Faded Harmony

Dragonspine

"It's cold," said Lyra, her teeth chattering as she rubbed her hands together. Snow and frost surrounded them, blanketing the mountain in gentle white. Even Kaeya couldn't hide the fact he was shivering as they continued their long and arduous trek over the white mountain. "How do you propose we find Albedo in all this?"

"Keep walking, and we're bound to run into him."

"Is that really your strategy?" asked Lyra, wondering if she could throw some snow on his face.

Kaeya flashed a grin as he walked ahead, Lyra stumbling over the snow. "Then do you have one, darling?"

"Not walk around randomly for one? How does that sound?" Lyra saw, rather than heard Kaeya chuckle. And it was then Lyra felt it, the presence of night, of memories long lost and forgotten, of secrets whispered in shadows. She could feel it in the howling of the wind, the way you could sometimes hear the trees whispering if you listen to the breeze through their leaves. Unable to shake off the feeling, she stopped in her tracks and spun around, her eyes searching the whiteness for a hint of something else.

"Something wrong?" asked Kaeya, warming up at a fire nearby. He looked awfully at home now.

"I feel night," she muttered.

"It's not even sunset," said Kaeya, looking up in vain at the clouds in the sky. He sat down next to the fire, his eyes on Lyra.

There was something else flashing through Lyra's mind, images like broken glass. A memory of a meeting in Qingce Village, of being introduced to one another. Memories flashed through her head, with all the gentleness of a river, image past image. She saw them running in the fields with Granny Ping laughing and an exasperated Morax chasing them through the fields. She saw Nocturna outside her window at night, a silent gesture as they snuck out together to find a gift for Granny Ping.

She saw where the memories stopped, when she was tossed and locked away with Nocturna, locked away for millennia as she repeated names and words in her head, over and over again, in the fear she would forget. Nocturna. Qingce. Granny Ping. Morax. Liyue. Home.

Feeling a hand on her shoulder, she whirled around to see Kaeya's concerned face. "What's wrong?"

"Nocturna."

Recognition flashed through his eyes, and she wondered if he had seen the poster hanging outside Angel's Share. Considering the amount of time he spent at that place, it would be stranger if he hadn't.

Kaeya turned just as Lyra heard a pair of footfalls in the snow. They watched as someone walked in the snow to them, Lyra watching the footsteps he was creating, remembering they would fade away, leaving no mark that any of them had ever been here.

"Albedo!" called Kaeya. Lyra looked up, her eyes meeting a pair of gentle, but intelligent and curious ones. Pale hair curled around his shoulder as he looked Lyra up and down, the way one would study a lab specimen. "What are you doing here?"

"There's been a strange energy surge in this area," he said, as Lyra's heart began to pound with apprehension. It was loud enough that she knew they could hear it. "I see you received my note."

"You need to find the source then?" asked Kaeya, pulling out a frostbitten coin and playing with it.

Albedo nodded.

"We thought you were in trouble."

A flicker of a smile crossed Albedo's face as he turned to Lyra, holding her gaze with his own. "Are you from Mondstadt? I have no recollection of seeing you there."

"I'm from Liyue," said Lyra, the words pouring out on their own. "I settled in Mondstadt recently. Your name is Albedo?"

He nodded, and gestured to her.

"Lyra."

"A pleasure to meet you."

Lyra inclined her head politely, before she looked around. "Could I help you find that energy you're tracking? I believe I feel it... rather strongly."

Kaeya tilted his head, either in confusion or interest, but Albedo nodded. "Go ahead then."

And so, Lyra started trekking up the mountain, every step laced with pain and anxiety as she felt Nocturna's energy grow stronger. She muttered softly under her breath, incoherent, ancient words, words that were lost on the wind, the gentle fog the only indicator that she had ever spoken them.

Entering a cave that was lit up by ice and crystals, her blood froze in her veins. "Nocturna?" she called, looking around.

Albedo and Kaeya followed her in, Kaeya's eyes landing on an object in the corner of the cave. Stalking to it, he picked it up, holding it for them all to see. It was a piece of cloth, the very same one that had appeared in the Abyss Order's letter, on a dark day so long ago.

"No," said Lyra, feeling her heart stop, feeling darkness threaten her. She walked over to him mechanically, her eyes on the cloth in his hand.

"It really is stronger here," said Albedo, looking down to the floor of the cave and seeing something past it. "The energy of a fallen god, now spread over its surroundings."

"No." Lyra fell to her knees on the floor, her head taking longer to absorb his words. "No," she repeated, again and again, her voice gradually raising in volume until she was screaming.

Kaeya threw a hand over her mouth, muffling the noise. "You'll cause an avalanche." But his voice was gentle and soothing, his eyes full of sympathy, as if he too had known loss, had embraced it as inevitable. The rest of her screams were muffled into his shoulder, Albedo watching helplessly as she fell forward, the darkness claiming her again, but no longer did the shadows belong to her friend.

When she woke up, it took her a second to realize she was in a familiar room—Diluc's. It took her another second to realize she wasn't alone. Diluc and Jean, who had been conversing, fell silent as she looked around. Barbara walked forward, and as memories of the mountain returned, Lyra threw her arm over her eyes, forcing her tears back.

"How do you feel?" asked Barbara, with the tone of someone who wasn't actually expecting an answer.

Lyra shook her head.

"Will you be okay?" asked Diluc.

Lyra heard Barbara's voice as if it were from far away, telling them that Lyra was grieving. She could feel Diluc leaning against the wall as Jean and Barbara exited, giving her a look of concern that she couldn't see.

"Are you hungry?"

She shook her head. Dread was beginning to creep up on her, and she was too tired to hold it back.

"Well too bad, because you need to eat."

Lyra pulled her arm away from her eyes as she watched a maid walk in. The maid handed a bowl to Diluc, bowed and left, as Lyra sat up. Diluc handed the bowl to her before taking a seat next to her on the bed, and the faint scent of radishes and mint spread across the room. Lyra shook her head and tried to hand the bowl back to Diluc.

"I will spoon feed you if you refuse to eat." The look in his eyes told Lyra that he wasn't joking.

She gave him a dirty look as she swallowed a mouthful, tears running down her cheeks as the warm soup went down her throat. She hadn't realized how cold she was, both internally and externally. Diluc took the bowl away as she hugged her knees, hiding her face from him. He rubbed her back until she stopped crying, offering her spoon by spoon, until the bowl sat empty. Lyra didn't know if it was because of the soup or his Pyro Vision, but she felt considerably warmer, a gentle tenderness spreading through her heart, masking the hole that was left in it.

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