Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kirara was used to searching high and low for all sorts of exotic people who lived in all sorts of strange lands—packages in hand, of course—but she had to admit, this Venti fellow was a special kind of difficult to deliver to.

First of all, international deliveries were always a bit tricker; it was hard to navigate an area she didn’t know that well. (Though that alone wasn't awful because Kirara loved exploring new places!)

But secondly, and most odd, the package had his home address listed as the Favonius Cathedral.

She couldn’t deny how she had sat on that one for a long while. As far as she knew, people didn’t live in cathedrals. She was fairly sure that even Mondstadt’s clergy didn’t actually live in their local Cathedral. (Maybe it was a cultural difference?) Or…did the guy just not have a house? Who doesn't have a house??  

Technically, Kirara knew some people who didn’t live in houses, but they were all eccentric exceptions, in no way bound by standard expectations. 

She had thought about the whole thing for even longer before realizing that he must be a member of their clergy, and the individual who wanted to send the package must not know this ‘Venti’ person’s exact address. There was no reason to be overly suspicious of that. Kirara had been warned he’d be hard to find. 

It was her responsibility to see a package all the way from the sender to recipient, and she had no intention of shirking this duty just because she got a tricky assignment. Besides, the package was fairly small, as far as deliveries went. She could hold the brown paper covered cube in one hand if she needed to, and it weighed a little more than an apple. It was barely a burden, really.

So when she got to the Cathedral in question, she wasted no time going straight up to the nuns so she could ask them her important questions, easily locating the most important looking one in a snap. 

“Kirara of Komaniya Express at your service!” She said to the girl at the back of the Cathedral with the pigtails and the nice dress. “I have one package for the Favonius Cathedral.”

Barbara, as she then introduced herself as, eyed the package with undisguised curiosity, but she did not move to take it. “I don’t mean to be unhelpful, or rude, but we didn’t order any packages.” 

Kirara was quick to clear up the confusion—which she had accidentally put into play… whoops. 

“It’s not for the Cathedral exactly,” she rushed to say, “it’s actually for some guy named Venti. But this was listed as the address.”

Barbara’s face soured, and Kirara lit up at the confirmation that at the very least, this girl knew who she was talking about. That was better than not knowing of the guy at all! If that had been the case, then Kirara really would’ve been in trouble. This was the only lead she had.

“Isn’t Venti a member of the Cathedral staff?” Kirara asked. “Shouldn’t he be here right now?”

“Venti…doesn’t live or work at the Cathedral,” Barbara said, plastering on a cute little smile while the silence stretched.

“Are you sure?”

“Uhm. I am the Deaconess of the Cathedral. Yes, I’m sure.”

“Do you know where he does live then?” Kirara leaned very far into Barbara’s personal space, but it was an emergency! Every second that passed, her customer was not receiving his package, and how could she let that atrocity last any longer? She was in the right city for goodness’ sake! And it wasn’t even that large of a city compared to some of the places she’d been.

“I don’t?” Barbara brought a finger to her chin. “Though now that I think about it, I’m not even sure he has a house in the city.”

Kirara pursed her lips. “Why?”

“Why what?” Barbara was talking in overtly soft tones, now.

“Why doesn’t he have a house?” Kirara asked.

“I think he prefers it that way?” Her face was sheepish, as if she had suddenly realized that that possibility should’ve been probed prior to now, without the interference of a foreigner. Kirara certainly thought so, and she would’ve addressed the matter were he her friend. Then again, she couldn’t actually tell what the relationship between Barbara and Venti was, whether they were simple acquaintances or not. The Deaconess was being oddly obtuse on the matter.

“But how is he supposed to get deliveries that way?”

“Sorry,” Barbara said, clasping her hands together and shrinking back even further. “I don’t know.”

Kirara deflated, though she only let herself seep in the unfortunateness a moment longer. There was still a job to get done. Kirara clasped her hands together, pleading, with a face she knew most couldn’t refuse.

“Do you have any idea where I might be able to find him?” She asked. “Even if he’s not here, he must be somewhere in the city. Please?”

Luckily for her, it seemed the Deaconess wasn’t stingy about information-sharing. Barbara stared off into the distance, thinking so many thoughts that Kirara was, sadly, not privy to. But Kirara could wait. She would wait! Even though she hated waiting.

Barbara bit her lip. “Well…”

…

The fountain. 

He’s a bard, a truly talented one. Wears a lot of green, too. 

Kirara had begun this search at the bottom of the city, then gone to the top of the city, and now she was back to the bottom of the city again. She was certainly getting some exercise in for the day. There was no shame in a bit of backtracking, but she was hoping this all wrapped up sooner rather than later considering that it would likely set her schedule back the longer it went on.

To begin with, it had been an extra delivery she had picked up solely because the mysterious patron had paid her and her company so much money to do it. Half now and half later, they had promised.

Not that Kirara needed all that money…but it was shiny! Like, really super shiny! She couldn’t refuse it. (And for that matter, neither could her company.) She had already begun conceiving of some fun ways to use it. What if she put a surprise coin in her deliveries for the next couple of months? That might be a nice treat to some lucky people, especially considering she would love if someone randomly gave her a shiny object. Maybe it’d be a good promotional event for Komaniya Express!

Kirara was seriously considering bringing it up at the next staff meeting. 

But enough about shiny coins; she had a bard to track down. Barbara had sent her down to the fountain, where she had said the bard often played music, so that’s where Kirara would go. 

On the way there, she took a brief stop at no less than five stores—because they just looked so interesting—but she did get back on track in the end. She blamed her unnecessary detours on why the fountain didn’t present her with who she was looking for.

Because at the fountain, there was no Venti. Or, well, there was no person who looked like what Venti supposedly looked like. Barbara had mentioned that he had a bright green hat, and there was no way Kirara would miss that unless she was colorblind. 

Which…she didn’t think she was colorblind. She had never bothered to check. 

…Should she check if she was colorblind? Was that a thing that might make her a sub-par delivery woman? Because now she was thinking about it, and she couldn’t stop thinking about it, and it seemed like such an obvious thing that needed to be checked immediately—she snapped back to attention before she could spiral about being potentially colorblind because for Archon’s sake, she still had a bard to track down. 

She had also apparently been standing around long enough to attract attention, which was a little embarrassing. A man lounging against the wall was waving at her, a sword at his side. When he realized that she had noticed him, he came sauntering up to her, all charm and suave. 

“Are you alright, traveler?” he asked. “I couldn’t help but notice you look a bit lost.”

"It's alright," she said, dejected.

"But it clearly isn't. I'm Kaeya, a knight, and it's the job of the knights to help where we can."

“I’m good, I promise,” Kirara chirped back. She hadn’t intended to bother the knights! They were busy, and she wasn’t worth their time. She was having trouble navigating their city and one wayward bard. “I’m just looking for someone, and I don’t think he’s here, is all.”

Kaeya raised his chin and looked her over carefully. “Did some young man stand you up? A pretty girl like yourself?” He clicked her tongue. “How disrespectful.”

Kirara didn’t get it. Maybe she was missing some sort of subcontext in human communication that she hadn’t had the opportunity to learn yet. 

“I’m just trying to deliver this package…say!” She exclaimed, “do you know of a Venti?” Of anyone, maybe the knights were better informed about the location of their people.

The man’s eyebrows raised comically high, and he stifled a laugh. “Venti stood you up?”

“I don’t know what that means!” Kirara chuckled back. “I have a package for him.”

The invisible tension immediately vanished from the man’s shoulders, and he hunched down in laughter. Kirara wasn’t sure why any of that was supposedly funny, but she was glad to bring humor into this stranger’s day, even if she didn’t get it.

“Venti, really? A package? That’s a challenge. I’m not sure he stays still for longer than five minutes,” the man said, crossing his arms over his chest, a bit cheeky though also sincere, it seemed. Sort of.

“Got any guesses, then? He’s proving difficult to track down.” 

She would take whatever tip she could find. The knights did probably know the best gossip, and Kirara would not, under any circumstance, let this Venti go without receiving his package; it was against her code of business.

“Maybe,” he said, winking. “Though I’m more interested in that package.”

“Customer’s matters are private, even to knights.”

“No need to snap, lovely miss. It’s just…it feels a bit…” his gaze was narrowed, steely and pinpointed onto the small package, as if it were the most important thing he’d ever seen. He shook his head and turned that blinding smile back on and aimed at her. 

“It’s probably nothing,” he said. “Suspicion is just the weak man’s sword, you know. So about Venti…”

“I’ll take any hint you’ve got!”

“I don’t know everything about him, mind you, and he’s entirely unpredictable. Considering what I do know, I suppose I’d recommend you check…”

…

Angel’s Share 

He’s the center of any party, you really can’t miss him. 

By general tavern standards, this one seemed particularly nice from the outside.

Kirara…didn’t like alcohol. The smell got up in her nose, and it burned acrid. She supposed it wasn’t all bad, though, as getting drunk made people so unbelievably interesting, and she always did long for the surprising. It was within her realm of skill to expect the unexpected, and it often flourished in places that sold alcohol.

She could, without a doubt, handle searching for a bard in a tavern. 

She threw open the door to the rowdy establishment, and let her eyes scrape across every corner and shadow. She had a brief moment of panic, wondering that if she were colorblind and couldn’t see green, what was she supposed to do then? Though Kaeya had also mentioned that Venti was loud, so maybe Kirara could count on that in the worst case scenario.

A red-headed man behind the bar was staring at her with open concern the longer she stood there, analyzing the clientele. 

“Need something?” He eventually asked. It came across as a bit hostile, but to be fair, she had been standing in the doorway for an unusually extended amount of time.

“Nope!” She responded.

Now then, back to searching for green bards. Green, green, green, green…I wonder if my luck is just bad today. There was no shrine where she could check, so she just figured it must be bad and decided right then and there that she’d have to roll with it. No job waited for good luck to come around, anyway. 

And then it struck her—perhaps this red-headed man’s luck was better than hers, in which case, he might be able to aid her in her quest, just like the other Mondstadt people had done, even though he was scowling so hard it looked like he wanted to gut her. They had all been helpful so far. Maybe he just wasn’t good at smiling. 

“As it turns out,” she said, “I’ve just decided that I could use some help.”

The man set the glass he was polishing down and gestured she join him at the bar, so she did.

“Do you want a drink? Have any particular request?”

She shook her head and made a silly face. “I’m not looking for a drink, I’m looking for a person. I’ve run all over the city today, but no luck.”

His gaze was sharper now, but he seemed wholly uninterested in Kirara’s little quest, which was kind of nice. It meant she was doing a good job blending in, and she’d take any compliment, even if it could only be found in apathetic gestures and a sideways glance. It still counted as a compliment to her. 

“I might be able to help,” he said. “It depends. You’ll need to give me more than ‘a person.’ Who are you looking for?”

“Do you know of a Venti?” She asked. She placed her small package on the table gesturing with both arms in a deliberate, excessive fashion. “Green, loud bard is what I was told to look for. My customer wasn’t nearly specific enough about where to find him, though.” A thought occurred to her, and she had to ask. “Do you know if he has a house?”

All of this had the man raising an eyebrow and smirking, his strict facade melting away. “I don’t think he does.” He squinted at the small brown package on the bar. “You’re trying to…deliver a package?”

“Yes!” She lamented, head falling to the table with a quiet thwack. This job really had become ever more precarious as the day dragged. “I can’t find him though. The sender put Favonius Cathedral as the address, and he obviously doesn't live there. I think your Deaconess might not like him very much.”

The bartender stiffened, and he tried to cover it up by grabbing a new glass to fiddle with, but Kirara’s keen senses didn’t miss it. He must agree about the Deaconess and Venti and not want to say so, she imagined.

“You said the package had The Cathedral as Venti’s address.”

“That’s what it says.” Technically it wasn't confidential information because it was clearly untrue.

“How peculiar,” he gritted out.

Kirara thought it was an odd response, but maybe he was just having a bad luck day, too and she had read him wrong.

“Right?” She agreed, tapping on the package. After all this, she had become even more curious about what was worth all the trouble. But it wasn't her business, and she could stay strong! Just for a little while longer.

The man fell into a relaxed position, leaning against the counter. “As it turns out, I actually know Venti very well. He doesn’t normally get packages, so this might be important.” His eyes spoke of sincerity. “You know, I’d be willing to deliver it for you.”

“No!” She exclaimed, taken aback, gripping her package so tight, her claws almost punctured the brown paper. “This is my mission, and I cannot let anyone else take on this responsibility. I am a courier, a respectable one, and that means seeing a package from start to finish.”

The man seemed hesitant, but he backed away anyway. “…Alright.” He scratched the back of his head. He avoided her gaze, looking to the floor in thought. “Do you really need to find him yourself?”

“Absolutely.”

He let out a passionate sigh. “If you’re that sure,” he said, crossing his arms in abject frustration. “Well, I don’t mean to send you on another wild goose chase, but if you’ve checked all across the city already and you’re that determined, I’d suggest going to…”

…

The Windrise Tree 

Follow the music. He’s the only one that plays a lyre all the way out there. It is far…you sure you don’t want me to deal with it? 

Despite the red-headed man’s insistence that she shouldn’t have to go out there to find one wayward bard and that he would be happy to handle the rest for her—he was oddly persistent on that front—Kirara declined any further assistance. 

If Venti was likely at that big tree, then that’s where Kirara would go. Third time’s the charm, right?

And finally, it seemed her luck actually had given her a break. When she approached and was a mere couple steps from the tree, she heard the gentle ring of a lyre. 

Kirara hadn’t needed to get very close to hear the music, and it was, without a doubt, music—a pure sort of song that seemed to create worlds in between the notes. If she had never heard music before, she might’ve thought it magic taking the form of sound, or a possessed lyre conjuring the essence of a traveler’s heart. 

Kirara could relate to whatever he was playing, though she had no idea what the song was about nor had she ever before met the individual coaxing such notes from a common instrument. She didn’t need to see him to know he was smiling.

When Kirara made her way around the tree, she saw a figure nestled in the roots, one in mostly green. (She wasn't colorblind after all!) He had twin braids that danced in the wind, and he was perfectly serene there, sitting upon the roots of the tree like an old garden spirit balancing on the tip of a flower.

She didn’t want to bother him, but her schedule waited for no man, ethereal magic playing bard or otherwise, and he wasn’t the strangest person she’d come across in her travels, anyway. So she strutted forward on heavy steps. When the boy spotted her, he paused his playing, the last note ending on a delicate hum.

“Why, hello there!” He called. “I’ve never seen you around, before. Are you a traveler? From distant lands, perhaps?”

She grinned right back, though it hadn’t been on purpose. 

“If you consider Inazuma distant.” Her sense of scale tended not to match with that of others.

“I definitely would! That’s very far away.” He began to pluck out a tune that she recognized as one she had heard many times in the streets of her home capital, one played on the advent of the blooming of the sakura trees. She almost asked where he’d heard it before—but it didn’t really matter. It was a beautiful rendition, and it was simply nice to be able to hear it, even all the way out here.

Bards were special existences that she didn’t meet as frequently as she would’ve liked to on the open road. She felt a need to savor this. Meeting the new was, after all, one of the best parts about traveling. There was no point in trying to make it happen the same way twice, nor in questioning how exactly it had come to be.

“Are you Venti?” She held up her package, hoping to make the message clear that she was here for this one simple thing. She wanted to interrupt him as little as possible. 

“That I am,” he said, placing a hand on his chest in display.

Thank goodness. She mentally thanked all the people that had helped her thus far—but the red-headed man most of all. It had been him who had known. She would’ve had no chance at finding this place otherwise. Though this clearing wasn’t horribly out of the way, it did constitute an area of the nation that she hadn’t thought was populated or a common place to frolic.

“I have this for you,” she said, lifting the wrapped box to eye level.

“A package, eh? Who sent it?”

“They didn’t give a name.”

“Ooooh! A mysterious sender? Really? What a delightful happening.”

Kirara couldn’t help but smile right along with him. “Yeah! Even though you were really hard to find. I recommend investing in a mailbox. Or a house! Whoever sent it had to put the Cathedral as your address!” 

She laughed, but he didn’t laugh.

In fact, for some reason, this had Venti shooting off the ground, anemo at his fingertips, which startled her, but not badly. He grabbed the box from her and inspected it curiously.

“What do you know, it does,” he said, the violet ink in shapely letters on the front, as they had been from the beginning. “That’s such a strange thing to do, considering I’m just a lowly bard.”

Kirara hadn’t thought it was all that strange until he specifically made a point of it being so. Now she was curious, but curiosity wasn’t going to get the rest of her packages delivered.

“But you’re definitely the correct recipient?”

“I imagine so! I don’t know any other Venti besides myself.”

“Great!” She said, giving a customer-friendly thumbs up. “Then, thanks for using Komaniya Express’ International service!”

“Thank you as well,” he said, strumming a quick, random chord to go with the words. “I have no idea what this is, but I’m glad it made its way to me, anyway.”

“Well, I’m thankful that you’re thankful,” Kirara said.

"Sorry I don't have anything to tip you with," he added, suddenly bashful. Then his eyes shot to the sky, and they went wide as dinner plates. “And look at that, it’s already midday, isn’t it!”

“Just about.”

Venti’s face went bug-eyed, and he sheepishly stared at the sun, as if he could coax it move in the opposite direction through willpower alone. “I promised someone I’d help them out right about now, so I really must be going. But!” He said, hopping off the tree roots, “if you come to Angel’s Share tonight, I’ll play any song you like.”

He patted dry leaves off his cape and straightened his lyre on a hook at his waist—near a vision, she noted. 

That promise, surprising even Kirara herself, sounded like a really nice reward, but just because she could take on international deliveries on occasion didn’t mean her other duties were entirely waived. 

She wasn’t meant to stay here. Kirara wasn’t meant to stay anywhere for long at all. So she said as much—even though his music truly was a beauty to listen to. If she could hear music like that whenever she wanted, she was unsure whether she’d never want to leave this place again or if she’d suddenly become inspired to take on a life of even more adventure. 

It was a real toss-up, and better not to tempt it.

"I've got places to be, I'm afraid. Though I appreciate the invitation," she said.

Kirara waved a fond farewell. No package was any more special than the rest, though she knew that some of them had a stronger impact than others, sometimes good, sometimes bad. She hoped this was the good kind. She had done her part, but it had been a group effort, really.

She stretched her arms over her head, basked in the warmth of the sun for a moment—the sun gave good hugs no matter what nation she was in—and she carried onward, the bard and his package behind her.

________________________________________

The package was weird, but out of his mind in record time because he was late!

Venti had specifically promised to help Marjorie tune some old lyres she’d recently acquired from a foreign antiques dealer, and it was not at all polite to blow her off just because he’d forgotten. And he had indeed forgotten. Entirely.

He should’ve thanked that kind courier for reminding him of the time—even if indirectly. When he got it in his mind to play an old tune he hadn’t touched in a while, he had a bad habit of getting stuck in it, detangling what parts he remembered no matter what that entailed. It could take a while to wholly reconstruct a song he hadn’t played in a couple centuries. Unlike nice, spirit-girl couriers, Marjorie wouldn’t be willing to tramp all around Mondstadt looking for him.

As it was, he had to use a bit of a boost from elemental energy to get back to town in a somewhat timely fashion, letting his wind glider catch a breeze that had been entirely self-made and a bit stronger than strictly possible for a mortal. Not that anyone was paying that close of attention. 

Marjorie was unsurprised when she saw him vaulting through the streets, hat clenched in his hand, hair so wind-strewn it must’ve been embarrassingly obvious what had happened. He decided to just go with it and pray to himself for clemency. 

“You’re late,” she chided when landed, barely catching himself from face-planting into stone.

“I know, I know! Sorry about that. We still have time, though, right?”

She narrowed her gaze. “I’d hope so. You better be fast at this. I have an appointment with someone else later.”

“I’m the fastest there is, don’t worry.”

Tuning lyres was, perhaps, one of the least intimidating tasks that existed in all of Teyvat, as he had more experience than literally anyone. He didn’t know of a single other immortal that spent as much time on music as him, and it did give him an unfair advantage, even if he’d rather claim it was his own personal skill deserving of the credit. 

He knew music very well, and tuning an instrument was merely reuniting it with music itself. He was good at getting these two things to see each other clearly, and that was it. That, and a lot of time spent working at it.

Marjorie led him into her backroom, a dark dusty place where she collected various wares that she either planned to sell in the front of the shop someday or that were simply waiting for the right customer. All sorts of artifacts and goblets and ancient scripts and monster parts lay in vaguely organized heaps. The lyres in question were all stacked together on the largest table, ready for tuning. 

“I have a tuning key,” Marjorie remarked, handing him a wooden piece with a hole cut out on one end. “It’s not very fancy, but it fits on the pegs.”

“That works for me. I’ve used worse.” Venti was literally used to turning the pegs by hand and using anemo as a crutch—which had varying levels of success. He couldn’t keep a hold of a small object like a tuning key over a long period of time. He lost stuff too frequently to even try anymore. 

He set the small package he was still toting around onto the table, exchanging it for the first of the vintage lyres, but before he could begin, Marjorie’s eyes landed on the small parcel.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Hmm?” Venti plucked a string. Sour note. “Oh, I don’t know. I must have a secret admirer,” he said, gigging. The topic dropped as Marjorie rolled her eyes at him, and he continued the task.

He plucked at each lyre, one string at a time, twisting them to just the right frequency as he went through the stack. There was a somewhat uncomfortable, crazed monotony in going down the table and doing them all one right after the other, but he really enjoyed that final moment when he could strum each and hear its unique sound. Lyres had fingerprints, a unique quality just like the shape of a snowflake, and they just needed a bit of attention to show off their one-of-a-kind qualities.

Marjorie didn’t seem as enamored with the discovery of each lyre’s personality as him, but she was obviously enjoying how much he was enjoying it, contently sitting off to the side and working on her ledgers. 

When Venti was just about done with the last, Marjorie went digging in her drawers. “How did you want to be compensated for this, exactly?”

“Hey,” Venti said, “I’ve already said I’d do it for free. Making the lyres easier to sell is enough. By doing this, more people may have the opportunity to experience music, and that’s what matters.”

She looked at him blankly, as if she didn’t care in the slightest for his crusade for the sake of music! (Though Venti supposed he might’ve laid it on a bit too thick to sound serious. He was being serious, though.)

“That’s good and all, but I can’t give you nothing. It’s against my morals. I may be a penny pincher, but good work deserves equal payment.”

Venti tapped a finger on his chin. “I suppose…I could keep one of the lyres?”

“That’s a start. What else?”

What else? Really? That was more than enough! They would clearly fetch a high price for any collector, and they were a good enough quality to sell as normal lyres, too, depending on how Marjorie wanted to advertise them. He was fairly sure she had gotten them for free, so no matter what price tag she put on them, she’d made money, which meant she shouldn’t be trying to give him one just for making this already profitable product slightly better. 

“I wanted to help,” he said, “no strings attached.” He made his best pouting face before brightening with a sly smirk. “Well, I suppose you could cover my tab at Angel’s Share!”

She raised an eyebrow at that. “Don’t push it, bard. I said equal. And I can tell you’re avoiding the point.”

“There’s just not a lot I want.” 

It wasn’t entirely untrue. Besides, he didn’t think it was fair to put a price on helping spread music in any of its forms to others. Sure, normally he’d accept compensation for any job he did considering how broke he was on an average day, but this was a different situation. It felt a little wrong. He had almost missed their agreed upon time slot for doing this, too!  

“I’ll just pay you in mora then,” Marjorie huffed. She turned her back to him so that all he could hear as the chink of coins landing in a pouch before she tied a string atop it tightly. “No peeking,” she said. “I won’t have you tell me how much this service is worth. Trust my professionalism.”

Aw. Venti had been planning to count them in front of her and try to change her mind that way. He accepted what was offered. Not entirely by choice.

At least he could tip any couriers he met in the near future. Though he should probably give it to Diluc. Celestia knows they hardly knew how to handle each other these days.  

