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When Lohen had been a young boy, his parents would dutifully visit the Cathedral in Mondstadt City every week. It was a long journey from Dornman Port, at least several hours when the wind was at their back. At the time, Lohen hadn’t minded much. His parents filled most of it with stories about the Anemo Archon. Lohen would pretend not to listen, though he still caught most of them anyway.
There was one story he remembered more clearly than the others. Lord Barbatos using the divine winds to cut through the highest peaks of Mondstadt, pushing away the snow to form oceans, the remaining mountains breaking into islands scattered across the sea. His father always had a talent for dramatic flair, gesturing wildly as he spoke, as though he could command the wind himself. Lohen often found himself wondering that if such power had been his, the journey would not have taken nearly as long.
His father might have smiled if he'd ever said that aloud, but he couldn't really remember.
The details of those weekly journeys had begun to blur with time. He still remembered the road into Mondstadt, but once they reached the city, everything became strangely indistinct. His parents would exchange familiar greetings with the guards, though he could no longer recall their names, nor whether he had ever truly known them to begin with. After that came the Cathedral.
He remembered sermons, prayers, and voices rising beneath the vaulted ceiling, but little else. Whether time had worn those memories away, or whether he had buried them himself after everything that followed, Lohen could no longer tell.
Some things had endured regardless. He could still trace the route they had taken and recall fragments of the stories his parents told along the way. Yet the wind had never faded with the rest. He remembered it accompanying them as the cart rolled from sand to hardened paths, and finally onto cobblestone.
His parents had been especially devout followers of the Anemo Archon, given their willingness to cross half the nation every week. And yet, they never seemed to notice the wind's presence on their journey. Lohen had never pointed it out, attributing it instead to their usual lack of attentiveness.
It was not an unfamiliar feeling to him, though not a comfortable one either. He was vigilant by nature, always aware of his surroundings, and the sense of being watched had sat uneasily with him at times.
It was similar, in a way, to the quiet concern he often caught in his parents' voices when they thought he wasn't listening. They would speak in hushed tones while he sat near the top of the stairs, long after he had supposedly gone to bed.
He'll grow out of it.
It was a sentence he heard often enough to remember years later. Back then, it had seemed to satisfy them. His temper, the fights, the questions he'd ask; they could all be dismissed as the habits of a difficult child. Neither seemed eager to question whether it was something more.
And so the weekly journeys continued. Looking back, Lohen sometimes wondered whether they believed the Church could reach him where they no longer could. They kept telling him stories for a while longer, though the excitement behind them faded with each passing trip.
They never knew he prayed when no one was watching. The words were never quite the same as the ones spoken in the Cathedral. They were quieter, less practiced, often little more than questions carried into the night through an open window. Whether anyone had heard them was a question he had quietly abandoned long ago.
Time had blurred much of what came after. Perhaps that had been his own doing. The stories remained, but the faces behind them faded.
Lohen hadn't seen his parents in years. It wasn't difficult to explain away. Dornman Port lay far from the city centre, and after he joined the Knights, there was always something that demanded his attention. First came his promotion to Vice-Captain, then the expedition to Nod Krai. Responsibilities accumulated until the years blurred into something difficult to measure.
That was the version he allowed himself to believe.
He knew it had begun long before that.
After the kidnapping, something between them had fractured. Adorno had taken him and Theodore under his wing, and life continued from there, but the distance between him and his parents only deepened. He still sent invitations when important days came, his knighthood, his promotion, but they rarely came. Eventually, he stopped expecting anything in return.
He told himself he couldn't blame them. What had once been called ambition in a child no longer sat so comfortably with age. The fascination had sharpened over time, becoming harder to overlook, harder still to justify. As the years passed, conversations grew shorter. Visits became rare. His name appeared less often, until eventually it seemed as though they never had a son to begin with.
It was fine, he didn’t need them.
And yet the thought still lingered, quietly, in the moments when he was alone, when there was no fight to distract him from it. His room offered little comfort in return. The same bare walls, the same untouched furniture, everything exactly as it had been since the day he moved in. He had never found much reason to make the place feel like his own.
