Childe might say, there was a certain pathway where you might see a boar flit through. Here, Childe might say, was where all the birds tended to congregate, often peaking at midnight where they fluttered down for their game. Here, he said, was where the clearing flattened into a never-ending pathway, the beginnings of winter often starting here. The snowflakes which drifted often became a counting game for Childe, where he stuck out his tongue and tried catching them upon his lips.

"It's a game I played when I was younger," he explained. "I really liked it, if I remember it correctly."

But each time Zhongli always found themselves at the end, where Childe often winced at he would be pulled away abruptly. Like whenever he was waxing on another story and he got swallowed away before he could warn Zhongli, his disappearance so jarring that Zhongli always whipped towards his position, the air a vicious and foul disappointment. Other times Zhongli felt palpable panic at it - what if Childe never came back again? What if one day, the unspooling became so malevolent and intolerable, that by the time he could warn Zhongli he simply blanked out from existence? It was like from sheer desperation alone that Zhongli seemed to will him into life - as if his own powers were in any way credited for Childe's continued existence. It was a miracle he remained here at all.

So when the months went by and the seasons an ever changing constant, perhaps Zhongli's fears became too real. Perhaps they became too terrible, too harrowing, that it became a reality. It was as if the Celestias themselves knew Zhongli's predicament and laughed at him. As if the Celestias still needed to test him, a hundred years after his birth, a thousand weeks since he last battled in war and found himself grieving in ways he did not comprehend.

*

"There must be a way," said Zhongli one day, steeping in acres of books as he flicked through the last of them. Notes and scribbles scattered here and there, sometimes flooding over notebooks and onto their edges where the words scattered into indecipherable morse codes. Zhongli placed it against an extending table which he ended up dragging towards the side of his desk, if only to compensate for the fact that even his vast library could not be contained over the small space which he kept his elegant stationery and necessary papers for general bureucracy. He did not think he would need to study things anymore - as if a god could even have limitations over the things he knew.

Well, apparently, he did. And he hated every moment of it.

"There must be things regarding the Abyss," said Zhongli. "Things beyond personal accounts. Stories which the villagers wax. There must be a pattern. I simply cannot grasp it."

"You're mumbling," responded Alatus.

"There must be a way to retrieve his body," reiterated Zhongli again, as if Alatus had not shot him so many unreadable looks to the point of frustration. "I cannot exorcise him if I cannot find his vessel. He needs it or I cannot retrieve his soul. He will be completely erased."

"And what if that's the only way?" asked Alatus. "You have done it before."

Zhongli knew - he knew in his past actions that he had obliterated mortals who lost their bodies in the Abyss, the ones who crawled towards him and found themselves losing themselves day by day. He had plunged all of his powers in them until they released that long-drawn sigh, the kind where their eyes blanked into something horrid before their souls scattered. People who will never be found again.

Zhongli thought about Childe - about the way he might look if he scattered.

"He is not gone yet," said Zhongli. "Unless it is absolutely necessary, I will continue to find a way."

Alatus sighed again. His head tilted against the walls as he kept his eyes distant. "You know," he said. "You are no different from when you were back then."

Zhongli felt himself frowning. "Like what?"

"A benefactor of humans," said Alatus. "A god who felt too much."

Zhongli clenched his fingers. He knew. He knew he gave too much leeway towards the humans. He knew that - just like his old friend Guizhong - that at some point, between his neutrality and his feeling, that he had crossed the borders somehow - that he had become someone he had vowed would be dangerous for a god. For what was more cruel - a God who did not feel at all or a God who felt too much? He was the judge, jury and executioner of their lives. He could not afford to tilt between the balances, lest he spared the wrong person.

But Childe was a good person, a kind person. He could not simply be eradicated, the same way Zhongli often spared the ones who contributed to his people. And in some ways Childe had - he helped the starving and the poor, the desperate and the tired. He was no cruel man.

