"What are you making?"
Kiyo looked back.
Lumine leaned against the wooden door, cool moonlight spread across her loose hair. She wore a white nightdress and no shoes or stockings, her bare feet resting upon the tatami. Her amber eyes watched Kiyo as she gave a lazy yawn.
"Dessert," Kiyo answered.
"Oh..." Lumine swayed her head as she inspected the soft white Dango Milk upon the plate. Her nose twitched. "Mm. It looks delicious."
It truly did. The pure-white dango resembled fresh snow spread across frost-covered branches at the beginning of winter.
"Can I try one?"
"Of course." Kiyo nodded.
Lumine picked up one piece between pale fingers. Her lips parted as she placed it in her mouth. She tilted her head, eyes narrowing contentedly as a smile appeared at their corners.
"It's delicious."
"How nice," she said. "How nice... Whoever gets to eat these must be very happy."
Lumine leaned against the edge of the table and stared at the autumn moonlight frosting the window. She seemed lost in thought. Only after some time did she ask, "Who did you make them for?"
She looked directly at Kiyo.
A fatal question.
Kiyo immediately felt guilty.
He had been planning to use them to bribe Narukami.
The longer he remained silent, the sharper Lumine's gaze became.
"Who are they for?"
"...Beelzebul," Kiyo confessed.
"How nice."
Lumine repeated the words, then looked back toward the moonlit window.
"You have Kitsune Udon too. Kitsune Udon belongs to Yae Miko, and Dango Milk is for Beelzebul. But there isn't a single flavor that belongs only to me."
"I can grill fish for you."
"No." Lumine shook her head.
"Why not?"
She stared straight at him, something indescribable within her voice. "I want one of my own. I don't want to share it with anyone else. You grill fish for Lia too, don't you? So that flavor isn't mine alone."
She was being unreasonable, though not quite spoiled, and somehow it was impossible to find her irritating. Lumine puffed out her cheeks and turned away from Kiyo. The tips of her ears glowed faintly red, and her beautiful eyes shone like those of a small, sulking animal demanding something that belonged only to her.
The Salt God is still sleeping inside the ruler, Kiyo thought.
"Then I'll invent a dish for you too—one I make only for Lumine." Kiyo considered it for a moment before speaking earnestly. "I don't know whether I'll succeed, but I have to try."
Everyone should leave a few dishes behind in a lifetime, just as everyone would meet a few people. Bosacius had created Jewelry Soup for his master and junior sister. Kiyono Raimei had left behind Kitsune Udon and Dango Milk.
Their memories and the people they loved remained hidden within those singular flavors. Years later, on a clear day after rain, one taste would bring that person back to mind.
Kiyo wanted to hide his feelings for Lumine within a flavor too.
Her eyes shifted faintly. She lowered her head and gave a quiet hum.
"I don't want it."
Then she fell silent, still sulking.
Kiyo returned to his work. His pale fingers rolled and kneaded the dough into smooth, round pieces. After a while, however, he stopped.
Someone had embraced him from behind. Warmth pressed against his back, and a soft breath tickled his neck.
"Don't turn around," Lumine said. "Don't move. Don't look at me. Don't resist, and you're not allowed to say no."
Her voice was very low.
"Let me hold you for a while."
So low it resembled the murmur of insects.
Cool moonlight enveloped them, scattering its frost-white glow. Kiyo heard Lumine ask quietly, "Does it still hurt?"
She meant his wounds.
To exhaust La Signora before Lumine's duel, Kiyo had destroyed most of the fire butterflies. Those butterflies, in turn, had scorched his body.
"No," Kiyo lied. It still hurt terribly.
"I'm angry," Lumine said. "Not at anyone else. At you. Kiyo Seigan, I'm very angry with you. What you did made me furious."
"I'm angry with you too."
Kiyo did not turn around.
"Why did you challenge La Signora to a Duel Before the Throne without telling me? I searched for you for more than ten days, but you kept hiding from me. We promised we would have dinner together before sunset, and you broke that promise."
At last, they had a chance to speak about what had happened.
Lumine paused, then buried her face against Kiyo's back.
"I didn't want you to see her," she said, her voice muffled.
Then it fell lower still.
"And I didn't want you to get hurt again. I wanted to protect you."
"Then my reason was the same." Kiyo turned to look at her. "I wanted to protect you too."
Their reasons had always been the same.
Lumine looked up. The warm firelight glowed upon her snow-pale cheeks. Then she quickly averted her gaze.
