Chapter Text
Mr. Zhongli?
…What happened…?
What happened?!
He heard that familiar voice ring in his head while it throbbed.
…Master Hu Tao?
He felt a throb on his chest. Then again to his head.
I don’t know? He suddenly passed out!
He could hear the rumbling. He could feel the shaking of the earth itself.
Mr Zhongli!
He could feel the hairs on his nape rise up. He could feel the scales on his skin forming.
That wasn’t supposed to happen.
He was supposed to be Zhongli. Not—
Yanwang Dìjūn , please wake up!
Zhongli had his eyes closed.
Morax had opened them.
And he could sense that he was not what he was supposed to look like.
He could see his weapon, the Vortex Vanquisher, embedded into soil like a spire.
He had sealed that weapon long ago, after the cataclysm. He sealed that to get rid of the memories with that weapon.
He sat up clutching his head. It still throbbed.
Someone was crouched beside him. A flash of purple.
He wore a long black robe trimmed with gold, fitted neatly around his frame. Layered beneath a dark, ornate coat marked with glowing geometric patterns. Around his legs, the robe split to reveal hints of hidden armor—sleek and silent, made for someone who once led battles.
He should not be in battle.
He was not supposed to be in battle. Not after all this time.
He was supposed to be in his retirement.
Morax blinked his eyes open with a groan. Ichor spilling from the wound from his head.
Did he hit his head? It felt like someone slammed him to a mountain.
“Dìjūn! By Celestia, did that god inflict much damage on you? The rest of us are distracting the sea goddess!”
His head hurt too much. His ears were ringing. He couldn’t hear them.
Electro energy trifling the smoked air—not from a vision but from cultivation.
That was not possible for mortals to acquire elemental mastery through the means of adeptal energy. No, the last ones to shift their adept energy into elemental was his adepti. And that technique was long forgotten by Teyvat. That was before the end of the war. Before all visions.
Then what—
Morax stared at the figure beside him.
He stood with the stance of a warrior, bare-chested and broad, his skin marked with sweeping purple tattoos that curled across his upper body. Electro, he noted. Four muscular arms moved with precise rhythm—two held Morax up, delicate and poised, while the other two hung ready, steady as if sculpted from stone.
Morax choked out, “Bosacius?”
“Dìjūn,” Bosacius still held him up.
The voice was rough, weathered by centuries, yet familiar— far too familiar . Morax blinked against the haze clouding his vision. Stone cracked beneath him as the ground shifted, the scent of scorched earth and smoldering resin thick in the air. His body ached, his mind reeled, but one thing was certain—
What?
Wasn’t he supposed to be dead?
He could remember it clearly—perhaps too clearly.
That final moment, that cursed silence after Bosacius vanished, swallowed by the very karmic corruption he had once defied. The memories hit him like an echo from a collapsed hall, ancient and heavy.
Bosacius, one of the last of the Yakshas… Loyal once—fierce, unyielding—but something in him had shifted in those final years. Weary of the endless slaughter, of purging evil that never stayed dead, he had turned away from his duties.
He had grown distant. Detached.
Morax—no, Zhongli—had tried to stop him. They had argued, not as god and general, but as beings who had once bled beside each other through the smoke and screams of the War.
Morax had known that the karmic debt was more than just a curse—it was a slow-burning sickness.
He had refused to listen.
The last he heard from him was that he fought against the hordes of abyssal monsters that attempted to invade Liyue through the Chasm.
He sealed off the Chasm using an artifact that slowly drained of his energy.
He was dead.
There had been no body. No grave. Only silence.
And yet now—
Here he stood. Holding him up.
The Yaksha’s hands were firm, steady, braced beneath Morax’s shoulders as if anchoring him to the world. The purple markings on his skin glowed faintly under the fire-lit sky, pulsing with a familiar but unsettling energy. His eyes, once wild with defiance, now burned with something else—urgency.
“Dìjūn,” he said again, voice gritted in battle. “You’re slipping. You must have hit your head.”
“Dìjūn, Ingarias and Menogias are diverting her attacks from the settlement. You must put yourself together.”
The golden light behind his eyes dimmed. The earth stopped trembling.
His breath caught, deeper now, more stable.
“Bosacius,” he rasped, voice edged in disbelief. “You’re supposed to be…”
“Dìjūn?” the Yaksha—who was supposed to be dead—asked. “The sea goddess is still raging.”
The battlefield around them crackled with lingering elemental fury. The name Leucothea still rang in the air like thunder—another god, another enemy from a world that had refused to rest.
This was not a memory.
Not an illusion made by the leylines.
(Did leylines even exist back then—back now?)
This was the Liyue he remembered . Not the Liyue he knew.
He was back.
How the hell—
The mountains were younger. They felt younger. Wilder. Raw stone jutted from the earth like broken teeth, and the sky above was a boiling mass of searing clouds and pulsing veins of elemental power. The wind reeked of ash and decaying bodies. Thunder rolled not from weather, but from war.
And Morax stood at its heart, still breathless from the sudden shift.
His hands trembled slightly, unfamiliar with the weight they carried. His polearm still stood upright while embedded onto the soil, caked in mud and blood not his own.
