Mondstadt’s god carries the wind and guides it where it needs to be. Perhaps he does the same with secrets.
There are whispers in town lately. You can tell after living here for a certain amount of time. A sort of excitement fills the air with electricity akin to a storm about to roll in. It’s quite amusing to see everyone so excited over something new. Naturally, I investigate. I, too, indulge in such hearsay when the passing days have grown dull. I can’t help my curiosity.
Besides, the city loves good gossip. A blonde stranger in foreign clothes steps into the city with a commission related to the abyss order. Speaks few words, straight-faced and strange. Alluring. Mysterious. With an entrance like that, the city is bound to be captivated by their presence.
They’ll try to get anything in relation to the object of their gossip. Do you have a name? Where did you see him last? What are his motives? Something tangible to keep the people going.
With some honeyed words and a coy look, people will believe anything.
I wonder if this man knows the other rumors about him.
I heard he’s a man who walks with eternity by his side. He was a soldier to the Eclipse, the prince’s guard. I heard they were close. (But you know we were more than that). The sword he wielded is left abandoned in a fallen kingdom. It’s hidden in the scattered wastes of the kingdom, they say. It spears the seat of the prince’s throne. Did he leave it there as a last goodbye? That he can no longer be a knight to the prince? The stories I'm hearing are all quite strange indeed.
They’re saying he has failed to protect the kingdom against the wrath of the gods, but I think it is such a burden for one man to bear all that weight on his own, don’t you think?
Twilight sword, guard of the eclipse – how heavy is the guilt you carry?
━
You wielded your sword with a skill that rivaled your instructor and intimidated your peers. Your shift from galaxies to blades bewitched your opponents well enough to leave them distracted, open, vulnerable. I have been at the edge of your sword one too many times, losing for that same reason as everyone else.
You caught the eyes of the king and queen and it was no surprise when you were appointed to my side as my status is no stranger to assassination. They chose well. You protected me.
But a knight to their prince was only supposed to protect. They should not have followed them into their quarters late in the night when people are more willing to turn a blind eye. Coincidentally, a prince to their knight should not have opened the door and pressed them to silk sheets.
I guess we were both at fault.
You are lethal and dangerous, Dainsleif. Pretty too. Eyes forged from stars, a voice tinged with flowery tales – such a combination can only render a person lovesick.
You were not to spin tales of fantasy when the night grew long and restless, but you pulled me in with your stories and stars and I didn’t put a stop to it. You pulled galaxies out of me with your hands and sank your teeth into my flesh, carving your devotion to the bone. You were a god in this way, creating something out of nothing.
I can hear your laugh. “A god?”
It’s a little fun. Would it not be interesting to have a little divinity in your veins? Half blood, half ichor? I imagine it would prove to be quite an interesting decision. Had the divine and the transient gone against each other once more, what side would they choose? Such a decision would bring about a dilemma, I’m sure.
I’m a little bit too on the nose, aren’t I?
━
Have you come up with new stories as of yet, Dainsleif, or have they been lost to time? You never finished that one story of yours. Something about planets being able to speak to one another, telling their stories of stories. You never got to Earth, I remember. Too late to get to the good part.
And I remember you that night. The grit of your teeth and galaxies swirling around your arms, too angry to control yourself. You left in a daze and all I could think about was the space in front of me left unoccupied. As the king and queen gave their final verdict, it didn’t occur to me that my door would never open with you following inside. It didn’t occur to me that we would not fall asleep next to each other the next night. Or any other night.
I only caught glimpses of you on the battlefield. A twilight star standing against the will of the gods. If I could lay my eyes on a beautiful sight until it burned into my eyelids, I would have stayed by your side.
Is it selfish of me to wonder if I was in your thoughts during the calamity? Maybe if I had stayed, you wouldn’t have been bound to infinity, cursed to walk the lands with eternity by your side. Is it selfish of me to think that your curse is a blessing, because I wouldn’t have to see you die?
I’m still waiting for you, Dainsleif. Would you really leave a prince unattended?
