"I should not have kept all of this from you."
Buer let her gaze move slowly around the room before settling, briefly, on Rahman. Her voice was unhurried, carrying the particular quality of someone who has decided that the time for withholding has passed.
"Over a thousand years ago, King Deshret reached into what lay beneath the Abyss and drew out Forbidden Knowledge. Together, he and I fought to suppress it."
"That battle was also where King Deshret fell."
Rahman's eyes dropped to the table. He had already encountered this in the ruins of Deshret's tomb , he had seen the shape of what had happened, even if not every detail. Hearing it confirmed again did not make it easier.
"It was from that point forward that the Withering began to spread across Sumeru. And the Blight."
Tighnari's head came up sharply. He stared at Buer with an expression that was rapidly reconfiguring itself.
"Then all of this , the Withering, the Blight, they were caused by–"
"Yes."
Buer's nod was steady.
"Irminsul fell ill. The Forbidden Knowledge that had taken root in it spread outward, and the Withering and the Blight were how that contamination expressed itself in the world , in the land, and in the people."
"Five hundred years ago, I went to Irminsul myself. I understood then that as long as I existed, Irminsul could not heal. The contamination ran through me into the World Tree. Every day I remained, was another day the whole of Teyvat remained at risk."
"So I broke free the purest branch of Irminsul, made Nahida from my own essential nature , and so, "
She looked at Nahida beside her, and the warmth in her eyes was not complicated.
"Whether you call Nahida my daughter, or call her my reincarnation , both are correct."
The room absorbed this in silence. Naphis had tears running openly down his face, which he was not making any effort to conceal.
"You never truly left Sumeru," he said, after a moment. "You never left your people."
Buer breathed out slowly and continued.
"Before any of this , there had been only one solution I could find to the problem of Irminsul's contamination. Let the world forget me entirely. Erase my existence from the record."
"I could not delete myself. So I created Nahida, left a trail of signs, and trusted that the day would come when we would find each other. When that day arrived, Nahida would complete what I could not , she would delete every trace of my existence from Teyvat."
"With me gone, Irminsul would no longer remember me. And the Forbidden Knowledge, bound to my memory within Irminsul, would go with me."
Alhaitham and the others had gone very still. The full architecture of what Buer had been carrying , and what she had been prepared to do with it , settled into the room with a weight that did not invite comment.
To be erased. Not simply to die, but to be removed from the record of existence. To ensure that no one who had ever known you retained any thread of that knowing. To make yourself as though you had never been, from the beginning.
And to do it deliberately, as the only viable solution remaining.
Several people around the table found that they did not entirely know what to say.
"No wonder," Rahman said slowly, his voice carrying something complicated, "that every account of Greater Lord Rukkhadevata calls you a god of great compassion."
He looked at her with an expression that held two things at once , his long-standing faith in King Deshret, and the recognition that what Deshret had done and what Rukkhadevata had done were not of the same order.
He could hold both things. It was not a comfortable position, but it was an honest one.
"Deshret's legacy is real," he said quietly. "But so is yours. You saved the world."
"Greater Lord Rukkhadevata." Tighnari's voice was careful. "So right now , Irminsul is still, "
"Yes." She did not elaborate on what the World Tree currently looked like. The room did not need that image. "As long as I exist, the contamination continues. The original plan has not changed in that regard."
Alhaitham's hands had flattened on the table. Something in his bearing had shifted toward the particular tension of someone recalculating quickly.
"Then you are still planning to, "
Buer's expression warmed slightly.
"No. If it were not for Ryen, I would have continued on the original path. But I have other options now."
"Before I leave, I will go with Ryen and the others to address Irminsul's contamination directly. After that, I will leave Teyvat. As long as the Forbidden Knowledge's hold on me remains, I will not return."
"Once Irminsul is freed from the Forbidden Knowledge's influence , the Blight and the Withering will dissolve. Both of them."
A pause.
"Consider that my last gift to Sumeru's people."
Her gaze moved, unhurried, and found a point somewhere beyond the room's walls , a place that existed in memory rather than geography.
"There is one more thing I should tell you."
"Years ago, under the weight of the Forbidden Knowledge's contamination, I had no choice but to create the Void."
