What the hell had gotten into Blondie?
Kiyo Seigan could not understand.
When he heard that Lumine had challenged the Harbinger to a Duel Before the Throne, his brow knitted tightly.
Two people had challenged the same opponent at the same time. In the interest of fairness, they could not both fight La Signora together. There would be two separate duels, held one day apart to allow time for rest and recovery.
And Lumine would fight first.
She would face a Fatui Harbinger, a being who stood nearer to godhood than almost anyone in the world.
Why?
Kiyo could not understand.
Why would she do this? Why act so rashly? Why go this far...?
She would die.
Without saying a word to him, she had challenged an enemy who was nearly a god—and not to an ordinary fight, but to a Duel Before the Throne. Kiyo knew what that meant.
It was a duel to the death.
"Can't it be canceled?" he asked Kiyono Sara again and again.
Kiyono Sara blinked her amber eyes.
"It cannot..."
She explained, "A Duel Before the Throne is the most sacred and impartial of all samurai duels. Once it has been declared, not even Her Excellency Narukami herself has the right to stop it."
"But that idiot..." Kiyo paused, then continued urgently, "She's a dopey little fool. She isn't a samurai. She doesn't have to do this."
Rain had fallen often over the past several days, leaving the air damp and somber. Thin clouds veiled the golden light of the autumn afternoon. In the courtyard of the Pillar General's mansion, Kiyono Sara knelt formally upon the tatami, her naginata resting across her knees and her back perfectly straight.
Kiyo's face was reflected in her golden eyes. Sara pressed her lips together and considered her answer for a long while before finally speaking.
"...Perhaps anyone can become a samurai when they have something they are resolved to protect. Since Miss Lumine issued a Duel Before the Throne, she must already have steeled herself. She has resolved to end all of this with her own hands, and that resolve is a noble one."
"She intends to kill La Signora—to end this fate with her own hands and take her revenge."
"La Signora has the Tsaritsa's protection and the soldiers of the Fatui behind her. Only before Narukami would Miss Lumine have an opportunity to kill her."
"His Excellency the Pillar General once said..." Sara looked instinctively into Kiyo's eyes. "When someone is prepared to die for what they hold dear, they become the strongest samurai in the world."
"If that's what she intended, then why did she involve Kunikuzushi? Why did she hide it from me?"
The moment Kiyo asked, a possibility occurred to him.
It was so terrible that he froze, unable to speak another word.
"Because Lumine knows she may fail to take her revenge," Sara said, giving voice to the words lodged in Kiyo's throat.
She held his gaze.
"She knows she may die. But she does not want La Signora to hurt you, so she needs Kunikuzushi as a second safeguard. If she fails, Kunikuzushi will finish what she could not."
"That is why she hid it from you and did all of this in silence..." Sara watched him earnestly. "That is why I say she has already found a noble resolve—the resolve of a samurai."
Kiyo lowered his eyes and remained silent for a long time.
He pressed a hand lightly against his chest. Though it was empty, a heartbeat shuddered somewhere within it. He understood that he was afraid for Lumine. And he could not help wondering whether this was how she felt every time he failed to return.
At last, he began to understand her.
Kiyo knew that La Signora had killed him in his previous life.
Ever since Mondstadt, Lumine's eyes had concealed something: an emotion, an obsession, a debt she had yet to settle. Kiyo knew she trained with her sword every day and every night, from sunset until dawn.
She had been preparing all this time.
Preparing for this day.
She was not merely a fool.
She possessed a resolve of her own—the resolve to protect Kiyo Seigan.
Kiyo kept his eyes lowered. After a long while, he said, "I'm going to find her."
"..." Kiyono Sara stared at him. "Find Lumine? But she probably will not see you... and she will not abandon the duel."
"No. I'm not looking for Lumine. If the duel cannot be stopped, then let it proceed." Kiyo's voice was serious. "I'm looking for someone else. There are things I can still do before the Duel Before the Throne begins."
Kiyono Sara's eyes widened.
She seemed to realize what Kiyo intended. Her brow drew tight.
"You mean to... No. You cannot do this. This is not something a samurai would do!"
"Which is why," Kiyo said, meeting her eyes, "I will go alone."
"Neither the mansion's troops nor you may take part." He smiled calmly.
"This alone, this humble one cannot permit..." Kiyono Sara shook her head. Everything she had been taught rebelled against the idea. "It violates a samurai's honor..."
Pillar General Kiyono had once taught her that honor was everything to a samurai. That was why he had chosen to die upon the battlefield.
