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“The Imperial Family,” the story teller says as the people in the square gather around to listen. “Six thousand years ago, when Liyue was a nation emerging from the earth, there lived a merchant’s daughter who witnessed the coming of a god.”
A breath draws from the audience. A few children excitedly run over, eager to hear their favorite story performed in broad daylight. Among the crowd, a hooded figure listens, tufts of dark brown hair shielding his golden eyes from the people.
“This god is none other than our great Rex Lapis.
They gaze into each other’s eyes, and their stares burn
Like a sword with a blacksmith. Or a lantern at midnight.
Heaven cannot match the Imperial Family.
“Their love bears a handsome child,
A warrior whose great feats slayed gods and demons alike.
He respects his parents — to the children, do not forget your elders.
Heaven cannot match the Imperial Family.
“Her smile topples city walls
And diamonds shiver with jealousy
When the god calls her, ‘beloved’.
Heaven cannot match the Imperial Family.
“No tomb can mottle, or sepulchre sink under,
for they live in all that live still.
Look how their love leaps across years.
Forever they live in the heart of the Geo Archon.
Heaven cannot match our Imperial Family.”
Under his hood, disguised as a mortal man, the god smiles in fond memory.
6000 (六千)
A dragon is falling from the sky.
The birth of a god.
Ancient Liyue is a civilization that loves to mine the riches of the earth. Because you are from a merchant family, who sell artisan ceramics to get by, your clothes are humble and stained with paint. Although you are not wealthy, the jade pendant around your neck glistens with a sheen that promises fortune. Fate has always made you different from your classmates in the province.
You had seen that curious meteor blazing through the clouds with the glow of a bronze-forged sword. It must have hit the ground with a ferocious impact. Everyone else in the village dismissed it as a flash of lightning, but you were not as blind. Fate made you see things others did not.
So out of curiosity, you leave the village to investigate the falling star in the valley. When you reach the crater, not too far from Dunyu, you watch pensively from afar as the dust begins to clear.
It is a chariot of Celestia. You know this because you can see the patterns on the chariot’s sides, and they look nothing like the patterns you paint in Liyue. The vehicle glows so brightly that the jagged rocks it had cratered when it impacted the ground look like stoked coals.
Proof of the divine is mesmerizing. Wanting to see more of it, you inch forward. However, a firm voice stops you.
“I would not touch that if I were you.”
You jerk back, and look up the valley to see a young brunet man eyeing you from the top of a mountain. He is a considerable distance away yet you can hear him clearly without an echo, as though he is right next to you. Moreover, you can see his narrow eyes glinting with interest, golden as an exotic lizard.
“Hail, mortal,” he says, and you know at once that you are in the presence of a god.
You get down on one knee and bow your head. Is this a god or a monster? He is a dragon as ancient as Teyvat’s first beings. So he must be both. Breaths baited, you wait for him to strike you down or to eat you there to satiate his godly appetites. Perhaps you’d been foolish, and you have walked into a dragon’s trap.
He does neither, only observing you as you are. A god is only as strong as the mortals who trust in them are, and you, bowing and reeling, are the first for Morax.
“Stand, mortal.”
You rise, pliant and obedient. Your eyes remain steadfast, but it is pure will that keeps you from quaking in terror.
In the god’s eyes, you bring warmth and light with the promise of a reign’s beginning. Red as the rising sun. A mortal who follows the commands of a god means that they are a follower. Followers grant gods their power. In turn, gods take care of their followers. It is transactional. A contract.
You do not dare to ask for this unknown god’s name. You do not know what he will do if he finds out that you do not know.
“Do you know my name, mortal?”
“Great god, I am afraid I do not,” you say honestly. If he strikes you, so be it. But he does not, and he waits in silence, inviting you to probe further. “You are gold I have mined from the deepest pits of the earth, and I am a magpie whose talons glint with keen interest.”
The dragon-man’s narrow golden eyes twinkle with amusement. He is a fierce-looking individual, though you can tell he lacks the wisdom of the divine for he is newly-born. The tufts of his dark hair are as brown as the earth, and his jaw is as curved and graceful as a swallow’s wing.
“How beautifully you speak,” he says. “Your fine language pleases me, so I will grant your curiosity. Do you have any questions for this god?”
