Archive of Our Own

“So you’re telling me,” Illuga says slowly, “This is what you spent the entire day doing while I was at work?”

His flat looks like it lost a fight.

Cushions scattered across the floor, books stacked into what appears to be a defensive formation, and one of the kitchen chairs is upside down for reasons Illuga doesn’t want to know.

The culprit sits in the middle of it all. It’s like coming home to a pet, except it’s a pet ghost knight Illuga never agreed to keep. 

Under the lighting, the knight's outline wavers faintly, the edges of his hair and cape fading almost to transparency. Something about the shape of his face always seems faintly unfinished. 

“In my defence,” the ghost knight says with all the dignity of a disgraced royal, “The machine started first, and I was bored.”

Illuga stares at the vacuum with a knife stabbed through it. How did Lohen manage to do that?

“You declared war on a Roomba.”

“It started moving on its own,” Lohen narrows his eyes at the poor machine. “I know a threat when I see one. Like those mechs from Fontaine, always going haywire.”

“I feel like the point of this whole thing is that you were bored.”

“‘Cause I am,” Lohen throws his hands in the air, “Being a stay at home ghost is boring! Things fall through my hands whenever they feel like it. I can’t leave the vicinity of my dagger, and you refuse to bring me to work.”

He pulls a daggers out of nowhere and spins it smoothly in his fingers to emphasise his point.

Well, dagger is, after all, where this whole mess began, specifically, the poisoned relic wrapped in cloth on Illuga’s dining table.

If anyone asked Illuga how he got into this situation, he also doesn’t know.

He has no recollection of how he came into possession of said haunted dagger, nor does he know why it comes with a ghost.

What he knows, is that this self proclaimed knight’s name is Lohen, the man cannot sit still to save his life, and his approach to problem solving is very questionable in the current century.

The good news is Illuga is fairly certain Lohen means him no harm. The bad news is Illuga is apparently the only one can see him.

Lohen wants Illuga to find where he is sealed and free him. Since he cannot move the dagger himself, Illuga has somehow become both his unwilling companion and primary mode of transportation.

The headache in Illuga’s life tosses the dagger. His hand blurs for the briefest instant as the knife falls, then catches it again.

Illuga hates when he does that. Lohen knows.

After three months, Illuga has started to recognise it as a trick. A sharp, glittering distraction for both of them. Something dangerous enough to look at so they don’t have to look too closely at anything else.

Lohen is bored, yes. Frustrated, definitely. But underneath all the dramatics, it’s guilt. He hides it worse than he thinks.

Illuga takes a deep breath. He understands the tantrum isn’t really towards him, nor is the war really against the machines.

Though he’d still preferred his flat stayed intact, at the hands of this knight who’s definitely not in shining armour.

Illuga sighs, “What else have you accomplished today other than wrecking my flat then, my dear knight?”

Lohen grins. That’s never a good sign.

“Research.”

Illuga looks at the stabbed vacuum. Then at the cushions. Then at the chair.

“This is research?”

“No, this is the aftermath of a scholarly pursuit.”

“Should I be hesitant to ask follow up questions then?”

“Always, my dear birdie,” Lohen gestures grandly towards the dining table. “I found something today.”

Illuga follows the gesture.

His laptop is on screensaver. Around it, several books that managed to escape becoming part of the fortress lie spread across the surface. Most of them borrowed from the archive using Illuga’s name and therefore, regrettably, Illuga’s responsibility. A notebook sits in the middle of it all, filled with Lohen’s terrible handwriting.

Which is impressive, considering Lohen can barely hold a pen, or anything else that doesn’t interest him as much as weapons, for more than a few minutes.

Illuga picks up the notebook, flipping through pages filled with myths———No, history, he corrects himself mentally. History they’ve been trying to cross reference with Lohen’s memories, which are not exactly reliable, considering they’re patchy and the knight paid little attention to history class.

“Remember when we were trying to think of who might still be around?” Lohen asks. “Most immortal beings I know are either impossible to track, deliberately annoying, or in Mondstadt. Finding the Traveller, or them finding us, would be ideal, obviously, but I thought of someone else.”

Lohen wakes the laptop and pulls up the page he found. A painting of blue and purple fill the screen.

“He’s close friends with Varka so it’s likely that———“

“Wait,” Illuga leans closer to the screen, “That looks like Mr Flins.”

Lohen stops, and slowly turns to stare at him. “You know Flins?”

“Yeah, he’s friends with my old pops. He runs an antique shop in the Final Night Cemetery.” Illuga turns to look at Lohen. “You were saying about immortal beings…”

“Illuga,” Lohen says, with the tone almost as if he feels sorry for him, ”Flins is a fae.”

They stare at each other. Then back at the screen.

An indigo silhouette holds up an incredible lantern, repelling the abyssal darkness.

Kyryll the Azure flame, the label says.

“The legendary lantern fae, even,” Lohen adds.

Illuga doesn’t realise he’s swaying until Lohen catches him. Hand closes around Illuga’s arm. Solid and cold.

“Woah!” Lohen exclaims.

For a moment neither of them moves, not sure for Illuga’s reaction or that Lohen is able to touch him.