Marjorie pushed him out of her shop, one lyre and a mora pouch heavier, before he could try refuting her decisions any more than he already had. 

…

The next step was, obviously, deciding who in Mondstadt should be treated to a free lyre.

Which is why when Venti spotted Kaeya lurking around the back alleys near Marjorie's shop, he didn’t hesitate to shout a greeting. It was fate, had to be! That’s what he’d tell himself at least while he decided how to go about doing this.

Venti did believe that having a plan for this operation would be for the best, but he was nothing if not an improvisational master; and if the world was going to put Kaeya right in front of him, he’d take the hint. 

It seemed too good an opportunity to pass up.

“Bard,” Kaeya said in response. He was looking chipper this evening. “I assumed you were already at the tavern. Apparently not. We can head there together, if you'd like.”

“Nah, not tonight.” Venti threw the pouch of mora, and Kaeya snatched it out of the air easily enough. “Though if you could give that to Diluc on my behalf, that’d be great.”

Kaeya shook the pouch, disbelieving even as the chink of coins sounded from where he stood. “Since when do you have spare mora?” He asked, teasing. “Did you steal it?”

“I’m an upstanding citizen, I’ll have you know," he boasted. "I helped Marjorie out with a little something, and she wouldn’t let me say no.”

Kaeya gave an unimpressed reaction. “I’m more surprised that you would try to say no in the first place.”

“It’s not like it’s hard.”

He scanned Venti with a discerning look and shrugged his shoulders. “If you say so. And I see that courier girl found you," he said, gesturing to the package. "That’s good…though I can’t help but be curious—who’s sending you things, exactly?”

Venti scrunched his nose curiously. “How did you know a courier was looking for me?” It was a sudden change of topic, meaning Kaeya actually wanted to know. All the more reason not to tell him! Just for the fun of it.

“I ran into her, of course," Kaeya explained. "Gave her directions. She seemed awfully lost.”

Oh, now that was a convenient good deed for Kaeya to have done. Very convenient, indeed.  

He had a good idea—one that Kaeya was not going to like at all. Which is exactly why it was such a good idea.

Venti smiled slyly. “Did you, now? Well, seeing as I’m in the mood to repay debts, I must do the same for you!” He grabbed the second lyre, the one Marjorie had foisted upon him and lifted it high and then panned it down slowly as if it were sacred.

“I don’t play,” Kaeya remarked, deadpan.

“Not yet, you don’t!”

“Venti. No.” He said it casually, but there was nothing but tiredness behind those eyes. Oh, how mischief made the heart sing!

“Then I insist you learn, seeing as you now own a lyre. They sure can be expensive, but there’s no reason not to learn anymore! Since the only reason you haven’t yet must’ve been because of the price.” Venti patted him on the back, nodding as he did so. It wasn’t polite to leave gifts to gather dust—everyone knew that—and they also knew just how persistent Venti could be when it came to music.

“That’s…Venti, please, this is entirely unnecessary. I have my hands full with my responsibilities to the knights.”

Venti wasn’t buying that for a second.

“But you helped that poor girl find me, even though I’m a horribly difficult person to track down. It’s only right that I offer you something in return.” He pushed the lyre all the way into Kaeya’s hands. Kaeya, for his part, was either entirely resigned to the entire thing or in the middle of some nefarious plotting, as he didn’t even try giving it back. Venti didn’t really care either way.

Everything Marjorie had forced upon him had become Kaeya’s responsibility, and that felt a lot better. Venti couldn’t help but giggle at the image of his friend, teeth clenched and wearing a fake smile, saddled with money that wasn’t his and a lyre he definitely didn’t want.

“It was nice running into you,” Venti said. “Really nice.” It was nicer for Venti than Kaeya, in any case. “When you get good enough at playing it, let me know, and we can perform a duet!”

This would result in something funny, he was sure of it. 

Kaeya finally came back to full awareness, eye widened. “Wait right there you damn bard,” he hissed.

And Venti? He did no such thing.

…

Once he was solidly out of sight, hopping through the streets in delight, he slowed down and looked up at the sky, finally catching a moment of calm. 

It had become late evening during the time he’d spent wandering about, and most shops were closed for the day. The tavern wasn’t of course, but he really didn’t want to be there when Kaeya tried to give Diluc money on Venti’s behalf. 

His initial plan had been to go to the tavern himself to do it, but he didn’t want to fight Diluc on whether the man needed to accept his money or not. It had gotten exceptionally awkward being the Archon of his favorite tavern owner. As it was, neither Venti nor Diluc knew how to deal with the other. Oh well, he figured it’d all right itself with time, especially when Kaeya was there to play the unknowing intermediary.  

For now, Venti would do this for the both of them and avoid Angel’s Share tonight while Kaeya took care of the whole thing, entirely oblivious about the underlying tension. Or…maybe he wasn’t entirely oblivious, but he was at least uncaring about it. Which was good enough!

As he considered starting up a nighttime serenade for the moon, he remembered with renewed clarity--the package! He had been carrying around for the better half of a day and had yet to open it. So Venti immediately plopped onto the ground, pressing his back against the fountain, package in hand.

“How could I forget about you?” He said, holding the little thing up to the moonlight.

It was about time he figured out who had bothered shipping something to him—and he was horrendously curious. It had been sent to the Cathedral. That wasn’t as inconspicuous of a choice as most would assume. 

Not many knew he was still around in Mondstadt, and even fewer knew to call him ‘Venti.’ Another Archon, perhaps? He wasn’t exactly on speaking terms with the lot of them, though—not because he was unfriendly, but mostly because they were territorial. (They could use an overdose of freedom once in a while.) So, the signs pointed to probably-not-an-Archon, but that wasn’t a very helpful limit. 

Out of all the mortals and immortals in Teyvat, he had only crossed six of them off his list. Yay. And really, this could’ve been Zhongli being his usual oblivious self and uninterested in traveling a short distance. Venti could see that happening. So he could cross out five and…a half. And that was still amusingly unhelpful.

He hoped the item itself would be forthcoming.

The tied twine and brown paper came off easily enough, stripped away to reveal a wooden box tinted a deep violet color. He couldn’t place anywhere that had purple wood, so he deemed the clue irrelevant. It must’ve been dyed that way.

The box had a metal clasp that was easily clicked open, and so Venti went for it. Boxes weren’t nearly as interesting as what was inside them. Though when he lifted the lid, he was treated to nothing but confusion, as he couldn’t see anything in the box. Just black. He was about to tilt it when the black interior shifted by itself, like a living block of nothingness.

That’s a peculiar effect. What was— 

As Venti sat crouched alone by the fountain, holding what appeared to be a small wooden box with nothing in it, the darkness came pouring forth—waves and rivulets of shadow matter. It flowed onto his arms and then around them, wrapping itself around him like a snake, a living tattoo, and Venti’s breath caught, a voiceless gasp jumping from his throat.

He jumped off the ground and shook his arms frantically, dropping the box as he did so, and it went clattering across the cobblestone. The shadows, however, they stayed put right where they were, elongating so that they could hold on tight, still uncontrollably gushing from the box, though going no further than a small radius from the epicenter, rising upward as if gravity was a negligible fact.

Venti began to act. Anemo gathered at his fingers as he spun it, whirlwinds working to throw the darkness off of him, to push it back in any way, but it stayed glued tight as if completely unaffected, no matter how fast he spun the wind. And he spun it fast, a veritable storm speed, thrashing and chaotic, almost too much so. It wasn’t working, so he just pushed the winds harder.

The shadows anchored him in place, their touch like the weight of iron.

His control shook just a fraction as a black inky curtain crowded out the stars, rising higher and higher, and the coiled wind raging against an invisible enemy brushed against his own fingertips. He hadn’t moved them out of the way in time—and the wind was fast enough to draw blood. And it did. Though that didn’t stop Venti from lashing out at it with even fiercer attempts to destabilize the darkness.

The red mixed with black, and the shadows seeped into every self-inflicted cut, a parasite seeking the heart. 

Venti collapsed, vaulting forward onto his hands, stones digging deep imprints into his palms. He suddenly felt…fuzzy. A dangerous kind of calm. And he might've heard a voice that could be Kaeya…but that didn't make sense. Venti had sent Kaeya to Angel’s Share…right?

The sensation had changed into something like floating, but specifically the way that floating felt before he had stuffed himself into a human-ish body, the way floating felt eons ago. The darkness was everywhere now. He realized, with only the vaguest dregs of awareness, that he hadn’t made any progress on cutting it away, though he would keep trying no matter what, as he was not helpless regardless of what anyone thought, even as the floating developed into a full-blown lack of sensation, numbness spreading like wildfire. But he could handle that just like he could handle anything because he wasn’t so weak that he couldn’t make it out of this strange situation alone, even if he had lost his gnosis. It wasn't that bad—

And he blacked out.

Chapter Text

See this—this right here—is exactly why Venti preferred to pretend away his own divinity. 

His godhood suited him better as a costume he could choose when and where to don, since otherwise, he’d have to deal with this sort of thing on a regular basis, and who had the time for that? 

When the shadows dissipated and his sight cleared, he just felt fuzzy all over and came to himself lying on the ground in a strange place, a dark land full of roiling violet fog and a night sky, somewhere that was nowhere yet full of somewhere, somehow. Hard to explain, really. 

As his senses fully kicked back in and the fuzziness began to recede, the space only sharpened with his further perception of it, and he became even more aware of the unfamiliarity of it all, of what unknowable thing had grabbed a hold of him and whisked him away to wherever this was. Beneath the fog, there was glossy obsidian reaching out in every direction, but it only seemed to lead further into total emptiness. When he got to his feet, he just stood there, struck silly by the complete absurdity of it all. 

Well. I’m certainly not in Mondstadt anymore. 

The shadows had done something he couldn't explain, and he'd been unable to stop it, he'd been a weak Archon, and normally he wouldn't care, but this time, there had been consequences. He started spinning in circles, even though doing so didn't give him any hint about his current location or what direction might lead him home.

Opening the box hadn’t been the smartest thing he’d ever done, but what else had he been supposed to do with it? Boxes were meant to be opened, obviously. And maybe he was just feeling salty because he didn’t want to have to start being cautious like back in the old days. It wasn’t pleasant to be on high alert all the time. There had been a fact that anyone around during the Archon war had known: there was never only one enemy out to get you. Just because one party might be satisfied at any given moment didn’t mean they all were. And Venti always had more to give to those that hated him. A lot of people hated him. For some reason.

Mystery deliveries weren’t safe in the days of the Archon war. 

Venti really, truly, did know that! He had just assumed everyone in the world had collectively agreed that those days were long gone. 

Apparently that’d been naive or just hopelessly optimistic of him. He just hoped he’d been the only one caught in the trap, as this was, without a doubt, a trap. Had he been teleported or merely sucked away into a miniature world like a teapot? He was personally leaning toward the second option, but maybe both were wrong. A teapot had never felt this…ominous.

He reached for the wind on instinct, hoping to tie down a location for his current predicament, or at least a direction for getting back home—but he found nothing at all on the other end of his summons. His fingers remained lifted, outstretched into complete stillness. No wind.  

His smile curdled. Now that was a little worrying. 

The last time he’d been unable to call upon the wind as he pleased, he’d been nothing more than a little wind spirit who knew nothing and had about as much power as a strong gust.

Weakness had been an okay look on him back then—until he’d been snatched up and deemed a God, that is. And now it was plain inconvenient. He’d have to explore on foot, try to get a sense of direction, at least. 

But as he took a step forward into the empty night land, the ground began bubbling.

He cringed backward, as the land suddenly refused to sit still. The facade of solidity was not long-lived, and the ground of black, shiny rock turned into something akin to an alchemy brew, thick gloopy tar that tossed him about while something was forming below the surface.

Venti tried to fly upward, but no wind meant no lift, and he ended up stumbling, barely out of the way before a building broke through the bubbling mass, shooting upward like a firework. And many, many followed, a dark garden growing a city. He tried again to fly away, but it worked just as well as the first time—that is to say it didn’t. And as if to challenge the idea that this couldn’t get worse, the buildings sharpened into a peculiar style that caught his eye in an impossible way.

They had a unique design, the kind no one mimicked on accident. A symbol was carved at the top of an archway that had sprouted up to the left of him, a four way cross that split into two curls at the end of each bar, a perfect cercelée. 

There was only one place he knew of that used that symbol. The structures continued forming around him, completely uncaring about the mental crisis that had smashed into place, manufactured in that same trademark style, trapping him in a maze of which he knew every twist and turn and every dead end. In fact, realistically speaking, it was hardly a maze at all—not to him, anyway. 

To others, yes, but never him.

“Really?” He asked into the air as the spontaneous self-building city finished its construction. After a second, once he was convinced that the tumultuous event had finished for real, he relaxed, though only on the outside.

He was still half breathless, half exasperated, and he didn’t care to spend time entangling which feeling was currently coming out on top. 

“This seems in bad taste, you know.”

And he meant it. Because Old Mondstadt didn’t belong here. It didn’t belong anywhere. 

It was a relic of an age long past, one he wasn’t fond of revisiting. it’s not that he didn’t love it…just that it was gone. Time changes all, and it was hard enough to remember that in normal everyday life, nevermind the incredibly unique situation of getting trapped inside a physical replica of his first home. 

It had constructed itself with far too much purpose to have been unintentional or accidental. As he had said already, in bad taste. Someone was playing a very nasty trick on him, though knowing that didn’t dampen the shock like he wished it would.

The smooth obsidian texture of the newly formed buildings had not a single crack, just like the arches of old that graced the first version of Old Mondstadt, before everything had gone so wrong and marvels had been reduced to rubble. Which is partly why this…couldn’t be real. He couldn’t tell if that realization made him feel better or far, far worse . He was okay with being messed with on occasion, but not with being tormented, and he was pretty sure this counted as the latter. 

As he spun in place, he confirmed that the area was entirely void of company, and he wondered how long that would last. Venti highly doubted he was truly alone here. Any good captor loved to spy on their catch. 

“What?” He called with a tone of petulance he’d perfected over the years. “You’ll go through the effort of reconstructing my first home for me, but won’t introduce yourself? I promise I’m much more fun face-to-face!”

He stayed perfectly still for a moment, waiting for an echo of a response, but received none. Darn. He had been hoping that whoever had been behind this was fond of egomaniac presentations. They had, after all, managed all of this. Normally that indicated a love to gloat.

Though perhaps the culprit wasn’t presenting themself because this place wasn’t as strong as it appeared. 

Venti bet there were some super prominent weaknesses here somewhere. There was no way someone could recreate an entire city of a bygone era without sacrificing structural integrity somewhere. This really couldn't have been easy, not by a long shot.

Which begged the question…

What was the point of all this?

It was one thing to trap him, but it was a completely other thing to bother to put him in Old Mondstadt, of all places. Especially since the ghost buildings of his homeland—though unsettling—were merely that, ghostly. 

He leaned a hand on a nearby building, one he recognized as the house of a woman he once knew. It was solid and real, but it was just a mimicry of wood. There were no monsters in this space, and there were no people. 

It could be a ploy to get at Mondstadt while he was out of the picture, but he couldn't help but chortle at that idea. Mondstadt was strong without him because it always had been. If whoever was behind this thought that removing him was enough to topple his country, they’d have another thing coming. 

Though this was all rather embarrassing for him.

He closed his eyes and collapsed down, legs criss-crossed, pretending he was back in the home he had built with his own two hands. It was his favorite trick for crushing the fake—Angel’s share, and the knights, and the statue, the Cathedral, a stroll by the fountain on a perfect day with the smell of sticky honey roast and fresh cecelias, such a bright, soft, vivid moment, he could hold it in the palms of his hands and sing of it for eons to come—but when he opened his eyes again, he was still stuck. The city didn’t so much as sputter.

His mouth curved into a frown at that, and he crossed his arms.

“I can’t believe this,” he complained to no one. “Me! Getting trapped! What a contradictory concept.” 

Though he tried his best to poke fun at the idea, he couldn’t stop the prickling at the back of his neck, and he pursed his lips through the waves of oncoming uncertainty. He didn’t like to be here, blind. So maybe he should—

His thoughts spinning in his self-perpetuated silence halted as he heard a note from a lyre, far off in the distance, coming from the direction toward the city’s center. His mouth dropped open at what he could only describe as the first hint of horror. The first time this space indicated that someone else was in here with him, and it was this? He didn’t know if he should laugh or cry.

That’s just mean. 

He was pouting now, but who could blame him?

He recognized what song exactly was being played and who was playing it. Each lyre had a sound after all, fingerprints, and that one was unmistakable—its player even more so.

“That decides it, then,” he said, standing back up and brushing nonexistent dust from his clothes. 

He was walking briskly before he could concoct a better plan. Because Venti needed to move, to get far, far away from that. Of all things, he would not let himself fall to mind games. Especially not incredibly mean ones.

Because seriously, of all people to mimic, this was not one Venti was okay with facing. 

So he ran away, as was his right. Whoever was behind the curtain could trap him, but they certainly couldn’t pin him down. This place was nothing more than a good forgery, he told himself, even if it was a really really good one.

More perfect details presented themselves when he looked, accurate cracks in the walls, words on signage. Little things. Little things he remembered as well as any lyric or note from any one-of-a-kind lyre. Which meant he had an advantage, here.

That familiar song, one of the first ever taught to him, rang true from that same origin point, but closer, now, but Venti kept his back to it resolutely, feeling much like a little kid who got caught stealing from the candy jar. He would not be tempted further into this fake city and its make-believe wonders, and he wouldn’t pretend that what once was might be back from the dead. 

Not even his most precious friend.

Just because he had been successfully placed here didn’t mean he had to make it easy for his enemy to pull him apart and scratch at his soul with the memory of people long gone.

The perfection of this place was a benefit to him, so he’d use it. If the one behind this wanted to play tag, then he would oblige.

Since Old Mondstadt had been replicated perfectly, that meant there was a limit to the sprawl. Sooner or later, he would reach the edge, and even after all these years, he remembered the way out. He had longed to lead his family out for so long, it would be silly to assume he had forgotten that exact path that he had daydreamed about becoming a reality for his friends week after week as the war had raged on.

Decarabian’s huge tower loomed behind him, and Venti merely gave it a passing glance as he continued down streets that promised escape.

It was nothing more than a ghost town, and that in itself was nothing to be afraid of. Though that most recognizable song kept ringing out through the streets, played in such a way that Venti could not deny whose mirage was supposedly on the other end.

Don’t listen. He’s not real.

Immortals never stayed perfectly sane forever, and Venti had done remarkably well over the centuries, considering. He didn’t want his track record challenged by old devastation. Not like this. 

Though maybe that was the point, huh?

Venti whistled his own invented tune as he went along, drowning out the other. This particular song of his had been made up in Diluc’s tavern, a place that didn’t exist here, a place he would be happy to get back to anytime now, a place where he was welcome and known, where his people were. 

This fake city had nothing on his Mondstadt!

The edge was ahead. 

But at the last row of buildings, right when he was about to break out, one more step away from the front gate, a storm whipped up so suddenly and with such ferocity that he took a step back as his hat went flying off into the ether. It wasn’t a real hat, but he mourned the loss anyway. 

An intense storm had calcified instantaneously right on the border, reaching at least twenty feet tall and getting taller by the second, a dome reaching its fingers to meet at the top of the Tower. 

It was made of wind, and it was made of friends. When he touched it, it was like trying to push aside a mountain.

Oh. Decarabian’s storm wall. He cringed, chastising yet another instance of a casual lack of foresight. I forgot about…that. How could I forget about that? Stupid.

Other spirits Venti forever remembered the names of swirled, locked in the perpetual storm wall, keeping those inside to the city boundaries and keeping out any that exist beyond said boundary, even though the only one in need of herding at present was Venti himself. (Well, him and one other.) Under Decarabian’s orders, they swarmed. They could not escape, not even in a city constructed of nothing more than memory lacking its tyrant king.

That familiar song was getting louder now, getting even closer. And Venti could no longer run further due to that same barrier that had once been his single greatest conflict when he was naught but a young spirit.

He fiddled with his fingers, intertwining and then shifting them, as if playing an invisible instrument. When the one who was playing that song reached him, he wasn’t sure what he’d do, but he bet it wouldn’t be smart. And it wouldn’t be helpful. 

An enemy’s trap did not hold kind ghosts. This would become a difficult concept to understand if he were made to face one.

Venti…wanted to leave now. Like, he really wanted to leave this all behind, like he had already done once before. 

He pushed against the storm wall, but it still didn’t budge, not even against his command over anemo and all that entailed. Archon of wind as he was, there was still no wind here, none that he could call upon. 

Though he tried and tried and kept trying, folding his fingers through the wall as if kneading silk, nothing came of it, and that song was inching ever so closer, a melody that once upon a time was his favorite thing in all the world. 

He could keep running. That’s what he should do, even if he longed to hear that song just a little bit clearer, as if he could bring the dead back for another round of laughs and casual conversation about anything—and there he was, being silly again. 

Stupid box of shadows.

This whole thing was just a careless mistake on my part. That’s all. So just give way, already!

He felt a jolt to his shoulders, but there was nothing he had done that might have caused it. He blinked, light beginning to block his vision in little pinpricks—and suddenly he was being whisked away from these hostile, unforgiving lands of night and empty memories and notes of lost songs, the bleak world fading into stripes and tangles of white. 

Those days when he was a simple spirit, living among the elements and pure, unfiltered existence melted away, though to his knowledge, there was no reason behind it. He was glad for it, in any case.

The city vanished under the fact of light.

He opened his eyes—to a very irate, and familiar, face staring down at him .

…

When Venti realized he was back to his Mondstadt, truly conscious and not in another illusion, the wind an ever-present friend once again, Kaeya was holding him by the shoulders and knocking him around like a cocktail shaker. Apparently, home hadn't been all that far away.

A…dream? Or, no. That was wishful thinking. He bit his lip. Not exactly a dream, just something close to one.

He was glad to have figured out how he had escaped, but he wasn’t particularly pleased about it. Outside influence was not his favorite way to get out of a trap, nevermind one he had totally sprung himself…but it was better than the alternative by a long shot.

“Well, hello to you too, Kaeya,” he said. Mondstadt was in one piece, as if it all had been one big, bad nightmare. He didn’t know how to feel about that. He should be relieved, but he just felt cold.

Kaeya let go of his shoulders once he realized Venti was awake, staring down at him as if he had broken a law or something, angrier than he generally pretended to be. Venti frowned at him, and wondered.

“I’m awake, right? And real? We’re both awake and real?” Spaces contained within the mind were nothing short of highly concerning, and asking another conscious person was the only way he could think to ensure he’d actually gotten out, especially since it was likely that Kaeya’s interference had, indeed, been what snapped him out. 

Venti had already assumed that accomplishing what the perpetrator had with the fake city would mean that it had some significant weaknesses, and this was one hell of a weakness. He’d have to do something nice for Kaeya to thank him at some point.

Kaeya merely glared harder. It felt less like Kaeya and more like an act—but then again, maybe Venti was reading him incorrectly. It was hard to understand Kaeya essentially always.

“What’s wrong?” Venti asked. When no response came immediately, he took to waving a hand in front of his friend’s face. 

“You’re not drunk,” Kaeya stated, still watching like a hawk. He made no motion to move from where he crouched, as if on vigil. 

“No?” Venti said in response, attempting to push himself off the ground. This ended up being a  somewhat terrible idea. As his head lifted higher, the entire world began spinning, and well, it was pretty obvious that he should probably just stay sitting here for a moment. Kaeya was still staring at him, judging with that judge-y look and judge-y crossed arms.

“Please don’t say you’re sick,” Kaeya said slowly.

“I’m not sick.” Venti blinked. “What makes you think that?”

“You were collapsed on the ground.” His expression was frank and yet exhibiting a remarkable amount of emotion all the while. “I’m trying to be sensitive about this, but there aren’t many reasons I can think of regarding how your predicament came about that wouldn’t justify concern.” Kaeya tapped his fingers rapidly. “So? How are you going to explain this one?”

