The memory of those days still echoed in his heart, a tremor that time could not quiet. He remembered that day with brutal clarity, as if it had happened only moments ago.
This was before the long sleep that would claim him for four hundred and fifty six years.
It began on a night when the stars aligned in rare harmony, a moment of cosmic importance. On this night, the universe of Teyvat watched as two brilliant stars crossed its canvas. They were not simple meteors. They were visitors, burning with light that felt both strange and profound.
These two beings carried different names. One was Lumine, the sister. The Other was Aether, her older brother. The twin stars streaked across the sky, their tails fluttering like celestial ribbons against the velvet black, before fading into nothing.
From the heart of the fading light, a slender, graceful figure began to materialize. Streaks of light crystallized and converged, their radiant energy slowly weaving together the form of a young woman. The golden hues did not vanish but lingered, settling as her short, fair hair and the delicate stellar patterns adorning the cloak draped over her shoulders. A pair of petite, shimmering wings folded gently against her back, and her eyes, when they opened, shone with a soft, inner luminescence.
Lumine stepped forward, her feet meeting the ground without a sound.
This was no ordinary place. She stood within a realm of impossible geometry, where pathways of pure, featureless white stretched into infinity in every direction. It was a nexus, a silent crossroads suspended between worlds. The only distinct feature in all that bright, chaotic expanse was a single, solitary door standing directly before her.
Cô nhẹ nhàng đưa tay ra đằng sau, làm đôi cánh đằng sau lưng của cô như bị tan chảy ra, những dải cánh nhỏ tựa như cánh chuồn chuồn cứ như bị nung chảy bởi một lực vô hình. Chúng co mình lại trước khi màu đỏ vàng chiếm lấy chúng trong thoáng chốc. Tất cả được đúc thành một lá bài nâu nhỏ với chính giữa là biểu tượng của một đôi cánh.
But before she could put the card into her hip pouch, the second star arrived. It burned with a deeper, more volatile gold compared to her serene silver light, and its flight path was erratic, flickering as if struggling against an unseen current. Crackling tendrils of lightning spasmed around its core, growing in intensity until the very charges coalesced, forging a human form from the feet up. Limbs, a torso, and finally, a head with hair the color of tarnished gold, the deep yellow of a thunderclap given substance. Last to form were the eyes, a sharp, piercing green that snapped open, instantly focused and glaring at the void before them.
A cloud of shimmering energy billowed from where he struck down, buzzing with the fading resonance of lightning. Aether rose to full height, causing a stray lock of hair to drift across his face. With a flick of his fingers, he brushed it aside.
"I flew ahead of you again," Lumine said, a soft smile on her lips as she turned to him. "You're too slow, big bro."
Aether let out a fond grunt, familiar warmth in his eyes. "Yeah, you're fast, Lumine. No wonder they called you the golden star of our family."
But even as the words left his mouth, something darker stirred beneath the surface. His gaze lingered on her as she turned away, her silhouette framed against the infinite white as she began walking toward the door.
Whispers and ancient records spoke of a grand journey across the universes, an orderly path through the cosmos. And every time their people crossed through Teyvat, a disturbing pattern emerged: one of them would vanish without trace.
Disappearances weren't uncommon in the vast, unknowable dark between worlds. But these... These were different. The timing. The location. Something about it left a cold, crawling dread coiled tight in his stomach.
Lumine stopped in her tracks.
Her hands settled on her hips as she glanced back over her shoulder, catching the weight of his stare. For a moment, she just looked at him, reading him the way only she could.
"Hey!" she called out, her voice cutting through the silence.
Before he could respond, she turned fully and walked back toward him, each step purposeful. His eyes widened slightly in surprise.
"I know what you're thinking," Lumine said, her tone firm but gentle, cutting through the dark spiral of his thoughts. "Those old stories, the rumors, all of it."
She stopped directly in front of him, close enough that he could see the constellations reflected in her eyes. The serious expression on her face softened, melting away like morning frost. In its place bloomed a smile. Warm, radiant, achingly familiar. The same smile that had been his anchor through countless storms, across dying suns and collapsing worlds.
"But you know, brother..." Her voice dropped, intimate and certain. "We've survived everything because we had each other."
He looked at her, really looked at her, and felt the torrent of anxious thoughts stutter and choke in his mind. The knot in his chest loosened, just a fraction.
"Yeah," he replied, the word a low rumble of acknowledgment. His worries didn't disappear. They never fully did. But her presence soothed them, pushed them back into the shadows where they belonged.
"So just trust me. If anything happens, I'll be the one to protect you." She reached out and squeezed his hand tightly, her expression set with brave certainty.
Aether felt a genuine chuckle escape his lips, the darkness in his heart receding slightly. "Yeah."
For one perfect, crystalline moment, everything felt right.
It happened in an instant. The very fabric of reality around them seemed to curdle and decay, peeling back to reveal monstrous constructs of shimmering, blood red cubes. They erupted from the void, not attacking, but reaching specifically for his sister.
Time stretched into a nightmare. Their eyes met one last time.
He was too shocked, his mind refusing to process the horror unfolding before him. His grip, once so firm in hers, went slack.
His fingers slipped through empty air where her hand had been just a moment before.
Her eyes were wide, not with fear, but with a profound, silent scream of betrayal and alarm before her very form dissolved into a constellation of fading, captured light, utterly and completely consumed.