Lohen snaps back to action first, guiding Illuga down into the chair. “Maybe you should sit down.”

Illuga sits because his legs have become unhelpful. Lohen lets go, and the coldness vanishes.

“But seriously,” Lohen says, already retreating to his unusual self. “You’ve known me for months, and now you’re getting light-headed?”

Illuga still stares at the painting.

“It’s one thing being stuck with you, and another finding out Mr Flins, basically my uncle, is a supernatural being okay!?”

Lohen hums. The split moment of gentleness when he caught Illuga has vanished, as quickly as it appeared.

“Guess we wouldn’t need to track him down, since you know exactly where to find him.”

Finding Flins is, indeed, not difficult.

Final Night Cemetery looks exactly as how Illuga remembers it.

Clouds hang low overhead. The lighthouse stands proudly in the cold wind, its beam cutting through the grey. Beneath it, almost tucked into its shadow, sits an antique shop.

Illuga spend a large portion of his childhood here, fascinated by all the stories Flins made up for his collection.

Now he suspects maybe the stories weren’t all so made up.

Lohen’s dagger sits heavy in his coat pocket, wrapped in enough cloth that Illuga can almost pretend he’s not carrying a poisoned ancient relic around.

He had learned about the poison the hard way.

One accidental brush of his finger against the blade had him collapse on the bathroom floor for six hours, shivering through the worst hangover of his life in cold sweat.

Lohen had looked more terrified than Illuga could ever have imagined.

He had stayed beside him the whole time, rigid with panic, voice trembling whenever Illuga’s eyes drifted shut for too long. He had barked out instructions for an antidote, then gone frighteningly silent when he realised there was no one to make in this century and there was nothing he could do but watch.

Lohen’s voice snaps Illuga back to reality. The knight peers up the sign of the shop.

“How good would the business be here, opening an antique shop in a cemetery?”

Illuga knows Lohen is trying to distract him, so he doesn’t dignify that with a response.

He doesn’t like how easily Lohen’s world keeps finding cracks in his. He likes even less the growing suspicion that those cracks had always been there.

The bell above the door chimes when Illuga pushes it open. Lohen ignores the door entirely and phases straight through the wall. He ripples though the stone without resistance, leaving faint blue wisps where he emerges on the other side.

Light spills over shelves crowded with old clocks, tarnished mirrors, cracked picture frames, and enough gemstones to always make Illuga wonder if Flins is secretly a magpie.

The shop smells like dust, mould, and the kind of history Lohen would probably take personally.

It’s familiar, yet it’s somehow not as comforting as it always has been.

Behind the counter, Flins looks up from a book.

“Ah,” he says, smiling. “I was wondering when you would visit.”

Illuga pauses with his hand still on the door. “I didn’t tell you I was coming.”

“No,” Flins says, putting a bookmark in the book and closing it, “You did not”

Illuga waits, while Flins continues to smile.

Lohen, who has already made his way to a display full of antique knives with far too much interest, snorts. “I can see he hasn’t changed.”

Flins turns his smile slightly to the left, to Lohen. “How generous of you to notice, Sir Lohen.”

For a moment, there’s only the quiet ticking of a dozen clocks.

Both Illuga and Lohen stares at him with wide eyes.

Flins, in an impressive display of audacity, looks between them as if they are the ones being strange.

“Did you expect me not to greet your guest?” Flins asks mildly. “Illuga dear, I taught you better manners than that.”

He laughs softly, “Or should I have pretended not to notice the haunted dagger in your coat pocket?”

Lohen never formally met Flins, but he has heard many things about him. The fae and the grandmaster are close friends.

Were, Lohen mentally corrects himself.

“You’ve been expecting me.” Lohen says.

“I sure have, Sir Lohen,” Flins rises from behind the desk, “For quite some time.”

He brushes over the fact it has been centuries, as if it’s nothing more than a slightly delayed arrangement.

“Come. I have something for you.”

Clipping his lantern onto his waist, Flins leads them towards the back of the shop.

At the edge of the glass display of bone puzzles, rests the skeletal frame of a collapsible wrist crossbow.

Illuga stops. “I know this.”

Lohen turns to frown at him, but Illuga’s gaze is fixed on the crossbow.

“I begged for months before you finally let me hold it.”

Illuga adds, “You told me the story when I was little.”

“I did.” Flins says.

“This was from———” And the realisation dawns on Illuga.

He has seen it before. He didn’t put two and two together, but the mechanism mirrors the one on Lohen’s arm. The one in display is clearly the early rendition, with straps to tie on one’s arm and wrist, rather than one directly attached to the armguard. Yet the resemblance is unmistakable.

He finishes his sentence slowly, “The old Knights of Favonius.”

Back then, Illuga had thought that Flins was simply good at telling stories.

Now he sees it. Myths. Legends. Anecdotal histories dressed up as children’s story for a kid sitting crossed legged behind the counter. He had been too enthralled to realise the stories might have been more than stories, might have been memories, histories.

How could he though? He hadn’t known this rusty little shop beneath the lighthouse had been full of proof.

Proof that his world and Lohen’s hadn’t collided at all.

Here, in this forgotten corner of Teyvat, history gathers dust on the shelves.

