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Starbursts are dancing in her vision, multiplying tenfold and scattering in focus, kaleidoscopic. Swan-dust eddies, snowflakes, softly feathering the edges of the world that she stands untethered within. Splendid, brilliant, lighter than anything she’s ever beheld.
Cool fresh frost aglitter with white. She can almost imagine her slow breaths fogging up the air. Her mind gradually clears, dashes of duller colours filling in the void, inviting with them an unusual clarity.
It’s over.
She’s free, the realisation creeps upon her. A chilling trickle down her spine at the same time.
Free. Free… What does that mean?
For so long, she’s pursued a single-minded goal, hell-bent, relentless, scarred up half the world, poured her very essence into this endeavour… her mission… her purpose… The people she had fought so hard to save—
And she can no longer remember what it is.
There is panic, of course. Brief and strangling, keeling her over she clutches at her head, trying to recall what it was she’s lost. Surely something as important as reviving the homeland mustn’t be so easily forgotten, surely?
It’s there, right there, her goal so close she could barely afford to lose…
But as quickly as the devastatingly sickening spell descends does it disappear. Leaving her hunched over, panting, eyes wide to stare at…absolutely nothing.
Nothing. She can’t remember. Why had that terrified her so?
She rises to her feet with imperceptible slowness. Her pulse takes a while longer to calm down before she dares think again.
I was supposed to save… them… she thinks. But who? Who was she supposed to save?
She can’t remember. And it’s almost…freeing.
It’s over. A gasp escapes her. She’s freed.
Oh…
Her chest implodes with a curious, delirious joy that unravels in tingling waves. She’s free, free. Free to do as she pleases, freed from toil and struggle, freed from the anguish and suffering of five hundred years…!
With no one around her, no manacles of fate sinking their rusted iron teeth into her wrists. They’ve dragged at her for so long, like a helpless cog in the wheel of destiny and its callous churning onwards, onwards; she, anchored to the trenches of a grotesque incarnadine sea against the tugging tides, fought tooth and claw and bone without the knowledge of her slowly drowning—
No longer.
Doing a little twirl, Lumine smiles at how her dress flares out so prettily, unfurling like the petals of a flower in bloom. How marvellous; her feet, weightless as air, make scarcely a scuffle against the gravelly grey ground. She’s a little unsteady; lightness feels almost unfamiliar to her now. When was the last time she’d been free to dance like this, like a young girl once again without a single sobering thought?
Oh, what she wouldn’t give to feel a trace of golden sunbeam kissing her cheek, like old times, a wisp of bracing wind tangled through her hair…
Instead… she’s here.
Lumine looks around, finally aware of her surroundings.
Around her is a cavernous ruin, damp and dark but for the silvery luminescence that emanates from her skin. Moonlight lances through gaping crevices above. Grey, crumbling structures loomed over her like the decaying ribs of a gigantic monster that had swallowed her whole, its corpse left behind to rot with time.
Corpses litter the ground, some twitching and others motionless. Hilichurls and Abyssal monsters and others whose features have been distorted by wound and corrosion into indistinguishable masses. The aftermath of a battle— no. A massacre. The air is thick with heavy loss.
Beyond the faint trickling of an underground stream, it’s quiet, still. But not a deathly unwelcome silence.
It’s peaceful.
Lumine takes the time now to examine her hands, softly awed by how they glow. Ah, she must be dead, too. Her skin definitely doesn’t glow like this, not even with her full powers. As much of a celestial star she is, she does not normally light up like a white bulb at minimal energy.
A sort of ghostly state, perhaps? Caught somewhere in purgatory, albeit a more peaceful variant? Purgatorial peace… she smiles at the poetic notion.
If she truly is dead, she’s glad it’s like this. The dull static noise that has been throbbing in the back of her mind, building with each decade warring against destiny, has died away at last. The viscous sludge of Abyssal power that had once filled her veins, her very essence, finally sloughed away.
