Archive of Our Own

A storm is brewing.

This in itself is no peculiar thing – Mondstadt is, after all, the city of the wind, always embraced in its moods and swirls. A proper summer storm every now and then is not out of the ordinary at all, even further: it would be strange to go without it. There should be no concern behind the dark clouds gathering, behind the air cooling down and the breeze picking up.

As every so often, a storm is brewing, and Jean worries.

She is in her office signing papers when the first drop of rain splatters against her window and she glances outside, frowning at the looming sky. An uneasy feeling settles in her gut, something she can only describe as the dreadful knowledge of something terrible coming. Rubbing her eyes, pushing the feeling down with the excuse that she has no time for nonsense, she glues her eyes back onto her papers.

She is still in her office when only a little later, the rain is not a slight drizzle anymore but forcefully beating against her window, tossed around by careless winds. Despite it being the middle of July, a chill lies in the air. Goosebumps raise up her spine.

Before she can ignore the creeping sense of alarm again, the rain turns into hail. Gusts of it slam against the Favonius’ quarters walls. The sky outside is a pitch black. Leaves from trees that should be strong enough to keep them dance in the courtyard, ripped apart by an invisible tide.

Jean stands slowly, hand still clasped around her pen. The wind howls a song of fury. Wide eyed she stares as lightning splits the sky, once, twice – and then the hail turns back to rain, the swaying trees outside coming to a stop.

She breathes a sigh of relief. A strange weather phenomenon indeed – but perhaps that is all there is to it. Storms are common, after all. And who knows – perhaps someone simply insulted Venti’s singing.

She chuckles at the thought, immediately followed by a wave of shame. She has no idea how far the powers of the Anemo Archon range. She hopes they don’t include telepathy.

Settling back on her desk, she picks her work up again with a sigh. This is nothing, she tells herself. It will all pass soon – and if at all, some rain is good for the crop.

At least until it drowns.

A few hours in and the citizens of Mondstadt breathe in relief at the weather, shuffling inside to get away from the rain, while also sending blessings for a good harvest this year. A whole night, and they start to shake their head in slight annoyance. Three whole days, and that annoyance turns into worry. A whole week, and it turns into desperation.

“We haven’t had so much rain since the beginning of weather recording,” Huffmann reports seven days later. He is drenched to the bone. Half of the Favonius have caught a cold – none of them are prepared for such conditions in the middle of summer. “The temperature has dropped drastically. The rivers are overflowing.”

“How is Spring Vale doing?" Jean asks. In one hand she keeps only one of many wrinkled papers stacked on her desk, in her other her lunch. Frustration pulls at her nerves. She has barely slept these past days, barely eaten, and now Sumeru has cut off supply lines due to the severe weather. Not long from now and they will be out of tropical fruits, fabrics and coffee.

They’re not necessities. Not yet.

“Still standing,” Huffmann says, “but barely. They might have to evacuate soon.”

“Perhaps they can find refuge at Hotel Goth or any other inn,” Jean suggests, adding the Sumeru Trade Association’s letter to the pile of already finished documents – it is much smaller than the one she still has to work through. “And we can find volunteers to take in those who don’t fit.”

Huffmann nods. “I will write to them.”

Jean only hums, waiting for his retreating steps while already skimming the next paper. He lingers on. After a few moments of his unsteady breathing and the wind rattling on the windows, she looks up again.

“Is there anything else?”

He shifts. “Can I ask a more personal question?”

She blinks. “Of course.”

“Do you know why this is happening?”

Something in her gut clams up at the question.

“You don’t think we did anything to anger Lord Barbatos, do you?”

Jean freezes.

It takes her a few heartbeats to look him in the eye and reach for her kindest smile. “I don’t believe so,” she says, ignoring the uncertainty clear in her voice. “There is nothing we have done any differently. There is no reason for his anger – this is only some strange weather that will pass soon.”

He nods at that, not quite convinced. She sighs. “If you have any more concerns, perhaps take it up with the church instead? I’m sure they can tell you more about our Lord that I can right now.”

His eyes grow wide, as if realising that he is keeping her from work. She secretly wishes it wouldn’t sting as much. There used to be a time where she was able to welcome any worry with welcoming arms. Now she yearns to have another pair of hands to stop the problems from piling up.

She is exhausted – but as long the rain doesn’t stop, neither will she.

“Of course,” Huffmann says and gives a quick salute. “I will be on my way, then. Thank you for your time.”

The door closes behind him. There is no relief to be found in the following silence.

Jean abandons her lunch and work on the desk and leans against the window, tracing the cool glass with her fingers. Mondstadt lies beneath a grey curtain of rain. She has not seen the sky in more than a week.

The following days, she will use her spare time to visit the church for comfort, but neither Barbara nor any prayer grant her answers to her questions. She will keep looking for any sign of a green cape in the rain-huddled crowds, even stopping at Angel’s Share only to hear that their favourite bard has been missing for an entire week. She will not stop searching, but she will not find him either.

The feeling of dread inside her gut is a churning snake, slowly twisting its way around her insides and reaching for her throat. The lack of sleep chips away at her. The lack of certainty breaks through her spirit. Her faith begins crumbling with every heartbeat that the sky remains dark and keeps her up at night, pondering any wrath her citizens might deserve – only to come up empty.

Jean keeps working. Desperation keeps seeping in as the first food runs dry.

The rain keeps beating down. The air keeps getting colder.

The silence keeps growing.

On the tenth day, the window to her office gets thrown open in a violent gust of wind, scattering papers everywhere, and her god tumbles through in a heap.

Never before has Jean seen Venti so askew. She sits frozen in her seat as he rights himself, plucking branches from his braids and smoothing down his clothes. He is drenched. Water drips onto the wooden floor, and he wipes it away from his eyes.

“Well,” he says, “that was a ride.”

Jean says nothing. The Traveller, leaning against the wall, sighs. Paimon shrieks.

“Tone-deaf Bard!” She skitters around him in a flurry of hair and stardust. “Where in the world have you been?”

He fixes her with a glare, eyebrows raised, but his voice is cheerful. “Hello to you too!”

She stomps her little feet in the air. “This is not the time for small talk! You interrupted Paimon!”

“Perhaps you should find smarter things to say then.”

She gasps at that, resorting back to the Traveller, who only pats her head in sympathy.

Finally, Jean recovers her dignity. She clears her throat. The wind keeps on blowing through the opened window, sending her matriculate order into further heaps. She internally mourns the hours she put into it.

“Lord Barbatos,” she says, trying to keep her voice steady, and because she can’t think of anything else. “You’re here.”

Venti only grins. “That I am. It seems just at the right time, too. I believe you-” he points at the Traveller and Paimon, “have some explaining to do.”

“Right,” Paimon says, laughing nervously, “so, as I was saying…”

It’s all a nightmarish tale, really. Jean loses track of it halfway through, partly because of her exhaustion, mostly because of Paimon’s habit to ramble. By the end of it, the Traveller looks sheepish, almost shrinking back into the wall, and Paimon’s retelling slows to a halt hesitantly, almost drifting away in the air.

“So in summary,” Jean groans into her folded hands, “you went to Stormterror’s Lair, somehow broke through the wind barrier, found an old artifact, touched it and probably caused… all this.” She gestures to the window.

The Traveller only nods.

The silence is interrupted by nothing but the rain.

All eyes turn to Venti.

He looks at the Traveller, then at Jean, then back, and raises his hands in a placating gesture. “Well, it’s not me,” he says. “I have no reason to keep Mondstadt in a storm.”

“If it’s not you, who is it then?" Paimon says. As always, she probably means it as an innocent question, but it comes out quite harshly, and Venti scowls at her.

“Probably the one you woke up by touching that artifact. Do you still have it, by the way?”

The Traveller shakes their head. Venti hums. “A pity.”

Jean leans forward in her seat. She is tired of everything being a puzzle. She is tired of her nerves constantly being on the verge of breaking apart. She is tired.

“Who did they wake up?”

A shadow falls over Venti’s face. With a flick of his wrist he lets another gust of wind slam the window closed, as if afraid he would be overheard. Suddenly, the air in the room grows heavy, pressing down on Jean with a chill. She shivers.

Despite knowing who Venti really is, sometimes it is almost too easy to forget.

“His name is – used to be, I don’t know how much of him really still exists – Decarabian,” Venti says.

Jean blinks. “The tyrant?”

Venti tilts his head. “Eh, if you look at it that way. His greatest sin was loving his people too dearly.” He drifts off, staring out the window for a moment. “He died in the Archon War, however.”

“Then how come he is back now?" Paimon asks.

“Leylines, perhaps. Or the artifact was his failsafe, remaining hidden for over two thousand years. Your constitution sure is special,” he smiles at the Traveller, “so maybe you touching it triggered something to revive him – or at least his soul, which for a god is more than enough.”

“Is that possible?" Jean asks bewildered.

“A lot of things are possible. The body is not the only thing tying us to this earth.”

Silence, this time more solemn, embraces them once more.

“So, how do we stop this?" Jean asks awkwardly. “The crops are gone. Spring Vale is completely flooded. Cider Lake is rising, too. Not long, and the lack of food won’t be our only problem.” She swallows. “And who knows if it might get worse.”

Venti shakes his head. “It won’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m stopping him.”

“…By force?”

Venti grimaces. “I’d rather not let it come to that. I’m merely redirecting the wind, soothing it a little.”

“You’re the Anemo Archon,” Paimon protests. “Could you not do more than that?”

“I am not the wind itself, Paimon,” Venti reminds her. “It has its own will. And right now, it’s being driven by hatred and despair.”

Now that Jean looks at him - really looks at him - he does seem rather drained. She briefly remembers his entrance, lacking most of the grace he usually carries, and suddenly regrets ever doubting him.

Of course it hadn’t been him. She shouldn’t have mistrusted her faith.

Venti glances at her out of the corner of his eye as if sensing her guilt, but moves on swiftly. “I will try talking to him, now that enough time has passed for him to properly form. He cannot be more than the sliver of his soul – his body is long gone.”

Jean tugs at her sleeves. “And what if that doesn’t work?”

“We’ll think about it when it comes down to that.”

“Would you even be strong enough to beat him?" Paimon asks, ignoring the elbow the Traveller plants in her side. “You know, without your…” She gestures towards him in a manner lost to Jean.

The Traveller places a hand on her shoulder. “Nahida told us an archon’s power is dependent on how many people believe in them,” they say in that strange accent of theirs, “but you told us you’re the weakest out of the Seven.” Their gaze is sharp. It’s rare for Jean to hear their voice, and so she only watches on, suddenly feeling as if caught in a conflict between beings much higher than herself.

“Did you lie to us, Venti?”

Venti only laughs and twirls his braid, acting sheepish. “I am no liar.”

“Of course you aren’t, tone-deaf bard,” Paimon groans, but before she can blow up into another tirade, Jean raises from her seat.

“Bar- Venti is right,” she says, correcting herself in the last moment. “We should offer a peaceful solution first, especially if we’re talking about a former god.” All that talk about divine entities is making her head swirl in an overwhelming daze, but she pushes it away. “We want as little destruction as possible.”

She turns towards Venti. “Do you know what he wants?”

Does the soul of a being long dead even want anything? Is it anything other than an echo of the past, easy to be shattered but never quite leaving?

Venti’s gaze shifts into something heavier. “He wants vengeance.”

“For his death?”

“For the suffering caused to his people.”

Jean does not understand.

“…Do you know where he is?" she asks instead of digging deeper, already knowing that some cryptid metaphor is all she will get.

Venti turns towards the window. He watches the sky with something odd in his eyes, a glint Jean cannot read.

“He sits in the clouds,” he says, “weeping.”

There is the cold. There is death. There is an eternal winter, wrapped around the lands from the frozen sea to the aching mountains.

There is disease in the winds outside. There is no wind inside except a storm, breathing stories of love and loss.

He does not bear a name yet, nor a form. He is merely a particle in the breeze that brings spring two days a century.

A boy’s hands catch Him in flight. He attempts to break free, but the grip is strong, the Boy’s calloused palms tender.

And thus, He learns of warmth.

