"Wow, this is the main entrance to Stormterror's Lair, right?"
Paimon floated beside Lumine, gazing at the gate ahead: "It looks enormous to us, but how does Dvalin get in and out with a body that size?"
Venti spread his hands with a smile: "It doesn't have to use paths meant for people. It flies."
"You know... that's a very good point."
Paimon pointed toward the center of the ruins: "That tower over there, the tallest one! If Dvalin has come back, that has to be the only place suitable as a nest, doesn't it?"
The shattered, broken tower she was pointing at loomed over everything around it.
Ji An said: "Let's go take a look."
The group moved toward the tower.
They were almost at its base when something stopped them.
"No... Dvalin!?"
Venti suddenly halted, his body going rigid, his hand flying to his chest as he gasped.
Everyone startled.
Jean stepped toward him: "Lord Barbatos, what's wrong?"
"The connection between Dvalin and me has been blocked all this time, but just now, for a moment, it broke through..."
Venti's eyes lifted to the top of the tower. His expression was grim: "I can sense Dvalin's presence again. But this time it's worse than before. Far worse."
His face tightened: "There's no time to waste."
He raised his hand and plucked the strings of his illusory harp.
The wind of the world answered him. It gathered around him in an instant and formed a rising current of air that carried him upward.
"Dvalin is at the top of the tower. I can feel it. Something is very, very wrong with its condition!"
He looked back at the others, called out the warning, and then he was gone, riding the wind toward the top.
Ji An and the others exchanged looks.
Jean said: "We need to get up there and help Lord Barbatos."
Diluc nodded.
The two of them unfolded their wind gliders and, using the current Venti had left behind, rose toward the top of the tower.
That left only Ji An and Lumine standing below.
Ji An glanced at Lumine and gave a small, awkward cough: "Same arrangement as usual?"
He hadn't quite realized it himself, but somewhere during the time he'd spent in Mondstadt, he had never once thought to get a wind glider.
"...Mm." Lumine tucked a strand of golden hair behind her ear and nodded.
And Lumine, for her part, had never seemed to bring the issue up either.
Paimon: "Hehe!"
---
At this same moment, high on a peak at the far edge of Stormterror's Lair, someone else was watching.
Aether stood at the cliff's edge, arms crossed, his gaze tracking the movement of Venti's group as they made their way toward the tower. He had kept them in sight from the moment they entered the lair.
Behind him, a contingent of Abyss Heralds and Abyss Mages waited in silence.
"The Anemo Archon Barbatos," Aether said quietly. "The god who gave his people freedom, who calls himself kind and enlightened."
"When you are forced to draw your blade against an old friend, when there is no path forward that does not mean severing that bond forever... what choice will you make?"
"Will it be like five hundred years ago? Following the decree of the Heavenly Principles? Treating an ancient kingdom like weeds to be pulled from the gods' garden, and feeling nothing for it?"
His expression remained still. Only when his gaze drifted to the golden-haired girl below the tower did something softer cross his face, brief and quickly replaced by a harder resolve.
In his mind, that day replayed itself. The crimson sky. The burning kingdom. The sound of people crying out.
"Sister. We will meet again."
"But until the Abyss has brought the divine throne down, there can be no peace between me and the Heavenly Principles."
He spoke quietly, almost to himself, as though sharing something with her even across the distance.
The members of the Abyss Order standing behind him sensed the weight of their prince's grief and held their silence. None dared to disturb him.
Then Aether's expression changed.
Something had caught his eye.
"Lumine... who is that man standing next to her?"
He looked more carefully. Noticed the closeness between them. And then he watched his sister step up behind that man, wrap her arms around his waist, and lift him into the air.
The color drained from Aether's face.
"Your Highness, are you all right?" a Violet Lightning Herald asked carefully, catching sight of his expression.
"...It's nothing."
Aether took a breath, and his voice returned to its usual cold steadiness.
"Sir Roland. Once Mondstadt's god has been drawn away from the others, the remaining group is yours to deal with. Leave the golden-haired girl unharmed."
"Those people... are they guilty of injustice?"
The knight who stood radiating a dense, corrupted aura reached up and ran a slow hand along the blade of his black sword, his head bowed, his voice low and detached.
Aether glanced at him. There was no warmth in it. Just a faint, undisguised contempt.
After everything. After having his soul absorbed and reshaped by the Abyss, after becoming something that could no longer be called human by any honest measure, this creature still believed he was carrying out justice grounded in human reason.
Still living inside his own delusion.
"Yes," Aether said calmly. "They are guilty. They are instruments of the Anemo Archon and the Heavenly Principles."
"More evil ones." The corrupted knight's ravaged face twisted into something that might once have been a smile. The dark aura around him thickened, spreading outward and rotting the plants nearest to him where they stood. "I cannot turn away from this."
He rose to his feet, raised his sword, and said in a voice that trembled with barely contained eagerness:
"They must be judged."
