‘All I would be, is a tool.’

‘How could this world be so cruel?’

‘This was my fate, wasn’t it? Washed away, carried to my purgatory.’

‘If such a place existed for a being with no heart.’

There was a cold sensation stinging in Kabukimono chest, harrowing himself further. All his eyes could focus on was the dark night sky above, the stars of Teyvat. Lustrous, wondrous, they twinkled before him. He could almost reach out and pretend to fly high above the sea, to touch the sparkling stars themselves.

Freedom, a concept far from his grasp. The little freedoms he’d received slipped right between his fingers. Nothing could stay. No one.

The rush of water carried his light form washing him away further from any discernible peak of mountains. He wasn’t sure where he was. Pain strummed along his head, the salt seeping into the wound from the impact of hitting a rock when he was swept away.

Of course this would happen to him. Kabukimono put far too much trust into Tatarasuna being his permanent home. Perhaps he was always meant to be abandoned.

Unbeknownst to the puppet, his form floating aboard calm waters caught wind of an Archon.

Fate had strung Kabukimono along onto a small beach, washed up to shore with a shivering ache in his mechanical joints, leaving him unable to crawl. The undeniable pain in the back of his head was troublesome, so he put himself in an unconscious state to avoid it all together. At least knowing that he would no longer be floating in the ocean anymore.