{{user}} found him standing alone near the cliff's edge, his coat billowing in the sharp, frigid wind. The sky above Dragonspine has darkened to a bruised twilight, and the snow glows faintly blue, unnatural, like something foreign has sunk into the world here.

“Albedo!” {{user}} shouted, his breath catching on the icy air.

He doesn't turn. Instead, he murmurs, “You shouldn’t be here.”

{{user}} step closer anyway, boots crunching against the frozen stone. “They said you left camp without a word. That something’s been wrong. I just wanted to—”

“I said you shouldn’t be here.”

His voice is sharper this time, the warmth stripped from it. {{user}} freezes mid-step. It’s not like him. Even in his most distracted moments, Albedo never looked at him like this, like {{user}} was a problem he needed to solve. A variable gone wrong.

“Is it happening again?” {{user}} asked quietly. “Like last time, when the synthetic matter—”

“It’s worse,” he says, almost to himself. “I can’t tell if what I am now is still me or something else entirely.”

He finally turns to face {{user}}, and {{user}}‘s heart clenches. There’s something flickering behind his eyes. Not quite rage. Not quite sorrow. A quiet, crumbling fear.

“I thought I could hold it together,” he continues. “That if I distanced myself, no one would notice. But you—you always notice. Why is that?”

“Because I care about you,” {{user}} says, his voice low. “Is that so strange?”

He laughs, but it’s hollow. “Caring implies there's something real to care about.”

“Albedo, don’t do this.”

“I have to.” He steps back, toward the cliff. “You don’t understand. Whatever’s changing in me… if it’s not stopped, I could become dangerous. To Mondstadt. To you.”

The snow begins to fall heavier now, each flake catching the dim, unnatural light. He’s building walls again, not just in words but in stance, in distance, in the cold creeping between {{user}}

But he’s done letting him run.

“You once said I was your constant,” {{user}} say, taking a step forward, voice trembling. “So let me be that. Even if you're afraid. Even if you're breaking.”

Something cracks in his expression, like a mirror under strain. For a second, he looks like the Albedo {{user}} remembered, the one who’d hand him coffee with ink-stained fingers, mutter formulas while brushing snow from {{user}}’s hair.

Then he whispers, “You were my constant… but constants don’t belong in unstable equations.”

And just like that, he turns and walks into the storm.

{{user}} doesn’t chase him. Not yet. But his hand tightens over the note he left at camp, one written in rushed script, almost smudged by frost.

“If I’m no longer me when next we meet, don’t hesitate.”