The retreat through the Whispering Woods was an agonizing symphony of taut nerves and controlled motion. Every snapping twig underfoot sounded like a trumpet call announcing our position; every hoot of a night owl felt like a judgment. The familiar, peaceful forest had transformed into a hostile, alien landscape, its shadows teeming with imagined pursuers. My Instinct, now a raw, exposed nerve, painted the darkness in strokes of dread. I could feel the lingering stain of the Abyss Lector's power on the very air, a cold, greasy residue that made the natural life of the woods recoil. I could even sense the direction of the corrupted ley line, a dissonant, thrumming hum deep beneath the earth, like a diseased vein pumping poison into the soil.
Kaeya moved beside me, a wraith of focused purpose. The spymaster's mask, usually so firmly in place, had been scorched away, revealing the unadorned steel of a commander facing an overwhelming threat. His mind was already at work, processing, analyzing.
"The Lector's energy," he whispered, his voice sharp and urgent, barely disturbing the air between us. "You described it as absolute. Elaborate. Did it have a 'flavor' like the Mages' spells? A discernible element?"
"No," I answered, my eyes constantly scanning the oppressive dark. "The Hydro Mage's power felt wet and mischievous. The Pyro Mage's felt angry and hot. The Lector... its power didn't feel like an element. It felt like a concept. Like the concept of 'wrong'. It was the energy of a void, an emptiness that sought to consume. Its chanting wasn't casting a spell; it felt like it was reminding the world that it, too, could rot."
"And your… improvisation," Kaeya pressed, his gaze intense. "That wasn't luck. I've fought alongside the most seasoned veterans in the Knights. I've seen Grand Master Varka in battle. I have never seen anyone adapt to their environment with such lethal perfection. One moment, a root is just a root. In your hand, it became a mace tailored to shatter a magical shield. That's a knowledge that isn't learned, Arthur."
The directness of the question was a spear point aimed at the heart of my secret. I had to weave a story that was both incredible and, in its own way, true.
"I told you, Captain, I don't know how," I insisted, my voice low and earnest. "When my life is in danger, everything else just… goes away. It's a singular focus. My mind doesn't see a root; it sees 'blunt object, good grip, optimal for shattering'. It doesn't see a rock; it sees 'sharp edge, good weight, perfect for severing that branch'. It's not knowledge. It's… a survival instinct that's terrifyingly specific. I'm not controlling it. In those moments, it's controlling me."
I was framing my Eternal Arms Mastery as a desperate, unconscious state, a fight-or-flight response of impossible clarity. Kaeya fell silent, his analytical mind chewing on the sheer improbability of my explanation. He didn't believe it, not fully, but it was a box, however strange, in which to place the anomaly that was me. For now, it would have to do.
We finally broke through the edge of the woods as the first, faint hint of dawn threatened the eastern sky. The majestic silhouette of Mondstadt, with its soaring cathedral and turning windmills, was a sight that brought both profound relief and a deep, aching sorrow. We were returning as bearers of a terrible truth, a secret that would poison the peace of this slumbering city.
Kaeya did not grant me a reprieve. We marched directly to the Knights' headquarters, our dirt-stained, ragged appearance drawing startled looks from the early-morning patrols. The emergency council was reconvened in the dead of night's final hour. Varka was already there, pacing before the grand map, the force of his personality a palpable presence in the room. Jean stood waiting, her expression taut with anxiety, her hands clasped so tightly her knuckles were white. She looked at our disheveled state, and her fear was quickly overshadowed by a dawning dread.
"Report," Varka commanded, his voice leaving no room for pleasantries.
Kaeya delivered our findings with the cold precision of a surgeon diagnosing a terminal illness. He began with the confirmation of an active camp, the number of guards, the presence of Abyss Mages. He then moved to the heart of the matter, describing the excavated pit, the pulsating, corrupted ley line, and the horrifying ritual of feeding it living elemental beings. When he finally spoke the words "Abyss Lector," the temperature in the room seemed to plummet. Varka stopped his pacing, his body going unnaturally still. Jean let out a small, choked gasp.
"They are not merely trying to disrupt our nation with an external device," Kaeya concluded, his voice grim. "They are attempting to inflict a permanent, spreading blight. They are poisoning the very lifeblood of our land from within, turning it into a conduit for Abyssal power. This is not a plot. It is a slow, insidious conquest."
The silence that followed was suffocating. It was the silence of leaders confronted with a problem that had no easy solution, no honorable battle to be won.
"How could we not have known?" Jean whispered, her voice filled with anguish and disbelief. "A Lector… operating so close to the city… It's an unimaginable failure of our intelligence."