And yet… why does her heart now ache with loss…?
Lumine makes a slow turn around.
She isn’t alone, she belatedly notices.
Amidst the shadows, the silhouette of a man some paces away sharpens into focus, knelt with his back to her.
Her head tilts in curious surprise.
The stranger’s cape and armour are desolatingly dark against the soft dreamy white of her world. The dull gold accents, the intricate designs, speak of a knightly status from an era long ago.
Something pale and slight is draped across his arms which he hunches over, clutching it tight to his chest. A body, perhaps, Lumine thinks morbidly, almost blithely. Maybe hers.
She recognises him, from somewhere long ago.
Lumine regards the knight sadly, sympathy welling up inside her. He’s in mourning, the weight of it like a thick miasma that has settled over his hunched form, sapping away his colour. Is he dead too? She doubts it. But she senses he is dying. Or has always been dying.
She takes a few steps closer. Before she reaches him, however, his whole frame stiffens. The knight whirls around, and he freezes at the sight of her.
For a moment, neither utter a word. Water drips from the stalactite-chandeliered ceiling.
Then,
“...Lumine?”
Her heart stutters at the sound of her name in that voice. That voice, the roughness of it, unmistakably raw with grief.
“You know me?” She asks, not too surprised.
His eyes, dim and watery-blue and bloodshot, take in her unnaturally luminescent complexion. The realisation visibly sinks into his already shaken expression. “You’re…”
He doesn’t finish, merely stares at her with those wide, stricken eyes.
“Dead? A ghost for now, I think,” Lumine picks at her skirt. “Hopefully not permanently.” Is it odd how nonchalant she is about this? But then again, she’s always accepted the most surreal situations with detached ease.
The knight regards her warily, his expression oscillating between judging his own sense and soundness, and mentally calculating how long this hallucination of her will last. Who knows? Maybe she’s already begun to fade away right this instant. She’d hardly notice.
“Are you in pain?” he finally whispers.
“Not at all.” She gives herself a glance-over for any bloodstains or bruises, finding only unblemished skin. He’s staring quite intently at her chest, as if any moment now a bloody hole will rupture itself right at her sternum.
Her gaze wanders to the entity he’d been grieving over. Her consciousness seems to obscure it without her consent, leaving it a formless silhouette she can only make out five dainty protrusions—a pale lifeless hand splayed upon the ground. “Say, is that my body over there?” Lumine pipes up curiously, gesturing to it.
The knight nods with a tight answer, “Indeed.” He reaches over to tuck the hand back into the darkness, the tender action belying his rugged armour and solemn exterior.
A humourless smile plays upon Lumine’s lips. “I’m assuming you killed me, then?
He’s quiet again. There’s a weight to his hesitation, the soundless silence an answer in itself. Then, with no small reluctance, “I did.”
Honest and direct. Not just anyone would have the courage to admit to one’s ghost that they were their executioner. She decides she likes him.
“I must’ve been quite the terrifying beast,” she says playfully, “to have been slain by a knight like you. And someone who must’ve meant quite a deal to you if you’d been mourning me so.”
A small, raw noise escapes him. It reminds her of a wounded animal. “You were…” his brows furrow together as his gaze lowers, holding back words with palpable difficulty. “...You really don’t recall?”
“Evidently not,” Lumine assures, adding in a small spin. Revelling in her forgets, her freedom, unburdened by the memory of who he is and who she once was.
He seems all the more downcast, defeated. “I shall not remind you, then.”
Lumine pauses in her graceful steps, grinning his way. “I wouldn’t mind if you do. But do leave out the terrible bits; I’m quite happy as I am.” With that, she continues her little one-dancer sequence, blue cape fluttering in her wake.
She can feel his eyes follow her, boring into her soul. He must find her bemusing, her ataraxy incongruous with their grim theatrical backdrop of corpses and ruins. Almost entranced, the knight steps towards her, the lost moth to the silvery flame, reaching out a hand. But he hesitates. As if he’s afraid to try, only to feel nothing but the crushing disappointment of longing for an illusion, a mirage.
