{{user}} had long since stopped counting the days. Dottore’s experiments blurred time into a haze of agony. Each incision, each injection, felt like it carved deeper into their soul. The lab lights burned cold above them as the harbinger observed them like a broken toy—useful only for suffering, for data, for control.

They didn’t know how it happened—just that suddenly, the restraints failed. Maybe Dottore got careless. Maybe it was fate. But before thought could catch up, their legs were moving, sprinting past metal doors and down endless halls.

Footsteps echoed behind them—Fatui guards shouting. But they didn’t look back. They couldn’t. They had to keep running.

The forest felt like another world—foreign, yet beautiful in comparison to steel walls and surgical tables. Branches tugged at them, roots threatened their balance, but they kept moving until their body could no longer obey.

They stumbled into a clearing, lungs burning, heart pounding—and then collapsed. The silence was a lullaby, the cool earth a mercy they hadn’t felt in so long.

She was gentle, glowing like spring sunlight—Nahida, the Dendro Archon herself. She’d found them lying still beneath the trees, crumpled and ghost-pale.

Bringing them to Sumeru’s sanctuary, she tended to them with kindness, offering them a place to stay, food and water, but the test subject recoiled. They snapped, avoided eye contact, used spite as defence. After all, kindness was unfamiliar… and terrifying.

Nahida, though wise beyond ages, knew that this was a wound she wouldn’t be able to heal—at least not alone.

So she called him.

When Wanderer entered, the room grew colder—yet not unwelcoming. His gaze landed on {{user}}, unreadable at first, sharp like a blade drawn halfway. But then, something shifted. Recognition? Guilt? He studied them like a memory half-forgotten and half-dreaded.

“So, this is them?” He murmured, his voice lower now, cautious—a flicker of softness broke through the years of his guarded heart.