Your eyes meet, and your heart speaks. He makes you feel like a prince; the finest diplomat for heaven on earth. Your head inclines to the burning star on the ground. “Is this your chariot, sire?”
“Yes.” His chin tilts up and you see that he has brown horns sticking out of his head. A dragon. “It belongs to the menagerie of gods in Celestia above. Why are you drawn to it when you know your fragile hands cannot withstand a burning star?”
Your voice quavers, just a little bit. It is not easy to hold a conversation with this deity whose gaze makes you nervous with fear. A dragon pouncing on his prey. Or rather, a dragon collecting gold to keep in his bejeweled nest.
“I came because I heard heaven’s cry, and a star beckoned me forth.”
The god laughs. Not condescendingly, but because he is amused by your mortal empathy.
“Not many people can tell who I am, but your eyes are sharp. Fate smiles upon you, though you cannot touch a star.”
“True, I cannot,” you say. “Perhaps I only wished to see you, great god.”
His head tilts. “You can help a god.”
You stiffen. You wait for his verdict. Will he ask you to burn the best crops on a towering pyre? Offer your firstborn son to rear his future army? Many possibilities run through your mind, but none of them are true.
As if sensing your unease, the god folds his arms and raises a palm. The great winds in your head calm immediately.
“I am Rex Lapis,” he says. The very syllables of his name strike marvelous awe in your heart, and you know you have found something incredible. “I am the Lord of Geo, God of Contracts and Commerce. The very ground you walk upon is my domain.”
You bow low, forehead practically kissing the ground before the god. “Great Rex Lapis. I am honored.”
“The strength of a god is only as strong as the faith of his followers,” he said. “This is the basic unwritten contract between gods and mortals. I only wish for you to have faith in me.”
You bring your face up to meet his yellow gaze, slow and blinking. Faith is a dangerous thing to ask when nothing is certain. It’s true—you have never met Morax until now.
You know that there are many gods in Teyvat, and other civilizations worship their own deities, but you have never really chosen one to be your god before. To pick one to be loyal to is to tamper with the stars in a war against the heavens.
But something draws you to Morax. His attractive aura, his awesome power. Perhaps the other people in Liyue would be disdained at this noveau god. But that was because they had a mountain of materials that would be threatened should they ever devote themselves.
You could not say the same. Why try to justify faith? Faith and justice are not the same.
So, you surprise even yourself when you jut your chin out and face him with newfound confidence.
“Rex Lapis,” you say, voice as lovely as birdsong. “I worship you.”
At all once, Morax feels the divine strength pouring into his veins, making him golden, illustrating the yokes of his true godly strength. He lifts his fingers and finds them firm and strong. You have clearly placed a faith most pure in him, and you only said three words.
You were a most faithful human indeed, and that made you useful. Powerful. Such a pleasant string is fate, for bringing you to him.
“Stand.” His voice booms with divinity. “Come in my chariot. I will reward you.”
You stand and shuffle to his side. Morax is taller than you, larger than life, the golden scales on his arms and the horns on his head tell you that you’re with something greater than humans. He smells like the rich earth, or like the mines where the most expensive treasures lay.
You know he can change form, but for now, as it is your first meeting, he will not. Gods are arrogant. They like to see mortals quail in their glory. Or perhaps he truly is just great, and knows you expect nothing less. First impressions matter to demand respect and to build trust.
In a flick of his sharp fingers, Morax lifts the divine chariot from the ground. It glows like the sun. Celestial material. Another reminder that there are even more powerful gods above you. The chariot ascends.
You lean over the chariot’s jeweled side, gazing down at the misty lands of Liyue. Lush plains, jaded mountains, white clouds. You know you should fear the height, but you do not. You know that Morax will catch you, and that is what it means to have faith.
“Do you see that mountain? I call it Tiangheng,” he tells you. “It will become an abode for Adepti.”
Your face is impassive. This time, you do not fall over yourself spouting cheerful praises. You are looking at the land and wondering what will happen, what this new god means for the future of Liyue. Pretty little mortal, how funny you are for worrying about things you do not even have a sliver of power to control.
Morax hums. He doesn’t quite know how humans work yet, but you have certainly piqued his interest. You are, after all, his special follower now. It should only be right that he tries to understand the way your mind works as well.
“The Adepti are mystical beings who will care for the people of the land,” he says. “I will cultivate this land. Liyue will be the best.”