"It is not a failure, Knight Gunnhildr," Varka said, his voice a low growl of controlled fury. "It is a testament to the enemy's cunning. They have moved in the shadows, in the cracks we did not even know existed." He slammed a gauntleted fist on the table, the sound a dull, final thud. "This changes the nature of our struggle. We cannot meet this with a frontal assault. A legion of knights marching into those woods would be walking into a prepared meat grinder. It would escalate this silent war into an open one, causing panic and chaos amongst the populace."
"So we are to do nothing?" Jean challenged, her sense of duty warring with the strategic nightmare before her. "We let this… this cancer grow?"
"No," Varka said, his eyes hardening into chips of flint. "We fight a shadow war with shadows of our own." He laid out the two-pronged strategy. The 8th Company would be the tip of the spear, a scalpel seeking a weakness in the Lector's ritual. And Jean would act as his liaison to the Knights' resident expert on all things arcane and ancient: Lisa Minci.
"Lisa's years at the Sumeru Akademiya were not spent idly," Varka explained. "If anyone in Mondstadt can decipher the nature of this Abyssal corruption and devise a magical countermeasure, it is her. Your duty, Jean, is to provide her with all the support she needs. This is now a battle to be fought in libraries and alchemical labs as much as in the field."
I felt the immense burden in the room settle, distributing itself among the four of us. Varka, the grand strategist, forced to play a defensive game. Kaeya, the spymaster, now hunting the biggest game of his life. Jean, the logistical prodigy, now tasked with coordinating a magical solution to an existential threat. And me. The boy with impossible powers, now one of the only people in Mondstadt who had looked the true enemy in its faceless hood and survived.
As the meeting concluded and the pale light of dawn began to filter through the high windows, I walked home. The city was waking up. I could smell fresh bread from the bakeries, hear the cheerful chatter of vendors setting up their stalls in the market plaza. A group of children chased each other around the fountain, their laughter echoing in the crisp morning air.
Each sound, each sight of peaceful, mundane life, was a fresh wound in my soul. They were living in a beautiful, fragile dream, and I was now one of its few sleepless guardians. I thought of my parents, still asleep in our quiet home, their greatest worry being whether I was eating properly. The gulf between my reality and theirs was an ocean, and the weight of the secrets I carried threatened to drown me. In my old life, this would have been a thrilling expansion, a high-level questline with epic loot. Here, the only reward for success was that the people I loved would continue to live in blissful ignorance, never knowing the blade that had been held to their throats.
I reached my room and stood there for a long time, the exhaustion of the night a physical ache in my bones. My Anemo Vision sat on my desk, its cyan glow a gentle, comforting presence. It was the power of a guardian, a Knight of the Wind. It was a power of control, of freedom, of protection. It was a power I had used to save my friends and escape my enemies.
But it was not enough.
It was the power to deflect a sword, but not to break it. It was the power to outmaneuver a beast, but not to quell a fundamental corruption. The Abyss was a force of absolute, internal decay. To fight it, I needed a power of absolute, internal conviction.
I had been afraid of my Mana Burst. I had seen it as a dangerous relic of a past life, a berserker's rage that was incompatible with the controlled, precise knight I was trying to become. I was wrong. It wasn't a liability. It was the other half of my soul.
I walked out into the cool, quiet air of our small garden just as the sun's first rays crested the city walls. I held out my right hand, palm facing the sky, and closed my eyes. I shut out the whispers of the wind and the hum of my Vision. I reached deeper, into the core of my being, to the dormant, golden star that rested there. I did not ask it for power. I did not command it. I simply willed it to be.
The resistance was immediate, a deep-seated reluctance from a power that had been neglected for years. A sharp, burning pain, like holding a live coal, lanced up my arm. The System's warning screamed at the back of my mind. I ignored it. I pushed through the pain, focusing my entire will on that single point in my palm.
Slowly, painfully, a response came. A tiny, brilliant flicker of golden light sputtered to life. It was no bigger than the head of a pin, unstable and infinitesimally small compared to the raging inferno I had once unleashed. It danced and wavered, a sun in miniature, casting a warm, golden glow on my skin. The pain was immense, but the sight was beautiful. It was the pure, undiluted essence of a star, the power of a King, held in the hand of a boy.
It was a start.
As I stood there, trembling with exertion, cradling a tiny, impossible piece of my true self in my hand, a new resolve settled over me, as solid and as real as the stone walls of the city around me. The threats were greater, the conspiracies deeper than I could have ever imagined. The Knight of the Wind, the hero of Mondstadt, was not enough to face what was coming.
It was time to start training the King.