"I am not a kind ruler," said Zhongli at last, his eyes casting downwards. His own words looked like gibberish to him. "I simply am a righteous one. And the righteous thing to do now, for him, is to spare him. He has helped countless people. It is only my duty to repay the deeds."

"If you say so," said Alatus.

"I do," said Zhongli. "I mean it."

He just hoped he had time. 

*

On the next moon Childe lounged upon a tree branch. His own feet dangled from the birch, his head tilted upwards towards the leaves.

"What are you doing?" asked Zhongli.

"Admiring the leaves," responded Childe. "What do you think? I just like resting up here."

Zhongli tilted his head up, watching as Childe tilted so dangerously that he looked like he would fall. "Careful," said Zhongli. "You might hurt yourself."

"It will not," said Childe. "I've fallen before. What's the worst that could happen?"

He could break a leg. Or an arm. Or a leg and an arm. Though Childe's body remained a strange anomaly, Zhongli would like to not test it. "Come down," he said instead. "I have something to show you."

Childe cracked his eyes open, turning his head slowly. "You have something for me?"

"Come down safely and I might show you."

Childe smiled wryly again, in a way that Zhongli felt was rather wily. Like that his comparison to a Fox was not quite an incorrect choice either - he truly, curiously, embodied its slyness. "Okay," he said. "But only because you said you had a gift for me."

"I did not say it was a gift," Zhongli corrected even as Childe slipped off the branch, his feet gracing the ground so softly the grass barely reacted.

"You brought me a thing," said Childe. "Same thing."

Zhongli gestured at Childe to sit down. Childe's smile broadened, sliding onto the ground as he crossed his feet. Zhongli sat across him, the grass prickly and moist as it pressed against his pants. 

"Here." Zhongli procured something from his back, placing onto the ground. "It is not much."

Childe raised an eyebrow. "And this is?"

Zhongli folded his hands. "A blade," he said. "I noticed you have one."

Childe exhaled again, his hands coming towards the small blade onto the ground. The sheath - a beautiful leather thing - grasped against the bright golden dragon which whorled around it, sliding onto the hilt where it gaped in a wide drawn growl. Its eyes glinted topaz, the same shade as Childe's hair, as it glared back at him, a sharp cunningness carved into its pupils as it glared at everything around it.

Childe frowned. "How much is this?"

Zhongli kept his hands folded. "It is not much," he said. "I just thought it might be a good gift."

"Mister Zhongli, that's not what I asked."

"It doesn't matter. I just thought it might be good for you."

Childe's frown deepened, though his eyes wavered a bit. He plucked the blade up, unsheathing it as the golden strip whorled around the silver tip. "This feels strange," he said. "Like something warm."

"Another skill," Zhongli said. "An old blessing."

Childe huffed. "You can cast blessings on blades now? I'm starting to think you're a lot more than what you seem."

"It is a charm," explained Zhongli. "Protection."

"From what?" Childe asked even as his smile crept on his face. Zhongli was starting to think that might be his natural state. "You know nothing can hurt me now, right?"

"That is an assumption," said Zhongli. "You have not faced a challenging opponent."

"Trust me," said Childe. "I think I can handle them."

"I do not doubt you. But keep this on you regardless."

Childe clenched and unclenched the blade. Then he held it close towards himself, its dark shades stark against his pale suit. He released a drawn sigh. "Thank you," he finally said. "Though I'm pretty sure this is more expensive than anything I have ever owned."

"Perhaps," said Zhongli. "But it does not make you less deserving of it."

"Are you flattering now, Mister Zhongli?"

Perhaps. Maybe. Childe always looked so cheery, so bubbly, that whenever Zhongli caught the sadness on his face, the creeping shadows that made him look like a grieving ghoul than anything, propelled him to want to chase it away. Perhaps it was his own selfishness, but Zhongli did not want sadness on a kind spirit, much less one who was always who made him feel more mortal than any other person.

"No," said Zhongli instead. "Perhaps this is a thank you for your wonderful company."

"Now that's an exaggeration," grinned Childe. "My company is dull and you know it."

"No, I think you're a delightful person to be around."