"...I told you not to turn around."
"Bastard," she cursed. "Bastard."
Only then did Kiyo notice something crystalline shining within her eyes.
He froze.
Lumine's heart had remained taut ever since they returned from Tenshukaku. Only now did those emotions finally find somewhere to fall.
The last time Kiyo had seen her like this was in Liyue, when he returned from the Chasm. The same tears had shone in her eyes then.
"Stop looking at me."
Lumine turned Kiyo's head away again.
"Say something comforting."
"What would comfort you most?" Kiyo asked.
Lumine remained silent for a long time. Kiyo waited patiently until the moon had risen above the crown of the paulownia tree.
"Something romantic."
Lumine rose onto her toes and whispered beside his ear.
"Say something romantic to me."
Her voice was so quiet that it barely reached him, yet it seemed to scratch directly at his heart. Kiyo felt her fingers tighten. He did not need to turn around to know that her face had reddened.
"I don't know how to say romantic things."
"'You are my Miss Lumine too,'" Lumine quoted, teasing and embarrassed at once. "You seemed quite good at it when you thought I was asleep."
"...Please don't mention that."
"Say something."
Kiyo turned again and looked at Lumine: at her moonlit face, her beautiful amber eyes and smooth golden hair, and the unhealed wounds upon her pale skin.
She was badly hurt too.
As he gazed into her eyes, Kiyo suddenly saw another vision of the original timeline. He saw the nation reduced to scorched earth, the chains forged from the laws of the world, and the girl impaled upon them.
The light in her eyes faded. Life slowly left her, and at last she closed her eyes forever.
Kiyo's heart lurched.
Then the vision passed. Lumine remained within his arms—living, warm, and real.
But that vision had been the original timeline. The true past.
"What is it?" Lumine asked.
"Nothing."
"Then say something."
Kiyo lowered his head and wrapped both arms tightly around her, refusing to let go.
Their cheeks pressed together. In the center of his empty chest, something beat furiously. Though he had no heart, his heart beat all the same. Though he spoke no words, what remained unspoken ran deepest.
He said nothing. But holding her this way was itself the most moving confession in the world.
After a long while, their breaths mingled—and then their lips touched.
Kiyo whispered, "I'll create the finest flavor in the world for you. Whenever I miss you, I'll taste that dish."
Crimson spread across Lumine's skin like sunset.
"You're awfully good at this for someone who claims he isn't..." she complained.
"Did that comfort you?" Kiyo asked.
"Not enough. Say more."
Lumine caught his collar, rose onto her toes, and kissed him.
"Say more for me."
—
The following day.
A light rain had fallen overnight. Shallow water in the courtyard of the Pillar General's mansion reflected the cool autumn light. After the rain, the breeze was mild, and the sky looked clear enough to have been freshly washed.
Today would bring the final Duel Before the Throne.
Before Narukami at Tenshukaku, Kunikuzushi and La Signora would fight the last duel.
"Do me a favor," Kiyo told Kunikuzushi privately. "When the duel ends, please give this to Her Excellency Narukami."
Kunikuzushi accepted the wooden box with some hesitation and weighed it in his hand. It was very light.
"Dessert," Kiyo explained.
"Ah." Kunikuzushi understood at once and nodded. "You intend to poison Beelzebul. Leave it to me."
You really don't respect your own mother...
Kiyo gave him a deeply peculiar look. "There's no poison."
"It's ordinary dessert," he emphasized. "She'll understand when she sees it."
"And if she does not understand?" Kunikuzushi asked calmly. "What if she refuses even to look?"
Just as she had never looked upon the puppet.
"Then throw it away." Kiyo waved a hand.
"You aren't coming to Tenshukaku?" Lumine asked. "I am."
"My wounds haven't healed." Kiyo shook his head. "Besides... I can't see La Signora again."
And so it was decided.
When Lumine and Kunikuzushi left the mansion together, Lumine glanced back. Cool autumn light outlined the side of Kiyo's face. His back was turned as he spoke to the Great Tengu. Swaying shadows from the trees concealed his body.
—
Dawn had barely begun.
The Delusion Factory stood upon Yashiori Island.
This was where the great serpent Orobashi had died. Countless traces of corruption and lingering curses had once roamed the land. Although the Pillar General had cleansed them all in his final campaign, few people ventured here even now.
It was the perfect place to build a Delusion Factory.
