The crimson earth, the boundless snowcapped mountains, the leaden sky and its heavy clouds—all dissolved into that single slash.
Fudoshin.
Let the mind arise without dwelling anywhere.
The body moved without conscious thought and followed the heart. Yet Kiyo Seigan's heart, hidden in the depths of Mt. Aocang, had endured a thousand years of solitude.
Turning from the phantoms of the floating world and seeking the eternal way of the pure land, his heart had kept vigil through an empty and lonely age for the sake of one Covenant.
For a thousand years, it had remained unmoving.
Kamigiri had rested inside its sheath ever since Kiyo first began cutting snow upon the mountain. A thousand years had passed without its edge seeing light. A thousand years of longing and a thousand years of defiance had accumulated to their utmost limit.
Today, the unmoving slash finally moved.
Khaenri'ah was swallowed. The leaden clouds boiled away. Corruption and desolation across the vast plain disappeared into white, and the entire world flashed within that immaculate radiance.
At the same instant, the authority of the Heavenly Principles bore down. It was as though Celestia itself were falling, infinite space crushing the pure-white world from every side.
If Musou or Eternity had ever existed in this world, both were contained within that stroke of light.
The world fell silent for a very, very long time.
...
Though it was spring, snow began to fall over Khaenri'ah.
Without either heart or lungs, Kiyo felt cold.
Gray flakes settled upon his shoulders and melted into chill water, which seeped through the folds of his kimono and into his skin.
Meltwater mingled with blood. White and crimson bled into one another until it was impossible to tell which part was snow and which was blood.
Kiyo coughed violently. Along with blood came fragments of his organs.
From inside his kimono, he took out half a flask of wine and shook it. A trace of warmth remained. He had brewed this sake himself on Mt. Aocang.
A thin haze of steam rose into the air and disappeared among the snowflakes.
Watching it, Kiyo suddenly asked no one in particular, "Would you like a cup?"
No one answered.
Behind him stood the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles.
Pure-white hair floated in the air. Her golden eyes remained utterly devoid of emotion. She seemed uninjured, as august and ancient as ever, unlike Kiyo, whose body was drenched in blood and nearing death. Her bare feet rested upon the ruins, yet no dust from the earth could stain them.
But the fact that the god of the heavens now stood upon the ground said everything.
It was a draw.
Or perhaps mutual defeat.
Kiyo's injuries were grave. Space had almost crushed his soul into fragments.
The Sustainer's were worse.
Kamigiri's final slash had cut through space and landed squarely upon her. A blade nurtured for a thousand years could cast even a god down from the sky.
The wounds they had suffered today would take centuries to heal.
"Have a drink."
"You are an opponent worthy of respect. And a god worthy of respect."
"Let's call it a draw."
Kiyo coughed again. He poured a little of the sake over Kamigiri to wash away the blood. Magnificent and uncanny patterns of wind and thunder layered its edge. Pale-golden blood ran through the fine grooves between them and dripped from its tip.
The instant the sake touched the god's blood, it evaporated into mist.
The Sustainer did not accept the wine Kiyo offered. She gazed calmly at the presumptuous mortal before her.
"You stayed your final slash," she said. "The victory is yours."
Kiyo had stayed his hand.
At the instant Kamigiri touched the Sustainer, he had pulled it back.
Otherwise... the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles would have fallen.
"I had no choice," Kiyo replied softly, watching the snow drift through the air. "Otherwise I might have died too... and I cannot die. I'm terribly afraid of death, you see. I promised certain people that I would live."
He paused.
"Besides, I do not want to kill you."
"Why?"
"You sustain the Heavenly Principles. If you die, who will sustain them?"
Kiyo took a sip of sake and felt its mellow warmth flow down his throat and spread into his limbs.
"I have understood many things over the past thousand years. Humanity cannot exist without heaven. Only when humanity and heaven are joined, each answering the other, can this world remain in balance."
He coughed up more blood.
"So... this outcome is enough. You are too badly wounded to stop me from planting the Sacred Sakura."