"I think that's sarcasm," said Childe. "But I'll take your word for it."

Here Childe slid the blade towards his side, where he tucked it against his other blade and strapped it tight. It shouldn't make Zhongli warm, but it did.

"I'm sure with your charms," joked Childe, "All the pheasants are going to run away from me now."

"Nonsense," responded Zhongli. "It will only chase away the bad things. Nothing more."

"Then what if the pheasants are bad?"

"I doubt it." Zhongli glanced in a distance. "There are worse things than birds who wander all their lives."

*

Childe brought him towards another clearing when he paused in the middle of his conversation again, his voice halting so precisely that Zhongli whirled his head around. "Childe?" he said, but Childe was already wincing.

"It's different," he said immediately. "Mister Zhongli-"

But he blipped out before Zhongli could do anything. His steps fumbled as he whirled towards where Childe was standing, his hands around extending towards the air. "Childe?" he repeated.

But nothing responded. Nothing but a sudden foul flavour in the air, lacking in all the times when Childe disappeared, all except now. The taint of the Abyss.

Zhongli's tongue tasted ash. No, he thought. It was too sudden, too early, for it to appear. But perhaps he had gotten complacent - it had been a concern all the times before, all before he realised at some point that Childe was tenacious, in a way most Abyss victims were not. A soul which was always tethered to the ground, always remaining there in a strange stable limbo.

Until he was not.

No no no, thought Zhongli. But none of his denials would be responded. The Celestias did not care. What made him think the Abyss might?

*

He scrounged through scrolls that night, ancient things weathering so horridly that they were fraying by the edges. He wore specified gloves during those times, streaking over languages which a common historian might not be able to decipher. But Zhongli was no normal historian and he certainly was not human, so he blazed through the stacks before the daylight broke over his windows, drawing patterns against his bookshelves and his warm silky rug. Alatus dropped by from time to time, but noticing Zhongli's odd mood, kept his mouth shut. Instead he left the rooms - sometimes weeks at a time - before coming back with more notes.

"This is all I could get," he said. "I don't know how much it will help, but it's the best I can do."

Zhongli went through old tales from quacks to midwives, from dubious merchants to self-proclaimed wizards. He went through archives regarding old Archons, spanning from the Mondstatders to the Snezhnayans, the latter which he thought might have the most hints.

Yet none of them said anything, nothing more than the Abyss being a wielder of monstrous things too abominable to name. He read about tales regarding how some Archons might have been born from those things, too, but that rumoured Archon to be the reason why Khaenri'ah - an old thriving nation - became a wasteland on its own. They had, against the Celestia's will, said the text, taken what they had not deserved, created a creature which was not god-blessed. And so the pseudo-Archon ripped the land in which the people worshipped, tearing down temples in their rampage. He became the very disaster they had hoped to avoid - the destructor of their nation when they were already razored by starvation. Zhongli read this text over and over again, the only hint in which where the Abyss might have been wielded, a door which pulled him into that ruinous realm where no man had ever walked. Unless they were unlucky.

But nothing. Nobody. Not a single place where he might have gotten a salvation, a proof that Childe might be able to survive. The Fox, damned to be erased even if a god willed him to live.

"Enough," Alatus told him one day, when he stayed up for days at a time, an action so readily available from his warring days alone. Perhaps this was a war in itself - a desperation that even Zhongli could not name. "You have stayed awake too long. Rest."

"I cannot," said Zhongli. "He will die."

"They all die. That's what humans do."

But not him, thought Zhongli, Never him.

He was not just a human. He was the Fox, the warrior, the lost boy who nobody thought to save. He was the one who was so at peace with his situation that every time he was reminded of it, it looked like the earth pulled right under his feet. As if reminding him of his mortality, the flame which remained as his restless nature snuffed out by a finger.

If Zhongli had the power, he would have broken those confines which held that flame. Let it raze the whole earth to the ground if he could if Childe could walk out of it unscathed. It was the least he could do.

"Rest," repeated Alatus.

