Night in Orario is never truly silent. Even in the wee hours, the city breathes through the roar of blacksmith furnaces working overtime, the heavy footsteps of Ganesha Familia patrols, and the faint hum of the Tower of Babel rising defiantly against the sky. However, inside the old church that now served as the headquarters of the Barbatos Familia, silence was usually a welcome guest.
Tonight, that silence was shattered.
Not by a sound, but by a sharp, stifled gasp.
Venti woke with eyes snapping open. His small frame jerked up from the wooden bench he used as a bed, as if he had just been forcibly pulled from the frozen depths of the sea. His chest heaved, struggling to scoop up oxygen that felt thin in his lungs. Cold sweat drenched his temples, plastering his black bangs against his forehead.
It wasn't a nightmare. Venti had lived for thousands of years; he knew the difference between the illusions of sleep and a reality that battered the soul.
This was a connection.
As the Anemo Archon—an entity that was the very embodiment of wind from another world—Venti possessed absolute sensitivity to his element. In Teyvat, the wind carried the scent of apples, the laughter of children, and prayers of hope. But the wind that had just infiltrated his sleep was different.
It didn't blow. It bled.
Venti clutched his chest, right where his artificial heart beat wildly. The pain wasn't physical, but an emotional resonance so dense it made him nauseous.
"How long..." he whispered, his voice hoarse and trembling in the darkness of the church. "How long have you been crying there all alone, Aria?"
He couldn't sleep anymore. Venti tossed aside his thin blanket and walked soundlessly across the cold stone floor. His feet carried him to the large window on the north side of the church, the only one he left slightly ajar to keep the air circulating.
He sat on the wide window ledge, letting one leg dangle outside. His teal-green eyes stared straight north, piercing the city's darkness, past Orario's giant walls, toward the distant mountains where eternal black clouds gathered.
Dragon Valley.
The night wind struck his face. To others, it was just a cold breeze. But to Venti, it was a missive filled with agony.
No words were spoken. The language of elemental spirits is older than human tongues. What Venti heard were pure concepts: Cold. Dark. Pain. Help. Tired. Let me die.
It was the sound of something majestic being slowly eroded into nothingness. Like watching a star forced to dim, or a bird having its wings broken one by one, every day for a thousand years. Aria, the Great Spirit of Wind, was being used as living fuel.
Venti gripped the stone sill. His grip was so strong that the old granite cracked slightly beneath his delicate fingers. The playful smile that usually adorned his face vanished without a trace, replaced by an expression of grief that was ancient and deep.
"You're not sleeping again."
A calm, flat female voice broke his reverie.
Venti wasn't surprised. He didn't turn as the nearly silent footsteps approached from behind. Alfia. The Silence. The woman had a habit of night patrols that was hard to break, a lingering instinct from her glory days in the Hera Familia.
"The night is too beautiful to waste with eyes closed, isn't it?" Venti replied without turning, trying to restore his cheerful tone but failing. His voice sounded hollow, like a cracked bell.
Alfia stopped two steps behind Venti. She wore a simple nightgown with a thick cloak draped over her shoulders. Her sharp eyes, which could usually make high-level monsters tremble, now stared at the small god's back with a probing gaze.
She could feel it. The air pressure around Venti was unstable. The wind inside the church swirled restlessly, making the candles on the altar flicker wildly.
"What is troubling your mind, Little God?" Alfia asked. Her tone wasn't urgent, but it demanded an answer. "You make the air here feel heavy. Meteria is sleeping; don't wake her with your bad mood."
Venti smiled bitterly. He finally turned, looking at Alfia with dim eyes.
"Have you ever heard someone screaming for help for thousands of years without stopping, Alfia?"
The question hung in the air. Strange, specific, and horrifying.
Alfia narrowed her eyes. Her face hardened. As a former adventurer who once stood at the peak of the world, she knew exactly where this conversation was heading. There was only one primeval entity associated with 'thousands of years' and suffering in their minds right now.
"...That dragon?" Alfia guessed, her voice dropping low, laced with a hatred that still burned for the One-Eyed Black Dragon.
Venti shook his head slowly. He looked back toward the north.
"Not the dragon," Venti corrected softly. "But the one imprisoned within it."
Alfia's brow furrowed. "You mean... Aria? That Great Spirit?"
"Imagine, Alfia," Venti continued, ignoring the question for a moment. "Imagine being locked in a cramped coffin. You are conscious, you are alive, but you cannot move. And every second, something sucks your blood, eats your vitality, and uses your soul to destroy everything you love."
Venti's voice trembled. "Wind is the element of freedom. Confining the wind is the greatest sin. But turning it into a tool for madness and slaughter? That is an unforgivable sacrilege."
Alfia fell silent. She remembered the final battle of the Zeus and Hera Familia. She remembered how the dragon possessed limitless stamina, how the wind around the valley felt like knives slicing the skin. Knowing that it came from the eternal torture of another entity made her stomach churn.
"So?" Alfia crossed her arms over her chest. "What's the point of lamenting it at a window in the middle of the night? We don't have the strength to fight it right now. I'm still sick, and you..."
Alfia looked at Venti's small frame. "...you are a God. And in the lower world, Gods are merely spectators."
