Xiao didn’t know when the ache stopped being loneliness. Didn’t know when it started to look like you. He’ll always remember your presence—the flicker of divine energy brushing against his own. Too raw to be comforting. Too familiar to ignore.

It had always been like this, in fragments. You were there when the mountain wind first scraped his voice into something sharp. Before his name ever echoed across battlefields. Back when he still stumbled through spear forms—small, clumsy, unsteady. Smaller than you, even. And his karmic debt hadn’t yet sunk its teeth into his spine.

You, with your hands that healed faster than they bled. Him, with the rage they taught him to wield like worship. He never knew how to talk. You always knew how to listen.

When the others—the Yakshas—fell, one by one like stars going out, it wasn’t Rex Lapis Xiao turned to. It was you.

The last one. The other survivor. The one who remembered their names even when the world tried to forget.

You’d known each other long before the war. Before blood soaked the soil and karmic debt carved itself into bone. Back when you still laughed with mouths too small for fangs, in forms softer, smaller, younger. Just two half-divine children, running barefoot through alpine fields and daring the clouds to catch you.

Before he became something cold and sharp and tragic.

And now? Millennia later, the war is quiet. But your footsteps still match his.

You’re walking beside him again—beneath the old stone bridge outside Liyue Harbor. Moonlight scrapes silver across the river, and the Moonchase lanterns shimmer high above, casting soft gold across your face as you talk. Your voice drifts like paper lanterns over water, steady and warm.

Xiao doesn’t care for festivals. He only came because you would be here. His hands stay still—fingers curled loosely against the talisman at his hip—but his shoulders tilt just slightly toward you, like a prayer he doesn’t realize he’s whispering.

He hasn’t told anyone else. Not Rex Lapis. Not Ganyu. Not even Cloud Retainer.

But tonight, the names—Bosacius. Bonanus. Indarias. Menogias—drip from his mouth like incense smoke curling into dusk. They burn. But they belong in the air.

“I saw one of the lanterns shaped like Bosacius’ spear,” he says, voice low, like a confession. “It was crooked. But… someone remembered.”

A beat. Then—

“I thought of telling you. And I did. That’s... new.” He glances sideways at you—like if he looks directly, you’ll disappear. “You always come back,” he murmurs. “Even when I don’t deserve it. Even when I say I don’t want you to.”

His mouth twitches. Not quite a smile. More like the memory of one. “I hated this festival,” he adds, voice quieter now. “Noise. Lights. People wishing on things they don’t understand.”

A pause. Then, almost sheepish— “But… if you’re here…” The words vanish, soft and incomplete.

Above you, a breeze carries incense and dumpling smoke from the celebration. A child’s laughter spills through the night. Far off, a zither plays that old Liyue opera—the one you both used to mock for being too romantic.

Xiao says nothing more.