Which was how he’d found himself one night, slowly sinking against the wall beside the dusty bookshelves, his gaze fixed blankly at the darkness ahead. The movement disturbed the layers of dust gathered over the years, a painful reminder of how little time he spent in this room. He liked to be on the move. Staying too long in one place could easily get him killed, after all. It was the excuse he had given Varka long ago, when he failed to deliver his paperwork on time. The truth was that as long as his mind was occupied with fighting, he never had to confront the restlessness that settled whenever things grew quiet.
He felt his fingers drift, almost without intent, to the back of an old, familiar photo frame. It had been placed upside down and shoved away at the back of a shelf since the first time he had unpacked the few belongings he brought from Dornman Port. He had never been one for sentimentality, yet he hadn't been able to look at it since moving to the city. If their faces faded from memory, perhaps everything that came with them would fade too. That would be easier. For all of them.He sank deeper against the wall, tilting his head back until his gaze fixed on the ceiling above. It felt empty in a way that mirrored him too well.
Adorno had once sat him down like this, voice quieter than usual, eyes steady in that way that made it difficult to look away. He had told him he needed something to fight for, something to anchor him if he ever wanted to become strong.
If you have nothing to protect, he had asked, what are you even fighting for?
Adorno was dead.
Theodore had grown distant.
There was no one left to fight for.
Nothing left to become stronger for.
And even then, he had failed to keep the only promise he had ever made Adorno.
For months, he had carried the weight of that failure. The feeling of helplessness had never truly left him.
So, in the deep of the night, Lohen found himself clasping his hands together in prayer. Dried blood stained his clothes and his face, stray strands of hair clinging to his skin. If his mind had not felt so heavy, he might have laughed at the sight of himself.
He had not prayed like this in years. Not since he had stopped expecting anything in return.
For a while, he said nothing. The silence stretched between him and the open window, filled only by the faint rustling of leaves outside.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
His voice sounded unfamiliar in the quiet room, shakier than it usually was.
The nuns had always said the wind carried every prayer to him. That every word spoken beneath the skies of Mondstadt would eventually reach the ears of its Archon. Lohen had once wondered if that was supposed to feel comforting to them. He had never been quite sure he’d believed it either.
“It feels unfair.” His grip tightened, his hands still folded together in prayer despite the tension running through them. “Having to speak it out in the open while you supposedly already know feels unfair."
His gaze lowered to his hands, to the blood dried beneath his fingernails.
“You know what I think about. Every time I look at someone, I wonder how strong they are. How easily I could break them.” He swallowed uncomfortably. “And you know I enjoy it.”
He thought of the battles. The way his heart raced before a fight. The way the world seemed quieter when there was something in front of him to destroy.
“I swore my loyalty to you when I joined the Knights.” His voice tightened. “The same vow every knight makes. To protect this city. To protect the people who call it home.”
He looked down at his bloodstained hands.
“But what does that make me?”
A bitter laugh escaped him.
“A protector who enjoys the things he’s supposed to prevent?”
The thought brought him back to the last time he saw his parents. The way they had measured their words around him, the careful distance they kept. Even they had learned not to get too close.
The wind shifted through the trees outside.
“I will never be like the rest of them. So why does it feel like you’re still watching me?”
He clenched his jaw until it hurt, swallowing against the tightness rising in his throat. It only grew worse, until the effort of keeping it contained left his body trembling.
“I’m supposed to protect the ideals of freedom. Your ideals.”
He could feel himself becoming more agitated with every word spoken.
“But what does that even mean when someone like me is the one carrying that oath?” His voice tightened.
“What does freedom matter if I was always going to end up like this?”
He shut his eyes.
Theodore had always cried easily. Lohen imagined he probably still did. He had never understood why people called it weakness. If anything, he envied it. Crying meant feeling enough that the body no longer knew what else to do.
Lohen had never had that problem. His emotions rarely surfaced on their own. They needed something louder to break through. The rush of a fight. The certainty of an opponent standing before him. The moment everything else disappeared, leaving only instinct and the certainty that one of them would not walk away alive.
The feeling of another life held within his grasp gave him control, even if he had long since lost control over his own.
Only then did the emptiness recede.
Not exactly the confession one should make before a god.
Maybe Barbatos thought he looked unsightly too.
The wind offered no answer, only shifting faintly through the open space.
