Stormterror's Lair — Night
Elemental constructs…
Unknown biological structures…
A brand-new sample…
Just imagining it was enough to make Mebius's pulse quicken.
Sitting casually atop her metal toolbox, the serpent-woman stared up at the broken spire of Stormterror's ruined tower, faint moonlight glinting off her emerald eyes.
If she were acting on pure desire alone, she would have dragged Stormterror home already—laid him on a dissection table, peeled apart those glorious wings, sampled the draconic elemental organs, the ley-line resonance nodes—
But she sighed, legs swinging lightly.
…If I do that, Venti will sulk. Troublesome.
She could endure.
For now.
Suppressing her excitement and the urge to dissect Teyvat's most unique elemental organism, she lifted off, gliding deeper into the ruins.
Stormterror was resting inside the special pocket-space at the top of the tower—
Well, what used to be the top. He'd blasted it apart during the fight with the Abyss.
Actually, she'd helped a little with that destruction, but that was a detail not worth mentioning.
A thunderous roar tore through the ruined structure.
Stormterror had sensed her.
"Oh my, looks like I won't even need to knock~"
Mebius stopped midair, smiling.
A violent gust swept the dust aside.
Stormterror emerged, a massive silhouette blotting out the night sky.
"Who are you?
Why have you come here?"
The dragon's voice rolled like distant thunder.
It stared down at the small girl, their sizes comically mismatched—yet despite his overwhelming presence, she was the one exuding danger.
"Mmm… such an adorable little test subject," Mebius murmured to herself. "What a shame…"
Stormterror's wings stiffened.
Test subject?
He didn't understand the phrase, but he did understand the emotion she radiated—
Something ancient, oppressive, far beyond human.
A god?
A demon from beyond the seas?
A creature from the abyssal depths?
Why—
Why is such a being here?
"Leave," Stormterror commanded, breath stirring violent winds. "Immediately."
"Ufufu… I'm afraid that's impossible, little mouse~"
Beneath her feet, the ground liquefied into an expanding pool of thick, corrosive green fluid. Her body slowly sank into it, vanishing from sight.
StormTerror's pupils constricted.
That substance… what is it?!
The dragon unleashed a volley of razor-sharp wind blades, raining them down like a storm.
Every single strike sank into the slime—and vanished without a trace.
No explosion. No impact. No reaction.
The wind itself was simply absorbed.
Stormterror's tail lashed anxiously in the air.
He gathered a dense mass of anemo energy, compressing it into a glowing orb before firing it directly into the pool.
A splash.
A ripple.
Nothing else.
Not even erosion? Not even an elemental reaction?
Stormterror realized it then—
This substance was not of Teyvat.
It was something fundamentally alien.
He turned, preparing to flee and find Barbatos.
"Running away? That won't do~ Little mouse, you're mine."
Her voice rose from the center of the slime.
A massive pillar of composite biological metal erupted upward, segments folding and reshaping like a monstrous blooming flower. Wrapped around it was a titanic serpentine creature—long tail, blade-like limbs, and a staff gripped in its claws. Its grotesque form twisted upward, emerging fully from the green mass.
The sky darkened instantly.
A green-black veil spread like corrupted clouds, bolts of emerald lightning raining down, scorching the earth with acidic crackles.
"Thus begins… the Moment of Ascension."
Mebius's true combat form rose, cloaked in the whispers of forbidden evolution.
Stormterror trembled.
A god.
The so-called "little girl" was not mortal.
She wasn't even merely dangerous.
She was a calamity.
A serpent-goddess of forbidden alchemy.
Elsewhere — Mid-flight
"What is Barbatos' name—?!"
Venti's expression twisted as a massive surge of corrupted lightning split the sky above Stormterror's Lair.
He knew that storm.
He knew that energy.
"Stormterror…!"
If that lightning was falling there, then—
Something abominable is with him.
His wings flared.
He flew faster.
"Please, please don't let anything have happened to him…"
For the first time in centuries, the Anemo Archon felt genuine fear.
And all of it was directed at the emerald-green nightmare blooming in the ruins.
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