They have always lived in the same world.

Illuga turns to the knight. Lohen’s expression is hard to decipher.

He says nothing and simply reaches straight for the glass display.

But blue flame snaps to life around the case.

Lohen yelps and jerks his hand away. The burn feels real, but his leather glove remains untouched.

“Oh,” Flins says mildly. “My apologies. A little fae magic.”

He does not sound apologetic at all.

“You let a little kid get close to this and play with a crossbow?” Lohen glares at him.

Flins’s smile doesn’t change. “I let Illuga get close to many dangerous things, Sir Lohen.”

“Under supervision.” His gaze flickers to Lohen, pupils burn blue.

Something in Lohen’s expression changes. A shiver travels down his spine.

Fire is supposed to be warm. Bright. Alive.

The blue flame in Flins’s eyes is none of those things, it only deepens the chill. It’s the colour of funeral lanterns that wandering souls follow.

Suddenly and too late, Lohen remembers exactly what kind of fae Flins is.

He wonders whether the azure flame would swallow him whole, if Flins deemed him too dangerous.

Then the flame in his eyes is gone.

Flins turns back to the display. He presses his palm on the glass and murmurs something under his breath, barely audible. Blue flame curls around his fingers as if harmless.

“Illuga,” Flins says without looking away, “Do you remember the story I told you about this one?”

Illuga has noticed the change in expression on Lohen, but watching the fire dances around Flins’s fingers, he has his own revelation to recover from.

Fae magic.

The phrase had been casually dropped into the conversation.

A dozen memories shift uneasily in Illuga’s head.

Flins’s unchanged face. The lantern he always carried which seems to burn without fuels. The strange whispers spread across the cemetery whenever Flins was around.

He had only just learned how little of it he understood.

“I have questions,” Illuga gives him a pointed look.

“I imagine you do,” Flins says.

“We’ll revisit this once it’s all over.”

“A sound plan. Albeit a little ominous sounding.”

The more pressing matter is the ghost knight.

Story of the crossbow? Of course Illuga remembers. It had always been his favourite out of all Flins’s collections.

“It belonged to a brave young knight.” Illuga starts slowly.

Lohen raises one of his eyebrow at the word brave, but Illuga's gaze has shifted back to the crossbow.

“He was the bowmakers’ son. Skilled with his hands, he built this prototype himself.”

Illuga used to stared at it for hours, mesmerised by the intricate mechanism and the elegant curve of its design.

He continues.

“You said he was clever. Proud. A little reckless,” his voice softens. “The kind of knight who kept challenging fights bigger than him.

“A generous retelling of stupidity for a child’s play,” Lohen cuts in.

Illuga almost smiles at self mockery.

“You said he carried out knighthood differently from his comrades, but that he was a knight nonetheless.”

“He left this behind when he went far away,” Illuga says, quieter now. “But his friends kept it safe, because they never once stopped believing he would return.”

Lohen freezes.

Flins retrieves the crossbow from its stand with careful hands, his smile faint and unreadable.

“A personal request from the Grandmaster,” Flins says, offering it to Lohen. “Varka asked me to keep it safe.”

Lohen doesn’t take it immediately. For a moment, he only stares.

Illuga has seen Lohen smug, frustrated, theatrical. He has seen him bored enough to declare war on household appliances.

He has never seen him look afraid of kindness.

“Varka,” Lohen mutters, and the name comes out like it costs him something.

Flins’s smile softens.

“He was quite certain you would come back,” Flins says, “He was not alone in that.”

Slowly, Lohen reaches for the crossbow.

His fingers close around it. For a moment, nothing happens. Then he presses the hidden button, the crossbow smoothly clicks into place, like it hasn’t been sitting in a display for centuries.

Illuga used to wonder, will the knight in the story ever return.

Now he stands before Illuga, holding the proof that his friends had waited.

Illuga supposes he has his answer now.

Lohen avoids Illuga for a week after that.

Which is impressive, considering he cannot leave the vicinity of the two artefacts currently sitting on Illuga’s dining table.

Avoidance, as Illuga learns, doesn’t require great distance, only silence.

Lohen stops lingering by the kitchen to judge how Illuga takes his coffee. He phases through walls when Illuga enters a room instead of pulling some harmless pranks. He stops commenting on Illuga’s meals, his sleep schedule, and the apparent tragedy of his fashion choices.

His flat becomes quiet.

After months of Lohen and his constant shenanigans, Illuga finds the silence deafening. This place feels too big, too empty.

From the visit, Flins hadn’t offered much more before sending them away, which Illuga cannot say surprised him.

“You need to complete the soul,” Flins had said, as if he were telling Illuga to remember an umbrella. “Then may the seal be opened.”

“And where are we supposed to go next?”

“Stories like threes,” Flins had only smiled. “Follow the wind.”

Whatever that was supposed to mean.

Illuga can only hope the last artefact isn’t another weapon. Knowing Lohen, though, the chances are fairly low. But without Lohen, Illuga isn’t sure what next.

When Illuga returns home from work on the seventh day, he expects more silence.

Instead, Lohen sits in the middle of a fortress of books, writing frantically on the same notebook.