Lohen let out a quiet sigh, unclasping his hands as he rose from the ground. Even after washing away the blood, cleaning and binding his wounds, and changing into fresh clothes, he still couldn't shake the feeling of being unclean. Perhaps that was answer enough. Someone like him had no business asking for Barbatos' guidance.
He wasn’t even sure why he had tried.
He remained standing in the middle of the room for a while. It suddenly felt smaller than he remembered, though he couldn't tell whether it was the walls closing in or himself shrinking beneath them. His hands found his temples, rubbing at them in a futile attempt to quiet his thoughts. Then again, he wasn't sure silence would be any better.
With another sigh, he made his way back to the windowsill, passing the bare walls and sparse furniture that had remained unchanged since the day he moved in. There was probably still an unopened box beneath the bed. He had never found a reason to unpack it. He had been a member of the Knights for years, yet he still felt like a stranger among them.
The promotion to vice-captain had been enough to set the city talking. Stories of the methods that had earned him recognition had already spread throughout Mondstadt, and many questioned why the Knights would entrust someone like him with greater authority. The announcement that he would become the youngest captain in the Knights of Favonius' history only gave them more reason to speculate. Varka had known of the arrangement Adorno had made with him. Somehow, so had the rest of Mondstadt.
The whispers had followed Lohen ever since his return from the expedition. On his way to meet Varka one afternoon, he passed a crowded terrace where a handful of voices drifted into the street.
"Ha! Can you imagine him of all people commanding a squad? That's an impending disaster waiting to happen."
Laughter rippled around the table.
"Captain Adorno choosing him never made sense to me," another voice said. "Adorno's dependable. Lohen..." The speaker paused. "I don't know. Makes you wonder what he saw in him."
"What he saw?" a woman scoffed. "You mean what he had to gain? The Knights aren't stupid. You don't put someone like that on a leash unless there's a reason."
A murmur of agreement followed.
Lohen had kept walking, his expression unchanged as the voices faded behind him. Only the tension in his jaw betrayed that he had heard every word.
In the end, Lohen received neither the promotion nor the title of Benevolent Knight after his involvement in the experiments surrounding Ursa's body. Neither loss troubled him much. What he dreaded were the conversations that followed. Whenever he heard his name spoken, he found himself turning away, unwilling to hear what new judgment Mondstadt had decided to place on him.
He faintly wondered what had become of him. He had never cared about such matters before.
Deep down, Lohen knew the promotions had never been the reason he kept his distance. They were only the excuse. It was the conversations that followed whenever Adorno's name surfaced. Varka and Jean had tried to keep the circumstances of his death within the Knights, but secrets rarely remained secrets in Mondstadt. By the time an official statement was released, the city had already decided what had happened. Every telling carried a different truth. None of them were his.
He could have stopped it, perhaps. If he had spoken during the Knights' official statement. If he had corrected the hushed conversations he overheard instead of pretending not to hear them.
But he never did.
Some part of him wanted Mondstadt to keep its distance. Wanted them to look at him and see someone worth avoiding. He had blamed himself long before anyone else had. Even if old age had claimed Adorno in the end, the guilt gnawed at him. So what was one more city condemning him?
Shaken from his thoughts, Lohen looked down and realized he had been gripping his arm hard enough to draw blood. He loosened his hold slowly, a thin line of red trailing down his skin and dripping to the floor beneath him.
Numb to it, he turned his gaze toward the darkness outside. The Knights’ dormitories sat high within the building, offering a clear view over the quiet city and its outskirts.
He wondered what it would feel like to fall from that height. Whether the wind would even allow it.
The thought struck before he could stop it, and for a moment he wanted to punch himself for even thinking it.
He turned away with a rough exhale, crossing the room in uneven steps before dropping back onto the bed. The mattress gave under his weight, but it did nothing to ease the tension still coiled in him.
He didn’t bother changing.
Less than a week later, he found himself standing alone in the darkness. Around him, the remains of countless monsters lay scattered across the ground. He held onto his polearm with shaky hands, each breath coming sharp and uneven as his vision began to blur. He wasn’t sure how time had passed since he’d gone out; the fading of daylight into the dead of the night suggested it had been several hours, at least.
He felt awful, and yet, he felt exhilarated at the same time. A rush of adrenaline masked the pain of a deep cut stretching from his knee to his upper thigh. Blood dripped steadily onto the ground below, and somehow, the pain felt almost cathartic.