“My family is one of gemstone merchants,” you say. “That is reassuring to hear.”
The chariot lands on Mount Tiangheng. You drift above the sea of clouds like a swallow reaching heights beyond her reach, but you find that you are a bird who can soar above it all. You love your land, you love Liyue and its people, and for you to be with Morax now, means that fate loves your nation too.
When two souls are destined to be together, things do not need justification—they only need faith. Your bodies fit fast and smooth as two halves of a cleft stone. Your life is as lucky as a necklace of jade.
“If it pleases you,” you say diplomatically, “I ought to climb this mountain as a pilgrimage.”
Morax tilts his head. His draconic tail flicks.
You push on with your words.
“Many more will follow.” You speak not with praise, but with fact. “You will dominate the land.”
“I wish not for dominion,” he said, “but I cannot watch the common folk suffer. That shall be my first contract. They will know me as Rex Lapis.”
You know at once that you have found a god who is steady. Perhaps not gentle in war, but one who will protect your people and serve as the pillar the land needs to prosper. And you offer Morax a smile that makes his dragon heart swell.
“When I have ten thousand barrels of rice that can feed that world and command ten thousand chariots that can rival the sun, I will place you by my side.”
5998 (五千九百九十八)
As a Divine Priestess, and Rex Lapis’s liege, you stay by his side at all times. Only eight seasons had passed since you placed yourself at his feet, yet you had changed significantly.
The others in Liyue cursed themselves, how a lowly peasant like you had found the Lord of Geo first. But you had remained calm and poised even when they whispered insults about you in passing, saying that Rex Lapis was no real god, and you proved them wrong, and for that, he was grateful.
Look at how gods can goad us, and there is nothing we can do. Look at how this god turned a pauper into a prince, and we have no choice but to follow because we cannot disobey a god.
Liyue had already been a rich nation, but when Rex Lapis came, it became even richer. He was an efficient leader and a fair ruler. He established trade routes that united many parts of the wide land, and every man and woman waited with baited breaths for what else he would bring to Liyue. He guided them to prosperity and you were his bridge to the society of humans. It did not take long for him to gain followers, but it also meant enemies.
Still, true to his word, he never failed to reward you greatly. Sometimes even more than what you felt like you deserved.
Silk from the finest flowers weaves together to paint your pretty hanfu. Morax himself placed it on your shoulders, letting the fabric drape down your waist like glittering rainbows at the foot of a waterfall. It had taken two years for professional mortal hands to sew patterns in the image of a golden dragon and the clouds over the mountains he so generously pulled from the ground with a strike of his spear.
Lóng paó, he whispered, his smooth fingers tracing over your collarbone, a dragon gown for the dragon’s treasure.
Rex Lapis is a fearsome god, but he is a good and balanced god. When he kills, it is because someone else will live. When he destroys, it is because he will build. The only time he has ever shown any favor was when he declared you his imperial follower—the child of Heaven.
The sun chariot had led you to him, thereby intertwining your fates.
You were his first follower, the very reason why he had become so powerful, and thus it was only right that he rewarded you. But his rewards had been generous, more than you knew you deserved.
Sometimes, he comes to you in the palace that he built for you in the form of a humble mortal man courting you. Sometimes, he enters as a dragon, and lets you ride his back as you fly above the sea of clouds at night, the winds running through your hair. There has even been a time wherein your ladies-in-waiting prepared you a bath, and one of them narrowed her golden eyes at you as she carefully helped your soft, bare form sink into the lavender substances.
Today, he comes to you as the god he is. He looks like a mortal, but he radiates divinity—Morax is the sun, and your whole life shines only because he brings the light.
You revere him. You worship him. You love him. Although you probably will never admit that last part, for it is too improper for a mortal to love a god. You love your god like how a daisy loves the sun. You know you are but a tiny daisy in his great garden.
“Do you know about the dragon in Mount Qingce?” Morax asks you once. Sometimes he goes by the name Rex Lapis, but they all go back to one thing and that it is he is the god.
“The Chi?”
He nods. “It terrorizes the people of the mountain village. It ravages their crops and burns their homes.”
“But it is a dragon like you,” you say.
“Not all dragons are good. Even I can be the opposite.”
“Are you?”
