The transition was a jarring lurch, a violent pull from the silent, featureless black of the void back into the world of sensation. Ren's eyes snapped open with a startled gasp, his lungs burning as if he had forgotten how to breathe.
The first thing he registered was the light. A warm, gentle, and very real, Sumeru sun was streaming through the large, open window, painting patterns of green-tinged light on the polished wooden floor. The air was warm and carried the faint, exotic scent of flowers from the garden below. He was safe. He was in the house.
He sat up, his heart pounding a frantic, terrified rhythm against his ribs. The dream… it had felt too real. The voices, the shattering mirrors, the cosmic, knowing whisper of a Hexenzirkel witch… they were etched into his mind with a terrifying clarity. He looked at the other side of the large, comfortable bed. It was empty, the covers neatly folded back. Ningguang was already up, her day as the unofficial, but very much in charge, Liyue ambassador already begun.
He was alone with the echoes of his forgotten past.
He slid from the bed, his feet finding the cool, solid floor a welcome anchor to reality. He went to the washroom, the simple, mundane act of splashing cool water on his face a desperate attempt to wash away the lingering dread of the dream. He looked in the mirror, at his own, familiar, and now deeply unsettling, face.
The facts, the terrible, fragmented truths from the dream, began to slot into place in his mind with a cold, brutal logic.
I was a Fatui experiment.
The thought was a shard of ice in his gut. The sterile room, the cold metal bed, the feeling of being a project, a thing to be enhanced… it was not a nightmare; it was a memory. He had a history in this world, a dark, painful one that had been stolen from him.
And the girl. The one whose face was a blur, the one whose voice held the sound of a forgotten home. "Big sister promises to get you out of here, safely." Who was she? And why did the thought of her feel like a phantom limb, an ache for something that had been amputated from his very soul? He had Ganyu, his wonderful, loving sister. But there had been another. Before.
He sat on the edge of the bed, the sunlight a warm, indifferent presence on his skin. He looked at his own, small hands, and the pieces of his own, personal puzzle began to form a chilling, logical picture. His appearance. The messy, beautiful, black-and-blue hair, the glowing azure eyes, the almost supernatural ability that disarmed everyone he met… it wasn't natural. It was engineered. It was a result of the "enhancements." His ability to absorb elemental energy, the very thing that had allowed him to wield Cryo and now Electro, was not a gift from another world. It was a feature, a side effect of whatever monstrous experiments had been performed on his small, forgotten body.
A new, even more disturbing, thought wormed its way into his mind. Aging. He remembered the boy in the mirrors. He was younger, but not by much. He was in the park. He was in the lab. He was on the mountain. But in all of them… he was still a child. He, in this new life, had been in Teyvat for a while now. He had experienced seasons, he had seen time pass. And yet… he was still ten. He looked exactly the same as the day he had woken up on that cold, lonely mountain. Was that part of it, too? Had the experiments frozen him in time, a perpetual, unchanging child?
A tremor of pure, cold dread ran down his spine. The dream had not just given him a past; it had thrown his entire future into a terrible, uncertain light.
And then there was the final, cosmic, and most terrifying, piece of the puzzle. Nicole Reeyn. The Hexenzirkel.
"An anomaly who transcends TIME and SPACE… an affront to the very concepts of LIFE and DEATH…"
Ren's mind, the mind of a gamer who had obsessively devoured every scrap of lore, immediately began to connect the dots. The Four Shades of Heavenly Principles. The primordial, divine beings who were the very embodiment of those concepts.
Istaroth, the Shade of Time. The one who had, according to the forgotten texts, manipulated the very winds of time to aid a young god of freedom, the one who had offered a sliver of hope to the sunless people of Enkanomiya.
Naberius, the Shade of Life. The mysterious progenitor, the one whispered to be the creator of the Oceanids, of Egeria, the very wellspring of life in the land of Fontaine.
Ronova, the Shade of Death. The one who had been hinted in the lore to have been connected to the curse of immortality that had been laid upon the people of the fallen nation of Khaenri'ah, a death that was not a death.
And Asmoday, the Shade of Space. The Sustainer of Heavenly Principles. The cold, impassive god who had personally intercepted the twin siblings in his memories of the game, who had separated them, who had cast them down into this world.
These were not just gods. They were the fundamental laws of the universe, made manifest. And Nicole, a witch of near-divine power herself, had just told him that his very existence was an affront to them. He was a bug crawling across the blueprints of creation, a glitch in the grand, cosmic program. The thought was so immense, so terrifying, that it was almost impossible to comprehend. He was not just a target for the Fatui anymore. He was, potentially, an enemy of the very gods who had created the world.
He let out a long, shaky breath. He looked out the window, at the vibrant, beautiful city of Sumeru. He saw the scholars walking with their books, he heard the distant, beautiful sound of a street musician's lute. He saw life. A life he now had. He thought of the family back in Liyue, the one he now loved.
The panic, the cosmic, existential dread, it was still there, a cold, hard knot in his stomach. But on top of it, a new, and far more powerful, feeling was beginning to form.
Determination.
He didn't know why he was here. He didn't know the "REASON" for his existence. But he was here. He was alive. And he had people he loved, people he had to protect.
He stood up, his small shoulders squared. He could not panic. He could not despair. He could only do what he had always done.
Survive. Learn. And find a way to protect his own, precious, and very much loved, family.