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Yelan had been gone.
Not for days. Not merely weeks. Over a month had passed since her last known mission, an assignment shrouded in secrecy, sent to investigate a rift inside the leylines torn open near the Gate of Injury. That had been the last known location of her team.
She vanished beyond it.
In the weeks that followed, families of the investigators who accompanied her– sons, brothers, or just friends– begged for answers. But their voices echoed unanswered through the corridors of Liyue’s administrative halls to the unease of the Qixing. There were no letters, no signs of struggle, no bodies. Just silence. The cyphered records referred to it as the Vowel by the way it swallowed them whole, as they awaited, praying The Groundbreaker for them to be spew back to the surface– all while the rift seemed to have been closing as a wound healing would
Ningguang, ever composed and precise Tianquan, eventually broke that silence with action. She dispatched two of her most trusted soldiers to track Yelan’s team possible paths, ordering them to cast a wide net across the boundaries of their nation as she tried to search for any sign of ley line alterations from other regions without alerting other leaders for a case of emergency.
Reports of a dark-haired woman matching Yelan’s description were pursued as far as the winding trails of the Wangshu Inn, the rice terraces of Qingce Village, and the bustling harbors of Qiaoying and Yilong. Even the shadowed tunnels of the Chasm were searched. Yet the land still offered nothing for the Seven Stars.
Then, unexpectedly, a letter arrived. No seal, no sender—just a plain message left under the collective name of Bubu Pharmacy, although it was most likely a personal message by the hands of its owner, Doctor Baizhu.
Curiously, the writer seemed to be unaware of the Qixing situation, yet they offered a lead: concern of a phantom–a spectral presence haunting a rotting wooden hut buried in the mountain wilderness, far from Liyue Harbor. Strange occurrences had been reported by herbalists and travelers alike: arrows whistling through the air from nowhere, the sound of dripping water with no source, and the thick, iron scent of blood on the wind. There were even accounts of a woman's broken voice sobbing through the night, begging for light and pleading for someone to bring the stars back to her.
It was like something from a ghost story told for a test of courage played by kids. In fact, it was, just as the little ears and eyes that Ningguang kept parading around the streets if the harbor told her personally, confirming to her the information given by the pharmacist. After all, snakes might lie but children wouldn’t.
Ningguang did not wait. She made the journey herself.
The hut was barely standing, half-consumed by moss and time, tucked into a narrow gorge where even sunlight seemed hesitant to linger for too long. She stood at the threshold, her silken robes unmoving in the still air, her expression unreadable as she waited long enough for the apparition to uncloak herself from the fine cape of translucent water that hid her figure from only the Gods could know what.
In all her glory, or lack thereof stood the stealthy and sly phantom that could make merchants, politicians and military agents shake in fear by the sound of her voice behind their back when they least expected them.
Her emerald eyes, whose pupils usually were closer to the ones of reptiles, seemed to widen as Ningguang’s golden figure moved forward and her copper fingerguards tinkled in the air.
Yelan didn’t utter a word, choosing instead to stare in silence, apart from her steady breath that at the very least could tell the Tianquan that her friend– her employee– hers only– was still in the realm of the living. Ningguang did not move closer. She knew better. Instead, she spoke gently, her hands folded before her with careful restraint.
"You haven't returned to Liyue Harbor in some time," she said, her voice even, almost warm. “Something must have happened. If you’re thinking of stepping away… I would understand.”
There was no accusation in her tone, yet a thread of unease trembled beneath the surface. A quiet, unfamiliar fear–not for herself, but for the woman in front of her. One that only if Yelan was truly there, would be able to tell. Ningguang knew very well the dangers of the abyss, it was the reason she trusted Yelan and Yelan alone to carry on with said tasks. She heard the stories of what toll it can take on the human body and mind. How it can wrapt mortals and illuminated beasts alike.
She had seen the diagrams of what the corruption could do to organs, how they could blacken, liquefy, even melt under prolonged exposure. She wondered, bitterly, if it could melt her heart as well.
“But it’s alright,” she continued, voice steadier now. “I work with those I trust… and I trust those I work with. If you’re out here searching for a way forward, then that’s enough for me.”
Her eyes lingered on Yelan’s unmoving form.
“Aggression, defense– those are just tools. Methods. They’re not what define us. Not what defines you .”
Silence followed. Heavy. Suffocating.
The creak of floorboards never came. Not even the rustle of cloth. Only the whispering mountain wind, rattling the frame of the hut like a dying breath. Ningguang found herself thinking, absurdly, of old Mondstadt legends of the God of Breeze and Hope, who was thought of by believers as a courier of the souls of the departed, how anywhere the wind blew would go back to their embrace and carried to their home to rest for all eternity. One of their operatives hailed from that land.
Then finally something shifted.
Yelan’s lips parted, her voice rasping out like a blade drawn too slowly from its sheath. Hoarse. Hollow.
“We made a mistake.”
Ningguang’s spine stiffened, ever so slightly. She said nothing.
“We never should’ve involved ordinary people in this,” Yelan continued, barely above a whisper. “Not in what we do.”
Ningguang’s brow furrowed. She tilted her head, eyes narrowing just slightly as she almost felt the sound of a cord tensing in the distance. Her voice, when it came, was quiet but still sharp.
"Ordinary people?"
Even as Ningguang was formulating thoughts, a flash of blue shot towards her, stopping as it passed her by less than a finger from her very eyes, it cutted the wind before pushing without protest the strands of her silver hair back and the talisman in her head moving back and forth rapidly almost as the rate of her own heart.
In a display of great control from the archer, the arrow shattered into pearls of water forming into the shape of a double triquetra, which broke into glistening shards of light before even touching the ground.
