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Winter had returned to Liyue the way it always did, slipping in slow and uneven: mornings cold enough to freeze the eaves, afternoons bright with sun, all the hours in between laced with a wind that seemed to carry something old and echoing from the peaks. In those months since autumn’s retreat, Kaedehara Kazuha had slowly become acquainted with the way winter settled into Wangshu’s bones. He learned the trick of the damp in the straw mats, the sweet burn of preserved osmanthus in heated wine, and how the frost would gather in feathered lace across the pond before the inn, even as the river below stayed restless and alive.
He and Xiao occasionally lived there now, more or less, though “lived” was a word Kazuha hesitated to use for what they did. He preferred “drifted,” or sometimes “lingered,” as they had made a pattern of traveling for weeks at a time, wandering the roads and forests and hills, always together, and returning once in a while to the familiar slope of roof and the broad, welcoming planks of the balcony overlooking Dihua Marsh. The lady who often frequented the inn’s second balcony called them “the ghost and his red shadow,” and Kazuha, for all his pride, had not found a better name for the way they moved through the world: a duet in two keys, one sharp and bright, the other always an octave lower, almost silent, always present.
There had been other places in the months since Inazuma, whole territories and nations unfolding in Xiao’s wake like the petals of a qingxin at dusk. They saw Mondstadt in the spring, when the city was rimed not with frost but with dandelion fluff. They watched the storm-lashed coast of Ritou from the decks of a ship, nothing but wind and salt and restless sky for days; Xiao grew uneasy with the shifting motion, his face unreadable, gaze often fixed on the gulls that wheeled above the mast. Kazuha noticed, sometimes, Xiao’s eyes lingered on the birds for long, silent stretches, the longing for the sky in his posture clear even if no words were spoken. They wandered the winding streets and glittering canals of Fontaine, the air sharp with the scent of rain and machinery, Xiao pausing now and then on the bridges to watch the water cascade below, his reflection shimmering beside Kazuha’s own. They passed through Natlan, where fire danced in every festival and the earth vibrated with drums and song, Xiao watching from sharp, paint spilled cliffs, wary but fascinated by the wild joy in every movement. They saw Sumeru’s empty sand-wastes, where nothing but the wind ever changed and the sky at noon glared down with all the hunger of a predator. Xiao, who had once ruled the sky, stood very still in the sand and said, “I have never seen a place so open.” Kazuha, listening, thought that Xiao had not meant the land at all, but himself.
Once, with mist rising beneath their feet, Xiao had carried Kazuha high above the Sea of Clouds, the peaks of Guyun and Jueyun Karst breaking through the vapor like forgotten islands. The world below had disappeared into shifting white, and the only sound was the beating of Xiao’s wings and the wind rushing past. For a time, there was nothing but open sky and the invisible tether between them, and Kazuha had wondered if this was how freedom felt, weightless, endless, and quiet as breath.
In every new place, the world seemed raw and strange to Xiao. He was, Kazuha realized, almost childlike in his approach: careful, cautious, rarely trusting his senses, as if each taste and texture might be a trap set for him by some ancient enemy. He ate his first Mondstadt apple with suspicion, then astonished delight. He watched the windmills for hours, mesmerized by their slow, endless spin. In Inazuma, he stood transfixed beneath the thunder sakura on Serai Island and did not move for the better part of an afternoon, silent, watching the light filter pink and gold through the storm-battered branches. In Sumeru, he knelt in the shade of colossal rainforest trees, fingertips brushing moss and ancient roots, listening to the wind as the jungle pulsed with a music he’d never known, startled by the riot of birdcalls, the dappled gold-green light, and the taste of sweet, spiced tea pressed into his hands by a merchant with a ready smile. In Fontaine, he stood at the rail of a canal bridge, silent as the city’s ornate clockwork chimed the hour, eyes wide as glass as he watched a pair of dancers whirl through a mist of rain, each step splashing silver over the cobblestones. In Natlan, he lingered at the edge of a firelit festival, the air hot with drums and laughter, and let a child paint his hand in bright ochre, the pigment staining his skin like a temporary blessing. Kazuha wanted to record every one of these moments, to paint them in poems or instill them into memory, but found each time that the words fell short, as if he was trying to trap wind in a basket.
