Unlike Mt. Yougou fifteen hundred years ago, the mountain of the present had no snow.
Flowers covered it from foot to summit.
When the setting sun touched the mountainside, fiery orange clouds merged with sakura blossoms that burned just as brightly. Day and night blurred together at dusk, while flowers bloomed in all their splendor.
But Kiyo Seigan was nowhere to be seen.
When Lumine reached Mt. Yougou, she could not find him.
Tatami mats had been laid beneath the Sacred Sakura. Dango Milk, Kitsune Udon, and other dishes were arranged upon them. The newly matured sakura wine released a delicate fragrance, and the afterglow covered everything in amber.
The scene was peaceful and beautiful.
But Kiyo was not there.
Lumine searched for a long time without finding him.
For some reason, as she stared at the empty place beneath the Sacred Sakura, an inexplicable unease stirred within her.
Something was missing.
She turned and searched the distance.
"Hey," Lumine called softly. "Little Corpse?"
"Little Corpse?"
Her voice rose and echoed through the lonely autumn evening.
"Little Corpse—Kiyo Seigan the Flower Girl? Come out! Come out!"
"Stop hiding." She paused. "If you keep this up, I'm going to get angry."
No one answered.
Lumine grew angry.
She noticed a shrine maiden in the distance.
The woman was beautiful and wore a kitsune mask. Sunset fell across her white robes, covering them in the shadows of sakura blossoms. She stood staring silently at the Sacred Sakura.
"Are you Hanachirusato?"
Kiyo had told Lumine her story, so Lumine recognized her at once.
"Do you know where that flow—" Lumine's words came quickly. "Do you know where Kiyo Seigan is hiding?"
Hanachirusato turned to face her. Her voice was subdued and faintly helpless.
"I don't know."
"I cannot sense him anywhere. Corruption still clings to him, so finding him should be easy..."
She paused. Behind the mask, her eyes trembled.
"But I cannot feel him at all, as though he is no longer here."
Not here.
Lumine looked away from Hanachirusato and toward the food upon the tatami.
The smoked mackerel was still steaming, its savory fragrance suspended in the air.
The food was hot.
It had only just been prepared.
Kiyo had been here moments ago.
Was this some kind of prank?
Do not make jokes like this.
It was not funny.
"Hey!" Lumine clenched her teeth. "Kiyo Seigan?"
Many of the guests had arrived.
Ioroi held Paimon's hand while the two hungriest creatures present stared eagerly at the food. Kunikuzushi, who insisted that he had "merely happened to pass by," had just happened to bring barley wine aged for several centuries.
Yae Miko had likewise "merely happened to pass by."
Raiden Ei, who had finally emerged from the Plane of Euthymia, stood beside her.
Every guest had arrived.
Only their host was missing.
Lumine had felt this before.
The same thing had happened in Mondstadt. They had agreed to eat together, but that fellow never returned. Lumine had prepared grilled fish, and the fish had gone cold while she waited.
Dusk was almost gone.
Why?
Why did he have to deceive her again?
Why could he never keep his promises?
This time.
Last time.
Every time.
No matter how long she waited, he never came.
Lumine bit her lip. Her fingernails dug into her palms.
"Kiyo Seigan?" Lia looked at Lumine. "You still haven't found him?"
"I don't know."
"I don't know where that bastard went."
Lumine shook her head.
Then something occurred to her.
"Kiyono Sara said he left with the great tengu Sasayuri. Where is Sasayuri...?"
"We should split up and search," Lia said.
And so they did.
Lumine found Sasayuri inside a desolate cave.
The place was well hidden. Adeptal talismans like those found upon Mt. Aocang had once turned strangers away, but someone had removed them.
The old tengu sat in his wheelchair, gray eyes lowered. Decaying autumn leaves covered his knees and lay in thick layers before him.
He stared into the cave, lost in thought.
"Kiyo Seigan isn't here," Sasayuri said at last, as though forcing himself to a decision.
"He will not return."
...
Lumine stared directly at him.
"What exactly did he hide from me?"
"A long time ago... several centuries ago, he asked me to give you something."
Sasayuri's voice was quiet.
"I do not know what it is."
"He said, 'If I do not return in time, give this to her five hundred years from now. Once she sees it, she will understand.'"
The old tengu braced his hands against the arms of his wheelchair and struggled to rise.
He stooped and dug his fingers into the soil.
Something gradually emerged from the earth.
An iron box.
Its surface had been eaten away. Sheets of iron had flaked from it, leaving the box covered in heavy rust.
Inside lay a thick stack of letters.
[To Lumine, fifteen hundred years from now.]
Those words began the first letter.
What did this mean?
Lumine did not understand.
She could not understand.
She lowered the letter and looked at Sasayuri.
What did if I do not return in time mean?
What was he trying to say?
She did not understand.
Bastard.
Bastard.
