The twins pressed deeper into forbidden territory.

  Guided by Boreas’s visions and fragments gleaned from Irminsul’s edges, they ventured beyond Sumeru’s borders—into the shadowed fringes where ley lines converged with Abyssal rifts. An ancient ruin, half-buried in Dragonspine’s eternal snow, whispered of mechanisms that once defied erosion itself: Khaenri’ahn devices said to anchor a mortal soul to the world’s pulse, drawing life from the leylines as Irminsul did. No records remained in the Tree; only echoes, half-erased, dangerous.

  They found the chamber at last—a cavern lit by sickly blue glow, walls etched with runes that pulsed like dying stars. In the center stood a crystalline orb, suspended in chains of void-black energy. Boreas reached out, fingers trembling.

  “I see it,” he whispered. “A way to bind Father’s life to Teyvat’s heartbeat. No aging. No end. Just… forever.”

  Elowen hesitated, winds coiling nervously around her. “But the visions… they flicker. Something’s wrong.”

  Before she could pull him back, the orb flared.

  Forbidden knowledge surged into Boreas’s mind—raw, corrosive, beautiful. Immortality unfolded before him: not a gift, but a theft. The device would siphon ley-line essence, rewriting fate’s ledger, erasing the natural decay that even gods endured. It would work. But the cost was balance itself—ripples that could fracture entire nations, awaken slumbering horrors, invite the full gaze of the heavens.

  Boreas staggered. “It’s… too much. We can’t—”

  The sky above the ruin cracked open.

  Golden light poured through—not gentle, not questioning. A column of pure celestial force descended, sealing the chamber in blinding white. The orb shattered. Chains snapped. And from the light emerged two faceless emissaries—taller than before, wings of fractured prism unfolding.

  Violation detected. Forbidden tampering with world order. Offspring of defiance have trespassed beyond mercy.

  Boreas tried to summon a vision to counter, Elowen raised winds to shield—but the light pressed inward, binding them in chains of starfire. Their powers faltered, smothered by divine authority.

  They were gone in an instant—lifted into the golden rift, vanishing as though they had never stood there.

  _______

  In Mondstadt, the manor’s hearth had burned low when the Traveler burst through the doors, breathless, cloak torn from haste.

  Varka rose instantly, claymore half-drawn. Nicole’s hand flew to her chest.

  “What happened?” Varka demanded.

  The Traveler’s voice cracked. “Nahida reached me through the ley lines. There was a disturbance—deep, old, forbidden. Boreas and Elowen… they went looking for immortality. For you, Varka. They touched Irminsul’s deepest roots. Celestia intervened. They’ve been taken.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Nicole’s knees buckled. Varka caught her before she fell.

  “Taken where?” he rasped.

  The Traveler shook their head. “Nahida couldn’t follow. But she felt the Sustainer’s presence. They’re in Celestia’s custody. For judgment.”

  Silence fell like a blade.

  Then Nicole straightened. Her eyes burned with something fiercer than fear—mother’s fury, angel’s defiance.

  “I will go to them,” she said. “I will bargain.”

  Varka gripped her shoulders. “We go together.”

  They did not wait for dawn.

  Under a sky split by golden fractures, Nicole and Varka stood on the highest cliff of Stormbearer Mountains—the closest point in Mondstadt to the unreachable heavens. Nicole raised her hands, starlight bleeding from her palms, and called upward in a voice that carried the weight of her fallen grace.

  “Heavenly Principles! Sustainer! Please… hear me!”

  The sky answered.

  A single column of light descended, and within it stood the Sustainer—taller than memory, faceless helm reflecting the couple’s desperate faces.

  Nicole stepped forward. “I beg of you, please release my children. They were reckless and acted from love. Punish me instead. Take back my immortality—my celestial remnant. Bind me fully to mortality. But please, never—never—harm Boreas or Elowen. Please!”

  Varka’s hand found hers, squeezing hard enough to bruise. “Please.” He pleaded.

  The Sustainer tilted its head—a gesture of cold appraisal.

  Audacity, the voice intoned. A fallen angel dares bargain with the order she once served. A mortal dares stand beside her.

  Silence stretched.

  Then—slowly—the Sustainer inclined its helm. An unknown sound echoed the golden chamber.

  Terms acknowledged. Your immortality is revoked. You will live as flesh, age as flesh, die as flesh. Your children will be returned unharmed. This is the final clemency. Further insolence will be met with erasure—not of individuals, but of your entire lineage.

  The light flared once, blinding.

  When it cleared, the Sustainer was gone. The fractures in the sky sealed shut.

  Moments later, golden chains unraveled in midair. Boreas and Elowen fell to the grass, gasping, unbound.

  Nicole ran to them first, pulling them into her arms. Varka followed, dropping to his knees, enveloping all three in a crushing embrace.

  For long minutes, no one spoke. Only ragged breathing, trembling hands, the sound of tears hitting stone.

  Then Varka pulled back just enough to meet his children’s eyes.

  “You reckless, beautiful fools,” he said, voice thick. “You went after eternity… for me?”

  Boreas’s lip trembled. “We couldn’t lose you. Not like that.”

  Elowen buried her face in Nicole’s shoulder. “We thought… if we could just find a way…”

  Varka cupped their faces—one in each hand.

  “I am choosing mortality,” he said quietly. “Not because I don’t love you. Because I do. This is the world order—not Celestia’s cold decree, but the natural one. Birth. Growth. Love. Loss. Memory. I want every day I have left with you—laughing, arguing, growing old together. Not some hollow forever that steals who I am.”

  Nicole’s voice cracked. “And I… I choose the same. My immortality was never a gift. It was a chain. If I must age, must weaken, must one day leave this world—I want to do it beside your father. Together. As we always promised.”

  The twins stared at them—shock, grief, love warring on their faces.

  Boreas’s voice broke first. “But… we wanted to save you.”

  Varka pulled them close again. “You already have. Every day you’ve been alive has been my salvation. You don’t need to make me immortal. You just need to keep being my children.”

  Tears spilled freely now—from Boreas, from Elowen, from Nicole, even from Varka’s storm-blue gray eyes.

  They stayed like that on the cliffside until the first light of dawn painted the horizon gold—not the cold gold of Celestia, but the warm gold of a new day.

  The family rose together—mortal, half-mortal, ageless no longer in spirit if not in body.

  They walked home hand in hand.

  No more forbidden searches.

  No more bargains with heavens.

  Only the quiet certainty that love, however brief in the span of stars, was the only eternity that mattered.

  And in Mondstadt, the winds blew on—free, gentle, carrying the sound of a family finally whole.