Still, it was Liyue that always called them back. In winter, the world outside the inn grew so silent that some mornings Kazuha thought they were the only two people left alive. The sky was a wash of colorless blue, the mountains hunched like sleeping animals, and in the hush of dawn, every sound, every breath, every shift of sleeve was amplified as if the sound alone could break the dawn open.
Kazuha stood on the balcony one morning, watching the slow-motion collapse of mist as it rolled off the marsh and burned away in the slant of new sun. He felt, for the first time since last autumn, the premonition of snow in the air. It was a dry cold, the kind that knifed through the ribs but left the fingers and ears untouched, and it made his thoughts slow and bright, his mind returning over and over to the slow-rolling days that had delivered him to this moment. He listened to the echo of Xiao’s voice, the way he spoke with perfect attention, and thought of all the things the two of them had learned about each other in the long, burnished space of dilatory months.
He realized he missed the snow.
Kazuha drew in a breath, deep and cold, and for a moment, let himself vanish into the memory of his first winter in exile, alone on a plank deck at an abandoned shrine overlooking Narukami, watching the world blanketed so thick and white it seemed the gods themselves had drawn a curtain over every ugliness and every old hurt. He had sat there, shivering and sleepless, and thought, if only the world could stay this clean, this quiet, this new. If only it could stay this way forever.
A light creak at the door pulled him from the memory, and he turned to see Xiao slip out onto the balcony, booted feet silent on the wood. He was already dressed, the tunic pressed close to the body, streamers tied off at hip and around the waist, the long length of sleeve drifting in the wind, the tips of dark hair catching the early light and flaring teal. His face was as it always was; placid, unreadable, with a caution that Kazuha suspected might never fully leave him. He watched the horizon for a long moment, eyes narrowed as if searching for some old threat. Then he said, “The wind is different today.”
Kazuha smiled. “It is. It smells like snow.” He tilted his back towards the marsh, a hand on the banister. “Winter has been my favorite since I was a kid. The pink sky. The drifting flakes. I used to sit by my father just inside the shoji and watch the snow fall. I have always loved how it makes the world go quiet for a moment.”
Xiao tilted his head, the gesture so avian that Kazuha was tempted to mimic it. “Quiet,” he echoed quietly, nodding as if tasting the word. His gaze drifted out over the marsh, thoughtful. “When the snow comes, it covers everything. Sometimes I look down from the karsts and think of cranes flying low, watch how the world turns white and bright.” He paused for a moment. Kazuha listened to him find the words in the wind. “Sometimes it almost seems too perfect to be real.”
Kazuha hummed, remembering the untouched white of his childhood, how he’d stand at the edge and marvel for hours. “It’s true,” he nodded. “I miss it, sometimes. The vastness of it. The silence.” He watched the way Xiao listened, not just his words, but to the world itself, to the way the wind moved or how the boards creaked under his weight. Xiao was always listening. It was a habit Kazuha envied, even as he sometimes mourned the reasons for it.
Xiao was silent for a while, then turned to look at Kazuha. The sun picked out a thin line of gold at the edge of his iris, made it seem almost molten. If Kazuha were to name a thing most dear to him in his short life on this world, it would be that gaze. “If you miss it, we could… go,” Xiao offered. “If you like.” The hesitation in his voice was no longer restraint, but the careful courtesy of someone who had lived too long in the world without ever asking for anything. Someone still getting used to the idea of being able to offer something without having to pay a price for it.
Kazuha blinked. “Go where?”