Your voice is a flute song, delicately changing pitch. The earnest look in your eyes telling Morax of your faith, your belief in his goodness, is worth a thousand temples burning incense for him. His eyes shine when they look at you, like gazing at a lovely lake under the moon.
“Perhaps not all that I do is good,” he says. “But I do good. For Liyue. For you.”
“You are too generous,” you say modestly.
“It is true,” he replies. “You represent the mortals. You are their goodness. The sun shines upon you.”
The songs they sing about you thousands of years later will gather men and women around the fire at s tea shop. All of Liyue will know how dearly Morax, the strongest of the seven Archons and a good god, loved you, a good and pious human. His gentle orations of adoration become tunes eventually — even the bards in distant lands know the lyrics.
5995 (五千九百九十五)
“My darling priestess,” he whispers, and the songs remember the words for centuries. “Tell me you love me and my realm’s mountains will quake for every step you take. Tell me you love me and my eyes are gems for your lips. Simply tell me you love me, and I am wholly yours.”
Your beauty is a tidal wave that drowns mountains. Your kindness is a flower that blooms in spring. Morax would mine every jewel from the earth’s depths just to catch glimpses of your smile.
And you tell him you love him.
5994 (五千九百九十四)
“G-god, please—” Your breath hitches, words lost into time as Morax sinks into you, in and out and in and out.
You had let the towel fall in your private room. Your body is jade and ivory. Your scent is an orchid pool. And your naked form is the most beautiful marble that the celestial gods have ever sculpted from flesh and bone.
Your god worships you.
Morax takes you to a bed encrusted with gems, the curtains fall apart like you do in his hands.
Your sharp nails dig into his skin, the smooth flesh on his toned back sometimes cold with remnants of golden scales. It is satiating, how you make marks on him just as you know he is making marks of his golden element inside you. Like dancing under the moonlight.
He curves you to him like a phoenix, burning hot. You sit astride and ride him like a dragon.
As a divine, he is big, and it comforts you that your mortal body can accomodate him and still feel pleasure, like your heart does. There is no want of material things from him for you, unlike the other mortals who pray for blessings and fortune and wealth.
You simply love Rex Lapis, not as your god, but as the wise and generous man he is, and you know he loves you just as much, which makes the way your bodies meld together with every movement all the more sweeter.
“Always,” you moan, arching into him. “Please—god—always.”
You crumble right after that, and it does not take him long to fall apart either. He comes inside you, both of you forgetting in your passion.
For a moment, he rests inside you, holding you tightly because you are not immortal and you are fleeting, like the short window of flaming sky at sundown. He is as steady as stone and your fingers thread through his brown hair, admiring your god as not a deity nor a man but as something else. Someone you love.
“Always?” he asks, and it kills you to hear how fragile your love sounds. Morax need not ask for always. He is always and forever. You are not.
You cup his perfectly-angled cheekbone and slide your palm down to his jaw.
“Always,” you whisper.
5993 (五千九百九十三)
When the sound of your son’s cries fill the room, you feel no greater joy. His name will spread across Liyue and the nations beyond. He would rule over the land with the same elegance and efficiency as his father. He would master all sorts of weapons and become an excellent fighter against the demons of the Abyss. He would become an emperor. A legend.
Your son is half-god. Your lineage is secured to be the dynasty of rulers that will rule the land. Your parents will delight in their chubby-cheeked grandchild. That is what the others will see.
But not you. He is your son—half you, half Rex Lapis. You will love him with all your heart and you shall rear him with the same kindness and respect for the world as his father rules. He is the tiniest human, soft as a feather. But when he opens his little eyes, it sends a shiver down your spine to see his yellow irises.
The midwives bundle him in a swaddle. Drenched in sweat—pushing out a divine being is no easy task—your tear-streaked face broke into a gentle smile as he calmed in your loving arms.
A cool hand touches your forehead. You gaze into Morax’s pretty eyes. They are the same shade of golden as your son; the sign of divinity. Morax presses his lips to your temple. He is the one worshipping you. You, the devout follower, the devoted wife. You, the only one strong enough to carry the child of the strongest Archon. You, the dragon’s most precious treasure, whom Morax will always protect.
“You are a queen among gods,” he whispers. “Thank you.”
“He is us,” you say. “Our world is infinite.”