“Oh, you’re finally back. Took you long enough,” Lohen says without even looking up, “We’re going to Mondstadt tomorrow.”

Illuga stops at the front door. “That’s the first thing you say to me in a week?”

Lohen finally looks up. He tilts his head, all false innocence, “Yes?”

“You avoided me the whole week.”

It shouldn’t feel like a betrayal, but it aches anyway.

Lohen pulls out his dagger and starts tossing it. The dagger turns with impossible weight, while the fingers holding it seem almost insubstantial, but more solid than before.

Illuga narrows his eyes, knowing this trick far too well by now. “Where have you been?”

“I was thinking.”

Illuga scoffs, “You thinking? Now I’m really worried.”

Lohen rolls his eyes.

Illuga crosses his arms, “We’re not going anywhere until we talked about what happened.”

“What’s there to talk about? Varka is a senti———“ The words die halfway.

“Was,” Lohen corrects himself sharply. “A sentimental old man. Flins is an insufferable fae. We need to go to Mondstadt for the third artefact.”

Lohen pretends he didn’t stumble on his words and glosses over it. Even now, he still uses the wrong tense whenever talking about his friends from time to time.

Illuga walks over and sits outside the fortress.

“It’s okay to miss your friends,” he says quietly, knowing it’s Lohen’s secret, and he’d never admit it outright.

“I had comrades. Subordinates. Superiors.” Lohen’s hand tightens around the dagger. “Not friends.”

“What am I then?” Illuga asks, “‘Cause I’m certainly not your landlord, considering you just exist in my flat without paying rent.”

Lohen stares at him for a moment.

Then, as if confirming something from Illuga’s face, he says with genuine horror, “Are you out of your mind? You see me as a friend?”

“I don’t see the problem.”

Lohen opens his mouth, then closes it.

“The problem is clearly in your head. Maybe I should crack it open with a book to check.”

“You can’t even hold a book for more than a minute.”

“A minute’s plenty.”

“Lohen,” Illuga softens his voice, “Stop changing the topic.”

The dagger disappears in Lohen’s sleeve. He looks away, “What’s missing going to do?“

“It’s a feeling. You don’t need reason to have one. Missing them doesn’t make you weak.”

“It’s useless. It doesn’t change anything.”

“No. It doesn’t.”

Lohen doesn’t immediately resort.

The silence stretches between them, less empty than the week before.

Then Lohen exhales, sharp and irritated, as if personally wronged by the existence of feelings.

“‘Follow the wind’,” Lohen quotes, “No need for dandelions to know the wind always leads to the land of freedom.”

But does the god of freedom still exist? Illuga wants to ask, not sure to whom. So he only watches Lohen for another moment.

Then he sighs, “Guess we’re going to Mondstadt then.”

Lohen’s grin returns at once, bright and victorious, “Excellent choice.”

Illuga gives him a flat look, “You’re impossible.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

“I know. Most of them by me.”

That gets a laugh out of Lohen. Brief but real.

Illuga rises from the floor, pretending not to notice the relief tucked carefully away in Lohen’s voice, “You can show me around, my dear knight.”

Lohen bows with one hand over his heart, ridiculous and sincere all at once.

“It would be my honour, my dear birdie.”

Despite Lohen’s dramatic announcement, they don’t know where to start once they arrive.

Mondstadt isn’t the city in Lohen’s memories anymore.

That should’ve been obvious.

Hundreds of years have passed. Streets have been rebuilt. Stores have been renamed. Stories and sceneries have been sanded down until what Lohen remembers as truths are printed on postcards and sold in gift shops.

Still, knowing that doesn’t make it easier.

Lohen is quiet when they first arrive.

It’s the kind of quiet Illuga has learned to dislike. Not peaceful. Not thoughtful. The dangerous and suffocating kind, where Lohen holds himself too still and his expression too stiff, as if movements might give something away.

Then Lohen sees a street musician playing beneath the statue of Anemo Archon. His mouth twists.

“Well,” he says, “Not the bard I’d look for, but at least the occupation survived.”

The crowd cheers, wine glasses raised high beneath the afternoon sun.

He sighs, “And the wine survived too I guess.”

Illuga lets out a breath he had not realised he was holding, “Hasn’t Mondstadt always been known for its wine?”

“Tell me more about it Birdie.”

They wander after that without much direction. Or rather, Illuga wanders, and Lohen pretends not to know exactly where his feet are taking them.

The Knights of Favonius headquarter has become a museum.

Lohen stops in front of it for a long moment.

Illuga doesn’t ask if he’s alright. Somehow it feels like an insult, to ask that of someone standing before the hollowed out remains of his own life.

Eventually, Lohen clicks his tongue.

“Acceptable preservation works,” he says, like the building failed to offend him enough. Then he walks right in.

For a while, it’s almost fine. Better than fine even.

Lohen moves through the exhibits like a man determined to be personally offended by every placard in the building. He points out mistranslated names, incorrect dates, reconstructed uniforms with the wrong stitching.

Lohen’s not a tidy storyteller. He gets distracted, argues with his own memories, and stops halfway through an anecdote to insult a display label. Somehow, that makes it better.

