The morning air rolled in with a hush, layered with the scent of rain-soaked moss and distant ash. Fog clung to the edges of Guili Plains like a mourner's veil, circling crumbling pavilions and shattered statues that stood as silent witnesses to wars long ended. The aftermath of the previous night's battle lay hidden beneath this waking quiet, as if the land itself held its breath, wary of what might stir next.
Furina trudged behind Xiao at a respectful distance, one hand pressed lightly to her bandaged arm, the other occasionally flicking a dewdrop from the feathered hem of her cloak. Her summons—Gentilhomme Usher, Surintendante Chevalmarin, and Mademoiselle Crabaletta—trailed at half their usual vigor, eerily subdued. Even the typically theatrical Usher offered only the occasional apologetic burble, his tentacles drooping as though sharing her fatigue.
She glanced up the path ahead.
Xiao moved with steady purpose, jade spear slung across his back, posture relaxed in a way that belied lethal readiness. He could dispatch a threat in half a breath if it so much as rustled wrong.
"We've been walking in silence for nearly an hour," she muttered, loud enough to carry through the mist.
Xiao didn't respond.
Furina tilted her head, a spark of familiar exasperation flickering. "Is this an Adeptus thing? Extended periods of dramatic brooding are a standard feature among your kind? Or is it a Xiao-specific brand of melancholy?"
Still nothing.
She sighed, the sound half annoyed, half resigned. She was starting to understand the shape of his silence. As if every word withheld conserved strength for battles yet to come.
The landscape shifted as they ascended from open plains into wooded hills. Ruins grew denser: vines overgrowing fallen bridges, roots entwining broken statues of long-forgotten guardians. Liyue's ancient scars were worn with quiet pride, a testament to endurance rather than defeat.
"You're sure the trail leads here?" she asked.
Xiao spoke at last, voice low. "The ley line echoes point to something old. The creature was drawn here, not spawned. Something pulled it."
"Pulled it… with what? Elemental bait?"
"Worse," he said. "A memory."
Furina blinked. "That's ominously vague, even for you."
He offered no further explanation.
Another fifteen minutes of ascent in near-silence brought them to a sharp curve along the ridge. There it was.
A shrine.
Half-buried beneath centuries of earth and overgrowth, surrounded by faintly humming standing stones. No plaque bore its name. Weather-worn murals were barely legible: outlines of clouds, spears, and flowing water. A cracked, moss-draped incense burner sat at the center of the courtyard, untouched for what felt like a millennium.
Xiao halted just before the central stair.
His posture changed in an instant. His shoulders stiffened, his chin lowered slightly, and every muscle coiled.
"This shouldn't be here," he murmured, almost to himself.
Furina raised a brow. "Oh good. Something you didn't expect. I was beginning to think you were omniscient."
He stepped forward cautiously, fingers hovering over a carved sigil without touching it. "This shrine isn't recorded on any Adepti maps. Not mine. Not Cloud Retainer's. Not even in collective memory."
"You mean… it was hidden?"
"Or buried," he said. "Until now."
Furina approached slowly, eyes tracing the faded murals. An odd lurch stirred in her chest.
She stopped beside a half-buried pillar.
There, etched deep into the stone, was a symbol she knew intimately.
A set of scales.
Not Liyuean. It was distinctly Fontainean.
She touched it lightly with gloved fingers. The carving was reverent: balanced scales interwoven with cloud patterns, executed with precision.
She turned to Xiao. She simply said, "This shrine bears Fontaine markings."
His frown deepened, genuine unease flickering across his usually impassive features. "Impossible. Fontaine and Liyue never shared sacred architecture or joint worship."
"Well, apparently someone didn't get the memo." She leaned closer, studying the lines. "These aren't forgeries. The technique matches the third-era Fontaine civil style: pre-Opera Epiclese, when we still experimented with symbolic balance in public works."
Xiao's gaze sharpened; he felt troubled about it.
Furina exhaled slowly, stepping back. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I've never been here before. And yet…"
The sensation clung to her spine, surreal and insistent, like standing in a dream she couldn't quite wake from.
They ventured deeper into the shrine's remains, passing beneath a cracked lintel into the main hall. Scattered stone lanterns lay toppled and ruined. Waterlogged prayer scrolls, tattered and illegible, clung to far walls like ghosts of devotion. The air grew thicker, heavier, more oppressive rather than sacred.
Xiao stopped just past the central dais.
"Don't move," he said sharply.
Furina froze mid-step.
He turned his head slowly, eyes narrowing. "The air just changed."
She reached instinctively for her rapier. "How bad?"
He didn't answer.
A low rumble began beneath their feet, like the slow exhale of a sleeping giant.