"By drawing on the Void, I was able to drive the Forbidden Knowledge back temporarily. But the cost was this: the people of Sumeru lost the ability to dream."
The corners of her lips lifted, barely.
"For a long time, I was the only being in the world who could still dream. In my dreams, everyone else still entered sleep , still found that quiet place at the end of the day. In the dream, no one was excluded."
She turned. Her hands folded together at her chest, the gesture carrying a quality of completion rather than ceremony.
"So , now, I give that back."
She spoke toward the walls, toward the city beyond them, toward no one present and everyone beyond.
"People of Sumeru."
"From this night forward , I hope you dream good dreams."
The light that left her was not dramatic. It did not announce itself. Small points of green , like the last few sparks rising from a fire that has burned long and clean , drifted upward from her figure and moved outward without haste, passing through stone and wood as though neither existed, spreading across the whole breadth of Sumeru until every person in the city had been touched by something they would not be able to name but would feel, that night, when they closed their eyes.
The people of Sumeru would think it was Nahida's blessing. They would look at one another and smile and say a few words of gratitude, and they would mean them.
Only the people in this room had seen where it came from.
Alhaitham and the others bowed without speaking. One by one, without coordination, they bent forward in a silence that said more than anything they might have added. They stayed there for a long moment.
When they straightened, Buer looked as though the expenditure had cost her something. It was not visible in her bearing , she held herself as she always had, composed and unhurried. But something in the quality of the air around her had shifted very slightly.
She said, simply:
"I return your dreams to you. Once Irminsul's last contamination is resolved, I will leave Teyvat behind."
She looked around the room, and her voice settled into something that was meant to be remembered.
"All of you , Sumeru is in your hands now. Please support Nahida well. Lead Sumeru forward, to heights that even I would struggle to reach."
Naphis, who had gotten himself more or less under control, looked up at her with the expression of someone who has just decided what the most important thing they have ever committed to looks like.
"We understand, Greater Lord Rukkhadevata. Your greatness will be remembered in the hearts of every person in Sumeru, always."
Ryen watched this from his position near the door and felt the distinct discomfort of someone who is witnessing a farewell that has not ended yet.
He cleared his throat.
"Right. To be clear , Buer is not dying. She is going to live in my world, which is, objectively, a very interesting place for a Goddess of Wisdom to spend her time. You will all technically be able to visit her there at some point. This is not a funeral."
The solemnity in the room cracked, slightly.
Buer pressed her lips together, suppressing something.
"He is correct. I will be there, and if you encounter something you cannot solve , you know where to find me."
The remaining stiffness in the room dissolved into something more like ordinary discomfort, which was considerably easier to manage.
Ryen made his farewells brief and got everyone moving. There was more of Sumeru to see before they left, and he had made a promise to Buer about that specifically.
They exited the Akademiya into the late-morning brightness, leaving Alhaitham and the others to their work. The festival was still running. The city was still warm and lit and full of the particular pleasant noise of people who have nowhere they urgently need to be.
The queue to hit Azar had reached new lengths overnight. Ryen assessed it briefly and concluded that the wait time was not worth the experience, regardless of how entertaining the experience might be. The group agreed without much discussion, and they left the city proper for the open ground beyond its walls.
Lumine had already gotten there first. She and Klee and a small contingent were somewhere in the Ardravi Valley below the city, engaged in what appeared, from a distance, to be a picnic that had developed into something more energetic. Klee was doing something to a tree that the tree seemed unlikely to survive. Lumine was supervising with the expression of someone who had decided this was fine.
The surrounding wilderness within a radius of several dozen kilometres had been pre-cleared. Ryen had checked before agreeing to this location. Nearly ten Archons and several dozen divine retainers did not require the landscape to be additionally dangerous.
Buer settled in beside Klee and Nahida with the ease of someone who had decided that picnics and helping small children arrange tablecloths were a reasonable use of a Goddess of Wisdom's afternoon. She guided Klee's contribution with the same patient attention she brought to everything.
Ryen found a relatively flat root to sit against and watched her.
He was aware that he had been watching her for longer than the moment justified, and aware that Zhongli had materialized beside him without announcing himself, in the way Zhongli sometimes did.