The Vice Captain let his head fall back, his eyes settling on the moon above. Its artificial glow bathed his face in pale light, making him look almost ghostly. He could slowly feel the adrenaline wear off, and he reveled in the sensation.
He had noticed how quiet it had gotten before, even the winds keeping their distance from him, not wanting to be caught up in the destruction that Lohen had caused. Now though, he felt a breeze tugging at his hair and catching his cloak as if fussing over him; Lohen closed his eyes and fought the urge to lean into it. He gritted his teeth and crouched down to wrench a dagger from the body of the Lawachurl at his feet, sucking in a breath as pain shot through his body.
Ignoring the wind's persistent nudges, Lohen forced himself upright. His legs shook beneath him, fatigue settling into his bones now that the battle was over. Without another glance at the corpses around him, Lohen turned toward the hardened path leading back to Mondstadt, the one he’d taken thousands of times before. Behind him, the fallen monsters began to dissolve into ash one by one, carried away by the wind until nothing remained. The moon had hidden behind the clouds, leaving the path ahead swallowed in darkness.
His thoughts wandered as he walked. He had been sloppy, and he knew better than to let an injury like that happen. A moment of carelessness could have very well been the end of him, and yet the thought did little more than draw a humorless laugh from him. A nagging voice whispered that perhaps it would not have mattered anyway.
He was nothing remarkable. The fight against Rerir had proven that much.
Rerir had broken him down with brutal ease, leaving him hospitalized for days afterward, his body forced into stillness while his mind replayed every mistake on loop. Worse than the injuries had been the words.
Useless. Mediocre. Barely worth the effort.
Each strike had driven them into him as clearly as the blade itself, and Lohen had not been able to prove him wrong.
Lost in his thoughts, Lohen barely registered the stone gates of Mondstadt coming into view. It was not until he was close that he noticed Lawrence standing guard, the man going rigid at the sight of him.
His gaze flicked rapidly between Lohen’s face and the wound in his leg, lingering on the blood still seeping through the torn fabric before snapping back again. “Vice-Captain— “ he started, already having stepped forward with his arm stretched out.
“Don’t.” Lohen cut him off without slowing his pace.
Lawrence and Swan exchanged a worried glance behind him. “Wait. Please.” The guard rushed to step in front of the young Vice Captain.
It was a bold move given their respective ranks, and Lohen knew it. He disliked using that kind of authority, but, if necessary, he would.
Still, he hesitated, then stopped with his back turned, already poised to leave if pushed too far. Lawrence would have to be careful with his next words.
“I won’t say anything to the Grandmaster,” he said, his voice unsteady. “But if there is anything you need… please tell me.”
Lohen ducked his head in response, suddenly aware of how his torn clothes clung to his skin where the blood had dried. For a moment, he remained still.
Then his weight shifted, just slightly, and Lawrence noticed the way he favored one leg.
“Vice-Captain Lohen, your condition—”
Lohen didn’t turn, but his voice dropped into something colder.
“Don’t make me repeat myself. I can handle it.”
He resumed walking, leaving the two guards in uneasy silence.
Only after a few steps did he speak again, glancing faintly over his shoulder as he ascended the cobblestone stairs into the city.
“And don’t report this to the Grandmaster,” he added. “I mean it.”
Mondstadt was quiet late at night. The streets lay empty, save for the wind drifting lazily between the buildings. As he passed the bars, he was quietly grateful it was a weekday tomorrow; the last thing he needed was to cross paths with a drunkard at this hour.
He wasn’t even sure where his feet were taking him. Sleep felt impossible, and he doubted the stationed guards at the Knights of Favonius headquarters would be as easily convinced as Lawrence and Swan that his condition didn’t warrant a report to Varka. The Grandmaster had made it clear they were to inform him if Lohen returned like this again, and bribing them had proven fruitless.
He found himself in front of the Cathedral instead.
He hadn’t intended to come here. Somehow, his feet had carried him there before he had even realized where he was going. Now he stood before the Cathedral doors, staring up at the place he had spent years avoiding.
Not because he had stopped believing, but because he wasn’t sure what he expected to find if he returned.
A part of him still remembered what it felt like to pray here.