The Fatui plan had begun by manipulating the Commissions and intensifying Inazuma's internal conflicts through the Sakoku and Vision Hunt Decrees.
Once those tensions reached their limit, civil unrest would erupt into war. A battlefield would provide the ideal testing ground for Delusions. That was why this factory had been built.
So far, the plan had progressed smoothly. The Sakoku Decree had already driven the people to bitter resentment.
Within another year at most, the Fatui would reap the results.
La Signora stared at the Delusion Factory, lost in thought.
She lowered her eyes. The cold autumn light seeped into her skin, bringing a faint sting.
With the heart and timepiece gone, she was empty. The excuses and convictions that had sustained her no longer remained. When she looked back upon the road she had traveled and forward toward its destination, when she looked at the Delusions radiating their dark presence, La Signora felt uncertainty for the first time.
No—not uncertainty.
Doubt.
When she closed her eyes, she heard suffering and delirious whispers rising from the depths of every Delusion. For a moment, it seemed as though countless eyes were watching her.
Silent eyes.
Hateful eyes.
All watching her.
For the first time, she asked herself whether the path she followed truly belonged to their dream.
Did it truly end in that pure-white world?
Was this the world Rostam had longed to see?
If he stood before the factory now, would he approve of these Delusions? Of the Sakoku and Vision Hunt Decrees? Would he want to see people driven from their homes, a nation consumed by civil war, and human beings used as experiments?
The answer was no.
La Signora wavered.
She had desired a beautiful world. Her dream had been pure and flawless, yet the road beneath her feet was anything but pure. It was twisted, and her methods were unjust.
La Signora had always known that. But she had believed something else just as firmly: if she could realize the dream and reach that pure-white destination, then no matter how twisted the road became, no matter how many people had to be sacrificed or how much guilt she had to bear, none of it mattered.
She had accepted that burden. That conviction had carried her this far.
If the result was beautiful, the means did not matter.
But now she questioned even that.
Could a twisted road truly reach a pure-white destination?
Could it ever produce a beautiful ending?
No.
She had only ever deceived herself.
Rostam's heart had vanished with the final grains of sand. The young wolf had not loved La Signora. He had loved the girl named Rosalyne.
And that girl had died long ago.
La Signora had buried her with her own hands. She had buried herself.
Just as Venti had said, she herself had buried the poem they once shared.
[My dearest Miss Rosalyne, farewell.]
Those words had been written upon the letter box that melted away.
They had said farewell long ago.
Could she still be redeemed?
La Signora no longer knew.
She ordered the officer in charge to dismiss every soldier at the Delusion Factory. She told them to return to Snezhnaya—to return to those they loved.
Then she walked forward barefoot.
Fire butterflies rose from her dead heart and settled upon the factory, sweeping across every Delusion.
Flames followed in their wake. With every step she took, the fire climbed higher. Delusions burned, their dark and chaotic power evaporating amid shrill, hateful screams. Every corrupted thing became kindling for the blaze.
Soon, an inferno swept across the land.
She burned down the Fatui's Delusion Factory.
From this moment onward, she too was a traitor. She had forfeited her seat as La Signora.
And she was burning the road she had once followed.
But destroying that twisted road could not restore the lives already lost. She could not be redeemed.
It was too late.
All she could do was repay what she owed.
The sun rose from the sea, scattering thin light through gaps in the clouds until dawn and fire shone together.
"But that was not dawn, dear Rosalyne. It was a sea of fire that would consume everything."
Within the light, Rosalyne heard a voice speak those words.
Yashiori Island seemed to have been washed clean. The heavy gloom above it evaporated into mist. Withered forests and rotting trees alike became ash. Before long, new plants would rise from what remained.
When everything had burned away, Rosalyne left for Tenshukaku to face the mistaken destination at the end of her twisted road.
At the far end of the steps, before the throne, Kunikuzushi waited.
That puppet.
Yet he no longer felt like a puppet.
La Signora sensed it clearly. His appearance had not changed, but his presence was entirely different—more real, more alive. It was as though an incomplete man had finally recovered the part he lacked, or a wanderer had at last found his lost home.
Kunikuzushi had filled the emptiness within himself.
At the summit of Tenshukaku, the Raiden Shogun lowered her emotionless gaze.
Begin.
One had lost everything.
The other had gained everything.
Fire butterflies surged upward and collided with Kunikuzushi's wind.
Fire and wind entwined, each devouring the other. The butterflies rolled the sea of clouds into an inferno, while blades of wind cut through them and sent their fragments falling as ash.