What the actual fuck?
His vision blurred, shifting between past and present, but here—now—the world refused to wait.
“Dìjūn!” Bosacius’s voice tore through the roar of battle, raw and alive, nothing like the fading memory Zhongli had mourned.
The Yaksha was real. Younger.
Geo crackled along his arms, his tattoos burning bright against his skin as he fought to keep his ground beside him.
“Stay with me!” Bosacius growled, gripping his shoulder. “You have to hold the line!”
Morax blinked. His gaze swept the horizon. His mind clawed to catch up.
And then he saw her.
But not the fragment. Not the revenant. This was her in full godly form—radiant, terrifying, alive . Her presence was vast, stretching across the battlefield like the tide.
Zhongli’s breath hitched.
She died as well. She died like Bosacius.
He killed her back then.
He was back—at least three thousand years back—in the middle of the Archon War, in a moment he had already lived, but could no longer separate from the present.
Everything felt too real. The vibrations in the ground. The scream of water splitting stone as Leucothea’s divine tide surged forward again.
“Do not falter!” Bosacius shouted, bracing his stance. “She’s breaking through the eastern flank—we have to pin her before she reaches the core!”
Zhongli tried to answer, but the words clung to his tongue like dust. He could barely think.
Hadn’t he already done this?
Hadn’t he already crushed her beneath a mountain?
But that hadn’t happened yet—not here.
Not now.
His pulse was hammering. His body remembered the motion, the technique, the instincts of war, but his mind lagged behind, still half in the present, a consultant wrapped in silk, not a god wreathed in wrath.
He turned his eyes back to Leucothea.
“Holding back, Morax?!” she said, her voice clear and sharp even through the roaring battlefield.
Morax’s knees nearly buckled. Her voice tore open something deep in him—time, memory, the delicate seam that bound his mind to the flow of history. Geo pulsed violently beneath his feet, reacting not to command, but to confusion.
Bosacius had taken his change in demeanor as battle shock. The hesitation. The confusion. The ghostlike silence. He had not asked again—his grip on the present was still too strong to imagine the impossible.
But Morax knew.
The flow of Ley Lines. The strain in his core. The forgotten scent of this battlefield. The weight of a body younger, heavier with raw divine force.
This war had not yet been won.
He wasn’t Zhongli anymore—the part of him that no other knew.
This was Morax in his prime, Morax when the world was still breaking itself apart and naming the Seven. The titles, the treaties, the civility—they would all come later.
This was a time even when the gods did not know the title they were fighting over.
Now there was only war.
“No…” he murmured, “This isn’t right.”
The impact snapped something loose in him.
He staggered, but the air around him shifted—stilled.
And slowly, the golden glow in his eyes ignited.
Not fully. Not yet.
But the earth beneath him recognized him again. Pillars groaned as they thrust upward from the ground, jagged and screaming as they intercepted the next wave of oceanic wrath.
Water crashed against stone. Steam rose in furious plumes. The battlefield hissed with elemental collision.
“Bosacius,” he said slowly, his voice lower now, more anchored. “Hold the eastern wall. Don’t let her reach the settlement.”
The command was not barked, but delivered with the gravitas of one who had given too many like it—each one etched into the marrow of wars long past.
The sea goddess’s forces had not broken yet, and her influence still churned beneath the waters, a living current that pulled at the minds of the weaker soldiers.
Bosacius’s eyes lit with relief that he was back. “Yes, Dìjūn!”
Morax stepped forward, golden sigils burning to life beneath his feet with each step. He still couldn’t remember everything. The present bled into the past. His thoughts swam.
But instinct carried him forward.
He turned his gaze eastward, toward the hills and the faint outline of the settlement nestled just beyond them. Innocents lived there—mortals who still clung to stories of gods, who lit incense not with fear, but with fragile faith.
They were his believers.
He had to protect them.
No, they had to. It was not a burden for one alone anymore.
Barbatos would have said something light-hearted here—something disarming, like a breeze through the smoke of war. A joke to make Morax exhale, if only for a moment.
But Barbatos was not here.
So Morax straightened, the lines of memory hardening into the sharp angles of duty.
He raised his hand.
The stone answered.
His polearm was called back.
And as Leucothea summoned a wave of blade-sharp currents to split the earth in two, Morax summoned the mountains to pin her back.
(A part of him thought of how he missed this.)
"The land will break and be reborn beneath the sea! Yield, Morax, or drown with your stone-stitched pride!"
Morax said nothing.
With a single motion, he drove his polearm into the ground. A tremor surged through the bedrock. In answer, stone erupted from the battlefield—massive pillars of granite and jade, thrusting upward in defiance of the storm. They twisted into great arcs like dragon spines, encircling him in a fortress of raw earth.
✦ ˑ ִֶ 𓂃⊹
Yes, how he missed this feeling.
It was not victory that stirred something ancient in his chest—but the stillness after.
That moment when the thunder of battle ceased and the world seemed to hold its breath. That hush where time slowed, and the taste of war settled on the tongue like ash and iron.
