Snow-white hair, unbound, cascading down her back , except for one precise strand pulled forward and braided to rest against her shoulder. A face with edges and definition that Nahida's still-soft features had not yet found. The resemblance was there, unmistakable and exact, but where Nahida's face still carried the last traces of childhood roundness, this face had become what it was going to be , elegant, composed, complete. The same green cross-shaped pupils, bright as Sumeru's deepest canopy, unchanged from the consciousness-space, unchanged from the image of the girl who had stood at the base of Irminsul five hundred years ago. Pointed ears, finely shaped. Robes white as new snow, traced throughout with patterns of jade-green in the style of trailing cloud-script. Shoulders left bare, the skin there pale and unblemished as fine porcelain.
Seen from across the room, the overall impression was that of something made rather than born , a figure too precisely rendered to have happened accidentally.
Ryen rubbed his eyes.
He looked at Buer. He looked at Nahida, whom he was still holding. He looked at Buer again, slowly, with the expression of someone receiving information they had not prepared to receive.
"Nahida is going to look like that when she grows up?"
He considered this at some length.
"That is completely unreasonable. What is Nahida even supposed to go through between now and then to arrive at that result?"
Nahida, who had been in the middle of being appropriately awed by Buer's appearance, felt a shift in her mood that she could not quite explain and was not entirely willing to examine.
Buer, meanwhile, had not expected this to be the room's primary response to her reappearance in the world of the living. She touched her cheek with one finger, slightly puzzled, and looked around at everyone with the careful uncertainty of someone who suspects they have missed something.
"I apologise , is there something wrong?"
Ryen was still looking her over with the methodical quality of someone conducting an inventory.
Face: immaculate.
Bearing: absolute.
Proportions: exceptional. Standing beside Ningguang in terms of sheer presence, she would not lose the comparison. A fraction either way and the balance would shift; as it was, the balance held perfectly.
He looked back at Nahida , soft cheeks, round face, very much a child , and felt a complicated mixture of feelings that he elected not to interrogate.
He had always known Nahida would grow into something extraordinary. Gods never grew into anything less. Makoto, Ei, and the others were all proof that divine beings did not produce ordinary results in maturity. He had imagined it, approximately: something beautiful, probably graceful, along the lines of Guizhong , lovely in the way of delicate and luminous things.
He had not imagined this.
Buer at full power was not delicate. Buer was magnificent in the way that a landscape is magnificent , a thing that simply occupied its space completely and did not require permission to do so.
He tightened his hold on Nahida slightly. Told himself not to continue this line of thought. Administered a discreet pinch to his own forearm under the cover of adjusting his grip.
What he had signed up for was a daughter-raising game.
What was happening in his head right now, looking at the grown version of that daughter, was beginning to feel like a different genre of story entirely.
He stopped thinking about it.
Nahida, nestled against his side, had been watching his face with the particular close attention she brought to things she was trying to understand. She had catalogued enough of the people around her to read the difference between the way Ryen looked at her and the way Ryen looked at Guizhong, or Ningguang, or Hu Tao. She knew what the shift looked like. She was watching it happen in real time, directed at Buer.
She bit down on something uncharitable.
Then, after a moment's reflection, decided this was actually acceptable intelligence.
Ryen found the grown-up version of her interesting. The grown-up version of her was, at its most fundamental level, her. Therefore, when she grew up , and she would grow up, on whatever timeline that required , Ryen would find her interesting.
From a strategic standpoint, the information was useful. Nahida filed it, noted that her prospects had improved somewhat, and began composing a mental request for a private conversation with Buer at the earliest opportunity. Topics to be covered: accelerated growth. Whether such a thing was possible. Whether Buer had opinions on the subject.
"Does anyone find something wrong with me?"
Buer looked down at herself, tilting her head slightly, still genuinely uncertain what had produced this reaction.
Guizhong, who had been staring with a combination of admiration and the mild competitive interest of someone who also considered herself quite beautiful, came back to herself and waved both hands quickly.
"No, no , absolutely nothing. We were just thinking about how beautiful you are."
Buer smiled at that, gentle and unhurried.
"Lady Guizhong is also very beautiful."
Guizhong lifted her chin with the satisfied confidence of someone who considers this a simple statement of fact.
"Obviously. I am a timeless and radiant young beauty, after all."
