The waiting game in Liyue was a distant, strategic hum, but the war in Inazuma was a loud, clashing, and increasingly violent reality. News of the conflict between the Shogunate and the Watatsumi resistance was a constant, grim topic of conversation, even in the serene, sheltered heights of the Grand Narukami Shrine.
The tide, it seemed, was turning.
"The Shogun's forces, under the direct command of General Kujou Sara, have been forced into a tactical retreat from their positions on Yashiori Island," Sayu would report, her sleepy voice a stark, mumbled contrast to the dramatic news she delivered. "The resistance… they are pushing forward. With a new… yawn… level of strength and enthusiasm."
Ayaka, who would often be present for these briefings, would look pleased, a hopeful light in her eyes. But Ren, listening to the reports, felt a cold, familiar dread. He knew the source of that "new strength." He knew it was not just the inspiring presence of the Traveler that was bolstering their morale. It was the dark, insidious power of the Delusions, a false strength that was slowly, secretly, consuming the very soldiers who wielded it. But Sayu's reports never mentioned them. The Fatui's dark gift remained a well-kept, poisonous secret.
The war, and Lumine's central role in it, felt like a distant, unfolding drama, something Ren was observing from a safe, detached distance.
Until the day the war came crashing, literally, into his sanctuary.
It was late in the afternoon. Ren and Ganyu were in the shrine's main library, enjoying a moment of quiet reading, when a sudden, frantic commotion erupted outside. A moment later, Yae Miko swept into the room, her usual playful, elegant composure completely gone, replaced by a look of grim, furious urgency.
And in her arms, she was carrying the limp, unconscious form of Lumine.
Paimon was floating frantically beside her, her small body trembling, her face a mask of pure, hysterical terror, her high-pitched sobs echoing in the silent, hallowed hall.
"What happened?!" Ganyu gasped, immediately rushing to their side.
"The Traveler," Miko said, her voice a low, angry hiss as she gently, carefully, laid Lumine down on a long, cushioned bench. "She decided to be a hero. A foolish, reckless, and very brave hero."
Miko explained in a torrent of sharp, angry words. Lumine, following a lead, had discovered the secret Fatui facility, the one where they were manufacturing and distributing the Delusions to the resistance soldiers. She had infiltrated it, alone.
"She found their proof, she confronted them," Miko continued, her violet eyes flashing with a dangerous, foxy light. "But she also ran into… him."
Ren froze. He knew who she meant.
"The Balladeer was there," Miko confirmed, her voice dripping with a cold, venomous fury. "It was a trap. They were waiting for her." She let out a sharp, frustrated sigh. "I was able to get there in time to… intervene. To rescue her before the situation became… irreversible."
Ren stared at Lumine's still, unconscious form, a single, terrible, and all-important question burning in his mind. He had to know.
He looked at Miko, his glowing azure eyes full of a strange, ancient, and deeply knowing intensity. "The Gnosis," he said, his voice a low, urgent whisper. "Did you give it to him?"
Yae Miko, who had been in the middle of a furious, protective rant, stopped dead. She stared at Ren, her foxy, intelligent eyes widening in a look of pure, unadulterated shock. All of her anger, all of her frustration, was completely eclipsed by a single, baffling, and impossible question.
How could he possibly know that?
The existence of the Electro Archon's Gnosis, and the fact that she, Yae Miko, had been its secret keeper for the past five hundred years, was a secret of the highest possible order, a secret known only to her and to Ei. For this child to not only know of its existence, but to know that she had it, and to know that it was the price of this confrontation… it was an impossibility, a piece of knowledge so far beyond his station that it was almost a divine revelation in itself.
She was silent for a long, profound moment, her brilliant mind reeling, reassessing everything she thought she knew about the strange, wonderful, and increasingly terrifying boy before her.
Finally, she let out a slow, weary sigh, a sound of profound, reluctant defeat. She did not question him. She simply answered.
"I did," she admitted, her voice a soft, tired murmur. "It was a transaction. A trade. Her life… for the Gnosis."
She looked at Ren, her expression a mirror of his own from their conversation weeks ago, when he had argued against a direct confrontation with the Balladeer. "He would have killed her, Ren," she said, her voice full of a grim, pragmatic certainty. "And if I had fought him there, in that unstable facility, with the Traveler's life on the line… the situation would have escalated. It would have led to an open, all-out war between the Shrine, the Shogunate, and the Fatui. The very thing you warned me against."
She had made a choice. She had made a deal. She had sacrificed a divine, cosmic chess piece, an important but untimately unnecessary item to her, to save the life of a single and very important person of interest.