But Zhongli could do anything but.

*

The next time Childe came back, his face paled into ash, his eyes dampened in a way that his previous returns had not displayed. His hands clenched by his side, the blade in which Zhongli gave him the only thing which glinted off of him. Zhongli lurched on the spot, pausing, before he asked, "Are you okay?"

Childe's face wavered. "I don't know," he eventually said. "It just felt... worse that last time?"

"Worse how?" asked Zhongli even as his power stretched towards the blade, curling into its glint as he tried anything, everything, to seek out whatever was wrong with Childe. But he could not touch him. Not if he wanted Childe to disappear like the last time.

"It's like-" Childe started. Stopped. His hands twisted in front of him "- like tearing apart. Like being broken down. You know how I described it as unspooling last time, right?"

Zhongli nodded.

"It's worse," said Childe. "It's more forceful."

They all die, Alatus' words repeated in him. That's what humans do.

"Tell me what you remember again," said Zhongli. "Once more. Perhaps we can find something in it again."

Zhongli had done this before. He had done it over and over during the reprieves where they found themselves in silence, the moments when Childe stopped talking about his surroundings and drifted into his past memories. His siblings. His family. The long lost winters which he remembered became a second existence in his bones. I cannot remember anything after, he said. It's like clawing through a haze.

"I don't know," said Childe. "I think I told you everything."

"Please," said Zhongli. He did not know his voice could even crack like that.

Childe stared at him again, brows furrowing. He ran a hand over his face, an instinctive familiar thing.

"Again," he said. "I remember my family. Snow. Maybe a pathway?"

"What else?" said Zhongli.

"Just lots of snow. I was trudging through it."

"Did you see anything before you? Is there darkness?"

"Well, it's a forest. There's always a forest in my head. My father always talked about how vast and dark it was."

The same things. The familiar things. Nothing which Zhongli could use.

"Try again," said Zhongli. "Really try remembering something from it. I'm sorry to pressure you like this, but I fear what may happen if we don't find something soon."

"You think something will happen to me?" And this was Childe, the precise one, the concise one who wanted to just know his fate and be over with it. I do not want it to be over. "What do you think might happen to me?"

At this, Zhongli hesitated. His throat bobbed minutely.

"I don't know," he lied.

"Liar." Childe stared straight into his eyes. "Mister Zhongli, tell me?"

Zhongli did not want this man to disappear. He did not want Childe to vanish into dust. I do not want you to suffer, he thought. Is that so hard?

Childe's fingers touched against the blade sitting by his waist, a sign that Zhongli left his mark. The only thing that Zhongli found comfort in.

"Am I going to die?"

Childe said it so suddenly - so simply - that Zhongli felt like he was getting slapped. His jaw tightened.

"And if I said you will?" 

"I mean, it's not a farfetched idea," said Childe. "I thought the unspooling might be a hint."

"Do not joke about this. This is about your life."

"But it will happen though, right?"

Zhongli shook his head. "Not unless I can find something on it."

"Mister Zhongli." Childe always said his name like that - Mister Zhongli. Like it was a title. Like it was a name that he could reverently say with all the emotion he could muster. "I'm sure you know how many months it's been. Though I haven't really been keeping track, it's been a while since we knew each other, no?"

"I will find something," said Zhongli stubbornly.

"I'm sure you have been." Childe's face softened. "Do me a favour - stop doing it?"

"No," Zhongli snapped, and it was so visceral, so immediate, that Childe blinked at it. "No, I will not stop. You have been nothing but honourable the whole time you were here. I will not let your contributions go in vain."

Childe smiled. "I haven't done anything big."

"You keep helping people. That's not nothing in this world."

"You sound so wise," Childe joked. "Are you sure you're not secretly an immortal?"

Zhongli was. He was immortal like time itself. He was immortal to the point where his temples built and razed, flames snarling in the dark. He was immortal like the Abyss, growing and growing, infinitely gathering his prayers until it became an overflowing dam threatening to overwhelm his senses. He was so immortal that he felt the empathetic pain which seared through all humans - the grieve and joy which ran so deep that he became mortal himself. He was immortal enough to not want to be immortal.

