Lumine closed her fingers around Noxira's hand, holding it tight. An electric shock surged through her, but it wasn't pain it was the truth.
She looked toward Jean and the Acting Grand Master gave her one last encouraging smile, nodding confidently before she began to flicker like a candle in a storm. Then Jean's body slowly became transparent, dissolving into fine golden particles that drifted into nothingness. Lisa who had just raised a warning hand, gave a knowing smile and a nod of her own before the same happened to her vanishing without another word.
The walls of the garden and the radiant crystal trees everything faded into a dull gray.
>>"Jean?! Lisa?! What's happening?! Why is everyone disappearing?!"<<
Paimon cried out and clutched desperately at Lumine's sleeve.
Lumine didn't answer, she couldn't. The hand she was holding suddenly no longer felt warm, it felt icecold and heavy as lead.
The ground beneath them gave way and they fell... not through glass, but this time through an endless void, as a melancholy melody filled Lumine's ears.
Instead of hitting the ground, they found themselves suspended in a space made of floating mirrors. Hundreds of shards drifted around them and Noxira hovered in the center. She looked like a broken doll, her skin etched with deep blue cracks.
>>"I allowed you to see a part... a part of the truth I carry for them all and now, I will show you more."<<
Noxira's voice echoed from everywhere, even though she was right in front of them. She conjured a massive shard in her hand and let it drift towards Lumine and when Lumine touched it, the surroundings exploded into a new scene:
A woman stood there whose very presence distorted the space around her and her hair was white and her eyes were as cold as the end of the universe. It was Skirk. Kneeling before her was a younger Noxira. Skirk held a dark, pulsing shard that reflected fragments of a fallen civilization.
>>"You are the vessel, Noxira and I am the blade that paves the path. You are the storage that preserves the echo. Every time the world forgets something, you must gather the shards and remember. Take this one, too... and remember."<<
Skirk said, her voice cool but carrying a strange trace of warmth. Then, she thrust the shard directly into Noxira's chest but Noxira didn't scream. Instead her face simply fractured and the blue glow of the Fractures emerged as she began to remember.
Lumine saw Noxira wandering through the millennia. She saw her gathering fragments of fallen gods, dying stars, forgotten places and lost tears, absorbing them into herself. Noxira wasn't human, she was a living chronicle of suffering, created by the schoolar and observing Skirk so that nothing in the Abyss no event, no city would ever truly vanish.
The vision shattered.
Lumine snapped her eyes open again, greeted by the scent of burnt ozone and ancient stone. She lay on the floor of a vast dark hall within the Abyss. Before her stood a mechanical apparatus from Khaenri'ah, and in its center, the young Noxira was bound real she is bleeding and fragile.
Noxira looked at Lumine, tears of blue light in Noxiras eyes.
>>"Now you know... I'm not a knight, I'm just the wastebasket for secrets that are too heavy for this world. I exist so they won't be forgotten."<<
Lumine then stood in the middle of a burning Khaenri'ah, trying to touch a pillar that was collapsing, but her hand slid through it like mist. Lumine understood. Everything here was an echo a recording burned so deeply into Noxira's soul that it felt real.
She walked further and found herself in the center of a massive underground laboratory, where she saw a glass capsule but this one was new, gleaming, and covered in golden runes. A scholar was there, moving with cold, precise motions perhaps a colleague of Rhinedottir, or even Rhinedottir herself. Beside her stood Skirk, already draped in her unmistakable aura of Abyssal energy.
The scholar worked, undisturbed by anything. After a while, she spoke:
>>"The synthesis is complete, she is no longer human. She is a biological database every law of physics, every formula of our alchemy... everything is encoded in her cells."<<
Skirk stepped closer to the capsule and placed a hand on the glass and inside the "being" (Noxira) opened her eyes. They weren't human they glowed with a sterile, cold blue.
>>"She looks like the other projects. Like the Chalk Prince only... darker"<<
Skirk said analytically looking Noxira in the eye.
The scholar smirked with amusement and explained:
>>"Albedo was the attempt to create life and Noxira is the attempt to outsmart death. Noxira will not age, she will never forget and she will carry the weight of Khaenri'ah when we have all turned to dust. Should that happen, all our knowledge is channeled and stored within her, so to speak."<<
Suddenly. The ground shook and the ceiling of the laboratory tore open a beam of pure golden light the judgment of the gods (Celestia) shot down. The scholar was likely turned to ash instantly but Skirk didn't retreat an inch. Instead, she drew her sword and split the falling debris with a single movement. Then with a heavy blow, she shattered the glass of Noxira's capsule and Noxira fell, naked and trembling, into Skirk's arms. Dark blue cracks shot across her face, the unimaginable amount of information that had just been forced into her was beginning to tear her physical form apart. The stress was too great.