She saw Yelan walking up to face her, her once fine and elegant legs as if she was the embodiment of a xuanwen beast as she walked without the bare sound were now moving unlike the other, her boot heels clicking roughly in the floor beneath them, a bow in hand, blood dripping down from her fingertips.
One could only imagine the days and nights of grueling training in archery Yelan had gone through for all her fingers to bleed still wet and fresh, wounds both new and old reopened by the strain in her hands.
Yelan raised her bow in silence, her green eyes narrowing against the wind. Mount Hulao loomed in the distance, its jagged silhouette half-shrouded by drifting mist. She said nothing, only aimed up the skies. A subtle shift in posture, the graceful tension of muscle and will, but in it was her answer to Ningguang. A wordless declaration.
The bowstring tightened with a slow exhale, her fingers steady, precise. For a heartbeat, the world seemed to cut all air in expectancy, as Ningguang seemed to ignore she was the one left breathless, thinking of the world once again like something meant for the two of them. Then she released.
The arrow leapt forth like a spear of judgment, laced with Hydro energy so potent it shimmered in the daylight. It shot upward at an impossible speed, carving through the clouds with a flash of raw brilliance, as though it sought to tear a wound in the very heavens. The air cracked behind it, chasing its wake.
Fine threads of light and water, ones that illuminated Ningguang’s gaze in a way that she could only recall being described once in her life with the records of a great meteor shower that were since adopted to the romanticism of fantastical folktales. Imagination frolicing in the symmetrical starry sky. A fleeting passing moment, an easy to miss view in the sky’s edge, one that would still remain grounded in her mind, she was sure of it.
Then something stirred.
As though the mountain itself had awakened, the stillness broke. A deep, primal growl rumbled through the distant peaks, and from the hidden veins of water within those ancient stones, a surge erupted. Glistening torrents rose skyward—not in a flow, but in a flurry. Hundreds of shimmering, liquid arrows spiraled upward in a majestic dance, each one mirroring the single bolt Yelan had unleashed.
They met her arrow high in the sky, converging like a heavenly ritual. And then, in a great burst of pressure and light, they collided.
Water exploded outward in a brilliant curtain, refracting moonlight into fractured shards of silver and blue. A sudden downpour followed, wild and free, as if the clouds themselves wept in awe. It was not a gentle rain, but a tempestuous squall. The scent of storm-washed earth flooded the air.
Ningguang did not flinch or move as the water soaked her whole, delicate silk qipao and stylized hair dropping wet. She stood beneath the deluge without raising an arm to shield herself, her eyes locked on Yelan, not the spectacle, not the water, but her . Even in the midst of such wonder, it was the woman who had summoned it who commanded her attention.
Then, it stopped. The rain slowed, softened, and faded into mist.
There was no rainbow. No butterflies fluttering through lightbeams. No moment of delicate, picturesque closure. Only a single, narrow pillar of light descending from the sky like a divine thread, untouched by the chaos that had come before.
It landed gently into Yelan’s outstretched hand as if it was what she was waiting for.
In the corner of her mind Ningguang felt her heart beat faster in jealousy thinking Were the Heavens the ones you dedicated your prowess to and not me? Should I present you with mysterious jewels from the sky so that you let me hold your hand without fear showing in your eyes?
Yelan lowered her gaze to the object now resting in her palm– a Vision, faintly glowing, as if newly reborn, her eyes trailing between disappointment and satisfaction. A look Ningguang was familiar with, it was the look in her eyes when she herself was proven worth it by the eyes of heaven. She could have not seen it but was still sure of it, the moment she carefully picked that vision whose owner had passed away to the other side, grey, cold and lifeless as it exploded in a yellow golden light that ruined her plans to earn anything to quiet the buzz of hunger in her stomach.
Years have gone by since then, now that disappointment was left behind as she became the Lady of the Jade Chamber, the sky palace kept afloat in the sky by the anti gravity minerals of their region, but her thirst for ownership and claim hasn’t abandoned her, simply it developed and matured as one would expect from a child turning into an adult. Now Ningguang could barely contain the urge she felt to take Yelan’s hand and carry her to her chambers and hold her after missing her presence for a month by now.
Excuse me, do you sell the moon here? was the code to enter her palace and while no moon was in her hands to sell she felt as if Yelan was the closest being there was to it.
She stepped forward at last, her hand curling gently around Yelan’s arm, not enough to cause pain, but with a deliberate steadiness that made her intentions clear. The warmth beneath her fingertips was real, like the ground beneath their feet, or at least is what she had hoped for.
Yelan turned her head slightly, the corner of her lips tilting upward in a subtle motion that could have meant anything from amusement, caution to acceptance. But her eyes remained distant, opaque as river stones. It was always like this with her. Even now, even here, Yelan was an enigma suspended between presence and absence.
And yet Ningguang felt no frustration. Only a quiet ache, familiar now, like the hum of jade under pressure. She knew what it meant to desire something untouchable, not out of vanity, but because its orbit intersected her own with such precision it felt destined.
She knew very well that while their routines would follow up as normally as they always were in any observants eyes, Ningguang could feel the change in Yelan’s posture, she wouldn’t be the same person she was a month ago, the moment she left Tianquan’s chambers with the scent of sandalwood still chasing behind her. But she was still her orchid, growing beneath the chasm walls, clinging to the ground at her side, as harsh and inadequate the environment was, and no matter what restrictions of gifts the heavens descended upon her, of how the Night Mother beckons her from the depths.
She could trust her pride as the Eclipse Star that Yelan would still seek her light no matter what.