━
The stars back home offer more comfort than the ones here. There’s something off about the ones looming over us. Perhaps it’s because these were crafted by the gods. Perhaps it’s because they live close to Celestia. They feel more like eyes than stars. Then again, some of us are already granted their eyes at some point in our lives.
These stars are a mockery compared to our cosmos. Our stars were better. They’re forged from better stories and never once wanted to control us. We made them purely out of creation, a placeholder for our dreams and wishes.
You told me, “I have a wish,” while you swirled galaxies between your fingers – I notice that’s another habit of yours, holding stars in your hand when you’re bored. When I asked what it was, you told me it wasn’t something you could have in your hands. A groan of annoyance, a fond laughter. I knew you wouldn’t tell me just to keep me bewitched by your mystery for a little longer.
Although, I am always bewitched by you.
To us sinners, stars were wishes and dreams, not a sign of fate and destiny. It is commonplace for us to detest them, as it is forged from the divine, but I do find myself curious about it. Something all-knowing enough to craft a life from start to finish for each soul on earth sounds quite exhausting, doesn’t it? What do you think? The divine seems to have quite the writer, stringing up tragedies and comedies all the same like this.
I wonder what they wrote about us.
You never did tell me what happened to you after the cataclysm. We were both busy and I couldn’t find you. I know we both had things to do. The Twilight Sword had an army to command and The Last Hope of Khaenri’ah needed an escape. Didn’t we make such a fine pair back then?
━
It’s strange how there are traces of you in everyone I meet. A small habit of theirs that is similar to yours, their laugh making me wonder if you too would laugh at the same thing. I see you in everyone. No longer are these remnants but memories instead.
There are days where I wish they didn’t remind me of you at all.
━
I dream of you, you know. Hazy worlds forged from stars, your hands holding my face. I fall asleep to the rumble of your voice speaking sweet words to me. I picture your lips forming the words my prince. You always said it so gently. My hand reaches out beneath the blankets, pretending that the warmth of your body has made an imprint on the sheets.
It's cold. I stare blankly at the space you would occupy, mourning the morning.
I reach for you in the night when I know you’re not there. It is only the action of my dreams leaking into reality. You come as a ghost in my home where you don’t make your presence known. I beg for the day I hear a noise that does not belong or my mirror shatters or things start to float in my room or that—
I would think it’s you, but you can’t die. It would not be a ghost, but a creation of my own delusions. At that point, it is hysteria, not hope.
(Do you do the same?)
━
I have always adored the look in your eyes when you stand before me – rich light almost holy. Devotion depicted on stained glass cannot compare to one I saw every day. No church can have a more vivid image of what devotion looks like. No church can depict the way you look at me.
But the look in your eyes that day.
That is something I can never forget.
Distraught can be one way I would describe it. Confused, perhaps. I couldn’t get the image out of my head for weeks.
Do you hate me for what I did? As the years went by, did you subject me to the back of your mind? (Yet another selfish question of mine.)
I imagine a world where you answer that question. I see your lips move, but the words do not follow. I’ve surmised several ways you could have answered and how I’d respond. It always ends with a bitter taste in my mouth and my dreams filled with smoke.
━
Being frozen in time during the war was not how I wanted to assist the kingdom, but I cannot deny the will of my mother and father.
This, I kept a secret from you. It is why I didn't deny them.
"Distract the enemies so my son can make his escape, Dainsleif," the King said. "He will move underground where he will sleep in ice. When he wakes, he will breach the surface and bring us justice."
You make rage look beautiful.
"Asleep? In ice? Who will watch over him?” You looked around to those sitting at the table, questioning their sanity. “When will he wake up?"
The king glared at you, but you held his gaze.
"There will be no objections."
You had turned to me, helpless.
I'm sorry, I wanted to say, but you were already leaving.
━
A woman who can read the stars told me I would have to make a major decision one day. I didn't want to trust her, but before I could dismiss her reading, she asked me how long I'd been searching for someone.
