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Atop the mountain, Lumine stood as a flash of white against the shadows that cloaked the land. Even as the first traces of morning rose above the ocean, the din of labor from Liyue Harbor remained absent. For once, the city rested. It slept in unworriedly, certain that the sun would rise. And with it, a peaceful day.
But behind her, darkness blanketed the wilderness. Fading constellations hid within the far reaches of the pitch. The night stretched on endlessly, infinitely.
And so, too, did her sorrows.
This was the world she had chosen to save. This was the decision she had made. This was what she had to live with.
The sound of shifting gravel came from behind her. Lumine whirled around, sword raised against the intruder.
A pair of cor lapis eyes gazed down on her. “Weapons are relics of the past. Wouldn’t you say?” Zhongli tapped the back of his gloved hand against her blade.
Scoffing, Lumine dismissed her sword and turned her back on him. “You’re one to talk. I’m sure you still have yours, don’t you?”
Neither a lie nor an admission escaped him as he came to stand beside her.
“Care for the edge,” she warned.
There was no real reason for the words—she doubted the Geo Archon would misstep and plummet to his doom—but they escaped her all the same. She had come to care about him; he was one of the people she had chosen over her own blood.
“Come to watch the sunrise?” he asked.
The wind whistled as it wound through the mountains.
“Something like that.”
Lumine could feel his searching gaze on her, but she refused to look at him. Instead, she stared straight ahead at the ocean. The sun had yet to rise, but a splash of peach painted the horizon. Objectively, she knew the sight was beautiful, but she felt none of it.
“Considering where next to venture to?”
“There’s nowhere left to go.”
There was no end goal left to move towards. Time had frozen the moment she’d run a sword through her brother and ended the tale of two. There was nothing more. Nothing at all. Only her and her treacherous choices.
Zhongli hummed.
Minutes passed in silence before he spoke again. “In these moments, when the sun is not visible, it is hard to tell between dusk or dawn.”
Peering up at him, Lumine found that, rather than examining her, his focus lay on the skyline.
“How then,” he continued, “with only the darkness that lies before us, are we to know which one we are faced with? Whether it is the end or the start? How do we know that after the day comes the night? And after the night, the day? With the uncertainty of it, how do we plan for what comes next? And how do we know that the actions we take are correct?”
Zhongli clasped his hands behind his back. “There was a time when I never considered these questions, or the possible answers to them. The sun rises and sets because that is the law of the universe. That night should follow day is a given. My decisions follow suit. All things in this world, in order. Rationalized and quantified.
“In a perfect world, that likely holds true. We take action, and the aftermath aligns with whether it was right or wrong. However, this world is far from perfect. As are we. Human or not, we may be.
“It was a good friend, a not-quite-human traveler that I had met, that taught me this.” He tilted his head, staring directly at her.
Lumine chewed at her lip.
“Allow me to share, in my own words, what she said.” He shifted his weight. “When in the dark, when we know not whether the dawn or dusk approaches, we can only act as what we believe to be true and just. At that moment, that is the correct answer. Only in retrospect, in the light of day, may our choices be judged for what they are.”
Hollow laughter rang through the air. “Well, in the light of day, I can see that it was the wrong choice.”
Around them, the sky grew brighter. A line of amber defined the horizon. Vibrant red streaks mixed with it, red like the pyre she should be burned on for her betrayal.
Zhongli set a hand on her shoulder. “It had to be done.”
“Is that what you tell yourself?” she whispered. “Does that actually help?”
His eyes softened, a subtle sadness seeping in at the corners. He squeezed her shoulder. “We do what we must. Would you rather have let him run rogue and ushered in the destruction of the world?”
Lumine watched as the sun peeked over the horizon, crawling its way into the sky. In the city, people emerged from their homes, venturing out into the streets to greet their neighbors and open shop.
“No. I wouldn’t have.” She had chosen to save the innocent people of a world her brother and she had stumbled into…and then almost wiped out. “I couldn’t let him do that. It wasn’t right. He would never do that…He—That wasn’t…”
That wasn’t him. No.
But was this her?
“At the moment, that was the answer,” Zhongli said. “We do what we must. It is the price we pay for peace.”
The full circle of the sun hung in the sky. It was the dawn of a new day, of an era of peace ushered in thanks to her.
“We do what we must, huh…”
She gazed down at her hands. Murder stained them in a shade that would never wash away. Daybreak made it all that much harder to deal with. Her sins could not be ignored.
There was nothing. Only her and her choices. And the comfort of knowing that every sunrise was followed by a sunset, where she could bury her guilt under the cover of night.