But what good was his immortality if he could not give it to someone else? What good was his helplessness in the face of something bigger - something kinder - that did not deserve their fate?

He had only known violence and loss and grief. He wanted to know more than that.

"I will not let you disappear," said Zhongli. "This is my contract."

Childe laughed. "Contract? What is this, a business proposal?"

"No," said Zhongli. "My promise."

Promise. Like the day when he told the Celestias he would do anything. Like when he promised his kingdom that he'd raise them.

Like when he promised his old friends he'd save them.

Like how he always failed in the end, over and over, for time waited for nobody.

Like when he always thought he was powerful - for what is a god's stance? To fight. To shield. To protect. 

For what was his use if he couldn't do any of that?

Has there ever been a promise that wasn't broken?, his Yakshas told him once. Has there been a life where you could have kept everything?

His hands pressed against his sides, the trembling so brief he barely felt it.

Childe stared at him quietly.

"That's a pretty heavy burden," he said. "Trying to help me."

"I will help you anyway," said Zhongli.

"I know." Childe smiled wanly. "I don't expect anything less." 

Then don't, thought Zhongli. Don't expect less.

Because before Zhongli was Zhongli, he was Morax the Great. He was the god who kept his word no matter what, even if it killed him. And what did it matter if such a promise killed him now? He had always kept his word as the God of Wealth, to the eternity which sunk upon his ground. Eternity will want him no matter what. It was only the promises that kept him going, even when he knew it was worthless.

*

On some nights Zhongli dreamt of foxes dancing over his vision. He saw their scimitar eyes. Then he watched them as they wavered and spilled onto the ground like curdling, sputtering blood. The blue bled onto the ground, turning sickly white.

*

"You cannot save him."

Zhongli pressed his fingers against his eyelids. The tension threatened to swallow him.

"Morax." Alatus' voice came rough. "Let go."

"No," said Morax, the god who he thought he forgot. "I will not."

"He will die."

"He will not. Leave me be."

*

Childe greeted him each time with a more pristine facade, his presence always coaxing and gentle like he always did. But the taste got thicker, the foulness which rotted him from inside out. He may not show it, but Zhongli could feel it. Could sense his shakiness even before he mentioned it.

"Mister Zhongli!" he exclaimed. "Come see this small creek I found!"

Childe waxed on and on about how the creeks were so thin and mild, yet the creatures which whisked through it a beautiful phenomenon on its own. He showed Zhongli some luminescent fishes, their shimmering scales hued like the winter lights, as they darted among each other. Childe pointed at one which he named solnyshko - little sun - an endearment that Zhongli only knew because Snezhnayans often used them for their most beloved.

"And why do you call that solnyshko?" asked Zhongli.

"Because I quite like it," said Childe. "What else is there?"

Zhongli thought how he quite liked Childe and, like that fish, would like him to live longer. He would like that blue to keep shimmering and for that ashen face to light up in a healthy blush once more. Perhaps he just didn't want the blue to fade away from his life at all - like the gold which always lived in his city, the obsidians always an old companion for it. Perhaps he wanted gold and blue next to each other, ever-bleeding, two colours singing like the horizon in that split second between day and night at once.

*

When Childe did not appear the month after that or the month after that, in a single inadvertent moment, Zhongli felt something in him snap, like a root being upended at last. He felt like the beasts in the wild who suddenly realised that their life was to be finished, the blade in their chest a sudden presence. He felt like the humans who he had eradicated when they begged him to free them from their pain, the precise moment when he ended them as they had not noticed while their heads lolled towards the side.

He felt like a tsunami spilling at last, wrecking everything in his way, swallowing everything and anything except his endless, ruthless anger.

*

The next time Childe appeared it had been too long and Zhongli had consistently came every month. His feet aching from all the hours he waited and the palpable dryness haunted him for all the next few weeks. He had thought that the last time was truly the last time, the fish the last remnant from their memories. It had not even been a meaningful one, he thought. He had pled the skies it had not been the last.

