The last thing he remembered was the glow of his monitor, the click-clack of his mechanical keyboard, and the comforting hum of his overworked PC fan. The world outside his small apartment had been a symphony of city noise—the distant wail of a siren, the rumble of a night club, the indistinct chatter of people in the streets. It was a world of muted colors and predictable routines. He was Alex, twenty-four years old, an orphan since he was a teenager, working a dead-end data entry job that paid just enough for rent, instant noodles, and the occasional splurge on primogems. His life was a flat line, a study in mediocrity, and his only true escape, his only splash of vibrant color, was the world of Teyvat.
He had just finished his daily commissions in Genshin Impact, his fingers dancing over the keys as he guided his favorite character through the golden fields of Liyue. He'd felt the familiar pang of loneliness as he logged off, the silence of his apartment suddenly deafening. He had crawled into bed, the digital landscapes of Teyvat still painted on the back of his eyelids, and drifted into an exhausted sleep.
This, however, was not his bed.
The first sensation was the cold. A sharp, biting cold, seeping through his thin fabric and settling deep into his bones. He felt it against his back, a hard surface of polished stone. The second sensation was the silence. It wasn't the muffled silence of his apartment; it was a profound, immense quiet, punctuated only by the soft, ethereal whisper of wind rustling through leaves.
His eyelids felt heavy, glued shut. With a slow hesitant approach, he opened them.
The world that greeted him was of a vibrant color. Above him, the sky was a gradient of sapphire and blue. Strange, stylized clouds, drifting lazily across the blue sky. He pushed himself up, his arms trembling with a weakness he didn't recognize. He was sitting on a large, flat-topped mountain peak. All around him, the landscape was a stunning jade-green mountains piercing through a sea of mist. Waterfalls sounds could be heard, as were the sounds of birds.
His mind, sluggish and disoriented, struggled to process the sensory overload. This is a dream, was the first thought. The most vivid dream he had ever had.
He looked down at himself, and the dream theory began to crumble, replaced by a rising panic. He was not wearing his usual worn-out t-shirt and sweatpants. Instead, he was clad in simple, loose-fitting trousers and a tunic of a soft, unfamiliar fabric, both in a shade of earthy brown. They were far too large for him, the sleeves hanging down past his hands.
His hands.
He held them up before his face, and a choked gasp escaped his throat. They were tiny. Small, delicate, with smooth, unblemished skin, not the keyboard-worn hands of a twenty-four-year-old engineer. They were the hands of a child. Frantically, he felt his face, his arms, his legs. Everything was smaller, weaker, younger. The panic was gripping his heart now, squeezing the air from his lungs. His breath came in short, sharp bursts, the thin mountain air burning his throat.
He scrambled to his feet, his oversized clothes hampering his movements. He needed a reflection. He needed to see. He spotted a perfectly still, circular pool of water a few feet away, nestled in a depression in the stone. It looked unnaturally clear, like liquid crystal. Stumbling on legs that felt both foreign and fragile, he fell to his knees beside it and peered into its depths.
The face that stared back at him was not his.
It was the face of a boy, no older than ten. A face of startling, exquisite beauty that it seemed to belong to a fairy tale or a divine painting. No, this looked like a face of anime or game character. His skin was pale and flawless, like polished porcelain, and his features were delicate and refined. But it was the hair and eyes that held the true magic. His hair was a cascade of messy, jet-black silk, soft and untamed, but shot through with thick, iridescent stripes of deep, shimmering blue that seemed to capture and refract the light, like veins of lapis lazuli in obsidian.
And his eyes. Oh, his eyes. They were the color of a pure, brilliant azure blue that seemed to possess their own inner luminescence. They glowed. They actually, literally, seemed to glow with a soft, gentle light. They were wide and framed by long, dark lashes, holding an expression of profound, innocent confusion.
Alex—if he was even Alex anymore—couldn't look away. He saw the fear in those eyes, the disorientation, but it was all filtered through this lens of breathtaking cuteness. The boy in the reflection was so heart-wrenchingly adorable that it defied logic. It was a potent, weaponized form of cute, an aura of harmlessness and appeal so powerful it felt like a tangible force. He reached up and touched his own cheek, and the reflection did the same. The soft, childish skin beneath his fingertips was undeniable proof. This was him. This was his new face.
A wave of warm feeling washed over him. He was a ten-year-old boy. He was in a place of impossible beauty. And he was… beautiful. Not handsome, not good-looking. Beautiful. Cute. So cute it felt like a superpower. The very sight of his own reflection made a part of his mind, the jaded, cynical part, want to coo and offer it a headpat. It was a deeply disturbing realization, that he felt was definately not his usual personality. It was almost a child-like feeling.