There is music to be heard between the groaning walls where there should be none. The silence does not bear it, frigid in its reign, and yet, the Boy raises his voice and sings, and the walls stop to listen.

His voice is the bringer of the sun, breathing life into stone. The Boy sings as lovely as a bird. The Boy does not know of birds, does not know of the sun – but he yearns for them, reaching higher than the chains can keep him shackled.

At night, the Boy lies to rest and whispers stories to Him, cupped in the safety of his hands. He whispers tales about the world he dreams of, the sights he aches to see. He whispers of the sky bigger than the eye can reach, and all the joy he would find in it, and all the ways he would melt.

Thus, He learns of love.

The cold cannot last forever. Where the Boy’s voice echoes lonely in the dark at first, more follow soon. It is song that carries them forward. It is song that carries them up. It is song that melts their frozen hearts, and perhaps the tyrant’s, too – but it is too late, soon, for both of them.

They sing as they march across the city walls. The boy sings along. The Boy keeps singing, even as the light leaves his eyes and Barbatos learns of grief.

He waits in the silence for a long time, until the Boy’s palms grow cold. He waits further, until they drag the tyrant out of his lover’s quarters and she raises an arrow against him, trembling, and Barbatos learns of betrayal.

On the blood-soaked grounds, Barbatos yearns, wants, prays to be human enough to weep.

The wind shifts around Him. He can feel Himself shift with it, into something solid, into something the earth can shape and take apart. Power rushes through Him in a dizzying blast. He kills the tyrant swiftly, mourning him, too, and opens the city gates for the people that call themselves His now.

He teaches the lands what was once taught him – warmth, love, a little bit of grief – and brings spring upon them, scraping away at the mountains and wiping out the other gods standing in His way. He watches His children build another city, far, far away from their prison, and forget all about what freedom cost them, and it leaves a bitter taste with Him.

He receives a Gnosis.

He joins beings as immortal as Himself and discovers the simple human joy of connection.

He walks beneath the bare sky and reaches for it with His hands, hands He once was brought upon from, hands that nurtured Him long ago. He smiles and drinks and sings and sleeps like humans tend to do.

But no matter how softly the sun kisses his stolen skin – Barbatos never feels warm again.

For the first time in centuries, Venti feels as if pulled by the wind instead of pulling it himself.

He lets himself be carried up towards the sky and becomes one with the storm, leaving his body to dissolve. The air is angry. The clouds do no listen to him as he pushes them apart, rigid in their frozen state above the city.

The only thing he can do is turn the hail back into rain and soften the gusts – otherwise, he uneasily confesses to himself, it quickly could become a disaster bigger than Dvalin’s corruption.

In the midst of the storm, where lightning strikes and the wind could tear him apart if it wanted to, he waits.

He quickly senses Decarabian descending towards him. His presence is intense. Venti felt it weeks ago, barely quick enough to stop the emerging hurricane from getting any stronger, but now here, with only the clouds to blanket him, he can taste the tension in the air.

A strange sense of nostalgia overcomes him.

“Barbatos,” Decarabian drawls. He does not quite bear a form yet, merely a shape in the wind, but he is there. He is alive – in whatever sense possible. “You’re late.”

“We never had an appointment,” Barbatos replies voiceless, letting the storm carry his meaning.

“Don’t belittle me.”

“Quite the opposite.” If he had a body, he would laugh. “Considering it’s been almost three thousand years, I am impressed. How did you return?”

“Why would you not know?”

“I don’t go digging in graves.”

“Don’t lie. You are not that honourable, Barbatos.”

“No. I’m not.”

Decarabian draws back a little, the clouds following him only partly. “What are you here for, Barbatos?" he asks. “Why do you still talk? Why have you come without any means to destroy me?”

Lightning strikes again. Barbatos pulls the storm away, back to the sky, back towards them where it roars and struggles. “I am not here to harm you,” he calls.

“What else, then?”

“I want to negotiate.”

Laughter booms through the clouds, so loud Barbatos wonders whether the humans below will hear it as thunder. Perhaps that’s all it ever was. The laughter of a bitter memory.

“Negotiate what? You know well enough there is only space enough for one god. You cannot negotiate peace with me without dooming yourself and the people to the Heaven’s wrath.”

“The Heavens have been asleep for five centuries,” Barbatos argues. “They cannot hear us.”

Decarabian remains quiet for a moment. Barbatos realises with satisfaction that he is stunned.

Decarabian turns away, then, gazing past Mondstadt’s shores further away. Barbatos knows what he is looking for – the steady reign of Morax to the South, the eternal twin flames to the East; the three God Kings’ cities matching the Heavens to the West. He finds none.

“What happened?" he asks, solemn. “It all has changed. The land here has changed. It is all different.”

Barbatos catches a glimpse at a chance. “War happened,” he says, not daring to recall his grief from the past five-hundred years. “Many are dead. More are dying, still. Things were discovered that were meant to stay hidden. Beings came to life that were meant to stay dead.”

He can feel the rain drenching the ground below. It is a rain of mourning.

“But,” Decabarian says, desperate, “gods are supposed to be eternal. We are meant to remain. Why else would I still be here, if it all has changed?”

Barbatos inches closer. “You are grieving yourself,” he says, tone soft. “You have gained a lot and lost much more, and now all of it is gone. I understand. But you must see,” he sweeps some clouds away, revealing Mondstadt beneath them, and the sight fills him with tender care, “these children of the wind are under my protection. You loved them once and you still love them. We both want the same thing – but war between us will only bring them to ruin.”

Decarabian says nothing.

Words only reach so far. They cannot save everything. They could not save the boy.

“War,” Decarabian slowly drawls, “is the only path.”

He turns back and his form has formed out of clouds, an icy glare fixed onto the wind.

“Why else does love end in nothing else?”

In the aftermath, the Boy lies still. His eyes are empty, gazing at an open sky he did not get to see. Blood pools beneath his body, staining the singed grass.

He feels it staining His hands, too.

The tip of a sword gets pointed at His neck, trembling with uncertainty. He looks up to find the Swordsman looming above Him. The man appears much smaller, much more mortal, now that there is power throbbing at His fingertips and the air parting around His very own form.

Not His own - stolen.

"Is this trickery, elf?" the Swordsman drawls. "Do you know what you look like?"

He looks human, that he knows - but He does not move like it, like His body is a fresh shackle, limbs as frail as a foal's and eyes as ancient as a newborn's. He plants His palms on the Boy's impaled chest to keep from being torn apart again.

"I wanted to be human, so I became what I knew best," He says. Such a strange thing to say - I. Not the wind, not us. I. "I wanted to weep like him."

"Well, do you?"

He looks back at the Swordsman, helpless. "I do not know how to."

The Swordsman huffs and sheathes his blade. "Many men don't. They've forgotten." He nods towards the Boy's still form, grief briefly touching his face. "He was one of the only ones who remembered."

"Do you remember?"

The Swordsman looks at him and says nothing. Then he stretches out his hand.

"Come, elf. There is no use dwelling here."

But He is no elf no more - he bears a name now. It coils around Him like a snake.

For the first time of many times, Barbatos feels trapped.

The Traveller takes Venti to Old Mondstadt.

The storm barrier is gone. The tower lies quiet and dead like a looming omen in the dark. The wind howls through it like a ghost, searching for a life that is long gone. It is wrong. It is a graveyard.

Paimon keeps close to them, chattering away nervously. Even her high pitched voice is not able to penetrate the silence of the ruins. There are memories in the walls. Venti can feel them upon letting his palm slide across stone, letting them rush through his body in shattered fragments. They are mute. They bear nothing of the compassion this city once possessed, nothing of the love, the anger.

Old Mondstadt is nothing but a skeleton now. All that waited beneath the raging storm was tragedy. All that is to find now is an echo of something that once was.

The Traveller leads them to a room in the very middle of the tower, winding down long flights of stairs. Venti has never seen the inside of it before. He did not lie to Decarabian – he truly never had any interest in digging up old wounds. There is nothing but suffering buried here.

In the belly of the tower, far, far away from any air and breeze, Venti halts. The Traveller turns around. Their torch is the only light this darkness has seen in over two thousand years, dancing on the walls, flickering wildly. The Traveller tilts their head in question.

Venti lets his gaze roam and shivers at the grief that swallows his heart, grief that is not his own.

“There are many souls trapped here," he says quietly. It has been very long. They will find no rest until they fade. They already are beyond recognition, and he is glad. The last thing he needs is a familiar face haunting him.

Paimon screeches at his words and grabs the Traveller’s shoulder, hiding her face. “Don’t say stuff like that! It scares Paimon!”

Venti shakes the sensation off and grins at her. “Boo!”

She screams and the moment is forgotten.

The Traveller watches him with a sad glint in their eyes.

Venti follows them further through the structure. With every passing step he feels himself ache deeper and deeper, yearning for the sky. There is no air in the belly of the beast – only suffocating memories without a bearer.

It is times like these that remind him how unlike some other archons, he never was human to begin with. He is a creature of the wind. Parting from it feels like parting from his very core. Walking through slim tunnels, rusted chains on the walls, the remnants of cells on each side, his discomfort becomes even clearer to him.

A prison where the sun cannot reach.

It goes against his very being.

Perhaps that is why Decarabian despises him so much.

The Traveller swiftly ducks into one of the old cells and messes around with a strange mechanism. Before Venti can so much as blink, the walls slide open around them, revealing another tunnel. He claps into his hands. It echoes through the cells - a lonely sound.

“I can see why they call you an adventurer of top class.”

The Traveller only smiles at him briefly before descending into the darkness once more. Venti is quick to follow. Past dwindling steps, crumbling in their form, they reach a room with nothing but a single altar in its midst.

On the altar, illuminated by the dying flame, lies a bow.

Once, so long ago it might’ve been a dream, Barbatos learned of betrayal.

Not daring to breathe, Venti steps closer. He remembers her. He remembers Amos, slain by her lover’s wrath. He does not know her face anymore. He does not know where her spirit was put to rest.

He reaches for the bow with still hands, but the Traveller grabs his arm and shakes their head in warning.

“Don’t touch it," Paimon squeaks. “Last time we touched it, that god woke up again!”

The Traveller smiles apologetically. “I’m sorry we ruined it," they say. Venti waves them off.

“It wouldn’t be the first time," he says. “Don’t worry about it.”

The Traveller and Paimon exchange confused glances. Venti bears them no mind. He almost envies them – despite being a star, the Traveller is merely a child on this planet, blazing forward in glory and ruin. They know nothing of time and her tricks. They know nothing of everything swimming apart in a blur and the world rephrased, again and again and again. They know nothing of what they have done and will not yet be doing.

They know nothing of what is to come.

Venti sighs and rests his hand decidedly on the bow. Nothing happens. The air remains as still as death’s breath. There is no energy pulsating beneath his palm, no life singing in the bow’s string. And yet, it has survived erosion.

Two thousand and six hundred years, stored in a prison.

If there had been any love left in Amos when she died, it is all gone now, disappeared into the shadows of history like the rest of her.

Venti fiddles with the string. It would be wrong to teach it a song again. It would not be hers. It would not be the right one.

Settling his palm into the curve of the bow, he is gone for an instance, lost somewhere between where he was nothing and a god. A brave hand guides him. A woeful voice leads him. A shadow forms on the flickering walls and disintegrates again, leaving him aching to fill the silence somehow, knowing it is not meant to be filled.

“I suppose," Venti slowly says and turns away from the strange altar, clutching the bow in his hands, “this could change his mind.”

Barbatos does not tell lies.

He does not.

Time shifts and waits and breaks apart and wins and loses everything.

She meets him in the winds, tracing his songs with a steady hand. He lets her drift along for a while towards the sea, where the salt races to meet them in a sunny embrace.

“You remember," she laughs.

“Remember what?" he asks.

She waves her hand. “Not yet. You will remember. Or you have.”

Barbatos, still young, still unused to a body and the worship coming with it, replies only by letting the wind shift through her hair. She catches it and swirls it back, and like that they have created a game only they can play, wading in the sea beneath Starsnatch Cliff where her temple lies.

“They will forget," she tells him eventually beneath mourning stars, “but you will not. You cannot forget.”