Another wondered whether someone like him still had the right.
He placed his hand tentatively on the door, not expecting it to give way so easily. After a brief hesitation, he pushed it open fully and stepped into the cathedral.
The door shut behind him with a dull thud that made him wince slightly.
Negligence on the part of the nuns or not, Lohen didn’t think anyone was supposed to be here this late without permission.
He glanced around cautiously. Somehow, the cathedral felt even quieter than the streets outside, each footstep echoing through the vast, empty hall. With a quiet sigh, he lowered himself onto the nearest pew and reached into his tattered pocket, pulling out a roll of bandages and a small vial of alcohol.
He patched his leg up with practiced ease, cleaning the wound before winding the bandages around it tightly. He barely acknowledged the sting as the alcohol seeped into the wound and trailed down his leg. Treating injuries like this had become routine, and he had long learned to ignore the pain.
Once the bandages were secured, he leaned back against the pew and let his gaze drift to the altar, his thoughts wandering aimlessly. The marbled floor beneath him had begun to stain red with blood, something the nuns would certainly not appreciate. He couldn’t bring himself to care.
Silence lingered in the cathedral for a moment longer.
Then, from somewhere above him, a light and quietly amused voice spoke, “You know, I don’t think you’re supposed to be bleeding out on sacred grounds.
” Lohen felt his breath catch. For a moment, the entire world seemed to narrow down to the figure standing above him. Barbatos hadn’t manifested in centuries, and yet Lohen could immediately recognize the voice that had spoken, as though the wind was woven into his being. He supposed, in a way, it was.
The Archon was clad in pure white, a stark contrast to Lohen’s own bloodstained state. He remained frozen, unable to decide whether he should flee or stay. Every instinct that had carried him through countless battles had gone silent, leaving him with nothing but the weight of Barbatos’ gaze upon him. There was an immense power hidden beneath those gentle teal eyes, one that Lohen could feel despite the warmth they held.
Lohen blinked, still unable to process what he was seeing.
Barbatos only smiled at him, kind and unhurried.
“Walk with me,” he said, motioning for Lohen to rise before turning his back.
Slowly, he pushed himself up from the pew. His legs felt heavy, but the pain that had once consumed him had faded into the background. His mind was too occupied to question why.
He silently followed his god up the stairs, coming to a stop in front a large, open window. Lohen watched hesitantly as Barbatos perched himself on the ledge, legs dangling against the outside walls as he turned and motioned the Vice Captain once again. “You’re not afraid of heights, are you? Please, sit.”
Lohen obliged with a nervous No, the first words he’d been able to speak since Barbatos’ sudden appearance. He sat down on the ledge next to Barbatos, trying, and failing to sit as far from the other as possible. Curse these narrow ledges, and curse those enormous wings.
“You have had a difficult week” Barbatos spoke, the words hanging heavy in the air between them; it hadn’t been a question, yet Lohen felt like was meant to respond regardless. "Yes," he answered curtly, staring ahead. He'd never had much appreciation for landscapes, but they made an excellent distraction now.
“I have been worried about you.”
Whatever shock had held Lohen frozen vanished, leaving behind something far more familiar. Anger.
The Archon looked untouched by the world, light as a feather caught upon the breeze, impossibly distant from the weight that dragged Lohen down. Lohen's hand curled into a fist before he realized it. His resolve gave way, and the emotions he had buried so carefully broke free, like a storm that could no longer be contained.
“I don't want to be like this,” he grit out, biting down hard enough on the inside of his cheek to taste blood. He stopped himself before he said anything more; angering a god was probably unwise.
Barbatos gave no sign of offense.
“Don’t you?” he asked instead, tilting his head ever so slightly. His voice remained calm, almost gentle, though there was unmistakable curiosity beneath it, as though he truly didn’t know the answer. It unnerved Lohen. Wasn’t he supposed to know all the answers?
Yet the question lingered longer than it should have, refusing to settle into anything simple.
Perhaps it wasn’t that Barbatos couldn’t answer.
Perhaps it was that Lohen could not.
The realization sat uneasily in his chest as the wind shifted faintly through the open windows of the cathedral. Barbatos did not move as the silence settled. If he noticed Lohen’s hesitation, he gave no sign of it. It made him wonder when he’d first become this way. The answer, as far as he could tell, was always. There had never been a moment he could remember when he had been anything else.