Xiao looked up, as if measuring the distance. “Dragonspine. I have not been in many years, but… it is always winter there. I could take you.”
Kazuha had seen Dragonspine once, when he was younger. He remembered only the savage beauty of it, the way the snow buried every hint of color, how the wind could cut a man in half and then scatter his bones to the sea. The mountain had been inaccessible then, but he had heard it had quieted now, the wind calmer, the snowfall less frantic. In Xiao’s voice, the idea of going there was not a dare, or even a proposal; it was a gift. In everything he extended to Kazuha, there was always a piece of himself, handed over with all the care of an heirloom blade. Kazuha had sworn to never take a single one for granted.
He nodded. “Yes. I would like that.”
Xiao did not smile, not really, but the tension at the corner of his mouth eased, and for a moment he looked like a boy unburdened, a child in the brief space before want hardens into need. He reached for Kazuha’s hand, bare fingers sliding over his with the ease of habit, and then the world collapsed around them, a single soft pulse, and they were gone.
---
The wind on Dragonspine was not like any wind Kazuha had known before.
It used to scream. Even in the lull between gusts, it hummed at the base of the skull, a pitch so high it made his teeth ache. The air had always been thinner here, the sun a wan, coin-sized smudge behind a sky more grey than blue. The world was nothing but white and black, the sharp edge of rock thrusting up through snowdrifts deep enough to bury a man, the trees stripped to bone, every branch coated in rime.
They stood in a small clearing near the summit in a cold, yet gentle breeze, in the shelter of a crumbled cave mouth half-obscured by fallen snow. The cave was marked by a handful of dead pines, their trunks charred and split from some old violence, and at the center of the clearing, a single slab of stone protruded, dark and glossy, like the back of a drowned animal.
Xiao stood perfectly still at the edge of the stone, hair swaying sideways by the wind, gaze fixed on the horizon as if nothing else existed in the world. He wore no cloak, and the cold seemed to slide off him without effect, though Kazuha could feel it stinging at his cheeks, nipping at the tips of his ears and the spaces between his fingers.
For a long time, neither of them spoke. The snow fell in silent, slow-motion sheets, soft and perpetual, and the sound of it became a second kind of quiet, so complete it felt holy.
Kazuha let the hush fill him. He breathed out, and the exhale froze in the air, a ghostly ribbon unspooling and then vanishing. He watched the slow swirl of snow, the way it settled on Xiao’s shoulders and in the dips of his hair, and felt something settle in him, too: an old sorrow, bright and blue, the echo of memories not entirely his own.
He turned, studying the place. Even without the wind, he would have felt the weight of its history. The air here was thick with regret. Not just the regret of loss, but the regret of things never given, never spoken, a million silences stacked up and left to petrify. He stepped forward, letting the snow crunch underfoot, and brushed his hand along the side of the cave, feeling the way the stone had been shaped and then broken, as if someone had tried to carve a place into it and then changed their mind halfway through.
“It is a sad place, isn’t it,” he said, almost to himself.
Xiao looked over, the movement slow, as if it took effort to break from the horizon. For a moment, there was no expression at all, only the impassive stillness of a statue, then a subtle confusion, as if Xiao had never considered the idea that places might feel things. “Sad?” he echoed.
Kazuha nodded, snow collecting in his hair, melting down the side of his face. “The wind here… it carries so much pain. Old pain. It’s different from the storms in Inazuma, or even the morning fog in Liyue. It feels… unfinished, almost. Like, there is something waiting.”
Xiao was quiet for a long time. He turned back to the horizon, searching the clouds as if hoping for an answer there. “This mountain is... asleep,” he said finally. “It is the grave of a dragon. Durin. He was not a creature of this land, he was made of darkness, born from an alchemist’s ambition, and sent to lay waste to Mondstadt. Barbatos and the Dragon of the East fought him atop this very peak. They tore him from the sky, and his body fell here, poisoning the earth and snow. But the heart still beats below the ice.” His gaze turned towards Liyue, to the silver silhouette of Jueyun Karst in the distance. “The Adepti would sometimes hear its voice when the snow was thin enough to let sound travel. An echo, deep and slow, as if the whole mountain could speak.” He spoke with the flat affect of a man reading from a plaque, the facts neatly filed and then set aside. “Even today, the people below fear the Shadow Dragon.”