“How will they forget?" Barbatos merely answers, braiding the night between nimble fingers. “You are Time. Time will always exist.”

Her gaze is sad. She watches the sky as if expecting it to fall. Perhaps she has seen it before. Perhaps she will see it again.

“I will always exist, yes," she says, “but I will also be my own ruin. Time is everywhere at once. Time is nothing at all.”

By the sundial, he watches her twirl hours through her palms like silk, rearranging them into fate. The stars shift into different patterns above them.

He gifts her seeds of stories to weave into them. Their meaning fades away, leaving him to find only their empty words. It is exactly as she wants it.

“If anything," muses Barbatos, “they would rather forget about me. I am merely Freedom, after all.”

The days shift around them. Her worship rises and falls with the night. He watches her fade into the sea, salt washing up her ankles.

“Humanity will believe in what they yearn for. Freedom, music, death – it all lies in their nature.” She smiles at him, a small thing with no comfort, pale beneath the three corpses of the sky. “What soul yearns for time to pass?”

“I do," he says, finding it to be the truth. “I am frozen. I am shackled. Free me from it.”

She merely laughs. “Do it yourself, Barbatos. You know you can.”

“Do I?”

“You will.”

“Tell me how.”

There is a tree burning in her eyes. There is the end of the world in her gaze, and its birth, all at once. There is a star rising from it all, brought upon from its corpse.

“They will forget," she repeats, bells in the breeze, “but you will not. You have not. You sing your songs and remember.”

And he remembers.

Even thousands of moments later, or perhaps two, he remembers. Sometimes, when he listens closely, he hears her forgotten voice in the breeze.

The Alchemist returns from the frozen mountaintops two weeks after the storm begins.

Venti waits patiently as Jean’s office begins to fill. Splayed across her sofa, he watches them through drooping lids – the best of Mondstadt, the smartest, the most talented. The ones in charge of protecting it without any god’s help.

Even in the distant caves of Dragonspine, Venti can sense the Alchemist. He is always a lingering thing in Venti’s mind, like the drawn string of a bow, humming with tension, waiting to be released and bring devastation. They have never talked before, but Venti knows what he is the heartbeat he spots him, and the scent sends him spiralling.

The Alchemist – Albedo, that’s what he calls himself – smells of sin and sage, of death beneath caverned walls, of smoke and stone and wrongness. He smells like that terrible day five hundred years ago.

He smells like he could be Mondstadt’s ruin.

The space in Jean’s office is cramped, unused to so many people at once. Besides the few leading Favonius officers and knights there are also Lisa and Sucrose, both of their usual drowsiness nowhere to be seen, and Kaeya, Diluc, the Traveller - their pixie suspiciously absent - and Albedo right behind them. The meeting is solemn. The subject: How to defeat a god.

Venti remains silent as Jean lays out their situation – Decarabian, alive again, on a path of revenge for reasons unknown; flooded villages and dying crops; disease spreading through the streets, water in every crevice of every house; winter in July. When she finally falls silent, everyone’s faces are grim. Some look downright disturbed.

The wind outside rattles on the walls. Venti can hear it call out to him, sometimes in plea, sometimes in anger, demanding to be freed. It aches to leave it be for the moment. Despite his body being nothing more than a fancy of his, he feels heavy with exhaustion.

“I think I know what we are dealing with," Albedo muses. His voice is as clinically cold as the snow he lives in. Venti can feel the corruption seeping through his blood. He does not dislike Albedo, quite the opposite – any being striving for freedom is under his care. In the end, though, it does not matter.

Durin strived for freedom, too.

Jean leans forward. “And what would that be?”

“God remains.”

The office bristles. Most expressions show nothing but confusion – judging by the look on Albedo’s face, something he encounters often. Some, however – Lisa, the Traveller – perk up in alarm.

Jean gestures with her hand. “Could you elaborate, please?”

Albedo clears his throat. His voice is soft, musical almost. However forbidden his existence is, his creator was nothing short of an artist. “Like any living being, gods leave remnants of themselves in the Ley Lines upon death. It could be anything – wishes, emotions, words – but most of the time it’s memories.”

He fixes the room with his eyes. The star on his neck pulses golden with life. It is almost laughably easy to recognise what he is if one knows what to look for. Then again, Venti knows how simple it can be to hide in plain sight, so he is not one to talk.

“Usually this would pose no problem other than some distress in the environment upon encountering such Ley Lines, or confusing situations for humans, however, since gods are such high beings, their death can impact the world around them in a much more severe way.”

He nods towards the Traveller. “If what you encountered in those ruins really were God remains, then we are dealing with a massive Ley Line disruption that has been lingering for thousands of years.” He glances out of the window, gaze distant. “I’m just wondering why it was triggered now of all times…”

Venti settles deeper into his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. It is an interesting theory indeed. The only problem with it is that the Traveller found nothing but an enchanted bow – and Amos was perfectly mortal.

“So what you’re saying," Diluc drawls slowly, “is that the storm out there is caused by something that isn’t even real?”

Albedo tilts his head, his fateless eyes almost amused. “Nothing about this world is real, Master Diluc.”

Diluc furrows his brow, opening his mouth to protest, but Jean chimes in instead. “And what would that mean for us?”

“You usually cannot fight Ley Lines head on," Albedo explains. “You can try, certainly – but it’s never possible to predict the outcome. If we were to attempt to stop this storm by normal means – let’s say, crudely shooting the sky to see if we can hit a god – it could make it much worse.”

The Traveller steps forward. “Ley Lines connected to memories are always somehow tormented," they say, and everyone’s attention snaps to them as if looking for a shooting star. “I encountered it in Inazuma. The only way to solve the problem was to fulfill the Ley Line’s avatar’s wish in some way or another.”

“I don’t know if anyone else has noticed," Sucrose hesitantly adds, clutching her notes tightly, “but sometimes, when the wind howls very clearly, it’s almost like it’s saying something.”

Everyone turns towards her, eyebrows raised.

“I’m not the only one," she says and scowls. “A lot of the town’s people claim to hear it as well. Timaeus, too.”

“Well, sometimes Timaeus likes to hear what he thinks should be heard…" Albedo murmurs to himself, faint enough for his words to be swallowed up by the storm.

Lisa hums at Sucrose’s words. “You do have a special connection to the wind, sweetie.” She gestures to the vision dangling off Sucrose’s collar. “Perhaps that’s why you are more sensible towards it. What does it say?”

Sucrose’s eyes are as wide as dinner plates. “Sometimes incoherent words, sometimes curses… But most of the time it calls for Barbatos.”

The room grows frozen.

In that moment, Kaeya spins around and faces Venti head on. “It seems our favourite bard here bears an anemo vision, too.” His face is pinched beneath a forced grin. Venti knows his way around masks, and he knows his way around stars. Looking at Kaeya hurts. He is like a Ley Line disorder himself, a walking memory for something Venti would rather forget. “Do you hear what the wind says as well?”

Venti only shrugs. “The wind says many things.” Deciding to test the limits a little, he leans forward as if to listen, tilting his head dramatically. “Like, for example that it must be very cold outside.” Somewhere, Diluc groans into his hand. “Or that the Cat’s tail is down one cat, poor creature. Or," he pauses and glances towards Albedo, “that our Chief Alchemist knows an awful lot about gods and Ley Lines for someone of his profession.”

Albedo’s face is smooth as chalk, but his eyes betray him – first surprise, then suspicion, then recognition flash through them in the span of one heartbeat, lost in an ancient blue. Fascinating.

The air grows tingling along with everyone’s confusion.

“Or," Venti sings and waves his hand, “that it’s getting late enough for a drink. Does the Angel’s Share still serve in these dire times?”

Diluc scowls. “It’s four in the afternoon.”

Venti snaps his fingers and jumps to his feet. “That’s a yes, then! Even a god wreaking havoc cannot weaken Mondstadt’s wine industry. Very impressive – it’s almost worth a song!”

Squeezing past stunned faces, he waves Jean goodbye and slips out the door. The last thing he hears before it clicks shut behind him is Kaeya asking: “Why was he even here?”

Venti trusts Jean. She will not betray his identity. Even if she did, he has much bigger issues than that at the moment.

If worst comes to worst, these people won’t be the only ones knowing about him, anyway.

He waits in an unlit corner of the library, where the storm is almost deafened by the walls and the smell of old books fills the air, embracing him with a strange sense of nostalgia he cannot place. He does not need books for his stories – they would only rot away beneath his hands, eaten by time. All the stories and all the songs in the world are with him, and will be as long as he lasts.

Perhaps that is what Istaroth meant, all those lives ago.

Venti does not need to linger for long. The Alchemist slips through the wooden labyrinth almost soundlessly, a ghost between history. His eyes are weary as he approaches, but his posture remains calm. Venti is all too glad. He would not want to destroy something as delicate as a library – Buer would be in tears – nor does he feel like he has any strength to spare.

Albedo sits down besides him. Venti draws patterns onto the dusty shelves. They’re in the Snezhnayan section. There aren’t many books in here, but they’re all sad, bleary things.

“You know who I am," Albedo eventually says into the silence.

Venti tilts his head and does not look at him. “Do I?”

“And I know who you are.”

Venti hums. There is no tune strung in the air around Albedo like it would be around other beings – whether it is because he is not human, or because he denies himself to be, Venti cannot tell.

“I’ve never met a god before," Albedo says. “My master despised them.”

“I suppose your master had every reason to.”

“I’m starting to realise that perhaps she didn’t. It was her own creation that brought upon the destruction of her home. It was her own fault.”

Venti ponders that for a moment, spinning the words through his palm. Gold, her name was, he remembers. The mother of Durin and every calamity in the world. The mother of humanity’s rawest greed and compassion. The woman who poured tea into his cup, lives ago, and called it a peace treaty.

“I believe," he slowly says, “it is only human to create. And it is only human destroy.”

Albedo turns towards him, eyes heavy. His coat is splayed around him like a blanket of snow. “What are you suggesting?”

“You know the answers to your questions already," Barbatos says. “You must only find them within yourself.”

“I may bring devastation to Mondstadt.”

“Or you may bring its divination.”

“I could harm it.”

“So could I. Or the Cavalry Captain. Or your little sister.” He thinks of ancient times, of sliced off mountaintops and shattered cliffs. He thinks of an eternal winter and a mourning storm. “We all have the power to destroy in this world, no matter what it is. The difference between you and Durin-" and Albedo’s face falls at that, “-is that you are not alone. You possess the freedom to decide.”

“…And if I do bring ruin?”

“Then you have the means and people to stop you.” Venti points at himself. “This one included.”

Albedo falters.

Venti leans closer, smiling. “Do you love Mondstadt?”

“I do.”

“Do you want it to be free?”

“…I do.”

“Then that’s settled.” He gets to his feet, dusting time off his hands. “There is nothing worth shackling yourself to a purpose for, Albedo. Nothing at all. To be human is to choose.”

He leaves the dimly lit space that is the library, feeling as if waking from a dream upon passing through the empty halls of the Favonius Headquarters.

He feels like laughing at himself, a little. Ever since that mighty tower’s fall, each of his choices has been ripped out of his grasp by his own winds. He hears the future and the past, knows what awaits the Alchemist left stunned between shelves, knows what awaits this city and himself – and yet the present is the most impossible to bear.

Beneath ice and storm, Barbatos finds the dying Wolflord.

“Boreas," he asks against the howling winds. He is a young god, then, power sprouting from his fingertips, song being born from his throat. “Why must you die?”

Boreas, breathing winter, only sighs. “Why do you love humanity, Barbatos?”

“I don’t know. It feels like something I must do.”

“You have freed them.”

Barbatos scowls. “I haven’t. Humanity freed itself.”

“Then what is the warmth you carry for them? What are the mountains you sliced, the walls you tore down if not freedom? What is taking away their souls to a brighter place?”

“Freedom cannot be demanded nor carried out by a god," Barbatos argues, echoing the past, “for gods bear nothing but shackles.”

“For humanity or for themselves?”

Barbatos thinks of blood on grass. He thinks of a tower drowned in storms. He thinks of a gnosis, pulsing gently where a mortal’s heart should reside, looming; a reminder.

