Who was this person?
Kaeya had come to find him early in the morning just to make an introduction?
Ji An had a vague sense of what might be going on, but couldn't understand the reasoning behind it.
Kaeya walked over to the blond man and greeted him.
The man gave only a slight nod.
But when he saw Ji An approaching, he suddenly rose to his feet and stared directly at him.
Ji An glanced at Kaeya, uncertain: "What's this about?"
Kaeya spread his hands and smiled: "Haha. This is Dainsleif. He arrived in Mondstadt from abroad a few days ago. A widely traveled man. Since you, Mr. Ji An, also came to Mondstadt with a specific purpose, I thought an introduction might be useful."
Suspicious. Both of them, extremely suspicious.
Ji An kept his expression neutral and decided to watch how things developed.
Dainsleif held Ji An in his gaze for a long moment. Whatever was moving behind his eyes gradually settled.
He sat back down, took a sip of his drink, and said evenly: "Widely traveled is an exaggeration."
Kaeya smiled: "Mr. Dainsleif is being modest."
Dainsleif said: "I simply know everything I need to know."
Kaeya coughed.
Ji An couldn't help a quiet laugh.
Know everything you need to know. Sure.
Kaeya looked at Ji An: "Shall we sit down?"
Ji An nodded and took the seat across from Dainsleif.
Neither of them spoke first. One drank in silence. The other observed quietly.
Kaeya had imagined a number of ways this meeting might go. Two people sitting in complete composure, as though nothing at all were unusual, had not been among them.
He grew quietly restless.
After a moment he said, with the easy manner of someone making idle conversation: "Mr. Ji An, have you heard of the ancient kingdom that fell five hundred years ago?"
Ji An hadn't expected Kaeya to raise Khaenri'ah so directly.
He said: "I've come across it in some books. Khaenri'ah, wasn't it? The Ruin machines scattered across the continent are all relics of that ancient kingdom?"
"Correct, that is you—"
Kaeya said with sudden enthusiasm, then stopped himself short. He cleared his throat. "I mean. Yes, that is correct."
Ji An's heart lurched.
He was certain he hadn't misheard. Kaeya hadn't finished the sentence, but the shape of those unspoken words was impossible to ignore.
In the simulation of the mad craftsman building war machines for Khaenri'ah, no one else should have known anything about it except Ji An himself.
He had been nearly certain that each simulated life only reached into the present through the Exclusive Bonds.
But Kaeya's reaction was making him reconsider that.
System, what is going on?
[Ding...]
Playing dead again, as expected.
"The Black Sun of the ancient kingdom fell. Its bright pearl lost its luster. Its gold lost its color. The rewards once promised were stained with the yellow of dusk."
Dainsleif set his glass down and spoke slowly: "That powerful nation, built by human hands alone, took great pride in its unprecedented prosperity and brilliant civilization. And yet in the end, when the gods descended, it was nothing more than weeds to be pulled from a garden."
Slap.
Kaeya brought his palm down hard on the table. The pain showed clearly on his face.
Ji An watched his reaction in silence.
Kaeya's identity was undoubtedly tied to Khaenri'ah somehow. But the timeline still didn't add up.
Kaeya said quietly: "The divine principles and the gods are unjust. To erase a nation of countless people, a great civilization, from the world with a casual gesture. What cruelty. What arrogance. Don't you agree, Mr. Ji An?"
His pale blue eye settled on Ji An with a smile that took effort to maintain.
Ji An nodded in silence.
But people's grief does not run in the same channels.
Unlike Kaeya's barely contained agitation, Dainsleif was entirely calm: "The heavenly throne is indeed unjust. But it is the Abyss that truly erodes this world's foundations."
"Even so, it was still the divine principles and the gods that destroyed the ancient kingdom."
Kaeya looked up, his gaze going cold: "Dainsleif, you of all people understand best what unjust punishment the gods can inflict. Why is there not a single trace of anger in your eyes?"
The look he directed at Dainsleif was the look a person reserves for someone they consider a traitor.
Ji An sat listening to the exchange and thought: these two have completely stopped pretending, haven't they. Cards right on the table.
Dainsleif: "What I understand, you may not."
Kaeya: "Then tell me what it is I'm missing."
Dainsleif: "You don't need to know."
The color went out of Kaeya's face.
A long silence followed.
Then, as if a switch had been flipped, he simply stepped back from it. His expression returned to its usual ease, as though the person who had just been barely holding back fury was someone else entirely.