I’m not.

Venti stared up at the sky, slowly coming to terms with the difficulty of worming his way out of this. He could safely say that were he to find one of his friends passed out on the ground, he wouldn’t be casual or dismissive about it, so his options were slim. (He was really hoping he could somehow get Kaeya to be casual and dismissive about it anyway.)

“Everything’s fine!” That, evidently, didn’t do a single thing to change his friend’s mind. Ugh, worry— now that was something Venti hated having to deal with, especially when there was no real reason to think that way. “Who doesn’t like to sleep on the ground occasionally?”

“The cold, hard, stone ground?”

“Ahem.” Venti didn’t have any better ideas in stock at the moment, which would’ve been funny if not entirely inconvenient. He responded with haste, “Yeeesss?”

“Not me, that’s for sure.”

“Well, you’re really missing out.” Venti took stock of his stuff, vision still in place, lyre still at his hip, and hat on his head. He spotted the wooden box a couple feet away, askew and open, cast in shadow, but no longer holding shadows. This time, it was empty. No darkness, just violet wood at the bottom. A very familiar shade of violet, like that of a certain unreal type of dream fog…

Oh. There was an intriguing possibility.

It was Abyssal in nature, wasn’t it?

Yeah, he should’ve figured it out sooner, it’s just he had just thought they’d have left Mondstadt alone after the Dvalin incident. Apparently not. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t have experience with Abyss-tainted wood! Or maybe it was actual wood from the Abyss? Could trees even grow there? He supposed it was irrelevant. He was intending to move over there to pick it up, but all that happened when he tried to stand is his legs gave way to shakiness, and embarrassingly, Kaeya had to grab a hold of one of his arms to keep him from crashing hard.

Bad idea. Let’s give it another minute.

Kaeya kept a sturdy hold on him, but did not say anything, just sighed deeply.

“Sorry about that!” Venti said cheerfully. “I’m a bit shaky, but it’ll go away.”

“It’ll go away? You can’t be serious.”

“Why wouldn’t I be serious?” He observed Kaeya’s face with increased scrutiny. “You know, you seem on edge. Might want to take tomorrow off.”

It was, honestly speaking, an understatement. Kaeya looked to be about one bad joke away from dropping Venti where he was awkwardly slouched against his side.

“You’re really not helping your case,” Kaeya said.

“I’m just. Who knows, tired or something. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Uh huh. Sure,” he responded. Thankfully, he didn’t pull away.

Now that Venti had found himself back in his Mondstadt, he could say with absolute certainty that it was not merely tiredness. But Kaeya didn’t need to know that. He seemed to, in part, already know anyway.

It was certainly poison. Abyssal poison. The kind that corrupted beings made of mostly elemental energy…which was not a good thing considering what exactly Venti was, but he also wasn’t an average elemental being. He was an Archon. Even without a gnosis, that fact had to count for something.

As a brief little test, he tried to send a small puff of anemo at a hanging sign—tried being the key word. The second his mini whirlwind made contact with the sign, it splintered. Into many, many pieces, a starburst of wooden bits. Foreign energy came in all types and flavors, and this one was doing a fine job at completely scrambling his own. He had no false belief that that was anything less than rather bad. He wondered how much it would cost to reimburse that sign.

Kaeya stared at the carnage. “What the fuck was that for?”

“I’ve hated that sign for years,” he said, nodding. “It was badly built.”

Kaeya squinted his eyes, looking from the splinters to Venti as if both of them made no sense whatsoever. “I hope you understand that I can’t begin to comprehend you some days. I won’t tattletale, but as a knight, I’ve got to recommend that you don’t break random signs for fun.”

Venti crossed his arms. 

“Why are you even out here?” He asked. It was a childish thing to pick at, but he had missed how Kaeya had ended up in a position to see him like this in the first place, and it was sort of starting to grate on him.

“You were being weird earlier, so I followed you. Were you intending to go unnoticed?” He asked.

“In what way was I being weird?” 

Petulance wasn’t always the best emotion to lean on, but it was internally satisfying.

“It’s Friday. You always go to the tavern on Fridays. Why would you not? I’ve known you for a long time. Where else do you have to be? I assumed you had some secret meeting to go to, which, might I add, is a perfectly reasonable assumption for me to make, and also a good reason to follow. I love a secret meeting.”

“Maybe I just didn’t feel like going to the tavern today.”

“Well, we’re going there now, so I’d say your feelings on the matter are invalid.” Kaeya maneuvered Venti onto his back before any complaints could be made.

“Wait, wait, why are we going to the tavern?” He tried to bend away to little effect, still at the mercy of Kaeya, who had a tight hold on his knees. Venti would’ve struggled more…but that seemed a bad decision, all things considered. The ground was rather hard. It was in times like these that Venti wished he had decided to occupy a larger body. It’d make him less easy to throw and carry around, that’s for sure.

Kaeya looked back at him in blatant disbelief. “Because you’re hanging off of me and unable to walk? The tavern is closer than my apartment. Where else would you like me to take you?”

“Uhm. Nowhere? I’m perfectly clear-minded and everything. Just leave me on the ground! It’ll work out!” He kicked his feet, but this did not cause Kaeya to drop him.

“Right.” Kaeya just continued hauling him along. “Sorry to disappoint, but the thing is that I don’t believe you.”

Venti poked Kaeya in the face, but he didn’t even flinch.

“Don’t take me to the tavern, come on! Kaeya.”

And then Venti was pinching his kidnapper's cheeks, but that wasn’t doing anything either.

“It could be a lot worse,” Kaeya said, voice muffled. “I could be taking you to the Cathedral where they actually have healers—which is what I would be doing if it weren’t so late, far, and separated from us by many many stairs.”

That would be worse. Barbara could get feisty. But still.

“Kaeya, please don’t.” 

No matter how he argued it, all of these options were terrible! If he went to the tavern, Diluc would realize something was wrong, and he knew more than he should about Venti and his place in Mondstadt, and so then he’d tell Jean, and everything would become a fine disaster, wouldn’t it? 

“But I owe you, don’t I?” Kaeya said coyly. “For that beautiful lyre. Isn’t that how this works?”

Kaeya just had to play dirty. His ability to use every single trick brandished against him in return was usually a source of hilarity, but not so much in this case.

“How about this,” Venti said. “I’ll take the lyre back, and we’ll forget about this whole thing! I’ll owe you, then.” He let his head drop onto Kaeya’s shoulder. “I thought you loved when people owe you.”

“If you try to bribe me to stop caring, I swear to every Archon on Teyvat, I will simply care twice as hard. And I’ll be really annoying about it. Trust me, you don’t want that.”

“That’s not—wait, what?” Venti paused. “I don’t want you to not care.”

“You sure?”

“Yes!”

“Then,” Kaeya began. He turned his head and Venti caught a glimpse of a sly half-smile, one that said he’d already won a game that they had never agreed upon playing. “What would you like me to do, knowing that I’m not going to abandon you while you are literally unable to stand ? I know I cultivate a wonderfully harsh personality, but do you think me such an awful person?”

Venti was not letting Kaeya involve anyone else in this. It was bad enough with just Kaeya. Venti could still play coy and avoid it all until he found a chance to run away. He was very good at running. Or well, he was good at using the wind to propel himself far faster than running would allow and escaping at semi-dangerous speeds. Same thing, really.

“…Can I just crash at your apartment for the night?”

“Oh? So you want to extort me now, I see how it is.”

“It’s not like you don’t let people crash there sometimes,” he huffed. “I know you do. And it’s not even that much further.”

Kaeya brought the hand that wasn’t supporting Venti to his face and rubbed his brow. “You just love to make everything difficult.” He exhaled very intentionally. “Whatever.”

“Is that a yes?”

“It’s not a no.”

Venti smiled, letting the relief take root. “Alright then.”

“We’ll see, bard. If whatever the hell is going on gets worse, you better believe there isn’t a single damn thing you could do to keep me from telling someone else. Keep your secrets for all I care, but the second that I have reason to believe they put you in danger, I’m not idly standing by. Call it my integrity as a knight if you’d like—doesn’t matter to me.”

Venti didn’t even bother arguing. Kaeya expressing feelings was an uncomfortable enough irregularity that Venti kept quiet the entire walk there, lest he risk seeing more sides of Kaeya that he ubiquitously did not have the energy to consider.

…

When they got to the apartment, Kaeya threw the door open and casually deposited Venti on the couch haphazardly. 

“Sleep,” he said. “Scream if you start dying.”

“Alright!” Venti gave a wave, one that went entirely unnoticed as his benefactor stole through a doorway deeper into the apartment.

He did appreciate the thoughtfulness of the suggestion of sleep. But he had already decided he wasn’t going to do that tonight.

He had been ignoring a lot of what Kaeya suggested he do in the last 24 hours now that he thought about it. In his defense, he had been struck by something that had effectively trapped him in some strange mental space, something which he didn’t understand. Sleeping sounded…risky. Maybe it wasn’t. But he’d rather not test it while in Kaeya’s house.

So he did a lot of thinking about sleeping. But no actual sleeping. He could always catch up on it later, he supposed.

Venti had gotten involved in all sorts of dangerous things and had survived them before. This was hardly the worst situation he’d been stuck with in the last several centuries. He had survived the Archon war of all things! (Realistically, the statistical chance of just that was ridiculously low.)

Poison, even Abyssal poison, he could cleanse easily enough, just as he’d done earlier during the Dvalin fiasco through the Windrise tree. Of course he hadn’t been the direct target of it at the time, but still.

With that set, instead of sleeping, he began mentally compiling the songs once taught to him by Carmen, deciding on an order he would play them in tomorrow. He lay still with these thoughts for a good long while. 

It would all be fine as long as he could stay clear-headed. Though even when said to himself alone, the idea seemed a comfort rather than a definite fact.

All through the night, he continuously heard the faintest sound of lightning and thunder. But when he checked, there had been nothing there but a clear sky and a smattering of stars. He was really in his own head, huh?

In the morning, he examined his own energy and figured that he was in control well enough to not go sprawling across the floor the next time he tried to walk from point A to B. Just because Venti often was a drunk old man didn’t mean he wanted to feel like one.

He was, however, without a doubt still poisoned. It wasn’t going to go away on its own, but he had already assumed as such anyway. He took better stock of the foreign energy that clenched around his core, his ability to keep it out waning like a flickering candle. Whatever the Abyss had gotten him with wasn’t entirely inert, but it didn’t seem to be bad, just destabling. 

Venti silently took note that he needed to make sure to visit the Windrise tree as he had initially considered. Probably soon. Like today, soon. But that was hardly his priority, the silly sentimentalist that he was. He wasn’t tired, and he was an immortal who had just spent an unfortunate amount of time facing what had been the stage for his worst mistakes and where he’d met his first family, who were all currently dead. Depressing.

He had time. And he had gotten his song list figured out last night, the songs closest to his dearest old friend that he needed to hear.

Kaeya wouldn’t like him skipping out without saying goodbye, but since when did Venti let himself be tied down just because of something as simple as misplaced worry? Literally never! And that hadn’t ever gone horribly for him. Yet.

When it was so early that the sun was only half-risen, he snuck out of the window, long before Kaeya would wake up. 

He had stuff to do. Like chase away old dreams from where they lingered uninvited with some good old-fashioned music.

________________________________________

Albedo took notice when the land he resided in began to shrink beneath the touch of the unwelcome. 

There were little sensitivities he was skilled at picking up on due to the lack of flesh and blood and the presence of a far deeper magic in his very being, and so he took it upon himself most of the time to act when he felt that something was wrong.

Wrongness came in all sorts of shapes and sizes. And he thought it obvious that wrongness was always trailed by tragedy in some form, and he was dedicated to halting that at the gate. This morning, he had awoken to a bone-deep certainty that something had invaded the boundaries of the land he claimed under his watchful eye, and so he was ready to pry into whatever he might discover upon further investigation. 

As he walked purposefully around the hills of Mondstadt, not more than twenty minutes out of the city proper, he drank in the air, and it tasted of rot. Subtle, certainly, but there. This was categorically a discovery worth concern, especially since he hardly doubted many others would have the sensitivity to notice. It was a small thing on the wind, a darkness he couldn’t accurately trace.

He scribbled notes on his clipboard about pressure, humidity, and wind speed. Little things. Because when he became certain that wrongness was permeating his city uninvited, he believed it only logical to note every single variable he had within his grasp. This, he could do.

Sucrose joined him in the lab after he returned to the Knight’s Headquarters, his data rather unhelpful. He greeted her casually, intending to hole up somewhere quiet to study his findings, but it became immediately apparent that she was agitated. Albedo dropped his current task to focus on her completely, spotting a strange object in her grasp. A small box.

“What did you find?” He asked.

“I’m not sure,” she said, her voice a quiet, jittery thing. “I’ve been trying to figure it out, but the thing is…I can’t place the wood or design.”

Albedo’s attention was caught at once. 

“Really?”

“Yes. I thought maybe you might have an idea.”

Sucrose was a truly prodigal alchemist, and though she had a tendency to underplay her own accomplishments, an inability to identify something signaled the suspicious nature of the object in question, and not her capabilities at all.

“Tell me everything.” he requested firmly. She nodded instantly.

“Of course!” Sucrose said. “So I was up early this morning, and I went down to the market to buy ingredients before it became too busy, and I was hoping to acquire some rarer materials too. But Timaeus wasn’t there yet, so I was waiting nearby, pretending to be busy so no one would bother me—and I’m not making sense, am I?”

“You are doing a fine job,” he said, sitting so still, he could’ve passed as a statue. “Please continue.”

Though her brow was furrowed and her eyes darting around wildly, she shook out the hesitation and carried on, “That’s when I saw it—a small wooden, purple box sitting in the shadows. It seemed knocked aside and abandoned. And…I wouldn’t have picked it up, except I was so curious because I didn’t recognize the type of wood…” she trailed off.

That was an awfully distracting idea. As a bio-alchemist, identifying materials was child’s play for her. Albedo knew this with an assuredness that had him restless, though he kept his emotions out of it.

“It was just lying there,” she said, “So I doubted anyone was coming back for it.”

Albedo let his attention switch to the box. And though he had thought himself calm today, he certainly wasn’t any more. And he wasn’t nearly as thrilled about the prospect of this new research subject as Sucrose seemed. 

Because it was familiar.

The purple had a unique sheen to it, somewhat iridescent and murky at the same time.  

If he had been alone, he likely would’ve acted out in rashness and desperate, frantic chaos, as he was 96.7% sure that he knew where it had come from. He did not let it show. 

“May I have the box, Sucrose?” He asked as calmly as he could manage. 

The more she poked and prodded it, the tighter his muscles tightened like coils, and the more his mind wondered just how similar her action might be to poking a live bomb. He’d feel better about Sucrose handling one of Klee’s explosives over the box any day, as he knew better than most the unpredictability of Khaenri’ahn constructs. Though it seemed inert, he couldn’t be certain.

“O-oh! Of course!” She gave it to him without a second thought. Albedo held his tongue and every part of him that desired to inform her about how potentially volatile the object she was holding could be.

Random panic served no one, and if he was lucky, the box was just a wooden box. So he said nothing, but took it from her as if he’d been handed an unstable concoction of ingredients. Nothing less would do. 

“And you say you found it in the market?” Albedo asked.

She nodded. “Near the fountain. It was strange though, all covered in shadows even though it was really bright out.” Sucrose seemed very excited about the entire matter, practically buzzing out of her skin. She wasn’t able to hold her tongue for long, even though she was clearly trying to give him a moment to interject. He didn’t mind.

“Where did it come from, do you think?” Sucrose asked, eyes aglow. 

“Uncertain.” Even a 3.3% chance that he was wrong meant that he would not disclose his hypothesis, especially because of the risks should he be right. “More data is needed to reach a conclusion.” 

Albedo took the wooden box gently and rotated it in the light, but there was no special angle that removed the details that were leading him to that same guess he’d already considered, the one that was more intuition than knowledge-based. It was an uncomfortable thing to be aware of. He dug a fingernail into the side, and there was no give. It was a very hard type of wood, and it was damning enough in every other aspect that he was beyond thankful it had ended up in his hands, even if luck had had a potent part to play in the matter.

It was times like these that he thanked the fact that Sucrose had entered his life.

“I thought it might be dangerous, which is why I thought to ask,” she said, watching carefully as he handled it. 

“And why did you think that?”

She fidgeted in place as if embarrassed, clasping her hands behind her. “I know that…this isn’t a scientific thing to say, but…it gives me a bad feeling.”

The axe had fallen swiftly, indeed.

“What do you think?” she continued. “Because I mean, if it is, should you really be handling it like that?” Her fingers twitched toward it before her cheeks broke out into a fantastic blush. “But I don’t mean to say what you can and cannot do with it of course, I’m just. Is it dangerous?”

Albedo’s lips thinned into a narrow line. “You made a good decision, and I am glad you were there.”

“Oh, well. I didn’t do anything special.” The blush persisted.

“You noticed an unusual, potentially dangerous, wooden box in a public space and decided to act on this realization rather than walk away. It’s not as easy to do as one might think.”

Despite Albedo’s personal research regarding Dragonspine minerals and the personal inquiry he had begun this morning, the box took priority, and he needed to keep it out of reach of those that might recognize ancient, forbidden sigils.

Though Sucrose hadn’t said anything about it, Albedo had noticed rather immediately that the very bottom of the box had a sigil he knew very, very well, as he had become acquainted with it while working with his master on her research. She was quite fond of it, and that same four-pointed star had been emblazoned on his own body since the beginning.

It was safe to say that he could not mistake that symbol for anything. 

The star indicated a situation worthy of caution due to its presence alone. It could be a forgery—hence that 3.3% chance he was wrong—but it was small.

No one else knew how dangerous it could be, so it was necessary that he be confident in his ability to keep the whole matter quiet until he was able to untangle what its presence meant for Mondstadt. His coworkers didn’t know the Abyss like Albedo did. He would not hold it against them. But he wouldn’t demand or request their help, either.

Sucrose wanted to help. He could see it in her eyes, but he didn’t think it would be wise to let her. Just in case it was something…darker than he was expecting.

Though thinking about it critically, he should make sure to ask Kaeya, though that was not a conversation he would look forward to.

“I’ll figure it out and let you know if I need help,” he said, because he wouldn’t risk her. “I doubt it’s dangerous, but I’d rather hold onto it just in case.”

“Are you sure? I can stay and help out.”

“You have other tasks to attend to, Sucrose. I assure you I can manage just fine on my own.”

She shrunk back. “Alright. I’ll see you at lunch, then?”

“We’ll see.”

She closed the door on her way out, and the solitude took on a unique air of foreboding. No matter. Albedo had many tests to run. A visible diagnosis was an immediate necessity, for one.

He brought it very close to his eyes. A microscope might be better here, but his eyes were a marvel in their own right, and he found that his naked eye could sometimes see that which turned invisible on the other side of the most transparent glass. 

Barriers of all kinds tended to halt the true act of seeing. So he looked closer with these eyes of his, gifted to him by the most miraculous individual he had ever had the pleasure of knowing. If he was to fail, it would not be because of the functionality of his eyes.

And well, that was peculiar, wasn’t it? Shadows clung to the sides of the box, like glue. No matter how he rotated it, the shadows remained, just little ones, forgotten cobwebs of sinewy black shadow. 

Yes, he decided, this was not something he was going to leave in the hands of anyone but himself.

________________________________________

“What is this?” Diluc asked, expression so blank, it was comical.

Kaeya, for his own part, thought that was a stupid question considering it was very obviously a pouch of mora. 

When it had landed on the table sitting an equal distance from the both of them, it had made that telltale clinking sound, and it’s not like Kaeya had a habit of giving Diluc strange pouches with cursed or nefarious contents. What did Diluc think it was? He was almost inclined to ask. Almost.

“It’s from Venti,” Kaeya said. “Turns out he actually does remember that he owes you mora. Though I doubt this is enough to resolve his entire debt.”

Diluc rolled his eyes. “Of course he remembers. That was never in question.”

Oh, Diluc and his needless confrontation. When would he break that habit?

“Sure, but it’s not like he takes initiative often.” The tavern was still blessedly empty, which meant Kaeya was free to bother to his heart’s content—and to chase down some answers that were beginning to interest him. “Which is exactly why I’m awfully curious, have you been pestering him to pay you back?”

Kaeya had been thinking about that question since yesterday. He figured he might as well take it to the source and see what he could needle out of the plain slab of muscle that was Diluc and his inability to effectively scheme.

Diluc scoffed, the first clue. “Obviously not. I know better than to expend energy on the pointless.”

“Hmm.” Kaeya’s posture was nothing less than languidly disinterested, even though he felt anything but. “Any idea why’d he bother to start paying you back now, specifically?”

His brother stiffened. “No. Now if you’re done, get out.”

Well, well, well. What a reaction. You give away the game, Diluc.

Kaeya wasn’t one to see secrets where there weren’t any, but with such obvious obfuscation tactics…it was no longer a matter of if Diluc was trying to hide something or not, merely what it was that he was bothering to hide.

“Want to tell me more about why, exactly, you’re suddenly so obstinate?” He asked casually. Too casually, apparently, given how Diluc’s eyes darkened and he closed himself off, suddenly steely-eyed.

“You can stop trying so hard, Kaeya. There’s not always something to uncover. Sometimes it’s just not your business. Venti and I are on good terms, and that’s all you need to know.”

“Wow.”

“What?”

“Are you two fighting?” Kaeya hadn’t even considered that option before, but now, it was becoming a very real possibility in that part of his mind dedicated to untangling mysteries.

“I just said—”

“Oh, I know what you said. I heard exactly what was said.”

Diluc knocked against chairs in a hurried rush to the table where Kaeya had left the money. He grabbed it and made a show of it, too, waving it about with a flourish. “There. I’ve received it. Is that all you needed?”

“I suppose it’s not my business why you’re angry about this.” Kaeya shrugged. “Make sure to count it toward Venti’s tab. I just came here to give it to you on behalf of our resident alcoholic bard, but do note that I’m still ravenously curious as to why this is an issue to you.”

“It’s not.”

“Whatever you say, Diluc. I’ll see myself out. No need to prolong whatever this was.” He gave a little, jaunty wave. “Nice chat.”

Times with Diluc were always so gloriously, confusingly hilarious. Why Diluc felt the need to war with everyone over anything would likely never make any real sense. At least Kaeya had freed himself from the mora he’d accidentally acquired from the bard. He wasn’t a fan of (unintentionally) stealing from friends. 

He still had that lyre, but getting rid of that one would take far more effort than engaging his sort-of-brother in a prolonged verbal charade. He had a couple ideas for how to take care of it, but they needed some work. Eventually, though. 

Kaeya would make it such a grand affair that Venti would have no chance at shoveling it back into his hands ever again. It’d be spectacular. 

In the meantime, he had some catchup work to do. He wasn’t in a rush to explain to his coworkers that he’d been late because he had had to do a quick sweep of his apartment to make sure the bard wasn’t hiding somewhere, and then he had had to go bring money to his brother, the task he had abandoned last night in favor of stalking Venti. If he said any of that, his coworkers would think him a slacker. 

He did get assigned extra patrolling as penance for his little no-show act this morning. He didn’t even bother contesting it.

________________________________________

Venti had never considered the Barbatos statue as belonging to that particular Archon moniker of his. 

No, it had always been Carmen’s statue, at least to Venti. That had been the point all along, after all. Carmen had died for what he believed in, and Venti had sworn to protect that memory with all he had, keeping his friend alive through his own image, if nothing else.

This was a statue of his most beloved friend. And it was carved in his honor, for his ideals, and as a testament to his greatest wish come true.

When Venti played his ballads, especially the ones that were so old that to actually claim to remember their author would seem a grand joke, he tended to say that he knew not of their origin at all.

But he had a small collection of personal ballads written by Carmen that he didn’t share often, and each one was special and precious because Venti said so. He barely played them partly because he didn’t like to lie about their author when asked.

