The candle on the wooden table had burned down more than halfway. Its curved black wick struggled desperately to maintain a small flame amidst the pitch-black darkness of the church. The dim orange light danced, creating long, swaying shadows on the cold stone walls, as if the spirits of this old building were observing its occupants who had not yet fallen asleep.
Outside, Orario was still asleep in the blanket of the night. A thin early morning mist began to descend, bringing a bone-chilling cold, enveloping the labyrinth city in a rare silence. There was no hustle and bustle of adventurers, no shouting of merchants, only the rustle of the wind whispering between the cracks of the stones.
Venti stood motionless in front of the table. His hand held a quill pen whose tip was still wet with pitch-black ink. His eyes, usually sparkling with wit, now stared at the piece of parchment before him with a look that was hard to interpret. There was a wry smile on his lips, yet that smile did not reach his eyes. It was the kind of smile one wears when laughing at a bitter joke that only they understand.
He did not bring many things. No large bag filled with supplies, no complicated map, and certainly no sharp weapons. Only Der Frühling—his beloved wooden lyre—slung comfortably on his back, and several bottles of average-quality wine hanging at his waist, clinking softly every time he moved. For Venti, those were non-negotiable necessities; liquid courage to face what was to come.
With quick movements, Venti's hand danced across the paper. His handwriting was deliberately made messy, with artistic curves typical of an artist in a rush or perhaps a little drunk.
"Go look for Wine. Don't miss me. If you miss me, kiss the pillow that smells like my wine. - V"
Venti put the pen back in its place. He reread the short writing and chuckled softly, the sound of his laughter breaking the silence of the church.
"Perfect. Very irresponsible. Very Venti. They will surely shake their heads reading this."
However, the laughter slowly faded, replaced by a sharp, focused expression. He extended his right index finger. The tip of the finger began to glow with a teal light—blue-green—dim but intense.
He did not use Mana as known by the mages of this world. He used Anemo, the pure wind element that was the essence of his soul. Venti pressed his fingertip onto the parchment surface, right over his inked writing. He channeled the energy into the paper fibers, weaving a complex spell invisible to the naked eye.
The silly writing about wine remained on the surface, a distraction message readable by anyone. But beneath it, hidden in sub-atomic layers of wind magic accessible only to those with a spiritual connection to him—or more precisely, those who had received Falna from him.
The message was intended only for the former Hera Familia executive.
"7 days. If more—you know what to do. Protect them, Captain."
Venti withdrew his finger. The glow vanished instantly, locked tight within the paper fibers. Alfia, with her sharp instincts and extraordinary magical sensitivity, would surely feel the strange pulse of energy on this paper as soon as her fingers touched it later this morning.
The Wind God turned around. His footsteps were as light as cotton, making no sound as he walked across the uneven stone floor toward the rest area.
He paused at the threshold of the makeshift room separating the main hall from the sleeping quarters. The worn fabric curtain was parted slightly, allowing the dim candlelight to illuminate the room's contents.
There, Meteria slept soundly. Her chest rose and fell with a regular and peaceful rhythm. A thick blanket covered her body up to her chin, protecting the new life growing within her womb. Her face, once pale and sickly, now held a flush of life, proof of Venti's intervention manipulating the time of her body's cells.
In the next bed, Alfia slept in a much stiffer position. Even in unconsciousness, her body remained alert. Her brow furrowed slightly, as if even in her dreams she was fighting to protect her sister.
Venti gazed at their peaceful faces for a long time. Warmth spread in his chest, a feeling unfamiliar yet pleasant. He recalled the days in Mondstadt, the laughter of his people in the taverns. However, this feeling was different. It was more intimate. More fragile.
In this world, his body was no longer just an elemental manifestation that could be formed and dispersed at will like in Teyvat. In DanMachi, the body of the "Nameless Friend" he used was physical reality. He had a heartbeat, he felt hunger, he felt cold, and he could bleed.
