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Sunlight bled through trees. Keqing squinted every time the light hit her eyes where it broke through the canopy of leaves. She scanned left, right, and left again, thumbing the soft leather hilt of the sword on her hip.
Keqing’s feet knew the way, so she allowed her mind to wander as she continued on her patrol. The forest was teeming with noise—insects humming and buzzing, the rustle of feathers as birds took flight—so Keqing knew, instinctively, that all was well.
Liyue’s forests hadn’t always been so peaceful. It was only within the last few generations that the Liyue hunters had managed to carve out a home for their people in the wilderness that was aggressively alive.
In the daytime, food was abundant: the crops flourished without any extra work, and their traps were always full. But at night . . .
Keqing paused mid-step. The air around her had cooled considerably; condensation beaded on her scaled bracers as she brought her arm up to look. The forest had gone quiet, straining Keqing’s senses the longer the silence stretched.
During the night hunts, the miasma that crept like a suffocating fog was unmistakable and impossible to miss with the way it lodged itself in every hunter’s throat and lungs. Keqing sniffed the air and smelled nothing but a sweet coolness, so, cautiously, she pressed forward.
Keqing continued a handful of paces, her head on a swivel, when the wind shifted. It hit her like a physical impact: the smell of blood, so rich that Keqing could taste the iron on her tongue, and it was disturbingly, cloyingly sweet—like rotting flowers.
Quickly and carefully, Keqing followed the scent trail. It veered off from her patrol route and deeper into the woods where the shadows grew long and grasping. The wards woven into Keqing’s clothes and armor protected her from the worst of it, but as the temperature continued to drop, the cold started to sting the exposed skin on her face.
She winced and rubbed her cheeks, peering into the unnatural darkness. Keqing could barely see, but straight ahead, there was a big, blue . . . something. All she could make out was a lump of matted fur, what looked like a limb or tail tangled in a hunter’s abandoned trap, and a pair of blood-red horns protruding from the mass.
When she got close enough to look, she saw that it was still breathing. Keqing’s hand left the hilt of her sword and instead reached for the bow slung over her back. She couldn’t quite tell what kind of monster it was—the bright blue fur was unlike anything she’d ever seen before—but the curved and sharp, black and red horns looked too similar to a mitachurl’s for her to risk coming any closer. Keqing could kill it before investigating.
All around her, the forest held its breath. Even the blue monster’s labored breaths were muted; Keqing could only see the rise and fall of its body, too fast to be normal.
Keqing nocked an arrow and drew her bow. The hissing rasp of wood on wood broke the stillness like a ripple through water. The monster’s eye blinked open. Keqing’s bow creaked softly as she steadied her aim, and the bloodshot, violet eye flickered over to her.
A hunter. Ganyu had never seen one up close, but this one stuck out like a sore thumb. Physically, the hunter was half-hidden behind the foliage. Magically, she was glowing from head to toe, adorned in trophies: the scales on her armor, the feathers on her arrow, even the hidden dagger on her thigh had been fashioned from a fang that belonged to a mystical beast. Ganyu’s lip curled.
Ganyu knew that the trap that held her tail had been placed by one of them. Perhaps it was this very hunter; they rarely pushed so far out into the forest. The human hunters were defensive of the borders of their burgeoning civilization, and anything that ventured close was killed indiscriminately.
Ganyu had just managed to stem her bleeding when this hunter came bumbling through the woods. The magic in Ganyu’s blood was already attracting abyssal demons; she could sense their energy growing stronger the longer she was trapped. But now, with this hunter glowing like a beacon, an encounter was inevitable.
When the hunter drew her bow, Ganyu barely noticed. The killing intent coming from the opposite direction was overwhelming, making all of her hair stand on end.
They were here.
Keqing adjusted her aim right as she loosed her arrow, sinking her shot into a monster that had more teeth than it did body. Three more slithered out of the shadows, their long claws grazing the grass as they sprinted forward.