He stared at the ichor flowing from the goddess’ body. A familiar sight. A familiar feeling.
He was back in his prime.
The ichor still glistened across the battlefield like paint on a canvas, its glow paling under the gray sky.
Morax stood unmoving, his expression unreadable, spear still angled downward, its tip buried half an inch into the blood-soaked earth.
Across from him lay the broken body of the sea goddess. Her limbs were twisted in a final, desperate reach. Her once-translucent skin now dulled, marred by cracks that split like veins across her frame. Her eyes, once the color of deep tidewater, had lost their light, half-lidded and fixed on nothing.
It had been so long.
Too long.
And yet, the rhythm of it—the violence, the silence, the weight—came back to him as if he had never left it behind.
Bosacius came into view, stepping lightly over the jagged stone. The wind had tousled his hair, and his face was streaked with grime, blood—not his own—and rain. “Dìjūn?”
Morax did not answer.
He stared at the body before him. His thoughts ahead of what was in front of him.
Bosacius watched him for a moment longer, then bowed his head. “You’re not moving. Dìjūn, you know what comes next.”
“I know,” Morax murmured.
Because the death of a god did not simply mean stillness. Their bodies were vessels for divine energy too vast to fade quietly.
That energy—when freed—sought release.
And for gods like Leucothea, so utterly infused with the Hydro element, that release would come like a collapsing sea.
Sudden, violent, and irreversible.
The telltale signs were already there. The wind had stilled, unnaturally so. The rain slowed, as though held in suspension. Even the ripples in the puddles surrounding her corpse had frozen.
The world was holding its breath.
Morax stepped back, his voice level. “We must leave.”
Bosacius blinked before straightening. “Yes, Dìjūn. As you command.”
“Gather the others. Move them west, beyond the cliff line.”
The authority in Morax’s voice left no room for argument. Bosacius nodded, already moving, and with a quick whistle between his fingers, sent the signal echoing through the valley. Three sharp bursts. Retreat. Danger imminent.
As the Yakshas began their swift withdrawal, Morax lingered a moment longer.
His gaze fell on Leucothea’s face.
She did not move, no. She was frozen as is.
Her mouth was slightly open, the corners curved down, as though she had something more to say. Perhaps she had. Perhaps it had been swallowed by the water long before the light left her eyes.
Morax stood over her, breath steady, but his mind was adrift.
He did not feel triumphant. Only hollow.
His spear, still warm from the battle, hung loosely at his side. He didn’t look at it. He didn’t need to.
His thoughts turned inward, distant, to the first time he had watched her die.
Back then, he had been younger—not in age, but in belief. The death of a god had meant something else. It had felt like a reckoning. A win.
But now…
Now it felt like repetition.
A cycle folding back into itself.
He stepped back slightly, boots pressing into the damp earth now slick with divine gold. The ichor clung to him, soaking into the fabric like stains that would never wash away.
“Why this again?” he murmured, more to the air than to her. “Why here?”
He closed his eyes. The sound of the battlefield lingered only in memory now—the crash of water, the shatter of stone.
Silence had replaced it. But it was not a peaceful silence. It was tense, like the pause before a storm breaks, or the held breath of a world unsure of what would come next.
He could still feel the pull of time in his bones.
(The golden threads of time, looped in its loom.)
Like a wrong note in a song he had once known by heart.
The others did not know. Could not know. To them, this was a great victory in the War. Another tyrant brought low. Another threat silenced.
But for Morax, it was deja vu dressed in divine tragedy.
His jaw tightened.
Before his last strike—before her ichor spilled onto the stone, a name immediately swirled its way to his mind.
Venti.
Barbatos.
Not a threat to be crushed, not a memory to be discarded, but something altogether different.
But his everything—his constant, his past, his shared fate.
Morax closed his eyes briefly, the distant roar of battle dimming in the background, replaced by the quiet pulse of his thoughts. Of Barbatos.
Ah…
Yes, he remembered now.
Barbatos had already taken the throne, long before Morax struck down Leucothea in this timeline. Not by force, but because the will of mortals had turned to him.
Decarabian’s fall had left a hollow throne and people without a home, but Barbatos had never sought dominion. He simply stood beside them, offered them the sky, and they, in turn, called him god.
And when he told Morax what had happened, he’d been almost sheepish about it, brushing a strand of dark hair behind his ear, like it was some small accident. Like he hadn’t just become one of the Seven.
“I suppose I’m an Archon now,” he’d said, smiling. “Strange, isn’t it?”
Strange. Beautiful. Undeserved, in Morax’s eyes, and yet completely fitting.
Morax had watched him from afar sometimes—when duty kept them apart—watched how he moved among mortals as if he were one of them.
His songs made old women smile and children follow him like ducklings.
Barbatos lived.
And in doing so, he had taught Morax how to live too.
A memory seared into him like sunlight etched on stone. That absurd god, untouched by war’s gravity, had once stood beside him on a mountain soaked in blood—shoulders relaxed, lips curled in a half-smile, and asked if it was always this bleak.
Morax had not answered then, too drenched in battle, too used to the silence.