"Let the blade cleanse their sins!"
He could already feel the anticipation running through him, that familiar electric sensation that started at the base of his spine and spread upward every time the blade found its mark.
Slice. Thrust. Swing.
Master, you must be watching.
Watch how your disciple carries out the justice you gave him.
---
On the other side of the tower, things were proceeding differently.
"Lumine... isn't this position a bit awkward today?"
Lumine raised an eyebrow: "Awkward? I think it's quite comfortable."
"...Right."
Cradled in Lumine's arms like someone being carried home from the doctor, Ji An decided not to press the point.
He who accepts the ride must not complain about the method.
Using the wind current, the two of them and Paimon rose quickly to the top of the tower.
Venti, Jean, and Diluc had arrived ahead of them. They were all standing still, staring at something on the high platform above.
Ji An and Lumine followed their gaze.
And stopped.
A massive shape occupied most of the upper tower. Its enormous head rested on what had once been the stone throne at the center of the platform.
"Is that... Dvalin?"
"What happened to it?"
"Why does it look like that?"
The dragon they had known had been vibrant and green. What they were looking at now was almost entirely black, with deep crimson patterns running like veins across its hide, and a horn on its back pouring out a dense, sickly, corrupted aura that thickened the air around it.
Venti stepped forward slowly, his voice unsteady: "Dvalin... who did this to you?"
He looked at the dragon, and something pained moved through his expression: "Have you already forgotten what happened to that child? My old friend, you cannot be swallowed by the darkness too. You cannot."
"Crack..."
"Crack... crack..."
Dvalin gave no response to Venti's voice.
Its jaws kept opening and closing with slow, mechanical repetition, as though it was chewing on something. Whatever it was focused on, it wasn't them.
As Venti looked at the dragon in front of him, his expression gradually shifted from grief to something harder.
His eyes began to glow with a faint cyan light. The ends of the braids at his shoulders glowed with it too.
"The Abyss Order," he said, low and tight through his teeth.
His entire presence changed. Divine wind rose around him without being called, and the top of the tower filled with a deep, brilliant cyan light.
The wind that served Barbatos had no secrets kept from it. Nothing in this world could truly hide from it. If something had, it was only because its god had chosen not to look.
"Hold on." Ji An stared at him. "Venti. You were holding back this whole time?"
"You said your divine power had been damaged. That you needed three days to recover. I actually believed you. And now you're telling me this is what damaged looks like?"
He had felt divine power before, during the encounter with Tartaglia. But what had been present there, a fragment of the Cryo Archon's will attached to a mortal host, was nothing compared to what was now radiating off of Venti. The difference was roughly that between a candle and the sun.
Ji An felt a cold sweat forming on his behalf of Rosalyne.
She thought she had beaten up the Anemo Archon and stolen his Gnosis. The more likely reality was that she had just managed to pick up a toy the Archon had set down and walked away with it while he wasn't paying attention.
The Seven Archons. None of them were pushovers. And any one of them that appeared to be weak was almost certainly choosing to be.
Jean, Diluc, and the others had gone equally silent.
Jean murmured: "Lord Barbatos..."
Paimon: "Aaaah! The busker was this powerful all along! This is what an Anemo Archon should look like!"
Lumine's gaze had drifted from Venti to the stone throne. She turned to Ji An quietly: "What is Dvalin eating?"
Ji An frowned and gave a small shake of his head.
Venti's voice rang out across the tower top:
"Dvalin! Wake up! Do not let the darkness pull you down any further!"
"There is still a way back. I will help you!"
Dvalin didn't stir.
Venti stepped closer, plucked the strings of his harp, and sent a wave of divine wind rolling toward the dragon.
Jean watched the darkness on Dvalin's body carefully: "Lord Barbatos's purifying wind... is it working?"
For a moment it seemed like it might be. The black spreading across Dvalin's scales appeared to be drawing back under the force of the divine wind.
Then it all reversed.
The darkness surged back stronger than it had been before, and a suffocating, foul stench rolled across the entire tower top in the same instant.
"Rooooar!"
Dvalin finally tore its attention away from what it had been focused on and turned on Venti with a roar that shook the stones beneath their feet.
Jean called out: "Watch the aura coming off of Dvalin!"
She didn't need to say it. Everyone could already see the black mist spreading outward from the dragon, resistant to even the fierce winds at this altitude, corroding the stone and tile wherever it touched and leaving black, reeking residue in its wake.
Venti moved quickly, strumming the harp and raising a protective barrier to keep the toxic mist from reaching the group.
Dvalin roared again, beat its wings, and launched itself into the sky.
"Dvalin, you cannot leave!"
The cyan light in Venti's eyes blazed as he commanded the divine wind to close around the dragon and hold it in place.
Dvalin was slowed for just a moment. Then a surge of deep purple corrupted energy erupted from the horn on its back, pushing through Venti's divine power and breaking the hold. The dragon tore free and shot upward through the clouds.
