Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“…Hey, are you sure this is a good idea?”

Deep within the Chinvat Ravine, two students from the Sumeru Akademiya, a boy and a girl, walked along the stream.

For a place so close to the nation’s capital city, the ravine hardly ever got any visitors, due to its status as sacred grounds. Many were convinced that ancient spirits rested within, and that they were not to be disturbed, and those who did not believe stayed away all the same, repelled by the creepy atmosphere.

“Ugh, we’ve been over this! You want our project to do well right? If we want to be the best in our class, we have to be original! That means going where no one has ever dared! Besides, it’s all just stories, anyway. As if some ghost is suddenly gonna come out and curse us for stepping on his favourite patch of grass.” The boy looked around for anything mysterious, without much luck, until…

“Wait, look over there!” He immediately jumped over the stream towards a hole in the cliff wall.

The Girl quickly followed. “Hey, Be careful! And wait for me!”

The entrance was small and inconspicuous, but the inside of the cave they entered surprised them.

It was filled with plants, many of them glowing. Most were green, but there were colourful flowers, too. It looked exactly how they would imagine the hideout of some fairy, with ancient white pillars and arches covered in green engravings and vines.
What caught their eyes, however, was the item in the middle of the cave.

It was a flat, round ornament, around the size of a small umbrella and absolutely beautiful. The deep blue colour looked perfectly preserved, and the golden details in the shape of a lotus reflected the glow of the cave as if it was newly polished. Two pieces of cloth dangled from the ornament, and it was held upright by vines.

“Now, this is what I’m talking about!” The boy immediately ran to the ornament and took it from where it was held by the vines. He turned it this way and that in his hands. “Check it out, it’s a hat!”

“You have no survival instinct, do you?” the girl sighed as her companion put the hat on and started posing with it, “Seriously, I- …Oh my god, is that..?”

They had not considered that the hat had been placed to obstruct the area behind it.

There, in the back of the cave, was what they could only assume was a statue. It wasn’t a normal statue, though. Usually they would be made bigger than regular people to display the greatness of whatever god or hero it represented, and they would be standing tall and proud. This one, however, was the size of a regular human, maybe even a bit on the small side, and it sat in a meditating position with its head held low. The only reason they knew it was a statue was that it was covered in vines and not moving at all.

The boy took off the hat and approached the statue, a bit more carefully this time, and the girl hesitantly followed him.

“Were those ancient people always so good at making statues? This one is so… lifelike. It’s actually kinda creepy.” The boy reached out to touch the statue’s hair, which looked completely like real human hair, only to have his hand slapped away by the girl.

“Don’t touch it! Who knows what could happen! …You’re right though. We’ve seen statues from that time before, and none of them looked like this.” She knelt down to take a closer look at the statue. It didn’t look like any of the ancient important figures she’d seen before. It seemed to depict a young man, maybe nineteen or twenty years old, and his face…

“He’s beautiful…”

“Come on, you say that about every guy. Lemme see that.” The boy leaned down beside her and paused. “Oh. Oh wow. Does this make me gay? Am I being turned gay by a statue right now?” With the girl being distracted by the absolutely ethereal face of this statue, the boy reached out to touch it again…

But before he made contact with it, a strange whirring sound came from within the statue, and he quickly retracted his hand.

“What the hell..?”

“I don’t think this is a good sign…”

The markings on the statue, which they had assumed were supposed to represent some kind of tattoos, started glowing. It was a dim teal glow at first, but it only got brighter and brighter.

Without exchanging a word, the students made a unanimous decision to get the hell out of there, research be damned.

Within that mystical cave, awakened by the activity of mortals, the ‘statue’ opened his eyes…

Chapter Text

Everything was either on fire or engulfed in darkness.

The Dendro Archon and her Shadow hurried to a cave in the Chinvat Ravine for shelter.

“Hurry, get inside! It’s the only way for you to survive!”

“What do you mean, me!? Lesser Lord Kusanali, you’re their god! You’re the one who’s supposed to survive, not me! I’m supposed to protect you!”

“Wanderer, listen to me! None of us were prepared for this kind of disaster. We can’t take on the Abyss and Celestia at the same time. You’re the only one with a chance of surviving on your own. I need to make sure at least some of humanity survives, no matter what! Even if it costs me my life!”

“And what am I supposed to do then? After everything is over, after you’re gone, what am I supposed to do with myself?”

“…I will be ensuring the safety of humans, but I don’t think much else will survive this war. Once it’s all over, humanity will need a guardian, in case monsters appear in the world again. Without Vision wielders and gods to protect them, you may end up being the only one who can.”

The two immortal beings stood in silence in the cave. The Shadow took off his hat and held it up, and the Archon created vines to hold it.