Venti stared at his own hands. He remembered when he first fell into this world. The DanMachi World Law System scanned him—an entity of pure energy with colossal power. The system was confused, then automatically categorized him as a "God." And since Gods in the lower world (Gekai) must possess a physical vessel, this world forced the formation of a physical body upon him. This body was a "mandatory uniform" given by this universe so he could exist here.
And precisely because this body was so "human," Venti cherished it. It reminded him of his old friend's vulnerability.
"Sorry I left without saying goodbye," Venti whispered, his voice barely audible, carried by the wind swirling gently at his feet as if caressing the cheeks of the two women. "I hate tearful goodbyes. It ruins my mood for singing, and you know how ugly my voice is when I'm crying."
He suppressed the urge to fix Meteria's blanket, afraid his touch would wake them.
Venti turned, tightening his green cloak to ward off the cold. He stepped out of the old church. The heavy wooden door closed without a single creak, its hinges seemingly muffled by invisible cushions of air.
..............................................................................…
Leaving Orario turned out to be far easier than he had anticipated. The city, humanity's strongest fortress, was off guard.
Venti moved like a ghost. He did not walk, but glided a few centimeters above the ground, propelled by air currents he controlled. The northern gate guards, two low-class adventurers on night watch, looked drowsy at their post. Their spears leaned askew against the wall, and their helmets had slipped down covering their eyes.
They remained completely unaware as a streak of green shadow rustled past them. No footprints, no sound of steps. Only a strong gust of wind suddenly striking their faces, carrying a faint, sweet scent—the aroma of fresh apples and the intoxicating taste of freedom.
"Hngh? What was that?" mumbled one guard, rubbing his eyes.
"Just the night wind, stupid. Go back to sleep," his partner replied.
Venti did not stop to look back. He continued speeding on, leaving the safety of the city walls behind him.
Once out of the city limits, he quickened his pace. He passed through the vast grasslands stretching around Orario, slipping into the silent outskirts forests. Nocturnal animals ceased their noises as he passed, sensing the presence of an apex predator—no, the presence of a ruler of nature—passing by.
He continued moving north, until finally stopping at a towering limestone cliff. This location was far enough from civilization, isolated, and silent.
From this height, Orario was just a cluster of yellow lights twinkling in the distance, like a cluster of stars fallen to earth. The majestic Tower of Babel pierced the night sky like a giant needle, the center of all this world's ambition and greed.
Venti stood at the edge of the cliff, letting his feet dangle over the abyss of darkness. The night wind here was much wilder, fiercer. There were no city buildings to block it. His green cloak and braided black hair fluttered violently, dancing to nature's chaotic and uncontrolled rhythm.
He looked up, gazing at the full moon hanging perfectly in the cloudless sky. Its silver light bathed Venti's young face, highlighting the look in his eyes which was now beginning to change. The playfulness and human warmth slowly receded, replaced by a blank stare as vast as the sky itself.
"This is going to hurt..." he murmured.
His voice sounded double. There was a strange resonance accompanying it, as if two entities were speaking simultaneously from one mouth—one a clear young boy's voice, and the other a deep, heavy, and commanding ancient echo.
"Very painful. But it's the only way."
Venti spread both arms wide, staring at the night sky with a challenging gaze. He knew the rules of this world.
In DanMachi, the gods who descended from Tenkai were bound by an absolute rule called the Arcanum Seal. It was a safety mechanism; a contract they signed with the lower world. If a god fully released their divine power (Arcanum) in the lower world (Gekai), the Seal would react instantly as an immune rejection system. A pillar of light from heaven would descend, forcibly pulling the god back to Tenkai, and ending their "vacation" forever. They could not refuse that recall.
Venti smiled wryly.
But he did not possess that Seal.
He was not a god from Tenkai. He was Barbatos, the Anemo Archon of Teyvat stranded across dimensions. The sky of this world did not know him. The Tenkai system did not have his data. The authority of heaven in this world had neither right nor power over his soul.