“For both.”

Boreas hums. Through every breath he parts with, the air grows warmer as he grows colder. “And do you love them, Barbatos?”

“Once," Barbatos muses, “I yearned to be human enough to love, and found I was incapable. The wind does not love – it only carries forwards tales of the past and bring the future back.”

“But you are not the wind.”

“…No. I am not. I once was, perhaps.”

“You even wear their form now. You speak their tongue, you sing their songs. You walk amongst them when you are needed and walk away when you are not.”

Boreas pauses. “You would refuse to lead them into another cage – you would even cut away your own power if it meant them harm. Let me ask you again. Do you love them?”

“Yes. I do.”

Boreas inclines his head, satisfied. “That, Barbatos, is why I must die.”

And as he does, his last breath heralds the coming of spring.

Another day; another attempt at peace.

Barbatos appears as Venti in front of Decarabian, skin mortal and face humanly flawed. The god bats an eye at him and begins laughing. His mirth transcends over the earth as rain.

“You cannot shake me, Barbatos," Decarabian says. “You can only fight me.”

He is more solid now, corporeal enough to wield a spear of lightning. Barbatos almost feels nostalgic at the sight of it, in more ways than one.

“I do not want to fight you," Barbatos says. “I only want to talk.”

“Talking is what your little bard did, too," Decarabian drawls. “But then he started singing and filled the people with hatred.”

“The hatred was already within them," Barbatos protests. “His songs were merely a match to an already smoking fire. They rioted because they needed to be free.”

“A bird should be kept in a cage.”

“Love is not a cage.”

“What is it then?”

Barbatos thinks of fire and death. He thinks of scarred palms and warmth. He thinks of duty, shackling him to the earth, and faith, leaving him soaring high above.

He cannot find it within himself to answer.

Decarabian roars. “You do not even know yourself. What a god you are! Beloved and feared by the people, I believe?”

Barbatos resolve hardens. “Fear is a chain. But hope cuts it free.”

With one flick of his wrist, he manifests Amo’s bow in midair, grabbing it securely where it lies silent against his palm. Decarabian bristles. The storms around them grow louder, louder, a sea of torment. Barbatos can almost hear his fury in it, his despair – and in a way, it sounds achingly familiar.

“Where did you get that?" Decarabian asks, tone so low it might have been swallowed by the winds. “How did you get that?”

“She believed in you even in her last breath," Barbatos merely counters. “She loved you even when you set her home ablaze.”

“They did it themselves!”

“Did they? How responsible are humans for the fury given to them by God?”

“How responsible are gods for the everchanging river of human emotions?”

Barbatos clutches the bow tighter. “You talk as if you did not possess them yourself.”

“I do not.”

“Why this storm then?” Barbatos sweeps the clouds away with his hands, trying to breathe through the thunder. “What is it if not fear in your own heart?”

For a precious moment, Decarabian remains silent. Barbatos edges closer.

He feels as if stuck in one of Istaroth’s time tricks. This has happened before. It will happen again. They talk and the storm roars on and no matter what he does, it is all utterly lost regardless.

“You are afraid," he begins, something inside of him trembling. “You were in love and betrayed, and a traitor yourself. You do not know what it means to let your children see the sky, and you are scared you could lose them if you did.”

Decarabian stares at him, frozen.

“But it’s not who you have to be. As long as you are still here, you can start anew.”

Barbatos can barely feel his own winds anymore, swallowed up in the storm. He draws a breath and the world calls it salvation. It is not who he wanted to be. It never was who he wanted to be.

“Free yourself of your shackles, Decarabian. They may hold you tight, but they hold you imprisoned, too.”

For a moment, the storm stands still, and Barbatos dares to hope.

Then, lightning strikes him head on.

As he falls, letting himself drop back to the earth, he can only hear Decarabian cackling along with the thunder. It almost sounds like grief.

Mourning his own failure, Venti returns to the comfort of the grass. Venessa’s tree sways in the rain. He settles beneath it, breathing in the scent of mud and battered life and suddenly feels very, very tired.

A shadow passes by. Venti barely cracks an eye open at the sound of giant wings, of warm breath on his face. He can sense his control slipping. A little further, and he will return to the wind for a bit, letting the world whistle past.

”Barbatos”, Dvalin murmurs. His scales are rough beneath Venti’s palm as he curls around the tree, much too large to be comfortable. Thousands of years ago, a wind spirit wished to take up space in the world. Now he knows it can be a curse, too.

It can end with an ever-beating heart in the depths of a frozen mountain.

”Let me ease your sorrow, Barbatos”, Dvalin offers. Venti simply rests his hand on the warm spot right beneath his ear – which itself is bigger than his own torso – and shakes his head.

“This is no burden I want you to carry, nor one I think you could.”

”What is happening? The sky is angry, but you are nothing but exhausted.”

“Old things have awoken. Souls that should have been put to rest long ago.”

Dvalin persists in silence. Venti sighs and chuckles, a dry thing.

“I suppose I cannot hide anything from you.” He takes a deep breath, feeling it rush through his fabricated body. “The people are losing faith in me.”

When he glances up, Dvalin is looking at him with deep sorrow edged into his eyes.

Venti pats him in comfort. “It’s not too bad. Merely a slight inconvenience, is all.”

This, perhaps, is not completely a lie.

He has felt it for days, now. Where it started off as a slight trickle of doubt in each prayer he received, the hint of wavering in a preaching voice, it has only grown ever since.

He knows the people of Mondstadt are desperate. The rain keeps beating down. The hunger keeps festering, the sickness wandering. Hope, first a bright, corporeal thing, is now brittle with barely any word from leading positions and no sign from their God.

Or perhaps, even worse – a storm only their God could fabricate, in their minds.

Venti can feel the vanishing faith in him and what he stands for tickle into his veins, sap at his energy and rush down like a river into his very core. Not long now, and it will become a circle – with him losing power, the storm will become stronger, the torment greater, and thus the belief ever thinner. For the first while since long ago, he might be running out of time.

If only Istaroth could see him now, with her forgotten temples and overwritten names and windless city.

Venti watches the swirling sky. The wind bites his skin. His strength is being pulled away.

Decarabian continues weeping.

No word or song will move him.

There is only one thing left to be done.

“I must fight him," Barbatos sighs and leans his head against the tree. Venessa has long since fallen quiet. He is glad for the Heavenly Principles’ slumber, and yet her silence disrupts him. “There is no reason nor rhyme to come through to him.”

”I will stand beside you”, Dvalin says.

Once again, Barbatos declines. “I cannot ask that of you.”

”You are not asking. I am offering. This does not go against my freedom – quite the opposite.”

“Freedom is to choose, huh…”

Dvalin does not catch the reference, so Barbatos swiftly moves on. “It is not your fight.”

”It is if I want it to be.”

“You do not have the duty.”

”And you do?”

“Well, I have to protect the children of the Wind, do I not?”

”So you call love a duty?”

Barbatos says nothing for a while. He is drenched to the bone. He is cold. It’s been a long time since he’s last been cold.

“…I suppose I do. It is a duty I have tied to my own soul. How could I not love them? I would be a traitor to myself.”

Dvalin does not quite shake his head – if he did, some branches might come off, but he huffs in irritation.

“Why is it that you fight for everyone’s freedom but your own?”

Barbatos merely laughs. Time twirls and spins and weaves a net beyond his understanding. Once again, he has no answer.

The first thing he does upon entering Jean’s office once more is place a cup of coffee and an apple in front of her.

She looks up in a daze, blinking rapidly as if just waking up. Venti closes the door with a soft click. Jean pulls the food towards herself, hesitating.

“Other people need this more than me," she says slowly. “I’ve already eaten.”

“When?”

She frowns. “I had lunch.”

“It’s past midnight, Jean.”

Her mouth forms a little oh. If it was not proof of her self-neglect, he would even find it adorable, in the way he finds all children of Mondstadt adorable. He plops down onto her couch with a huff and a flurry of feathers.

Jean takes a sip of the coffee and grimaces at the taste. Venti grins unapologetically. “Sorry. I couldn’t find any sugar.”

“No, no, it’s…”

She trails off. Where she usually is so adapt with her words and orders, she is now merely a shell of herself. The bags beneath her eyes make her appear ghostlike in the flickering hue of the candles. Her hair is unkept and her collars stained.

A quiet sense of nostalgia washes over Venti. His smile turns more wistful.

“You know, you remind me of an old friend of mine," he begins.

Jean looks up, confused. “What do you mean?”

Venti leans back, willing to play the role of a storyteller. “Well, she was a mighty flame. An office was not suited for her – it was the open sky that called for her, but alas, as she got older, she loaded a lot of heavy burdens onto her own shoulders in the name of duty. More than a single person should bear.”

He waves his hand around. “I would visit her just like this, although I brought her cider instead of coffee. She was a bit more prone to drinking than you.” He gazes around the room, as if taking it all in for the first time. It looks different than by day. The corners are dark. The light dances eerily across the walls, as if hiding a secret. He has the strange urge to whisper.

“It was in this very office, I believe. Not much has changed since then. The building’s style is still the same, although a big portion of it burned down at some point.” He leans his head against the cushion and closes his eyes for just a moment. “I’m sure she would’ve liked to see what has become of the place she founded; how well it protects the people she loved.”

In the quiet of the night, there is nothing to hear but the rain and the low crackling of the candle. Barbatos is terribly lonely.

When Venti glances up again, he finds Jean looking at him with tears welling in her eyes. He blinks, surprised. For a moment she holds his gaze, something utterly and deeply human wedged into her features, and he feels his stolen heart pang at it – but then the moment is broken as she wipes her face and clears her throat.

A wet laugh escapes her, strangely panicked and flighty. Venti blinks. He is not sure what exactly upset her.

“Did you just compare me to the Dandelion Knight?”

Venti snaps his fingers. “Just the one!”

“There is no way I could measure up to her. After all, I am just…” She stares at her paperwork, gaze empty, “human.”

Venti tuts. “Venessa was just human too.” Well, until she ascended to Celestia, but he does not like to think of that. “And just like you, she always put others before her, completely disregarding her own health in the process. So, what I’m trying to say-" he leans forward, raising his eyebrows at her, “-you better eat that apple or I will have to make it an order from your archon, and I think we both don’t want that.”

She sighs and shakes her head, but a small smile splits her lips. When she finally takes the apple, Venti almost cheers. She snorts at him.

“You’re insufferable.”

Venti grabs his chest theatrically. “You wound me.”

For a heartbeat, he can almost imagine himself in another place, in another time. The simple banter and piles of paper awaken a sense of melancholy in him he hasn’t felt in a while. Jean, as tired as she is, has lost all pretense of dignity or respect, much to his liking. It makes this almost painful, how time plays its tricks of repetition.

His illusion is, of course, quickly shattered when her face turns more serious. “…I appreciate your visit, Venti," she says, voice lower. “I really do, and I couldn’t be more honoured, but… I believe there is something you must want to talk about, otherwise you wouldn’t show up this late. Am I right?”

Ah, that.

Venti pulls up his best attempt at beating around the bush, settling for a familiar grin. “Well, seeing your condition, my visit was much needed, no?”

Her gaze remains sharp.

He sighs and straightens himself. No use with this one.

It is unnerving how perceptive she is sometimes, how strong her resolve remains. Jean is exactly what he needs – the perfect leader for Mondstadt.

Which leads him to his dreadful announcement.

“I will declare war on Decarabian," he says and watches her face fall.

“…Now?”

He huffs. “Well, obviously not right now. But I’ve tried talking to him several times and…" he grimaces and trails off. She nods in grim understanding.

“I see. What do you need me to do?”

Right. Immediately to the point.

Venti folds his hands over his lap, tossing ideas back and forth in his head. “I have kept the storm at bay so far. It’s a difficult feat, especially since the belief of the people is swaying-“

An alarmed look flashes across her face, but he waves it off. “No need to concern yourself with that. There is nothing you could do.”

“I could ask the church to grant more offerings and prayers.”