5980 (五千九百八十)
Your son is a young man, and the mountains beckon his soul. He climbs the valleys and scours the heights, and he speaks to the adepti like they are his equals. Demons ravage the land, and as the prince of Liyue, he chooses a polearm like his father and defends the harbor in war.
Rex Lapis is not the only god in Liyue, much less Teyvat. The gods are jealous. They envy happiness, and wage war against it. Father and son venture into battle, much more alike than you are willing to admit.
They both forbid you to enter the fray. You spend days like these alone behind bolted doors. The cedars trees and the tiger orchids are your only companions in these long nights. You must not fight. You must live.
You have raised a wonderful young man. Growing up, he would climb Mount Tiangheng to gain the earth’s wisdom, and to seek his father’s guidance once he reached the clouds. He is a fair and understanding boy. It certainly did not hurt that had inherited yours and Morax’s good looks, too. And he loves his parents, he bursts with filial piety for both of you, and cares for you. He is exemplary.
These years have compressed despite the long stretch of life’s daily dregery. You certainly do not look the same as you once did, when you were but a young lady discovering god. You and your son, bleeding mortality, have witnessed time pass and felt its effects, too.
Yet Morax alters his appearance only to match yours. You can blink and he could look the same as he did when you came upon him so many years ago.
Clouds drift over Mount Tiangheng, ever-changing, and they remind you of yourself. Will the passing of time soften Morax’s sadness once both you and your son join the realm of spirits? In decades, your skin will be wrinkled like raisins, and your hair will be white as foreign frost.
Perhaps your son will sire an heir, because that is how it usually goes, and pass on your blood. And Morax will spent eternity haunted by a lineage of young boys and girls who will someday be the only proof that you ever existed, that your constellation crossed his.
The world changes every day. When your husband and your son return, jubilant with good news about the defeat of enemy troops, you meet their golden eyes with a serene smile, but Rex Lapis can see the way your eyes betray you.
5972 (五千九百七十二)
The enemy troops come like fire spreading through a forest. Their war gongs beat like a ritual’s drum. They have come to hostage the earth god’s jewel, demanding that you marry their leader and lying that they have slain your husband and son.
You know they lie, but the wars over this land have gone on for long and your son has been away for a considerable time. How much longer till this world changes? When you stare into the night sky, you look at the moon and wonder how many more there are behind the false sky.
They do not know all that you know. You are the priestess, and you will know if Rex Lapis is dead. He is not. But your son…
“Prove to me the death of my son and husband,” you say. “Bring me the Geo Archon’s golden cape, my son’s red spinning top, and my silver koi pin that my husband wears to battle. My husband and son have them. Then, I shall believe you.”
The troops who have defiled the palace leave for three days and three nights, and come back with three objects. They present a golden cape, a red spinning top, and a silver koi pin, claiming that they were the divine possessions you sought.
You triumphed. “There is no such cape, top, or pin in battle. They are on display in this palace. You lie.”
With your clever trickery, you have stalled enough time for the Liyue troops to arrive.
Right before the enemies draw their swords to take you away, an explosion fills the night sky outside. Stars burst in the clouds. Fire crackers. Frightened, the enemies scatter. When the smoke clears, they are gone.
“Mother!” your son shouts happily, running up to embrace you.
Rex Lapis follows him. Your eyes meet. You glow with pride at the world you have accomplished making with him, starting with your family. He embraces you both, and the servants smile when they emerge from hiding.
The bards say it’s a testament to remaining not too attached to the material world when they sing about the story.
5960 (五千九百六十)
Your son’s wife cannot bear a child.
She practically drapes herself on the floor, kneeling before you and Morax, her parents-in-law, her beautiful face dripping with salty tears, apologizing. The nurses had seen the blood running down her legs, and they knew it was futile. Her body cannot bear the genetics of the divine.
She is a perfectly healthy woman. Not once have you ever seen her in sickness, not even so much as a cold or a cough. And you know at once that it is the Ley Lines, the greater gods in the sky, sending you a clear message: one divine child is enough, but you are not allowed to reproduce more.
Your son had been a glorious general. It is a warning: do not overtake the heavenly state that floats above.
“My daughter,” you say softly, kneeling down and wiping her tears with your aged fingers despite her sobbing. “Cry no more. It is not your fault.”
Morax watches you with a pensive countenance. He tells your daughter-in-law, “I grieve your loss with you, little one. Your sorrow is mine.”