He pushed himself away from the pool, his mind racing, trying to connect the dots. The stylized mountains, the golden-leaved trees, the sheer, breathtaking landscape... this was familiar. He had spent hundreds of hours exploring a digital recreation of this very place. He slowly turned, his glowing azure eyes scanning the surroundings with a new, dawning horror and wonder.
There. A large, circular stone table, surrounded by three stone stools. He recognized the intricate patterns carved into the stone, the specific layout. He recognized the nearby Domain entrance, its ancient carved closed door, dormant but unmistakable. He recognized the cluster of Qingxin flowers growing precariously on a nearby cliff edge.
This wasn't just a place like in-game Liyue.
This was Mt. Aocang.
The realization hit him with the force of a physical blow. He wasn't in a dream. He wasn't hallucinating. He had somehow, impossibly, been transmigrated into the world of Genshin Impact. The game that had been his only solace, his digital refuge from a lonely life, was now his reality.
For a long moment, he could do nothing but stand there, a small, ridiculously cute child in oversized clothes, lost in the heart of Adepti territory. The initial panic began to subside, replaced by a dizzying cocktail of emotions of two different perspectives. There was terror, of course. This world was not a game. There were no respawn points. The monsters were real, the politics were lethal, and the gods were terrifyingly tangible. He was a ten-year-old boy with no vision, no weapon, his worthless engineering skills and the physical strength of a wet noodle.
But beneath the terror, a spark of exhilaration ignited. This was Teyvat. The world he knew better than his own. A world of adventure, of magic, of heroes and legends. He was free from his gray, meaningless existence. This was a chance, a terrifying, beautiful, insane chance to truly live.
And he was on Mt. Aocang. The abode of the Adeptus, Cloud Retainer.
His gamer brain, the part of him that had min-maxed stats and memorized questlines, took over. This was a critical moment. A starting zone. Meeting Cloud Retainer was the Liyue equivalent of meeting a dragon on your first day and having it not immediately eat you. She was powerful, ancient, and knowledgeable. But she was also reclusive, arrogant, and not particularly fond of mortals trespassing on her sacred ground. Getting on her bad side could mean being turned into a fine red mist before he could even learn to tie his own tiny shoes.
Then there was the second part of his brain. The part of perhaps the lost, ten-year-old boy. Vulnerable, innocent, and scared—a part which wasn't fake, as he was genuinely all of those things, even in his adult mindset.
A sudden shift in the atmosphere snapped him out of his frantic planning. The gentle whisper of the wind ceased. The air grew heavy, charged with an unseen energy that made the fine hairs on his arms stand on end. A vast shadow fell over him, blotting out the sun. It was sharp, defined shadow, belonging to something immense.
He slowly, fearfully, tilted his head back.
Descending from the heavens was a creature of breathtaking majesty. It was a crane, but a crane of impossible scale, its wingspan easily thirty feet across. Its feathers were a pristine, immaculate white and blue, tipped with elegant black and accented with markings that glowed with a soft, golden light. It moved with an impossible grace, not so much flying as gliding on the very currents of Anemo energy.
It landed before him without a sound, its massive form folding with elegance. Its head, crowned with its intricate crest, lowered to his level. Its eyes, sharp and intelligent, gleamed with an ancient light as they fixed upon the small child who had dared to trespass on its mountain.
Alex's heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. This was it. Cloud Retainer. In the game, she was stern but ultimately an ally. In reality, she was a god-like being whose power could shatter mountains, and he was a bug on her doorstep.
A voice, clear and resonant, echoed in the sudden silence. It was not a voice that came from the crane's beak, but one that seemed to emanate from the very air around them, a voice that was both melodic and imperious.
"One's solitude is a precious, deliberate thing," the voice stated, each word laced with cold authority. "Who are you, little one, that you have strayed so far into this one's domain? Mortals rarely possess the fortitude, or the foolishness, to climb so high."
Alex's throat was dry. He forced himself to look up, to meet the Adeptus's gaze. He did not even need to fake the fear and confusion, as it did show on his face. His luminous azure eyes were wide channeling the innocent, lost child persona, which he truly was. He felt a tremor run through his small body and didn't even try to stop it.
He saw a flicker in Cloud Retainer's sharp eyes. A brief, almost imperceptible softening. Her initial, razor-sharp suspicion seemed to dull ever so slightly, replaced by a flicker of… what? Curiosity?
He swallowed hard, and when he spoke, his voice came out higher and softer than he expected, trembling with a mix of fear and awe.
"I... I don't know," he whispered, his voice barely carrying on the still air. "I woke up here. I don't know where 'here' is. I don't know how I got here. I'm... I'm lost."
Alex was realizing that the scared feeling within him was definately not his own, perhaps the consciousness of the small boy that he was now, was merging with him.