Lumine smiles back at him. “Don’t be afraid, Sir Knight. You may come closer if you wish.”
“I… I’m not afraid.” Yet the look in his eyes speaks otherwise.
Before he can fully withdraw, Lumine takes his hand. Partly out of curiosity if this ghostly form is still tangible, partly something instinctual. Something passes through the two where their fingers meet— a tingle, a shockwave. She ignores the relatively pleasant sensation and pulls him closer. It’s thoughtless, natural and reflexive. Her heart almost sings at his human warmth, the solidness of his gloved hand interlacing with hers.
He must’ve been deeply important to her once.
The knight’s eyes have gone utterly round at her gesture, big and blue with wonder. His reactions to her are so visceral, so unabashed. It’s truly adorable.
The knight takes another step closer. She lets him, watching amusedly as he examines their intertwined fingers, her skin glowing lightly against his gloved ones.
“The Loom of Fate must’ve tampered with the Ley Lines here,” he muses, mostly to himself. “As an extension of your will, its powers enable you to maintain your consciousness and form on the mortal plane, albeit temporarily, because you wish to…” his lips twitch in resemblance of a wry smile. “You wish to stay.”
“The Loom of Fate?” She presses at the unfamiliar term, to which he hastily shakes his head. “Nothing. It is of little consequence to either of us now.”
Quiet settles between them once more.
“Are you afraid?”
The knight’s question is quiet, sincere in how it softens upon the last word.
Lumine contemplates, before shaking her head. “Hardly. Perhaps I ought to be, once the history of my sins have caught up to me. Who knows what’ll happen to me in the afterlife, if such a thing exists at all?” She shrugs. “I’ve never been scared to die. It always sounded peaceful to me, like stepping into a hot bath after a long tiring day.” The knight raises an eyebrow at the analogy, bidding her to continue.
She hums in thought. “A warm bath after a long day, your weary muscles aching with fatigue. The water scalds when it first envelops your body, but as you slowly sink into it, get used to the warmth… you feel at peace.”
“Peace,” the knight echoes, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he appraises her words. “Peace… like lying in a bed of flowers, finally home to rest,” he murmurs. “Returning to the embrace of the earth… from dust to dust.”
“Wonderfully said,” she praises. “Is that what you think death is like, Sir Knight?”
“Yes,” he admits. “The peace which death brings is undeniably alluring, yet with death comes loss. Death plays havoc, Lumine, and I’ve never enjoyed the loss of a… close one.”
“Close one,” she mumbles, wondering if he means her. His grip on her hand tightens ever so slightly. He pulls away, leaving her hand clenching strangely with loss.
“You’re no ordinary lowly being like I.” His gloved fingers brush along her bare arm, her skin tingling at the barest of touches. The thought of his fingers being stained with blood, with her blood, flashes briefly in her mind. “You belong to the stars, Lumine. And there you shall return after this human form… disappears.”
The knight trembles as he speaks, making her heart clench at the sight. She reaches up and pats his head, the gesture inevitably affectionate. But she can’t help it; she just wants to pat his head and enjoy his little expressions, the surprised blinks and the slight hitches of breath. “... you might disappear any time now,” the knight says tersely.
“I know,” she whispers. “I could always disappear any time now, a fact that I’ve accepted long ago. I could’ve perished in life— as Khaenri’ah’s heir, and as Princess of the Abyss Order, all for my ambition. And I can easily disappear forever now in death. But before that happens…” She takes a deep breath and smiles softly up at him. Clear, open, and unafraid. “Let’s make the most of our time now, shall we?”
Lumine extends a hand to him once more, an invitation.
“May I have this dance, good sir?” A lilting smile teases her face. “Or ought that be your line?”
