"Why should I save you?"
Eh…
Ganyu froze. Her gilded eyes fluttered once, as though she hadn't heard Seino Yaku's words—or rather, she had heard every syllable, but her mind refused to react.
She knew each character; strung together, they made no sense.
Why save you… From a very, very young age, Ganyu had never asked that.
It had always seemed only natural that Bosacius would come to save her; she was used to calling for her senior brother—no other reason needed. She was the junior. He was the senior.
Yes—why should he save you?
Why indeed…
From the moment karma took her body, she'd felt as if standing on hollow cloud—no sense of reality in anything around her; her emotions stalled. When one stops thinking, one stops hurting. But with Seino Yaku's quiet words, she fell from the cloud onto hard earth.
In the center of a scorched wasteland, belated panic arrived hand in hand with pain.
She lowered her gaze. A puddle mirrored her face; a strange, blazing hue ran from her lash line, tracing crimson at the corners of her eyes, yet in their depths lay pooled emptiness and deathly stillness. Her lips curled unnaturally—sickly, warped. The filth coiled deep in her soul.
Is that me…?
Is this me?
Instinctively, she touched her cheek with her fingertips.
Fragments of Bosacius's husk sprinkled the air, each cold mote catching the light. Every grain was a piece of Bosacius's body. She stared at the shards, paused—and fully realized what she had just done.
What had she done?
Each grain was Bosacius's remains. The pebbles glinted like tears.
Her senior brother… Bosacius's body… she had destroyed it.
She had never gone to pay respects—no matter how many times Indarias invited her. And now she had destroyed his remains…
Ah—he was killed by her; it was she who broke the seal Bosacius forged with his life.
She had destroyed his body.
Those stones she shattered—just as, two thousand four hundred years ago, she pierced that carved-full-of-names heart.
Wild-eyed, helpless, she looked around. Soot-dark karma climbed for the highest vault of The Chasm; layer upon layer of stone took on stain; the long-dead fire in the lava rekindled, blood-red tongues licking a leaden sky.
She did… all this?
She had done this.
What had she done?
Liyue might be ruined because of her.
And so—by what right should she be saved?
She stared at Seino Yaku, and found the youth's aura ever closer to Elder Brother's: agitated geo gathered to him; he stood like a mountain—solemn, weighty, reassuring.
Still so strong.
She did not deserve to be saved.
She had no right to redemption.
The more she thought so, the deeper the filth crept. The emptiness in her eyes was overrun by shadowy stain, and a voice murmured over and over: that is not your senior, not your senior—your senior would come to save you, your senior will come to save you…
Not your senior… not your senior!
Kill him, kill him, kill him.
Resentment, recrimination, even hatred.
Hatred when hope collapses; hatred for what one cannot attain—a sickly hatred.
No!
At last she understood—felt with her own body—what agony Bosacius had faced that day, and what kind of will had borne it.
No… no… Ganyu tried to cast off those voices, but however she struggled, she was caught like a fly in a web, sinking deeper. Kill Seino Yaku—kill the imposter—no.
Just her own karma already drove her toward murder—while Bosacius had borne a hundredfold hers.
And yet he restrained himself—he did not kill her.
Twice.
Not your senior, not your senior—kill him, kill him, kill him!
"Kill me…" Ganyu bowed her head, nails digging into her palms until blood ran along the pale creases. Again and again she whispered, "Kill me."
She was unworthy of saving. So she waited for death. Head bowed, she waited for its arrival. But it did not come. After a time she felt a touch—slightly rough, warm—lightly stroking her hair.
Rough skin and soft hair brushing—like the fine sun and sand of a summer afternoon, warm and long-missed, something that had happened countless times, that she had felt many times. Beautiful enough to ache.
She lifted her eyes. Seino Yaku was looking at her.
His hand rested atop her head. Behind him, mountain-fire flared, dazzling light plating his figure. The moment was brief and eternal—a moving painting.
"Sei…" she murmured, "Senior Brother."
"I've taken all your karma," Seino Yaku said calmly. "From now on, your senior is already dead. Stop running."
"We won't be entangled anymore."
He did not know… if this could truly save her.
Perhaps it only treated the symptoms.
He could carry off the two millennia of karma born in Ganyu—but if she could still not face the truth, if she continued to flee as before—then another two millennia would birth new karma.
But that would no longer be Seino Yaku's concern.
To defeat the heart-demon—she herself would have to. There might be sorrow, pain—but she would come through.
Because Seino Yaku was tired—so very tired.
The only thing he could do for Ganyu—and for everyone—was to struggle to keep living, not become a new shackle to her, not harm those who loved him.
He had to live—that was the limit of what he could do.
He could not manage two thousand years hence. He had fulfilled his duty as Seino Yaku; to anyone he was, he bore no guilt.
Bosacius might owe; Ganyu might have erred—but he, as Seino Yaku, the "heartless" one… had not.
It wasn't Seino Yaku's fault.
What…
What did he mean, "take all your karma"?