He spread his hands and smiled at Ji An: "Haha. Mr. Ji An, Dainsleif and I both share a deep interest in history. We disagree often. Please don't mind us."
"Of course, of course." Ji An nodded along.
He didn't believe a word of that.
Dainsleif looked at Ji An and said unhurriedly: "Shall we go sit upstairs for a while?"
Ji An blinked, not immediately understanding why they'd need to move when the conversation here was perfectly fine.
Then he caught the brief falter in Kaeya's expression and understood. Dainsleif was extending the invitation to Ji An alone.
As for Kaeya, the meaning was plain enough: go find somewhere else to be.
Ji An hesitated: "Is that necessary? We can talk here, can't we?"
He didn't want to outright agree and leave Kaeya feeling dismissed.
Kaeya recovered quickly, his manner light: "It seems I'm the unwanted one here. Don't worry about me, you two talk. I won't get in the way."
He was already getting up.
Ji An said reflexively: "Captain Kaeya..."
"I'm only joking. I just remembered I have something to attend to at the Knights. I'll leave you to it."
With that, Kaeya shot Dainsleif a brief look and left the tavern.
Ji An and Dainsleif were alone.
Dainsleif's expression settled into something more serious as he looked across at Ji An: "Is there anything you want to ask me?"
Ji An said honestly: "To tell you the truth, I don't entirely know who you are. Though I've started to form a guess."
He ventured: "Are you, like Kaeya, connected to Khaenri'ah?"
Dainsleif didn't deny it. He gave a quiet sound of confirmation.
Ji An was more puzzled than before: "Then why did you send him away just now? By any logic, the two of you should have far more to talk about with each other than either of you has to talk about with me."
"He sees only what is immediately in front of him. He cannot perceive the deeper truth of the world."
Dainsleif said: "For me, speaking with you is what holds meaning."
Ji An opened his mouth: "Why me?"
Here we go again. That feeling of being told: young man, you are the chosen one.
He had never picked up any protagonist's script, as far as he was aware.
"I once held you responsible for the fall of Khaenri'ah. I believed you were the one who tore open the veil of deepest sin and ultimately drew the wrath of the gods down upon it."
Dainsleif's deep blue eyes held Ji An steadily: "But when I came to perceive the truth and gathered the scattered pieces together, I understood what you truly carried, and what you truly endured."
Ji An stared at him.
What I carried? I don't even know what that means myself.
Does no one know Ji An better than Ji An? Apparently so.
"So. If there is anything you wish to ask, ask it."
Dainsleif said slowly: "Even if what you want to know concerns a power from beyond this world, a power capable of negating the world itself, I will tell you everything I know."
---
After Ji An's figure had disappeared from view, Dainsleif sat alone at the table.
He dipped one finger into his drink and began tracing a shape slowly on the worn wood surface.
Savior of the past. The one who will bring the cycle of fate to its end. If what I am able to say can be of even some small use to you...
He withdrew his hand and looked at the pattern for a long moment.
Then he rose and left Angel's Share.
"Eh, what's this?"
The waiter who came to clear the table noticed something and stopped.
He lowered the cloth in his hand and leaned in to look more carefully.
"Is that... a snake? Who drew this?"
He stared at the wet shape traced there: a ring, a snake curled back on itself with its tail in its own mouth. He scratched his head, puzzled, and moved on.
---
While Venti rested in Mondstadt and recovered his strength, something else was happening elsewhere.
Stormterror's Lair.
A handsome golden-haired youth stood at the top of the broken tower. Two Abyss Heralds stood behind him, and several hooded Abyss Mages knelt further back.
"Your Highness, just as you foresaw. By channeling the resonance of that magical baton's otherworldly power against the Abyss itself, we have drawn out a stronger and purer Abyssal force than before."
An Abyss Herald pressed a hand to its chest and bowed to the youth.
His name was Aether.
Aether turned and looked at the mass of Abyssal power suspended in the air, held in place by three Abyss Mages.
Even looking at it from a distance inspired a deep unease. The chaos, the hunger for destruction, the boundless and mindless madness it contained were palpable just from proximity.
The process had worked by resonating the otherworldly power stored within the magical baton directly against the Abyss, drawing out a concentrated form of corrupting energy.
This time, unlike the previous red-tinged result, the energy had shifted to a pale, sickly purple. Purer. More deeply corrupted.
"Good."
Aether crossed his arms and nodded.
He turned and walked into the interior of the tower, ascending the steps toward the high platform above.