Therefore, that forced repatriation mechanism did not apply to him. When he released his human form later, no pillar of light would pick him up. He would not be sucked into heaven.
However, freedom from that rule came at a terrible price.
The physical body he was using right now—the body of "Venti the Bard"—was not merely a projection avatar. This body was real flesh given by the DanMachi World Law when he first arrived, because this world's system scanned his power and deemed him a God "required" to have a physical vessel.
To release his true form, he had to destroy this vessel given by the world. He had to use the mass of his own physical body as fuel for the transition.
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and summoned his ancient essence sleeping deep within his soul's core.
"De-materialization... Start."
CRACK.
A horrifying sound was heard amidst the silence of the night.
It was not the sound of breaking bones. It was the sound of reality cracking, the sound of solid matter being forced to change phase instantly.
Venti's skin began to glow from within. Bright green light seeped out of his pores, as if a small sun were about to explode behind his ribcage. The blood vessels in his neck and face glowed neon green, pumping Ichor with a lethal speed.
The pain was excruciating. No words could describe it. It felt like every cell in his body was being forcibly pulled out one by one with hot tweezers. He was forcing the physical body given by this world to dissolve, breaking its atomic bonds, and converting solid matter into pure energy.
He was rejecting this world's "gift" with his own divine authority.
"Ugh... AAAHH!"
Venti screamed.
The scream was soundless, swallowed by the wind beginning to rage around him.
His legs began to fade. Not disappearing, but dissolving into millions of emerald light particles swirling wildly like a glowing sandstorm. His pants, his cloak, his hat, even the lyre on his back—everything was absorbed, converted, and melted down into stardust.
The wind around the cliff screamed, responding to its master's pain. Air pressure dropped drastically within a one-kilometer radius, creating a deadly momentary vacuum before finally exploding outward in a wave of pure energy.
BOOM!
The light was blinding, illuminating the night cliff like daylight for a full second. Birds in the forest flew in panic, and monsters in the distance cowered in fear feeling the surge of alien energy.
When the light faded, the figure of Venti the Bard was no more.
His human shell had been temporarily melted down, freeing its contents. And because no Tenkai Seal pulled him home, he remained there, floating above the cliff.
Hovering in the air, a few feet above the ground, was something else.
Something majestic. Something terrible in its abstract beauty.
It was Barbatos.
The form possessed no human face. No mouth to smile, no nose to smell flowers, no skin to feel touch.
His head was merely a humanoid silhouette made of compressed wind, rotating in an eternal vortex that was calm yet high-voltage. Robes of white that seemed woven from clouds covered his lower body, while his upper body was bare, revealing a physical structure made of interwoven light and shadow.
On his back, a pair of giant wings spread wide. The wings were transparent, layered like goose feathers but made of aurora shimmering with a spectrum of colors that did not exist in this world. Every time the wings flapped gently, a humming sound was heard—like a choir of a thousand angels humming a low note that vibrated the soul.
And his eyes...
In the place where eyes should be, there were only two points of cyan light glowing sharply.
Cold. Emotionless.
Eyes that did not see the world as physical objects, but as flows of energy, time, and fate.
If Freya were here, the Goddess of Beauty who could see the color of souls might have fallen to her knees in confusion and awe. The warm and free Turquoise soul color belonging to Venti was gone. Replaced by the color of Ancient Green. The color symbolizing the beginning of the world, the color of the first storm that shaped the continents, a primordial color so alien to the concept of divinity in DanMachi.
Before darting away, Barbatos paused, floating in the emptiness of his new form.
A memory flashed through his collective mind—a memory far older than Teyvat, originating from his first life on Earth, before he reincarnated into wind. Memories of being a mortal human with all its limitations. However, that memory was quickly overlaid by another memory far more painful from his early days in Old Mondstadt.