To that, I laughed.
━
When I woke from the ice, I looked for you in Khaenri'ah and only found monsters in my people’s stead. It took me a few days to realize how that is what they turned to when the gods walked our earth. Our home lost its stars, its art, but somehow it was still beautiful in ruins. A lost city, just a legend to outsiders.
I barely reached the surface, collapsing under a mountain where I blacked out for an indeterminable amount of time.
I was awoken by a man. He smelled of wine and sun.
“Are you okay?” he asked me. I was too distracted by how red his hair was. “Can you hear me?”
The Ragnvindrs are good people, Dainsleif. To think people like this were on the surface was astounding. They offered me their home, warm food, clean clothes. They didn't question my existence, only asking for my name and how I got there. I told them I had no memory of the last year, which was only half true.
The son was most sympathetic as we were “closest” in age, but yet, he was the most wary of the bunch. I was a stranger, after all. Who wouldn’t be wary? I hailed from Khaenri'ah and came there as a spy. I didn't know how much time had passed after the war and how much anyone knew about it.
(It turned out to be nearly 500 years since the war. We missed each other for 500 years. I've been asleep for 500 years. Did anyone try to look for me so I could help them when the war was over? Did you?)
They got me situated in town after I had rest. Crepus and Diluc showed me around as best they could, even introducing me to their Acting Grandmaster and the rest of the Knights of Favonius. At the time, I think they were dealing with a mysterious meteorite problem, so I didn't get to talk to them for long. They had seemed like an interesting bunch though.
Diluc was their Cavalry Captain, which seemed pretty on par. He fit the role quite nicely. I wondered how I would fare as a captain.
I grew closer to the people in the winery and even learned the basics on how to brew wine. Crepus said I was a natural talent.
"It's only because I taught him," Diluc said.
"Sure," I drawled.
I felt strangely at peace there. The winery had warmth where the kingdom didn’t. These people became a part of my little world. They didn't know me as a prince, they didn't know me as a savior. To them, I was just a man they found beneath the mountains. A person taken in by the Ragnvindrs, almost like another son Crepus did not have.
While I should have been the one who was thankful, the people of the winery gave me their gratitude.
"His father is far too busy to spend proper time with him some days," their maid told me, placing down a cup of tea she had known I liked. "He's less lonely with you here. He's needed a friend for a long time."
It was another honor I had greater than my title of a prince.
The peace lasted for half a year until I realized I was living a lie. I could not stay for long.
Try as I did, it was difficult to leave. They were all very adamant on me going. I didn't understand. I could take care of myself and I could defend myself just fine. But when I told them that, Crepus just shook his head.
“We don't want to see you alone out there.”
They were all so, so kind.
“I'm sorry,” I told them. “But I can't stay.”
Diluc saw right through me, but he didn't say anything. He let me go. I wonder why he did it so easily. Didn't he think I was going to cause trouble in his city? Didn't he find me suspicious? Did he trust that I was not the kind of person to do such a thing, or did he trust himself to be the one to put a stop to me?
But I didn't voice those thoughts to him. Surely, that would give me away. Besides, I didn't see much of him after that, or for the next four years.
His father died shortly after I left. Something about a Delusion. I didn't know what it was, but I knew that what would follow Crepus’ death would bring about misfortune.
And it made me feel empty.
I found him wandering on the outskirts of Mondstadt the night it happened. I told him the truth.
His face was just like yours on that day.
I didn't peg him as a violent person, but I guess I didn't know him that well during my time of stay. He lunged at me and I figured he needed catharsis. It was the only way I could repay him.
I had never seen him use his vision either, but the sight was almost heavenly. A blazing phoenix, Dainsleif. It was breathtaking.
It was my first time using my powers after so long as well. It felt like you by my side. I missed the stars.
Angry, hot tears streamed down his face even while holding his blade to my neck. It pressed against my skin, but I knew he wouldn't do it. He didn't want to lose anyone else, especially by his own hand again.
