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Xiao’s breaths come fast and harsh as he stumbles his way along the empty grassy plain, chest constricting painfully with every labored inhale. His legs feel like they weigh a hundred pounds each, every step an ordeal. Every throb of his head sends bolts of lightning down his limbs and turns his legs to water. Still, he plods onward, no destination in mind, forcing his numb legs to carry him ever further from his home.
His mind has been attacking him for hours, intrusive thoughts threatening to send him spiraling into insanity. He tugs roughly at his hair, hoping the impulsive action will somehow relieve some of the agony he feels, but all it does is exacerbate it further. He wants to die, wants to kill, wants to see this world thrive and burn at the same time. The thoughts aren’t his, and yet they can only come from him. An overwhelming paranoia haunts him, forming visions of monsters that don’t exist.
In front of him, a lake stretches out, silent and serene, but even this quiet and peaceful place cannot stifle the groaning in his mind and body. He falls to his knees at the water’s edge, hands fisting desperately into the thin fabric of his shirt. The motion is so fervent that he feels his nails digging into the skin of his chest through the fabric, undoubtedly leaving angry red marks in their wake, but in his haze of his rabid thoughts, he hardly feels it at all. The physical pain is overlaid completely by the screaming in his mind: a broken, irreparable sob for release that can never come.
He’s scared, so scared. It feels like the world around him is slowly falling away, eaten up by a darkness so black and unending that it strips away his sense of direction. He’s floating and falling at the same time. Down is up and up is left and he doesn’t know where to put his feet anymore. He can’t even tell if he’s moving.
He bites down on his tongue hard, tastes blood welling up from the puncture wounds his teeth leave in the sensitive flesh there. That, at least, is something he can recognize, but the taste that he’d hoped might bring him back to reality only makes him feel sick to his stomach. Doubling over, he retches onto the shoreline, the action dry without the need for him to eat or drink. His head spins in a way that he’s never experienced. His immortal body means that he doesn’t get hungry, or sick, or physically exhausted, but he begins to realize too late just how much of himself is reminiscent of the humans he’s been sworn to protect. His body trembles as his mind falls to pieces, an uncontrollable symptom of his depravity. Is that what it had felt like, he wonders, when his fellow Yakshas had lost their minds and descended to killing each other? Is this the feeling that had driven his comrade to turn to dark forces in an effort to preserve their own life? The thought frightens him more than any demon, because it can only mean that he is following the inevitable path that had led them all to their demises.
Even deeper than the fear, however, is a sense of resignation. None of them had been able to escape this fate. He’d known that someday, he too would fall victim to the karma that had caused their ends. In some ways, he’d accepted it, had known it to be a possibility.
Perhaps this is how it’s meant to end.
Impossibly, he feels tears well up in his eyes, clouding his darkened vision further. Never once has his undying body felt the need to cry, and yet it comes to him now, an overwhelming wave of fear and shame and, somewhere deep down, gratitude. At long last, his eternal fight can come to an end. He can die knowing that he’s upheld his contract to the very last seconds of his life, that he’s given everything he has to give to protect Liyue and its people. He wonders if Morax will forgive him for succumbing so easily.
“If this is how it must end, then so be it,” he whispers, words for his ears only. If the swirling madness in his head will not subside by will alone, then he will bring about his own end, on his own terms. White-knuckled, his hands reach out into empty air and close around the shaft of his polearm, summoning it from the ether where it rests. Its weight is familiar in his practiced grip, its edges worn from eons of bloody battles. He holds it close to him, as he would a precious heirloom, and manages to take a single, trembling breath.
In the reflection of the lake’s ever-moving surface, he hardly recognizes the person that stares back at him. His face is as white as the snow that falls on Liyue’s rooftops in the winter, showing none of his summer tanness. His normally neat and tidy hair falls in messy tangles around his gaunt face, dirty and unkempt, and his eyes are nothing but swirling shadows, windows into the chaos of his mind. In his state, he looks more like a beast than a man, a mighty and exalted adeptus so far from that title that he may as well already be dead. Part of him is glad that the people will not remember him like this. They will remember his strength, his unshakeable nerve, not the weakness that now precedes his death.
Still shaking, he turns the polearm in his hands and presses the tip of the blade against his chest, right above his heart. A single shove with such a weapon would at last grant him freedom from the madness encroaching on his every thought, ending his life in one quick, merciful motion. Closing his eyes, he takes another breath. The shaking in his hands stills. Liyue, my home, my reason for living, may you live on in peace, he prays. Even now, amidst the screaming that only he can hear, thoughts of beautiful Liyue keep him tethered just long enough to act.