He wondered now what he would say. If Barbatos would look at this battlefield, at the ichor staining his robes, and still find something light to offer. Or if he would simply go quiet, as he sometimes did when the cost of their thrones grew too visible to ignore.
That memory had no place here—and yet, it would not leave. It clung to him, heavier than his armor, sharper than his spear.
Because Barbatos had been different. Still was.
A part of him mused that if Barbatos saw him now, standing amidst shattered stone and the cooling remnants of another god’s life, he would come to him without hesitation.
He would not recoil, would not look away in shame or judgment. He would approach with soft eyes, hands empty of weapons—just with that lyre of his—and offer what no other god dared offer to the Lord of Geo.
Kindness.
He would draw close and hum some half-remembered tune from the wine-soaked taverns of Mondstadt, or whistle a melody of soft winds through the grass. He would not ask questions.
He would simply sing—something gentle and wandering, with nonsense lyrics and long notes that wove between heartbeats.
And Morax would listen.
Not because he needed music. Not because he wished to forget.
But because for the span of a few stolen moments, Barbatos could make him feel like there was still something after this. After the thrones. After the blood. After the silence. A moment of peace, not carved by violence, but given freely. Shared.
Morax knew himself too well to pretend he could be comforted easily. But Barbatos never tried to fix him. He never pretended Morax was broken. He simply stayed—light and ephemeral, like the wind—and let him breathe.
How long had it been since he had drawn breath without tasting ash?
He glanced down at Leucothea. Her features had settled now, still and statuesque in death, ichor trailing down her temple like liquid gold. The war had taken her, as it had taken so many. And it would take more. Of that, Morax was certain.
And Barbatos?
Blood on his hands, eyes dull with calculation, with exhaustion. Would he still smile? Still press a hand to his shoulder and say, “Rest now,”
The thought hit harder than he expected.
Morax turned from the body. His spear was heavy in his hand, heavier than before. Or perhaps it was his limbs that were tired. He couldn't tell anymore.
The wind was still absent.
Barbatos had always called him too serious. "You wear your ideal like armor," he once said, nudging Morax’s shoulder as they lay beneath the stars. "I wish you'd let the breeze in once in a while. "
It had been five hundred years since he last saw him.
That memory had not dulled with time—if anything, the centuries had only sharpened its edges, made it clearer in moments of stillness when no battle or rebuilding could distract him. It returned most often at night, when the wind slipped in through the gaps in the stone and rustled the lanterns like it carried his laughter still.
Barbatos, asleep.
Not a mortal slumber—no, this had been different. It was the kind of rest that came after devastation. After Durin’s attack, the chains of the corrupted dragon had shattered like brittle ice under a new spring sun.
Barbatos had collapsed that day. Not in victory, but in silence.
Morax had arrived late—too late to intervene, too late to offer anything more than his presence. The winds had calmed by the time he found him, curled beneath the ruined statue, the pieces of the snowy mountain crumbling around them like the remnants of a forgotten age.
His hood had been drawn low, but the strands of hair had spilled across the cracked marble. Dust clung to his skin. Blood stained his regalia. One hand still clutched a lyre with frayed strings, the other had rested beside a single Cecilia , flattened by the weight of his fall.
“Barbatos?”
Morax had called his name. Once. Twice.
No answer.
The winds had whispered instead—faint, ghostlike, as if mourning their god. It had taken Morax a moment to realize Barbatos was breathing. Shallow. Uneven. But alive.
That should have been a relief.
It wasn’t.
He had never seen him look so… breakable.
Barbatos, who had always danced on the wind like nothing could touch him. Who had laughed at formality, who had thrown crowns back at the feet of the people with a wink and a grin. Who had dared to live free even in the face of war.
And there he laid.
Still. Pale. Like the wind had left him entirely.
Morax had knelt beside him, fingers hovering but not touching. He hadn't known what to say. He hadn’t known how to reach someone so utterly undone.
The flower had still been pinned to his hood.
Even after all that…
Perhaps he never had. Perhaps that was why he remembered him now, with such clarity it hurt.
Barbatos was likely far away by now, guiding his people, watching the skies, singing to the wind. But in Morax's heart, he was closer than ever.
And yet—
“Dìjūn!” Bosacius’s voice cut through the storm of thoughts.
He opened his eyes.
The wind was gone. Only the sea roared now.
Duty called.
But still, he felt it—that lingering breeze on the nape of his neck, that breeze in his chest where grief might otherwise hollow him out.
✦ ˑ ִֶ 𓂃⊹
Now, he really can’t tell if it was nostalgia.
He really had forgotten how annoying these gods can be.
One after another, like eager children playing games without consequence.
(To him, they were children. Mentally, that is.)
How long has it been? A few weeks? In the goddamn battlefield.
This time it was a god of the hunt—he didn’t catch the name. The sky crackled too loudly for him to hear it. Morax stood in the middle of it, his golden gaze fixed with cold irritation, polearm already slick with the ichor of yet another upstart.
"Arrogant," he muttered under his breath as another arrow of blinding light tore across the battlefield, searing through a line of stone shields he had summoned.