Until they stand before a painting of Varka. Lohen stares at it, shoulder shaking slightly.

Just as Illuga worries Lohen might finally break, Lohen bursts out laughing.

“He looks,” Lohen says between laughter, clutching at his stomach and struggling to breathe, “He looks like a constipated nobleman with three wineries.”

Illuga should probably not laugh in a museum. He does anyway, not caring about how other people might perceive him.

And somewhere between Lohen arguing with a text of troop formations and muttering darkly about modern historians having “no respect for basic bow anatomy,” Illuga starts to understand.

Lohen touches nothing, but he points everywhere.

The training yard was there. The solidarity confinement was here. The knight-to-bes raced down that hall when they thought nobody important was watching. Lohen used those books in the library as pillows. The Grandmaster broke that window and blamed it on Dvalin, the East of the Four Winds.

This is grief. But it’s also memory.

Not the clean kind preserved behind glass. The living kind. Messy, loud, ridiculous. Still warm in Lohen’s mouth after all these years.

Then Lohen points to a door near the end of the hall. “That was Adorno’s office.”

His voice changes when he says that name. Only slightly. Only enough for Illuga to notice.

They find the last artefact in what used to be Adorno’s office.

It sits alone in a glass display beneath a careful beam of museum light, small enough that Illuga almost walks past it at first.

Lohen does not. He goes very still.

Slowly, his hand rises to his ear. There is nothing there.

Of course there is nothing there. There has never been anything there, not since Illuga met him.

As a ghost, Lohen cannot see himself in mirrors. He cannot check his own reflection. He cannot know what piece of himself has been lost unless someone else tells him.

Illuga has always thought something about Lohen’s face looked unfinished. He had blamed it on the way his features faded at the edges, how light passes through his half transparent hair.

He understands it all too late.

“Illuga,” Lohen says, and his voice is strange. “Have I been wearing an earring?”

Illuga looks at him. Then at the display. He hates that he’s the one who has to answer.

“No,” he says quietly. “No, you haven’t.”

Lohen stares at the earring.

The label beneath it reads: The Benevolent Knight.

“I———” Lohen starts, then stops.

“No,” he says, “No, this is mine.”

His voice sharpens, disbelief rushing in to cover whatever came before it. “Mine, not Adorno’s. How did they even manage that? Adorno with an arrowhead earring?”

He barks out a laughter, too bright and too hard. “Come on. Do better, modern historians.”

Illuga steps closer to read the inscription.

“This belonged to the Benevolent Knight, whose name was lost in history,” he says. “It is said that the heroic knight sacrificed himself in the fight against Ursa the Drake. The honorary title was bestowed upon him by his predecessor, Sir Adorno, even though he was not there to receive it.”

Lohen goes silent.

Then he laughs. Properly, loudly, as if the museum has told the funniest joke in the world.

“Of course,” he says. “Of course they would do something like this.”

His smile is all teeth.

“I bet this was Varka and Adorno’s doing. Useless sentimentality.”

He spits out the last words like venom, but his voice doesn’t quite obey him.

Later that night, Lohen takes Illuga to the cliff behind the Favonius church, overlooking Brightcrown Canyon and Cider Lake.

Some things don’t change, Lohen says, looking out at the dark stretch of water below.

Illuga takes a sip of the wine he got from the tavern, a bottle Lohen had recommended with obvious reluctance.

Instead of the view, he watches Lohen’s profile, whose expression is unreadable.

Earlier in the museum, Lohen had reached straight through the glass display.

Illuga had expected his hand to get repelled by magic again, maybe this time by mages, or passes through both the glass and the earring. It did not. Lohen picked it up as easily as if the glass had never been there. The earring came away with him, slipping through the case without setting off a single alarm.

No one shouted. No security guard tackled him on the floor. No tourists pointed at Illuga and screamed there’s a floating earring following him.

Honestly, maybe Illuga should stop trying to make sense of supernatural logics.

Now the earring sits where it belongs, swaying slightly against Lohen’s jaw when he turns his head.

After a long silence, Illuga asks the question that has been sitting on his chest since the museum.

“Adorno,” he prompts softly, “Was he your mentor?”

The night wind drifts over the cliff, cool and gentle. Illuga’s hair sways with it. Lohen’s does not, but the moonlight doesn’t pass through the tip of his hair like it used to anymore.

Lohen takes off the earring and turns it over in his hand.

He doesn’t answer directly. Under the open sky, with no Celestia to witness but only the moon and stars, he tells a story of obsession and arrogance instead.

He tells the story of how a boy was kidnapped and saved by a knight.

He tells the story of how a teenage adventurer became a knight, because chasing strength was easier than admitting he had been afraid.

He tells the story of how a vice captain was defeated in the battle against Rächer of Solnari.

He tells the story of how a captain-to-be’s obsession spiralled out of control, and how he submitted to the temptation of strength, dabbling in power of another race.

He then tells the story of how a sinner wished to pay for his crime, confessing to his god and seeking the help of mages, sealing himself and the Drake away together.

When he finishes, silence settles over.

Illuga looks down at the wine between his hands.

Then he asks again, “And after that? What happened to him?”