Back then, he was just a small clump of wind. A weak Elemental Wisp. Powerless. He had a friend—a brave nameless bard—who led a rebellion against Decarabian, the tyrant of storms. Little Venti wanted to help, wanted to fight. But he was too weak.
He could only watch. He saw his friend plucking the lyre amidst a rain of arrows. He saw his friend fall. He saw the light of life extinguish from his friend's eyes, leaving a song of freedom unfinished.
That regret was eternal. That regret was what shaped him into the Archon he was now. His desire to take his friend's form was a form of tribute as well as atonement.
"Now I have power," thought Barbatos, his voice echoing in his own mental void. "But this process of melting down the physical body... the pain is like dying over and over again. I don't want to do it again if not forced."
He looked at his glowing hands. While he was in his true form full of power, he had the chance to create insurance. If later he had to return to Venti's physical form, he needed a backup so he wouldn't need to burn his body again for trivial things.
Barbatos moved his long, tapered fingers. He condensed a bit of wind essence from the vortex around him, taking a tiny shard from his divine core.
He separated that small part, shaping it into a small, faint, and cute ball of light.
It was a small wind spirit.
Its shape resembled the Seelie or wisp that used to be his initial form. Weak, formless, barely visible, and possessing only basic consciousness. Exactly like himself in the powerless past.
"You will be my backup," Barbatos murmured soundlessly, transferring a small fraction of his consciousness into the small spirit. "If at any time I need an undetected spy, or something else... you will be there."
With an elegant flick of a finger, the small wind spirit vanished, merging with the cloud robes on Barbatos's body, sleeping until needed. Venti would not let the powerlessness of the past repeat itself. He was a god who learned from mistakes. He always had a backup plan.
Done with his final preparations, the majestic figure looked back toward the north. His cyan gaze pierced the darkness of the night, reaching beyond the horizon.
"..."
No words were spoken from the mouth that did not exist. Yet, the voice echoed directly in the atmosphere, vibrating air molecules for miles. The voice was like the rustle of wind passing through a narrow mountain crevice—high, resonant, and impossible to identify its gender.
("Wait a little longer, Aria. I'm coming.")
Barbatos leaned his body forward, gathering momentum.
BOOM!
A deafening sonic boom was heard as the figure shot forward.
It was not flying.
Birds fly by resisting the wind. Planes fly by cutting through the wind.
But Barbatos was the wind itself.
He merged with the air currents, riding the jet stream flowing rapidly in the upper atmosphere. In this form of pure energy, distance was merely an abstract concept that was irrelevant. The thousands of kilometers separating Orario and Dragon Valley were devoured with elegant greed.
The scenery below him turned into an abstraction. Forests, rivers, and mountains turned into blurry colorful lines passing in the blink of an eye. His speed was so high that the sound of his own sonic boom was left far behind him, only heard seconds after he passed.
He crossed the border of human territory in minutes. He passed through untouched monster zones, where giant monsters could only look up in confusion seeing the green comet splitting the sky.
He headed for the barren land shrouded in eternal darkness in the far north.
The closer he got to his destination, the louder the wind around him screamed. But this time, it was not Barbatos screaming.
It was Aria's weeping.
And that weeping was now heard clearly in his elemental ears. No longer as a faint whisper he felt in Orario, but as a heartbreaking scream for help, full of pain and despair that had accumulated for a thousand years. Their wind element resonance called out to each other, sending waves of rage into Barbatos's core.
Barbatos's cyan eyes narrowed. The intensity of their light increased drastically, transforming him from a calm star into an angry comet ready to destroy.
On the northern horizon, black clouds rolled, hiding the monster cage that had swallowed the world's hope for a millennium. The aura of death and decay could be smelled even from this height.
But the God of Freedom did not slow down. Instead, he went faster.
The Wind Thief had removed his human mask. He didn't come to conquer or claim ownership.
He came to break the chains and free the imprisoned wind.