The wind howled around him, stirred not by Barbatos, but by the fury of yet another pretender.
Bonacius and Indarias had joined the fray, but Morax gave no commands, only gestures—sharply angled palms, a tilt of the head.
Bonacius surged into motion, lightning pulsing from every joint as his four arms whirled with dizzying precision. Indarias followed like a blaze, each step scorching the earth as her Pyro spear carved arcs of flame through the other god’s arrows.
Morax, however, moved with grim purpose. He did not desire victory. He sought a conclusion.
With every clash of his spear, he led the enemy farther east—away from the peaks that bordered Mondstadt’s highlands. Farther from the wind-carved valleys that might draw attention. He kept the terrain breaking forward—creating landslides and walls to nudge the battle gradually toward the Guili Plains.
He didn’t care. He had to lead him there.
The god of the hunt noticed too late. Divine beasts snarled and lunged, only to be impaled upon stone pikes that erupted from the earth. Arrows of divine light lit the air, but Morax’s shields deflected them with stony indifference.
Bonacius struck like a tempest, but Morax waved him to the flanks—he wanted no distractions. Indarias’s flames scorched bright trails through the battlefield, but Morax kept her behind sweeping walls of stone that pushed their quarry forward.
The god shouted in frustration, and Morax met his gaze with cold silence.
He was done with declarations. There was no glory in this.
Stone rose, not as shields or spikes, but as pillars—mighty, ancient shapes drawn from the memories of mountain roots. Each step Morax took reshaped the land, and with it, his frustration found form. He was not angry with the god.
He was angry with himself.
Every clash, every enemy god brought him no closer to what mattered.
Every divine corpse left in his wake was just another reminder.
Barbatos was out there. Somewhere. And in this time, they had not yet met. In this time, the winds had not yet laughed in his direction.
He didn’t know what that god of freedom remembered.
He didn’t know if Barbatos had awoken yet to the truth of their shared past—or if he still hummed his songs to the sky, oblivious to the eternity they once shared beneath stars long forgotten.
But Morax remembered.
Every time he turned his spear, every time the wind failed to carry laughter, he remembered.
The enemy howled, leaping into the air.
Morax answered with silence—and a single motion.
A tectonics shift rolled beneath the god’s feet, and the ground cracked open. A geyser of stone surged skyward, shattering the beast-forms and throwing the god bodily into the air. A flick of his wrist, and chains of golden earth rose to bind him in midair.
Bonacius darted in, a blur of blades and lightning, and Indarias ignited the sky with a column of fire. Morax watched without expression as the god screamed, his form crumbling under the coordinated assault. He could’ve ended it earlier. But he didn’t.
He had wanted the noise. The distraction. The excuse.
Finally, the god fell, dissolving into mist and fragments. His essence scattered in the wind.
There was a bit of elemental essence scourging its way towards the jagged cliffs. Enough to kill hundreds.
And yet, Morax stood, alone in the silence that followed. He ignored the chatter of his Yaksha. He did not even register their presence.
His eyes turned toward the distant nation.
Toward Mondstadt.
Toward winds that had not yet come.
He had drawn the battle away for that reason—to keep it far from where Barbatos might have noticed. He told himself it was to avoid needless diplomacy, to spare the younger god any premature confrontation. But deep down, he knew it was fear.
What if Barbatos didn’t remember?
What if the winds never laughed again?
He turned away, not toward the settlement, but toward the hills where Guizhong once planted mechanical marvels, and where Ping played her guqin beneath the dusk sky.
He needed somewhere quiet. Somewhere he could think.
✦ ˑ ִֶ 𓂃⊹
Ping had already arrived. She knelt by the low stone table and gently set down a porcelain pot of tea, the scent of osmanthus rising with the steam. Her expression had a flicker of curiosity in her eyes as she regarded Morax with quiet scrutiny.
Morax sat last.
He did so stiffly, like a soldier unused to peace. The weight of his spear still pressed against his spine, though it had long since been laid down. Guizhong took the seat beside him—close, familiar. Too familiar.
She smiled, as she always did around him, soft and patient. “You vanished during the final hour,” she said lightly. “I sent Menogias to look for you, but Bonacius returned first.”
“I was delayed,” Morax replied. His voice was steady, but a touch lower than usual. Measured. “The gods... resisted until the end.”
“Leucothea?” Ping asked, “She was known to be an uproar of a god.”
Guizhong’s gaze lingered on him longer than was polite, though not unkind. “Yes, Indarias already led the healers to the wounded. Some adepti went to assist with the aftermath.”
If he remembered correctly, her death resulted in a flood.
“It was the god of hunt, afterwards.”
Morax didn’t meet their eyes. He took the tea cup Ping poured for him, warm between his hands, but he didn’t drink.
Guizhong leaned forward, voice lower. “Something troubles you.”
He flinched—barely. But the motion didn’t escape either of them.
His thoughts were not here. They had never truly returned from the battlefield—not because of Leucothea or that other god, not because of the war. But because of Barbatos.
The god of freedom.
The god who had once leaned against him like a breeze, all wine-sweet laughter and half-finished lullabies. The god whose lips had once brushed his with the gentleness, whose hands never demanded, only invited.
