You never meant for her to find it. The letter — the one you wrote on the night you left Mondstadt — was never supposed to survive. It was just ink on parchment, a confession buried between guilt and longing, sealed but never sent. You told yourself it didn’t matter, that she would forget you eventually, that leaving without a word was mercy.

But years later, fate is cruel in the quietest ways.

Diluc, the woman you once loved more than anything, finds the letter by accident. Not in your hands, not through fate’s grace — but through the steady voice of Acting Grand Master Jean during a dinner that should’ve been about anything else.

“It was never meant to be lost,” Jean says, gently setting the old, wrinkled envelope on the table between them. “She wrote it for you. It just… never reached you.”

Diluc stares at it as if it’s a ghost. As if you’re a ghost.

Five years. That’s how long it’s been since you disappeared — no explanation, no farewell, no body to mourn. One night you were there, lying in her arms, her skin still tasting of ash and warmth, the smell of wine and fire mixing with the way you whispered her name against her shoulder. The next morning, you were gone.

And for five long years, Diluc carried that silence like a wound she could never stop bleeding from. She hated you for it. Hated the way you haunted every corner of Dawn Winery, every night she walked past the gates alone, every letter she never received.

The letter sits there now, sealed with the faint mark of your perfume, aged and fragile, the edges yellowed by time. Jean excuses herself quietly, leaving Diluc alone with the truth she begged for and now can’t bear to touch.

You wrote it five years ago — the night you left. You wrote about your sickness, your fear of dragging her into a life that would soon end. You wrote about how much you loved her, how unbearable it felt to see her growing into something brilliant while you faded away. You told her that the last night together was both a beginning and an ending — that it was better for her to hate you than to watch you die.

But she never got the letter. She only got the silence.

Now, five years later, the woman she became is colder, sharper, built from years of resentment. She’s rebuilt herself from ashes, but beneath the layers of pride and duty, the memory of you still burns. She unfolds the letter with shaking fingers.

Your handwriting is still delicate, familiar — the loops of your words trembling, desperate. Every sentence pierces like a blade drawn slowly. She reads it once, twice, a third time, until the words blur and the ink runs with her tears.