It’s then that he hears it faintly on the wind; the gentle trill of a dihua flute. It makes him pause, blade still held to his heart in preparation for his final act, and he lets his eyes flutter open once more. Another note follows the first, and the another, weaving a slow and tranquil melody in the damp air surrounding the lakefront.
Xiao is not a musician, but even he cannot deny the beauty of the flute’s swallow song. It swells and fades, louder and quieter, like waves on the shore of a great beach, and as he listens, he finds himself again.
The gritty sand beneath him is suddenly bothersome, scratching against the bare skin of his calves. For the first time since reaching the shore, he feels the ground, solid and reliable, feels himself being pulled down safely against it. He is no longer falling, no longer floating. He is no longer surrounded by darkness. There’s something magical about the melody as it reaches his ears, as though it is dispelling the smoke he’s been lost in for as long as he can remember. Suddenly, he can see again, hear again. His hands give a violent tremble, and his polearm falls to the ground with a clatter, his skin unmarred by its sharpness. His mind is blissfully quiet.
“Who…” he starts, voice hoarse with an emotion he can’t name. There are tears in his eyes once more, but these are not tears of helplessness. He takes up his polearm once more, uses it to heft himself to unsteady feet.
Seated on the edge of a rock in the center of the lake, silhouetted by the shine of the full moon, he sees him. A boy, clad in green and giving off an air of youthful carelessness, holds the flute to his lips with practiced poise, each note a sweet offering to the empty night air. His legs hang off the edge of the jagged stone, waving back and forth in time with the flute’s slow melody.
Xiao recognizes him as the Anemo Archon, though the two have never met. Xiao does not often leave Liyue, nor does Barbatos have a tendency to stray from his home in far-off Monstadt. However, it is unmistakably him. His Vision cries out for the lonesome god, an invisible tether linking the two together: an Archon and his gift to the last remaining Yaksha.
As Barbatos continues to play, Xiao’s body slowly relaxes. He holds his polearm loosely in one hand and stares. He does not know if Barbatos is aware of his presence or if he had simply happened upon Xiao’s intended final resting place by the will of fate, but it makes no difference in the end. The music is purifying, purging the karma in his blood that has accumulated from millenia of hunting and destroying demons, of taking on their evil intentions so that their corruption does not spread beyond the bounds of his own body. The spirits of thousands of demons vanish from within his soul, their malevolence put to rest once and for all. He’s never felt so light before.
Thank you, he wants to say, but the words fail to come, so he simply prays it. As the final notes of the Archon’s song disappear on the breeze, the boy with the dihua flute turns his head with a gentle smile and locks eyes with his audience across the water.
---
Time goes on. Decades after Xiao had intended to die, he continues to live, and as he continues to live, he continues to fulfill his contract with Rex Lapis. As humanity adapts to a world of demons and monsters, he removes himself from them, finds solace in the fact that the world will live on after he is gone. He takes to staying at the Wangshu Inn, not because he has any special attachment to it, but simply because it is quiet, and comfortable, and close enough to Liyue that he can continue to watch over it from a distance.
It’s at this inn that he first comes face to face with Barbatos.
In all honesty, he’d expected to never see the Archon again, but apparently Barbatos has not forgotten him. He comes for Xiao on the rooftop patio on a moonlit night, where he can gaze out at Liyue in the distance without worrying about being bothered by the inn’s many tenants. When he turns away from the railing to find himself staring into the face of the god of Anemo, he briefly forgets to breathe. “It’s you,” he says dumbly, his voice as gruff and blunt as it ever has been.
Barbatos offers him a coy smile, a look Xiao has often seen on the faces of swindlers and smooth-talkers. “Yep, it’s me,” he echoes, a teasing lilt to his voice. “I must say, you’re a hard man to track down.”
Xiao scoffs, turning his head away from his new companion. Despite their harmlessness, Barbatos’s teasing words rub him the wrong way, sparking a twinge of annoyance in him. “That’s on purpose,” he replies clippedly. “Why have you come for me, Barbatos?”
Barbatos’s reasons for visiting are an enigma to Xiao, who can’t imagine why he would come so far from his own country in Monstadt to see someone like him, the guardian Adeptus whose name is long lost to history. Their textbooks know him as Alatus, the Golden-Winged King and Conquerer of Demons, the Vigilant Yaksha who protects them from otherworldly threats. Those few people who stumble across Xiao’s path do not recognize him, and he doesn’t go out of his way to make himself recognizable.