If Kiyo and the Sustainer had destroyed one another, that would have brought true calamity upon Teyvat. The world's natural order would have collapsed. Neither Heavenly nor Human Principles could have endured, and the Abyss would have consumed the continent.
The Sustainer gazed at the mortal before her, his face reflected in her tranquil eyes.
"What a presumptuous mortal."
"Then can we call a truce for a while...?" Kiyo smiled. "Share a drink with me."
"Taste a mortal's wine... and perhaps try looking at us mortals a little more closely."
He held out a cup of sake. Against the pure clarity of the snow, the wine shone white.
The Sustainer lowered her gaze to the cup. After a pause, she finally accepted the mortal wine. She brought it to her lips, took a tentative sip, and frowned faintly.
"A strange taste."
"We mortals are strange like that."
Kiyo laughed freely.
"We love strange things and chase after causes that make no sense. We are weak and strange—but even we, strange as we are, hope that one day we might be understood."
The Heavenly Principles would never understand.
"You intend to deceive time," the Sustainer said softly. "I will still stop you."
Kiyo raised his cup to her.
"We are enemies. Five hundred years from now, the man I will become—Kiyono Raimei—will still die by your hand. But just for this moment, just for now... let us try to understand one another and share a drink."
The Sustainer considered this for a time.
At last, she raised her cup tentatively.
Amid the pure-white snow, humanity and heaven touched cups for the first time.
—
The Sustainer departed.
The battle between the two Sustainers had erased the ruined land of Khaenri'ah completely. Both the calamity's corruption and the Abyssal taint had been buried within that slash—buried within the world of pure white.
Only when the Sustainer had vanished completely and returned to Celestia did Kiyo release the hand resting upon his sheath.
He would never reveal weakness before the Sustainer.
Vertigo engulfed him.
His vision went black. The taut thread holding him upright finally snapped.
Exhaustion swept over him like a tide. Unable to endure any longer, he collapsed.
He had neither heart nor lungs. He could not breathe. He could draw no air into his body. His heart neither beat nor supplied him with blood.
At last, he felt the loneliness of the dead.
Cold and empty.
But Kiyo would not die. His present body could survive in this world even without heart or lungs.
It was simply agony.
"It... isn't over."
With great difficulty, he pushed himself upright and looked toward the iron-gray haze at the limits of sight.
He could not rest yet.
The source of the corruption, Khaenri'ah, had been erased. But the corruption that escaped it still existed. It had already penetrated Inazuma and lands farther away.
He had to plant the seed—the fruit borne within his heart.
At the very end, Raiden Makoto had given Kiyo her dream. Their Covenant had been made. He had to fulfill it.
As he had said, he and the Sustainer remained enemies.
She had a duty to preserve the Heavenly Principles. Once she recovered even slightly, she would come to stop him again and correct the history he had falsified.
Before that happened... he had to plant the Sacred Sakura.
Kiyo lowered his eyes and drained the last of the sake. Forcing his body onward, he began walking toward the distant snowcapped mountains.
—
At that moment, all of Inazuma lay beneath a haze of corruption.
Even so, its streets remained relatively peaceful.
The Pillar General had held the calamity beyond Yashiori Island, preventing it from reaching Inazuma's heartland. Two more islands lay between Yashiori and Narukami Island, and the people there had not yet suffered the corruption's assault.
Kiyo returned to Konda Village.
The village of five hundred years ago was very different from the one he knew five hundred years in the future. Every cherry blossom in town had fallen. Gray-white rime covered the roofs and lanes. Every household had barred its doors, and the streets lay deathly still.
At the far end stood Kiyono's Tofu Shop, its doors tightly shut and its front steps buried beneath layer after layer of gray snow.
"It's closed."
Yae Miko studied the stranger before her, who somehow seemed faintly familiar.
"It will never open again."
She could not place that inexplicable familiarity.
The young man appeared to be wounded. Bandages wrapped his body beneath a pure-white kimono. Smooth white hair fell all the way to his wooden sandals, and a sword hung at his waist. He looked like any other wandering swordsman.