She held the pose for a moment, then let it drop into something more genuine, looking at Buer with a warmer curiosity.
"Is this what you looked like at your peak? Before everything happened?"
Buer inclined her head.
"Yes. This was always my true appearance, when my strength was intact. It has been a very long time."
Makoto had been quiet, but she was watching Buer with an expression that belonged in a different register from everyone else's , the recognition of one ancient god for another, the specific quality of seeing someone as they were rather than as they had been presented.
"The last time I saw you like this," she said softly, "was over a thousand years ago. You told me something had happened in Sumeru, that you had exhausted yourself dealing with it."
Buer's expression held its warmth, but something moved through it , a resignation that had long since completed its grieving.
"Yes. King Deshret." She breathed out slowly. "Though that is all finished now. There is no use dwelling in what cannot be changed."
"So you are actually what Nahida will look like eventually?" Ganyu asked, with the mild wonder of someone fitting pieces together.
Buer's eyes moved to Nahida, softening.
"Yes. We are distinct individuals, as I said , different in the ways that matter. But at the level of essential nature, we are the same. What I became, she will become."
"Though the timeline," she added, in a tone that was gently practical, "is quite long."
She paused, and her expression shifted into something that served as both explanation and analogy.
"For your convenience, think of Nahida and me as similar to Baal and Beelzebul , twin sisters."
Twin sisters.
Every pair of eyes in the room traveled from the composed, fully matured woman who had just introduced herself as Greater Lord Rukkhadevata to the small, round-faced child still settled comfortably in Ryen's arms.
There was a silence that had several things in it at once, most of them carefully unvoiced.
The unspoken consensus, forming simultaneously across multiple minds, went approximately as follows: if these were twins, something about the distribution of developmental progress within the womb had been notably uneven.
"I would say mother and daughter," Ryen said, in the tone of someone offering a friendly amendment. "More accurate, given the circumstances."
Buer raised a hand to her lips, smiling.
"If Nahida doesn't object, I have no particular feelings about it."
"Absolutely not!"
Nahida's objection arrived before anyone had quite finished processing the sentence, delivered at a volume that was unexpected from her usual register. She looked between Ryen and Buer with an expression that contained several layers of very specific refusal.
"Why not?" Ryen looked at her with genuine curiosity. "You came from Buer. In any meaningful sense, she, "
Nahida made a noise somewhere between protest and syllables, found that neither was helping her cause, and settled on a look of profound grievance directed at Ryen.
"We are not doing this! There is work to be done! The World Tree! We have not forgotten about the World Tree!"
Ryen shrugged pleasantly and said nothing further.
Nahida sank back into his arms with the air of someone who has narrowly averted a disaster and is still processing the proximity of it.
Her internal accounting was less composed than her external presentation.
She had observed Guizhong's entire arc. It had taken less than a month. One month from arrival to complete and total enthralment, and she had watched every stage of it happen in something close to real time. She was not going to claim ignorance about how these things developed.
Buer was already suited to Ryen's taste, which she had confirmed approximately twelve minutes ago. Buer was already, by any measurement she could apply, exactly what Nahida would eventually become.
If Buer was formally established as her mother in the household's emotional logic , if that word settled into place and stayed , then Nahida's own eventual path forward would be complicated in ways she could not currently calculate but strongly suspected she would not enjoy.
She was not agreeing to the word mother.
The relationship with Buer could be sisters. Sisters was fine. Sisters was navigable. Sisters still left the relevant future accessible.
Mother, under no circumstances, ever.
She began composing her request for the private conversation with Buer, adding a new item to the agenda: under no circumstances allow Ryen to refer to their relationship as maternal.
"How does the resurrection feel?" Ryen asked, turning to Buer with the slightly different register he used for practical matters.
Buer stood still for a moment, taking genuine inventory.
"Very well. It appears to have restored me entirely to my peak condition." She looked at him with something that carried real weight behind it. "Thank you, Ryen. Truly. Since the incident with Forbidden Knowledge, over a thousand years ago, my body had, "
He waved it off.
"As long as you're well. More importantly , are you still feeling the Forbidden Knowledge's influence? Any lingering effect on your body or soul?"
She shook her head.
"Both are gone. No erosion, no residue. That is actually the part I find most remarkable."