Even now, Morax could recall the way the air shifted around Barbatos—soft, mischievous, elusive. The scent of cecilias. The glint of teal.
He had seen none of it here. Not yet.
And yet... Barbatos must already exist in this timeline. Yes, that rebellion… Barbatos was likely watching the skies, laughing with humanity, perhaps already building windmills and singing again.
But Morax was here. And Guizhong was still alive.
That truth sat heavy on his chest.
He hadn’t seen her in thousands of years—not since the tragedy that eventually claimed her life. And now, sitting beside her, alive and smiling, her presence felt foreign.
Her nearness only deepened the discomfort. Not because he disliked her—he had always held deep respect, even affection, for Guizhong. But to him it had always been platonic. He was grateful for her showing him the other side of the world.
But because she looked at him as if she still believed in a future between them.
And that... that was no longer his to give.
(He knew she always held deep affection towards him, but to him—it was nothing more than old friends.)
“Morax,” she said again, quieter now. “We’re alone. You can tell us the truth.”
He met her gaze at last.
And there it was—the soft affection behind her eyes, the unspoken hopes that had always lingered just beneath her words. Even Ping seemed to shift slightly, watching the two with knowing patience.
“I am only tired,” Morax said, finally drinking the tea. It was bitter, floral. He barely tasted it. Tea back then—now—was really nostalgic. But he still preferred the fresh tea leaves supplied by Wangsheng.
Guizhong didn’t believe him. Not entirely. But she let it go, her smile curling into something bittersweet. “Then stay tonight. We will rest here. You deserve a moment to put your burdens down.”
Morax hesitated. “I…”
She reached out, just a brush of her fingers on the edge of his sleeve. A gentle, grounding gesture. Familiar.
He pulled back his arm, taking a sip of the tea. Bluntly ignoring the curious expression on her face.
The tea was too cool now. Fragrant, with a hint of dried leaves, but it had lost the warmth he’d meant to savor. He didn’t mind. The taste gave him something to hold onto—something grounded and real, here in the mortal world, where he was supposed to belong.
His gaze drifted toward the horizon, where the wind stirred gently through the trees that surrounded the pavilion.
But in it, he heard something that did not belong to this moment.
A voice, light as air. Singing in a tongue no one in the Guili Assembly spoke anymore—not here, not now.
Barbatos.
His hand tightened slightly around the porcelain cup, the motion too subtle to catch unless one already knew what to look for. Guizhong had been speaking. She still was—gently, as she always did. Her tone was even, her words carefully chosen.
Something about the western mountain’s soil. About modifying the grain yields through dust-forged sediment. A topic he might have once entertained with interest, perhaps even pride.
But now, the words slipped past him like mist.
Not for lack of respect. Guizhong was brilliant—more brilliant than she let most see—but her voice did not pierce the haze in his mind. Not today.
His thoughts felt muffled. Blunted by the ache behind his eyes, by the strange pressure that never fully left the space between his shoulders. It had been growing worse…
Not a wound. Not anything mortal medicine would recognize.
Just… fatigue.
A heaviness he could not shed, as though the earth itself had found its way into his bones.
Perhaps that was fitting.
He was, after all, stone.
A god of permanence.
That was how they saw him. How they needed to see him.
The God of Contracts, the unmoving foundation of the Guili Plains.
(Of Liyue.)
But they did not see this—the quiet strain of maintaining his form, the threads of will that stitched it together each morning, tighter and tighter.
No one knew what it cost him to remain like this—contained. No one saw how carefully he cloaked his true self behind a mortal shape.
They could not know.
Because he did not let them.
All other gods, it seemed, had long since accepted their human-like vessels, their gentle illusions. Even those who wore animal forms once now spoke through avatars of grace and warmth.
But Morax had always resisted.
His true form, he knew, was not something mortals should see. Because it was monstrous, because it was immense.
He didn’t trust anyone to see him like that.
Not even those closest to him.
Not even her.
(Only to Barbatos.)
Especially not now, when he felt it pulling at the edges of his composure again—the weight of centuries, of memory, of a voice that had once laughed across mountain peaks and fallen asleep beneath the stars beside him.
Five hundred years.
That number had carved itself into him like a chisel through bedrock.
It had been five hundred years since he last saw Barbatos.
Not the cheerful form that drifted through dreams and festivals, not the bard that sang for mortals. He had seen the god himself, once—when the veil slipped, when the war had burned too hot for masks.
He remembered the way Barbatos had looked in that moment—not as carefree, not as light.
But fallen. Still.
That image haunted him still.
“Morax,” she said quietly now, drawing his name from the silence like a thread.
He blinked, realizing only then how long she had stopped speaking.
She was watching him—composed, yes, but with that same sharp perception that made her dangerous in diplomacy. Her expression held no accusation. Only… concern. A hint of it. Hidden behind the usual stillness.
“You haven’t answered me,” she said gently.
“I heard you,” he replied, setting the teacup down.
It wasn’t untrue. But it wasn’t the whole truth either.
Morax listened, or tried to.