They must have heard him for Childe rattled into life at last, his existence like a shuddering breath barely holding on. Childe's glazed eyes turned towards him, the strange milkiness terrifying Zhongli while his hand grappled against Zhongli's blade so tightly his knuckles whitened. 

"Hello," said Childe tightly. "I'm assuming you've waited for a long time this time?"

"Childe," whispered Zhongli. "It has been half a year."

Childe's face faltered, his lips wobbling, before he forced that precise smile again. The act looked so unnatural he looked like a puppet drawn by the strings. "Walk with me?" he said.

"We must deal with your instability," Zhongli said immediately. "We cannot-"

"Just this time," whispered Childe, and it was with such a terribly soft tenor that Zhongli could not say no. He swallowed.

"But we must talk about this," he said. "You know we must."

"Of course. What else do we do except talk?"

Zhongli walked as Childe waxed again about the world around them. His eyes blurred at times, his focus clearly fading as he darted from one area to another. Perhaps the symptoms had been here longer than Zhongli thought. Perhaps he had been hiding it all this time, keeping his face and body twisted away from Zhongli whenever it came on. The sudden realisation made him think about all the times when they spent time together, Childe glancing away, his shadows stretching beneath his feet.

Had he been doing this the whole time? Hiding his pain when Zhongli rambled on on his stories?

"And here," Childe's voice cut in "looks like that one time that boy came and he screamed. Screamed! As if I was a ghost," he added that last part with a weak chuckle. "You know, I kind of think I'm like a ghost. A pretty strong one since I've been living a bit too long."

"There have been some cases," intercepted Zhongli. "Like that one girl who works in the pharmacy in town. She has been here longer than you think."

"Ah, is there? I think you've told me about that before."

Childe talked even more, his voice a constant melody. In contrast Zhongli's interceptions sounded like a horrible discord. He wanted Childe to talk uninterrupted, to hear that voice as it lilted in ways which might burn into his mind. Here, Childe speaks with a quick cadence when he gets excited. Here, Childe slows down whenever he speaks about stories that matter. Here, his voice pitches when he looks at Zhongli and hopes for his affirmation.

Here here here. That was all Zhongli had - this moment, now.

"Childe," said Zhongli at last at the edge of the forest where they stared at the stars, frail bodies too dim to be beloved. "Please. Can we talk about it?"

Childe's shoulders dropped. The tightness unwound from his chest.

"And what is there to talk about?" he said. "I'm going."

"No you are not. You are still tethered to this world."

"But it's not the same." Childe smiled shakily. "You know it's not. Didn't you say this was a possibility?"

I have not eradicated you, thought Zhongli. If I do not, maybe you would not go.

But he knew one thing better than anyone - that if Childe vanished now, he could only go to two places: nowhere, or the Abyss. Both a terrible outcome.

"Zhongli," Childe said, the first time he had ever dropped the honorific. "You've done everything you could. And so have I. Isn't this enough?"

"No," Zhongli said. "A good outcome would be where I returned my promise."

"But you already have," said Childe. "You've done everything."

"Clearly not enough."

"Hey." Childe came close this time, so close that his face was just inches away from Zhongli, his invisible breath ghosting over his lips. Zhongli's throat tightened. "You know, I thought you were a weird shaman when you first came, but I would have never guessed you were a really great friend. And a fun conversationalist, too."

"Don't."

"Zhongli," Childe repeated, as though he needed to say it just for the act of it, the name so different from the way everyone else said his name. Like referring to his fish. "You have made me the happiest in my life."

"Childe."

"I'm glad I met you." Childe smiled, a wan little thing. "You have been my most favourite person. You know that?"

No, thought Zhongli, I do not. But before he could even say anything, Childe leaned it, just briefly. Something flickered in his eyes before he pulled back.

Already Zhongli wanted to draw him back in.