He began playing them all in a row now, standing in the Cathedral clearing below the statue, knowing that it might take a while, but it took his mind off of the hollow sound of a friend long dead. Venti shivered, remembering the haunting sounds of Carmen. He longed to hear more, and he didn’t, at the same time. It was a confusing state of internal affairs.

It had been unfair to trap him there, to put him right in the middle of what was his greatest regret. Though Venti had tried to forgive himself long ago, and he had made amends in the only ways he knew how. It still hurt, though. So, he’d do what he could and play some super old songs and remember.

Mondstadt was all Carmen had dreamed of, and that had to count for something.

A crowd gathered as he went through the entire repertoire of his friend’s hand-crafted ballads, tales of friendship and joy and hope and of futures that would never come to pass. They meant very little to a Mondstadt not caught in the hands of war, but they meant something to Venti, and that was enough.

He was doing alright, he thought, as he played through them methodically. One by one.

And then he reached toward his eyes after concluding one that was accompanied by memories of laughter and play, a game of tag under the moonlight. His vision was blurring, and then his fingers came back damp. He stared, like a kid caught in a daze after a hard knock to the head. 

I’m crying. Whoops. Well, that’s unintentional. And relatively unprompted, he noted to himself, even if such a distinction wasn’t going to do him much good.

It was entirely (mostly) random, spurned on by who knew what and…inconvenient. He hadn’t expected his own body to betray him like this, and now the group of people were watching him as if he had sprouted a second head, and as he concluded what sounded to most like a completely normal playful song, he realized just how ridiculous he must seem.

Making a fool of himself wasn’t on the plan for the day, but oh well! He couldn't very well regret it, now could he?

Venti didn’t want to admit that seeing Old Mondstadt once again had shaken him, but there was no denying what was being proven through his own inability to wrangle his feelings under control. Twas the folly of a bard.

Someone grabbed his hand when it fell from his lyre strings, and he whipped his head around to see Barbara, her mouth a thin line. 

“Come with me,” she said, all petite and quaint.

“Sure?” He said, more a question than anything. He let himself be pulled along into the Cathedral and then, oddly enough, even further into the backrooms, rubbing at his eyes to try and clear them up all the while.

He really hadn’t thought she would let him back in the Cathedral, nevermind bring him in herself, and he was unsure what exactly she expected of him. It was an alarmingly peculiar action for her to take, and he was still trying to figure out what her game was when she clicked the door closed behind the both of them, and he belatedly realized she intended to stay and talk, or something.

“Barbara?” He began, politely distanced, “Is everything alright? You’re not planning to take out your revenge on me behind closed doors, right?”

She turned to him in a sudden fit of frustration. “You’re one to talk! Are you alright?”

“Whatsoever gives you the impression that I am not?”

She bit her lip. “You were…crying.”

Venti’s cheeks flushed instantly. He hadn’t expected her to actually say it! Surely, he had thought, she’d make up some less-embarrassing reason for shuffling him through the Cathedral doors to take shelter from the crowd he had gathered himself.

“It was a sad song,” he said simply.

“I didn’t think so, though. It seemed…very lovely.”

“Oh, Barbara! You admit to enjoying my ballads? Why, I thought you were fed up with me! Had I known you were a fan, I would’ve taken requests. You’re my favorite Deaconess, you know.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “Of course I enjoy your songs. It’s the other things you do in your free time that I disapprove of. Like climbing the statue. And drunkenly bothering the nuns. And blasphemy.”

Finally, they had moved to more comfortable territory, and Venti relaxed, even if minutely. “I’m merely having fun. No one gets hurt at the end of the day.”

“It’s about the principle of the thing,” Barbara chastised. 

Venti hummed. “To each their own…”

“Just—ugh.” She shook her head. “Why are you playing songs that’ll make you sad in the first place?”

It wasn’t a complicated reason. He figured it was so obvious it wasn’t even worth being discussed. Wasn’t it obvious?” 

“How else will they be saved?” He asked, cheeky and with a flamboyant edge that normally had Barbara cringing at him. But this time she didn’t. “Most of what I sing has never been written down.”

“Then write it down?” She urged. “You don’t have to be alone in keeping Mondstadt’s music alive. This city is full of bards.”

He knew that. Of course he knew that. It’s just. Well. A lot of Carmen’s songs were a bit, how should he put it…personal? Something like that. Sure, he shared the ones about revolution, but the ones about playing in the snow and bad attempts at flirting with random people and about what Carmen thought the world beyond the storm wall might be like? The ones about how they’d met?

Venti was sort of regretting playing any of them publicly in the first place, but that’s just where the statue happened to be, so. It’s not like he’d made the choice entirely by himself on that matter. If he had known Barbara was going to express concern at the outcome, he definitely would’ve planned this differently. Done so under the cover of darkness or something equally pseudo-sinister.

But he also hadn’t expected that particular song to feel quite as melancholic as it had in the moment. Maybe he needed a little break from music. Just a little one.

“I’ll compile them all someday,” he said. “Later. It’ll happen. When I have more time.”

She looked at him curiously.

He had always intended to hand off all his musical knowledge to the people, but a long lifespan had given him no particular deadline for that. Sure, he would someday. Though he had no interest in specifying when that someday would arrive, least of all to Barbara considering the more personal events most of his favorite songs spoke of. If she knew that he could recite the entire history of their nation’s founding and numerous tales about the daily lives of the revolution members in song, she’d probably never let him go until he had it all written out for her. The church was sentimental about things like that, and in that one way, it did indeed remind him of himself. Then again, they probably wouldn’t believe that they were historically accurate in the first place.

“If you say so.” Barbara didn’t seem convinced, but she was too much of a soft soul to push it. “You can hide in here for now, but if you cause trouble, I will be removing you from the premises.”

“You wound me!” He said, clutching at his heart. “I’m Barbatos, you know. You can’t kick me out of my own church.”

Barbara moved in closer, shushing him with all the ferocity that a petite, zealous nun could muster. “I’m doing you a favor. At least follow the rules in return.”

He was suddenly stuck in place. He hadn’t planned what would happen should Barbara let him say stuff like that and then stay anyway. Normally his claims of Godhood angered her more than that. 

“That’s it?” He asked. “Follow the rules? You don’t want me to help clean the church or something?”

“Do you want to clean the church?” She asked, genuine. “You can if it would help. It would help us, and we will never turn down well-intentioned assistance. So if it would be well-intentioned, we’d appreciate it.”

“But aren’t I a menace? I still haven’t paid you back for breaking the Holy Lyre.” 

She gave him a look that very much screamed shush now before you dig yourself any deeper, and then she pulled herself into a very intentional, perfectly upright posture and cleared her throat.

“Perhaps you are,” she said. “But I forgive you.” She twirled an escaped lock of hair in monotonous circles. “Jean asked me to, so.”

“Jean did what now?” 

Why in Barbatos’ name would she do that?

“She said you were instrumental in solving the Stormterror attacks.” Ah. “If I couldn’t turn the other cheek for one of our city’s saviors just because of one broken artifact, what kind of Deaconess would I be?”

Venti kept very still. And quiet.

“Stay as long as you’d like, and we’ll be even. Or…something close to it,” she said, turning to leave.

Venti didn’t think that fairness should apply quite so cut and dry where these issues she spoke of were concerned, but he understood the desire to try and simplify, the desire to ‘make it even.’ 

Except it was never that simple.

The problem was that this city held too many fragile things. 

Venti didn’t intend to stop breaking them, as sometimes it simply couldn’t be helped, and to chase fairness about the consequences regarding what did and didn’t break and why and when he should be forgiven and how…it seemed entirely futile. He didn’t really get why they tried. 

Throughout his life, his regrets pooled at his feet, an ocean of broken glass, and most days he didn’t bother looking down at it. Even trying to pay it back to those most hurt by the shattering he inflicted seemed truly and wholly impossible. He didn’t want to let himself be haunted by his many, many mistakes in that way.

It was often no one’s fault and sometimes pure coincidence when things broke. And when so much of the time there was no way to fix them, why try to parse through any of it at all?

Venti much preferred playing his songs instead. He would never be even with anyone he had, whether intentionally or not, wronged.

He quietly left the church an hour later. 

…

Venti had managed to dodge well-intentioned concern all day, but his streak couldn’t last forever.

Kaeya found him, of course. Though the knight seemed to be playing the whole thing off as some sort of grand coincidence considering the way he waved at Venti and jogged over with unfettered glee when they happened to cross paths in the inner city. The thing was, Kaeya didn’t really do glee unless he wanted something.

Oh well. Kaeya was practically destined to track him down at some point today anyway.

“Bard,” Kaeya greeted in a curt tone. 

“Captain.”

Though Venti thought it definitive that this meeting was entirely orchestrated, it was also overdue considering he had left quite a few strings untied the last time he’d seen Kaeya.

“I missed you this morning—” he started, and Venti could barely hold back a groan, “—and after I did you a great gesture, letting you crash at my place and all.”

Venti could tell Kaeya wasn’t actually mad about that, but he probably wasn’t going to drop it, either.

“It was nice of you,” Venti said. “I always knew our Cavalry Captain had a big heart, and I don’t know what I would’ve done without your help.”

“Sure didn’t act like it.”

“Oh, you know,” Venti said. “I had places to be. Things to do.”

Kaeya smiled sweetly. “Obviously. Because when I think of the term ’eternally busy,’ I think of you,” he drawled.

“I have hidden depths.”

“I never suggested otherwise.” Kaeya shrugged.

Venti didn’t deign to give away the game, even though the captain’s rapt attention was on him wholly. It was a bit awkward, but they were both too proud to back off. 

“I’m glad to know my reputation precedes me.”

“Are you aware that said reputation also suggests you are a trouble-making individual with nothing better to do than bother everyone in his general vicinity?”

“As if I’m really a bother. I mean, Barbara actually let me into the Cathedral today! So I can’t actually be that bad.”

“Did she really?” Kaeya asked, an eyebrow quirked.

“Yup!” He did not fill in the gaps as to the why. That would be self-sabotage, obviously, and Kaeya didn’t need any hints.

“I’m amazed. You’re apparently not enough of a menace to be barred from our most famous public space anymore. I feel like I should congratulate you. Except that that wouldn’t be an accomplishment for literally anyone except you, so I haven’t decided if you deserve it.”

Venti blinked. “Uhh…thanks?”

“You’re welcome.”

It was getting to be later in the afternoon now, and didn’t Kaeya have things to do, or something? Venti wanted to play the rest of Carmen’s collection, the songs he hadn’t gotten to while at the Cathedral, but he wasn’t keen to attempt that again with an audience. Right then. He better get on scaring Kaeya away. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be on the job?” He asked.

“I have errands, I suppose. Knight things, but all that is hardly a priority.”

“So that’s how it is!” Venti snapped his fingers and put on his best mischievous grin. “If you really want to avoid all that and spend time with me, you could’ve just said so!” Venti said, grinning with his lips pinched tight in a knowing smile and eyebrows lifted.

If Venti pestered Kaeya long enough—or at the very least acted like he was well and truly alright—he bet he’d be let go from Kaeya’s watch, and no longer would he have to put up with being stared at like he’d drop dead any second.

Against all expectations, Kaeya smirked and settled into a relaxed stance, and he said, “Ah, you’ve figured me out,” all drama, no authenticity. “I guess I might as well spend the afternoon hanging about you, then.”

Venti paused, smile slipping off his face. He hadn’t expected Kaeya to go along with it for real. He had just said it to poke fun at him. 

“Uhm.”

“So what’s the plan?” Kaeya asked.

“Well...”

“I’m all ears.”

“I’m thinking.”

“Think away.”

Alright, this was a bad idea.

“You were supposed to say you’re too busy for frivolous things.”

“Oh, was I now?” Kaeya asked, the opportune manipulator that he was. It’s not like this was new behavior for him, but it was unideal. “I’m afraid I was unaware this interaction had a script to go with it.”

Kaeya really thought that there was something going on with Venti, and he didn’t seem willing to drop it. Suspicion leaked through in every way that he moved and spoke, and it was plainly tiring to handle.

“I feel fine now, you know.”

“I never said otherwise.”

“You’re acting otherwise,” Venti complained.

“I’m not taping you to the wall. Do whatever you’d like.”

“Ok then. I’ll do just that. In fact, I’m leaving right now. And unlike you, I’ll be busy for the rest of the afternoon, so. If you’re also not busy, don’t follow me this time. Or do! Whatever you feel like.” 

He absolutely did not want Kaeya following him around, but it was best to handle Kaeya with reverse logic. Venti could probably write a whole book on how to make Kaeya act in a predictable manner, but the only person who might buy a copy was Diluc, so his efforts, should he ever exercise them, wouldn’t land him with much but a pittance. His tab was too much for anything like that to make a difference.

Both of them stayed locked in place, and the silence stretched. Venti felt the need to fill it. “I’m not doing anything bad, you know. Really.”

“Neither am I,” Kaeya replied. “Are you going to bother telling me what happened last night?”

“Nothing,” he said, sticking his tongue out just for good measure. There was much to be gained from cheekiness. That was a lesson Venti had taught himself, one learned over many many centuries and embedded too deeply to be forgotten. For one, it distracted most people from literally everything.

Kaeya merely sighed. “I don’t expect a lot from you, Venti, but I do expect you to report on dangers to this city and its people. That includes you.”

“Obviously.”

“So? You still won’t say?”

“What is this, an interrogation? Sir Kaeya, I assure you I am doing nothing worse than taking a casual stroll! And there is nothing nefarious going on.”

“Of course. How silly of me, to presume you might be up to something.”

“When am I ever?”

“I’ll see you at the tavern, Venti. Tomorrow.”

“Oh, will you, now?”

Kaeya raised an eyebrow. “I better.”

He looked away. “Hmm. Alright.” He snapped his fingers. “But only because no one at the tavern has any fun without me!”

…

Sitting upon the Mondstadt rooftops, Venti played the last note of a not-so-lost song his friend had once taught him. It rang out, clear and smooth, though he doubted anyone but himself could hear it well. 

He didn’t intend to give anyone this song, not for a while yet. When he had told Barbara that he’d write all of his songs down, he hadn’t been lying per se, but he had been greatly ignoring how uncommitted he was to the idea. Well, there was no point in reminiscing on what was pointlessly melancholic. 

He stood up, stretching as he did, and when he tried twirling the wind into a small updraft, it did as he requested, though it stuttered, as if weighed down by unintentional chaos. 

His energy was still going a little haywire, even though nothing actually dangerous was coming of it. He just felt a little concerned. Which was fine. The city was protected, and it’s not like he was actually integral to any of the daily procedures. Nothing bad had happened while he was trapped, so he had to assume it was an attack on him, not Mondstadt. Which was a great thing and meant he needn’t worry any more.

He had one more song to play, and he intended to go to Windrise to do it. He could cleanse his energy of poison there, and all would be fixed. 

Storm clouds overhead were beginning to gather, and as the wind whipped up with a fierce bite, he figured it best he moved quickly so he could beat the weather. Not that he disliked rain, but he wasn’t a fan of sogginess. Damp hats were a travesty in any circumstance.

The closer he got to the gates, the faster the wind brushed against him, pushing him every which way. It was unsettling, the way the storm was wrestling the wind away from him. On the whole, Venti preferred when the wind could wander freely and not when it was chained to a maelstrom so unpredictable, it was inescapable. It wasn’t in his nature to challenge storms—maybe because he had history with them, maybe because Ei was a genuinely scary individual, and he didn’t feel like stepping on her toes.

The sky darkened with a grayness indicating a long downpour, and a steady layer of mist crept through the streets.  

Best be quick about it.

Except then he blinked—that’s all, just closed his eyes for less than a second—and the sky was changed. He rubbed at his eyes to attempt clearing the wrongness because what he was seeing simply wasn’t possible, but the sky didn't change back.

A veritable wall of clouds filled with lightning and thunder had coalesced around the border of Mondstadt, stretching from the walls to the sky where they domed above, a cage that reminded him too much of another. Venti stared at the city gates where the stone met storm, so completely baffled that he couldn't even be bothered to consider how strange he must seem at this moment, stationary and staring off into the distance.

That’s Decarabian’s storm wall. Here. In Mondstadt.

Oh no, no no no. What? How?

As far as he knew, such a thing was wholly impossible—because last time he checked, this Mondstadt wasn’t surrounded by storms, and there was no storm God dictator to put them there! 

The storm wall was an overwhelming, chaotic thing, a mass of clouds and debris, stretching sky-high, rippling like a vertical wave, blotting out the sun. 

He stepped back a tick, and as the great wall of wind continued undulating, knocking his hair and clothes ajar, it was as if he was a little wind spirit all over again, stuck in a kingdom that promised it loved him—and at the mercy of an endless looping barrier and a mad king with ideals of misguided perfection, and what could he do against that?

“Snap out of it,” he hissed to himself, immediately on the defensive.

Mondstadt could handle her own disasters, but—and then he saw a knight getting awfully close to it, did he not know how dangerous that was—and Venti vaulted forward and pulled him back by the shirt before he could get closer to the writhing storm.

The knight, Lawrence, let out a high pitched gasp, and it was a most confusing thing because Venti could hardly breathe! How come Lawrence seemed to be looking at him as if he were the crazy one? And why wasn't he also panicking? This was rather well deserving of panic!

“What were you thinking?” Venti asked, edging on mania rather than what he had intended to be concern. He was near stuttering now, too.

“Uh.” Lawrence stood there, blank, as both of their hair and clothes whipped further into a frenzy. “I have a shift at the entrance to the city,” he said, as if his job mattered when Mondstadt had practically been captured and quarantined. “Are you alright?”

Why did people keep asking him that?

“I’m doing great, thanks for asking,” Venti said, rushed, “And you? Do you want to become knight-mincemeat? Don’t get close to it!”

“…Close to what?”

And…what? He couldn't be serious, could he? Venti stopped in his tracks. The thunder faded away, as did Lawrence’s attempts to get a further confirmation of well-being from him, the buzzing in his skull far louder than anything.

It was a rather conspicuous thing, wasn’t it? The storm wall of his time had been a marvel just as much as the bars of a prison, and this one was no different.

Wait.

It’s no different. Literally. 

Venti watched the people around him as they pointedly didn’t react at all to what he thought seemed a disaster on a scale so much worse than Dvalin, it would be impossible to ignore. They were all going about their day with the same light step that most people of his nation expressed on average.

It’s not real, at least not to them.

He clamped his mouth shut with a hand before he could say anything.

It couldn’t be real because surely, people would be acting differently were Mondstadt truly overcome with a grand storm wall akin to the one Decarabian favored during his reign. No question about it.

This storm wall didn’t just look like the one Venti remembered, it felt like that one, too. Like hundreds of voices clustered into a collective of forced control and cruelty. Oh, he hadn’t heard these sorts of songs from his winds in centuries. Although that wasn’t true, was it? He’d heard it, seen exactly this, yesterday. And apparently, only Venti was weighed down by this insurmountable sight, a thing harkening back to days that only an immortal could remember.

Venti would not give the culprit the honor of seeing him squirm.

He let go of Lawrence, realizing belatedly that he’d had the knight’s shirt in a death grip the whole time. He tried to smile, but his body wasn’t responding right, as if a cog had slipped loose. Maybe one had.

“Sorry to bother you!” He said. “It was, uh, a test! You passed. Good job!” He gave a shaky thumbs up.

Lawrence, for his own part, angled himself as if he intended to continue his job. “Was it really?”

“Yep. You can go and go back to do doing knightly things, now. Really, it was just a bad joke.”

Venti wished that’s all it was.

The knight’s expression evened out in time. “Right,” he said, clipped. 

Venti watched as Lawrence walked past the gate, right through the storm wall—no resistance—until he was no longer in sight, hidden behind an impassable, grey, swirling barrier.

 I think that this is…not good. Though it could be worse, I suppose.

Venti inched closer. He reached out, and though he couldn’t bring himself to touch it, this proximity told him all he needed to know, his hand reacting to absolute force. Getting past it wouldn’t be as simple for him as it had been for Lawrence. It was a lot harder to convince himself that this storm wall wasn’t real, and what would he do if it was? 

He turned tail and fled back into the city. It was a natural response, he argued, to what could only be described as a perfect replica to what had once been his worst fear. At one point in his life, he had been plagued by nightmares about what it had once felt like to be a guard of Decarabian’s gate, a spirit swirling in perpetuity around those that wanted nothing more than to escape him and his brothers and sisters.

Frankly, he didn’t care if it was real or not right now. He’d find another way out of the city and to the Windrise tree. He would. Yet he knew that the storm wall he remembered had had no weaknesses. 

Not a single one. 

…

Albedo woke abruptly, a sudden shock coursing through his system, as if all of his organs had collectively decided to halt functionality for half a second. 

The moment had him startled into perfect consciousness faster than his eyes could open. He must’ve accidentally fallen asleep in the lab, his arms still folded atop the table. That in itself wasn’t unusual. Except for the fact that he could claim very straightforwardly that what had awoken him wasn’t anything as simple as discomfort. No, it had been fear.

That was wrong. 

Sweat beaded at the back of his neck, and that too, was wrong.

So, he began to categorically run through every thing that might be wrong with his body, his mind, and the Knights’ Headquarters itself. It wasn’t his way to casually let any sort of function failure go without questions. His mind booted into thinking quickly. Had he been drugged? No no, that was too extreme a thought. Perhaps there was smoke, and he’d noticed it while asleep? But no, that didn’t seem likely either.

As he ran through the most worrisome and immediate possible causes for such a sudden return to wakefulness, his eyes strayed to the little box, a seemingly harmless thing, sitting sideways, open, and dripping shadows onto his floor. 

Albedo breathed slowly, manually deconstructing all of the panic responses that had his system in a chokehold. The box. An empty box—but not completely empty.

What a troublesome result. 

He grabbed it and slammed it closed, hurrying down to Lisa’s library with the box under his arm. The halls were shrouded in darkness and quiet, and so there was, thankfully, no one to question him. 

Lisa had a record of every book in the library, a large ledger that lived atop her desk, a ledger that under no circumstances was anyone but herself to touch. Albedo began leafing through the pages with haste.

What else do I know about what just happened? What am I missing?

It was the little things that always led to the greatest revelations. Many others would ignore being startled awake from a nightmare as a normal occurrence, but not Albedo. No details were to be considered inconsequential until he’d had a chance to critically examine them with decisive scrutiny. 

The moment in which he had awoken hadn’t been synthesized with random forced physical fear responses. It hadn’t felt that mundane.

No, it had reminded him of a specific moment a long ago, from when he once lived with his master, a woman who tended to tread a fine line between risk and reward. Albedo was prized on his memory, and it hadn’t failed him yet. And though it seemed outlandish, his memory wasn’t failing him here, either. 

What woke him hadn’t been random fear, but the exact sort of fear that he had once felt before, from a time when her lab had exploded and begun a great fire and he had wondered for a split second whether she was alive or dead. It was a moment he gave little regard to these days, but he remembered it. He remembered it well.

This was mimicry.

“Now then,” he said, taking careful consideration of what he had discovered, however inadvertently it had been done. “Memory. Fearful memory, I have to assume for now, as the catalyst.”

Science always began with a hypothesis.

He had a starting point, and he intended to act on it post-haste. Albedo began scanning the list of books in the ledger with sharper discernment, keeping careful track of any that may be promising to solve this brand new quandary.

He would be investigating other avenues of esoteric research thoroughly come morning.

Chapter Text

“That brat said he’d come tonight.” Kaeya swirled his drink in careful circles, comfortable in the warmth and casual din of Angel’s Share. The only thing missing was one lying, promise-breaking bard. “I swear, if he’s up to something, I’m gonna sick Jean on him. That’s what I should’ve done in the first place.”

“Do that, then.” Rosaria was here tonight, though not particularly interested in his complaining, which was a little unfortunate. Kaeya really wanted someone to air his grievances to who would contribute pretend pity.