Your blood is going to with you and your son. Neither of you will live forever. Still. His love grows stronger as the fine days slip away.
5901 (五千九百零一)
Your hair is white as the snow in the distant north.
Unlike you, your son still glows with divinity. When he sees the frailty with which you lift a teacup, he looks to his father with pleading eyes. “Mother, what is happening?”
You smile. Your face has lines from the happiness you’ve accumulated over the years.
“What happens to us mortals in all due time, my son,” you say. “I will see your wife soon.”
Rex Lapis’s eyes are glassy when his wrinkled hands caress you. He has always altered his appearance to match yours. “My love, please don’t go.”
Your hands intertwine. One life is not enough to love him.
5900 (五千九百)
The earth has always loved you, and it embraces you once again as the its god lowers you into the ground.
500 (五百)
The land under Teyvat has fallen. They should have known their follies well — that if they were to ever defy the gods, they would fall. There is a term for it. Hubris. When humans overexert their pride, they eventually find out the true cost of playing the roles of the divine.
Rex Lapis thinks of this when he launches the final spear, imbued with the earth’s elements, at the palace in Khaenri’ah, watches the knights and the soldiers with those dreaded stars in their eyes scatter, and the whole place explodes into a cloud of golden dust.
In the distance, he can see the terrors the other Archons have inflicted upon the Khaeneri’ans — the Electro Archon with her lightning sword striking the ground, the Anemo Archon with his glowing wings visible through the gale storm he had whipped into life.
None of them want to fight this war, but they must. Celestia forbade the Khanri’ans to push for that technological progress, and it was bad enough that every nation had been attacked by the Abyss. They are wicked things. But they are gods.
What would you think? He wondered. You had never been anything like the Khaenri’ans. You had been a human whom Celestia tolerated well enough. Your marriage to Rex Lapis was one that the gods above did not interfere in, even when you gave birth to a demigod.
When the wars in Liyue raged on, the soldiers and their families often passed down the stories of you and Rex. As long as they had faith in the Geo Archon, and stayed loyal, unwavering, and true, much like a reliable rock that changes little over time, they would be greatly rewarded. Where you were once the most dazzling and lovely thing the god ever had, you were now only a story for him to hear, especially during difficult times like war.
Perhaps you would have sympathized with those poor Khaenri’ans. They knew little about what it meant to have love for something greater than them. It was no wonder that they turned to machines and contraptions to satisfy their need for accomplishment. But at the same time, you would have understood that these machines they built were dangerous. Human arrogance. No one should ever make an enemy of the divine.
Rex Lapis supposed, though, that you never had to feel that way since he had been a fair and just god in the first place. The deities in Celestia were not as forgiving. You would not risk Liyue, not when it was your beloved home. And he would not tarnish your legacy by letting Liyue remain overrun by evil.
So as the soldiers of Khaenri’ah, the sad and pathetic things they are, come rushing in, more out of honor than the belief of victory if anything, Morax manifests a meteor from the sky and allows it to obliterate everything in sight.
1 (一)
“The Imperial Family,” the storyteller says as the stage begins to change. The actress named Yun Jin takes form on the stage in the tea shop, and a crowd begins to gather. The role of the god’s beloved deserves only the best actress, , for she is the star of the story.
Everyone loved the story of the Imperial Family. The song was thousands of years old, translated over and over again, but the story remained the same.
Yun Jin dances across the stage, her arms weaving through the sky as though to imitate you in the heavens.
“Thousands of years ago, when Liyue was a nation emerging from the earth, there lived a merchant’s daughter who witnessed the coming of a deity.
“Rex Lapis is the name of this deity
They gaze into each other’s eyes, and their eyes burn
Like a hero’s sword, or a lunar eclipse.
Heaven cannot match the Imperial Family.
“Our great prince is their love,
That warrior whose noble feats slayed demons
The filial son, the paragon of children
Heaven cannot match the Imperial Family.
“Ancient walls crumble at her smile
And treasure troves are envious
When He calls her His beloved.
Heaven cannot match the Imperial Family.
“No tomb may mottle, nor sepulchre sink
For the dead live through all living things
Look at how their love leaps across years.
The Geo Archon adores her, still.
And Heaven cannot match the Imperial Family.”
The words have changed much throughout the translated years, but the melody rings the same as it did millennia ago.