Lohen thumbs the earring, “…I don’t know.”

The answer is quiet enough that the wind almost takes it.

Three artefacts have brought all the pieces of Lohen back. Memory by memory, wound by wound. But only up to the seal.

Whatever happened after that remains mysterious.

For a moment, neither of them speak.

Then a bright voice chirps from somewhere above.

“Well, that would be a terrible ending though!”

Illuga nearly drops his cup.

A rabbit-like creature with a red hat appears above them, floating in the air.

“So,” the creature continues cheerfully, “The brave knight fought a very, very long battle against the wicked dragon beyond the seal, while his friends waited very patiently for him to come back!”

Illuga stares at it with wide eyes. “What the———“

“Mage,” Lohen interprets him and narrows his eyes.

The creature spins in the air, delighted, “Correct! Gold star for big brother Lohen!”

Illuga turns to look at Lohen, whom looks momentarily stunned before he realises who this is.

“…Klee?”

The creature bobs happily in the air. “Yes! It’s Klee!”

This is not how Lohen had remembered her. Well, not as a dodoco, of course.

She’s still bright, warm, still full of impossible energy. But there is something underneath it now, something time has polished smooth instead of wearing thin.

The little mage is no longer little.

“It’s been so, so long,” she says. “Anutie Nichole set up the seal so she should be the one here but she's unavailable. Klee is maintaining Teyvat’s border for Mom because Mom and Dad went travelling again, so I can’t come greet you in person…”

“But Klee knows your little adventure is almost at its final chapter, and you need her help,” she continues brightly. “So I have a gift for you!”

A lantern materialises in front of Illuga. If not for his good reflexes, that thing would’ve dropped straight off the cliff.

He catches it against his chest and stares.

The lantern sits in his hands. Not burning, just warm to the touch, radiating energy like something alive.

“A little witch’s magic for an old friend and a new friend!” Klee says. “You can also use it when someone is being very very silly!”

Illuga looks at Lohen. Lohen looks surprised and vaguely offended for a reason Illuga doesn’t yet understand.

Lohen looks at the lantern, and then the floating figure. Slowly, he sighs, “Thank you, Klee.”

“You’re welcome!”

His smiles, “Let’s go fish blasting next time.”

“Yeah! That’s a promise!” Klee says, delighted. “You should bring your friend too!”

“Bye bye big brother Lohen! Bye bye Illuga!”

Then she disappears as suddenly as she came, leaving only a few drifting red sparks behind.

For a long moment, Illuga says nothing.

He looks down at the lantern in his arms, and then back at Lohen, still trying to catch up on what happened.

Lohen shrugs, as if a hundreds-year-old mage speaking through a floating rabbit doll and handing out enchanted lanterns is daily occurrence.

“That’s mages for you.”

With all his memories returned, Lohen leads them to the seal the next morning.

The place is quiet. A secret lab, half swallowed by earth and time. There’s no birdsong, no wind through the grass, no distant hum of the city behind them. A striking difference from Mondstadt itself.

Even the dagger and the crossbow in Illuga’s coat pocket feel still, as if they're holding their breath.

Lohen, however, looks more real with every step.

It’s subtle at first. The edge of his cape no longer flickers in the corner of Illuga’s eye. His boots leave faint impressions in the dirt. When he reaches out to steady himself against a broken stone pillar without thinking, his hand doesn’t pass through immediately.

By the time they stand before the seal, he almost looks alive.

The seal is carved into the earth and stone, old runes half covered by moss. Purple light pulses beneath the cracks like a heartbeat, casting a purple hue on everything around, Lohen included.

Illuga stares at the seal, but Lohen stares him instead.

“Illuga.”

He turns. Lohen is calm. Too calm.

“You should leave.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“No,” Illuga says. “I heard something stupid. I’m giving you the chance to try again.”

Lohen’s mouth twists, but the retort doesn’t come.

“This is where you should stop,” Lohen says, his expression painfully soft. “You have done more than enough.”

Something cold settles in Illuga’s chest.

The last time Lohen had acted like this, he had run away and hidden grief behind a travel plan.

“Lohen.”

The knight reaches up and takes off the earring. “You should keep this.”

“No.”

Lohen sighs, “You haven’t even heard what I’ve got to say.”

“I don’t need to.”

Lohen ignores him. He rolls the arrowhead across his knuckles.

“This was hidden in my sleeve when the kidnap happened.”

Illuga listens, despite what he said.

“It was sharper then,” He traces the worn edge. “Given enough time, it might have cut through the rope.”

His voice remains strictly matter-of-fact. “Only a small nick was made before the rescue came.”

“Useless, in the end. Still, I kept it, and made it into an earring.”

He holds it out to Illuga, “Keep it.”

“…Why?”

For the first time, Lohen hesitates, “It was a reminder for how powerless felt like.”

His hand remains outstretched still, the earring glints beneath the purple light. “Maybe now it can mean something else to someone.”

Illuga’s gaze dart to the earring, and then back at Lohen.

“You were kidnapped,” he says.

Lohen’s expression shutters. “Yes, I told you that already.”

“No. You have told me a story about a boy.”