“At least give me some sympathy, here! I’m practically distraught. Why else do I hang out with you if not for your endless sympathy?”

Rosaria merely raised an eyebrow. “Pray to Barsibato. See if that fixes it, and get back to me.”

Kaeya politely did not respond. It would’ve been rather uncouth for him to soliloquize on how the Gods were the least likely to listen to him out of every mortal their gazes passed over. That self deprecating thought had really come out of nowhere. Shit. The alcohol was making him melancholic. It had turned into a fine, sad day, hadn’t it? Not for any particular reason, either. Some days were just sadder than others.

“And where the hell is Diluc?” He complained, and then he turned to Rosaria and leaned in conspiratorially. “What are the chances our two missing compatriots are cavorting about under the moonlight together?”

“Low.” She scrunched her face and stared at the ground. “Or wait…taking into account Diluc’s recent leniency regarding the bard?”

Kaeya slammed his hand on the table, nearly knocking her glass over. “You’ve noticed too!”

“How could I not?”

“Oh thank the Archons, I thought I was going mad!” He didn’t, but he always lay it on thick for Rosaria. She understood him in a special way that called for excess performativity.

“Hmm…with these important facts taken into account, I suppose I’ll revise my original estimate to high.”

He tossed a coin the bartender’s way. “Much obliged, Rosaria. I’ll cover your drink tonight for that.”

“How gentlemanly.”

He really couldn't thank her enough.

Venti had promised to show up and clearly hadn’t, so Kaeya was undeniably suspicious about what he was getting up to these days. And he was suspicious of Diluc, too. And he was suspicious about everything to do with either of them. 

And come to think of it, he was also suspicious of Jean!

She was the one who had strictly asked him sometime after the Stormterror attacks to tell her if Venti ever needed a hand in any way. She had said she owed him a debt—that they all did. She hadn’t told all the knights this, however, just those she considered friends. Kaeya had forgotten all about it until the haze of alcohol had dug up those old-new memories tonight.

These days, she also had them aware of a threat that she had demanded absolute secrecy about until they had more knowledge, a threat he didn’t know what to make of, and Kaeya could hardly hold it all straight some days.

Frankly, the only one he wasn’t suspicious of was Rosaria. It was a reverse psychology sort of thing where she was so suspicious all of the time that he no longer wasted energy on the potential that the act was genuine. Besides, she was more like a co-conspirator than a villain in the shadows.

Venti aside, Diluc was almost certainly embarrassing himself, and Kaeya was so close to spilling that whole mess to Rosaria, even though the anger from his sort-of-brother for doing so probably wouldn’t be worth it. But his tongue was loose tonight, and he was still feeling so goddamn melancholic, for fuck’s sake!

“Hey, hey Rosaria,” he said.

“Hm?”

“I think you’d make a good vigilante,” he said, all coy and sharp.

“Absolutely not,” she shut him down. “I’d never work without pay.”

“True…” Kaeya was still just looking for some solidarity, here. “But do you know who would make a really bad vigilante?”

“Who?”

“Diluc.” He nodded sagely. “Just saying. Don’t you agree? Can we make fun of Diluc tonight? Talking behind his back would make me very, very happy.”

She just rolled her eyes and called for another of whatever she’d been drinking. Kaeya was too in his own head to care.

________________________________________

Venti had spent the late hours running rings around the city. 

He had found no clear exit, no convenient break in the Storm Wall, no mistake. It was solid and intact the entire way around the border, even though as far as he could tell, it was real to him and him alone. How did that even work? How could something so unreal be so perfect? Maybe that’s exactly why it can afford to be perfect.

When he had tried to breach it, the spirits within had screamed. And so he’d pulled back, reevaluated, and run around some more. He had watched it very, very closely. He just needed a sign, something that proved it wasn’t exactly as he remembered, not for any logical reason, but just because he needed it; but it didn’t offer forward anything of the sort.

It occurred to him that it might just stop existing if he stared long enough. That was the logic, at least, that he used to justify the moment he stopped trying and fell back into a normal pattern of existence. Sans sleeping. 

In the morning, he greeted everyone he came across with a merry wave and well-wishes. Near noon, he got lunch at Sara’s and played with children by the fountain. When it became evening, he busked at the statue, and he stayed there until he worked up the courage to acknowledge the skies as his eyes could see them. He was sitting with his back to the Cathedral, doing what must’ve appeared to be cloud gazing. It was only too bad he couldn’t actually see the clouds. 

A hideous wind storm remained overshadowing the entire city, and it was with belated regret that he realized nothing had changed. Blinding optimism didn’t normally provide such…lackluster results.

Twenty-four hours was hardly a long time to wait, though! He had waited for far longer before. And the best part about waiting was that while doing so, he could believe, at the very least, that there was still a chance that he needn’t do anything to fix it. He’d spent much of his immortality being a passive bystander, and the world always seemed to right itself eventually. Though did the same apply when the only one affected by the problem was himself? Hmm. It was a thought worth further pondering, but he didn’t feel like facing what that idea might lead him to. 

It also occurred to him only now that he’d failed to show up at the tavern like he’d promised. He hoped Kaeya wouldn’t heckle him for it. But who was he kidding? Kaeya was a nation-famous heckler. Venti hadn't missed on purpose...he'd just lost track of time, a little bit. He’d lost a lot of time this past day. A lot of time, just staring. He hadn’t done that since half a millennia ago, and it was a probable sign that he should try something, anything, else. 

He stretched his arms above his head and anchored on a point in the skies. There was still one weakness to check: the place where the dome formed, the keystone piece. The spirits swirled in circles, and so though there were no weaknesses down here, there might be one up there. Was this feeding more blinding optimism or could it be a potential escape?

If he wanted to get all the way to the top of the dome, he’d need to rely on something more than wind currents though, and if he was sticking with the somewhat bad plan beginning to form, he’d want to start somewhere high. Best start climbing at this point.

He used a slight pulse of anemo, just to get him off the ground, and it catapulted him upward, far harder than he’d hoped, and there were a solid two seconds before his feet touched back down again during which he blinked and looked around frantically. Alright. Be more careful. And less confident. His control was still being finicky, and he didn’t know whether to blame the loss of his gnosis or the sketchy Abyss box more for it. 

Oh, well. It didn't matter right now.

As far as high points in the city went, he would’ve liked to use the Barbatos statue, but Barbara had just done a nice thing for him, and contrary to popular belief, he didn’t actually want to bother her anymore. Using the Cathedral as his jump off point would anger her more than he was willing to risk if she happened to catch him. His shenanigans had limits, even though to most, it didn’t look that way.  

He’d use a windmill. Those had ladders attached anyway, so they were technically meant to be climbed! And he had created Mondstadt from the ground up; he was in his right to climb whichever building he pleased. Beginning the ascent brought with it an old, forgotten feeling, one he didn’t even try to place, and he ignored it resolutely. Nostalgia was one of his favorite things, but it was not helpful while he was attempting something that even he considered ill-advised.

Venti figured it was late enough that no one would still be up and about. However once he had reached the halfway point on the nearest windmill, focused entirely on scaling it, a voice called out to him from the city below, and he almost slipped right off.

“Venti? What are you doing up there?” A nun asked. He hadn’t seen her approach, and he was just incredibly thankful that it hadn’t been a knight who noticed him. 

“Just getting inspiration!” He called back. “Ballads don’t write themselves, after all!”

She narrowed her gaze and moved to carry on, though she was clearly not convinced that that was the correct decision. In the end she shook her head and gave him a wry smile. Venti was very glad for his perceived self-preservation skills. And he was glad that should a townsperson notice him climbing a windmill, it was overall pretty likely that they’d accept a ballad-related excuse. That was all thanks to the reputation he had built up for himself, here! He was thankful for it.

“Oh, well, be careful?” She said, somewhat like a question.

“Yeah, yeah of course!” He nodded, dangling off the ladder with reckless abandon. 

As he watched her walk out of sight, he shifted to a more obscured side of the construct. It wouldn’t do to get caught like that again. 

When he made it to the top, he surveyed the city. The sails gave him some nice cover, and though it was the oldest trick in the book, a lot of people didn’t think to look up unless prompted to do so. If he was up this high, there was less likelihood of him being noticed just in principle. 

From up here, he still couldn’t properly gauge whether the top of that wind dome was securely closed or not, though. He needed to get higher, as high as he could manage. And that…well, as he’d expected, that meant wings. 

His other form would give him power and leeway in flight, both things that he needed. But it was a bit of a regretful situation. Relying on his wings wasn’t his favorite option, especially since it was more out of necessity rather than him deciding to generate rumors for the fun of it. Though he had nothing against his wings. In fact he liked them quite a lot. They were the sort of thing spoken of in legend, and even when the topic was himself, he wasn’t the type to speak badly of legend, no matter the personal association. He had too much fondness for ballads to think differently. 

However, it was by nature risky. It was also a risk he would take. 

It was late enough that a human-sized bird-looking thing could be explained away with dancing shadows and an overactive imagination, if he was lucky. He closed his eyes and quickly called upon an ancient power.

For but a moment, he was ensconced in light, the soft kind that hung about gently rather than burned harshly, and when it cleared, he was looking an awful lot more like Barbatos and a whole lot less like Venti. Ah well. Such was the cost of flight.

He bent low, preparing to take off into the sky, pinpointing the keystone area of the dome, the place he had the best chance of breaking through. Crouching down on his knees, he eyed his goal, and his wings unfurled slowly but surely. Buzzing with anticipation, he felt the wind against his cheek and—

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? ” A voice hissed from a next door rooftop.

Venti was ashamed to say his whole body flinched, and he whipped his head to the source, crouching down even lower, as if the wings could be hidden were he to scrunch into a ball. (They couldn't.)

The worry about getting found out abated instantly though, as that voice belonged to someone Venti knew very well, someone who Venti could identify through that one-of-a-kind shade of red alone.

There was no point trying to hide a secret from someone who already knew it.

Venti wasn’t the only one interested in working under the cover of darkness, and it wasn’t really all that unsurprising to see Diluc galavanting about, dressed up in his little nighttime costume on a rooftop just across from him. Venti loved a good costume. He did not, however, like getting caught while attempting to solve a problem he much preferred didn’t get around to those who would feel a responsibility to do something about it. The last thing he needed was people yelling at him!

Not to mention, Diluc didn’t let himself be handled, so there wasn’t much room for error now that he’d been spotted and therefore needed to explain himself. He’d prefer to avoid all confrontation, but him and Diluc were too close for that to be an option.

“Why, I didn’t expect to run into you, sir Darknight Hero!” He said, sing-song. They had both officially given up on trying to pretend that either of their alter egos didn’t belong to them, so here they stood, a couple feet from each other atop the city at large, neither willing to budge first.

“Nor I, you.”

Venti knew he couldn’t deny that this must look awfully suspicious. Their Archon, who loved staying incognito and had no intention of revealing himself unless necessary, was out about intending to fly above Mondstadt in the dead of night. Yeah…suspicious.

Based on the way Diluc’s gaze had narrowed, he wasn’t going to let it go, either. Venti would have to explain himself. Or try, in any matter. 

“It’s not what it looks like,” he began.

Diluc raised an eyebrow. “No?” He took a good long languid look from head to toe, and it was piercingly sharp.

“I was, uh, chasing birds.”

“I don’t see any birds.”

“Well, I chased them all away already, obviously.”

Diluc brought a hand to his temple and let his claymore hit the ground with a thud. “Can you just come down from there? I’ll get you a drink. You can explain what you’re up to.”

“It’s nothing bad,” Venti said, and his wings betrayed himself, fluttering about anxiously.

“I didn’t say it was.” But the look of his face certainly said otherwise.

“Even so, I’m really gonna have to pass on that, I’m afraid.”

“Giving up free alcohol? You?”

…Ok yeah in hindsight, that definitely made him look more suspicious, but this really wasn’t the time to get sidetracked! He just needed to take a quick jaunt to the top of the storm wall—or at least whatever the barrier was supposed to be—that’s it.  

“Don’t worry!” He called. “I’ll make sure what I’m doing doesn’t impact Mondstadt. Just act like I was never here.”

“Seriously, Venti.” Though it was too dark to know for certain, it was almost certain that Diluc was rolling his eyes. “Come down from there and explain what you’re hoping to accomplish.”

“I’m not up to anything, and there’s nothing wrong with flying around.” He paused. “Even with wings.”

“But you wouldn’t risk it. Why now?”

“Straight to the point…” Venti said. “It’s a personal matter, Diluc!” He put a finger to his mouth, as if to shush him. “I’ve tried to not involve Mondstadt in my personal matters for a really really really long time, and I’m not going to start now! I’ll be back down soon.”

As he flew away, taking off in a burst into the sky, he barely caught a whisper of Diluc huffing out, “Personal matters?”

Venti didn’t bother to elaborate, and he thought it for the best. 

Now, about that storm wall…

The wall reminded him of something close to comfort, and wasn’t that terrible of him? It had been within this prison that he had met his best friend, it was where he had forged unbreakable bonds. It was the enemy he had fought for so long that at one point he had wondered if it had been a friend all along and he’d been too stupid to notice. 

However, that had all happened when he was naught but a newly-born wind sprite, an entity that barely knew anything of the world at all. Within the first years of his life, he had met some of the best and worst people he’d ever known. And so, even now, he didn’t know how to feel about the storm wall—it had been, in every way, a miraculous construction, made of so many sprites, it had thrummed with palpable power no matter where one had stood in the first version of this city. It was in his city, now, and he didn’t know if he welcomed that memory with open arms, a detestable fear, or both.

Venti could feel that same thrumming in his own version of Mondstadt, the one he had made to replace the first. He had spent many years trying to convince himself that remaking his home wasn’t wrong, and yet now, it was as if his old home had decided to punish him for the god complex that had led him to doing such a thing, to thinking he could succeed at replacing the irreplaceable. 

Even if he was a God, it was still presumptuous. Normally he didn’t let that sort of thing bother him, but it was a lot harder to pretend otherwise when the wall was right there, trapping him in his own construct.

But he wasn’t the same wind sprite from back then. 

However ill-earned and unwanted it had been, he was the anemo Archon. He had held that mantle long enough now for that identity to become intertwined with everything he knew of himself. It had been hard in the beginning—a weak, practically newborn creature had gone from barely anything to a God. It was destined that Venti wouldn’t be able to reject ‘Barbatos.’ He had hardly known who he was when the title had been forced upon him.

There were benefits, though. Decarabian’s storm wall had been terrifying, once. It had been insurmountable. But Venti was a God too this time around. For once, it was an even playing field, or so he hoped.

The storm raged as he got closer, blasting through the air, and he could hear the calls of those he once considered family, hundreds of wind spirits that didn’t belong here. They weren’t really real. So Venti pushed against them, and though he had hoped it would go differently, this wall reacted the same as the one he’d found when sequestered within his own mind and the same as the one he’d once lived within. It refused to be parted without struggle.

“Is that how we’re playing this? Really? I’m the Archon of anemo.” It was unfair to use his own specialty against him, and he’d be sure to complain about this to anyone who would listen once all was said and done.

For now, he just pushed harder.

The spirits screamed, horrors of what would happen if they parted, of what destruction would rain upon them for betraying their king. And Venti hesitated—just for a second, but it was the first sign of his own weakness. He could hardly bring himself to speak anything but kindnesses.

“It’s alright,” he whispered back. “Decarabian’s not around anymore.” 

He told himself that it was for the best that it got destroyed, better to act for his own interests even at the cost of wind spirits that weren’t even real.

Yet they were such perfect replicas of…of those he once loved. His hand retracted, the storm rushing to fill the void, the little hole he’d begun carving out of the wall repaired, and once the flaw was fixed, his hand snapped backwards, and Venti realized how much it had taken out of him to do just that. His hands shook, the cold night air a shock.

With no gnosis, he was limited. Very limited. Maybe he could give tearing apart the wall another shot after resting for a bit—though he’d have to do so with screaming spirits in his ears all the while. That sounded decidedly unappealing. 

“This isn’t fair. Like, at all.”

How was he supposed to get out when it meant hurting them?

Always too soft, wasn’t he? Zhongli would probably read him off some proverb about how what’s dead stays dead and that he need not concern himself with ghosts of friends, but they just seemed so real! 

What a predicament. He bit his lip.

This called for alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol. At this point, Kaeya and Diluc had already both given him an open invitation anyway, and though taking it meant an interrogation, he was fairly sure it’d be worth it anyway.

He came down from the top of the city, lowering himself to the windmill and sending the wings away, tiredness cascading down upon him like falling autumn leaves. He shuffled back down the ladder, and the second his feet touched the ground, from in a shadowy portion of the city Diluc came stalking from the shadows like a man on a mission. Truly relentless, he was.

“Finally. Now then, what were you doing up there?” Diluc asked.

“You’re still here,” Venti stated blandly. That was a thoroughly unexpected outcome! Why would Diluc have stuck around?

“Yes.”

How could Venti make him…go away? “Well, it was great seeing you tonight. Keep up the good work! I hope we don’t run into each other like this again. It was sort of awkward, and I think we’d both prefer it never happened again, really.”

“Wait.”

And he did. Though Venti knew doing so was the most self-damning thing he could’ve possibly done.

“You never transform,” Diluc stated coldly. “I’ve lived in Mondstadt my entire life, and I’ve never seen you like that, nor have I heard rumors of a flying human shape—because trust me, had I ever heard a rumor like that, then the entire nation would have heard it as well, and they would have no qualms about spreading it and speaking of their God as if he were among them. Considering that they don’t do that, I can confirm that you do not transform. Ever.” He stopped, only to take a breath. “Venti, what are you doing? And why?”

He gulped. “So the thing is, I had a dream—”

“How is this related?” He griped.

“I’m getting there, Diluc, jeez.” Venti clicked his tongue. “Really, I was just testing something, that’s all! Gaining some height.” He winked. “What’s wrong with wanting to observe the city from up high?” 

It was a good excuse, mostly because it was half true, and Venti patted himself on the back for that one. Lies were always easier to get past the most rigid and careful of people when they weren’t entirely false. 

“How is this related to a dream?”

“Hmm…I don’t want to tell you. It’s a secret.”

Diluc looked like he would’ve groaned had he any less self restraint. His eyes were unflinching. “Are you in trouble?”

He shrugged. “Not much.”

“Should we get Jean? How serious is this, exactly?”

“It’s not!” He said, waving his hands back and forth. Venti didn’t realize Diluc would jump so fervently on that admission—that was his bad. 

He really did not look happy. “In any case, flying about the city looking like Barbatos can only have so many possible results. Why not—”

“Shhh!” Venti said, sporadically checking the area just in case they might’ve attracted eavesdroppers. “It’s not anything worth worrying over. I can be careful, sometimes.” 

Diluc sighed aggressively. “Is this related to the rift wolves? Because I’d prefer you just say so. I’m not against working with you, Venti. And to be honest, I’m frustrated and more interested in answers than anything. So just be frank with me: are these things related?”

Venti swore he had never felt more puzzled than right then and there, merely standing on the balls of his feet as Diluc cut through him with a glare of extreme proportions. When his brain caught up with what had been said, it was a feeling of whiplash like no other.

“I’m sorry, but can you back up?” Venti asked. “And start over? What do you mean ‘the rift wolves?’”

…

Diluc refused to tell him about the rift wolves. Claimed it was a slip of the tongue—as if!

And Venti tried very very very hard to wrangle it out of him.

Even without specifics, he could come to his own conclusions. It seemed as if the Abyss might be moving. Diluc and whoever else was aware probably had a good handle on the issue, and Venti trusted the people of Mondstadt, but it was the presence of a potential issue itself that had him thinking. Either it was coincidence…or it wasn’t. To be honest, Venti didn’t like either of those options.

It could be related to the box, but that seemed a stretch even to him. And where was the cohesive reasoning? If the goal was to take him out, they hadn’t succeeded just by poisoning him; and Mondstadt could weather some rift wolves. What was the end goal? 

For days, Diluc didn’t even show up to Angel’s Share, all in an attempt to avoid him, Venti was sure! It was not at all worth dealing with the needling from Kaeya that resulted, who was oh-so-disappointed that Venti hadn’t come when he had promised that one night, even though it had been, like, forever ago at that point, and then Kaeya had concluded that Venti must be up to something, which he already believed anyway, so it was hardly a new revelation. And then Kaeya had merely pushed harder about whether Venti would involve him in it next time, whatever ‘it’ was. Kaeya had wanted to know this, specifically, on more than one occasion.

The one blessing in all of this was that Kaeya and Diluc weren’t exchanging notes on the matter.

Venti still had his own problems to deal with, namely the fact that he hadn’t slept. He hadn’t figured out how risky sleeping was, so he had just decided to…not. Being an immortal came with its own rules, but one of those rules was not ‘just stay awake forever.’ He had lasted for, what? Several days? They had sort of blended together, but he knew it had been night a couple times, and he hadn’t slept through any of it. 

The storm wall remained, swirling. Ominously. And it wasn’t going away. Chasing Diluc around, pestering him about rumored rift wolves, and hoping that it would disappear on its own, as it turned out, wasn’t giving results. 

He had tried going to the Cathedral to see if they’d heard of stuff like this before, but they hadn’t. A couple of times he had considered calling on Boreas, but it’s not like he could do anything about it either. So Venti had done what he did best: wait. He watched the storm wall and waited for it to falter. 

After all, it was but an illusion. It had to falter eventually.

Right?

Apparently, maybe, it didn’t.

There was only so long he could go before his energy would run out, and he was rapidly approaching that ledge. An elemental being as he might be, everyone needed sleep eventually, and he wasn’t used to running about on zero energy. But what if sleeping brought him back…there? His lips puckered. No matter how much Venti would much prefer to solve this one himself, he could appreciate the value of a bit of caution with regards to testing how detrimental sleeping might actually be. So, who should he ask to help?

It seemed fairly obvious, actually, once he started crossing off who he absolutely shouldn’t ask. And though it would welcome suspicion from her, he thought it worth it. Probably.

Jean was always willing to do the unexplained when asked nicely, and though she would want to know why he needed her help, obfuscation worked on kind people. Maybe that meant Venti wasn’t kind, though he could at the very least reason that it was for the best for everyone to go about it this way.

Unfortunately, when he asked for her, the knights told him that Jean was on her lunch break, and that was a line Venti wasn’t going to cross. Bothering them when on break was unthinkable, really, so he went to find Lisa instead. 

She was in the library, though when he arrived, he noted to himself that she seemed a little frazzled. But he’d already committed to asking someone to help out, so he hoped she wouldn't mind too much.

“Lisa!” He said, waving. “How are you doing on this fine day?”

She took the greeting well, and her face fell into a small smile. “I’m feeling a little overworked, actually, but nothing terrible.”

Venti paused. Sure, he’d initially come to ask her for a favor, but then he wondered…was she also in on this rift wolf thing Diluc refused to speak of? If Diluc knew, then wouldn’t Lisa, too? They weren’t that close, but they both had their heads to the ground and an awareness of the goings on of the city, so maybe?

“Why? What’s got you so busy?” He asked with an open ear.

She sighed, and her head tilted just so, hair falling about her face. “I’ve received a difficult request from our head alchemist for some information about a rather esoteric topic, that’s all.”

“What kind of topic?”

The coy smile she gave him in response told him all he needed to know regarding her awareness of what he was trying to do—which meant it probably wouldn’t work. That was too bad.

“The kind that I think best stay between Albedo and I, little bard.” She never lost that smile, just as was natural of a schemer in blood and intention. 

“I don’t need to know specifics!” He said. “I was just curious, is all. What’s Albedo done to get you all worked up?” 

She pinched her lips and seemed to genuinely consider it for a moment. Then she threw her hands up with an exasperated sigh. “Though it’s bad manners to talk crassly about a coworker…did you know, he came in at the dead of night and plundered my library, de-shelving all sorts of tomes and leaving them in a mess—very bad behavior! Even children would know better.” There was a reproachful tone to her voice, yet also one of mercy, as she likely found the matter less of a chore than she was intending to get across, as if she wanted him to think light of it as well.