He shakes his head. “That’s very kind, Jean, but what kind of god would I be to take more in an hour of need? It is only natural for them to stop believing after weeks of torment with no promise of salvation. But it’s also the reason I need to act now, before it gets worse.”

He clears his throat. There is no need for her to know of the sense of dread creeping through his bones; of how it feels to be slowly drained of power, like bleeding out over a stony pavement. She already has more than enough worries of her own.

“Anyway, like I said – I’ve kept the storms as mild as possible; however, when I fight Decarabian head on, I will need all the energy I can get, and therefore must take back my protection.” He grimaces at the thought. “…Which means, you’re bound for something quite worse than a mere hurricane.”

He watches her take in the information slowly, as if already running the numbers. On first glance she looks nothing but determined – yet, in the depths of her eyes, he spots fear growing, a dark, curling thing.

“Alright," Jean eventually says into the tense silence. “We could perhaps evacuate the city to Stormterror’s Lair?”

Venti flinches a little at the use of Dvalin’s old title, and shakes his head. “That is where this whole thing started. If there is one place he would return to – no matter in which outcome – it would be that. You would be more unsafe there than in an open field.”

Jean frowns. “But there aren’t merely enough houses with basements that could support that many people.”

“How about the tunnels?”

“…What tunnels?”

Venti is taken aback. He hums. “I see – not everything is cultivated by time, apparently.”

Jean only looks utterly confused.

“Back in the era of the aristocrats, before Venessa managed to overthrow them," he explains. “They used the slaves’ manpower to build a network of underground tunnels beneath Mondstadt. They were mostly used for trading and backup escape routes in case of a coup. As we both know, it did not improve their fate.”

Jean rests her chin on her palm, pondering. “I have never heard of those tunnels before," she admits, “neither do I think has anyone in the older generations. I’m not sure whether they’re even still safe, with all the flooding.”

Venti hums in understanding. “To be fair, that was, what, a millennium ago? Who knows when their existence stopped being recorded and kept. Although, erosion has always been much slower in Mondstadt…”

Jean looks a little confused at that, yet quickly brushes over it. “I will try to find out. If that’s not an option, however, we can also consider the Favonius Quarters’ and the cathedral’s basements. It’s not much, though.”

Worry darkens her face.

“The tunnels shouldn’t be flooded," Venti muses. “Mondstadt is built on very high ground. They would definitely be eroded, however. Perhaps you could ask that alchemist if he could come up with a quick enough solution to steady the structure?”

Jean looks up at him in surprise. “Albedo?”

“He’s got a geo Vision, hasn’t he? Speaking of geo…”

Venti pauses, sorting the words in his mind. Jean watches him quietly. After a few seconds, her brow furrows.

“…I’ll be honest with you for the sake of the people," Venti eventually says. “I am not sure how this will end. A direct conflict is what I’ve always wanted to avoid – but the situation is getting more dire by the day, and Decarabian more drowned in his sorrow, so I cannot wait any longer. I must act, no matter what it costs me.”

Jean’s eyes go wide. His heart feels heavy at the sight. Despite her immaculate leadership, she is still merely a child, like any mortal will always be – a child barely having glanced at the world, already being torn apart by its cruelties.

“Lord Barbatos," she breathes, “you’re not implying that you might die, are you?”

Venti backtracks, waving his hands. He will not die, he is sure of it. Time would not allow it. The vacancy that would be left in his place – because Decarabian, as he always has been, as he always will, is destined to fall – would disrupt fate too much. He has not died before, and he will not die now.

He is not sure if he even could, anymore.

“No, no," he says, “If I was defeated by him I would not die, at least not in the way most things do. I would perhaps-" he sighs at the thought, “-sleep it off for another century or two. No matter, it would mean that I would not be able to aid you anymore, not in this lifetime. It’s not bound to happen – but if it does…”

He ponders it for a moment, already sending a silent apology to both Rex Lapis and his own future self for enraging him.

“There is a man called Zhongli at the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor in Liyue. In case of utter disaster, call for him.”

“Is he a friend of yours?”

Venti tilts his head. “Well, I certainly hope he is at the moment. He is no longer bound by contract to me, unfortunately, but I dare believe that he would come to aid.” If simply for the sake of their shared history, Barbatos does not say. All those drinks, wars and losses endured over the centuries together must count for something.

And in the end, Morax would despise being the only one left just as much as Barbatos would.

Jean chews on her lip. “Okay," she says slowly, “I will do what I can. I will talk to Albedo right away.”

“No.” Venti gets up to lean against her desk, gently grabbing the paper out of her hands. “You will go to sleep first.”

“But-“

“Shall I order it? Or sing you a lullaby? I can do both, whatever helps you.”

“No, I-“

Not further discussing it, Venti simply tosses the papers onto the couch. “Do them from there. You’ll be out like a light.”

“Mondstadt needs me.”

“Mondstadt mostly needs you to take care of yourself once in a while, too. You cannot help them if you can barely stand on two feet.”

Jean says nothing. Venti grins. He knows a won argument when he sees one.

“…How much time do I have?" she asks.

Venti ponders it for a moment. Time has always been a peculiar thing to him. She could have all the time she wanted and none at all, or everything in between. It all depends on what the winds decide to carry; which story they decide to retell.

Pulling himself back to his role, Venti tilts his head. “Three days. If you need more, I will know.”

Three days to find the tunnels, to stabilise them and to evacuate the city before all that might be left of it is rubble and dust. It is no easy feat – but Jean will manage. She will because she can.

Upon leaving, Barbatos glances back at her. Hunched over her desk, eyes dark and shadows flickering on her face, she looks like a painting of another woman in her place, lifetimes ago. There is courage in her poise. There is desperation and fury and so, so much devotion.

“I really do mean it," Barbatos says quietly into the candlelight. “You are much like her. Mondstadt is grateful to have you - I am grateful to have you.”

After the Archon War is won and the Heavens are satisfied, Barbatos meets the other Archons.

He is late. He plummets through the heavenly gates, barely managing to stop his newly acquired body from tumbling against a pillar. There is a flurry of feathers and a gust of wind as he rights himself, and finds nothing but silence.

“You," Deshret drawls, “are not Decarabian, nor Boreas.”

Barbatos dusts himself off and takes a seat by the table, his countless, long wings draping awkwardly over the cloud-made marble. “They are both dead," he declares. “I am what comes after.”

Rukkhadevata leans forward, curious. “After death?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

Opposite of him, Morax eyes him warily. “You do not know yet yourself.”

“What does anyone know, really?”

Before the tension at the table can escalate any further, Nabu Malikata clears her throat. She is seated right next to her fellow God Kings, a trio made for ballads and poems all the same. She raises a cup of nectar with a hand clad in jewels and silvers, jingling at every movement. The lower half of her face is obscured by thin fabric the colour of the sky.

Her eyes, delved in song, reflect nothing.

She was once part of nature’s very core, too – like him.

“I suggest," says she sweetly, “we toast to our last guest.”

The other gods visibly deflate, grumbling in response. Her eyes flit across them, satisfied, and yet her gaze never leaves him in particular. He feels like she is almost… waiting. Knowing. Aching.

Barbatos, then and there, decides to never mess with the land of the Goddess of Flowers.

“Wait," Baal says, tone soft. “Aren’t we forgetting someone?”

Morax hums. “When is ever Istaroth not forgotten? It is her fate.”

Egera sighs. “And yet Time carries on for all of us. Who knows what it will bring?”

Barbatos pours himself a cup of nectar, too. “I dare believe it shall bring prosperity to us all," he sings, “but most of all, to humanity – for we are to lead them to brighter futures, now that the War is over.”

The clinking of cups against his own fills his ears. Soon, all prejudice is drowned beneath laughter and drunkenness, and Barbatos loses himself in the sight of Celestia’s immortal skies.

Aeons later, the table will be empty, and the cups drained. They do not know of it yet. Perhaps he will forget it, too.

When Venti enters Angel’s Share drenched and breathless, he is greeted by an almost empty silence.

The wind slams against the walls. Venti forces the door closed behind him with a flick of his hand, accidentally putting more force behind it than he means. There are barely any patrons in tonight despite the late hour, and those that are sit with their heads low, their voices merely exhausted murmurs.

The best places to measure the citizens’ wellbeing are the taverns of Mondstadt.

Diluc stands behind the counter, only raising an eyebrow at him. He can’t fool Venti – he is much more surprised that he lets on. Venti hops onto a high stool.

“A dandelion wine, please," he asks.

Diluc blinks. The hand that a moment ago polished a glass is still. “We ran out of that.”

“Apple cider, then?”

“That, too.”

“What do you have?”

“We have normal wine from last year.”

Venti wrinkles his nose. “Shouldn’t that still be in a barrel?”

Diluc throws him a pointed glance. “Well, between serving my patrons a wine too young or no wine at all in this weather, the choice is simple.”

Venti raises his hands and grins. “That is very considerate of you, Master Diluc. Who could imagine what would happen if Mondstadt’s best tavern closed!”

Diluc’s face turns dark. “Not long and we will have to. The Cat’s Tail already has.”

“What splendid news that must be for you.”

“We’re running out of stock, too. This year’s harvest is more than ruined. If this continues, I will be forced to close.”

There is a meaning in his words – not quite a threat, but not a question either. Venti only smiles and lowers his voice to a more sober tone.

“You won’t have to. After all, who would I be if I let that happen!”

Diluc only shakes his head and turns back to the glass. For a moment, silence engulfs them, and Venti takes the opportunity to take a look around the tavern. It is awfully quiet. Gone are the booming festivities, the joyous songs and dances and drunken remedies against all that is sad and gone. There is no more bliss to be found in the patrons’ eyes – only sorrow and hopelessness, drowned in wine turned sour. It feels wrong down to the core.

“…I don’t mean to impose," Diluc eventually says, wordlessly sliding a glass of wine over the countertop, “but why are you here? Aren’t there more important things to be done?”

Venti welcomes the openness like a breath of fresh air. He toys with his glass, watching the dim lights reflect in it, how the wine, dark as blood, sways from one side to the other as he twirls it between his fingers.

His heart is awfully heavy tonight. Jean has found the tunnels. Albedo has stabilised them with that foreign power he wields. The citizens have already been informed of the evacuation following in the morning – not of the reason, however, which has only lead to a further spike in people losing faith.

Perhaps that is why the mood is even more solemn than usually today.

Dear skies. After this whole thing is over, Venti will retreat to nap for a century or two. It is much too exhausting to ache like a mortal.

He does not meet Diluc’s gaze completely, yet it rests burning and deep on him. He glances to the faces in the shadows, listens to hushed conversations, and hums.

“I’m sure you’ve heard of the plan," he says slowly. Diluc only nods.

“Jean told me. That doesn’t answer my question, though.”

“Well, what kind of bard would I be if I did not bring my people a jolly song in times of need?" Venti tries, mischief sneaking into his voice.

Diluc’s gaze only sharpens. “The people do not want a bard right now. They want their archon.”

Venti deflates with a sigh. Just like with Jean, there is no fooling this one. What a pity.

“Then, let me try again," he starts, more solemn. “I yearned to unwind a little, to see a slice of normalcy even if distorted by grief – and so I came to the place I knew would grant that. Therefore-" he lifts his glass, “I shall toast to you, my lovely bartender, for still keeping your spirit in these dire times.”

Diluc only grumbles and shakes his head, turning away. “I’m not allowing you to get drunk tonight.”

“You wound me, Master Diluc," Venti teases. “I am never drunk!”

“Tell that to your bill.”

Venti glances down at his drink “So this one isn’t on the house? Oh, and to think of all the things I do for you!”

“I could not come up with a single thing you ever did for me.”

Venti presses a hand to his chest in mock hurt. “So you have never noticed the crystalflies?”

Diluc pauses. Before he can retort, however, a man approaches the bar. He is clad in the amour of a knight, but his frame is thin, his face sunken. Venti briefly recalls his name to be Bruce.

Bruce leans against the counter, gawking at Venti with something akin to wonder and hesitation. “Venti?" he says and gently pats him on the shoulder, already three sheets to the wind. “I didn’t think you’d come back.”

Venti tilts his head. “Why not?”

“You’ve been gone for weeks, that’s why! Everyone already feared the worst.”