"Don't tell me," Zhongli said, with the mildly resigned tone of someone who has been in this particular vicinity before, "that you are now interested in Buer."
Ryen turned a look on him.
"Am I that predictable?"
"..." Zhongli looked at the assembled group , Hu Tao, Ningguang, Ganyu, Guizhong, Yae Miko, and the others , with the expression of a man reviewing evidence.
"Yes," he said.
Ryen made a sound of mild protest, then stopped. "Fine. I am somewhat inclined toward her. But that is not actually what I was thinking about just now."
Zhongli waited.
"She said she was once the only dreaming being in the world. She is the Goddess of Wisdom. Why would the power over dreams belong to her?" He turned it over. "And separately , you and Buer have both existed since very early in Teyvat's history. Which of you came first?"
Zhongli was quiet for a moment. He looked at the valley, the festival's residual noise carrying faintly from the direction of the city.
Then he spoke.
"The power of dreams , it was originally the Goddess of Flowers' domain. In the age before the Archon War, the three gods of Sumeru each held a portion of what the land carried. King Deshret governed the desert and its knowledge. The Goddess of Flowers held life and dreaming. Greater Lord Rukkhadevata held wisdom and the World Tree."
"As for the Gnosis , I have heard that it was originally intended for Deshret, but he refused it."
"And as to how the dream-power came to rest with Buer rather than remaining with Nabu Malikata, or what passed between them that led to that arrangement , that I do not know."
"And the other question," Ryen prompted. "Which of you is older?"
Zhongli closed his mouth. He said nothing for a notable stretch of time.
"You're doing that thing again," Ryen said.
"It is not a deliberate performance of mystery. I genuinely do not have a precise answer."
Zhongli turned his gaze back to the valley.
"Buer's nature is unusual. She is simultaneously a god and something that transcends what we ordinarily mean by that word , she is the World Tree's incarnation, which places her in a different category of existence from those of us who simply hold a Gnosis. The question of which of us was born first does not have a clean answer, because she was not born in the way that I was born."
"In any case, " He let it go with the particular ease of someone who has decided that certain questions are not the most productive use of the present moment. "Now that she will be living in your world, none of this has a great deal of practical significance. Your world has no World Tree. It has no Forbidden Knowledge. The categories that made her existence unusual here will simply not apply there."
"You might," he added, with the subtlest inflection of someone slipping in an observation they have been waiting to make, "apply your attention to something more immediately productive. The Witchcraft mod, for instance, has been active for over a week, and the progress so far is not what it could be."
Ryen looked at him sideways.
"Is this you giving me a lecture now?"
"Merely an observation."
"Right." Ryen jabbed an elbow into Zhongli's ribs, lightly. "Tell me what you actually want. We've known each other long enough. You're not going to embarrass yourself."
Zhongli accepted the elbow with the dignity of someone who does not acknowledge elbows.
"The draw blade production is now running smoothly. The furniture mod has begun generating output , Liyue and Mondstadt have both set up furniture workshops, and household quality is improving across both cities. The Witchcraft mod, however, remains underdeveloped. No library ruins have been located. No high-quality spellbooks have been found."
"By any reasonable principle of resource allocation, this represents an underinvested opportunity."
"And you personally," Ryen said, "have found a specific spell you want."
A pause.
"Temporal Stasis?" Ryen guessed.
"No."
Zhongli's voice had not changed at all, but something in it had become very slightly more precise.
"Rite of Remove Curse."
Ryen went still.
He looked at Zhongli , really looked at him , and found that Zhongli was looking at the sky. Not at anything in the sky. Through it.
"Don't tell me," Ryen said, slowly. "That this is because of Khaenri'ah."
Zhongli spoke toward the distance.
"Khaenri'ah is part of it. The disaster , even though I acted under coercion, the ordinary people of Khaenri'ah had no part in what the ruling powers did. They were innocent. I have not forgotten that."
A silence.
"But there are others." His voice did not waver, but something in its quality shifted. "Others to whom I owe a debt I have not yet had a means of repaying."
His gaze had not come down from the sky.
"The Primordial One of Celestia."