They had made a promise.
Sasayuri watched her without speaking.
Silence stretched between them. Daylight gradually painted the sea red, and evening shadows gathered across the mountain.
At last, Lumine spoke.
"He will come back."
"I'm going to wait."
"For as long as it takes?" Sasayuri's eyes widened slightly.
"One sunset. One year. One century. One thousand years."
Lumine raised her eyes and looked straight at him. The blazing dusk was reflected in their gold.
"I will wait here, however long it takes."
She pressed her lips together and drew out the pendant hanging against her bare neck.
A silver chain held a translucent shard.
Warm light shone from the fragment.
It had come from the Vowbound Heart, born from a Covenant. Lumine had worn it around her neck ever since returning from Liyue Harbor.
There were eight fragments in all.
The first seven had come from the Covenants made by Bosacius and represented Kiyo's former lives.
Only this eighth fragment came from a Covenant made by Kiyo Seigan in his present life.
This shard belonged to the man he was now.
Lumine closed her fingers around it, feeling its warmth.
Translucent words appeared upon its surface.
Covenant Eight: Return home and have dinner with Lumine before sunset.
She looked toward the sun dissolving slowly into the sea, toward the sky as dusk faded.
"He will come back," Lumine said. "Because we made a Covenant."
Not the slightest hesitation entered her voice.
"And I believe him."
—
[Read those letters. Then write the eight-hundred-and-first.]
[Continue your dreams.]
[Continue your longing.]
[If you fail, this time you will truly die. You will never reincarnate again.]
[For this time, it is your soul that will perish.]
Kiyo's faded eyes shifted faintly.
The hair at his temples had turned pale, though his face remained young.
His pure-white hair fell all the way to his ankles, unchanged from eight hundred years before.
Only his eyes were different. Once deep blue, they had slowly lost their color, as though a clear sky washed by rain had been stained with lead.
Letters...?
He could no longer remember.
Kiyo rose slowly and stared into the sky.
Looking north from Mt. Yougou, he could see the blue sea surrounding Narukami Island.
The sinking sun descended toward it, spreading scarlet clouds across half the heavens.
Colors became indistinct.
Blue and red flowed into one another.
Kiyo felt his heart sinking with them. Every emotion disappeared into the depths of the sea until he could no longer distinguish one feeling from another.
Was he happy?
Was he sad?
Eight hundred years of erosion had worn every thought away.
It had consumed him.
He had forgotten why he remained alive.
The body standing here was little more than a walking corpse.
His life had become a candle in the wind.
Kiyo Seigan was about to die of old age.
Perhaps in the very next instant, erosion would kill him.
The struggle of eight hundred years would end, and he would finally receive eternal peace.
Only one certainty remained.
Fifteen hundred years from now, someone was looking at the same sky.
Someone was watching the same sunset.
It was dusk.
Dusk.
What was one supposed to do at dusk?
Kiyo dimly felt that he had forgotten something.
Cooking smoke rose from the village below. Red clouds covered countless hearths.
At the sight of that human warmth, his shoulders trembled.
Something stirred within his fading eyes.
Write the eight-hundred-and-first.
Kiyo dug the iron box from the earth.
Its surface had corroded almost entirely. In earlier years, he had protected it with talismans so the box and its letters would not decay.
But he had not replaced those talismans for a very long time.
Their power had nearly failed.
He opened the box.
Eight hundred letters filled it almost to the brim.
Many had yellowed, and the writing upon them had grown faint.
Kiyo read them one after another.
They had been written for Lumine.
They had also been written for himself.
While he read, dusk faded until only the thinnest afterglow remained.
When I have written one thousand letters—when I have filled the box with my longing for you—I will be able to see you again.
That sentence appeared in the seventy-third.
It could not end yet.
Kiyo had not dreamed for a century.
The scenes that once appeared in his sleep had become indistinct: sakura and wine, sardines and salt, udon and dango...
But today, Kiyo remembered the dream.
He remembered what awaited him at the end of this long vigil.
He remembered what he had spent a thousand years waiting for.
Only a gathering.
He was waiting for a gathering beneath a sakura tree.
That alone was the meaning of his continued life.
It could not end yet.
Not yet.
Not yet.
Kiyo closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, Mt. Yougou was gone.
A desolate, broken world surrounded him.
Ruins covered the land.
The sands of time eroded everything in sight. Great slabs of earth had split away and floated through the air.
The sky was the color of haze: gray, dim, and sunless.
This was Kiyo's realm of consciousness.
His soul.
It, too, was dying of old age.
Eight hundred years of erosion had destroyed this world.
[Kiyo Seigan, climb the final step.]
His body had already entered the realm of divinity.
His soul had not.
That was why he remained mortal, weak and helpless beneath the erosion of the ages.
Only one step remained.
It was not outside him.
It existed within his consciousness.