“That’s sweet, but I’m sorry to have caused you concern. There is no need to worry about me," Venti laughs.

Bruce only shrugs. “What can I say? The tavern has been lonely without you. Even Six Fingered Jose has refused to play because of your absence.”

For a moment, Venti is stunned. Warmth spreads in his chest, followed by aching guilt. In all the flow of time, it is almost too easy to forget that walking amongst humanity does impact it more than he may think. It is not often that he is reminded of it; that someone misses not Barbatos, not a god, but simply Venti, the bard that brings joy.

Venti does not know what expression must flit across his face for a heartbeat, but it causes Diluc to still in his movement, eyes a little wide. Bruce does not seem to notice, and Venti quickly pulls himself together again.

“Well, I did not mean to sadden you," he chirps and slips off his chair. “Let me make it up to you with a song.”

Bruce practically beams. Turning towards the other patrons, he pulls Venti forwards grinning wildly. “The bard has returned!”

The people’s amusement is quieter than it would usually be, but it is there. Venti settles on a chair pulled up for him, places his drink on the table and takes out his lyre. “How kind of you, my knight," he says. “What song do you request?”

Not long and the ice is broken – time forgotten, he is showered in requests, music falling off his lips in a manner familiar. They ask for jolly songs, sea shanties and mock-ballads bringing down the Raiden Shogun – she does have very little tolerance for wine – until from a darker corner, unnoticed and silent so far, Kaeya speaks up.

“Bard," he asks, and the others fall silent as they tend to do when Kaeya speaks with his voice of silk and sin, “do you know songs from other lands as well?”

There is a strange edge to his smile. Venti has seen it before in cats before they pounce; in hawks before they descend upon their prey; waiting, stalling. He plays along.

“I know every song from the past, present and future, my dear Captain," he boasts, relishing in the snickers of his listeners. Sometimes the truth is most easily concealed in plain sight.

Kaeya leans forward. “Also from pasts you’d rather not have happened?”

The air shifts.

Similar to Albedo, Barbatos had felt the Khaenri’ahn child’s presence since the moment he awoke. He is no immediate threat, at least he was not in the past – merely a snake curling underneath, slumbering and lazy yet, not to be struck. Fate has woven a cruel tale for him. Its tragedy surround his every step.

He is the sand that has to decide between the sea and the shore it belongs to. He is the snow swallowing itself. He is the prisoner of the doom brought upon him and the doom at the same time.

He is, quite literally, split by Time. Barbatos can sense her fingerprints all over him – although nowadays, they are not easily distinguishable from the Abyss.

Out of the corner of his eye, Diluc is watching. Venti rests his head on his palms, almost cocky. “Ask away and I shall play.”

Kaeya blinks, suddenly caught unaware. A sly grin pools around his lips. “Well, I couldn’t possibly resist that, dear bard. On second thought though, I think a lot of us rather wish for something… warm, something familiar.” The men around him cheer. “How about you play us something from home?”

Venti hums. “From home, you say? But of course! Nothing easier than that.”

Beneath the excited murmurs of his crowd, he tunes his lyre in scales he has not heard in a long time. As his fingers touch upon the strings, they carry a burden heavy and a heart sunken in regret. He catches Kaeya’s – the star child’s – eye in the twisting candlelight as he begins singing:¹

It is a lilting tune tumbling from his lips, old in its name and older in remembrance. The tavern falls silent beneath it. Barbatos closes his eyes to shed the memories of fire, of burning skies and falling debris; of agony and death beckoning him on stolen power; of shattered voices still singing, still declaring life.

No matter how godless, how caught in machinery, humanity never stops singing. Their woes still ring like bells in his head.

As Venti tells the tale of dying daughters and sinning sons, Kaeya grows ever paler in his corner. He, fate-crossed, sky-torn, sinks into the shadows as if to disappear. Barbatos’ own heart grows heavy at the thought of his tragedy, a ballad written in stone, and he keeps his voice soft as he finishes his haunting melody. The other patrons have vanished beneath it – it is only for them, a declaration, a question; a lullaby, for dreams have always been the most solid of realities.

When finally, the last chord rings out, the room is utterly silent.

Barbatos rests his hands on his lyre, listening to the last of its voice disappear, and imagines them drenched in blood.

The air is heavy.

Bruce draws in a shuddering breath and breaks the spell. “…I have never heard that before.”

“It didn’t even sound like Mondstadtian," another soldier joins in, pale and shaken. “I could understand some words, but it was a different language entirely.”

“Magic!”

“I won’t be able to sleep tonight.”

“Bard, you are amazing!”

Venti smiles and tips his head, playfully waving off the praise. “You are too kind!”

“But, bard," Bruce chimes in, “this was no song of home. I didn’t recognise it. Where is it from?”

Venti hums, fiddling with his lyre. He replies to the question, but his gaze rests on Kaeya. “It was a song from home – perhaps not ours, perhaps from one long gone.” He sighs. “But then again, home is like the wind. What is today’s home can be tomorrow’s ruin. And what is today’s estrangement can be tomorrow’s home. It flows.”

Kaeya in the corner says nothing. His gaze is far, far away in a place even the wind cannot reach.

“Play us another one," Bruce says, the wine colouring his cheeks red. “A Mondstadtian one; one we do not know yet, either.”

“Nothing easier than that," Venti cries and raises his lyre towards Diluc, who remains standing behind the counter, frozen. “This one’s for our dearest bartender and his beloved falcons. May they fly higher than all of Mondstadt! And may his business continue to soar just as easily even in these dark times.”

He clears his throat, blinks, and suddenly he is back in the wind, tugged towards the sound of singing softer than the clouds above. He raises his voice for the first song he’d ever heard:²

There are lifeless walls around him, fear seeping from their grasp on the peoples’ hearts. There are storms keeping the sky wrapped in a tight embraced, never to bear light, never to bear hope. There are the cries of children drowned out by the howling wind, and impenetrable silence keeping them imprisoned.

There is the boy’s voice, soaring above it all.

He, who did not yet know what it meant to have a voice, swarmed closer like a moth to a flame to listen. Perhaps it was a spell, the boy’s gift; or it was a drop of humanity already awoken in Him, He who would never be human enough to taste it fully, always just a swindler, always just pretending; trickery. It mattered little then, as little as anything did.

The boy sang of raising birds he had never seen only for them to leave him for lands he’d never heard of. The boy sang of betrayal. The boy sang of love remaining, of watching with a heavy heart and a restless conscience.

The boy sang just to sing and He listened, not yet understanding what it meant to regret, and for a fragile moment, they were immortal.

Venti blinks. The image shatters. The song is finished and the boy is dead again, resting in the curve of his ribcage. Diluc watches him with a strange expression. The tavern begins chattering once again.

Kaeya has disappeared.

After many more songs and many more drinks, Venti plops down by the bar, leaning his face against his palm. Diluc begins packing up – it will be closing time soon. So much routine in such unknown times.

“That was an odd language, back there," Diluc eventually says into the dim quiet.

“Old Mondstadtian," Venti asks and laughs. “Well, I suppose it is quite outdated. Still, I would’ve thought children still learn it in school, no?”

“I was homeschooled," Diluc deadpans, “and it’s not what I meant. I was talking about the song you played for Kaeya.”

“What makes you think I played it for Kaeya?”

Diluc frowns. “We grew up together. I would recognise Khaenri’ahn any time.”

“Did you understand it?”

Diluc looks at him, confused.

Venti shrugs. “I’m just asking. It is quite interesting how similar Khaenri’ahn can be to Mondstadtian, no?”

Diluc says nothing. Venti grins at his expression and waves with hand. “Don’t fret about it.”

“Why did you play it?”

“He asked for a song from home and so I granted him one.”

“It upset him. You played it knowing it would upset him.” Diluc leans against the bar, almost adorably intimidating. “Why?”

Venti taps his fingers against the counter. There are only a few hours left until morning; until the streets will be filled with people fleeing, people seeking shelter. His people seeking shelter he cannot provide on his own. He is here, now. He cannot be sure whether he always will be.

“…Even homeschooled, you must be able to understand some Old Mondstadtian, yes?" he quietly says. “I meant what I said. Even left alone, you can embrace the familiarity. Even betrayed, you can reconcile.”

He meets Diluc’s gaze. “Fate will come for him. He cannot run from his past forever, it is only a matter of time until it catches up to him. Once it does, he will need all help he can get.”

“His life is none of my business.”

Venti hums. “His life goes well beyond his own. It will affect many people – but I’m sure you know that.”

“He does not want my help.”

“The wind contains many spirits. Without them all, it would not blow. They are not asked – they simply keep together because if they didn’t, they would fall apart.”

Diluc huffs. “Are you drunk? This sounds like another of your nonsense ramblings.”

Venti laughs. It always sends a trickle of adoration through him, watching people apply their own concepts of how the world should work onto him. His body is no shackle – it is not even a body at all, for he could discard it whenever convenient. He sways playfully in his seat. “I can be as drunk as I want to be. Or as sober!”

“Do you welcome him?”

Venti falls silent. Diluc’s gaze burns into his, suddenly intense with protection. He leans back. “What do you think?”

Diluc swallows. “I think," he says slowly, “he could possibly become a threat to Mondstadt. You must protect Mondstadt. Therefore, it would be safest to assume that his presence bothers you.”

“What would you do if it did?”

Diluc hesitates. “…Well, I could hardly fight you about it.”

“But you could not let it go unsaid either.”

Venti sighs and grabs a glass from the counter, spinning it around simply to occupy his hands. “Do not worry, Master Diluc. Mondstadt’s threats are for Mondstadt’s people to deal with – unless it gets out of control, of course, but I doubt he’d have that power on his own.”

The Khaenri’ahn prince perhaps not – but combined with the Alchemist…

Venti quickly brushes over the thought and meets Diluc’s eyes. “Anyway, it would be quite hypocritical of me to refuse him a life here, and possibly beyond my power. After all, the wind welcomes all.”

Diluc simply looks at him for a long, long while. Around them, the other patrons slowly trickle outside, too caught up in their own worries and drunkenness to listen in. The candles burn low.

“…Many are grateful to you," Diluc eventually says and evades his gaze. “Just so you know, the citizens of Mondstadt need their god – not because of force, but because they choose to. Choosing to rely on others is freedom, too.”

A smile slips across Venti’s face. He feels achingly warmer, almost as if something inside of him melted. The night is coming to an end. Soon the sun will rise beyond the clouds, and with it a morning of violence.

“You are a good man, Master Diluc," Venti answers gently. “I believe you know more about yourself than you think.”

Cradled in warm palms, the Boy tells Him how to be human.

To be human is to breathe. To be human is to feel wet fabric on softened skin and water slipping through brittle hands. To be human is to escape the snake’s bite and relish in its poison and weep for its damnation. To be human is to sing when all words fail.

To be human is to reach for the sky and fear the sun in return. It is to endure the winter with the promise of a returning spring. It is to leap through forests as children, chasing wisdom, and finding wisdom in the exchange for youth. It is to remain by the fire.

It is to know of death and keep on living regardless.

It is to believe and hope and love and melt and believe; and believe.

In the fragile moments of dawn’s birth, God steps into his own church.

There is no light falling through the beautifully stained windows; no candles to keep the warmth inside. It is a cold place, empty and devoid of life, the rows upon rows of seats lined up like looming graves. The howling wind carries the cold inside, passing through the high walls. A chill is settled in the air.

There is no more welcoming warmth here. Each of Venti’s steps echo loud and wide through the cathedral, as if the building wanted to swallow up each sound, replaying it a thousand times. He traces the wooden seats with his palm as he walks towards the front, watching the dust drift to the ground.

The Deaconess is cowering before his altar. Her hands are shaking where they are clasped in prayer, her frail form still and cold. For a moment, Venti merely watches her.

Her pleads, quiet and relentless, are the only ones left ringing through his being, and yet they are growing fainter, too.

He settles beside her. Her face is sunken, her braids undone. Her devotion is trembling with each breath. He pokes her in the shoulder.

“Deaconess.”

Barbara opens her eyes to look at him. They are hollow and wide; the eyes of a child left in the cold with only the promise of spring keeping her upright.