"Hey Zhongli," he grinned. "If we met when we were alive, I think I might have liked you ask much as I liked you now."

But before Zhongli could even respond, Childe's breath came out long this time, like a long-held sigh. Then he just- vanished. Like he never existed before. Zhongli clung against thin air - clung with his power against the poisonous taste that mingled with the soft touch, the cotton warmth which drew over him like a blanket. Then nothing. The grip which tightened over his chest became such an agony that he just stared at the sky for a long time, the shades so blurred that he swore the fields vanished into dust.

*

He did not leave his office for a long time. Not until Alatus walked into him staring at a book, the pages so well-worn that nobody could be sure if it was because of time or the brushes in which Zhongli drew over it again and again, the feeling fading against his fingers. He stared it long enough that the words had become imprinted in his mind, the words which Alatus tore from him and snapped it shut.

"Morax," said Alatus. "Let's go and walk."

Zhongli glanced up at Alatus, at the way his crystalline blue made it harder to breathe.

"Let me be," he said.

Alatus's face twisted. "My lord," he said. "You have to-"

"Please."

Alatus froze again. His hands clenched against the book, the leather bending towards his force.

"One hour," he said. "But we must go then."

Zhongli swallowed. "Yes," he said. "Of course."

Alatus tilted his head, pulling the book close towards his side. Then he left the room, the door left ajar. Zhongli saw the way he just pressed himself against the walls, the hallway so dark that it made him look like a luminescent ghoul.

*

Foxes are known to be contradictory creatures in many cultures. Some have thought of foxes as lying tricksters, creatures who lured mortals in and descended upon them dangerous life-altering fates. Others depict the foxes as some creatures who have only ever known temptation, things who succumb to their own wants despite the incredulity or even the hopelessness of their situation. But the most positive view of the foxes live in their very existence - that somehow, against all odds, they have challenged bad spirits and warded off bad fates. As if a wily nature is something that can even challenge the gods themselves, a thing so unnatural that even a fox's own existence has been pioneered as a bastardisation of sinners in some religions.

But in some ways this is something to be admired - for despite the negative outlooks towards them, that foxes can still be revered among the general population, especially for the believers who worship audacity. As if the sheer thought that not all fates set in stone might become true after all, if only from one's tenacity was able to achieve such high glories. In that sense the foxes are gods, made as the rebels for the heavens themselves. They are the ones that keep them in check - guardians where the creators have failed.

*

For a long while Zhongli could not feel anything. If it had been grief, Zhongli might have been familiar with it. Except it was not grief that haunted him now but something else - something worse. He thought about how this feeling felt like both clawing and tightness, emptiness and fullness, until his knuckles whitened against his clenching, his jaw worn so terribly that it ached when he relaxed. He thought how his hands kept drifting over his books, his notes, until all he remembered was the flicker of the sun, the way it changed from light to dark to light again. He remembered something about Alatus snapping at him, but he could not see beyond the texture beneath his palm, the hard wood roughened in a way that felt like grooves under his thumb. He had not thought about his touch now until he realised it existed - that like anything else he felt - touch, sight, taste - lived in his body. Till memory haunted him.

And memory ran deep, for he realised he had not really created much memories at all. Beyond hearing Childe, talking with Childe, had he ever touched him? Had he ever known how that warmth felt other than his aura, the heat which emanated from his body? Would he have ever felt anything like it - the silkiness of his suit, the soft brush against his neck?

Would it do him any good to think about that? How so many things in life throbbed not because of its occurrence, but the lack of it?

Did you know, thought Zhongli impulsively, that you were my favourite person, too?

The tightness came again, the hyper-focused sensation beneath his fingers. He could not - would not - feel anything else. As if he needed to remind himself of this.

He had not touched Childe. Would never touch him. Would never know if that body was truly real at all, as if he had been just a figment of his imagination.

*

"Morax," said Alatus.

"No," said Morax. "Not now."

"Morax, we have to take another walk now."

"This is an order. I do not want to be disturbed."

"Please."