Venti lowered his leg from the window, turning fully to face Alfia. Moonlight illuminated half his face, creating a sharp contrast of shadows.
"I'm going to Dragon Valley," he said. Brief. Concise.
Alfia's eyes widened. Her composure cracked instantly.
"What?"
"I'm going. Alone. Tonight."
"Are you crazy?!" hissed Alfia, her voice rising an octave but restrained so as not to wake Meteria. She stepped forward, gripping Venti's shoulder. "Do you want to commit suicide? Have you forgotten the basic rules of this world? Gods are forbidden from using Arcanum! If you violate that, you'll be forcibly returned to Heaven. And if you don't use your power, you'll just be a snack for that dragon in seconds!"
Alfia's grip was strong, enough to crush the bones of an ordinary human. But Venti didn't budge. He didn't wince.
Slowly, Venti raised his hand, placing it over Alfia's hand that gripped his shoulder.
For a moment, Alfia felt a strange sensation. Not heat, not cold. But a sensation of massive emptiness. It was as if she wasn't holding the shoulder of a boy, but holding the core of a typhoon.
Venti lifted his face. And for the first time since their meeting, Alfia saw it.
The playful smile was gone. The mask of the lazy bard crumbled.
Those teal-green eyes shone with pure divine light—not Arcanum granted by this world's system, but a primeval power he brought from Teyvat. The gaze was commanding, ancient, and absolute. It was the gaze of an Archon who had once flattened mountains and changed the climate of a continent with a mere breath.
"I am not just a god by the legal definition of this world, Alfia," Venti said. His voice echoed, as if spoken by a thousand winds at once. "Guild laws, Heaven's rules... those bind people from here. But I am Barbatos."
The wind inside the room swirled faster, lifting the edges of their cloaks and hair, yet strangely not knocking over a single item in the room. Perfect control.
"And you misunderstand one thing," Venti continued, the light in his eyes dimming slightly, returning to a gentle but sharp gaze. "I'm not going to fight that dragon. That is the task of future heroes."
Alfia released her grip, stepping back as her warning instincts screamed.
"Then? What are you going to do?"
A crooked smile slowly etched onto Venti's lips. A smile full of confidence, cunning, and danger.
"I am the best thief in the world, Alfia," he whispered. "I won't defeat the guard. I'm just going to steal the prisoner."
"You..." Alfia was speechless. The idea was insane. Infiltrating the lair of the One-Eyed Black Dragon, the strongest monster in the world, to take its power core without fighting?
But as she looked into Venti's eyes, she saw no hesitation.
This small god possessed power beyond the standard Falna and Arcanum. The power of the wind he held as an Archon still dwelled there, waiting to be unleashed.
"How long?" Alfia finally asked, surrendering to her god's stubbornness.
"Maybe a few days. Maybe a week," Venti answered casually, as if he were just saying goodbye to buy wine in the next town. "I'll use the jet stream currents in the upper atmosphere. The trip north won't take long if you fly faster than sound."
Venti walked toward the church door. He paused for a moment, then looked toward the hallway where Meteria's room was.
"Take care of Meteria. And take care of yourself," Venti instructed.
He then snapped his fingers.
A small ball of wind, glowing a soft green, appeared and floated toward Alfia. The ball spun slowly around the woman's shoulder.
"What is this?"
"A little protection," Venti winked, his cheerful persona returning in a flash. "If anyone dares to disturb my home while I'm gone... that wind will cut them down before they can even blink."
Venti turned, his hand already touching the cold handle of the church door. The night wind outside roared, calling him to take off immediately, to merge with the sky and fly north. His primal instincts screamed: Go. Now.
However, his footsteps halted.
A pale hand gripped his wrist. The grip wasn't physically strong, but its emotional weight held the Wind God tighter than any iron chain.
"Don't be stupid," Alfia's voice sounded sharp, yet it trembled. "You want to leave just like that? Without a plan? Without preparation? Just on sheer recklessness and wind?"
Venti fell silent. He didn't turn around, but his tense shoulders slowly relaxed.
"That dragon killed my army that had prepared for years, Venti," Alfia continued, her voice pressing every word with rational fear. "If you go tonight with an empty head, you won't save Aria. You'll just be throwing your life away."
Venti let out a long sigh. He released the door handle. The teal glow in his eyes faded, returning to human eyes that were warm but tired.
He realized Alfia was right. Freedom didn't mean stupidity. If he died foolishly, Aria would remain trapped forever. And worse, he would leave Meteria and the baby without protection.
"You're right," Venti murmured. He turned, looking at Alfia with a thin, guilty smile. "It seems I was too eager hearing her call that I forgot the manners of saying goodbye."
Venti walked away from the door, returning inside the church.
"One night," Venti said, raising one finger. "We formulate a plan tonight. Tomorrow morning, when the sun rises and my alibi is ready... I will go."
Alfia lowered her hand, exhaling a long sigh of relief as if she had just held back a natural disaster. She touched the small wind ball still perched on her shoulder.
"Good. Because if you left tonight, I would drag you back even if I had to crawl," Alfia threatened, though the corners of her lips lifted slightly.
Outside, the north wind was still weeping, but Venti covered his ears for a moment. Wait one more night, Aria. I must ensure my footing is strong before I leap.