(No, he wasn’t.)
Her words were gentle, her voice always composed, but they didn’t pierce the haze in his mind.
The question burned in him.
He set down his tea. His voice was low, almost casual—but not quite. “...What is the news from Mondstadt?”
The question settled into silence.
Ping blinked slowly. Guizhong’s breath caught, so faint it might have gone unnoticed by anyone less attuned.
“Mondstadt?” Ping echoed, lifting her eyes to him. “That is... quite far from the front. Have you reason to ask?”
Guizhong tilted her head slightly, curiosity furrowing her brow. “It’s rare that you speak of the northeast, Morax. Especially in times like these.”
He did not answer at first. His golden eyes flicked to the horizon, as if searching for something across the leagues of sky and memory.
“I heard... in a passing wind stirring.” His voice remained measured, but the faintest edge of longing coiled around his words.
Guizhong’s expression shifted, her hands resting more firmly in her lap. “You’re speaking of the god who claimed one of the thrones.”
Morax didn’t flinch at the name. “Yes.”
Ping exchanged a quiet glance with Guizhong, but it was the former who responded. “Mondstadt cast off its previous god, Decarabian, not long ago. Word reached us by traders who crossed the valley routes. The wind god who rose in his place... calls himself Barbatos. But none know much of him.”
“He rules from afar,” Guizhong added gently, “Rarely seen. He does not impose, nor does he demand. Mondstadt’s people govern themselves under his blessing. A curious thing, compared to the war we see in the rest of Teyvat.”
Morax's fingers tensed slightly at the rim of his cup.
So it had already happened. Just as he remembered. Decarabian had fallen. Barbatos had risen—not as a conqueror, but as a liberator. And he had chosen to lead from behind, allowing the people to breathe their own laws into life.
It sounded like him.
It always had.
A flicker of something warmer passed through Morax’s chest. Not relief. Not quite joy. But something familiar, something aching.
He closed his eyes.
“Does he speak?” he asked, more softly now. “To other gods?”
“No, there has been no talks of another alliance.”
Good, the dragon inside him rumbled.
He gripped the cup, he should really start getting ahold of his instincts..
Ping cleared her throat. “But…”
Guizhong watched Morax over the rim of her cup, her gaze soft but inquisitive. “It’s unusual, that’s all,” she said mildly.
“You’ve never shown much concern for Mondstadt. Not since the earliest treaties, at least. You rarely ask after the other regions unless the threat is close.”
She paused, “Did something change?”
Morax’s gaze remained on the horizon for a long breath. Then, as if returning to his own body, he blinked slowly and took a sip of tea—finally.
“No,” he said after a moment. “Not exactly.”
Ping tilted her head. “Then what draws your thoughts so far?”
There was no edge in her question. Only curiosity, polite and poised. If anything, there was no sense of alarm.
Morax answered carefully, “It’s simply... unusual. For a god to rise so swiftly. Without war. Without conquest.”
“And yet now,” Guizhong added, “he is one of the Seven.”
Morax nodded slowly. “It makes me wonder how many paths there are to power... and how many are forgotten.”
Guizhong watched him a moment longer, then leaned back, her expression warm but thoughtful.
“You’re introspective today,” she said with a small laugh, though it held no mockery. “Perhaps the battle left you more shaken than we thought?”
✦ ˑ ִֶ 𓂃⊹
“—d Barbatos?”
The voice was distant. Threaded with concern. Familiar—but not the right kind of familiar.
“Lord Barbatos!”
A sharper edge this time. Urgency. Worry. A hand touched his shoulder, firm and gloved.
He startled awake with a sharp inhale, jerking slightly where he sat slouched against the bark of a wide, mossy tree. His cheek had pressed against the curve of the trunk.
Snow floated down from above, dappling the grass with soft white.
His fingers twitched. Where—?
He blinked hard. The sky overhead was greyish. The air was heavy with the scent of crushed mint and lakewater. It was wrong.
Jean always smelled faintly of ink and dandelions. And—
That wasn’t Jean.
It wasn’t her voice.
Venti—
Barbatos sat up abruptly, only now realizing that the wind had stilled around him. For a moment it felt like even the world held its breath.
The woman knelt beside him in light armor, a cape fastened neatly at her shoulder. Her eyes were wide with concern beneath her brow-length fringe, pale blonde hair bound back in the style of knights from an earlier age.
Not Jean.
Wait but… she looked like Jean.
He blinked.
“…Gunnhildr?” he said, voice hoarse.
Relief flooded her features. “Finally. You weren’t answering—” She stopped short, frowning deeper. “You look… pale. Were you wounded? You weren’t like this earlier.”
Barbatos stared at her.
She wasn’t supposed to look like that.
Not young.
Not whole.
Dead.
The words slipped from his mouth before he could catch them. “You’re alive?”
Gunnhildr blinked, startled. “I… I certainly hope so?”
He closed his eyes and inhaled sharply through his nose, trying to steady the frantic beat in his chest. He remembered falling asleep in Windrise. The birdsong had sounded off. The winds were all wrong. He’d told himself it was the wine.