He steps closer. “You were kidnapped. You became an adventurer, and then a knight. You lost to Rerir. You sought power because you were terrified of being helpless again. Your choice hurt the people you cared. Then you took responsibility.”

“What differences does that make?” Lohen’s jaw tightens. “Don’t reduce it to that.”

“I’m not,” Illuga’s voice is steady. “I’m making it sound like it happened to you.”

Lohen doesn’t know what to say to that.

“You keep talking about your story like it’s not yours,” Illuga says. “Like you’re nothing more than a warning.”

“That is what I am.”

“No!” Illuga snaps. “That is what you keep choosing, because it’s easier than admitting you’re scared.”

Lohen looks away and barks out a laughter. “You modern people and your soft parenting.”

Illuga glares at him, furious and disbelieving to Lohen’s deflection. “You old fossil and your complete inability to seek help.”

“You deserve more than this,” Lohen says, finally holding Illuga’s gaze, his voice low and strained.

Illuga’s anger surges so fast it almost scares him. “Don’t.”

“Illuga———”

“No, don’t.” The lantern shakes from how hard Illuga grips it. “Don’t stand there and make that decision for me.”

“I am protecting you.”

“You are pushing me away and call it protection, because that’s easier than———”

“What if you end up like Adorno?!” Lohen’s voice cut through his. “What if the will of a mere mortal cannot defeat the power of a fallen angel? I don’t know what lies beyond the seal, but I should be the one bearing the consequences. Not Adorno, not the innocent civilians that were hurt by the escaped monsters, not———”

Not you, Lohen doesn’t finish that, but it hangs heavily in the air.

Taken by anger, Illuga swings the lantern.

He doesn’t think it will hit. It shouldn’t.

Even though Lohen’s existence is more stable, he’s still a ghost. The lantern was given to Illuga, because Lohen can't hold it. It should pass through him, or through the air, or through whatever remains of the laws of nature Illuga still holds onto.

Instead, with a bright little chime of witchlight, it smacks Lohen square in the face.

The silence that follows is absolute.

Somewhere, very distantly, Illuga has the hysterical thought that Klee knew exactly this would happen.

Lohen stares at him, and Illuga stares back.

The heated atmosphere is long gone.

Lohen touches his cheek. “You hit me in the face.”

“…You needed it.”

“With a lantern.”

“It was all I had!”

Lohen continues to stare at him, long enough that Illuga begins to worry he might’ve given him a concussion with mage’s little gift.

Then Lohen starts laughing hysterically.

“I, are you okay?” Illuga asks.

“You,” Lohen says between laughs, “You hit me with a lantern.”

“I’m sorry!”

“No don’t go apologising now,” Lohen says while catching his breaths. “I knew you have it in you.”

Illuga opens his months and then closes it, unsure of what to say to that.

Lohen’s laughter echoes through the lab until something in it gives way, sharp and fragile.

When it fades, the silence between them feels different.

Less like a wall. More like a wound.

Lohen lowers his hand from his face. The last of his smile disappears. For once, he looks at Illuga without a joke ready to hide behind.

The lantern has broken the tension, but not resolving what's underneath. Illuga takes a breath. 

“What I meant to say is, you don’t get to decide for me.”

“You crashed into my life uninvited,” he says. “Made a mess of everything, shattered the world I thought I knew.”

His grip tightens around the lantern. “And after I get used to having you around, you expect me to just walk away?”

Lohen knows all too well how it began.

Push this button. Offer that favour. Wear this mask. Say those words. And let Illuga’s bleeding heart do the rest. He has always been good at manipulation.

At first, Illuga had been simple enough to understand. Kind. Responsible. Too willing to help things that arrived broken and bleeding at his door. Then somewhere along the way, the shape of it changed.

It changed when Lohen pulled a blanket over Illuga after he fell asleep on the couch. When guilt curled sharp beneath his ribs every time he remembered he had shattered the quiet shape of Illuga’s life. When his hand had closed around Illuga’s arm before he could think, solid for one impossible second because Illuga had swayed and Lohen had reached.

It started to change long before that, probably.

Lohen had forgotten care could feel like this without immediately becoming a debt to repay or a wound to survive from.

Not that Lohen has any intention of admitting it.

Hesitantly, Illuga steps closer.

Maybe Klee had meant both of them, when she spoke of someone being very silly.

Leaving would be sensible, and perhaps even kinder, if it gave Lohen one less person to fear losing. 

Illuga is used to choosing what other people want over what he wants. Wanting something has never seemed like a sufficient reason to choose it.

For once, what he wants is reason enough.

“You know what? Fuck it. I’m sacred too, but I’m staying.”

His anger is still there, but the worst of its edge has dulled into something heavier.

He reaches out for the earring that still sits in Lohen’s palm.

But Illuga doesn’t take it for himself. He puts it back to where it belongs with careful hands. His warm fingers linger briefly against Lohen’s cold skin.

Lohen goes completely still.

“You keep this,” Illuga says. “Whether opening the seal fixes everything or makes anything worse, you’re not facing it on your own.”

Not this time, Illuga thinks, not anymore. 

“You don’t have to like it, I’m staying.” 