The Shadow then knelt before his god with his head held low.

“… I understand. I assume the only way for me to survive this is to shut down?”

“That’s right.” The Archon reached out and put her small hand on his cheek, not mentioning the wet streak she felt. “For you to go under the radar of both the Abyss and Celestia, it has to be a full shutdown. You won’t even dream. Hopefully, you won’t feel the time pass at all, and you’ll wake up as if you never even fell asleep. I can’t say when that will happen, but when it does, please protect them. I trust you.”

“A shame you didn’t have the time to make me understand how you possibly could.” The Shadow adjusted his position so it looked like he could be meditating. “Very well. I give you my word that I will do my utmost to protect humanity against whatever forces of evil might try to harm them, if only because it is your wish.”

The Archon chuckled.

And she placed her hand on his head.

And the cave was enveloped in green light.

Everything was black.

He drifted in the void without any concept of time.

In the beginning, he could hear the chaos outside. He could hear faraway screams of those who were too late for salvation.

Then, he could hear nothing. It felt as if time moved impossibly slow, yet impossibly fast at the same time.

That was, until the sound of voices returned. They were unintelligible at first, but they slowly started to sound like words he recognised.

“Am I… by… statue right… ?”

…

“What the…?”

“I don’t… is a… sign…”

He heard hurried footsteps moving further away, just as awareness was returning to him, and he saw no one there when he opened his eyes.

The Wanderer looked around while he got used to consciousness again. The cave looked almost the same as it had when he had shut down, but it was a lot more overgrown. He was overgrown, too, covered in vines, but as soon as he moved, they retreated as if they had a mind of their own.

He stood up and was mildly surprised to find that he felt no damage on his body. It seemed the Abyss had not reached him during the disaster, just as Lesser Lord Kusanali had promised.

The thought of her made something twist in his stomach. She was dead, wasn’t she? He heard no destruction outside of the cave, indicating that the disaster was long gone. If she were alive, she would have been there when he awoke.

She wasn’t.

She was gone.

He had lost her.

Before he could even react to this new sense of grief, he was distracted by the absence of something else.

His hat.

Someone had taken his hat.

Heads will roll-

No. No murder. He was not about to break his promise to Lesser Lord Kusanali over a hat. He was better than that.

Deep breaths.

The Wanderer tried to take deep, calm breaths, he really did, but sometimes, it was just easier to be angry.

And so, he stomped out of the cave and into the ravine, driven by rage.

He stopped in his tracks as soon as he was out of the cave.

The ravine looked… different. It had never been exactly cheery, but now, it was almost as gloomy as Chinju Forest, and it had an ancient feeling to it, like it had been left alone for centuries, if not millennia. It confused him. Just how long had he been gone?

He decided to put that thought aside for a moment. He could ask around once he got to an inhabited area.

It was when he tried to fly out of the ravine that he noticed the state of his Vision. Its colour was dull, and it did not respond when he tried to use its power.

Then it hit him. The Archons had all probably died, meaning that their respective elemental authorities were either destroyed along with them or left without a master, probably rendering all Visions useless.

The Wanderer gritted his teeth. This was all too much. He was losing too much too fast. Everyone he knew was dead, his hat was missing, and now his Vision was nothing more than a pretty trinket, dangling uselessly over his chest.

He had to distract himself, so he started to make his way towards Sumeru City on foot.

…

…What.

The Wanderer stood motionless by the bridge to the city.

The landscape was fairly close to how he remembered it, but the city itself…

Sumeru City was unrecognisable.

The houses had been replaced by strange, tall square blocks with windows, the roads had lines in the middle, and on those roads there were… machines on wheels… with people inside? And the people all wore strange clothes. Many of them walked with their heads down, looking at the glowing rectangular slates in their hands, some with wires leading up to their ears. The city was filled with posters and glowing screens with what seemed to be advertisements, but none of the products were familiar to the Wanderer in the slightest. There were images of drinks he had never seen (including two very similar ones making fun of each other, for some reason), restaurants he had never heard of (with two similar ones making fun of each other… again), and two very strangely dressed men with strange names… compared to bottles of ‘Ketchup’ and ‘Mustard’… whatever that was.

The Wanderer had no clue what he was supposed to do in this situation. Sure, he had lived long enough before this to witness the changes in society, but back then, he had been present to see the development take place, instead of being slapped in the face with it after sleeping through it all.

When one of those machines on wheels drove past him, and he saw the people inside staring at him slightly longer than normal, he became acutely aware of his own appearance. He might have thought everyone else looked strange, but if that was the norm here, then he was the strange one. His clothes had stood out even back when Sumeru looked like itself, but now… He had to find something else to wear. Starting with a hat. He felt exposed without one, and the stares from people passing by did not help.