These monsters she recognized: rifthound whelps, which were easy enough to deal with. Keqing felt for her enchanted arrows, recognizing the unique fletching by touch as she didn’t have time to look. The second arrow exploded a whelp upon impact, and the third pinned another one to a tree as it writhed and struggled to dematerialize.
Just one more whelp—Keqing scanned the area and was startled when she realized that the blue monster had managed to rouse itself. It was much bigger than she’d thought, standing a whole head above her.
Keqing could see now that its tail was lodged firmly in the trap, faintly glowing lines of magic woven into blue fur. The last whelp was dancing just beyond the monster’s limited range before it lunged forward and sank its fangs deep into the monster’s shoulder. Immediately, the smell of unnaturally sweet blood filled the air, and two more whelps slunk out of the shadowy woods.
The whelps weren’t interested in her at all, Keqing realized. The whelps were here for it, that strange blue monster that had its back turned to Keqing like it didn’t care why she was here. In all her years as a hunter, Keqing had never seen the monsters turn on each other, but this pack of whelps was clearly out for the blue one’s blood.
Keqing pushed through the undergrowth to get closer but stopped abruptly when she saw that the small clearing was littered with abandoned traps. The whelps floated harmlessly over them, but Keqing had no way of knowing which ones were still active. She was forced to stand back and fire arrow after arrow until her quiver grew worryingly light and, finally, Keqing and the blue monster were the only two left standing.
But Keqing sensed that this tenuous peace wouldn’t last for long. The monster was panting, shimmery blood matting its pale blue fur. It gave Keqing a long, inscrutable look before collapsing with a thud that was far too light for its size.
Keqing picked her way over, navigating carefully around the camouflage traps until she stood before the monster. For all her hours studying and maintaining her bestiary, she still couldn’t recognize what it was. Keqing crouched and brushed her fingertips against what she thought must be its forehead. The fur was incredibly soft and almost cold to the touch.
Keeping a close eye on the unconscious monster, Keqing slowly stepped around to take a look at its caught tail. The make of the trap was worryingly familiar; why was it placed so deep in the forest, so far away from the regular patrols? Keqing made a mental note to address this with her captain when she returned.
She set her things aside as she focused on breaking the seals woven into the magical trap. These were class-standard runes—Keqing herself could’ve been the one who wrote them. Keqing frowned and shook her head, not wanting to get distracted by speculation. Thread by thread, the trap snapped open.
The furry blue tail twitched in Keqing’s hand. Startled, Keqing glanced at the monster and froze when two violet eyes met her gaze, open and unblinking.
“I’m going to free you now,” Keqing said. She cleared her throat, feeling awkward as the monster gave no sign that it heard or understood her. To emphasize her words, Keqing shattered a few more seals. The threads were growing thinner and thinner; they broke easily beneath her fingernail.
She wasn’t sure if this was a good idea, but leaving the monster like this wouldn’t be fair, hurt by a trap created and abandoned by one of Keqing’s peers, vulnerable to the elements and to the rifthounds that were sure to return.
When Keqing shattered the last seal and the knot slipped loose, the blue tail whipped out of her grasp. She hissed at the sudden sting on her palm and shook out her hand, but where Keqing expected to see a friction burn instead looked like frostnip.
The monster was gone. Despite its injured state, it moved faster than Keqing could track. She braced herself for a tackle or teeth at her throat, but nothing hit her, bit, or scratched. Keqing spun in a circle as she rose to her feet. It had disappeared without a trace.
Keqing scratched her head. At the very least, she’d expected to see some spots of blood leading in whatever direction it had run.
In any case, Keqing would have an interesting report for her captain and a new entry to her bestiary when she returned home. She looked around for her things and realized too late that her bow and quiver, which she’d put down earlier, were both missing.
To her left came the unmistakable sound of a bow being drawn. Keqing’s sword was in her hand before the arrow was loosed.