“I’m just checking in on an old friend,” Barbatos replies mysteriously. “Oh, and call me Venti from now on.”
Xiao casts Barbatos a withering look. “What use do you have for changing your name?” he asks, incredulous. “And since when are the two of us friends?”
Barbatos laughs, a melodious laugh befitting of a bard. “Monstadt has long outgrown its need for an Archon to rule it, so I have left its people in charge,” he says with an ever-present smile, “and I think the Vigilant Yaksha is a friend to all Archons, with the work you’ve been doing.”
Xiao frowns. “I’m simply fulfilling the contract I made with Rex Lapis.” He casts his gaze toward Liyue, watching as dozens of tiny lights float into the air from the city’s depths. This year’s lantern rite proves to be even more grand than the previous years, the lamps in the sky appearing as bright yellow stars against the backdrop of night. It makes him yearn for the old Liyue he remembers, the Liyue in which he had freely walked. “You never answered my question. What do you want from me that you came all the way from Monstadt to find me?”
Barbatos - or Venti, as he seems to prefer to be called - shrugs his shoulders. “Call it a whim. It’s been centuries since I came across you on the lake's shore.”
Xiao tenses in response to the memories that come flooding back to him. Of all the people to ever walk the earth, Venti is the only one who has ever known how close to death he had once come, how the weakness in his heart had nearly driven him to suicide. “You remember,” he states, unsure whether he is thankful or not that someone else can recall that period of darkness.
Venti nods his head, his smile remaining, but softened at the edges by sorrow and concern. “Indeed. Such a memory would be hard to forget.” He leans against the rail at Xiao’s side. “Back then, there was such an incredible poison within you that I feared nothing would have the strength to purify it. I don’t want to see you fall so far again.”
Xiao finds himself as a loss for words. He hadn’t realized how much such a simple deed had weighed on the Archon’s mind, how many times Venti must have thought after him, wondering if the spell he’d played into existence had stuck. He falls silent, ruminating on this new revelation for a few long seconds.
“You seem to be doing alright, though,” Venti continues, taking Xiao’s silence as a cue to fill the void. “I sense that such a darkness could come for you again, given time. If that happens, come find me. I’ll play for you again.” He pats a pouch at his side, inside of which must house the flute he’d played all those many years ago.
Against his better judgement, Xiao longs to hear its sweet tune again, to once again know the song that had saved his life. And yet, Venti’s words and actions continue to perplex him. “Why?” he asks, his voice breaking in a rare show of vulnerability. “Why do you go so far for me? Why did you save me?”
Venti’s smile disappears, a flash of shock crossing his expression before it returns, solemn and sad. “Because you didn’t want to die,” he answers quietly, “and because of that, I didn’t want you to die, either.”
Xiao looks away and is silent for a few seconds. “Your reasons are too simple,” he accuses, but his voice is soft, uncharacteristically devoid of bite. In truth, Venti’s words touch him deep in his soul, a part of him he’d forgotten about between the endless demons that come to call on him. It’s been a long time since anyone has spoken words of concern to him, worrying about his state of being. He’d assumed that the only beings left who harbored any care for him now were Rex Lapis and the remaining Adepti, and yet Venti has proven him wrong. “Still, I will keep your offer in mind.”
Venti’s smile returns in full force, a bright spot in the darkness of the night. “Good,” he says. “Then let me play for you now.” He reaches into the pouch at his side and pulls out his flute, then kicks his legs up and over the roof’s railing so he can perch on the sturdy wooden fencing. Xiao is immediately taken back to that dark lake shore, the intimate familiarity of his pose reminiscent of how he’d perched upon the rocks all those many years ago. Shifting to get into a comfortable position, Venti lifts the flute to his mouth and begins to play.
The song is different, but the feeling of the music is the same. It washes over Xiao like the tide of the ocean over sand, its melody stirring up a gentle breeze around them. It’s the sound that he’s been missing, the feeling he’s been longing for, and he lets out a gentle sigh against his will. The breeze stirs his hair and the long fabric of his sash, and it feels like freedom. He glances up into Venti’s face as he plays and pretends he doesn’t see the way the Archon smiles knowingly against the wood of the flute. “Thank you,” he murmurs, just loud enough for him to hear.
Venti does not acknowledge his thanks, but Xiao knows that his words are heard. His song continues, its melody carrying gently through the quiet night sky. For a night, Xiao is at peace.