Ryen smiled.
"Makes sense. Full restoration to peak condition, by definition, means no negative states. If there were negative states, it wouldn't be peak condition. The totem doesn't compromise."
Nahida's eyes lit with a thought that had just surfaced.
"Then does that mean Greater Lord Rukkhadevata could, "
"No." Buer said it gently, but without hesitation. "The restoration removed the erosion from my body. But the Forbidden Knowledge itself is not an affliction of the body , it is a form of knowledge. What I have experienced, I cannot un-experience. What I know, I know."
She paused to let that settle.
"I still cannot remain in Teyvat for extended periods. The moment I stay long enough for the connection between my memory and Irminsul to reestablish itself, the contamination resumes. The totem healed the wound. It did not remove the cause."
Nahida's expression fell slightly.
"I understand."
Buer looked at her, and the smile she offered was the particular kind that contains both acknowledgement and reassurance in equal measure.
She reached out and touched the top of Nahida's head lightly.
"Don't worry. Being unable to stay in Teyvat is not the same as disappearing. You spend most of your time with Ryen regardless, and I will be in the same place. We will have plenty of time together."
"My era has passed, Nahida , as has Morax's, and Barbatos's. I should step back and rest. The future belongs to you, and Sumeru needs you to lead it. Not me."
"If there are things you don't understand yet, you know where to find me. I will be watching every step."
Nahida breathed in. Breathed out. And then she nodded, once, with the particular quality of a decision being made and kept.
"I understand."
A pause. Then, with slightly more softness than before: "And please , just call me Buer."
Nahida looked at her for a long moment. Then, with equal solemnity: "Alright."
She considered her words.
"Buer… older sister."
Buer smiled.
She turned to Ryen.
"When should we address the World Tree?"
Ryen was still turning something over. Buer's description of Forbidden Knowledge , the way she had characterised it as existing not as an affliction but as something closer to a memetic contamination, transmitted through the act of knowing, persistent because knowing could not be undone , was sitting in his mind at an angle.
He had some familiarity with things that worked this way. Not much, but some. He was not an expert on the specific mechanics of it. He found, on reflection, that he was not particularly interested in its origins either. The question of where it came from was academic. The question of what to do about it was not.
He looked up.
"No rush. You are still in Teyvat for now, which means we have time." He tilted his head. "When we are ready to leave, we will handle it all at once before you enter the MC World. Get it done in one pass."
"There is one thing to be aware of going forward , once we resolve this, you cannot return to Teyvat. Not under normal circumstances."
Buer shook her head, and the smile remained.
"That is a far better outcome than I was prepared for. I am not in a position to complain about it."
She glanced in the direction of the closed portal.
"And besides , I am genuinely curious about that world. What I observed through Irminsul was remarkable. But seen through other people's memories, the picture is always incomplete."
Ryen laughed and produced a collection of items from somewhere on his person, offering them across.
"You will learn as you go. In the meantime , welcome gifts. Consider it your starter pack."
He laid them out one by one. Buer looked at each of them with recognition rather than confusion , Irminsul's memory had done thorough work , but the recognition was intellectual, the same way she might recognise a place from a description. The objects themselves, in her hands, were something different.
The Totem of Undying. Alchemical elixirs. Ender Pearls. A Rapier. A Staff.
The contents of a beginner's package from the MC World, assembled over many expeditions and many cycles, were by now considerably more substantial than they had been at the start.
Buer received them with both hands and held them carefully, as though the weight of each one was being properly registered.
"Thank you. All of you."
Ryen nodded easily.
"We will be in Sumeru for a while longer. Use the time , explore what you want to see. If there is anything you want to do before you can no longer return, these are the days to do it."
Buer was quiet for a moment. Her eyes drifted somewhere that was not the Sanctuary's walls.
"I have had more desires than I could count, over the years. Most of them resolved themselves while I was still able to act on them. What remains now, "
She paused.
"I simply want to walk through Sumeru and remember every flower, every blade of grass, every street corner. Commit it all to memory."
A breath.
"And then , in that other world, where time has no particular meaning , I want to build a Sumeru of my own."
Her voice was very quiet. The kind of quiet that comes from having held something carefully for a very long time.
"In all the years I have had, through all the long hours , that is the only thing I have ever truly wanted to keep."