"I don't care about a samurai's honor," Kiyo told her. "In this life, I care only about the people dear to me. That is the resolve I have chosen."
Lumine had protected him in silence.
Now he would protect her.
"Besides..." The last light of the autumn day gathered in the boy's eyes. "I won't die. Don't tell Lumine. She would never agree—just as she never told me."
"If we're taking revenge, then of course we should take it together."
——
La Signora was writing a letter to Snezhnaya.
In it, she reported several developments in Inazuma.
Construction of the Delusion Factory had begun, with its site chosen on Yashiori Island. The bearer of the Gnosis had also been located: a mortal named Kiyo Seigan, currently under the protection of the Pillar General's mansion.
And then there was Kunikuzushi's betrayal.
Kunikuzushi's betrayal...
La Signora raised her eyes slightly and looked at the formal challenge lying upon the desk. Kunikuzushi had submitted his request for a Duel Before the Throne to Tenshukaku. Once Narukami approved it, the challenge had been delivered to La Signora.
A Duel Before the Throne...
An intelligent move.
La Signora bit her lip.
"Please remember my promise. Please give my heart to Kunikuzushi."
Kiyono Fugin's final words still echoed in her ears. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw Mondstadt's dark-gray shore, the withered sand beneath a leaden sky, and strand after strand of wind dissolving before her.
She could not hold it. She could not catch it.
La Signora had struggled desperately to keep that wind, but it had always slipped through the spaces between her fingers. She had searched frantically within it for something—until, at last, she grasped that heart.
It lay before her now, resting quietly inside a wooden box. The crystalline heart refracted the autumn afterglow, taking on the clear and lustrous beauty of glazed glass. Its radiance filled the room.
It was the only thing she had left to possess, her final source of comfort.
That heart had watched over him in Mondstadt.
She had not honored Kiyono Fugin's final wish.
And now Kunikuzushi had come to make her return it.
From the moment she took the heart for herself, she had known this day would come. She had long since prepared for it.
Because she knew that the heart belonged to her in the end. Misunderstandings had driven them farther and farther apart, but La Signora had always yearned for the moment when they would finally understand each other. Every obstacle along the way was perhaps merely another trial.
The vanished wind would return. Ashes consumed by flame would kindle anew.
La Signora believed it.
People had to believe in some fantasy if they wished to find a meaning—or merely a reason—to keep walking.
And now, the final trial had arrived.
Once she defeated Kunikuzushi—once she overcame this greatest of ordeals—she could prove herself to the heart. Prove that she was more worthy of possessing it than Kunikuzushi.
She could prove her love, prove her pure-white ideal, and win back the wind that had left her. Then, at last, they would understand each other, and she could continue onward to fulfill the dream they shared.
That was why La Signora had accepted Kunikuzushi's challenge.
There was also a girl named Lumine who had challenged her.
Lumine.
La Signora remembered that name. She was the girl who had traveled through Mondstadt with Kiyono Fugin—or rather, Rostam.
When Dvalin terrorized Mondstadt, it was Lumine who saved Kiyono Fugin. Together, they repelled the dragon and accomplished what La Signora had failed to do five hundred years ago—what she had arrived too late to do.
It was she who had stolen everything that should have belonged to La Signora.
La Signora bit into her lower lip until blood welled at its edge. Her dark-violet eyes were shadowed and lifeless.
She cupped the heart gently in both hands, feeling the warmth that radiated from the crystal.
Then let them come together.
She would defeat them both.
She would kill them both.
Every enemy standing in their way, every thorn upon that pure-white road, would be burned to nothing by her flames.
She had made more than enough preparations.
The early-autumn sunset cast the shifting silhouettes of leaves across the window. La Signora took out the Hydro Timepiece. Its flow had long since stopped.
Rostam had once told her, "When the sand runs out, you'll see me again."
But they never met again.
The time within the Hydro Timepiece had stopped forever five hundred years ago, along with La Signora's desolate heart. Both remained frozen in the valley where the young wolf had died.
Yet La Signora was suddenly seized by a strange premonition.
The Hydro Timepiece was about to flow again.
——
The appointed hour was approaching. Before Narukami herself, La Signora would kill that girl with her own hands and reclaim everything she had lost.
The clouds hung heavier and more oppressive than ever that day. Autumn wind filled every alley. When La Signora walked alone toward Tenshukaku, the long staircase was desolate and empty.
At the far end of its countless steps stood a solitary figure.
Blocking her path.
Pale hair drifted in the air. Deep-blue eyes reflected La Signora's face, without the faintest ripple of emotion in their depths. Autumn wind stirred his pure-white kimono, and its short hems, patterned with snakes and sake, rustled softly. His pale, well-defined fingers rested upon Kamigiri.