Kazuha listened, the story soaking into him. He traced the wind, feeling for the dragon’s heart, for the pulse of something vast and ancient, but what he felt most strongly was not the remnant of Durin but a different kind of memory, something more human, more immediate, that colored the air with its presence. Its familiarity.
He stepped closer to Xiao, watching as the wind tore a curl of hair loose and drove it across the sharp angle of his cheek. “It is not just the dragon,” Kazuha said, gently. “You have been here too.”
Xiao blinked, the words catching him off guard. For a moment, his guard slipped, and Kazuha saw the old pain flicker across his face, the pain he never named, never let out into the air. Then Xiao drew in a breath, slow and precise, and let it out again, watching the plume of vapor as if it might contain all the answers he lacked.
“I used to come here,” he said, the words brittle as ice. “During the archon war, before the god who… owned me… was destroyed, he would hide here, in this mountain. I was left to guard the entrance. Decades passed. Nothing changed. I watched the world turn, watched the stars move across the sky, and tried to remember who I was before.” He closed his eyes, the lashes so dark against his skin that it was almost shocking. “There were years when the snow would pile so high I could not see the sky. I would eat it, when I was hungry. It never helped.”
Kazuha listened, heart thudding, feeling Xiao’s past more in his bones than in his mind. He understood what Xiao was not saying: that he had been left here, abandoned, his only company the dead wind and the endless white, years and years of nothing but his own silence for comfort. It was not the pain of violence, or the sharp ache of a wound, but the slow, suffocating pain of absence, the kind that hollows out a person so completely, all that remains is the echo.
He reached for Xiao’s hand, gloveless and pale, and squeezed it once, hard enough to remind both of them that they were here now, together, alive. “I am sorry,” he said, though it felt like a foolish, meaningless thing to say. “I did not wish to make you remember such painful memories.”
Xiao looked at him, and this time, the confusion was deeper. “It is not painful,” he said, after a long moment. “Not anymore. I… liked it here. When I was alone. It was better than being… down there.” He nodded towards Liyue, far below, invisible in the storm. “There, I had to fight. Thousands would die in my hands. Ten thousand dreams taken away… Here, I could rest. I could… exist without killing. All that was asked of me was to keep watch. Even if it hurt, I could exist.” He flexed his fingers, the motion stilted, then turned his hand to catch Kazuha’s. “I was not a weapon here. Only a ghost.”
Kazuha’s eyes stung, but he did not let himself cry. Instead, he tried to memorize every detail of the moment, the way Xiao’s breath clouded in the cold, the way the wind, for all its violence, seemed to soften when it moved through his hair, how even here, at the edge of the world, Xiao could find something gentle in all the darkness of the world.
What sort of eternity was this, to be forged in violence and emerge still so gentle?
He thought, then, of all the things he would change, if he could. He thought of the dead god who had left Xiao here, thought of the Geo Archon who even now claimed Xiao’s loyalty with invisible threads, and felt a hot, wild anger burn in his chest, sharp enough that for a moment, he worried it might set the air alight.
But the only thing he said was, “I wish you were free.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Kazuha, breathing around the pain in his heart, Xiao, listening.
“Your anger feels like a storm,” Xiao said eventually, very softly. His voice was a thread, thin and low. “The last time I felt it was… when I left you, at Yaoguang.” He paused, as if the words had snagged in his throat. “When I am there, I can still feel the wind’s bite from then.”