“…Yes?”

“It is morning.”

She blinks, uncomprehending.

“I’m sorry," she whispers with a hoarse voice, “but is there anything I can do for you? Do you want to… pray, or talk?” She tugs her hands to her chest. “Apologies, I think I’m a bit unfit at the moment.”

There is no strength left in her. Venti tilts his head and smiles. “I don’t need anything from you, don’t worry. I wanted to tell you that the evacuation is starting. You should head down to the others.”

Barbara frowns at him, then at the altar. She settles on the ground completely, her white dress fanning out around her like the wings of a downed bird.

“…I don’t think I can," she says quietly.

“Why not?”

“I…" she stares at her hands as if they carried sin, as if they carried the answers she’d been pleading for. “I can’t abandon this place.”

“It won’t be abandoned. You will return after the storm has passed.”

She turns towards him again, wide-eyed. “…But will it pass? Jean told me to evacuate along with everyone else, but she didn’t say why, and she’s never before hidden anything from me, and… what if something horrible is upon us?”

Silence, for a heartbeat.

Tears escape her, softly rolling down her cheeks as she trembles. “I’m sorry," she says, wiping her face, “I’m sorry. This is not how I should behave. I should be comforting you, or, or pray alongside you, I can’t-“

He settles a hand on her shoulder. “You’re very young, Miss Barbara. It’s normal for you to be afraid.”

She hides her face in her palms. “But it shouldn’t be. I am supposed to be there for everyone, I am supposed to heal and help, not… cry when I’m needed the most.”

Venti merely hums and lifts his head towards the altar.

It is a strange thing, to be worshipped. He has not ever felt like he deserved it – not when he sliced mountaintops in half, not when he freed humanity, not when he called for the skies and they came upon his beckoning. The statues, scattered around the cathedral, winged creatures dressed in stone; they are not him. He is not marble. The wind is ever fluid – and yet, it never changes.

Venti is not Barbatos – and Barbatos is not Venti. The lines between duty and will, between divinity and urge, have long been blurred. He is not sure whether they’d ever been clear at all.

“…Do you think, Barbara," Venti says, “that gods cannot cry?”

She stills. “What do you mean?”

“Do you think that gods are beings made of stone – unmoved and unmoving? Would you worship them if they were? I believe stone to be quite dead and heartless, frankly.”

He turns towards her, eyes a liquid teal; almost glowing in the shaded dark of the church. “Or would you rather them weep at the sight of their people suffering, and rejoice alongside them in times of peace, just like mortals would? Would you want them to be flawed?”

She stares at him. He wonders whether his analogy is lost and he is merely confusing her, but then she blinks, slowly, averting her gaze.

“I’m not sure," she says. “How well could a god protect us if He was flawed?”

“How could He if He was perfect?”

In the deafening silence, Barbara takes a deep breath. “I do not wish to lose my belief," she quietly confesses. “It’s just… What if these times are a test? What if all this hunger, all this pain, is merely for us to show our courage?”

“You do not think it is Barbatos’ wrath?”

“No.” She folds her hands in her lap. “I can’t explain it, but these storms, they feel… different. I know the wind to be loving. This one is not.”

“There are many different kinds of love.”

“Then this one is not one I am used to.” Her eyes go wide, as if she was afraid of her own words. “Nor one I would want.”

Venti smiles to himself, content. For a moment, they are merely breathing. Even the storm cannot reach them here. There is only the twilight, the shaded corners whispering of secrets long gone and a looming altar.

Barbatos plants his palm on the cold floor and feels the ancient energy brought upon by a thousand prayers seep through him. It is slow, lulled by centuries of collection and wait, but it is there.

“You are very admirable, Deaconess," he says, “for you have not lost faith when so many others have.”

“If we do not have faith, then what else is left?”

Barbatos chuckles. “Wise words. You’ve always been a good child. In a way, you could say you are the spirit of Mondstadt.”

“Is there such a thing?”

He turns towards her, braids undone. “Perhaps. If there was, it would lie in the morning breeze and the apple trees. It would lie in the cradle of the meadows’ blooms all throughout spring and the unwavering belief all throughout winter. It would lie up there," he points towards the sky, “and down here.” He inclines his head towards her.

He sighs. “Whatever it would be – I believe your efforts would be very much appreciated.”

And Barbara goes – still.

He did not entirely mean it, but it does not come as a surprise to him when finally, finally, Barbara’s eyes go wide. So closely attuned to his powers, so closely in their center, he can feel every surge of shock and shame wash through her. He places another palm on the ground to steady himself, and the rush of energy is warm; but hers burns much, much brighter, devotion at its core.

Between the now very much visible glowing of his eyes and the light filtering strangely at his back, he is sure the connections are not difficult to make.

“Oh,” she hides her face in her hands. “Oh, how I have mistreated you! Laughed about you, sang along with you, scolded you for breaking the lyre!” Her cries echo loudly through the cathedral, and Venti winces. “Archons, I even kicked you out of your own church!”

Although she is already on her knees, somehow she manages to make herself even smaller, her forehead touching the floor. “Lord Barbatos, please grant me forgiveness! I was foolish, I didn’t know, and I know my actions were beyond blasphemous and redeemable - oh Lord, please don’t tell me the storm is my fault, I swear I did mean only the best for the lyre! But even so I still kept you from it, oh what kind of nun am I, please forgive me and I do not wish to ask even further of you, and yet I cannot-“

Venti halts her wall of words by gently touching her shoulder and pulling her upright. She’s trembling. There is awe in her young eyes, wonder and disbelief, and deep, deep down, beyond what she would admit to herself, there is fear.

“Do not beg before me,” he says, gently, keeping his touch feathery light. “Do not ask for redemption you do not need. You have done nothing wrong – quite the opposite, actually.”

“But the lyre-“

Venti waves his hand. “Eh, that old thing was bound to break sooner or later. It is merely a sentimental piece, nothing more. I do not need it to keep the memories. You, however-“ he cups her face, “are important, as is any other child of Mondstadt. There is no reason for you to ruin yourself in my name.”

Barbara, white as a sheet, says nothing.

Barbatos takes a deep breath. The air is dusty and filled with anticipation. The wind knows what is to come soon – but not yet. Not yet.

“I do not wish to be a tyrant,” Barbatos declares lowly. “I do not wish to tie any soul to any purpose they do not seek themselves. Mondstadt is not a cage – and although you sing as prettily as one, I must admit as a fellow musician,” he throws her a grin, hoping for her to catch and find peace in it, “you are not a bird imprisoned in it. What you choose to do is your choice alone. No amount of faith or guidance should change that.”

Barabara does not say anything for a long, long time. Newly found energy thrums through Barbatos’ veins, aching to be released. He hears it hum in the very core of his being, even without a gnosis to keep it stabilised.

It is not often that he gets reminders that, in the end, he has never been anything but pure elemental energy.

Eventually, Barbara exhales softly and relaxes, all the tension fleeing her body.

“You are no tyrant,” says she, “nor has my choice to follow you ever been forced upon me. I believe,” her voice shakes, shoulders trembling anew, “that the spirit of Mondstadt resides in love, and in trust. And that is all I have.”

“And it is more than I could ever ask for.”

She looks at him, truly looks at him, and then she is crying again, laughing along with it. Venti can do nothing but embrace her softly and rest his head on hers.

And for a brief windless moment, that’s all there is – a God and His preacher, weeping at His shoulder in the quiet before dawn.

Somewhere, another future ago, Barbatos talks to the Traveller.

“Has this happened before?" they ask. The night is a wide-spun dream above them, and they are looking at the stars as if they yearned to join them. Star-child. Sky-sojourner. One to bring hope and devour it again.

Barbatos hums, fiddles with the strings of the breeze. “Everything has happened before,” he says, “and yet nothing has. Does that answer your question?”

“Do you think it does?”

“Do you think it was a good question?”

The Traveller blinks. Their eyes are pure molten gold. Something that only flows in the very core of a planet, a liquid heart. “There are no bad questions.”

“There are wrong ones.”

“Was it a wrong one?”

“In this world, perhaps.”

The Traveller looks out over the ruins of Time long gone, not yet born, and sighs. “You speak in riddles.”

“Oh, but riddles are the finest of stories! It takes real skill to weave them. Take one for example: When does a speck of sand become a tree?”

The Traveller looks at him. “When you dream.”

Barbatos clicks his tongue. “Always too smart.”

“Are we dreaming?”

“When are we not?”

“I cannot remember falling asleep.”

“Perhaps you never have – or perhaps you never will.”

The Traveller says nothing. They glance around the ruins, watching them be rebuilt, reborn, and reburned in the span of a heartbeat. Time filters around them like water. Barbatos has never tasted salt before, yet he can feel it on his tongue.

“These aren’t your temples. This was not built for you,” the Traveller says. Knowledge comes easily to them in this world; it is pulled towards them like gravity. They are a star indeed – all swallowing, all seeing. Almost all.

“No,” Barbatos says, “it wasn’t.”

“What happened to her? Did she die?”

“Gods do not die.”

“Do you?”

Barbatos stretches out his limbs, feeling the pull of energy needed to keep his body tied together. Without it, he would spill back into the wind; back into time.

“What does death mean to you?" he asks instead of replying.

The Traveller stares back at the stars, pondering. “A black hole,” they say. “Oblivion.”

“Does it mean to be forever gone, in any form?”

“Energy does not diminish. It only changes.”

“And matter falls apart.”

The Traveller smiles, galaxies down their throat. “I believe death is to become unrecognisable. Not only to others, but yourself, too. But true death – there is no such thing.”

Barbatos laughs. “See? That was a good question. And a good answer. All without me.”

“What would I need you for?”

“Nothing at all. Or maybe everything. Do you need me to have this conversation?”

“I suppose I do. It gets lonely.”

“What is loneliness when everything around you breathes?”

The Traveller’s eyes are far, far away. Perhaps they aren’t even eyes anymore. “What is loneliness when everything around you breathes, except you?”

Barbatos huffs. “Touché.”

Silence lives and dies between them. The sky rises and falls through their fingertips. The constellations remain the same – woven without a weaver, a dream without a dreamer.

“Humour me,” says Barbatos. “I have another riddle to ask of you. What is a star without a home?”

“Falling.”

“And a god without wings?”

“Falling, too.”

Barbatos leans forward, staring into melting, frozen twin skies. “And what would kill us? The fall or the landing?”

“Neither; forgetting.”

Barbatos, for the first time in centuries, breathes in raw power.

Casting a last glance towards Mondstadt, he lifts his seals, allowing the winds to overtake it. He dives back into the clouds. This time they easily part around him; afraid; shrinking away in a manner that makes him feel wrong.

Decarabian awaits him fully formed. He is a shadow amongst the storm; looming, loathing. He sneers upon his arrival.

“Here for negotiations again?”

Barbatos, one with the wind, the wind himself, unfurls.

He does not know why exactly the form he takes is the one that comes most natural to him; lithe, almost human at first glance but nothing but a wisp of glowing air at the second, a thousand wings sprouting from his back. He summons a spear out of pure humming energy.

“No.”

Decarabian visibly grows wider. His grin turns taken aback, then frustrated, then lastly gleeful.

“You are nowhere near fully powered, Barbatos,” he says, giggling into the storm. “You are weaker than when I first met you.”

Perhaps he is right. Without the gnosis, there are a lot of things he cannot do. There are a lot of things he can do because of it, too, though, with no risk of leaving any record for Celestia to stumble upon. He can tell the truth.

Perhaps that is why he cannot quite bring himself to regret letting it be taken. He has made his choice. It is his duty to care for the plant that has sprouted from its seeds now.

“Weakness does not equal loss,” Barbatos says.

“Oh, but it does! He who is weak is caged; He who is weak is killed.”

There is no death – merely forgetting. There is no real hatred – merely-

Merely corruption.

Decarabian’s form is twisted. His words are those of a hundred spiteful souls. He never knew Barbatos long enough to evaluate his strength. His vengeful deeds, they are not his, not entirely.

