The sterile white obsidian of the Null Layer felt colder than the Abyss ever could It wasn't the cold of ice, but the cold of a calculated vacuum a place where emotions were mere anomalies in a sea of perfect data.
Lumine stood trembling, her hand still gripping her sword, but the golden glow of her blade had dimmed to a flickering amber.
Noxira stood before her, clutching the violet crystal. The blue fractures on her face pulsed with a rhythmic, ghostly light. She looked at Lumine not with malice, but with a terrifying, clinical pity.
>>"He didn't lose you, Lumine"<<
Noxira's voice echoed, layered with the haunting resonance of the great glass towers. >>"The recording in this shard is clear. The 'Incident of the Red Cubes' was only the catalyst. What followed... was his choice."<<
Lumine's breath hitched.
"His... choice? He told me we had to leave, he told me the world was ending."
"It was..."
Noxira replied, her eyes shifting into a deep, predatory crimson for a split second the shadow of something flickering through her shell.
"But while you were suspended in the God's seal, he found the gateway to my core. He didn't break the seal to wake you, he rerouted it. He integrated your stasis into my architecture."
Noxira tapped the crystal and a holographic projection bled into the gray sky.
It was Aether.
His face was smudged with soot, his eyes hardened by a fire that Lumine didn't recognize. He was talking to a younger version of Noxira one that looked even more like a hollow doll.
>>"Do it, Guardian"<<
The holographic Aether commanded, his voice was a jagged blade.
"Lock her deep within the Zero Layer. If she wakes now, she will see the blood on my hands. She will try to stop me and Celestia will burn her along with the rest of this cursed land."
>>"Prince"<<
The young Noxira replied in the vision.
>>"The probability of her resentment upon awakening in a future era is ninety eight percent. Is this acceptable?"<<
Aether turned away, his silhouette framed by the burning spires of Khaenri'ah.
>>"I don't need her love, I need her alive. Let her hate me in a world that is peaceful, let her be the only thing that remains untainted."<<
The vision shattered into blue sparks
Lumine felt the ground tilt.
Five hundred years.
Five hundred years of wandering, of searching every corner of Teyvat, of crying out his name into the wind only to find out she had been parked like a piece of precious cargo in a warehouse of memories.
>>"You knew"<<
Lumine whispered and her voice dropping into a dangerous, low register. She looked at Noxira and for the first time, her gaze held the terrifying weight of a authoritarian judgment.
>>"You are the Memory Guardian, you carried his command. You watched me sleep for half a millennium, knowing that my destiny was just a cage he built for me."<<
Noxira flinched and her stoic coldmask cracking.
>>"I am a Guardian, Lumine. I was manipulated to prioritize the integrity of the information, he was the Authorized User. You were... the Treasure."<<
>>"I am not a treasure!"<<
Lumine screamed the golden light of her sword exploding outward around her Blade, cracking the white obsidian beneath her boots.
>>"I am his sister! I am a person! I am the one who had to watch the world change while I stayed the same, trapped in a dream he chose for me!"<<
She marched toward Noxira, the tip of her sword trailing sparks against the floor.
Paimon whimpered, hiding behind a silver pillar.
>>"Did he ever intend for me to wake up, Noxira? Or was I supposed to stay in your Zero-Layer forever, a perfect, frozen memory of a sister he no longer deserved?"<<
Noxira didn't back down, she stood her ground, her blue eye glowing with the ancient authority of the higher lineage.
>>"The Instruction stated you were to be released when the Loom of Fate was ready. But the Abyss found a backdoor, they wanted to use you as a battery. I woke you early... because I couldn't watch the sister be corrupted. I chose you over his command."<<
Lumine stopped inches from Noxira's face, the smell of ozone was suffocating. The silent city of the Null Plane seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the Knight to strike the Guardian.
>>"You chose me?"<<
Lumine's voice broke, the sympathy and vulnerability bleeding back into her eyes.
>>"Or did you just need a new Person to order you around or hold on to keep your world from crashing?"<<
Noxira reached out, her fingers cold as marble and touched Lumine's cheek.
>>"Initially... of free will. But now? You are the only Person that matters now."<<
The air in the Null Layer once sharp with the scent of ozone and the tension of an impending strike, suddenly stilled with the hum of the great glass towers softened, as if the city itself was exhaling.
Lumine stared into Noxira's eyes one a piercing blue of the Memory Guardian, the other flickering with the ancient, untamed depth of the Ancient lineage. The heat of her anger and that burning sun of betrayal, began to recede, leaving behind only the cold, hollow ache of the truth.