A hairline crack burst across the shrine floor behind them.
Xiao swore under his breath, an uncharacteristic slip. "Move—now!"
Furina leapt sideways as the stone beneath her buckled inward.
A serpentine shriek tore through the chamber, and a massive form erupted vertically through the collapsing floor: a second elemental beast, larger and more heavily armored than the last, its body coiled in plates of limestone veined with shimmering Hydro light.
"Another one?!" she cried.
"This one's worse," Xiao replied, already airborne, his jade spear materializing in a flash of green.
The beast lunged, jaws unhinging with crystalline teeth.
The entire floor gave way.
Darkness swallowed them both.
Dust choked the air, thick with the raw tang of ley energy. Furina groaned, rolling onto her back as her vision swam. Her summons sparked weakly around her like guttering candles—Chevalmarin bobbing unsteadily, Usher's tentacles limp, and Crabaletta's claws scraping feebly against stone.
"Xiao?" she called, her voice hoarse.
A whisper of wind answered. A flicker of jade light cut through the gloom.
He landed beside her in a crouch, unharmed, spear still gripped tightly.
She pushed up on one elbow, wincing. "I'm fine," she said stubbornly before he could ask.
He gave her a long, assessing look but didn't argue. Instead, he turned his attention to their new surroundings.
The cavern they had fallen into was vast—wider than the shrine above, lined with towering pillars carved in swirling motifs. Forgotten architecture stretched into shadow, tomb-like and silent.
"Where are we?" Furina asked, rubbing dust from her eyes.
Xiao's voice was low. "Somewhere no living soul has walked in centuries."
He knelt, placing a bare hand against the cold stone floor.
"The ley lines are thin here. Twisted, yet feeling familiar."
Furina watched him in silence, her chest rising and falling too quickly.
He looked up, golden eyes sharp. "We're not alone."
A deep pulse echoed far below, reverberating through bone and stone.
The hairs on her arms rose.
Silence thickened in the buried shrine, heavy as centuries of dust.
Xiao moved ahead like a shadow through the ruined corridor, fingertips grazing faded reliefs: spirals of storm clouds, coiling dragons, and flowing rivers. He scanned each carving with narrowed eyes, cataloging anomalies.
Furina followed, her own fingers trailing the same stone. "These markings," she said while continuing to touch them, "are not purely Liyuean." I'm seeing Fontaine curvature in the relief flow: graceful arcs and balanced symmetry. Someone blended two sacred schools here."
Xiao paused at a broken brazier, sifting through ash and powdered rock. "The air feeds on memory. It is reinforcing itself."
"Like the building remembers?" she asked quietly.
"In a way," he replied. "Adepti-built sanctuaries were anchors—spiritual and physical. Forgotten, they fade. But if something old enough remembers them…"
"They return," she finished, voice small. "Or something forces them to."
Chill settled deeper than the cavern's cold.
They stepped through a cracked archway into a larger chamber. The ceiling stretched into impenetrable blackness. Old stone benches lined the walls like seats for a congregation long turned to dust. At the far end rose a circular dais bearing a five-pointed glyph indentation at its center.
Furina stared at it, a half-remembered dream stirring behind her eyes.
"I know this room," she whispered.
Xiao glanced at her, studying her expression. "Then your connection to this place runs deeper than mine."
"I've never been here. But the proportions, the altar geometry…
She stepped onto the dais.
The ground vibrated faintly. Xiao's hand moved to his spear.
Blue light bled upward from cracks between stones, forming runic sigils beneath her boots.
"I didn't do anything!" she said quickly.
"Get off the platform."
"It's responding to my vision, I think—"
"Furina."
The glyph flared with sudden, blinding intensity. A sharp gust erupted from the center, nearly knocking her backward.
She stumbled off just as an inverted glyph emerged from the opposite wall, stone grinding as it slid outward to reveal a deep recess.
Xiao appeared at her side in an instant, one arm raised protectively.
The chamber trembled. Dust cascaded from above.
A shrill, inhuman screech echoed from the darkness.
Furina summoned her rapier in a flash of Hydro light. "Oh, not again!"
A serpentine creature materialized, sleeker than the surface beasts, scales glistening with artificial luster. Constructed from the unknown.
Xiao intercepted it mid-lunge, spear clashing in a shower of sparks.
"It's smarter," he warned. "It's defending the territory."
"Or guarding something," Furina muttered, summoning Usher to her side. "Split formation?"
"Stay close."
Another tremor. Tiles cracked overhead.
Chevalmarin launched illuminated Hydro shards into the shadows, revealing more slithering shapes.
"Oh great," Furina hissed. "There's more than one."
