"Is that Erloeff woman still crying outside? Does she ever stop? It's the middle of the night, some people are trying to sleep!"
"Sigh, have some sympathy. That poor girl is truly pitiful."
"Tch, those Erloeffs. When the monsters attacked, they went to the battlefield to deliver supplies. Meddling where they had no business. Serves them right for dying."
"You can't say that..."
"What did I say wrong? Shouldn't the Knights be the ones dealing with those monsters? They get paid, so protecting us is their duty!"
---
"I heard before that Deputy Grand Master Rostam and the Erloeff girl were close. Didn't think it was true. Look at how she's crying."
"Must say though, she's quite pretty. No wonder Rostam had his eye on such a young thing."
"You shouldn't talk about Deputy Grand Master Rostam like that! He died fighting for Mondstadt, protecting all of us!"
"Who let this little brat into the conversation? Adults are talking, stay out of it."
"Yeah! If it weren't for his negligence, my house wouldn't have collapsed in the monster attack. Should I be thanking him?"
---
"Hey, where are you going?"
"Today is Deputy Grand Master Rostam's burial. I'm going to pay my respects."
"Hmph, you actually believe he died protecting Mondstadt?"
"Your tone suggests you know something."
"Haven't you heard? That Rostam was doing private work behind the Grand Master's back. Who knows how much he pocketed for himself. Hah, given how active he was, I'd wager he was just protecting his own property."
"Is that so? And here I actually shed a few tears for him. Outwardly kind but inwardly rotten, it seems."
---
"Have you seen the Erloeff girl? She's terrifying! How is she on fire?!"
"I saw it too! My god, she's a monster!"
"Quickly, get the Knights! Get her out of the city!"
"First Mondstadt gets attacked by monsters, and now they let a creature like this stay inside the walls? What are the Knights even doing!"
---
Boom.
A dull crack of thunder split the sky.
Dark clouds rolled in and raindrops as large as beans began to fall, shrouding the land in a vast grey curtain of rain.
Out in the wilderness, the girl, her entire body burning, dragged her feet forward without any clear direction.
No matter how many raindrops fell, they evaporated before they could even come close to her skin.
The fields she passed through were left as nothing but scorched ash in her wake.
"Ro... Rosalyne... Rosalyne."
Behind the burning girl, a thin figure followed, having called her name more times than she could count.
Until her voice had gone rough and her strength had begun to thin.
She still could not reach her.
The burning girl had exhausted her tears and her songs. What remained was only a shell filled with fire.
No self. No goal. No direction.
Only when a stray dark monster crossed her path would her eyes come briefly alive, and she would let it turn to ash in her flames.
But after the monsters were gone, the pain did not lessen in the slightest.
Standing in the embers, she let out a silent wail.
Though her body was long covered in wounds, only fire as hot as molten iron could flow from them and from the corners of her eyes.
This agony of being burned from within could not be soothed by ordinary rain.
Whenever it became too much, Martha would step forward.
Using the portable elemental bottles she had once used for research, she would draw on the stored Hydro element to cool down Rosalyne's body and keep the flames from consuming her entirely.
It was only because of this that the girl's body did not collapse.
---
Tender shoots pushed up through the soil. Green trees grew lush and spread their shade.
Withered leaves fell in the autumn wind. Snowflakes blanketed the hills.
Spring passed into autumn. Summer gave way to winter.
And then the cycle began again.
Day after day. Year after year.
Many, many years passed this way.
The girl filled with fire, sustained by that powerful force within her, did not change much in appearance.
Even as her body became stained with the black blood of countless monsters.
But the plain girl who had always followed behind her, caring for her without fail...
Her once youthful face had been worn down by time, the smooth skin now carved with deep lines.
Her black braids had turned to white hair. Her once sturdy frame was now bent and slow.
Over the years, only when the harshest part of winter arrived would the flames burning the girl subside slightly.
Martha would take those opportunities to return to Sumeru to see her family.
But she always came back.
As Martha grew older, however, something changed. From one particular day onward, she did not return from Sumeru.
---
Once again, a monster crumbled to ash in the burning girl's hands.
Martha stepped forward, as she always had, using the Hydro element to ease the flames burning through the girl's body.