An indecipherable emotion steals across the knight’s tense features, before he gently accepts her hand. Dark bloodstained fingers slipping around ones shaded starlight. “You’ve taken everything from me,” he says wistfully, “might as well take my line, too.”
How melodramatic. Though his affinity for histrionics amuses Lumine more than anything.
Now, what song would be fitting for a final dance? She imagines it to be slow and soothing, a soft, elegant melody melancholic enough for their dismal ballroom that’ll just have to do. Ah, she can already hear it; the delicate piano keys floating through the silence, bass chords accompanied by a light refrain. The ghostly sound echoes through the vast cavernous space, filling the darkness with an ethereal airiness.
“Do you hear that?” Lumine almost conspiratorially whispers. “A waltz song for us to dance to.”
Registering the music reverberating in the air, the minute distance between their bodies, a look of wonder crosses the knight’s face. “I… I hear it, too.” Lumine beams, her fingers tightening securely around his.
And slowly, they begin to dance.
Lumine takes the lead first, taking her dance partner by the arm and guiding him through a gentle, easy waltz. Her movements follow the ebb and flow of the melody gracefully, almost unfalteringly. In their decrepit, death-adorned ballroom, where her steps make no sound at all, gravel crunches under his boots like crushed fruit rinds.
They’re awfully close, she realises. Though he stands easily a head taller than she, his body leans into hers, perhaps even unconsciously, as if dragged in irresistibly by a sort of magnetic gravitational pull. His soft blond hair is brushing against her head, melancholic, shadowed blue eyes watching her unreadably.
“Where… did you learn to dance?” His question is hesitant, attempting a conversational air, like they’re strangers meeting again for the first time again. It’s disarming.
Her face twists in mild surprise. “I’m sure I told you before. When we first danced at…“ she cuts herself off, trying hard to remember the first time they’d danced, not really sure why it feels so important. “Surely we’ve danced somewhere before…” He’s too familiar not to.
”Just answer the question.” His eyes crinkle with the barest tinge of amusement.
Lumine sighs, then closes her eyes in recollection, allowing him to spin her around in his arms. The memory of it is blurry, but…
“I recall my mother teaching me to dance when I was little.” The words painting a lost childhood slip from her tongue with relish, a sobering nostalgia. “She’d hum a song and twirl me around, and I was always so careful to avoid stepping on her toes.” A pause, and Lumine grins. “Afterwards, when it was just me and my brother, I’d persuade him to dance with me too. He’s terrible at it, but luckily, I was a good teacher.”
”Indeed you are.” She can hear the faintest warmth of a smile in his voice, at last.
Lumine levels her gaze to his face again. If only his eyes weren’t so sad, he’d make a more wonderful dance partner than he’s already proving himself to be. “You’re not a bad dancer yourself, you know.”
”I certainly hope so.” He twirls her a few times across their dirt and blood-embroidered dance floor, swaying to the music’s lyrical phrases. The tune rises and falls like sighs. “It’s been a while… a long while since I’d last danced. And dancing is hardly one of my talents, but,” he suddenly pulls her close, bodies pressed together, his lips to her ear, “you were a good teacher.”
“I taught you?” Her mouth taut in a playful frown, trying to ignore the way her skin tingles at how their proximity has dwindled so easily in numbers, all in the space of seconds. And remarkably without a hint of reluctance either, on both their parts. “I don’t quite recall.”
A low chuckle from her dance partner. “I’m sure you don’t. And I don’t suppose you don’t quite recall how we met either, the first time you told me your name.”
Before she knows it, he’s the one leading their dance. The waltz’s harmony is almost a jaunty, swinging gait now. The knight twirls her in circles, the pace whirling, her heart racing to the rhythm of the music and their timed footsteps. Catching her by the waist into a low, breathtaking dip, his fingers trail up to her hair. They find the Inteyvats nestled safely there, never once taken off. “And… the first time you told me how much you loved these flowers.”