But this—this wasn’t a dream. He could smell the war in the distance, like a bruised thunderhead waiting to split open.
His heart began to race.
“I found you sleeping out here again,” Gunnhildr said slowly, as if gauging him. “I know you’re not one for formality, but… it’s unusual, even for you, to miss three check-ins with the masons. The men said you looked strange before you wandered off. Did something happen?”
Barbatos didn’t answer.
His hands trembled in his lap.
He stared down at them, at the faint glint of his teal tattoos—the ones he hid under his green bards’ guise. This was his body. It felt like his body. But it also felt like waking up with someone else’s memories rattling in his head.
Not—
He let out a slow breath. Then, masking the tremor in his voice with a lazy smile, he tilted his head and offered, “Perhaps I just needed a little nap. The winds near Cider Lake are particularly gentle today.”
Gunnhildr didn’t smile back.
Instead, she stood, the edge of her shadow falling over him. Her hands were now folded behind her back—diplomatic, but stern.
“You do seem… different,” she said carefully. “Even for you. Your gaze—”
“I had a dream,” Barbatos interrupted.
The words snapped out with more sharpness than he’d meant, too quick, too raw.
A flicker of something passed across Gunnhildr’s face—surprise, yes, but not fear. Never fear. Only a soldier’s alertness, the kind that made her spine straighten and eyes narrow the way a seasoned knight scans a battlefield.
Then he sighed, exhaled, and lifted one hand in apology.
“Sorry,” he said, softer. “A dream. That’s all. I’ve been carrying it with me a little longer than I meant to.”
Gunnhildr regarded him in silence for a moment.
Barbatos turned his face toward the canopy, but his gaze slipped past the leaves, beyond the clouds breaking through their trembling edges. He didn’t want to meet her eyes again. Not yet. Not while his throat still felt tight with too many unspoken names.
“I’ll report, if you’ll listen,” Gunnhildr said after a long pause, voice low but clear.
He gave a nod. Wordless. Grateful, in a way.
She stepped around him, settling on the grass nearby but not too close—close enough for formality, not intimacy. This was Lady Gunnhildr now, his former—well not really former now?—right-hand man. Her posture was straight, tone official.
“The construction at Cider Lake is going well. Faster than projected even with the weather.” she began, “The lake has been partially drained, just enough for stone foundations. The masons are excited—it seems the sediment beneath is unusually stable, and we found a natural mineral deposit useful for glassmaking. The new settlement may include a forge after all.”
Barbatos gave a faint hum, letting the words wash over him. In another time, in the other world, these facts would’ve stirred a whimsical flourish from him. A blessing of song, perhaps, or an impromptu toast? But now they struck differently.
Gunnhildr pressed on, aware of his silence but trained not to be rattled by it.
“Supply lines are steady. We’ve also had an unexpected surge of meat production farther west—seems some of the older families are offering tribute in exchange for early plots of land near the lake.”
Barbatos’s lip twitched faintly at that. The old nobles always knew how to disguise ambition in reverence.
She noted it, but didn’t comment. “The civilians are in high spirits. Singing while they work. Your blessings have helped, my lord, even if you haven’t delivered them in person.”
He closed his eyes briefly. A windless blessing. How… nostalgic?
“And the others?” he asked, voice low. “Gunnhildr. The border. You mentioned surges.”
She coughed, “Yes. Elemental fluctuations. Increasing every day. Geo in particular. You can feel the pressure in the air, even this far out. Last night, one of the children said they saw ‘a sky fire’ blooming near the edge of the borders.”
Barbatos’s mouth went dry. His hands curled slightly in the whitened grass beside him.
“Any known combatants?”
“We can’t confirm names,” Gunnhildr admitted. “But the energy signatures resemble those from the war.”
His heart sank.
The Guili Assembly.
Gunnhildr shifted again, more gently now. “I know you’ve walked many paths, Barbatos. I know you see more than the rest of us. But if there’s something we should prepare for…”
Barbatos raised his head.
Her expression was calm. Steady. But not unworried.
He hesitated. The truth clawed at his chest. He wanted to tell her—You died. Everyone did. I was alone. I couldn’t sing anymore. I—I was…
—asleep.
But he couldn’t. Not here. Not now.
“Don’t fear the fire just yet,” he murmured instead. “The sky may flash its teeth, but that doesn’t mean the storm will reach us.”
Gunnhildr frowned faintly at that—something between skepticism and a desire to believe.
“You always say things like that,” she said, a touch dryly. “And half the time it means you’re about to fly into the center of the problem yourself.”
He didn’t deny it.
Instead, he turned his head, and finally looked at her.
She was younger here. Braver in some ways, more reckless in others. The knight of Mondstadt before it became what it would be thousands of years from now. But her gaze was already that of a woman who carried the weight of others’ safety like a blade across her back.
“You don’t need to worry for me,” he said gently.
“That’s not how it works,” she replied. “We do worry for you. Even when you vanish into the trees. Even when you hum to yourself and pretend you aren’t haunted.”
Barbatos’s smile was faint. Hollow, but real.
“Then thank you,” he said. “For waking me.”