The portable elemental bottles, once rough prototypes from her student days, had been refined by Martha many times over the years. The efficiency of converting and storing the Hydro element had improved greatly, allowing her to ease Rosalyne's suffering more quickly than before.
After the flames settled, Martha did not step back.
The girl was still tormented, her mind adrift in the haze of the fire. And yet she seemed to sense, somewhere beneath that fog, that a farewell was near.
Unusually, she let out no wail.
Martha's aged face was full of memory and reluctance as she gazed at the girl for a very long time.
Rosalyne. You must live on.
After hanging the portable elemental bottle carefully at the girl's waist, the old woman turned and walked away into the light of the setting sun, and never came back.
And so the burning girl was alone again.
---
Afterward, the girl wandered the wilderness for several hundred more years.
The long passage of time allowed her to grow accustomed to the torment of the flames, and she occasionally regained enough clarity of mind to be conscious of herself.
Her old friends were long dead. There was no one left in the world who knew the name Rosalyne.
But the people who glimpsed her burning monsters gave this creature, who wandered the wilderness year after year, a new name.
The Crimson Witch of Flames.
The Mondstadters she saved from monsters would return to their towns, frightened and stirred up, telling stories of this strange encounter, wondering aloud why the monsters and this burning figure fought each other.
By now, the girl was long gone from who she had once been.
On her head she wore a wide-brimmed witch's hat, charred at the edges, which she had found a century ago during one of her clearer moments.
With such a large brim, when she threw herself into battle, she did not have to watch the monsters being devoured by flames and scattered into ash. And when she caught her reflection in still water, she did not have to see her own face, scorched and cracked by the fire and smoke.
At her waist hung a glass bottle. The Hydro element that had once been stored within it had long since transformed into something that flowed and burned like liquid fire.
Like the blood running through her veins.
---
"The Crimson Witch of Flames is coming! She's heading toward the village!"
A child running in from the village entrance shouted at the top of his lungs.
People saw the distant glow and panicked immediately, pulling their children inside and shutting their doors and windows tight.
The lively village fell silent in an instant.
It was a wordless expulsion.
Even though many in that same village had been saved from monsters by her hands.
To ordinary people, she was something to be feared and turned away from.
But their reaction made no difference to the Crimson Witch of Flames.
To her, someone had to go on burning, clearing away the pain, so that new hope might grow in the ash.
She needed no understanding. No comfort. No sympathy.
And even less did she need saving.
She walked quietly along the deserted village road. Hundreds of years had given her enough control over the flames that she no longer left burning embers on the paths she traveled.
Perhaps it was also connected to the fact that her life force was nearly spent and her end was approaching.
---
When the witch's power was almost gone and she was ready to meet her end, a man wearing a sneering mask followed the trail of smoke and found her.
He said: "You are truly remarkable. To carry such power within a mortal body."
"How about we make a deal? Let our Majesty's blessing extinguish the fire consuming you."
The witch did not respond. There was nothing left in this world she held onto.
But even at the very end of her life, facing this strange person, she still asked who he was. Her voice was rough from the flames.
"The sage thinks himself omnipresent, but we understand the righteousness behind their foolish acts."
"I am Pierro, the Jester. The first fool."
The mask on the man's face seemed to sneer:
"My talents could not match the sages'. I failed to gain the favor of the previous king. I failed to stop them from tearing open the veil of deepest sin and inviting the gods' destructive wrath upon us."
"You are like me, are you not? You have seen the absurdity and indifference of the laws that govern this world."
"Join us. Become a clumsy fool. Help us rewrite the divine principles."
The man showed the witch the Delusion.
He showed her the boundary between a corrupted past and an unstained future.
The dim eyes of the Crimson Witch of Flames reignited.
"I understand. I will use this ice to extinguish the ever-burning flame."
---
The silent ice cleansed the black filth from her body and froze away the painful past.
She donned pure white garments and became a leader among fools.
Even so, the pale, unstained flames still burned fiercely inside her heart.
She knew well that even dressed in white, her whole body was already stained with the oil and ash of countless corpses, impossible to wash clean.
Reborn as Signora, she had only one reason left for living.