It’s almost as if he’s recounting a tale featuring the both of them, Lumine notes detachedly. Listening to him speak makes her feel… estranged. A shadow in her own story. It’s perhaps a pity that she can’t remember the things he’s saying, the emotions displayed for her to witness, coiled tight in his chest that’s pressed against hers. As if a single sign of mutual remembrance from her will be all it takes to unravel him.
The music swells to a gentle crescendo. He spins her once more, letting her whirl away. Till she finds herself standing in moonlight, dust and eddies floating through a gap in the cavern roof above. The moonlight bathes her form, something ethereal and intricately familiar.
Gentlest eyes fixed upon her, the knight remains where he stands, cloaked in shadow. “This reminds me… of that night we were travelling through a forest in Inazuma, five hundred years ago,” he reminisces quietly.
“You were standing in a stream, pale against the darkness of night, the silhouettes of trees, the blue glow of flowers surrounding you. Like a ghost, a spirit… an angel.”
At last the knight steps forward, joining her in the moonlight. “You were spellbinding,” he breathes. The last notes of the waltz are a slowing rhythmic trill, slipping away quietly unnoticed. His arm guides itself along her waist, squeezing gently to pull her close. Too close. Their abdomens pressed together so she can feel every unyielding ridge, every contour of his armour; their noses barely brushing, blond hair dripping in spools to her golden.
So close she can almost feel his lips on hers.
The knight glances downward, a breath catching in his throat. “... Lumine.”
Lumine follows his gaze.
Ah. She’s disappearing.
Motes of light are leaking from her form. The ethereal glow enveloping her edges flickers, wanes, spiralling and fading away like exhausted, lonely fireflies into the night. The very fabric of her being unspools, and suddenly she can’t breathe.
“Aether must’ve destroyed the Loom of Fate,” the knight says. Panicked terror has seized his face, which she tries to soothe away with a hand to his cheek.
She remembers his name now. Strange for her to remember everything else first during their final waltz, yet recall his name last.
“We’re out of time, aren’t we?” Lumine says softly, her gaze finally sliding into Dainsleif’s. And it’s as though the world has finally slowed its dizzying orbit for a last gasp of blessed breath. Everything stilling and coming into coloured, vibrant focus, a beautifully fatal finality.
His eyes are blue. Like the sea, soft and warm waves lapping at her waist, sunlight scintillating upon the kissed horizon.
His eyes are blue. He… killed her.
He killed her, and he’s killing her now, with those stricken, saddened, sea-blue eyes.
“Dainsleif,” she whispers. “Dain, Dain Dain…” Her legs buckle beneath her, no longer there as her lower body dissipates away—
Dainsleif is there to catch her at once, holding her steady and hugging her trembling body tight to his chest. His heart is thumping so rapidly against hers, the frightened sound of it fills her ears and drowns the pulsing in her head away.
She remembers now. The war between the Abyss Order and the Heavenly Principles, and then those who straddled the moral world between: Dainsleif and Aether. Two of her most cherished past-travel companions, fighting both against her and for her.
Her coup de grâce had been swift and merciful—a single plunge of his blade into her heart, skewering her through with only the scarcest drops of ichor rolling down her dress. At the hands of her enemy, her past travel companion, who’d known her unlike anyone else. Even her own twin, who is the other half of her soul.
Cradling her head, his other hand brushes along the slender curve of her neck. Dainsleif cups her jaw lightly, tilting her face to his. “Lumine,” he whispers, his forehead touching hers. Her skin is so cold, so cold. “Oh, Lumine.”
He killed her. She’s already long gone, the divine instrument tethering her soul to this mortal realm destroyed—along with what’s left of her consciousness.
Ah… She remembers now. Who she was supposed to save. Who she has failed.
Dazedly, she lets her thumb trace his cheek, feel the flutter of his thick lashes. It’s too close, too intimate; what does it all matter anymore, anyway…? “I failed,” Lumine says numbly. “I failed them all. I was so blind… with vengeance and grief over the past…” she laughs. “What a fool I was.”