Kunikuzushi fought La Signora as the heart beat within him. When fire scorched his body, it felt pain. When he severed the path of a butterfly, it felt joy.
Pain or joy, sensation or emotion—every response was novel and endlessly fascinating.
Kunikuzushi experienced them with the wonder of a child and felt happiness from the depths of his being.
The heart pounded fiercely.
Once again, he saw the final battlefield.
He saw the soldiers of the Pillar Army charge the great serpent one after another. He seemed to stand among them now, feeling the same fervor within his own chest.
He heard their voices.
The voices of those soldiers.
"Four hundred years later—Kishibe Shirono, draw!"
"Four hundred years later—Tanaka Morii, draw!"
...
Kunikuzushi saw the old man too.
Kiyono Raimei.
He remembered the tradition of the Pillar Army. When one soldier died, the next buried their body, remembered their name, and continued onward. To be forgotten was the most complete death of all.
Kiyono Raimei had been the last soldier of the Pillar Army. The old man had therefore carried every one of their names.
And now Kiyono Raimei was dead as well.
Kunikuzushi lowered his body and gripped Orochigiri's sheath. White mist escaped between his teeth.
The ancient heart beat with blazing passion. Within it, he heard the voice that had lain silent for four hundred years.
Kiyono Raimei's voice.
"Four hundred years later—Kiyono Raimei, draw."
Kiyono Raimei was dead, but he would not be forgotten.
The puppet would succeed him as the final soldier of the Pillar Army.
At last, Kunikuzushi grasped Fudoshin.
Following the guidance of that heart, he held the blade of wind and lowered his body beside Kiyono Raimei. White mist spilled between his teeth.
Together they drew.
Lightning lasting 0.3 seconds and a wavering wind crossed the sky as one.
"Four hundred years later—Kunikuzushi, draw."
All things lost form within that lightning. All things lost sound within its thunder. Every corrupted husk dissolved.
The fire butterflies vanished within Kiyono's thunder, turning to ash. Rosalyne disappeared into that pure-white blade-light with them.
This was Kiyono Raimei's world.
It was also Kiyono Fugin's.
She felt no pain.
Everything was quiet.
Nothing was frightening anymore.
The stifling whispers that had tormented her were gone. Only peace remained, and pure white filled her vision as Rosalyne walked through it.
She saw Mondstadt's windmills, their weathered wheels turning beside the clear waters of Cider Lake. She saw the blue sky, the castle, the cathedral, and the statue in the plaza below.
Then she heard a song.
That long-lost melody, bright and sorrowful.
"If you have any troubles, you can confide in me. Alleviating a lady's worries is a knight's duty."
"The west wind carries the scent of wine,"
"The mountain wind brings word of victory."
"My name is Rostam. And you, my lady?"
"A far-off breeze pulls at my heartstrings,"
"And every rustling leaf sings of my longing."
"These scars have longed for your tender touch."
"But I wasn't joking."
"I want to hold your hand."
"You stirred my morning dream, then quietly slipped away."
"Your scent—tart berries and sweet lilac."
"Have you packed everything?"
"It's a Hydro Timepiece. It will complete one cycle in the time it takes for you to finish your studies at the Akademiya. When the timepiece runs out, I'll come to see you."
Rosalyne walked toward the young wolf, moving backward through frozen time.
Once again, she became that girl in a pure-white dress and scholar's hood, escaping her burdensome studies to sing poetry upon the statue in the plaza.
She saw the heart.
At the end of her life, she finally understood it.
"I'm sorry..."
"I'm sorry."
The girl's shoulders trembled. She lowered her eyes as crystalline tears traced her cheeks.
Her apology was not only for Rostam. She apologized to every life she had reduced to ash.
Or perhaps she was repenting.
"I'm sorry."
The boy waited patiently and silently at the end of that pure-white world.
Rosalyne followed him toward its furthest edge. She did not know whether dawn waited at the end of that road or a sea of fire that would consume everything.
But she knew that, at the end of the pure white, she would find her final peace.
"On a rainy night at Cider Lake, I would follow the wolf into the storm."
The final line of Rainy Night at Cider Lake.
At last, the thunder dispersed, and Tenshukaku slowly returned to clarity.
Before the throne, Rosalyne scattered into countless dancing fire butterflies.
They slowly vanished within the light.
No one could say whether a smile had rested upon her lips or tears had crossed her face.
Perhaps both.