A breath. A shudder. Golden eyes slipping shut.

"I cannot," his ragged voice came. "For today, I cannot."

*

He walked towards the woods every mid-month. Wandered through the pathways until he found himself mapping everything in his head. Here, Childe greeted him for the first time. Here, Childe wound through the forests as he pointed out places with the most game, his eyes lighting up at the challenge of catching every pheasant. Here, Childe leaned against a tree bark, legs swinging from the birch as he smiled slyly from the top. 

Here, Childe gesturing him to come closer as he hopped from one side of the creek to the other. Here, the fish which he called solnyshko - his most beloved, his darling sun.

Here, Childe standing against the stars as his eyes gleamed like supernovas, his invisible aura the scent of rain just as it washed against the pavements, the hit of a well-brewed tea just as Zhongli rose with the sun and settled by his tea table. Here, the infinitesimal touch as he leaned so close - too close - as Zhongli imagined, dreamt, of moments where he actually leaned in all the way, the warmth against his body so natural he wanted to pull it closer until they became a singular entity, the fox and the dragon, the Phoenix no longer a symbol of love.

What was the fox if not a challenger of the heavens? Zhongli did not need a Phoenix to complete him. He needed the audacity of that who could tether him, the one who burned so viciously that it was all they could do - burn. So that the remnants of his bastardisation would only exist as a myth.

*

A hand carding through his head. A soft breath against his lips. The sound of a smile.

Dreaming about those who have perished him have always been a constant. Those were easy - dying people were all that Zhongli had contributed. Dying people, and wars he could not stop; only finish.

But what was worse - those he had ended or those he did not save? The answer was neither. One could not have one without the other.

*

When the seasons passed and the forest waning, Zhongli found himself the only thing constant in this world, the eternal mountains which stood even when the wind blew. This, he found a familiar feeling - just like the days where he would walk among the glaze lilies, now he walked upon the plains. Exploring the world which the fox yearned to scatter through. What else could he do except wait? He had done nothing else in his life but that.

He felt like a hopeless crane, seeking for the other when he knew it would not come back. He thought about all the cranes in the world, the one who lost their other half. Flying until their wings snapped.

*

On a summer's day, years after the Fox disappeared, Zhongli wrote a letter to the Cryo Archon: I agree to your terms. I will await your actions. He folded that later and sent it through a reliable carrier. He waited for days before the Cryo Archon responded to his acceptance, her glee so palpable Zhongli nearly grimaced. 

Months later a ship docked the Liyuen harbour. A man with a foxy smile graced onto the earth. Upon his hilt sat a familiar blade - gold and brown, whorled with a dragon which snarled at the tip. 

When the man knocked on Zhongli's door days later, requesting for a cultural advisor, Zhongli stared at his Fox until he found himself gritting. Until he felt his hands shake beneath the table even as he greeted him.

"Hello," said Childe. "My name is Childe Tartaglia. I was wondering if you were Zhongli, the cultural advisor everyone speaks so highly about?"

He does not remember me, thought Zhongli, he cannot remember me.

But what was a soul if not the etching of an old memory? That even when Zhongli could not remember who he was before being an Archon, would always remember the tremors of a life that was either his or someone else's. If this was truly his Fox - and Zhongli could taste it, the poison which always haunted alongside his warmth - then it did not matter what form he took. Only that his Fox had returned to him.

"Good evening," said Zhongli. "Yes, I am him. Is there anything in particular I can help you with?"

The smile which came after - so blinding, so familiar - slotted something in Zhongli's chest. Like seeing gold for the first time.

"Yes." Childe beamed, sliding towards his desk already. Taking a seat from across him. "I was hoping you could tell me some stories, actually. Some rumours I have heard around town."

Zhongli slipped back into his seat, folding his hands over his desk. He watched as Childe leaned against his desk, the glint of his blade catching Zhongli's eyes. The warmth spread.

"There was this story, you see," said Childe, "about how the Geo Archon used to wait in the forests."

Zhongli's eyes crinkled. Then he told him the story.