Kiyono Raimei had gone to defend the border. Kiyono's Tofu Shop would never open again.
Miko was the shrine's Guuji, and she had duties of her own. She would soon leave Narukami Island to cleanse the corruption spreading elsewhere.
This shop would remain closed forever.
Kiyono Raimei had become the Pillar General. He would never return to this tofu shop. To Miko, the little storefront would become nothing more than a memory, gathering dust alongside everything that had once happened there.
"No," Kiyo told her, the fox reflected in his eyes. "This shop will open again one day."
"Why?"
"Because those who live will meet again."
The fox did not understand.
"That makes no sense." She tilted her head. "I have to go. Inazuma has suffered greatly these past days. You should stop wandering the streets and return home soon."
"I will." Kiyo looked at her. "I will definitely go home. Where are you going?"
"Yashiori Island." The fox raised her ears and spoke with distaste. "Her Excellency the Guuji is going to see whether that old bastard who won't die has died yet."
"I see. I'm going to Mt. Yougou."
"That is the exact opposite direction." The fox tilted her head again. "Then goodbye."
"Until next time, Miss Fox."
They turned their backs to one another.
"One more thing," Kiyo said. "I'm going to plant a springtime for you. Please take care of it in my place."
They passed each other and continued in opposite directions.
After walking a little way, Yae Miko suddenly stopped.
She turned back and watched the young man recede. The endless snow settled over him until the white plain slowly swallowed his solitary figure.
For reasons she could not explain, Miko felt as though something had slipped out of her life.
—
This snow had fallen long enough.
Kiyo climbed the steps of Mt. Yougou one by one until at last he reached its summit.
White snow covered everything in sight, burying every sound upon the mountain beneath deathly stillness. Heavy, gloomy clouds shrouded the sky.
He took the seed from within his heart.
The seed of the Sacred Sakura radiated a gentle warmth into the cold air.
It had been born within Musou Isshin, from the dreams of everyone who dwelled there. It had traveled from five hundred years in the future to five hundred years in the past.
Kiyo planted the seed in the snow.
The moment it touched Inazuma's soil, roots drove into the depths and spread.
The stem rose.
Spring began to spread with it.
Kiyo sensed something changing.
The snow stopped.
It was spring, after all.
The snowfall ended beneath a sky clear from horizon to horizon. Grasses drank in the moisture. Withered trees lived again. The storm withdrew, revealing the mountains' outlines as the brilliant setting sun gilded their edges.
Dead plants revived at once, and life swept across the land. Grass grew and orioles took flight. Reed flowers broke into soft clusters beneath the breeze and scattered through the air. Puddles left by the rain reflected the newly cleared blue sky.
The sun slowly sank. Clouds rose like rolling waves, spreading scarlet fire across the heavens until the sky resembled a vast golden blanket. The breeze stirred the sea of clouds, folding ripples into that blanket.
By the time Kiyo returned to himself, the branches of a cherry tree had woven themselves across the sky.
A fine rain of blossoms filled the air.
The Sacred Sakura stood upon Mt. Yougou, its leaves whispering in the wind as though it had existed there since the beginning of time.
The seed was the fruit of Kiyo's heart.
The tree that grew from it was the shape of that heart.
It would take Kiyo's place and guard this land forever.
Kiyo Seigan had returned fifteen hundred years into the past and waited for a thousand years among the mountains.
At last, five hundred years before his own age, he planted a springtime for everyone.
Yae Miko raised her eyes to the cherry blossoms woven across the sky. Pink petals stirred the spring light, falling over Konda Village and before the sign of Kiyono's Tofu Shop.
As she gazed at the Sacred Sakura, something moved within her.
Something profound.
Yet she did not know why.
She felt sorrow.
The Sacred Sakura had stood there since ancient times. Why, then, did her heart tremble whenever she looked upon it?
She did not know.
Perhaps it was simply because the Sacred Sakura...
was so beautiful.