Cloud Retainer remained silent for a long moment, her gaze unwavering. She was scrutinizing him, her ancient mind processing every detail. The strange, vibrant stripes in his hair. The unnatural glow of his eyes. The sincerity of his fear, which warred with a strange lack of malice or ill-intent. He felt like a specimen under a microscope.
"You do not know the name of Mt. Aocang?" the voice questioned, a hint of skepticism returning. "This is a place of legends, known throughout Liyue. For a child of Liyue to be ignorant of it is... peculiar."
Alex's brain screamed at him. It's a test! She was probing for inconsistencies. He couldn't claim to be from Liyue if he didn't know the basics. But he also couldn't reveal he was from another world. He was not sure how to explain it though.
Tears began to well up in his eyes. They weren't fake at all. The overwhelming reality of his situation, the fear, the loneliness—it was all bubbling up to the surface, coupled with the strange emotions of a child that were also mixing with his. His ridiculously cute face crumpled, and a single, perfect tear traced a path down his porcelain cheek.
"I... I'm not from Liyue," he stammered, his voice breaking. "I don't think so. I don't remember... anything. Just... waking up. It's so cold."
This was a better lie than anything his adult mind could have conceived. Amnesia. The classic, convenient plot device. For a lost and terrified child, it was entirely plausible. He huddled into himself, shivering, looking as small and pathetic as possible, which again, wasn't difficult at all.
The effect was instantaneous and profound.
The last vestiges of coldness in Cloud Retainer's presence seemed to melt away, replaced by something entirely new. It was a complex, foreign emotion for the proud Adeptus. Her razor-sharp intellect told her this was an anomaly, a puzzle to be solved. But another, more ancient and instinctual part of her mind was being relentlessly assaulted by the sight of this beautiful, luminous-eyed child, alone and crying in her sanctuary. The sight of his trembling form and the tear tracking down his cheek triggered a protective surge that was both baffling and undeniable. It was an instinct she hadn't felt in centuries, a quiet, insistent whisper in her mind that said: Protect this child. Keep it safe.
Her form seemed to soften. The imperious tilt of her head lessened. The oppressive aura of power receded, leaving only a feeling of immense, ancient presence.
"Cease your weeping, little one," the voice said, and this time, it was softer, the hard edges sanded away. It was still formal, still the voice of a being far removed from mortal concerns, but it now held a note of… concern. "This one... is not a monster to be feared by lost hatchlings."
She took a slow, deliberate step closer. The sheer scale of her was dizzying from this proximity. She was a living mountain of white and blue feathers. She lowered her head until her beak was only a few feet from his face. He could feel a faint warmth radiating from her.
"Your hair, your eyes... they are not of any mortal lineage this one recognizes," she mused, her voice now filled with more curiosity than suspicion. "And you radiate no elemental energy, yet you are clearly not entirely... normal. A child with amnesia, appearing from thin air in the heart of Jueyun Karst. Most curious."
Alex stayed silent, letting his wide, tear-filled azure eyes do the talking. He looked up at the great crane-adeptus with an expression of pure, unadulterated helplessness.
Cloud Retainer let out a sound, a soft, low noise that was utterly out of character for the stern being he knew from the game. It was a sound of contemplation, but also of something gentler.
"Hmph. To leave a child to fend for itself in these perilous mountains would be a dereliction of duty. The winds are cold, and the beasts of the peaks show no mercy to the weak," she declared, her voice regaining a sliver of its usual commanding tone, as if to convince herself as much as him. "This one's abode is not a nursery, but it will suffice for now. You are an enigma, child. And this one does not suffer enigmas to remain unsolved in one's own sanctuary."
She shifted her weight, and with a movement too fast for him to track, one of her massive wings gently, so very gently, nudged him forward. The touch was surprisingly soft, the feathers like the finest silk.
"Come," the voice commanded, though the command was now wrapped in a strange, unfamiliar layer of solicitude. "You will be given shelter and sustenance. We shall ponder the mystery of your origins later. For now, you are cold and lost, and that is a state of affairs this one finds... disagreeable."
Alex stared, his mind reeling. She was taking him in. He wasn't going to be left to freeze or be eaten by a Mitachurl, although now that he thought about it, do they really eat human children? Wait, what the hell was that thought process?
He wiped his eyes with his oversized sleeve and shook his head, clearing his thoughts before giving her a small, wobbly smile. It was a smile of pure, radiant gratitude, amplified a thousand times by the sheer charm of his face. He saw the Adeptus physically recoil for a split second, as if the smile was a flashbang of pure, unadulterated cuteness.
Taking a deep breath, the small boy with messy black hair and glowing blue eyes took his first tentative step into a new life, following the divine crane into the heart of her hidden domain, the full, terrifying, and wonderful anticipation of Teyvat settling around him.