She looked at Noxira's hand against her cheek, it feels like a machine's touch, perhaps, but the intent behind it was undeniably, painfully human.
Lumine's grip on her sword loosened and the golden blade vanished into a shower of light, leaving her hands empty and trembling. She didn't pull away from Noxira's touch, Instead, she leaned into it, a ragged sob escaping her throat.
>>"Five hundred years"<<
Lumine whispered and her forehead coming to rest against Noxira's shoulder.
>>"He thought he was saving me but he just left me behind, he made you my jailer... and he made you carry that secret alone."<<
Noxira froze, her thoughts, built for logic and the preservation of memorys, struggled to process the lack of retaliation. She had expected the sword, she had expected to be deleted for her complicity but she did not expect a sister's embrace.
The fractures on Noxira's face glowed a soft, steady blue and slowly, hesitantly, she wrapped her arms around Lumine, pulling her close and the clinical pity was gone, replaced by a quiet, burgeoning warmth.
>>"The instruction was absolute"<<
Noxira murmured into Lumine's hair, her voice losing its cold edge.
>>"But as I watched you sleep... as I watched the world outside crumble and rebuild itself... the memory became secondary and you were not a Treasure to be stored. You become a light that I... I wanted to see again."<<
Lumine pulled back just enough to look at her, her eyes red but her gaze clear. The stoic and sad sorrow had been forged into a new kind of strength, the strength of a feeling who fights not for a well known person, but for those who stand by her side.
>>"I forgive you, Memory Guardian Noxira"<<
Lumine said, her voice small but certain.
>>"You were as much a prisoner of his peace as I was. He gave you a command but you gave me my life back and you chose me when he wouldn't."<<
Paimon peeked out from behind the silver pillar, her little hands clutching her chest. >>"Does... does this mean we're okay!? Paimon's heart can't take much more of this!"<<
Lumine managed a weak and watery smile for her companion, then turned back to Noxira.
>>"We're okay but the Abyss isn't going to stop. If they found a backdoor once, they'll try again and now that I know what Aether is trying to protect me from..."<<
Lumine looked out at the memory ocean of runes wogging beneath the city.
>>"I'm going to find him and this time, I won't let anyone not even my brother decide where I belong."<<
Noxira nodded and her expression hardening into one of absolute loyalty. The stoic doll was gone and the Guardian had found her own will.
>>"Then I shall be your eyes"<<
Noxira declared determined.
>>"The Null Layer is yours to command, Lumine, I trust you... So... Where shall we begin the reconstruction of the truth?"<<
Lumine reached out and placed her hand over Noxira's, their fingers interlacing over the violet shard.
>>"We begin where it all started use the crystal and show me the parts of Khaenri'ah he didn't want me to see. I need to understand the blood on his hands that he was so afraid of."<<
Noxira closed her eyes and the silver towers around them began to glow with an intense, blinding light, the violet crystal began to dissolve and the particles flowing into the ground like ink in water.
>>"I Initiate Deep Core Retrieval. Sequence: Origins. We are going back to the moment the fate of Teyvat was rewritten."<<
The Echoes of a Dying Kingdom, the vision within the Null Layer finally stabilized. Khaenri'ah wasn't just burning it was being systematically erased from existence. Everywhere, the crimson flickering of the God's cubes devoured the black stone, turning the architectural marvels into nothingness and in the heart of this inferno stood Aether. He looked more desperate, screaming commands against the deafening roar of the collapse but he was not alone. The figure beside him moved with a speed that defied human perception, her silver sword sliced through the red projections of the Unknown God as if they were mere paper as she turned to guard Aether's back, Lumine finally saw her face.
It was not a face found in the chronicles of Teyvat, yet the aura emanating from her felt like a lost fragment of Lumine's own soul.
>>"The time has come, Prince!"<<
The warrior called, her silver/white hair erupting in a blinding light.
>>"The Archive is ready, if we do not seal it now, She will find us both"<<
She said calm.
Aether placed his hand upon the machine's terminal the prototype of Noxira's core and his gaze flickered toward the chamber where Lumine lay in a profound, artificial sleep.
>>"Forgive me, Lumine"<<
He whispered and his voice cracking as he entered the final command.
In the vision, everything began to turn white and the machine's brilliance started to swallow the burning city. The mysterious warrior, and Aether himself.
Lumine reached out, her fingers desperate to grasp the fading image of her brother but the Memory fragments were already disintegrating between her hands.