Kiyo Seigan.
The Vision-bearing mortal had actually left the protection of the Pillar General's mansion of his own accord.
"Mortal." La Signora regarded Kiyo as though he were already dead, mockery coloring her voice. "Is this what you call a Duel Before the Throne?"
"Lumine is waiting for you." Kiyo tilted his head, wearing a shameless grin. "Before your duel, I'm going to wear you down a little."
He looked straight at La Signora.
"If I can seriously wound you, even better."
Kiyo had no intention of throwing his life away. He knew he could not defeat La Signora alone. From the beginning, his only goal was to exhaust her. The moment he could no longer hold on, he would retreat.
He had to protect Lumine.
That was Kiyo's entire plan—simple and utterly shameless. It was why Kiyono Sara had said the act violated a samurai's honor.
Neither the mansion's troops nor any army could participate. If they did, this would become an official provocation against Snezhnaya, with Inazuma plainly at fault. It might even lead to war.
Wearing down an opponent outside the arena immediately before a sacred Duel Before the Throne was hardly honorable.
But Kiyo was neither Inazuman nor a soldier.
He had no intention of discussing samurai honor with the Fatui. Nor would he speak of fairness with beasts who conducted human experiments. The Delusion Factory was already under construction. Why should he speak to such an enemy of honor?
Fairness was for people, not beasts.
Kiyo instinctively loathed everything La Signora had done.
"A crude attempt to wear me down." La Signora's violet eyes darkened. "I could simply ignore you."
"But you want my Gnosis, don't you?" Kiyo tilted his head. "And here I am, standing right in front of you."
"If you let this chance pass, I'll hide inside the Pillar General's mansion again. This is your only opportunity. Will you really walk away?"
The answer was no.
To keep the heart in her hands, La Signora had to seize the heart carried by another.
"It's an open trap."
Kiyo smiled. Kamigiri traced a cold arc through the air as its scabbard trembled softly. Serpents of lightning hissed around him.
"La Signora!"
This was the closest point to Tenshukaku, the place nearest to Narukami herself. Shrouded beneath the authority of thunder, even the Tsaritsa's power could not reach it. La Signora would not be able to receive her blessing as she had during their last battle.
It was the perfect place.
"I will kill you outright."
La Signora understood Kiyo's plan, but she did not care. The chill in her eyes grew deeper and more forbidding as she spoke calmly.
"Mortal."
The temperature around them plummeted. Even the heavy clouds overhead froze in moments, congealing into a vast sea of ice. La Signora raised it aloft and brought it crashing down toward Kiyo, plunging heaven and earth into darkness.
But at the final instant, the falling mass stopped dead.
Beneath that mountain of ice, a magnificent jūnihitoe unfurled in the wind, brilliant as crimson maple leaves.
Mikoshi Chiyo.
Chiyo's wounds from that day had not healed, and traces of corruption still remained within her. Even so, she had recovered just enough strength to fight.
This, too, was part of what gave Kiyo confidence.
Creak—
Thunder collided with the layers of ice. Geo surged and seethed as ridge after ridge erupted from the earth. Kiyo gripped Kamigiri as though holding a bolt of living lightning. Its radiance raced through the frozen expanse, splitting layer after layer apart.
Kamigiri tore through the sea of ice.
Thunder flashed once and swept toward La Signora's neck. In an instant, Kiyo appeared directly before her. Never had they stood so close; each could see their own face reflected in the other's eyes.
For that one moment, shattered ice caught the desolate autumn light. Crimson maple leaves rose upon the wind and hung suspended in the air.
The entire world seemed to stop.
They were so close.
So very close.
"I loathe you."
She captured heroes who had once fought against the corruption, only to subject them to experiments with Delusions. She interfered in the affairs of other nations, covertly advancing the Sakoku Decree and Vision Hunt Decree to inflame conflict between their people. She deployed troops upon foreign soil, placed bounties on ordinary lives, and built her abhorrent Delusion Factory.
Kiyo loathed all of it.
He shattered the ice and looked upon La Signora with cold, perfect calm.
"Your methods. Your character. That so-called pure-white dream of yours. I reject all of it. I loathe it all."
"I loathe you," he said.
"I loathe everything about you."
His voice held not the slightest trace of emotion.
"Of everyone in this world... you are the one I loathe most."
No one knew why.
They were only the words of a mortal, the insignificant feelings of an insect.
And yet, when La Signora heard them, her heart stopped for a single instant.
Like an illusion.