Venti's expression shifted. Something in his eyes showed genuine wariness at the sight of that purple energy, a reaction that went beyond ordinary caution.
But he didn't pull back. He rose on the divine wind and followed Dvalin into the sky.
Diluc looked at the spreading black mist, his brow furrowed: "This corruption isn't clearing..."
The group remained huddled beneath the protection of Venti's barrier on the tower top.
"Traveler, wait—"
Jean moved to warn Lumine when she saw her reach her hand outside the edge of the barrier.
But the black mist, rather than corroding Lumine's skin, dispersed at her touch.
Piece by piece it pulled back and condensed, until it had formed itself into a single crystal resting in Lumine's palm. Predominantly deep red, with threads of purple light flickering across its surface.
Paimon leaned in, studying it: "That looks a lot like the dragon tear that was stained with poisonous blood before!"
She tilted her head: "But something about it feels different. Traveler, are you going to purify it like last time?"
Lumine nodded and was already preparing to do so.
Ji An spoke up: "Lumine. Could you hold off on that and let me take a look at it first?"
Lumine looked at him curiously: "What do you need it for?"
"Just want to verify something someone told me," Ji An said, keeping his answer vague.
Lumine considered for a moment and held the crystal out to him: "Be careful. The power inside it can corrode the body from the inside."
She didn't quite let go of it, watching him closely, as if ready to pull it back the moment anything seemed wrong.
"I know what I'm doing."
Ji An took a slow breath, quietly activated the Arcane Art, and reached out to take it.
The red-purple crystal hovered above his palm without touching his skin, and even from that distance it gave off a sharp, prickling sensation that ran up his arm.
This power is from the same source as what I've drawn from the ley lines before. But it's a higher concentration. More refined.
According to what Dainsleif had told him, the corrupting power of the Abyss was not native to this world. It originated from somewhere beyond it. With only rare exceptions, any living being that came into direct contact with it was warped and transformed into a monster.
But Dainsleif had described a method of gradually building tolerance to this power. If Ji An could do something similar...
He turned the possibility over, felt the stinging pressure radiating from the crystal, and decided he wasn't confident enough in his current resistance to push it further.
He handed the crystal back to Lumine.
"Could you keep this for me for now? Don't purify it yet. I still need it."
Lumine nodded and put it away carefully, then turned her attention back to the stone throne at the center of the platform.
"What was Dvalin eating?"
She hadn't let that question go.
Ji An heard her and walked toward it himself.
"There doesn't seem to be anything obviously unusual up here."
He looked at the broken stone structure: "This must be the throne of the old king, Decarabian."
He stepped up onto the platform.
His vision blurred.
Ji An instinctively looked up, and found himself staring directly at the figure seated on the throne above him.
"You are... Decarabian?"
In that instant, he was certain.
The king in black armor and crown looked back at him from the throne in silence.
There was no cruelty in that gaze. No murderous intent. None of the hostility that radiated off the Abyss Order. He simply watched Ji An quietly, as if there was something he wanted to say but could not.
Then Ji An noticed it.
A pale golden, faintly luminous fragment, barely visible, resting before the stone throne.
"So that's what Dvalin was trying to devour."
It made sense. What defines a demon god above all else is their dominion over one or more fundamental authorities. Under the right conditions, those authorities can manifest as physical objects, taking on a tangible form.
He had seen something similar before, in the Dragon King's Crown that Jiang Li had once attempted to return to him.
That pale golden fragment was almost certainly one of Decarabian's authorities, so faded now that it was barely possible to make it out. Dvalin had been here trying to absorb and claim that lingering power for itself.
Ji An considered his next move.
The remnant soul of the solitary king appeared to have little power left. It seemed unlikely to pose a mortal threat. But no one could be entirely certain that a once-mighty demon god had no surprises remaining. Approaching without care might be read as a hostile act.
He was about to step back and discuss it with the others when the system spoke.
[Host. The system has detected a special item in the vicinity.]
[The system recommends collecting it immediately.]
Ji An stared ahead.
He didn't need to guess. The special item the system was referring to was obviously the pale golden fragment sitting in front of Decarabian's throne.
He looked at Decarabian again.
The figure on the throne had not moved. That calm, watchful gaze remained fixed on Ji An without any sign of aggression.
It was enough to make up his mind.
He stepped forward carefully and reached out toward the pale fragment.
The system responded at once.
[Ding. Simulation fragment "The Solitary King of the Tower's Broken Dream" discovered. Loading data...]
[Data loaded successfully. This simulation fragment has been identified as epic-grade. The corresponding simulation mode has been unlocked.]
[Host may now initiate an epic-grade simulation.]
[Proceed?]
Ji An stood very still.
An epic-grade simulation.
Did that mean he would be simulating the life of Decarabian himself?
-------
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