Zhongli allows the tea leaves to swirl in his cup before they settle at the bottom. Then, he blows the heat away. There was once a time where he fell from the heavens like a burning comet, and now, thousands of years later, he prefers his tea piping hot. It is amusing how even gods change in the smallest ways.
The stories sometimes varied throughout the centuries. In some versions, you were not a merchant’s daughter but instead a miner’s daughter. Or a fisherman’s novice. He often corrected these mishaps, to protect your memory, your history. Life has changed in many ways.
Yet it is true. Nothing will match you.
0000 (〇)
A dragon is falling from the sky.
The death of a god.
When you watch Rex Lapis’ corpse splay across the terrace, it feels as though your stomach has dropped to your heels. The tears well in your eyes and they fall on your silken sash.
As a shamanic painter, you have had many strange encounters with the divine. From the moment you were born into this world, rumors of adepti in the form of birds flying over your nursery began to stir across the harbor. Your spiritual connection to the gods have always felt like a serene oasis between the earth and the sky, even more so when your merchant father would bring you to the temples to pray.
You cannot explain why, but your heart longs to unite with their world. People often say you’re akin to the crane lady Shenhe since they presume you to be an adeptus at first glance. But you’re a mortal. Your soul is a cloud drifting above the mountains; heart fluttering like flowers rooted deeply into the rich earth.
When you grew older, and began to study the artistic displays of the ancient priests, you’d often light incense in the pristine jars that would randomly appear on your desk. They look ancient, yet they work well. You’d strum the lute and hum songs about Rex Lapis. You have sold many ceramics of Liyue’s god.
You adored your archon; loved him, like any devout artist loved a muse.
And that is how you know that the exuvia before you is not the Geo Archon’s true corpse.
Where then, is he?
You mull over this as you descend Yujing Terrace, thoughts clouding through your mind like a thunderstorm, even if it was a sunny day. You cannot imagine Rex Lapis dying on a day full of sunshine. There is no sign of him between the earth and the sky.
You long for your god. Your soul has always been old; you seek the past in your dreams.
Away from the world, you realize that there is no one near the garden and the pool. Everyone was at the terrace, mourning the Exuvia. There are no guards watching over the antiques on display near the bridge.
The antiques are six thousand years old. A cape, a top, and a pin, carelessly tossed behind the ceramics. Your mind stops; and you gaze at them in wonder. Did they belong to the Archon’s wife?
“I would not touch that if I were you.”
You jump, and turn to see a tall man standing a few feet away. He is dressed in smart brown robes, and speaks with an air of wise authority. When your eyes meet, his pupils seem to enlarge in his golden irises, like a dragon finding gold.
“I was only looking,” you say.
“You have a good eye,” says the stranger, amusement laced in his tone. “These artifacts date back to the year Rex Lapis fought wars.”
“A pity I only see them on this unfortunate day.”
“Rex Lapis’s wife was nearly kidnapped that year, but she cleverly deceived the opposition with these objects.”
“These must be auspicious and blessed,” you say, inspecting the artifacts. Strangely enough, she had the same tastes as you. You’d once sewn a cape for your father with the same embroider pattern, played with a spinning top as a child, and wore a koi pin as well. “Truly… curious.”
“Truly,” the man repeats. His voice has drifted off as he gazes at you, as though you were all in the world. He has the loving eyes of a wise man enamored with you at first sight. It reminds you of all the times you were inspired by your god to make art of him.
Something within you stirs. A pull as resonant as the echo of a lute’s string. As bright as heaven’s stars. Or as deep as the ocean’s most quiet depth.
You think you know this man. Your voice drops to a whisper, as gentle as birdsong in the early spring.
"May I ask who you are?"
Zhongli softens at once. It has taken everything to restrain himself; to be the calm mortal he had learned to become. But that is not what you know him as. Or what you remember him by. Erosion is a terrible thing, coupled with the fragility of mortal life. But your memories are surely deep within Ley Lines, waiting to come back.
"If I tell you, would you know me?"
You're taken aback by this alluring man you just met. He is handsome and gazes at you with eyes that speak of intense longing.
A star burning for you. An answered prayer from your time at the temple. Or a dragon falling from the sky and into your embrace as though you’ve waited six thousand years. And he has been waiting for the god to step down to find you, too.
And you smile.