He kept his head low as he entered the city. There were so many loud noises and bright lights. Everything was hard to keep track of, but he eventually spotted something that looked like a clothes store and went inside.

Everything was strange. He had a hard time imagining himself in any of these clothes on display. Eventually, he just found a random hat and made his way to the counter.

At least he was familiar with queues, not that he particularly enjoyed standing in long lines with a bunch of people, but he knew what do do, so that had to be enough for now.

Once it was his turn, the very bored-looking lady working there looked him up and down with a judging expression. The Wanderer simply put the hat down on the counter.

The lady took a weird black device and held it to the hat. It made a beep sound, and a number appeared on another machine connected to it.

“150 Mora.”

The Wanderer dug through his pockets and then placed the Mora on the counter.

The lady rolled her eyes.

“Look, sir, just because you’re in a costume does not mean you can pay with fantasy money. We don’t even take regular cash anymore. Pay with your card or leave. There are people waiting.”

The Wanderer blinked.

What was he expecting? Of course the currency would have changed.

“…Right, sorry.” He quickly pocketed his Mora again and left, having gained absolutely nothing.

On his way out, he heard the lady mutter something about ‘main character syndrome’…

The Wanderer walked along the streets of Sumeru City (was it even called that anymore?) with no goal or destination. His face was neutral, but he was panicking. He didn’t know anyone, his Vision was useless, and the world itself had changed so much that he barely even recognised it.

He had nowhere to go and nothing to do. He was supposed to protect the humans, but he didn’t see any threats anywhere, and they seemed to be doing fine on their own. He didn’t see or sense any magic, either. There was elemental energy, but it felt like it was only the amount naturally present in any object. It was as if magic and elemental power had completely left the world, and humanity had simply learned to live on completely without it.

Did he even have a place in this new world?

The noise was becoming too much, so he dove into an alley to take a break from the overwhelming city.

He leaned against a wall and dragged his hands over his face, all while trying to steady his breathing. How was he supposed to get anything done in this kind of environment? What was he even supposed to be doing?

He was so distracted by his own situation that he barely even heard footsteps approaching him from further down the alley.

“Oh? Well, what do we have here? What’s a pretty little thing like you doing in a scary place like this?”

The Wanderer lifted his head to see a rather large man coming closer. He really did not have the patience to deal with humans right now.

“I just took a left from the big street. I’d hardly call this a ‘scary place’.”

The man stopped right in front of him and leaned in close. When the Wanderer tried to move away, he caged him in with a hand to the wall on each side.

Ah, so it’s that kind of interaction.

“Don’t you wanna have some fun..?” The man’s breath reeked of alcohol.

The Wanderer was not unfamiliar with this kind of thing. Back in Tatarasuna, there had been creeps like this guy, too. Nothing ever went wrong with that, though, because there would always be someone to stop them before they could do anything to him. In particular, Katsuragi, Mr. Mikoshi, and Niwa had always been ready to protect him. They were the first to teach him to defend himself, too. How he missed them, now.

When he first joined the Fatui, he was rarely ever away from The Doctor, so no one would get the chance, and once he became a Harbinger, well… there was only ever one instance where a recruit had tried. The story of his death had been enough to act as a gruesome cautionary tale, even centuries later, although greatly exaggerated by then. It was one of the big reasons behind his bad reputation among soldiers, and why none of them ever included him in their pointless rankings of Harbingers by attractiveness.

Now, however, there was no one to protect him, and he had no reputation to speak of. Of course, he could easily beat the man to a pulp, but he was not familiar with the legal system in this era, and he would rather not become a criminal after only just arriving.

There must have been more options than either killing him or letting whatever happened happen, but the Wanderer was to overwhelmed by the city to think properly, and the man’s disgusting face was getting closer-

“Hey! What’s going on here?” a man’s voice called from the direction of the street.

The creep immediately retreated from where he had been trapping the Wanderer and hurried in the opposite direction.

Coward.

The Wanderer didn’t look at his ‘saviour’ immediately. He took a step away from the wall, focusing on his breathing. It wasn’t like he had been in any true danger, so why was his skin crawling?

“Hey, are you okay? He didn’t hurt you, did he? I swear, some people just can’t keep their hands to themselves…”

There was something familiar about that voice. It was comforting, but he didn’t know why.

The Wanderer turned to tell the man that his assistance had been unnecessary, and that he could handle himself just fine on his own-

But when he saw the man’s face, his voice died in his throat.

Kind brown eyes.

The checkered bandanna on his head.

Messy brown hair, tied in the back.

…And that single streak of red.

Niwa?