Xiao plunged into darkness, Elemental Skill blooming—green afterimages streaking walls like deadly comets.
Furina pressed forward, slashing a lunge that broke through. Her strike wounded but didn't kill her.
Then the quake hit.
Deep thunder rolled; it was not from below but within the stone itself. The floor shook violently as the columns cracked, and the dais glyph overloaded with light.
"Xiao! It's unstable!"
He reappeared beside her, spear coated in fractured blue ichor, breathing harder.
"Fall back! This whole place is—"
The ground gave way again.
They fell.
Furina landed hard on her side, her breath knocked out. Summons scattered, flickering. She coughed, rolling slowly.
Xiao knelt nearby, bracing against the wall, chest heaving.
"Still alive?" she rasped.
"Yes. You?"
Weak thumbs-up. "Bones intact. Dignity slightly bruised."
They had descended further into an ancient passageway where Adepti sigils were half-covered by unfamiliar symbols.
Furina traced one. "Ancient Fontainean. Pre-hydrostructure ley entanglement experiments—binding water memory into architecture. Abandoned centuries ago as too volatile."
Mural on far wall: A figure with twin halos—cloud and tide—kneeling before a lightning-split mountain.
"You felt resonance," Xiao said.
"Yes."
"Not coincidence." Furina now grew nervous.
"No."
Heavy silence.
"What now?" Furina asked, her voice trembling slightly. "Trapped underground. No backup. Surrounded by hostile remnants of a forgotten experiment."
Xiao sat on a nearby ledge. "Let's wait and regroup, then rest here for now."
"Rest? Here?" She looked at him in disbelief.
"They're wounded. We bought time until we recovered."
She sat several feet away, not too close.
Silence stretched, thick and unbearable.
Furina broke it first, forcing lightness. "We've officially ticked 'fall into ancient ruin' off the adventuring checklist."
No response.
"Maybe the next thing that would happen is a cursed vault or a portal to an alternate timeline where you smile."
Nothing.
"You can't stay silent forever. One of us has to break."
"You can leave," he said.
"And abandon you? Not a chance."
"Why then pretend to be brave?" he asked suddenly.
She blinked. "Because they only listened when I was loud. I performed long enough that you forget where the show ends."
"You weren't pretending?" He raised his eyebrow.
"Yaksha were created for war. Morax gave roles. I kept playing after they died. I don't know what I am without it." She put her hand on her chin, looking exhausted. "Maybe we're both in ill-fitting costumes."
"Stop."
She turned to see him. "Excuse me?"
"You don't know consumption by what you fight. Karmic weight. Lifetimes crumbling."
"Don't dismiss mine because it differs."
Silence.
"You hide in grief like an honor badge."
"I've lost everything close."
"So have I!" She yelled.
Nothing but silence. They began to realize in that brief moment how they are not so different.
She released an exasperated exhale. "You want silence? Fine."
She stood, Usher burbling concern, and walked away.
Silence pressed heavier on Xiao. He sighed and followed her.
Splash. Sharp cry.
He blurred forward.
Furina scrambled as the floor cracked; the trap sprung.
Half-submerged chamber. Pale water. Hybrid snake-crustacean beast: obsidian plates, blue runes.
Usher trembled.
The beast lunged right at the ex-Archon quickly.
Furina dodged partially, clipped, and crashed into the wall. Pain flared.
Crabaletta shielded her from any more attacks.
Beast reared—
Xiao descended. With his spear held firmly, he pierced the core of the creature.
It shrieked and twisted.
"Behind me," he commanded.
Splinters fell.
"It replicates." He frowned.
Furina rose. "Whack-a-wyrm?"
Rhythm formed from their attacks—Xiao piercing, Furina redirecting the attacks. Anemo Swirl amplified Hydro attacks.
Beast imploded.
Furina knelt. "No splitting party."
"You were pretty silent in that moment?"
"You told me to stop talking."
"I didn't think you'd follow."
"I always follow."
The doorway shimmered.
Furina touched the glyphs, and they glowed.
Chamber had various spiral scripts that gave the glyphs life. Pedestal with a crystal sphere of blue and green veins that seemed out of place, yet she knew how it worked. Even Xiao was able to feel a familiarity with it for some reason.
"Memory core has stabilized the impressions."
"From dreams?"
He nodded. "Yes. Shrine grew from this."
Furina then looked at it carefully and said, "Corrupted by a foreign force."
"Link to creatures." He looked at her.
"Destroyed?" she responded.
"Not yet." He shook his head.
"We learn what it remembers."
"And what it's forgotten."
Agreement in silence.
Above, the shrine groaned as if it were awakening from a long slumber. Furina and Xiao realized how many problems it was laying for them.
End chapter