“He must’ve been awfully concerned. And he still hasn’t found what he’s looking for?”

“Not quite.” She hadn’t lost that coy look to her eye. “But I believe in our head alchemist. Has Albedo ever been known as one who would give up?”

“Well, no…but if it’s information he needs, I could always help.”

That coy smile evolved into one tinged with amusement. “I’m afraid this really is knights’ business,” she said, bringing a finger to her lips. “But your enthusiasm is always darling.” She adjusted her hat an inch to the left, and satisfied, once more locked her attention to her visitor. “Now then, I don’t often see you in this library. What can I do for you?”

He still hadn’t figured out if this matter with the box was related to rift wolves, and now Albedo was also up to something…Well, Lisa clearly wasn’t going to crack, and he’d pushed enough at this point. He’d come here for another reason, anyway.

“I need a small favor,” he said, clasping his hands together. “Super small. It shouldn’t even be an inconvenience!”

“What kind of favor, hmm?”

“Ok, so this is going to sound weird, but trust me, it’d be a big help.”

“I’m listening, and I never indicated otherwise,” she said, voice lilting, like a calm candle in the dark.

“You sure?”

“You’re making me nervous, as if preparing me for something. Is this request of yours truly so turbulent?”

“No…” he shook his head and with it, the lingering hesitation.

“Then what can I do for you?”

“I’m just tired,” he admitted quietly, “and I’d like to take a nap, but I need to be awake in, uh, 20 minutes. Do you mind waking me up after that much time has passed?”

“That’s all?” She asked.

“Yep. The library is quiet, and I mean…it wouldn’t be trouble, right?”

“Of course not.” Her countenance softened, a gentle thing. “20 minutes isn’t very long.”

“I know. But still.” He took a deep, steadying breath. “Exactly 20 minutes.”

Her gaze narrowed. “Sure, I can do that.” Under the surface, he was certain he’d attracted suspicion for his insistence, but he could hardly afford to be careless.

“Thanks, Lisa. I’ll make it up to you, later.”

“There’s no need for any of that.” She shook her head. “I’m afraid to say that you do look terribly tired, and I merely hope that whatever you need to be awake for doesn’t take too much out of you.”

“Yeah.” He gulped. “Me too.”

He lay on a couch, Lisa in view, scratching something into her ledger in ink, and though she wasn’t looking straight at him, he doubted he’d leave her field of vision in the next 20 minutes. That’s just how she was, and he was thankful for it, even if it might come back to bite him later. This might've been better than asking Jean in some ways, but decidedly not in others. 

There was no real reason to think that sleeping should cause problems though, right? He assumed not. It shouldn’t.

His eyes fell closed, pulled down by sheer and utter exhaustion, the type that reveals itself suddenly when opportunity strikes, coiling around the mind to extinguish and steal it away into sleep.

…

It was too much to hope for, that sleep would be empty of things that didn’t belong there.

Too much, indeed. Had he been smart to avoid sleep or stupid to fall right back into the trap willingly?

Venti truly didn’t know whether he should feel disappointed or merely resigned to what he’d expected and hoped desperately against.

They were talking, all those people who he recognized better than his true face, and it was a homely scene at a dinner table deep in the recesses of where the revolution gathered, a place that had similarities to the Dawn Winery, but which wasn’t that place. The old antique style of the Dawn Winery had meant to replicate this exact sort of scene, after all. One a replica, the other the original. The two were not equal.

“Friend!” Carmen chirped, a lyre in his hands, eerily similar to Venti’s own. His eyes shined and hair swayed as he moved about, as if a real flesh and blood human with a soul. There was no time to prepare and even less to run. “I’ve been looking for you! Where have you been?”

In another life, Venti wished to say. Far away. Far…ahead. So many ways he could’ve said it and could never say it tumbled through his thoughts all at once. Really, he was just struggling to say anything at all.

“Nowhere,” Venti replied, as it was the only answer he could give with the intention to be assumed joking. And he couldn’t bear to leave his friend unanswered, no matter what the circumstance. But this was so bad.

“Come! Gunhildr has brought apples today,” he said, gesturing to the table where his family sat, a collection of those that were neither blood-related nor close in age, people from all walks of life gathered to be together purely because they wanted to be. 

“That’s alright. You need it, I don’t.” This voice was still unfamiliar to him, a sort of whisper on the wind that was neither mortal nor animal, something unusual yet perfectly natural at once, like a stray leaf gliding atop a gentle river. It was at once so nostalgic and lonesome to Venti’s own senses that he hardly wanted to speak again, though he knew it a worthless endeavor to attempt and distance himself now.

“An apple, my friend, is not worth any concern,” Carmen said, taking one red fruit from a bowl and placing it on the table, gesturing Venti join them, as if he could claim a spot in this makeshift family of rebels and heroes. He wondered how long it had taken him to become either of those things. It was a future memory so hazy, he hardly knew what to make of it.

Venti drifted over to the table and stared at his own reflection in the red shine of the fruit, a young thing, two bright white eyes peeking out from a white hooded cape made of the wind itself. How curious it was, to find his own appearance so distant and foreign, even though it was nothing new. He had never stopped being a wind spirit, yet some strange sliver of his mind wondered if he’d ever been one to begin with, what the chances were that he was misremembering his own history.

He was Barbatos. He wasn’t Barbatos, here. But if he’d always been Barbatos, then what was this? If he’d never been Barbatos, was this real, and everything else false memories dressed up with some pretty feelings and desires?

These days, all he wanted was freedom, for himself and for those he held dear. This dream of “Venti” and “Barbatos” was, in some ways, all he’d ever wanted. Didn’t that mean that the chances it was all a lie were remarkably high? 

In fact, that’s exactly what it meant, right?

He hated to think so, but in some ways, it was the only way it could all make sense. How could he have lived for as long as his future-memories claimed, anyway?

The wind spirit had been born in Mondstadt and lived here his whole life, and it was the source of all he’d ever known. There’s no way he’d live over a thousand years! There’s no way Carmen could die like in the wind spirit’s future—not future, fake—memories, as if he’d ever let that happen! There’s no way he’d ever be chosen to become a God, either.

What a fanciful impossibility—him, a God. He was laughing now, and Carmen seemed to brighten. 

“Laughter suits you,” he said. “Don’t worry, friend. We’ll get out—we’ll end Decarabian’s reign of terror. And then no one will have to worry about such things like whether they can afford to share an apple with a friend. Because that’s my dream,” he said. “The one I’ll see to the end.”

And I’ll make it happen, the wind spirit thought. No matter what it takes. To the end.

“We all will,” the red-headed one—Gunhildr, of course, the wind spirit knew—remarked solemnly. “Revolution finds a way, and it can break through even the strangest of keyholes. We know that. We are fighting for that,” she said.

The wind spirit held his voice, stopped from saying what he was thinking, did not mention these wrong-memories of a Mondstadt over a thousand years later. Because here they were, and here they would all stay. None of them would be taken from him. He would not leave them behind for Celestia, would never let that happen as a passive existence to the changing of the world.

The wind spirit wasn’t a bard like in his imaginings. How could he ever claim to be an existence as transcendental as that?

“Hear-hear!” Carmen called. “A song, for my friends here tonight. Tomorrow, we will enter battle. But now, we sing!” There were many others in the room, at the table and listening in nearby, everyone that believed in revolution. The wind spirit didn’t know them all that well, only Carmen, and he knew what Carmen meant to them, even if the boy himself couldn’t see it.

When he called for a song, they perked up, ready to hear of a way to the future their hearts longed for. That’s what Carmen had always been—the sort of hope that shines a beacon forward, whether he knew it or not.

The wind spirit knew. For that same beacon had brought him from a tumultuous existence, and it had given him what he’d never known he’d always wanted. The least he could do was pay it back and stick by his side till the end. If Carmen died…how could the wind spirit bear it?

The song began, that first line ringing out true and dreamy, and the wind spirit floated upward to come to rest on the bard’s head, himself a surveyor of rebellion and its many forms. If only this was all it took.

Decarabian’s presence could be felt even in this hidden place where the rebels made their bed and plotted. The wind spirit could feel that willowy chain that swung around his neck. Though he had rejected it and could do so as many times as he pleased—always because of Carmen—he knew that the king who sat on the other end wanted nothing more than to pull the wind spirit back into servitude for the glory of a concept that the wind spirit could never understand. How lonely, it seemed, Decarabian’s world.

Carmen’s world, now that was a place where the wind spirit would love to live and thrive. It would be home. It already was home.

Not even that lingering dream of a Mondstadt over a millennium from now felt quite as sweet as what he knew was to come, what was sung of here tonight in this place, a gathering of the seekers of dreams. Oh, how he loved the sound of freedom!

The wind spirit wondered if he’d ever be able to make that kind of sound, and though it was one of his greatest wishes, he doubted such skill could ever be garnered by one such as him. 

“Carmen?” He whispered as the song ended and the men and women of the rebellion joyously raised a glass to each of their individual sorts of freedom. “I had a dream.”

“Oh?” He hummed, running his fingers over the preciously carved wood of his instrument. “Was it a good one? I hope it was a good one!”

The wind spirit was unsure how to respond, though he would try; he would try no matter how hard it was some days to translate his emotions into words, as more often than not, the complexity of his own feelings escaped definition. “It was fun,” he said, “but I believe in your dream more.”

“Haha! How joyous that makes me.” Carmen’s voice was bright and young. “Just wait a little longer, and we’ll see it together, I’m sure of it.”

The wind spirit was prepared to wait as long as it took, though he was also prepared to enter the fight himself, in whatever form that took. He’d do it. He’d do it because—

…

A splash of cold water shocked him to consciousness, and there was a sudden feeling of deja vu, except this time it wasn’t Kaeya standing atop him. He flung out with the wind at his beck and call against the barrage of coldness, and a bucket went smashing into a bookshelf at his lack of control. He blinked water from his eyes, restless.

He hardly knew how to interpret the tableau.

Lisa, hands outstretched, the bucket cracked and halfway across the room, her hat askew, face ashen—and him, the wind spirit, in the body of a boy soaked with water on the couch, eyes heavy, and limbs that were somehow foreign and familiar at the same time, haphazardly strewn about and tingling.  

What was the right way to respond to this, exactly?

“…Hi,” the wind spirit said, his own voice wrong, and that one word hardly did the scene justice. 

He didn’t much know what else he could’ve said. Even just existing felt wrong, and it wasn’t specifically his voice or the woman or the area or the stale parchment smell that often accompanied even the most cared-for libraries. No, it was something much deeper, as the rivers of his mind were still reasserting themselves and their direction, breaking up the dams that had self-constructed in the space of…20 minutes. It had only been 20 minutes, and yet everything had gone sideways.

The wind spirit could feel something close to terror creeping up into his surface thoughts. When he had been there with Carmen, he had felt that echo in his mind, though it had been subtle. Now, he felt it much clearer, as the storms solidified behind closed mental doors, deep inside, hidden away and no longer within view.

These two worlds were beginning to fold onto one another, and he didn’t know what to do about it.

Well that answers that question quite…succinctly. No more sleeping. Nope. Bad idea. 

Lisa put a hand around his wrist, a weighty, anchoring presence that was rather less encouraging than the wind spirit—than Venti—would’ve hoped. He felt very, very small.

“Thanks, Lisa.” He got up onto wobbly knees. “Thanks a lot. You’re more of a help than I am even capable of expressing. I mean, look at this! I totally would’ve overslept.”

“It’s no problem, my dear,” she said, eyes sharp, and hands shaking ever so slightly. Ah. He’d really given her a scare, hadn’t he? What a terrible God he was being. “You wouldn’t wake, so I assumed this a reasonable course of action. Though you should reimburse me for that bucket.”

“Oh, how I don’t know what I’d do without you!” He exclaimed, though it was hardly a comfort to him, nor to her if her face was anything to go by.

“Are you alright? Need…” she swallowed. “Anything?”

“I’ll try to stop by some other time,” he said. “But I really must be going! Places to be, and stuff.”

It was, perhaps, a bit surprising how quickly she recovered her composure only to breath in deeply and smile that Cheshire grin. And she said nothing at all. Venti could feel, even as he was, that that wouldn’t be the end of it. Lisa, oddly enough, was about as good a schemer as Kaeya, and in some ways, she understood even better than he did the value of subtlety. Venti had always thought that Kaeya liked to torment people a bit too much, which is why it was obvious that he should be more concerned as to what someone like Lisa, who hid their scheming better than most, might do next. Not that he could do much about it.

He emerged in the wrong Mondstadt under a sun so glaring and harsh, it hardly seemed real. How many years had it been since he’d seen this sun? Only 20 minutes, that’s what logic was telling him…and yet a millennium, he believed. Many, many years had gone by, and Venti hardly knew his own city—if it could even be called his—though when he focused he could remember cutting out the same paths that had been in the original Mondstadt, some indeterminate time in his…future? No, that wasn’t quite right, because this was the future. or, the…present? Calling it the future was just as bad as being unaware that he was living within it. 

Dear Barbatos, he needed a drink.

“Friend!” Called a voice, from someone standing in the sunlight, a quite impossible thing. An impossible thing, because this person and the sun had never become well-acquainted with one another.

Venti realized a bit too clearly that the risk he’d imagined wasn’t near as bad as the real thing. What little sleep he had gotten was far from worth it, and yet it was worth everything in the world.

(And he was afraid.)

As unfortunate and glorious as it may have been, someone had followed him right out of sleep and back into reality, a very mean illusion, or was it a boy? It was someone that didn’t seem to be an illusion at all. 

“Ah.” Venti froze where he stood. “Figures.” He shook his head, a ghost of a smile dancing on his lips. “It seems I’ve got strange luck these days. Boxes that contain nightmares, realities that house the dead…what am I to do about it all?” The last part he whispered so quietly as to be misheard or, ideally, not heard at all.

Venti hardly thought that this…mirage-person-thing could be listening that closely anyway, as it—he—hardly belonged here to begin with. This Carmen look-a-like wasn’t acting as he should, if logic prevailed. 

Carmen shouldn’t know what Venti looks like, so he should’ve commented on that. Most people, when faced with their doppelgänger, would have something to say about it, right? He should at the very mention the absence of their shared friends—those buried by snow and time, far below in the ancient dirt. No such accompanying sorrow was present, either. And yet Venti felt glued to the pavement, unwilling in every way to do what he obviously should and block this imitation out of sight, out of mind.

“Mondstadt looks so different now!” Carmen exclaimed, just as bright and ethereal as ever. No matter how mortal Carmen had been—was—Venti had always believed divinity was where he belonged. Celestia truly had made a mistake, and it had never been as clear as it was right now. Venti was the knock-off version of the genuine article, and he couldn’t even be upset about it.

Venti gave a shaky smile and a pathetic thumbs up. “You know, I’ve always wished you could see it as it is today. You would’ve loved it.”

“What are you talking about?” Carmen raised an eyebrow and put his hands on his hips. “I love it now!”

Venti drank in the presence of his first, best friend, all that spirit housed in such a small existence that wasn’t really small at all. “Yeah. I should’ve expected that. It’s exactly what you’d say—course it is. You’re just like that. All the best parts of the mortal.”

Carmen tilted his head, and the braids shifted with him, as if they were real or something. It was so, so mean.

“Well?” Carmen asked, hands on his hips. “Are we going to catch up? It seems you’ve been busy in my absence, and I’d be honored to hear about all of it.”

“I’d tell you anything any day. It’s a long story, if you’re willing.”

“We have all the time in the world, don’t we?”

Venti raised a hand to his brow to keep out the sun so he could see the statue in the distance near the top of the city, its progenitor lingering right next to him.

“I don’t know if I can do it justice,” he said, and he’d never normally dare be so self-deprecating, but this was Carmen, the one person out of them all that Venti could never hope to match. “It starts with the death of a mad king,” he began, “and the ascension of a very small wind spirit.” He pulled out his lyre to strum a simple tune. “And it continues, in song!”

Venti turned his back on Carmen and skipped a jaunty beat as he went along, knowing that wherever he went, he would be followed.

Even after all that, he was still tired, more tired, really. Tired in a way he knew wasn’t natural. 

He appreciated the presence of his oldest friend far more than he should’ve. How important was his mental fortitude, anyway? It was a mistake to bask in it, he knew, a mistake he ran toward with as much love and fearlessness as he could muster while still within the storm. 

The storm wall was undulating at the edge of his consciousness now, unignorable in every sense of the word. And a faint trace of Decarabian’s presence had begun to wheedle its way into his mind, demanding surrender.

________________________________________

Albedo hadn’t decided how he was going to broach this particular conversation with the one other person he knew that, logically, he should ask. 

He and Kaeya had had very different experiences with Khaenri’ah, experiences neither were keen on sharing, not even with each other, though Albedo respected the value of gathering intel more than personal comfort. Which…was not diplomatic in the slightest. He was hardly called on to be the face of diplomacy in most cases. But most cases didn’t involve Khaenri’ah. He truly hoped Kaeya would understand that.

The chance Kaeya might find the box familiar was high enough that he couldn’t pretend otherwise. For the sake of his friend’s comfort, Albedo would put off asking until he could no longer justify the risk.

The box had been quarantined within his lab, and for as long as it had lingered, so had a general malaise that was both mesmerizing and powerful in equal measure. It had attracted his unfiltered scientific curiosity, a strong trap for one such as himself. 

He had hit a point now where he worked until he slept, and then he slept until the box woke him with images he hadn’t remembered so clearly in years. Despite it all, he refused to leave or halt what minimal progress he was making on cataloging results. He could hardly intervene for himself, and he didn’t want to. Even though every dead end pointed to his own ignorance. So he persisted.

Albedo knew that he was logical to a fault, but that fault wasn’t often a risk. Had this become a risk? He couldn’t tell, because he doubted that if it were, he’d willingly admit it to himself. 

Leaving the lab was unimaginable. Letting anyone in to view the box was impossible. Asking Kaeya was an insurmountable wall while they remained separated by distance, and the curiosities and mysteries of the little box showed no sign of end. 

It terrified him, an emotion he had long thought to have left behind, but that’s what the box did best. It terrified him, and the very fact of terror somehow magnified it into a beast of tethers and locks that he never wanted to walk away from. Scientific curiosity and terror made for a malignant partnership.

In realizing this, he decided to take a step back. He opened a window, intending to just air out the room and take a moment to collect his thoughts, but it was hardly the reprieve he had been hoping for.

The air, upon initial contact, tasted so stagnant upon his tongue that he wondered if his senses had been as scrambled as his memory had clearly become within the last week or so. For the first time in days, he realized that opening that window might’ve been the best thing he’d done in a long while, and it brought him staggering out of the lab. All of his senses were in perfect working order once he was outside of the box’s proximity; all foreign, heady feelings had retreated back into the woodwork, and he felt a weariness crash back over him in full force. The air remained stagnant anyway, this new hotbed for investigation supplying him with conclusions he didn’t like one bit.

Jean was on her way out of the Headquarters when they crossed paths. She greeted him warmly before cutting to the chase. 

“Are you still busy with that personal project?” She asked.

“I’m afraid so.” Although he'd made very little progress, and now something else strange had grabbed his attention.

She simply nodded, as if she had expected that answer. Perhaps she’d seen it in him already, in the weariness that spoke of difficulties deeper than something that was defined only as ‘work’ might cause. 

“The rift wolves?” He inquired in return.

“Still an issue. They're still hiding, which has me very concerned. I’m headed out of the city now. If they get any closer or amass a larger force any larger, I will need to call on you, Albedo, regardless of what project is taking up your time and energy.”

“I know.”

“Be ready,” she said, regretfully yet equally aware of what they must understand. “I’m afraid we may be on the cusp of a new disaster, and I’d like to handle the issue at the gates. I will need you for that.”

“I understand, Captain. I will be ready when you call.”

He felt the slightest twinge of regret that Jean felt awkward about pulling him back into what was, in every way, his actual job that he had sworn to fulfill with all he had. 

But the box and the rift wolves aside…that rotten smell was still on the air. He had forgotten until now about what strangeness had brought him to the hills of Mondstadt all those days ago, before Sucrose had casually brought an ancient, unknown artifact right through his door.

“Jean?” He asked, and though she had begun to head toward the front of the city, she stopped, and gave him her time.

“Yes?”

“Is the wind strange these days?”

She made a peculiar face at that, yet she considered it with scrutiny. “I…had a strange feeling, a couple of days ago, that there was, well, I’m not even sure what I felt. It might’ve been nothing.”

Albedo made a severe face.

“Or…not?” She wondered. “It might’ve been something. I don’t know. I don’t know how to describe what it was like, and I’ve been busy. Why?” Though she said it as if the question were harmless, Jean was a woman who had a tendency to scrutinize everything behind a good disguise. 

“Conjecture, that’s all.” He said. “Be safe, Jean.”

Right then, Venti hobbled out the front doors of the Knights’ Headquarters, coming upon the two of them at a damningly bad moment—and he was also sopping wet.

Jean wanted us to keep this from him. It is just as fate does, and perhaps fitting, that he should show up now.

“Jean! Albedo!” He called, wringing the water from his hat onto the ground. Where the water had come from was a mystery, though not one of priority. And yet so very curious. “Sorry to interrupt your conversation, I was just leaving. Yeah. Don’t mind me!”

It was a suspicious comment to make, yet not as suspicious as the image of Venti, a renowned troublemaker, practically dashing away from where the two of them had been involved in obvious conspiracy. Had he stuck around, he might’ve learned about exactly that which Jean hoped to keep from him and the public at large.

Strange, indeed.

________________________________________

Venti did, despite all logic, decide to show up at the tavern that night. Was it a bad idea? Probably. 

When he looked at his hands, all he saw was flesh covering bone that was false, and it wasn’t his, nor Carmen’s, nor belonging to a mortal being, and he really just wanted that perception of the world to go away—or he at least wanted to become numb to it for a little bit. So this was as good a plan as any.

Carmen trailed behind him, jabbering on about all sorts of fantastical beauty within sight, weaving poetry about little nothings. The windmills were an especially lovely thing to him. In Decarabian’s storms, such things could hardly be built or maintained. With calmness came opportunity, the sort Carmen was unfamiliar with as a child of that long-dead chaotic country. 

“…And the leadership,” he was saying, “they allow anyone to leave Mondstadt whenever you like?”

“Yep!” Venti said. “The gates are wide open most of the time.”

“How can you all live with the belief that they’ll never change their mind?” He didn’t ask the question with fear, but merely an endless desire to learn more.

“Mondstadt is the city of freedom. That’s how it’s known all across Teyvat, so it would be a sign of absolute shame if they turned on their most important value,” Venti explained. “And besides, there’s me! I’m a silent protector of sorts. Some know I’m here. Most don’t. But the important ones know.” Not because of his own desire for them to know, of course, but it was still fact.

Whenever Venti’s current status came up, it always made Carmen oh so pleased, a response that to Venti, seemed sour. It should’ve been you, he would think, but never say. Even if Carmen had no envy to spare for the subject, Venti only presumed it was a consequence of being an illusion. Of sorts. Or of being whatever it was that he was. Venti still hadn't worked up the courage to treat him as anything but his best friend.

They arrived at Angel’s Share, and Venti was still slightly damp when he entered and planned to begin a night of mindless revelry.

Normally, actually getting drunk took a truly colossal amount of alcohol. But it wouldn’t take necessarily that much this time around. He could hardly be considered functional at present anyway. Sleep deprivation and ghost torment did that to a person.

Kaeya joined him right at their usual spot by the bar and right on time for Venti to finish chugging his eighth glass. Ever since the whole Dvalin debacle, Diluc had been more willing to let the debt go, and Venti hadn’t been as pleased about that as in this singular minute.

“Are you…actually drunk?” Kaeya opened with. A silly observation, especially for a wordsmith such as himself. 

“Maybe.”

“You usually half-fake it.”

“Who says I’m not half-faking it now?” He asked, eyes sliding right off of Kaeya.