Corruption slumbers in Mondstadt’s very roots. Its blood runs in the rivers; its temptation sweetens the wind. It is not surprising that something died and born along the Leylines falls victim to it so easily – it is still a tragedy, nonetheless.

“I think I could understand you,” Barbatos says lowly, “if you would let me. And I think you could understand me. But not while Mondstadt is suffering.”

Decarabian hums. “Not long, windling, not long. Soon it will be rid of you and back where it belongs – in an embrace that protects them.”

Barbatos lowers his head, saddened. “Is that what you are told?”

“It is the truth.”

And with that, Decarabian lunges.

It is a fight Barbatos has not experienced since the Archon War. Decarabian’s strikes are fierce, each blow sending a gust of hail towards the earth. He fights with the despair of someone’s last ambition – and the roared determination of a newborn, declaring: This world is mine to witness. It is mine to devour. It is mine to be witnessed in.

It becomes a dance between them, almost. Barbatos leaps back to dodge a blast and uses the momentum to become air, ripping Decarabian back by his core. Decarabian whirls around, grabbing him by what becomes feathers, flickering and disappearing into the winds.

Barbatos gathers a cloud – Decarabian gathers another.

Barbatos brings forth gusts of screaming storms – Decarabian does the same.

It does not matter who swallows who’s physical form – for it is only a form, fluid with the sky; merely a symbol. It does not matter who tears apart one wing or stabs one limb. Not when energy is all they are, leaking and shooting and shaking the horizon in flashing lights.

It does not matter what they hit – for all they hit is themselves.

This is no war against winter, or against the sea. They are merely fighting for control over the same element, and the element itself rips itself out of their grasps violently, howling in frustration. Barbatos beckons for the wind to gather in his palm, and Decarabian grabs it instead to shoot it back, only for Barbatos to remain unharmed. It leads nowhere – all it does is tear apart the forests below.

Barbatos gathers his wit and, with a new strategy, lifts his spear.

Decarabian blocks him with a shield of thrumming light. His face beneath it is twisting, contorted; the Abyss has settled in his eyes, corruption seeping from his wounds. For a moment his grin becomes mocking.

“Do you truly believe weapons can kill a god?”

Barbatos grits his teeth. A name is still a name. A symbol is still a symbol – and as fluid as the body of a god may be, it is still a mirage of his condition, and vice versa.

Decarabian bled all over the ruins of Old Mondstadt before he shattered. It still stains the grass – but perhaps he cannot remember it anymore.

Perhaps he cannot remember much of anything anymore.

Barbatos attacks again. And again. And again. Decarabian leaps for his spear and wrenches it out his grasp – but it turns into an arrow instead, sinking into his shoulder. Decarabian screams. Barbatos, seeing his chance, lunges forward-

-and finds himself falling.

They drop through the weeping clouds like lightning. He cannot tell whose fault it is. It matters little, because in that moment, Decarabian pulls the arrow from his shoulder, bleeding a hurricane, and hauls it towards Barbatos. He barely manages to catch it before there is another attack incoming, sending them both tumbling downwards.

All his wings unfurled, covering the sky, barely stop their descend. He attempts to wrench back control over the wind, and so does his opponent, and the gales howl in fury and confusion. A stab sends feathers falling apart like scattered snow.

Barbatos barely feels the pain as the arrow returns to a spear and he sends it fast, sends it wide, both of their forces crashing against each other, and Decarabian gets close enough to wrestle for and for a brief, halting moment Barbatos loses his grip and the tip, almost catching domainless lightning in its gleam, is pointed towards where his heart used to rest-

-and for the tick of time there is a crumbling tower and a dying god and a boy bleeding out, arrow through the chest-

-and the rush of power and a blazing sky and bells in the breeze-

-and the ticking of clocks and the breathing of time and a million prayers, and one strong in particular-

Lord Barbatos – bring forth liberty from your torment.

And he is one of a thousand wind, the one to blow souls home, to make the trees whisper their secrets and the birds sing their songs, the one to gather relief in the arms of death and carry out its duties, and he is, more than ever, loved.

With one last decisive burst of hope, Barbatos reclaims what is his, grabs the spear’s very end, spins them both around in the breath of a breeze and sends it searing right through Decarabian’s chest.

The world screams.

They crash into the ruins of Old Mondstadt.

There is silence, and the sky, and the wind finally, finally breathing freely again.

Time dripping like honey from the walls, Barbatos pulls himself from the rubble. Decarabian lies shattered in the skeletons of what used to be his home. Corruption seeps from his form, oozing into the ground a deep purple. Just as easily as he gathered strength from his environment mere hours ago, it flees him, leaving behind a mere shade of himself with a humming arrow in his chest.

Barbatos halts before him. The air is cold, the rain heavy around them. A broken city. A violent wind. A death, quiet and already forgotten, bleeding out amongst the rocks so far from the skies.

Somewhere behind him, the air parts for four figures. Barbatos does not need to turn to sense the Traveller, parting the world’s very matter with the flick of a hand; teleporting. He does not need to hear to know who they have brought along. He does not need mortal senses at all, now – the wind is his again, his alone, and he belongs to it just the same.

Barbatos pays his audience no mind as he towers over Decarabian, over all his violent, tragic deeds; and all he can find within himself is woe.

He summons Amo’s bow.

Decarabian glares at him, spilling out over the rocks. “Will you finish the tale now, Barbatos?" he spits, all teeth and tongue and fear. “With her bow? Will you kill me again like you have before?” He leans forward. “You know it will not work. Time has her ways – I will return, and so will she, and so will all that has brought you ruin.”

For a moment, Barbatos ponders it, gazing out over the ruins. The rubble speaks no word. Too long has it been since they caught any song; since they listened to the tunes of wonder.

Barbatos lowers the bow next to Decarabian’s wavering form. It almost feels like a breath is pulled from the world as it exhales. It sighs in relief. As his hand lets go of the gentle curve, the memory of a dead woman, Barbatos feels himself relax alongside it.

“No,” he says.

Decarabian is taken aback. “No?”

“I will not kill you again. You have done so yourself already.”

“I don’t understand. Is that not what gods have always done? Is that not what I have done?” He laughs, splintered with decay. “You were born from violence, Barbatos. I was buried in it. It is how you climbed your throne, and how I lost mine. It is how the world works.”

“Are we not allowed to decide how the world works?”

Barbatos kneels, wings draping through the dirt, and he does not quite touch Decarabian, for his skin is soiled in the Abyss’ touch, but he lowers his voice to an almost gentle tone.

“Are we not willing to shape it?”

“You are a young being, still. You haven’t learned, yet.”

Barbatos smiles. “Not anymore, not anymore. A lot of time has passed.”

Decarabian hesitates. “…How long?”

“Long enough for you to forget who it is that you died for.”

Decarabian’s gaze wanders to the bow. It lies abandoned in the rain, like an offering to the dead. It is all she is now; a memory in a grave. Perhaps it is the only language the wind speaks.

“I did love her,” Decarabian mourns. His frame flickers, his emotions toiling, from fury to grief in the fragile span of a heartbeat. “I loved her like no god is allowed to love. I built walls for her to be safe behind; I built a home for her to return to. I built her a hearth behind the storms so she would never be cold. And yet she betrayed me.”

“You built a cage, and you did not see – that is what lead to your demise.” Barbatos tilts his head, morose. “Perhaps you are right – you felt more than a god should, because it made you fear the thought of losing what you’d grown to love. You were lost in it, and you paid the price.”

Decarabian sneers. “Do not pity me, Barbatos. You are no better. You were lost in love since you were nothing but one of a thousand winds. You even wear his face, still!”

“And his memory along with it. He is the first who taught me the art of what it means to love.”

“See where it got him.”

A small flame lights up in Barbatos, anger racing up his spine and down again, but he does not let it fester. “All humans must die. It is up to them when and how they do – and he made his decision to rather die beneath a free sky than live with no air to sing his songs to. To be human is to choose - it is their very core.”

“And what do you know of humanity?”

Barbatos lowers his gaze. “I yearned to be human, once,” he says, “and so I became a god.”

“I have seen you,” Decarabian mocks. “You walk amongst them as if you were one of them, as if death haunted your very step, too; as if you were not the one bringing it. It is no wonder it was so easy for me to rise again. There is nothing to protect them.”

“I am here now, am I not?”

Decarabian opens his mouth for another response. His shape is dimming, fading. The hatred in his eyes has become nearly desperate. Barbatos sees it then clearly, suddenly, like the sun hitting his face; there is nothing to be reasoned with anymore. Deep within himself, Decarabian already knows his own answers.

“But they have suffered under your guidance for weeks,” the broken god declares. “If you had been stronger, quicker, you could have eased their suffering. Instead, you wanted to negotiate. You wanted to wait for them to act first. Any archon who knows their own worth would have gotten rid of the threat right away. I would have done so.”

“Is that all you see yourself as? A threat?”

A heartbeat, mortal and frightened.

Barbatos leans forward. “That is the thing about humanity, Decarabian, which you have never grasped in your drunken love. Just as they are birds in a cage beneath a shackling hand, they let their flock rise from the nest to find their own skies. They have the right to fight their own wars and govern themselves. It is no matter of the gods any greater than it is a parent’s matter to force a child’s path, for a god’s wrath and worry run much too strong. It brings only damage.”

He takes a deep breath, fills air-made lungs with air. “Therefore: Let them go. They don’t need you.”

“Oh, because now they have you to replace me, of course. Do not lie to yourself.”

“I don’t. They do not have me, nor do I have them. I’ve never had them – all Mondstadt’s people have sown under my guidance is for Mondstadt’s people to harvest. What else is freedom?”

“There is no such thing as freedom.” Yearning, deep somewhere in there.

“You speak from a shackled heart. You have never experienced it before. All you ever knew was love.”

Decarabian’s voice breaks. “And what did your little martyring poet sing about that? Did he not say that to be free was to love?”

Barbatos shakes his head, laughing to himself. “Time has stolen your memory, just as she used to steal my lyre,” he says, and he recalls a ballad long lost. “To love is to hold on when you are needed and let go when you are not. To love is not to freeze – it is to melt.”

Decarabian says nothing for a long time.

His gaze wanders around, passing by the ruins, by the walls, by the broken mountaintops in the distance. It wanders over the Traveller, Jean, Diluc and Kaeya, who all stand silent in sullen reverence. It wanders over the sky.

“You have changed these lands,” he eventually whispers hoarsely. “You have brought hope when I could not. You melted the snow and befriended the winds.” He looks up at Barbatos, eyes suddenly younger, clearer, much like they were in his dying moments. “Perhaps beneath you, as it was warm, they could feel it again – what I felt, when I looked at her.”

Barbatos briefly thinks of the Tsaritsa and her devotion, her heart frozen in grief, and only blinks. “What did it feel like?" he asks, his own core suddenly trembling, suddenly afraid. What did it feel like to love? What did it feel like to burn so brightly that the aftermath of the flame was winter?

Decarabian looks at the sky once more, hued eyes a little clearer, a little brighter. “Like spring.”

And with that, he is gone.

It is no death he dies. It is not the lack of a presence previously occupied by life, for he was not alive at all. It is merely the fading of a memory, quick and fleeting; exhaled.

Still, Barbatos almost finds himself mourning it like one.

For a moment, he allows himself to breathe.

Amo’s bow rests forgotten on the grass. The shattered walls are stained with corrupted blood. There is no doubt Decarabian will return, one day – for the Abyss has its ways and so does Time, always returning to bring upon memories in its vicious cycles. Barbatos has the inkling to believe that when the point of the tale does arrive, Decarabian’s shadow will be the least of their worries.

But not yet.

Not yet.

Strangely reminded of his first time using a body, Barbatos rights himself. The others stand merely a few feet away. Jean has her face set in a stern expression. Diluc watches on with a pale hint to his skin. Kaeya looks everywhere and nowhere at once.

The Traveller regards the stained splatters of blood with a far away gaze; as if it was their sibling’s.

They all will stand high and proud when the time comes for Mondstadt to fall. They will all make their choices. They will all pay for them, and they will do it gladly. They will all choose to love, in the end, one way or another.

Just as it is human to do.

Above them, at last, the clouds break open to reveal the first sliver of light.