No matter what it required, even if it meant becoming nothing more than a tool to serve the Tsaritsa's goals.
For the sake of the erased past of the girl named Rosalyne.
The fools would cleanse this world of its sources of corruption: the shortsighted, foolish gods, and the filth of the dark Abyss.
---
[Ding. "Light and Shadow of the West Wind" has concluded.]
As the knight named Rostam was struck by the poisonous dragon's breath and bled out in the valley, the system's voice sounded and pulled Ji An, who had been fully immersed in the story, back to reality.
Another tragedy.
He couldn't help thinking it.
He was somewhat numb to it by now, having been through enough of these to have built up a degree of resistance.
But it occurred to him that this might be related to the system's upgrades.
The immersive mode felt considerably more vivid than previous simulations. If before he had been a spectator watching events unfold, this time it had felt far closer to actually living them.
During that simulated life, he had genuinely seemed to exist as the young wolf Rostam. He had come to know Rosalyne, had shared with her moments that were both wonderful and heartbreakingly brief.
Even now, having returned to himself, he felt the weight of it.
"I wonder what happened to Rosalyne after that. I hope that when she comes back from Sumeru and finds out Rostam is gone, she won't be too devastated."
Although, knowing Rosalyne as well as he now did, that was absolutely impossible.
That somewhat tsundere girl had never once openly admitted her feelings. And yet her affection had been so plain that it was practically overflowing. Her whole heart had been tied to him.
Before he had come to Teyvat, there was a saying back in his world that tsunderes were a thing of the past.
But Ji An felt tsunderes were genuinely endearing.
Clearly caring so deeply for someone, yet stubbornly refusing to say so out loud. And then, when teased about it, putting on that indignant, slightly devastated expression as if she were about to cry.
Of course, the main point was still that Rosalyne was beautiful.
After all, the real heart of the word tsundere was never in the cold front, but in the warmth underneath.
---
[Returning to reality shortly.]
At the same time, a sequence of images played before Ji An's eyes.
A figure that seemed familiar at first, but as the image drew closer, felt strangely distant.
The once pure white, noble knight. His armor no longer shone.
The white flower the girl had gifted him, still pinned to his chest, had long since been stained black with blood. His sword no longer carried its old brightness.
"Is killing in the name of justice still killing?"
"No. Justice carried out through killing is still justice."
---
"When did I begin to take pleasure in the sensation of a blade passing through flesh and blood?"
"Perhaps this is what it feels like when justice is served."
---
"If I keep cutting, thrusting, swinging this sword without stopping, then surely, eventually, every sin of this twisted world will be purified."
---
Enamored with his own knightly path, he believed he would carry out his justice like this forever.
Until he realized that at some point, countless black raven feathers had settled on him without his noticing.
Ravens are sharp creatures. They follow those steeped in bloodshed and seek out prey alongside them.
The bloodstained knight then realized he could no longer tell the difference between the blood soaking into him and the blood flowing out of him.
Whether it was an enemy's blood splashed across him, or his own blood leaving his body.
He finally understood. In the long years of slaughter, his knightly path had transformed the once pure white knight into something monstrous.
Even though the resolve to carry out justice still burned within him, he knew clearly that there was no longer a place for him in the world above ground.
And so he bid farewell to the world of men.
He descended into the deep earth where neither sun, moon, nor stars could reach, pressing further down until he arrived at the ruins of the fallen ancient nation.
He had decided to let his final chapter end in battle against the monsters at the cradle of their origin.
Yet at the bottom of the world, he came to understand the true story of the ancient kingdom's end, and the origin of the monsters. It was the greatest injustice he had ever encountered.
And so the knight, who had come ready to meet his end, raised his blood-blackened sword one more time:
"The great ancient kingdom was punished unjustly."
"The great ancient kingdom's people were twisted into monsters against their will."
"How could my knightly path ever tolerate such injustice?"
"If the Abyss is its name, then I pledge my sword to the Abyss."
The final image was the bloodstained knight raising his sword toward the sky above.
Then Ji An's consciousness plunged into darkness.
---
The system's voice returned.
[Lifespan: 32 years.]
[Click to view life summary.]
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