From as far back as he could remember, he had never understood why the things that came naturally to him unsettled everyone else. There had never been any guilt in the satisfaction he found in watching those who had wronged him suffer, nor in the relentless desire for power that had driven him throughout his life. Others had always looked at him differently because of it, shunning him for the very traits he valued most. He had never cared. Those desires were as much a part of him as anything else.
It was only after the fight with Rerir that those convictions had begun to falter. Against him, all his ambition had meant nothing. He'd been powerless during the ambush, unable to change the outcome, unable even to save himself. Worst of all, someone else had done it for him. If his pursuit of power could still leave him this helpless, if the very instincts that had carried him this far could fail him when he needed them most, then what was left of him?
“You don’t look so tough,” he suddenly blurted out, surprising himself as much as the Archon beside him, whose eyes widened. Barbatos barked out a laugh, light and musical and probably louder than he had intended it. Lohen felt a strange satisfaction at having, if only for a moment, caught even the wind off guard.
“You don’t think so?” Barbatos smiled impossibly wider. “I don’t consider myself much of a fighter,” he added cheerfully.
Lohen looked him over for a second, not having given himself the opportunity before; seeing Mondstadt’s deity in front of him still felt unreal. He looked unassuming enough, but Lohen had heard too many stories of Barbatos' feats to take his words at face value.
Barbatos did not seem troubled by the scrutiny. If anything, he looked mildly amused by it.
“You’re staring,” he said at last, still smiling. Lohen blinked, caught off guard. “I was not—” he began, then stopped. The words felt unnecessary halfway through saying them.
Barbatos tilted his head slightly, still smiling. “Were you expecting something else?”
Lohen hesitated.
He had expected something distant. Something untouchable. Something that did not look back at him like this.
When his parents spoke of him, it had always been in fragments: stories told in passing, half reverent, half fearful. A name carried on the wind, a figure of songs and warnings. He had never been able to form an image of it that felt real.
“No.” He settled on.
Barbatos gave a soft laugh beside him.
“Didn’t I hear you say I don’t look tough?” His eyes twinkled as he spoke. “I thought my reputation was better than that. I suppose I haven’t been slicing enough mountains this era.” He winked.
The Vice Captain hummed in agreement, as though the suggestion had been a genuine one.
“I think Dragonspine could use some reshaping,” he said.
The words earned a quick gasp from the god beside him.
“Really? And here I was quite fond of it,” Barbatos replied, shaking his head earnestly, though his tone stayed light. He almost looked like he was considering it.
“Too many people come back from there alive,” Lohen added after a beat. “It gets repetitive.”
The Anemo archon chuckled again, seeming unsurprised at the Vice Captain’s words. “The wind guides them home,” he said simply.
“Buzzkill.” Lohen mumbled under his breath, earning another breathy giggle from the god. A comfortable silence followed, the two deep in thought while the wind played lazily with Lohen’s hair. Barbatos was the first to break it.
“You say you don’t wish to be like this,” he started carefully, gazing into the distance as Lohen felt himself involuntarily straighten. “I want you to consider whether that wish truly comes from the heart.” He continued.
“…“Freedom means following one’s ambitions, even when others find them strange or impossible.”
Lohen inhaled sharply at those words.
That was the kind of answer he had always wanted to hear. Not because he believed he deserved it, but because some part of him had kept hoping, against everything he knew of himself, that it might still be true.
But hearing it now only made something twist in his chest.
Because it came from Barbatos.
A god.
Someone he should not have been sitting beside, let alone speaking to like this. If Barbatos truly understood him, he would not be offering freedom so easily. Not to him.
Lohen had never thought himself worthy of being understood by something like that.
And beneath the guilt that followed, something sharper flickered through him. Anger, quiet and immediate, at the idea that such words were only being spoken now, as though they had not been needed years ago. As though they could undo everything that had happened before. This time, he could not hold himself back.
“I spent years asking for your help,” he gritted out, pushing himself to his feet. His hand rose, his finger stopping just short of Barbatos’ chest. He towered over the seated god, though Barbatos’ expression remained unreadable.
“Every night, I prayed to the winds. I begged for something to change. For me to change.” His teeth clenched. His hand did not move.