Kazuha couldn’t help the laugh that escaped, the sound small and unsteady. “It was a bad day,” he admitted. “But the world gave you back to me, in the end. So perhaps the storm was worth it.”
Xiao did not reply, but Kazuha could feel his hand tense in his own, could see the color creeping back into his skin, the faintest flush at his cheeks from the cold. He watched the way Xiao’s gaze tracked the movement of snow, the way he seemed to measure each flake, as if they might be counting down the seconds until the mountain would open up and devour him again.
Kazuha turned to the sky, staring at the distant blur of Celestia, barely visible through the shifting clouds. He wondered, as he often did, what the gods saw when they looked down. If they saw the people, or only the wars. If they saw suffering as a tragedy, or as the inevitable consequence of living. “Those who govern the laws of this world care so little for what is right,” he said, the words leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.
Xiao stepped forward, the movement abrupt, and stood in front of Kazuha, blocking his view of Celestia. He looked up, amber eyes clear, and said, “You have already broken the laws of this world once to make it right.” His tone was not accusatory, but quiet, almost awed, as if the act itself was too large to look at directly. “You made a place for me, even when fate demanded I had none.”
Kazuha could not speak, could only reach up, both hands cupping Xiao’s face, the skin of his cheek cold but alive, the faint pulse beneath so precious it made his hands shake. He pressed his forehead to Xiao’s, breath mingling in the brief, bright space between them, and whispered, “You deserve so much more than what you were given. Such an unimaginably long life… full of so much pain. Sometimes…” He trailed off, the old sadness rising, but he forced it down and finished. “Sometimes I wish you were born human. Just a boy who could play in the rice fields and throw snowballs at his friends. Who never had to fight. Who never had to hurt.”
Xiao’s eyes widened, and for a second, he looked truly startled, as if the idea had never once occurred to him. He made a small, surprised sound, then said, “I remember very little of it, but… I recall making balls of snow and throwing them, when I was very small.” He frowned, as if the memory was just out of reach, but did not pull away. “I think I liked it.”
Kazuha smiled, the cold numbing his lips, but the feeling in his chest so bright he thought it might melt him from the inside. “Little Xiao,” he repeated, and the words felt like the warmth of a pyre. Then, without thinking, he straightened and gripped Xiao by the shoulders, the motion sudden enough that Xiao tensed in his grasp.
“Let’s do it now,” Kazuha said.
Xiao blinked. “What?”
“Snowball fight.” Kazuha grinned, and before Xiao could answer, he bent, scooping up a handful of snow. It packed easily in his palm, the cold biting but clean, and he shaped it into a perfect sphere, then lobbed it gently at Xiao’s chest.
The snow hit, burst, and left a white splotch across the ivory of Xiao’s tunic. Xiao stared at it, nonplussed, then looked up at Kazuha, who was already bent over, scooping another. “I don’t remember getting hit when I was small,” Xiao said, head tilting to the side. His eyes were brighter than Kazuha had ever seen them. A smile was cresting at the corner of his lips.
“Not very Vigilant of you,” Kazuha shot back, laughing, and tossed another.
This time, Xiao sidestepped, moving with impossible speed. The snowball missed, struck the dead pine, and exploded into a flurry. When Kazuha straightened, he saw Xiao twenty paces away, already crouched behind a rock, another snowball forming in his hand.
They played for a long time. At first, Kazuha complained that Xiao was cheating, blinking from place to place, always appearing exactly where the snowballs would not be. Then he realized that he could sense Xiao’s movements in the wind, an eddy here, a shift of pressure there, and so he started aiming not for where Xiao was, but where he felt he would be. The first time he hit, the snowball struck Xiao square in the back, and Xiao let out a surprised huh, more animal than human. Kazuha doubled over, laughing so hard he thought he might cough up a lung.