“I always thought you enjoyed drinking Diluc out of a business just to torment him.” Kaeya was still staring, in complete disbelief. “I didn’t know you even could get drunk like this.” He then sat down but didn’t order anything for himself, merely watched the scene unfold curiously.

Venti would’ve thought of something snarky to say were all his parts functioning as they should. As it was, he defaulted to the cold, hard truth. He still blamed sleep deprivation above all else.

“Let’s just say the situation is unusual.” He took a long gulp from the glass. “And I’m. Hmph . Stupid things. Having a bad day.”

“That’s rare. I always figured you were an eternal ball of joy.”

“I am. So you’re obligated to be nice to me tonight. Such a bad day, it’s been, and most of it wasn’t even my fault, and it’s not even over yet!”

“Sounds like a truly awful predicament.”

Venti knew that Kaeya was merely filling the space with meaningless nonsense, but he was enjoying the company, anyway. Meaningless things were easier to understand right now.

“I’m glad you understand, even if you can’t, really. Cause you get close enough most of the time, and you—you are nice sometimes, so it’s a good thing. You get it.”

His eyebrows raised comically high. “Except I really don’t, not at all. Mind indulging me?”

“Well.” Venti shifted to sit face to face with Kaeya. “I got a bucket of water dumped on me.”

“Why—”

“No interrupting!” He called back. “And I’m being stalked. Actually, I don’t think you’d call it stalking, but I would, and my opinion is what matters, here.”

That had Kaeya sitting far straighter. “By whom?” He had that killer glare in his eye, the one that promised retribution. It was too bad he wouldn’t be able to find the culprit in question.

“Don’t get it wrong, it’s not malicious. Or by anyone real, actually. He’s sort of like a ghost, I guess. Or not? I haven’t figured that out yet. Not even sure if I want to.”

“Stalking is by definition malicious,” he stated calmly, far calmer than he seemed on the outside.

“Ugh, nevermind. Shouldn't have said it.”

Kaeya waited a tick. “It’s a lot easier to listen to you when you’re well-rested. Which you’re clearly not. Just thought you’d want to know.” Kaeya tapped his fingers against the bar, and the sound was like little drums going off behind Venti’s eyes. “So, who’s stalking you? If you tell me, I’ll have a quick chat with them, and then we’ll all be able to continue on with our lives.”

“That’s sweet of you.”

“Uh huh. Who is it?” Now he was taking careful stock of the clientele of the bar. Not like he was going to find what he was looking for, Venti mused. Should he explain it? He sort of felt like admitting what was actually happening wouldn’t have any meaningful outcome.

Venti really wasn’t sure what was supposed to come next at all, actually. What should he do? What did he want to do?

When he’d decided to sit on his hands and watch and wait, he hadn’t done so due to careless inaction. He had genuinely expected a solution to present itself if he were only patient enough for it. No illusion lasted forever, and surely, sooner or later it would crack. But that hadn’t happened. And now…

Carmen was wandering about the bar, as if he belonged here, as if he’d been born and raised in this city.

An ultimatum.

There were lots of things Venti could do that he hadn’t tried yet, as he hadn’t been desperate until now. Ask someone to go fetch Zhongli, and see if he could do something about this. Maybe do some more research. Call the 4 winds to him, and see if they have any ideas. Perhaps he’d discounted Boreas earlier, and the wolf might have a solution.

Or Venti could just persist. 

But back there in the dream, when he had forgotten himself in times long past…he had been so passionately happy. Carmen was in his world, and Venti never wanted him to leave. In fact, he wanted to follow Carmen back just as he had done first. And he wanted to exist there for as many seconds as he could steal from a dream world given freely.

Why was it that Venti should want to banish his friend?

If it was a hard thing to remember, well, it only stood to reason that it was an even harder thing to forget. Carmen was singing songs only he could hear, songs that overwhelmed the din of the tavern like a tsunami of melancholy. There was that nostalgia again, and he didn’t know whether to consider it a great gift or the worst of curses.

Carmen had finished his wandering about the place and came to sit on the other side of Venti. “What a marvelous place! And run by a bloodline I remember, too! It’s good to know that after all this time, some have stayed.”

“A lot of people also believed in your dream,” Venti said. “More than even I.”

Kaeya interjected, “excuse me?”

Venti waved him off. “Wasn’t talking to you.”

If Venti did decide to let these dreams exist in tandem with his world, would that be cowardly? What consequences would come from it? Would it be bad of him?

“What else exists beyond?” Carmen asked. “What more of the world could we discover if we only walked on?”

“A lot,” Venti whispered. “It’s a shame I can’t leave the city or I'd show you.”

“Just go out the front gate,” Kaeya said to his right.

“I’m still not talking to you,” Venti responded. How rude! Couldn’t Kaeya tell that he was trying to have a conversation over here? Though he felt the need to explain it, just to get Kaeya off his back. “And I literally can’t. I’m up against an invisible adversary.”

Kaeya could hardly contain his laughter. “What is up with you today? You’re an awfully morose drunk. I hadn’t expected that.”

“Hey!” Venti complained. “I’m not morose. And none of this is really my fault. Don’t assume.” He slumped lower in his seat.

“So what do you mean ‘invisible adversary’?” He asked, apparently less willing to drop it than implied, his true opinion on the claim shrouded in mystery. He always was horribly hard to read when he wanted to be. “How are you proposing that to be possible?”

“It’s not important. Just—”

“It’s important to me. I find your whims unimaginably entertaining, but a bit of logic really elevates the entire experience.”

Venti’s lips turned down into a pout, and he put his cheek to the table. Carmen was entirely out of view now, yet he couldn’t bring himself to raise his head so that he may see the both of them at once. “That’s not even the worst part, you know.”

“Oh?”

“I can’t sleep, Kaeya. And I’m perfectly capable of managing this on my own, it’s just sort of frustrating, I guess.”

“What a vague explanation.”

“I don’t really need that much sleep anyway. Not as much as you mortals.”

Kaeya didn’t seem to know what to do with that. He’d usually use such drunken ramblings as material to tease with, but here, he faltered.

“Is there no way to alleviate this issue?” He asked. “I must admit, I don’t have much experience with insomnia—” and definitely not with this kind, Venti considered mirthlessly “—but I’m certain that if you asked, there are many who may offer solutions.”

“Good point,” Venti drawled. “Though I’m afraid this is a uniquely personal problem.”

“So personal that there is no solution? That seems unlikely, even to me.”

“I guess…” Was there anyone he had missed? The spark came suddenly, and it was so obvious, Venti could hardly believe he’d forgotten. “I guess Xiao could potentially help. He’s, uh, he’s smart and experienced and stuff. And smart. Did I say that one already? Hmm…oh, also he knows things about dreams! A buncha stuff, and yeah, Xiao could help…it’d be awfully nice, if Xiao would come help.”

“Dreams?”

“Yeah. My dreams are broken. Hence the—the, ‘can’t sleep,’ thing.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means they’re being mean to me! That’s what.” He turned to his left toward Carmen. “It’s not you, though. You could never be mean.”

“Ookkkaaayyy then.” Kaeya slid the glass away from him slowly. Venti in return flopped his head on the table.

Then a person teleported straight behind him—a most familiar, comfortingly sharp presence—and Venti had no time to regret what he’d done in speaking a name he had accidentally forgotten the power of.

________________________________________

Kaeya had been side-eying Diluc the whole time, but neither had actually moved to do anything about this, and Kaeya wouldn’t be the one to start. He wasn’t normally the responsible one, and he certainly wasn’t going to start now.

Then Venti spoke a name he didn’t recognize, and Kaeya was wondering whether this was someone he might know or not—

He was broken out of his thoughts by a blur of green that materialized right behind Venti, a shock of motion on par with the most bizarre of hallucinations. 

“Oh, what the fuck.” Kaeya jolted out of his chair and summoned his sword to his side.

A person was in the haze as it dissipated, a very eye-catching individual that Kaeya could comfortably say he’d never met before, tattoos all down the stranger’s arms, and two piercing golden eyes. An enemy?

The person turned to Venti with his arms crossed. “You called?”

That’s a guy. A whole…guy. Who certainly wasn’t there two seconds ago.

And Kaeya snapped his eye over to the bard, deeply desiring an explanation for this stranger, as he poised himself to defend just in case the rogue, teleporting man decided to attack.

“Xiao!” Venti’s face lit up before immediately falling to complete devastation. “Oh, noooo I’m sorry! I forgot you can hear your name—I am a silly, hopeless friend. I didn’t mean to actually call you, but the intent was definitely there…that’s my bad, really, I’m just not being careful enough right now, which isn’t great, but also shouldn’t be your problem.”

“Venti,” Kaeya spoke smoothly, the sword tip lowered. “Want to introduce your friend, here? I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him.”

Teleportation wasn’t nothing. It wasn’t mortal. 

“Right, right. This is Xiao. Adeptus Xiao, from Liyue. He hangs out at Wangshu Inn most of the time. We play music together sometimes.”

The Adeptus’ scowl got very dark, but he made no move to start strangling Venti, so Kaeya figured that was as good a sign as any to remain still, but wary. 

“—And this is Kaeya! He’s a knight.”

That was all Venti said, though at first, Kaeya expected something more. Well, that’s not fair. Venti’s a bard; I expected better.

Why didn’t he get as exciting of an introduction? Sure, he wasn’t an Adeptus, but Venti could’ve said more than ‘a knight.’ It seemed so pedantic when put that way. Had it been done on purpose? Were Venti and this Adeptus in the sort of relationship where one had to appease the other? If the Adeptus could come whenever called, was Venti subject to his whims? Teleportation had very few boundaries in the way of…stalking. 

If this was the mysterious non-real, pretend stalker, Kaeya didn’t know what he’d do, but it wouldn’t be good. It would be very not good and incredibly ill-advised.

“I was unaware you kept such respected company,” Kaeya said coldly.

“Xiao is Xiao,” Venti said. “He’s nice when you get to know him!”

Xiao interjected, “I came because you called. Do you require assistance?”

“Awww! That's so sweet!” Venti turned to Kaeya. “Look how nice he is!”

Kaeya didn’t think Xiao had said anything that sappy, but perhaps their relationship truly did function in a dangerous way. He was certainly curious about how it had started to begin with…and though he’d likely sacrifice sanity in the goal, he couldn’t very well refrain from asking.

“Venti, I was unaware you knew one of Liyue’s Adepti. Mind filling me in on how that happened?” 

The Last Yaksha, no doubt. Now that he was looking closer…well, Kaeya had heard rumors and myths about this one. And he wasn’t sure he was comfortable with this particular individual standing in a casual bar with a bunch of mortals. This one was supposedly a protector, but Kaeya had his doubts about those types. Could anyone in here defend themselves if need be? Certainly not. Diluc or himself might have the best shot, but it’d be a destructive clash, and the two of them would face trouble in any attempt to work as a pair on short notice.

Kaeya de-summoned his sword in a light shower of sparks. Though it was a somewhat risky move, he didn’t intend to give this person the wrong idea, and he couldn’t afford conflict.

Venti pondered on the question for a while. “We’ve known each other since, like, forever ago. Right, Xiao?”

“Indeed.”

This could be an attempt to distract or redirect. Or it could be a secret message.

“He’s one of my best and oldest friends!”

This, for whatever reason, made the Adeptus stiffen, and immediately refute it, “I cannot claim to be your equal on any level, though I am honored.”

“Ughhh that’s ridiculous, we’re friends, and that’s that. You may not reject my friendship, or I will…I don’t know, do something mildly inconveniencing, but not mean, until you accept it.”

Adeptus Xiao had, gratefully, stopped glaring at people, but he was not any less prickly than when first arrived. “You wanted help with dreams, I heard.”

Venti shook his head, and it wobbled around. “I didn’t! Or, well, I did, maybe, but I changed my mind.”

“Do you want me to go get Mor—ahem.” Xiao’s gaze shot around the room. “Zhongli?” He said, eyes sidling back over to the bard.

“AH!” Venti screeched.

Kaeya brought his hands to his ears. “Screaming isn’t necessary. We are all right here.” Who is Zhongli?

Venti stared at Xiao as if he were capable of bringing about a great reckoning, and finally, it was a reaction that made sense, though in some way, equally uncomfortable. “Nooooo, he’s gonna disparage me for being careless. Which I’m not!”

Xiao stiffened and turned his head about in such an odd, mechanical way that Kaeya could believe easily enough that this person wasn’t human. Or he was just unbelievably uncomfortable. Who was Kaeya kidding? It could always be both! Though he wasn’t fond of either of those options. Immortals tended to act without care, and for that matter, so did the uncomfortable. So now there were two reasons to be cautiously on edge.

“If I cannot help,” Xiao began, “and you require assistance, I shall retrieve him at once.”

“Xiao, wait!” Venti grabbed a hold of the Adeptus’ arm, and it took everything Kaeya had to keep his damn mouth shut and not scream at Venti to not disrespect the damn Adeptus before consequences presented themselves. Honestly, Kaeya really needed to pry into this relationship once he got a chance. For now, he was going to abandon his ‘stalker’ theory if only because Xiao willingly leaving didn’t make much sense. Though who was he kidding? None of this made sense.

“Don’t do that,” he pleaded. “I’m serious.” 

Venti trying to act “serious” was, quite possibly, one of the least serious things Kaeya had ever seen. The bard was all fidgety, and theoretically that gaze might be piercing if he weren’t so drunk. And yet, for whatever reason, Adeptus Xiao halted where he stood and seemed to be taking the instruction very seriously. More seriously than Kaeya could ever think justifiable. 

Xiao huffed and crossed his arms. Kaeya would’ve thought Xiao’s unstable countenance damning if it hadn’t been preceded by him having decided to take Venti, of all people, seriously. What had the world come to?

“If you are sure. Though…if he asks, I must inform him.”

“He won’t ask. I mean, how would he know to ask? Unless you tell him. Which you won’t!” He winked, and it was hardly cute, a far more sinister thing instead, though one wouldn’t draw that conclusion had they not been watching for a long time with a careful eye.

Kaeya hadn’t intended to interfere in a mess on a scale that involved immortals. Though only now did he realize that he was already concerned despite his desire of the opposite. 

Oh, hell, why not? 

“Venti says he can’t sleep,” Kaeya said, casually butting in between them. 

And yes, it wasn’t his brightest moment, querying an Adeptus on matters like this, but he could believe in the power of supposed friendship, and he could believe in it for an insignificant amount of time. Though after this was all over, Kaeya wasn’t going to talk to Xiao ever again if he had a say in the matter. 

“What did you people do?” Xiao asked, perhaps agitated, though he said it so gruffly, Kaeya was back on high alert all over again.

See, this right here is what he had been worried about. Why did this fellow need to be so aggressive about everything? It was plain unnerving. 

“We didn’t do anything!” Kaeya paused to let the righteous indignation take effect. “Well, I didn’t do anything, and it’s not as if we are a nation that torments our bards.”

“Listen here, mortal. I know not what your mind is able to comprehend, but I’ve seen darkness in the hearts of many.”

Kaeya was so over this. He would’ve made a righteous exit if he hadn’t been the one to poke the hive. “He says the issue is nightmares. Just—can you fix that or not?”

Xiao immediately swiveled toward Venti. “Nightmares?” He said, whisper-soft.

“Kaeya, stop,” Venti said, though his gaze was on Xiao alone. He carried on, though it was clear his words were solely for that one who stood before him. “I’d never ask that of you. You know that, right? Never. Never, never, never. Not in a thousand years. Not even in a—uh—a million billion! Go back to Wangshu Inn, Xiao. Sleep well. That’s what I want. It’s what I want most for you, because it’s what you deserve, plain and simple.”

A calm stillness suffocated the room, though it wasn’t as if the patrons of the bar were listening in. Those that had been surprised by Xiao’s sudden arrival had lost interest by now, and Angel’s Share was not an establishment rich in focus this late into the night. All the same, Kaeya suddenly felt very heavy. 

“It is not my place to question you.” Xiao turned his back. “Though if you call, I will come, always.”

And he was gone, in that same teal haze, as if he’d never been there to begin with.

In the ensuing silence, Kaeya accepted that now he officially felt very over all of this. If Venti wasn’t going to accept help from a literal immortal, he was done. Kaeya would stop prodding, stop trying to help. Against common perception of himself as a legendary troublemaker and nuisance, Kaeya knew how to stay away when he wasn’t wanted. And he very clearly wasn’t wanted. 

What was he supposed to do with that? 

Nothing, that’s what. Interfering could only go on for so long before he would just begin to move backwards, and he wouldn’t allow that in any circumstance. Kaeya now knew that he wouldn’t be privy to any answers no matter what he did. 

He got up and didn’t look back as the door closed hard behind him, as was the nature of his understanding. 

…

It was a new day and a cool morning, but it felt just as stale as the one prior, and just as full of frustrating people.

Kaeya was used to abandoning people. It wasn’t a new trend for him, and he rarely thought himself a villain for it. If anything, he was the martyr! And he was a kind martyr, the sort who wouldn’t air grievances publicly, not to those that wronged him, not even to Diluc. Kaeya had never once admitted to what had been done to him because it was far more comfortable to be the silent martyr. It was an enjoyable state of being specifically because no one knew. 

He could watch those around him and merely exist alongside them. You don’t know who I am. You don’t know what’s been done to me. You don’t know what I’ve sacrificed. A peculiar source of joy, for sure, but it was all his.

Venti being a martyr didn’t fit into Kaeya’s world. 

For one, Venti wasn’t a very good martyr—not the silent type like himself, not even when he tried. And secondly, there was only room for one martyr in his life, and it should forever be him. Because that meant he was the only one getting hurt. He didn’t think he could handle a world in which all of those dearest to him were hurt without his knowing.

So, Kaeya wanted the bard to drop the martyr act as soon as possible, but Venti simply refused to do so at every juncture. 

And now he just felt done with the entire act. He couldn’t deal with a second martyr in his life—it simply wouldn’t do! If that meant forsaking the bard…well, he hadn’t decided yet what he’d do then. He hoped he’d never have to. A break would be good for every party, he presumed.

At the Knight’s Headquarters, he knew what was expected of him, and here were a hearty sort, people who either wore their pain plainly or took care of it themselves. He was the only sickly snake in the grass here, and he liked it that way.

Just look at Albedo! There he was, walking straight into Kaeya’s orbit, his frustration plain. Albedo promptly caught Kaeya before he could step far into the building, and the alchemist had a laborious expression on his face, the kind that willed the target of his focus to listen.

“Kaeya. I’ve been wanting to speak with you.”

Familiar, Kaeya felt, even in the unfamiliarity of a request made by Albedo. Kaeya had no problem with the familiar, as long as he was allowed to be a martyr within it. 

“Have you really? I’m not hearing the enthusiasm.”

“Yes. It’s just. It’s a matter of importance.” He stalked off toward his lab, and Kaeya fought to catch up. Why a brisk walk was necessary hadn’t become clear yet, and he certainly wasn’t in the mood, but he kept pace anyway.

“You don’t look so good,” Kaeya remarked casually.

Albedo’s eye twitched, a rare display of casual disgruntlement. “I am aware.”

“Well, you know me. I’m always willing to put off work-talk, especially if you’re not up to it at present. What’s the rush?”

“No,” Albedo snapped back, “no, we must speak now. I’ve been putting it off myself for far longer than logical.”

“Is that so?” Kaeya asked languidly. He sort of wanted to keep dragging this out, see what might happen, though he didn’t wish to keep going at it until it became unkind. “That’s unlike you.”

“I am aware.”

The lab opened, and a peculiar stillness smothered his senses once inside, though it was the unmistakable absence of that which he couldn’t identify. It was plainly strange; his world seemed askew, but only in this room.

“I haven’t seen you these days,” Kaeya said languidly. “Considering the issue with the rift wolves, I had assumed you—”

Albedo cut him off, not a twinge of remorse present, something in his hands. “Take a look at this, and tell me what you know.”

The box was dark, shadowy, and reminiscent of old memories long-ago dissipated and forgotten thanks to time and a careful, quiet mind. Because that weapon did one thing very, very well: unquiet a mind. 

I take it all back. The familiar is…not comfortable at all. Damn you, Albedo. 

The first feeling that appeared once he got over the shock was incredulous fascination, followed shortly by the blurred memory of fear, the true kind of fear that only came about once in a blue moon, summoned again and again and again. He took a deep, languid breath and smothered unwelcome intrusions upon his thoughts.

Best start from the beginning.

“How did you acquire this, sir Albedo?”

“So you know what it is, good.”

“No, no, not good.” Kaeya planted himself on a table, perched just so that he could cross his arms and stare down at Albedo like a disapproving teacher. “You’re going to tell me what you think you’ve got in your hands, and we’ll start there.”

“I am uncertain of its purpose and properties, though I’ve been trying to uncover them for several days, hence why I thought to ask you.”

“Oh, that is not nearly good enough, my dear, dear alchemist. I cordially invite you to try again.”

“Try…I don’t think you’re understanding.” He was still holding the box, as if it were some small trinket.

The gall of some people. 

“I understand perfectly well, Albedo. Give me a reason to tell you anything. Give me a reason to think you acquired that accidentally, and then we can talk.” Kaeya leaned forward, eyes pinned on the box. It didn’t settle well, the idea that Albedo had somehow gotten his hands on a curse box. How long had he had it for? “Well? Time’s ticking, and I’ve got places to be.”

“This is urgent.”

“And you already admitted to putting it off.” Tapping his head, Kaeya gave a rueful smile. “I pay attention, surely you know that by now. I believe you have all the time in the world, and you likely won’t convince me otherwise, though feel free to waste more time trying.” Kaeya was a sly man with motivations that were often the opposite of good; it was only obvious that he knew how to play the game. 

And his underhandedness was justified considering that Albedo was welcoming him back into a game that had begun a long while ago, the type that had been abandoned, unfinished, and expected to stay that way forever. 

Really now, how dare he?

Just once, a very, very long time ago, Albedo and Kaeya had had a short discussion about a secret that they happened to share.

It had been an auspicious night, one where the stars aligned in a way that promised understanding from friends, and it was the sort of celestial happening to occur so rarely, that it had endeared itself even to them, one a prince far from a ravaged home and the other a chalk doll. 

These two strange companions had found it deep within themselves to admit a handful of truths that were already known to both of them, and it had been a strange occasion which was henceforth never repeated again.

Kaeya had admitted to why he was here, to a change of heart. Albedo had admitted to his task, and the letter that had begun it all. Under a shared sky, they had lingered in a graveyard away from prying eyes, and once they split, they never spoke of that night again.

Albedo forcing a return to acknowledge that complicated night was, to Kaeya, clearly blasphemous to the sense of friendship they had cultivated—an awkward friendship, to be sure, one that was neither openly friendly nor trusting, but a friendship nonetheless. It worked, but it did not work in the company of an ancient relic that, as far as Kaeya was concerned, existed purely as an unforgivable weapon. He would make no mistake on that matter.

 He wasn’t fond of weapons. Especially not one from his first home brought into his second.

“I acquired it accidentally.”

“Of course you did,” Kaeya responded, and it was obvious that he didn’t believe a lick of it.

“My assistant found it, and then it made its way to me. That’s the full story.”

“Of course it is.” What a unique spin to the first way he’d told it. “And how did she get it?”

“I trust Sucrose.”

Kaeya could’ve laughed, though that would be rude. “Of course you do.”

“Kaeya, please.”

“A piece taken from the whole, and I can’t really believe you at all, correct?”

Albedo sighed and brought a hand to his temple. “Sucrose found the box abandoned in the city. She brought it to me, and I’ve since quarantined it. I know it’s Abyssal. I don’t know what it’s made for.”

“Better. And?”

“It’s given me nightmares, but only when I sleep in this room.”

“Yeah, that’s a thing it does. And?”

Albedo perked up at the offered information, however slim it might’ve been, and he continued willingly. “There is a sort of residue in the box, but it’s shadowy in nature. I assumed early that it may have been used to bring something into the city. I do not know if it’s related to the rift wolves.”