A Cryo Abyss Mage drifted quickly ahead, reaching the broken stone throne at the summit. It waved its staff, cutting open a rift in the air, and from within drew out a pale golden, faintly luminous fragment wrapped in Abyssal power.
The Abyss Mage released it carefully.
The fragment drifted downward, settled onto the broken throne, and vanished the moment it made contact, like a single drop of water absorbed into a river.
Then, in the very next instant, everything changed.
A violent gale tore across the entire tower summit. Even Aether and the Abyss Heralds struggled to keep their footing against its force.
"Your Highness!"
The Cryo Abyss Mage closest to the throne let out a sharp, cut-off scream.
Aether's expression tightened.
The Abyss Mage had been torn apart by the wind in an instant, leaving nothing behind.
The broken stone throne was gone entirely. In its place stood something that had not been there before.
Seated upon a grand, imposing throne was a tall man clad in black armor and wearing a crown. His presence was immediate and overwhelming, the kind that required no announcement.
He withdrew his gaze from where the Abyss Mage had been.
Then, slowly, he turned his head and looked down at the congregation gathered below him.
An ancient sovereign's pressure radiated outward in waves, pressing down on everything within range.
Within his deep, dark golden eyes, fierce winds seemed to coil and churn like a storm held just barely in check.
The Abyss congregation flinched instinctively and fell back.
Even these twisted, corrupted creatures shrank from the authority of a demon god.
And this was only a remnant soul, a shadow drawn together from the broken dream of that solitary king, summoned up from the ruins of the old capital. Less than a tenth of what he had been at his peak.
But a god diminished was still a god. And this one had been formidable.
A single glance had been enough to call the wind and shred an Abyss Mage where it stood.
"Your Highness..."
Aether had already steadied himself. He ignored the Abyss Heralds moving to block him and stepped forward.
"You are Decarabian? The solitary king who once ruled from this tower?"
The figure on the throne shifted his gaze to Aether without hurrying, and said nothing.
The winds churning in his eyes gathered again.
The same wind that had destroyed the Abyss Mage swept now toward Aether.
This time, the outcome was different.
Aether's expression hardened. He did not retreat. He drew the sword at his waist and drove it against the oncoming gale head-on.
He was battered by the force of it. His skin and clothes were torn in multiple places. His feet scraped and skidded backward across the stone again and again. But with the Abyss congregation finally reacting and lending their combined strength, he held his ground and did not fall.
"Decarabian! You are already dead! Stop clinging to ambitions and dreams that died five hundred years ago!"
Aether's voice rang out: "No matter how powerful you once were, what stands before us now is only a lingering remnant soul. Everything you do here is nothing but futile resistance."
The solitary king on the throne showed nothing. He raised one finger, pointing it downward at the insignificant creatures below.
This time, the wind that began to gather was greater and more terrible than the last.
The expressions of the Abyss Heralds changed. One looked urgently at Aether: "Your Highness, we must call upon that lord from the Abyss. Now."
"Refusing the easier path, then."
Aether fixed Decarabian with cold eyes.
He raised his hand. The corrupted Abyssal power gathered in his palm, swirled once, and then dispersed outward into the air like a signal sent into the dark.
"Sir Roland, please come forth."
At those words, a vast and deep rift split open in the air above the tower.
The rift was wrong in a way that was difficult to describe. Any mortal who looked directly into it for even a moment would likely feel their mind begin to crack under the weight of what poured out from within: an overwhelming tide of chaos, corruption, and something that had no name in any living language.
A beat of silence.
Then a black, corruption-stained knight's boot stepped from the rift and came down onto the stone floor.
The bricks it touched darkened and dissolved instantly into reeking black liquid, as though the stone itself had begun to rot.
"Ughhh... I can smell it... the stench of injustice."
"The very breath of unrighteousness!"
A hoarse, resonant voice poured out from the rift like something long held under pressure finally being released.
Then the rest of him followed.
The knight emerged slowly, his armor stained entirely black with old blood. He raised his head. His face was ravaged and contorted, the features beneath barely recognizable as human anymore.
His eyes found the figure seated on the throne.
"An arrogant overlord."
"A brutal king who ground his subjects beneath him." His voice carried a fervent, trembling disgust. "How utterly detestable. How utterly unforgivable."
He raised the black sword in his hand. A fanatical light burned in his eyes, hot and absolute.
"My knightly path could never tolerate such evil."
-------
A/n: New content and stories posted on my patreon go check it out!
patreon.com/deadlygoober