Ganyu had not yet understood. Stained by karma, feeling hollow, her thoughts dulled and murky, cut off from the world—of course she didn't grasp what had happened.
She only saw that Seino Yaku had arrived, but did not ask how he'd reached this place—the deepest of The Chasm—where karma lay everywhere.
And where was the karma? Where had that overwhelming tide gone?
She blinked; her pupils tightened. At last she realized.
Nuo Fu.
Was it Nuo Fu… but why—Nuo Fu?
She tried to speak; before words formed, she went rigid. She felt those shadowed, murky emotions receding swiftly, like a tide dragged back into the sea. The gilded sheen in her eyes faded, clarity returning bit by bit.
In a single instant—
The voices were gone.
The karma, gone.
The world had never been so quiet, so peaceful.
So quiet it was almost frightening.
She had finally found calm—release.
She could feel the karma flowing along Seino Yaku's palm into his chest; his entire arm had gone nearly translucent, black blood coursing through his veins, carrying infinite filth and rancor into the boy's heart.
So—he had not reached out to comfort her; the touch was only to ease Nuo Fu. That warmth of sand and sun had been an illusion.
Her heart had never been this still—still as a mirror-lake in shadow—and the stiller the sea, the colder it is, death's chill seeping into bone.
Yet with the chaos and clamor scoured away, Ganyu's reason returned.
She lifted her eyes to Seino Yaku—and froze.
What had she seen… what had she seen?
He swayed; his aura grew thicker. His back felt ready to split; bones lengthened and cracked; flesh tore; two new arms strained to break from his back.
Frenzy. Rampage.
Pain.
"Hah…"
Seino Yaku remembered many pains: the old, the forgotten; the painful life of loss that had always belonged to his karma came bearing its despair, and he took up the old scars.
He saw scorched earth and a blood-red sky. Karma poured along a leaden horizon like dark rivers of fire… He saw his last moments, dying alone in the abyss; he saw Ganyu's once-hateful gaze. Scenes whirled past like a lantern show.
His eyes grew darker, deader.
"No… it shouldn't be like this. Why…"
Ganyu's eyes trembled. She wanted to speak—nothing came. Her heart felt hollow. She murmured, dazed; she was no fool—she pieced together Seino Yaku's—Bosacius's—plan.
He would swallow all the karma, then have the Archon kill him… He would finish what was left undone two thousand four hundred years ago.
"You mustn't."
Calm returned; normalcy crept back. She stared straight at him. "You can't… You know what that means…"
"I won't die," Seino Yaku said softly. "Please believe me."
No. He mustn't.
It was too cruel.
He won't die… won't die.
She could not believe it. She would not.
No—another lie. Still lying.
She had to stop Bosacius—had to stop Seino Yaku, even by force. She reached, by reflex, to take his hand—and he drew away.
…Eh?
Her slender hand hung in the air.
"Ganyu."
His voice was very low—very low.
"Zhongli believed me. Ying believed me. Havria believed me. Only you did not."
He no longer knew whether it was he speaking or the karma. The border was blurred.
Under torment, his patience and reason had been ground down to nothing.
So low it was almost inaudible—flat and quiet.
"Then and now alike,"
"—you never believed me."
He said it gently.
Never.
Ganyu froze. She stepped back half a pace. She wanted to speak—to deny, to argue, to say it wasn't so—but no words came.
Only she had never trusted Bosacius. Only she had never trusted Seino Yaku. The Yaksha had gone to see him—but not her. The Yaksha had met and mingled with Seino Yaku—but not her. And now… only she thought Bosacius—thought Seino Yaku—was lying.
She had grown up with him—for six hundred years—spent longer with him than anyone… and yet…
"Only you."
"You never believed me."
Only she had never read Bosacius's heart.
Bosacius—or Seino Yaku—bowed his head and looked at her no more. He turned away and walked, slowly, toward the edge of The Chasm. His steps were slow; his back grew small.
Before him, a fissure opened in the layered rock. A ruddy sunset spilled dappled light—sunlight that by rights should not reach so deep.
He stepped on the flecks of light, one after another, going farther. His back straightened higher. Along his path, all karma melted into the blood-red afterglow—into his body. His silhouette was swallowed by the sun.
Ganyu wanted to give chase—but she could no longer match his stride. She had stood on the wrong road for too long; chances to correct had come and gone.
She could do nothing.
She could only watch as a bystander—cold, helpless…
Do nothing.
"Hah… hah."
Seino Yaku trudged on. He was exhausted. He wanted to sleep—deeply—and think no more. To hand his body to someone else. To stop hurting.
His heart beat heavily—like thunder.
Each beat, a roar of karma.
He had to end this quickly. If he delayed until the karma in his heart spread through him entirely, he would be as Bosacius—beyond cleansing; even if the body were slain, the karma would roost within.
Karma had entangled three of his lives; it had entangled Liyue for millennia. Now he would write the period at the end of fate's long sentence.
And then—heartless, unburdened—he would live.
At last he reached The Chasm's end—reached the end of the sunset—and saw a blaze of light. He also saw the Vortex Vanquisher leveled at his heart.