Kiyo stood upon scorched earth and raised his eyes toward the stairway.
The Geo Gnosis and Bosacius's heart had built those steps, while the Body of Filth bound them together.
They climbed directly toward the low, dark layers of cloud.
What awaited at their end?
What kind of world existed above that sea of clouds?
Kiyo took one step.
Lightning flashed through a rift in the clouds, followed by a deafening roar.
The entire realm of consciousness convulsed.
The earth shattered for leagues around and rose into the sky. Cracks spread through layer after layer of the heavens.
At that moment, erosion reached its peak.
One step was enough to make him fall.
His consciousness was on the verge of total collapse.
Creatures born upon the earth could never touch the sky.
To do so was sacrilege.
That was the law engraved upon the destiny of every living thing.
It was the reason by which the world endured.
The Heavenly Principles.
A mortal was forbidden to profane divine authority.
Kiyo continued climbing.
The higher he went, the closer this world came to destruction.
The closer his soul came to destruction.
All things lost their shape. Flames rose from cracks in the scorched earth and licked at the darkened sky.
The heavens splintered into countless pieces.
Beyond those fragments lay death.
Emptiness.
Kiyo knew that when the sky broke completely, eternal nothingness would embrace him.
He had only one choice.
Before the heavens shattered, he had to finish climbing.
He had to leave this sky behind.
Kiyo continued upward.
He was writing a letter.
Within his own heart, he wrote the eight-hundred-and-first.
[To Lumine, six hundred and ninety-nine years from now.]
Every step was agony.
With each one, his soul groaned beneath the weight of erosion.
Still Kiyo moved forward.
He did not stop.
He did not look back.
[When you read this letter, will the sakura around you still be blooming?]
[I may never see sakura again.]
Kiyo's consciousness was dissolving.
Nothing remained in his eyes but a deathly emptiness. Webs of cracks spread through the realm as darkness swallowed him.
[I have forgotten many things.]
[So many things.]
[I have forgotten why I must endure.]
Kiyo swayed and fell upon the stairs.
The impact shook his soul.
He raised his head, forced himself upright, and continued toward the blackened sky.
[I have forgotten the meaning of my life.]
He was so tired.
The stairway had no end.
No matter how far he climbed, he could never rise above the clouds.
[I have forgotten my life.]
When the cracks reached their limit, the sky broke apart.
The realm of consciousness collapsed.
The stairway shattered with it.
Kiyo fell from the heavens and plunged through darkness as the abyss opened to consume him.
[I have forgotten my dreams.]
[I remember only one thing.]
Kiyo continued to look into the distance.
Though the stairway had been destroyed, he stared at the broken heavens and the vast opening torn through them.
[I must be home for dinner before sunset.]
He kept his eyes upon the sky.
He raised one hand toward it.
[When you read this letter, I will be falling.]
[When you read this letter, I will be looking at the sky.]
[When you read this letter, I will be thinking of you.]
[I want to see you before sunset. I have forgotten everything. I want you to tell me my name, my life, why I endured, and what I once dreamed of. I want to hear it all from you.]
[I want to see you before sunset. I want to see the sakura. How different are the blossoms seven hundred years from now? I want to know. I want to see them with you. I am certain they will be beautiful.]
[I want to see you before sunset. What does mackerel taste like? I have forgotten. I want to see you. I want you to tell me its flavor.]
[I want to see you before sunset, so I must continue.]
[Two hundred years remain.]
Kiyo reached forward.
The stairway had vanished. The Stairway of Divinity had shattered.
Yet his hand seemed to grasp its end.
The old realm of consciousness broke apart.
[A sunset lasts only fifteen minutes.]
[For me, it is a wait of one thousand years.]
The ruined shrine vanished.
The earth splintered.
The heavens collapsed.
Fire rose from the deepest ley lines of his mind, using the entire old world as fuel. Everything burned until all things had lost their form.
And through the opening in his consciousness, Kiyo saw a new world.
Scarlet sunset covered him.
Beyond the hollow sky, a different landscape appeared.
[My thousand-year life is only the instant before the sun disappears.]
[But that instant is beautiful.]
[It is worth the wait.]
Kiyo seized that landscape.
The old realm of consciousness became ash.
From those pure-white ashes, a new soul was born.
He reached the final step, passed beyond the limits of mortal consciousness, and arrived at the farthest horizon.
[The instant I reunite with you will contain my thousand years.]
He passed through layer upon layer of cloud.
The world lay beneath his feet.
The great setting sun became his crown, while scarlet clouds unfurled in towering folds.
[So this is my eternity.]
The world seen from above the clouds became his new realm of consciousness.
It surpassed the Plane of Euthymia.
It blurred the boundaries of time.
It possessed the power to carry him from a future age into the distant past.
Its name was Musou Isshin.
On this day, Kiyo Seigan ascended to godhood.