Then it was real, Xiao playing to win, eyes sharp, snowballs coming fast and accurate. They spun and dodged and tumbled, the world around them nothing but motion and laughter and the sting of cold across their faces. At some point, Kazuha forgot about the mountain, about the gods, about the ache in his chest. There was only this: the rush of air, the sound of Xiao’s footsteps, the small, involuntary sounds he made every time he landed a hit or dodged one, the shape of his body alive and bright in the blur of snow.
It ended as all such things must, Xiao appearing behind Kazuha, breath hot on the side of his neck, hands at his shoulders. Kazuha spun, tried to twist free, but the movement only brought them both crashing to the ground, a tumble of limbs and laughter and snow everywhere, cold soaking through the layers, the air sharp and raw in his throat.
Kazuha found himself half-pinned, Xiao’s arms around him, his own hand buried in a fistful of Xiao’s hair, snow packed into the roots. They lay like that for a moment, the wind still above, the sky vast and indifferent, the world reduced to nothing but the warmth of their bodies in the cold, and the way Xiao was looking at him, lips parted, eyes wide.
“You are always so warm,” Xiao said, voice reverent, almost a whisper.
Kazuha did not answer, only pulled him closer, burying his face in the hollow between Xiao’s shoulder and throat, breathing deep. He tightened his grip, his arms closing around Xiao as if to shield him from the whole wind-ravaged range. He shut his eyes, listening to the quick, soft huff of Xiao’s breath against his collar, and let the world shrink to the press of their bodies, the thrum of blood, the snow soaking cold through the side of his haori, but his chest blooming with a heat that outlasted fire. He thought of that day in the rime of his childhood home, the white silence so total that it felt like eternity, the way every ugly thing in the world was hidden under the snow, at least for a little while. He wanted, in that moment, to gather Xiao up and drag him back to that small, bright world, to the shoji and the futon and the safe hush of his father’s voice, to give him all the small comforts he had been denied for a thousand years. He imagined a place where Xiao could sleep in, curled up tight in an irori-warmed room, with nothing to fear but the sound of snow drifting off the eaves. If he could have granted that to Xiao, he would have stormed the heavens and their iron laws a hundred times over. He was not a god, or even the shadow of one, but he was greedy with the life he had left. He would spend every scrap of it keeping Xiao here, stubbornly, selfishly, as if the world owed them both a little peace.
Xiao shifted his weight, the bulk of his body pressing down just enough to pin Kazuha but still so careful, as if afraid to leave a mark. He hovered there, the wind flattening his hair to his cheek, snow beading at his lashes. For several heartbeats, he only looked at Kazuha, the amber eyes so intent it warmed Kazuha from backbone to skin. The burn behind his ribs expanded until it pressed against his throat, and in that moment Xiao raised a hand and reached for his chest, palm flat against the fabric, just over the heart. The weight of the touch made Kazuha’s whole body still. The cold from Xiao’s hand seeped through the cloth, and then there was only the sensation of warmth, two sources overlapping, impossible to tell which belonged to whom.
“You wish I knew warmth,” Xiao said. He spoke so softly it barely reached over the wind, but the words cut through the layer of snow and memory. “Safety. Protection. But you do not see…” His hand pressed firmer, a gentle insistence, as if he was trying to memorize what beat beneath the skin. “I know them. Kazuha, they are here.”
Kazuha was not prepared for the ache that detonated inside him. He reached up and threaded his fingers into Xiao’s hair, tugging him down so their foreheads met until Xiao’s breath feathered out, warm and close. He could feel the heat of his skin through the thin shock of cold between them, a line of contrast that made him dizzy.
He exhaled, slow and steady, and let the thought settle without resistance. He had always believed infinity lived in the sky, in the drifting white of winter, in the silence that stretched without end. But it had never answered him. It had never stayed. This did. Warm beneath his hands, close enough to touch, close enough to keep. He tightened his hold, just slightly, and felt Xiao’s arms drawing tighter.
Kazuha closed his eyes. If this was what infinity felt like, then he would spend the rest of his life holding on.