The forest had darkened considerably. From the time spent on patrol to now, it should only be late afternoon, but the shadows were drawn to the taste of blood and recent carnage. Between the trees, Keqing could barely make out a pair of hands that looked strong and steady on Keqing’s bow as they pointed a nocked arrow at her.
At this distance, Keqing was confident that she could react fast enough to cut it down. Probably. But Keqing was still in the clearing surrounded by traps—there was no leeway for her to dodge or run.
“Hold your fire!” Keqing shouted, but before she finished speaking, she was already moving at the swish of an arrow cutting through the air. Keqing managed to deflect the arrow on the flat of her blade, but the shaft exploded into splinters.
Having narrowly avoided an eyeful of wood, Keqing scowled and navigated quickly to the edge of the clearing. She took the shortest route possible through the traps so she could dive into the cover of the trees, but no other arrows came. Maybe they ran out; Keqing didn’t have very many left after shooting down the rifthounds.
Keqing knew better than to linger after that and darted in the direction she’d originally come from. She still needed to finish her patrol, then from there, she could reflect on what—or who—she’d just encountered.
A rustle in her bedroom woke Keqing up in the dead of night. She blinked up at her ceiling then reached over to her bedside table to turn on her gas lamp. With a hiss, the room was illuminated in a soft, flickering glow.
There was a woman perched on the edge of Keqing’s desk. Keqing blinked again. The woman had wavy blue hair that curled at the ends, and she was paging slowly through Keqing’s bestiary.
“This is wrong, you know,” she said, not once looking up.
Keqing was taken aback. “Excuse me?”
“Your classifications. They don’t make any sense at all.”
Keqing frowned and sat up in her bed. “I beg to differ. Who are you? How did you get in here?”
The woman ignored her questions and gestured with a tilt of her head at the items propped against the wall. “I brought you your things.” With a growing chill, Keqing recognized her bow and quiver. Her fists clenched at her covers.
“I know you have a tracking spell on them,” the woman continued. “I can read your magical signature.” Her violet eyes trailed slowly around the room, lingering on some of Keqing’s things before landing on her.
Keqing’s brows furrowed. “So you found me. Do you need help? Are the rifthounds still after you?”
The woman’s expression cooled, and she took a step back. “I didn’t need your help. You should stay out of the forest.”
An incredulous laugh bubbled out of Keqing. “Are you serious? Those monsters would’ve killed you if I hadn’t been there,” she said. Keqing didn’t miss the way the woman stiffened at the word monsters.
“Thank you for saving my life,” the blue-haired woman said as she inched toward the window—which was shut, Keqing noted. “But don’t do it again.” Then she twisted and lunged, shifting into an opaque blue cloud that slipped through the cracks of Keqing’s window.
The frame rattled for a second before Keqing was left alone with only the smell of sweet flowers and a cool mist that lingered in her bedroom. She rose from her bed and slowly walked over to her desk, peering at her bestiary that the woman had left open.
Keqing looked down at her crude drawing of the blue monster she’d met earlier in the woods. Four legs and a tail extended from a formless body with black horns and violet eyes marking its head. Fluffy blue fur curled every which way.
Keqing had scrawled her meager notes, bullet points that read large, fast, and cold – frost magic? Above the drawing, she’d written ice monster, but Keqing’s handwriting had been crossed out.
A neat and unfamiliar script penned some unfamiliar words underneath: illuminated beast. Keqing glanced at her window. Outside was pitch-black; the monsters would be roaming, always testing the boundaries protected by the Liyue hunters.
Part of Keqing was itching to join the night hunt, but hunters who were scheduled to patrol during the day were forced to sit out at night. Now, it gave Keqing too much time to think.
That woman had told Keqing that her classifications were wrong. Illuminated beast? Keqing had never heard that phrase before. But there was one more thing that bothered her, a footnote added like an afterthought right below Keqing’s drawing.
Figure 1, it read. Keqing huffed. How cheeky. The next word was vaguely familiar, piquing the farthest recesses of Keqing’s memory. She must’ve heard or read it before, a long, long time ago.
Qilin.