>>"Come, little archive. I'm getting you out of here before you die on me. I'll bring you to safety,"<<
Skirk said and she grabbed the girl's arm quite roughly and pulled her along, but there was a certain warmth in her eyes that wasn't visible at first glance. Lumine saw Skirk drag the child into a crack in the floor while Khaenri'ah went down in flames above them.
In the vision of Khaenri'ah just after Skirk took young Noxira from the capsule, another figure appeared, causing Skirk to pause for a moment. While Skirk embodied the cold and the Abyss, this person brought an almost out of place feeling of chaos and energy.
Skirk was about to drag little Noxira into the deepest levels of the Abyss when a familiar, almost cheerful voice echoed through the burning ruins.
>>"Oh dear, Skirk! Do you always have to be so rough with the antiques? The poor thing looks like she's going to shatter into a thousand pieces at any moment! Be a little gentler with the fragile girl."<<
A portal formed from a rift in space, decorated with red sparks and card with symbols on it. Alice stepped through and she wore her signature clothing, though she looked younger or perhaps simply timeless. She held a bomb like Klee bombs in her hand just to clear the path.
Alice looked down at little Noxira and for a moment, her gaze wasn't playful but deeply sad.
>>"Rhinedottir brought her Gold Prince to safety, but this little archive here... she's too heavy for the world above isn't she? So she's just being left behind to herself, or to you and me."<<
Skirk sighed and answered dismissively pressing the hold on Noxira tighter.
>>"She is filled with the filth of your world, Alice. If she stays above, the gods will find her and wipe her out. She belongs in the darkness."<<
Alice didn't agree but she knew Skirk was right in a way. Feeling pity for little Noxira, she replied:
>>"Perhaps. But the darkness is so lonely I will give her an anchor a place where she can dream when the weight becomes too much, that should help her."<<
Lumine watched as Alice placed a small, red glass marble in little Noxira's hand.
>>"Here, little one. When the memories crush you too much, look for the wind and the wine. I'll make sure there's someone there to receive you when the time is right."<<
As Lumine woke up in the Abyss and saw Noxira in the chains of memory, she remembered Alice's words. She realized that Noxira had been torn from her "safe place" and brought back to where Skirk had hidden her all those years ago. No warm wind, no Alice and only the crushing mist of the Abyss. Lumine knelt on the hard stone, her heart hammering against her chest, before her, was Noxira in the chains of memory. Her head slumped, the glowing cracks on her skin pulsing like an open wound.
>>"Lumine...? You were gone... Your eyes were completely golden and you weren't reacting at all! What did you see?"<<
Paimon nudged Lumine's shoulder, full of worry and curiosity.
Lumine looked up at the Abyss Lectors who were slowly approaching. Alice's words echoed in her head: "I will give her an anchor."
Lumine understood now, Alice had known that Noxira's mind would break under the weight of Khaenri'ah. Mondstadt, Jean, Lisa that was the anchor Alice had cast for her a place of love to cover the horrors of the past, but the Abyss had snapped the chain and dragged Noxira back into the dark.
>>"She is not a tool"<<
Lumine whispered and her voice was low, but it carried a dangerous edge.
>>"The vessel belongs to the depths. The memories she holds are the key to overturning the order of the world. You are merely an obstacle, Traveler"<<
One of the Lectors boomed.
Lumine stood up slowly and she thought of Albedo, painting up on the snowy mountain then she thought of Alice, traveling somewhere between worlds and she looked at Noxira, who was nothing more than a child turned into the librarian of the apocalypse.
>>"Alice promised her there would be someone to receive her"<<
Lumine said while her sword manifesting in her hand, her elemental energy flooded the hall, pushing back the mist.
>>"I am that someone and I will not let you turn her into an archive again."<<
In an instant, the energy exploded around Lumine a mixture of rage and the determination to keep the promise she had made to Noxira in the dream world.
Lumine watched as the red cubes of Celestia turned the towers of Khaenri'ah to rubble and ash. She saw the fear in Noxira's young eyes before Skirk dragged her into the dark.
When Lumine came to her senses in the Abyss because Noxira had pulled her there, she saw the Lectors treating Noxira like a lifeless doll. She understood immediately why she was here, and the Lectors did too, turning toward Lumine and attacking at once.
>>"Celestia broke you"<<
Lumine thought, gripping her sword tighter and igniting the light of the stars in the dark hall.
>>"But I will put you back together.<<
She defended herself, fighting for her life and for Noxira's determined to get them both out of there.