The terrifying cubes contracted, flowing like obedient, liquid hounds back into the outstretched palm of a figure. A being of immense and terrible power who now stood where Lumine had been.
A breath, a ghost of a sound, escaped his lips.
"Lumine?"
A woman with a gaze as deep and unyielding as the void watched him. Enormous, feathery wings, white as a seraph's, spread behind her, and a great mane of hair billowed around her head, thick with the dust of constellations.
"Your journey ends here, Traveler."
Raw anguish erupted from his throat. A primal scream that tore through the void like thunder. "Give her back! Return my sister to me!"
His form dissolved into a storm of lightning.
A fist, moving with unimaginable speed, shot toward her face. It connected with a concussive blast that shattered the air and sent her hurtling backward.
She barely arrested her momentum. From her palms, two scythes forged from shifting, crimson cubes shot out, embedding themselves in the walls on either side of her and screeching as they gouged deep furrows, halting her flight.
A coppery tang filled her mouth. She wiped a thin trickle of blood from her lip, and her icy composure shattered into frigid wrath.
A sound like cracking crystal echoed as two more cube scythes erupted from her back. They launched toward Aether, but he was already a blur, leaping high into the air. The ground where he had stood erupted, blasting sand and debris in every direction.
Suspended in the air, his eyes tracked the crimson scythes materializing around him. One, two, five, a dozen. Each one locking onto him with predatory intent.
The first blade screamed toward his throat. He twisted, inverting his body during flight. The scythe passed so close its edge kissed the fabric of his collar. Before gravity could claim him, the second blade carved upward from below. With flawless reflexes, he caught its flat side with both palms, using the momentum to swing his legs up and through his arms in a fluid, impossible arc. His body became a blur of motion, threading through the storm of crimson metal. Left, right, spinning, each evasion a hair's breadth from disaster.
From the corner of his vision, he saw it. A final scythe, larger than the rest, erupting from a cluster of red cubes directly in his path. It moved too fast. Too close. There was no room left to dodge.
His form shattered into pure lightning. A dazzling constellation of golden electricity that scattered in every direction. The scythe passed harmlessly through empty air, cleaving nothing but the afterimage of where he'd been. Beside the stranger's right shoulder, ambient charge coalesced. Sparks drawing together like iron to a magnet, weaving themselves into sinew, bone, flesh. Aether materialized in a crouch, already in motion. The air around him erupted with voltage, his hair standing on end, arcs of golden electricity dancing across his skin. His right fist ignited. Not with flame, but with a bolt so massive it dwarfed his entire arm. A shaped lance of condensed lightning that roared and crackled with apocalyptic fury. His teeth ground together, his eyes burned with anger.
And then Aether pivoted, every muscle in his body coiling like a spring, and drove the electrified fist directly toward her face.
Yet her expression remained a mask of serene indifference.
The punch connected.
The force erupted outward. A devastating shockwave that tore through the pristine white pavement and sent it flying like scattered leaves. Shards of crystalline ground erupted skyward, spinning lazily in the maelstrom. The shockwave rippled outward in visible, concentric rings, each one distorting the air into shimmering heat haze as it passed.
Aether's chest heaved. Lightning still crackled along his knuckles, earthing itself across his trembling body. His breath came in ragged gasps. Smoke and pulverized stone billowed thick around where she had stood. An impenetrable curtain of gray.
The wind shifted.
The smoke began to thin, parting like a stage curtain drawn back to reveal the finale.
Her face emerged from the haze. Untouched.
His eyes widened. His lightning wreathed knuckles hung frozen in place, as if embedded in invisible amber. Between his fist and her porcelain skin, a constellation of blood red cubes shimmered into existence, each one rotating lazily on its axis. They had formed a perfect lattice. A barrier that had drunk his apocalyptic force and rendered it nothing more than a gentle breeze against her cheek.
"How... how could it be?" The words tumbled from his lips, barely a whisper.
Her eyes, cold and infinite as the void between stars, met his. They twitched. Narrowed. Locked onto him with surgical precision.
The red cubes began to move.
They didn't just multiply. They erupted, cascading from the barrier in a geometric avalanche. Aether stood stunned, his entire body locked in that punching pose as if time itself had betrayed him. The cubes swarmed over his arm, his torso, his legs, each one clicking into place with the precision of a puzzle solving itself.
He tried to wrench himself free. Lightning exploded from every pore, golden and desperate, but the cubes drank it all, converting his fury into more of themselves. In seconds, a prison of crimson geometry encased him, leaving only his eyes visible. Wide, burning with impotent rage as the woman floated forward, her hand reaching toward his frozen face.
"You... You!!" His voice cracked, firm yet trembling. His eyes shook, his heart trampled. Was it the fear of death? No. The fear of failure. The fear of dying without protecting his sister. The fear of an end where he had achieved nothing.
Her hand stopped before his face. Between her fingers, a single red cube rotated slowly before she brought it closer. Slowly, deliberately, she pressed it against his vision.
The world began to collapse into crimson black geometry. His sister's name died on his lips as darkness, precise, mathematical, absolute, swallowed everything whole.
The stranger's gaze lingered on another spot, where she saw something different from the rubble and dust. A card fell down, carrying with it an air of sorrow and desperation.