Barbatos did not move away from him.
For a moment, he simply looked at Lohen, his expression softening with something Lohen could not quite place.
“I see,” he said at last, voice quiet. There was no surprise in it. No judgment either. Only a kind of stillness that made Lohen feel suddenly too exposed.
“You hated yourself,” Barbatos said gently, as though he was giving voice to something Lohen had never dared to say himself.
His gaze stayed on Lohen’s raised hand, then slowly returned to his face.
“And you asked the winds to change you.”
It sounded stupid when the god said it like that. Childish, even.
The realization hit before he could stop it, and something in his expression faltered.
His hand was still raised, still pointing, but it no longer felt like conviction holding it there.
For the first time, he was aware of how he must look.
“Why are you here?” he gritted out bitterly, though his conviction was already beginning to waver. There was something in the way the god spoke that made his anger difficult to hold onto. He had to resist the urge to let his guard down.
Barbatos hummed thoughtfully, his gaze settling fully on Lohen now, making the latter look away. “I know what you do to yourself,” he admitted, and for a moment, his expression tightened, as though the thought itself pained him. “You hurt yourself, fighting until there is barely anything left of you.”
The god averted his gaze briefly before speaking again. “I just couldn’t stand by and watch anymore, so I waited for you here.”
“You knew I’d come here?” It was the only answer he permitted himself to give, stalling time as he was trying to register the worry behind the Archon’s words, worry for him.
“I have my ways to make sure,” Barbatos responded simply. “I want you to know that I heard your prayers that night. I have been worried about you ever since your return from your expedition to Nod Krai.” Barbatos said, wringing his hands in front of him. Lohen thought he almost looked nervous.
“I know it can be hard to accept yourself sometimes. I can attest to that, perhaps better than anyone.” He smiled softly. “However…”
His expression shifted, softening slightly.
“The winds of Mondstadt do not ask what form they are meant to take,” he said gently. “They simply move freely.”
Silence settled over them after the words were spoken. Lohen had expected it to feel suffocating, but instead something in his chest slowly began to loosen. He still wasn't sure he believed everything Barbatos had told him, but he found himself holding onto the words anyway.
“Did you also hear my other prayer?”
Barbatos’ eyes twinkled with quiet amusement as he exhaled softly. “The one where you asked me to fight you?”
A mischievous smile played on Lohen’s lips. At least, Barbatos seemed to interpret it that way; most others would have found the expression far more unsettling. “Mm!” he confirmed, clasping his hands together in a mock prayer. “Well? What about it?”
He tilted his head when no answer came, glancing up at the Archon beside him. Barbatos was still watching him with that same calm amusement, as though nothing about the request was particularly unusual.
“Ha. Definitely not.”
“I’ll expose you,” Lohen added immediately.
Barbatos blinked.
“The bard,” Lohen clarified. “The one who spends half his time drunk outside the tavern.”
Barbatos let out a tired sigh, and for a brief moment, Lohen looked almost pleased with himself.
“I have tried,” Barbatos replied lightly. “They don’t believe me.”
Lohen clicked his tongue, leaning back slightly as if considering this with genuine disappointment. “Coward.”
That finally earned him a reaction. Barbatos turned his head a little more fully toward him, brows lifting in mild disbelief rather than offence.
“I am a god,” he said after a pause, as if that alone should settle the matter.
“Exactly,” Lohen said without hesitation. “And still a coward.”
Barbatos stared at him for a moment longer, then exhaled through his nose, something between resignation and amusement settling in his expression.
“Too bad,” he said simply.
Lohen tilted his head a fraction. “Please?”
“Absolutely not,” Barbatos replied, far too cheerfully.
Lohen sighed in resignation, shaking his head as he glanced sideways at Barbatos. The Archon was pressing a hand over his mouth, only barely managing to suppress a laugh.
He looked back over Mondstadt, the city resting quietly beneath the stars. Nothing waiting for him tomorrow would be any different. The rumors would still linger. The guilt would still follow him. He would still wake with the same hunger for power, the same instincts he had spent years trying to erase.
But perhaps Barbatos had been right.
Perhaps he had spent too long believing that becoming someone else was the only way forward.
The wind brushed gently against his shoulder, light and familiar. This time, he didn't pull away.