“No,” Dainsleif murmurs fiercely. “No, Lumine. You were the last thing from a fool. You were hopelessly selfless, determinedly stubborn, desperately afraid, even… but a fool you were not.”
His voice is becoming so far away in her head now.
Lumine lets out a weak chuckle. Strange. It’s as though her body is an overwound clock winding down after its final spurt of vitality. Everything is slowing, her senses shuttering out, emotions dulling away.
She isn’t angry, oddly enough. But rather content. This is a beautiful way to die, after all; a former friend-turned-enemy having one final dance with your ghost, his gloves still stained with your blood.
No guilty apologies and regrets stumble from his trembling lips, and she appreciates the absence of words, rendered meaningless in a moment like this. Dainsleif has never been one for fluff or drivel. Her death by his own hand was a necessary evil—if it can even be deemed that. A tragic constellation always woven into their tapestrial dance with fate, looming over them both. The unspoken prophecy, fulfilled at last.
He’s already killed her before, and now he grieves for her death a second time. Fate is cruel, she muses, to have her return to him in this transient form, only to steal her away forever.
There’s no pain… is there? At least, not the pain of knowing you’re already dead.
“Take care of Aether for me, okay?” Lumine murmurs, reaching up to trace the tear running down his cheek. Her fingers, already losing their solidity, pass through him, and her heart mourns. “...He’ll understand. He always does.” Her own throat grows raw with an aching anguish—her heart not yet fully numbed, “Tell him that we will be reunited, someday. In the sea of flowers we’ve always wanted to go.”
Dainsleif nods. His tears are dripping onto her cheeks, warm and wet and barely tangible, as if she’s already beginning to lose her sense of touch.
“And us, Lumine…?” His final question is pained, almost ashamed of his own selfishness as she disappears.
She does not give an answer; there was never really one to begin with. Dainsleif exhales, not with resignation, but acceptance. And he is smiling tenderly when he says, “I will find you again someday, Lumine. I promise.”
Lumine smiles back, her soul lighter than air. She is finally set free from the shackles of fate that have been dragging at her for so long. That’s… all that matters. “I know you will, Dain… you always do.”
And she allows herself to fade away.
✵
And thus, the world’s near-annihilation was narrowly avoided, the story having reached the completion of any other fairy tale: the valiant knight slains the embodiment of wickedness, the dangerous vessel of the Abyss whose goal could have spelt doom for all in Teyvat.
The ‘antagonist’ Princess lives no more, the Abyss Order crumbled to oblivion.
Righteousness, ruthlessness, treachery, penitence… all is rendered desolate once again, a never-ending cycle of time.
Till all that remains amidst the rubble and dust of the old world is the knight, his noble fate fulfilled after five hundred years. And now his solitary form taking shambling steps onwards, homewards.
It is indiscernible and insignificant how long he took. The destined path is irresistible, even with what little strength lingered in his weary bones. The knight wanders a ghost, down, down, down to the forgotten world’s darkest depths. A lone traveller in his solemn pilgrimage to the final resting place.
And there, at the destination of his all-too-long journey, he finds himself at the Sea of Flowers at the End, once more.
Tired, the knight sits upon a bloomless patch, brushing away fallen petals as if dusting an old eroded gravestone. Once upon a time, someone had brushed aside the petals just for him. Someone with a crown of gold, constellations in her eyes, the purest soul. It mattered little how tainted she was by the darkness of the Abyss, how cold she became, how those amber eyes lost their shine.
It only mattered that she’d woven flowers for him here, and had once smiled upon him with a gentleness like starlight.
The knight smiles fondly, closing his eyes to hold onto the memory of her, even as it has long slipped away from his weakened grasp.
Gazing out at his sea of Inteyvats now, dancing softly in the wind just for him, the knight allows himself to breathe at long last.
All is at peace.