Kaeya kept silent. He didn’t know if the conclusion he was beginning to come to was…logical, or emotional. An unfortunate piece clicked into place. Fucking damn it. If Venti…fuck. There was no point in making baseless assumptions. But now he was beginning to regret a great number of things considering that what he was imagining certainly could have happened, even if ridiculously unlikely. It was possible.

He could be wrong. He wasn’t often wrong.

“Another thing,” Albedo said. “The wind in the city is strange.”

The statement was completely unexpected, and Kaeya felt momentarily staggered, though he sat motionless. “The wind?”

“Yes. It has become stagnant.”

Kaeya wasn’t sure how to respond, considering that he could literally hear it right now whistling gently through the streets. “Are you sure ‘stagnant’ is the word you’re looking for?”

“Quite. It’s not that it’s gone completely, merely that it’s subdued.” He was flipping through pages on a clipboard, now. “It began on the same day I acquired the box. I thought them related. Though, considering your reaction, are they not?”

“Hmm. Who’s to say?”

“So they’re not. I see I’ll have to reevaluate the issue.”

Considering Kaeya couldn’t tell that the wind was ‘stagnant’ or whatever, he was inclined to ignore it outright. “Maybe Barbatos is sad, or something.” The wind was, after all, supposedly his domain. If he existed, that is. Kaeya had plenty of doubts on that front. “Now then, about the box—” 

“Barbatos. I hadn’t thought of that.” Albedo got up in a flurry of movement, coat fluttering about behind him as he paced. “The wind, the wrongness…” His eyes went unnaturally wide, his mouth literally gaping. “How’d I miss that?” He whispered harshly, gaze drifting to the box. “Where is Venti? I believe he may have answers. And you seem unwilling to continue.”

Whether the statement was a barb or pure fact as Albedo saw it, Kaeya was unsure.

“Venti? Why?” He asked, polite, not at all reflective of his current feelings .

“Obviously, because he’s—oh.” Albedo’s face went painfully blank. “You are still unaware. I hadn’t expected that. Excuse me. I will go locate him.”

Kaeya got up, too. “Let me help. I’d really love to hear more—I mean help.” He waved his hands about, angled down into a bow. “I live to serve and whatnot. A knight to this city.”

“That is not necessary. I’ve merely realized that I’ve been negligent with regards to a particular matter. A forgotten variable, you could call it.”

“With regards to the bard?”

Is finding Venti really more important to you than getting answers from me about the box? Kaeya would not be sidelined or misled as to what the priorities were or why.

“I am sorry to have bothered you,” Albedo said, already on the move. “I believe all of these things may be more interconnected than I had hypothesized. I will take my leave.”

Kaeya was not involved in this. He never was. He didn’t even want to be.

And yet! How could he leave it like this? Kaeya was the one who walked out last night; it hadn’t been the other way around, though he’d love to pretend otherwise for the sake of sweet egoism. Venti, of all people, had become tormented by nightmares within the last week, and if that was related to that damnable box, then Kaeya was partially to blame for missing the signs, and they’d both need Kaeya’s help in the end. If he was right…

He wasn’t a fan of this state of affairs. How could he call himself an infamous meddler if he backed out here? And really, he could hardly let Albedo question the bard without being present. He loved a secret meeting, after all. 

And he still had that god-forsaken lyre. There were many things to be done, yet.

“We can discuss this later,” Albedo said, pulling at his gloves til they sat snug. “One thing might be more time-sensitive than the other.”

Would Kaeya really miss out on a secret meeting? Really? Just for pettiness? 

The answer needn’t be queried; he didn’t dare disrespect the concept of a secret meeting like that.

“I’m coming with you,” He announced, “So, you’ll have to experience the joy of my company, whether you want to or not.”

Albedo was, as usual, not particularly interested in anything but whatever was currently consuming his thoughts, and so it took very little time for him to get over that initial wave of hesitation. He gave in easily, just as Kaeya had figured he would. 

“Very well, then,” he said, and there was no room for taking it back, not with Kaeya pledging to stay glued to his side in different words—words which they both understood to mean the same thing.

…

The further his steps took him across Mondstadt, the more Kaeya began to, in hindsight, see the common signs of degradation in his friend that had, at the time, seemed like nothing but strange quirks of the moment.

The symptoms of the curse poison as it sank deep weren’t that subtle: nightmares, hallucinations, derealization, sleep deprivation…it had all been there, hadn’t it? Kaeya wondered if he should feel ashamed. If it had been Albedo stuck to the bard’s side for the last week, he would’ve put it together. Then again, he didn’t know that list of symptoms, so perhaps not.

This was a fine mess of unfortunate circumstances and blatant negligence, wasn’t it?

And how did Venti acquire a curse box, anyway? Maybe it had been an accident. Maybe that assistant Albedo liked so much was actually a double agent and had given him the box then ‘retrieved’ it to try and scrub suspicion from her person. Then again, he knew Sucrose, and suspicion tended to make him harsh. 

If it wasn’t Sucrose, then how had Venti gotten the—oh, for fuck’s sake.

Of course, as was his place in the universe, he had a part to play in every major catastrophe whether as the brain or the hand, and this time was no different. Why oh why had he supposed otherwise? He wondered if his idyllic assumption that he could live somewhere without being a catalyst for something made him an idiot or just clueless.

Venti had received a curse box, and Kaeya had helped it get to him.

He tried to recall what the delivery girl had looked like. She had had two tails and a penchant for an enthusiasm that left even him tired. She had been working for a delivery service, one which he couldn’t recall and definitely wasn’t local.

But obviously it wouldn’t be a local business. Someone from the Abyss had apparently wanted to curse Venti—they wouldn’t let themselves be tracked backwards so easily. They would have hired someone from out of town, far out of town.

The delivery girl was a dead end for now. 

Why did they want to curse Venti anyway? Kaeya still hadn’t come to terms with the reasoning. A bard was hardly a valuable target to spend one of those boxes on—unless he was exceptionally powerful. Which…obviously not.

Kaeya personally would’ve expected them to target Jean, Diluc, or even himself. Now there were some people who could cause damage. What was Venti supposed to do once corrupted completely? Sing them all into a frenzy? It didn’t make sense. The world had gone strange, and he wished he could have a target to heap blame upon. That would at least make it bearable.

There was an oddness to the wind according to Albedo which had yet to abate.

There were rift wolves gathering at their doorstep, secretive, looming only when shrouded in the cover of night.

There was a bard hit by an old curse meant to whittle at the senses till one could no longer separate friend from foe.

There was a Khaenri’ahn curse box within Mondstadt.

(He wondered if the Adeptus was somehow a part of it, too…though likely not. That one source of weirdness was all Venti’s.)

Had there been a mistake made somewhere in the mix on behalf of either side? Or had it all been on purpose? 

And this was all happening, right after Mondstadt had survived the greatest disaster of the last decade, a dragon of legendary proportions that had been set on razing the city to the ground in destruction-wreathed wind. 

Kaeya couldn’t make sense of it. But if Albedo wanted to track down Venti, he had no complaint to lodge against that plan. He would wager on Albedo’s understanding over his own, purely because he felt so damn confused and adrift. Jean was supposed to be back in the afternoon, and then maybe they could get somewhere.

“Where else might Venti be?” Albedo finally asked once they had finished scoping out the area around the Cathedral.

“The last time someone asked me that, I think I might’ve made a mistake in responding,” Kaeya reminisced, regretful about one too many things.

“We’ve no time for this.”

Kaeya shook the disgrace from his mind. “I know, I know. Let’s try his standard busking places in the lower town.”

Albedo gave a terse nod, and that’s all it took for them to begin heading down. Though they hadn’t spoken a word about it, they knew to stick together. 

In these few moments, Albedo became grim, and Kaeya did too, but only in response to the instigator of this mad chase. 

“The wind is picking up,” Albedo remarked solemnly.

“Is it? I still can’t tell.” But he could sense a storm on the horizon, though there were no clouds to speak of. Disconcerting, for sure.

“It’s loud,” Albedo said, cringing.

Kaeya hadn’t been able to tell when it was stagnant, but he could certainly tell that there was a chaos threading in the wind that hadn’t been there before. He hadn’t admitted it because he had hoped it was his own imagination. He’d made the Barbatos comment in jest, but he couldn’t help but think—what other reason could there be for this? And that worried him more than anything.

The Khaenri’ahn box should have no such effect, and as far as he knew, neither did rift wolves. If it really was Barbatos, Kaeya didn’t know what he’d do. Break something, maybe. Run far, far away. Try to slay a God.

Then he heard laughing, a sharp sound coming from the direction of the fountain, and he chased after it zealously, Albedo hot on his heels. 

The bard’s presence should’ve been comforting. It should’ve been. 

It was anything but. 

What happened? It’s only been one night since the tavern.

Though the streets were empty—for no reason that could be explained in words, but one which the city seemed to intrinsically understand—there was Venti, standing barefoot in the fountain, kicking the water about, and the wind followed as he danced, slapping against buildings and the ground as if bending to his every command.

It seemed the curse had sunk deep, then. Venti was having a one-sided conversation with the air, and Kaeya knew. Albedo didn’t, however, so he walked forward, fearlessly. If he had known, perhaps he would’ve been afraid.

Kaeya for his own part had been unaware that Venti was strong enough to leave an indent on pure stone with nothing but the wind and casually throwing power about, and he was quickly reassessing the risk he had assumed this predicament carried. He wasn’t sure anyone should be getting close at all.

Albedo, with nothing but a once-over and that piercing gaze he was known for in certain circles, had reached a conclusion. “Venti. The box was sent to you, wasn’t it? That changes…a lot.” He sounded tired at the end there, and Kaeya could barely believe his ears. Albedo? Tired? 

Well, to be fair, so was he. 

Venti finally acknowledged them and lit up when they came closer. His eyes were clouded over, a subtleness that were Kaeya untested in awareness, he wouldn’t have noticed. Albedo had probably noticed too, but he was just observant like that, even if he couldn’t know what it meant.

Kaeya cleared his throat. “So, what are you up to?”

He seemed to blush, at the very least embarrassed that he had been caught gallivanting about in the fountain. Foot by foot he toddled out of it. “Just having a bit of careless fun!” He waved a hand about, as if to emphasize the point, and it sent the wind off to follow, flung against the stone wall with a resounding crack. 

“Ok, maybe…stand still. And stop using your vision.”

He tilted his head. “What?”

“To preserve the structural integrity of the city, if you please.”

Venti looked around then, and his eyes recovered a shine that indicated, however slim, that he was still there. “Oh dear Celestia.” His attention flicked back to the two of them. “Kaeya, smack me.”

Kaeya couldn’t help but snort. “Tempting, but no.”

“And you,” Venti said, pointing toward an emptiness beside the fountain, “that is not an invitation.”

“…Venti?” Kaeya appreciated a bit of good old-fashioned jovial banter, but it wasn’t exactly belonging, and this just kept getting worse.

“Sorry, sorry!” He twirled a braid around a finger. “I keep uhhh daydreaming. And it’s a bit of a problem. Just next time, feel free to smack me. I won’t be mad!” 

“You better not be.”

The bard’s hat was nowhere to be found. Where had it ended up? Hopefully he wouldn’t be too saddened when he realized it wasn’t on his head. It was such an unimportant thing to notice, but it was one of those pieces that was contributing to the somber mood. Venti was always wearing that stupid hat.

One of his fingers twitched, and it was enough to send a small breeze down the street. Where the fuck is he getting that kind of power, anyway? Because it certainly wasn’t from the curse box.

Albedo looked troubled. “A box,” he began, and Kaeya held his breath— here we go . “About this large. A purple so dark it might appear black. What do you know of it?”

Venti froze, and Kaeya knew it was his turn to step in. 

“It was that package, wasn’t it?” He asked, and both of them looked toward him, and Venti did not challenge the claim. “It was, then. Damn it.” His hand covered his eye, and he took a very long breath.

Albedo immediately followed up, “what package?”

“A delivery girl, a non-local, brought a package into town about a week ago addressed to Venti. It was the right size. I wasn’t sure before now…but well. Now I am.”

Venti was suddenly very meek, tucking his head down. “I didn’t know. I shouldn’t have opened it. It was just a mistake, that’s all.”

Kaeya could’ve smacked him for that right then and there, invitation to do so be damned. “And so that’s how you’ve landed yourself essentially cursed. I still don’t get why it’s you they targeted, but it’s also become clear no one is being very honest about anything these days.”

“Sorry.”

Nothing more followed the meek apology. “And you still refuse to tell me.” He shook his head. “Fine. Whatever. How bad is it, exactly?”

“What do you mean?”

Seriously, forget smacking, Kaeya could’ve strangled the damn bard. “I know how this progresses. I know what happens. Indulge me.”

Venti’s eyes sidled to the right, but he didn’t speak. 

“Hallucinations.”

“Well—”

“Of what? Give me specifics. Things? People? Dangers?”

Just when the silence stretched long enough that it became awkward, Venti responded quietly, “…The first two, I guess.”

“Good to know. Thanks for cooperating.” Kaeya was not, by any definition, thankful. He truly couldn’t believe it had gotten to this point without intervention from someone . “But that’s still not specific enough. Tell me more.”

It hit him suddenly; that stalking comment from last night made a hell of a lot more sense now. Kaeya didn’t know whether to be glad it wasn’t the Adeptus tormenting the bard or frustrated that it was arguably worse.

“…it’s a friend.”

“Who specifically?”

“A dead friend. You wouldn't know him.”

Kaeya would’ve cringed had he had a worse hold on his expression. As it was, he merely pursed his lips and kept glaring. “How real is he?”

“Very, I guess?” Venti was getting even quieter, and it wasn’t a good sign.

“Details would still be helpful. Give me something, here.”

The command seemed to snap him back to attention. “His voice sounds just like him. He changes volume depending on how far away he is or where he’s facing. Our hands brushed once—it felt real. He felt warm. I don’t even—is he really fake? It’s, uh, hard to believe, is all…” his voice trailed off.

“I mean this nicely.” Kaeya’s tone went icy. “If your friend was dead last week, he’s still dead. It’s a trick. The Abyss is known for its tricks, and this is an Abyssal affliction. It’s not even a ‘he.’ It’s not real.”

He frowned, though it was subtle. “You don’t have to put it like that.”

“Based on that reaction, I feel I do.”

Albedo took that moment to interrupt. “So Venti is currently affected by a dangerous Abyssal curse that came from the box. Correct?”

“That about sums it up.” Kaeya still couldn’t believe it. He hated this.

“No wonder the wind is wrong.”

Venti responded quietly, “ah, yeah, sorry about that, too.”

Kaeya couldn’t bother to question them. He just needed to get his own head on straight and be a knight. It shouldn’t be a difficult ask considering all the years he’d spent as a protector to the city, yet it was a strange circumstance indeed to make him question whether he’d be able to uphold that pledge right here and right now. 

“What else?” He continued, listlessly. “What else do you see that shouldn’t be there?”

“Well.” He fiddled with his sleeves. “I still can’t leave the city…”

“What does that—oh.” The conversation they had had at the tavern was slowly filtering back in. “You can’t leave the city. Something is stopping you.” An invisible barrier, he had said. Kaeya could’ve screamed. “This stuff relies on memory more than anything. What sort of memory would even cause that? Were you caged as a child?” 

He meant it as a joke, but it wasn’t being taken that way, and he felt that in different circumstances, he would’ve attempted some weak type of comfort. For now, he pretended he hadn’t said it. Apparently Venti had a darker past than he’d imagined. 

“Nevermind,” Kaeya relented. “Let’s just get inside.” There was no storm, he knew, yet the hair at the back of his neck prickled as if lightning might strike at any second.

When no one moved, Kaeya took it upon himself to put a firm hand around Venti’s wrist and grab Albedo similarly and start dragging. They were going back to the Headquarters, and there, they would discuss like civilized individuals and not three people practically jumping out of their skin.

This time, he would not let go. No abandoning friends. Fuck it—they could both be martyrs together and hopefully not take each other out in an effort to save what might still be saved.

…

“So, Venti,” Kaeya began languidly, “mind explaining why the Abyss thought cursing you was worth the effort?”

Albedo and Venti exchanged glances, and it was enough to inform Kaeya that he was the only one out of the loop—and that he was being kept that way on purpose. So be it. He wouldn’t be left in the dark for long if he had anything to say about it.

“Who knows?” Venti said, and it was enough to tell him that there would be no progress made on that front if he tackled it directly. If Kaeya wanted to know, he’d have to be subtle about it.

“How have you lasted this long, anyway?” He asked next.

They both looked at him in confusion—Venti far more obviously confused than Albedo—as they had no way of knowing what Kaeya knew to be fact. He enjoyed that, the subtle control he could dangle above their heads, just to return a sliver of the frustration they’d both heaped upon him by refusing to share information freely.

“I don’t understand,” Venti responded, earnest as ever.

“It’s called the 3-day curse, by some. Or, it was.” He was disgusted by his own willingness to speak without caution; it wouldn’t do to expose all he knew as if it were common knowledge. That’s how the absentminded got ousted from the collective—but he wasn’t willing to stand by, either. As long as Albedo didn’t tell the bard where Kaeya had gotten his information, they wouldn’t have any problems. And that, he truly hoped, was a line Albedo wouldn’t cross.

“The more you sleep, the more it claims your mind,” Kaeya explained. “3 days is what it takes, normally. And yet it’s been what, a whole week? You seem far too okay.”

“…Thanks?”

“It wasn’t a compliment.” Kaeya anchored his eye on Venti, openly staring. “I know you won’t say how. Which is fine,” he said, teeth grinding together. “Just do not fall asleep for now if you can manage it.”

Albedo cut in, “and the cure is?”

Kaeya sighed, and it was such a tired sound it reminded himself of Diluc more than anyone. They had grown up together, but rarely did he take on his pseudo-brother's mannerisms. Kaeya didn’t like it at all. 

“Complicated,” he said. “There is one main source of fear that it feeds on, generally, and whatever that is needs to be vanquished in reality when it inevitably appears.”

“That seems doable,” Venti said.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Kaeya asked mirthlessly. “The thing about sources of fear is that we’re not very good at defeating them. And since we can't see through your eyes, you’re on your own.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, Oh.” Kaeya knew he shouldn’t be so snappy, but he could still hardly believe this had happened in Mondstadt, and right under his nose, no less.

“Does the danger only apply to Venti?” Albedo asked. 

No. He didn't say it. The other great risk to the curse was that the one put under it would slowly lose their senses, hurting those they loved without meaning to. It was a curse to destroy cities from the inside out. But Venti wasn’t exactly strong, and though he had a vision, Kaeya believed in his own power more. He should mention it to them, but…no. This, Kaeya had inadvertently caused. This, Kaeya could do on his own. Knowledge of a potential enemy inside one’s home hardly helped those who were actively invested in fighting the enemy outside the gates, too. Knowing wouldn't help, and really, how much damage could Venti realistically do? Also he'd already gone this long without succumbing to it completely. They could wait another day or two.

“It’s the only danger that matters.”

Besides, they refused to tell him everything; he certainly didn’t need to tell them all that he knew, either, especially since he deemed it unnecessary. Venti wouldn’t be difficult to subdue if that’s what it came to. Kaeya’s mind flashed back to the fountain when wind had dented stone, and for a moment he wavered—but it must’ve been the fault of the stone, not because Venti actually had that much power. It was a laughable idea, the bard, a bringer of destruction.

Kaeya thought it better not to speak of this most common use for the curse. Perhaps he’d regret it, but he hardly believed it could get much worse. He’d need to stay vigilant and hope that peace would return, as it was long overdue. He’d never realized how much he liked peace until it’d been stripped from him unfairly.

Jean returned while they were talking, coming upon them seemingly accidentally, and the moment to admit to the deeper truth was gone. Kaeya was glad for it, really. Making the hard decisions wasn’t something that pleased him, especially not with regards to Khaenri’ah. Though he loved to be the center of intelligence, he liked it far less when said intelligence was about his lost nation. 

When she realized that the three of them were together, she signaled Kaeya and Albedo to come with her, yet again intentionally leaving Venti out of it. That was another mystery, Kaeya mused. 

She seemed so committed to keeping Venti specifically out of their troubles. Too bad Kaeya had decided he wasn't letting himself back out again.

“Do you need them?” Venti asked. “It’s no problem, we were just catching up.”

“Still, I apologize for interrupting. Albedo, I’m calling on you now. Your project will have to go on hold. Kaeya, you as well.”

She seemed frazzled, which meant the rift wolf issue had likely gotten worse. An army was gathering at their gates, and Kaeya didn’t know which was a greater source of concern, the enemy outside or the enemy within. Well, there was one simple way to minimize the danger involved.

"Give me your vision," Kaeya said to Venti. "Trust me, it's for the best. And we'll talk more later, figure out a plan." Venti obliged, the glass orb now out of his hands, and with it, the danger that Venti presented. Confident that all would be well eventually, Kaeya followed Jean out of the room.

Jean continued to gather her most trusted companions, and she announced to them in a tone that left no room to argue. “Tonight," she said. "They’ll attack tonight, I’m certain.” No one doubted her words, not even Kaeya. “We must be vigilant and wise. This enemy is not insurmountable, and I believe in our ability to protect our city.”

Venti became an afterthought as she rallied her knights and gave orders to begin securing the city.

“Be brave,” Jean commanded. “Mondstadt will stand for another day yet, and we will make it to tomorrow.”

________________________________________

Although he was alone, Venti knew he wasn’t actually alone at all.

His friend was soliloquizing on the lovely furniture, said it reminded him of home, but not exactly, and he thought that it was fascinating. Once again, Venti questioned the falsity of this being. Was he really as fake as he had once believed, as Kaeya had claimed? And Kaeya had taken his vision. Venti hadn't bothered to challenge it, but he did hope he'd get it back eventually. It hadn't been the easiest thing to make, after all.

Venti was caught in his thoughts when Carmen came very close to his face, his eyes so very blue, the blue of a clear sky. “You weren’t listening, were you?” It wasn’t said to shame him, just an earnest question like all the rest.

Venti could do nothing but tell the truth. “I just got distracted. Silly me.”

“You seem tired.”

“I am tired. But I’d still love to listen to whatever you have to say.” Venti tried to look happy, but it was difficult when he felt so horribly out of place and out of time. It was hard sometimes to even know where he was. He was a traveler on the wind, so it didn’t much matter, but he wondered…if he kept flickering in and out of this world, lost, would he someday fly away like a dandelion seed? 

“You should take care of yourself first!” Carmen said. “No one can function without rest, not even one as miraculous as yourself, my friend.” He moved to sit right on the table, between Venti and the door. “Here—why don’t I play you a lullaby? I know many good ones.”

“I know you do.” Venti couldn’t help how he involuntarily smiled so wide that it hurt. “I’ve heard them all a thousand times, and I’ve played them a thousand more. But I’m not supposed to fall asleep.”

Carmen chuckled at that. “Whyever is that?”

Venti thought back, trying to uncover the source, but came up empty. “Someone said so. You were here. Don’t you remember?”

Carmen’s eyes were mesmerizing, and within them reflected a room where the two of them used to write ballads together, one full of potted plants and pillows. “No one I know, that’s for sure. Do you know who it was?”

“Not really. He’s from…” Mondstadt? “The wrong time.”

“Well, I think it’ll be okay! After all, I’ll be watching over you.”

“It should be the other way around,” Venti said, yawning, as he leaned deeper into the couch cushions. “You’re the one who’s mortal. I’m just some spirit. I should be protecting you. Especially since—” he stopped and didn’t dare finish the sentence with memories that shouldn’t exist yet. They didn’t exist…or did they?

“Nonsense!” Carmen exclaimed. “You’re a very precious existence.” A song began playing, and it took Venti far, far away into a lush field of memory and hazy, distant days. “So sweet dreams, dear wind spirit.”

Venti didn’t have it in him to respond. He hoped for sweet dreams, indeed.