Lohen closes his eyes. When he opens them again, he looks genuine. No facade, no mischievous act, no sharp-edged smile.

Just Lohen.

Some of the tension leaves Lohen’s shoulders, though his gaze remains fixed on Illuga.

“You’re impossible,” Lohen says, but the words hold none of their intended heat.

He reaches out to hold the lantern, laying his hand over Illuga’s.

Three artefacts.

A dagger, a crossbow, an earring.

Survival, belonging, vulnerability.

Each stripped Lohen down to his barest bone. But what they’re holding, it’s not a piece of his past.

The lantern, it’s the future.

“I don’t want you to see what’s left of me.” Lohen whispers.

Illuga’s anger softens so suddenly it hurts.

“Let me be there when you find out,” he says. “I want to see it all, all of you.”

Together, they raise the lantern to the seal. When it breaks, the world holds its breath.

Thick purple fog pours out of the cracks, cold and choking, rolling over the earth like something alive.

They hold the lantern high. The soft yellow light turns gold.

The fog recoils.

Lohen inhales sharply.

For a moment, Illuga sees Lohen as he must once have been.

Not transparent. Not flickering. Not a ghost tethered to a poisoned dagger.

A proud and young knight.

The crossbow locks around his arm. The dagger gleams in his hand. The earring catches the light at his ear. He wears a blinding grin.

Beyond him, something vast shifts in the dark.

A dragon’s eyes open.

The lantern burns brighter. And brighter. And brighter still.

The world dissolves into light.

At first, Illuga thinks the light has blinded him. Then shapes begin to move within it.

A battlefield. Broken stone. Fire. Wings spread open and the sky split open above it all.

And Lohen.

Not the Lohen beside him. Another Lohen. Younger only in the cruel way memories are younger, all sharp edges and impossible determination.

He fights. Again. And again. And again.

Steel flashes, crossbow sings. The Drake rears back with a scream that seems to shake the bones out of the world.

Then the scene shatters and begins again.

Again. Again. Again.

An endless battle folded in on itself, centuries of violence compressed into moments of light.

Illuga doesn’t realise he is crying until something warm closes around his hand.

He turns. Lohen is right beside him.

Solid. Warm. Here.

His eyes burn with something fierce and bright, more life than ghost, more present than memory.

When Illuga looks back towards the light, Lohen’s grip tightens.

“That’s the past,” he says quietly. “I’m right here, all of me.”

The lantern grows brighter still.

The battle, the dragon, the young knight, all of it begins to dissolve at the edges, burning away into gold.

Lohen doesn’t let go of Illuga’s hand.

And Illuga doesn’t let go. 

Then the light swallows everything.

Illuga wakes to a familiar ceiling.

For a few seconds, he cannot move.

His bed. His room. His curtains. The faint hum of the fridge from the kitchen. Morning light spilling pale across his floor.

Home.

His chest tightens so hard it hurts.

“Lohen?” he calls, not sure if he’s expecting a reply.

Then the bedroom door burst opens.

Lohen stands there, solid and holding a mug of coffee.

For a second, neither of them says anything.

Then something in Lohen’s expression gives way, vanishing before Illuga can name it.

“You sleep like the dead,” Lohen says.

Illuga stares at him. Lohen opened the door, not phasing through it.

Opened it.

Lohen’s mouth curves.

“Too soon?”

Illuga opens his mouth. Nothing comes out at first.

His throat feels dry. His body feels heavy, like he has been sleeping for a hundred years instead of———

“How long was I out?” he manages.

Lohen passes the mug to him. Illuga takes a sip and frowns at the taste. 

Lohen sits by the bed, the mattress sinks under his weight. “…Three days.”

“Three days!?”

“You were very committed to the performance,” Lohen says, far too quickly.

“Lohen.”

The joke fades at the edges.

Lohen looks at him then, really looks at him. Only then does Illuga notice the shadows beneath his eyes. Lohen no longer looks like a frozen snapshot. He looks real. Tired. Worried.

“You wouldn’t wake,” Lohen says, “The lantern sent us back here after the seal broke. Albedo came to check on you, but even he didn’t know what the magic had done.”

“He told me to just, wait.”

Illuga notices the room properly then. A kitchen chair beside the bed, a blanket thrown over the back of it, books pilled on the floor, a notebook on the floor, half open with Lohen’s terrible scribble.

The mug in Illuga’s hand has dried coffee rings around the rim, clearly been refilled for too many times to count.

“You stayed the whole time?”

“Obviously. Someone had to make sure you didn’t die dramatically after all that effort.”

“Awake for three whole days?”

“You were very committed,” Lohen says again, weaker this time, defensively crossing his arms.

Illuga’s hand tightens around the mug.

The coffee tastes terrible. Bitter, as if the only its function is to keep the drinker awake.

Black isn’t how Illuga takes his coffee. He drinks it anyway.

Lohen watches him drink like it matters.

Despite the coffee burning his tongue, Illuga can’t help but ask, “Are you really here?”

Lohen blinks.

Then he lifts one hand to flick Illuga on the forehead.

“Hey!”

Lohen takes Illuga’s free hand in his.

His hand is warm.

“I am, my dear Birdie,” he says.