He reverted back to being a child with how small he looked.
I wondered at that moment what his reaction would be if he sliced my neck and found me alive the next day.
I do not know what he did in those four years. I tried to follow him but he did not want to see me. He did, however, throw his vision at me and I kept it. I figured it gave him bad memories, but I didn't want to toss it out.
Sometimes it flickered. It scared me. It meant he was almost dying and I couldn't do a thing about it. It was almost laughable how things turned out after I woke up.
Time became skewed after that. I could not find either of you no matter where I traveled. I only found traces of the abyss.
I had to go back to Mondstadt.
A man in Liyue told me that while the region was a place where things come to settle, it was time for me to go back home and rest. I felt like he knew what I'd been doing. And how long I'd been doing it.
I went back home.
When I stepped foot in Mondstadt, their Acting Grandmaster wanted me to be their Cavalry Captain. I wanted to decline. I did not want to be Diluc's replacement while he was away even when I knew he wouldn't want to work with them again. I didn't like the Knights anyway, or at least, the ones who offered to keep Crepus’ death secret. It would, however, give me access to more information about the world I was now living in. Perhaps they knew something of the Gods.
(While the kingdom was in ruins, did I even have to continue my duties as a savior at all? I wonder.)
It was cruel of me to deny her even at that state, so I took the role. I hated how it felt like I was taking his place, filling up the space Diluc left behind. I didn't want him to come back and see that I've become the one thing he hated.
But that didn't matter in the end.
When he saw me, he treated me like one of his patrons. He didn't ask for his vision back and didn't answer me when I questioned how he was doing or where he went. He didn't have to, but he didn't know how scared I was. How I feared that the next time I would look at his vision, its light would be dim.
But he didn't ask, and I didn't bother to tell.
It has been a few years since then and perhaps he's mellowed out. Although I never had any siblings, it still feels like I had just lost one. I wondered if he views me as a stranger.
Do you see us as strangers now too, Dainsleif?
━
Lately, there’s been something stirring deep inside the woods. An energy that feels too familiar. Do you feel it?
━
The traveler came by.
They told me what happened to you. They didn't go into much detail considering how they took care of it themselves. Your last whereabouts were presented to me so swiftly that I had assumed it was a hallucination.
“He left.”
The Knights of Favonius office was quiet.
“Ah, he did?” I asked.
They didn't know what those words had done to me.
The traveler nodded. “You won't see me for a while. I'll be leaving for Inazuma.”
I was too late.
I can't bring myself to blame them. I didn't push, and they had just lost their sibling once more by the tips of their fingers. I was in no place to coax any more details out of them. They had taken enough requests.
But to them, they think you're a stranger to me. How wrong that is. How wrong that is.
They don't know of the stories you told me. They don't know how you looked at me, how softly you spoke, how patient you were. They don't know how much I dreamt about you, how often you linger in my thoughts, how you live under my skin. They don't know how you say my prince, and the gentle whispers pressed into my hair when night stretches to dawn. They don't know.
When are you coming back to me? (Selfish, so selfish.)
The minute I knew you were in the city, I should've tried harder to find you, but you were just out of my grasp. It occurred to me that maybe you knew I was looking for you and didn't want to be found. That astrologist was right. When I am a reminder of what you couldn't protect, that would leave us estranged, wouldn't it? Is that why?
I didn't want to see you come to hate me, had I found you. Maybe that was why I didn't try hard enough.
This was my own cowardice.
You’ll come back, won't you?
Tell me again about the stars. Every story. Again. Tell me your whimsical tales and sweet words. You always spoke so sweetly. Look at me. Get angry at me again. Kiss me. Knock on my door no matter how late it is. Devotion, my dearest, is a lovely look on your face. Does my devotion rival yours?
(Funny how you despise the gods yet you look at me with such sanctity. Like I’m something holy in the hands of the damned. In your hands, I am holy and hungry. I am a star come to life. I burn in your hands. You still hold me).
But the damned are doomed to this type of fate.
We would know that intimately.