Lumine was at the end of her strength. Three Abyss Lectors circled her, their dark lightning skittering across the floor. Paimon clung trembling to a stone.
>>"It's over, Traveler,"<<
Hissed on of the Lectors aggressive.
>>"The Memo guardian will now be fully extracted, and her consciousness will perish under the weight of our Void."<<
Suddenly, the sound in the hall changed and the mechanical hum of the Khaenri'ah machine turned into a shrill, deafening screech. Noxira, who had been hanging unconscious in the chains, slowly lifted her head. Her eyes weren't just glowing anymore they seemed to burn holes into the darkness.
With a movement which was faster than Lumine could follow, Noxira break her arms free from the chains. The violet-blue chains didn't just break, the space around her wrists shattered like glass, and Noxira landed soundlessly on the floor.
The Lectors shifted their focus from Lumine to Noxira, striking at her with bare hands and elemental energy but wherever their blows touched the air, black and blue rifts remained and asecond later, they exploded with a force that sent the Lectors flying back yards away.
One Lector tried to cast a spell, but Noxira clenched her fist a single, massive rift appeared before him, and distorted reality. The Lector was sucked into the center of the rift like a black hole, leaving him helpless and exposed for Lumine's next strike.
Noxira let out a cry of pain that sounded half human half something not describe able. She slammed her hand into the ground and a narrow fissure raced toward her enemies. When the pulse hit them the uncanny happened:
The Lectors flickered and are appearing double, as if two versions of them existed in the same space. They suffered the damage double while Noxira gasped, her eyes flooded with visions because of her attack.
>>"I see... your ends!"<<
Cried Noxira and her voice sounding as if a thousand souls were speaking at once.
The entire hall began to flicker and Noxira spread her arms, and the colors of the world drained away. Everything turned black, gray, and a pale, ghostly blue and for a moment, the surroundings shifted. Lumine no longer saw the debris of the Abyss, but the spectral, intact walls of Khaenri'ah, overlaying reality like ghost images.
The Lectors froze and their positions became "unfixed".They tried to flee, but they couldn't move an inch while their bodies were torn apart by echoes of their own pain, this was no longer a fight it was a deletion.
After the struggle Noxira sank back to the floor and dropped to her knees, the Fractures on her face glowed dimly but did not disappear. Noxira looked at Lumine and for the first time, there was no, no emotion in her gaze only pure, human exhaustion.
>>L-Lumine..."<<
She whispered weakly and smiled weakly
Lumine rushed to her side just as Noxira collapsed. The blue light in her eyes faded until only the dull matte of her fatigue remained, she trembled as the weight of the real world fell back onto her shoulders. The blue cracks on her skin pulsed slowly, it wasn't ordinary pain, it felt as if reality itself was trying to stitch back the gaps in her body that she had just torn open. Lumine caught her and Noxira's skin felt not warm like it should be but like cool marble on the verge of bursting under too much pressure.
>>L-Lumine..."<<
Noxira whispered her voice is a hollow as if it's coming from a deep well.
>>"I can still hear them... the echoes. They aren't gone. They're inside me."<<
Lumine held her tight and answered a bit confused, she didn't understand what it Noxira talking about.
>>"Which echoes, Noxira?"<<
Noxira lifted a trembling hand, staring at the blue veins shimmering like LED strips beneath her skin and answered.
>>"The ghosts of Khaenri'ah. I'm not human anymore, Lumine I don't feel like a Human... More like a Vessel, I feel like i am a vessel. She didn't create me to live as I choose... She created me to preserve, I am the Memory guardian that was never allowed to burn. Every pain, every sin this land committed... they etched it into my very structure."<<
A bitter smile twisted her features as if she were accepting a life without happiness, she starts to accept her fate.
>>"Rhinedottir called it 'Chalk' Albedo is the perfection of that art, the Chalk Prince. But me? I am the 'Ash',Lumine. I'm not even the Ash Princess... I am what remains when the fire of the gods has consumed everything else."<<
Paimon clung to Lumine's sleeve and cried softly in protest.
>>"But you are our Noxira! You like cake and you are afraid of thunderstorms! Ash doesn't eat cake and it isn't afraid of storms!!"<<
Lumine looked deep into Noxira's eyes and smiled lovingly.
>>"Listen to me, Noxira. Maybe you were planned as just an Memory guardian, maybe your body was formed from the ashes of Khaenri'ah or something but the hand who's holding mine right now is real, the will you used to wipe out those Lectors to protect Paimon and me wasn't even your job then. It was a choice Noxira. It was your choice and only living persons make choices and you are our friend"<<
Noxira closed her eyes for a moment and lean her forehead against Lumine's with a smile, the dark hall seemed to breathe around them. The ruins of Khaenri'ah hanging in the air like spectators and reacted to her presence. Runes on the walls glowed faintly, as if welcoming their rightful sovereign.
>>"The memory... is being read... I am the Keeper or guardian of Memories..."<<
Noxira murmured and hug Lumine with a smile, seeking safety and support.
>>"The Lectors didn't just want me, they wanted the key that I am If we stay here, the Abyss won't stop clawing at me, it pull until there's nothing left of the girl you both know."<<
She looked at the massive gate at the end of the hall a gate not made of stone, but of dense, compressed Abyssal energy.
>>"We have to go deeper"<<
Noxira said it with a new clarity in her voice.
>>"Not to escape but to close the cycle Alice gave me the anchor in Mondstadt so I wouldn't sink into madness but here... down here I must learn to command the storm itself. Skirk wanted me here for a reason and now I guess I understand why."<<
Lumine nodded with determination, she felt the fundamental shift in their journey It was no longer just about protecting Noxira, it was about working together to assemble the fragments of a world the gods would rather forget.
>>"Then we go lead the way, Noxira. There is no you only us. If you say we must go deeper into the Abyss, then that's where we go"<<
Lumine said firmly while reaching for her sword as Noxira spread her arms and absorbed the colors of reality, the change was more than visual. The air grew thick and heavy filled with the scent of ozone and the distant echo of bells that hadn't rung in five hundred years. Lumine froze as she looked at Noxira the girl stood in the center of a storm of fragments. The ruins didn't just flicker, they came to life and for a moment, Lumine saw through Noxira's eyes:
She didn't see the dark hall, she saw a golden plaza beneath the earth, she saw children laughing and scholars in white robes playing with mechanical birds but then, the artificial sky of Khaenri'ah turned to toxic crimson Red cubes and they rained down like burning hail. The laughter turned to screams and the mechanical birds are burning to scrap.
>>"Stop... Stop it!"<<
Noxira whimpered her cry is echoing in both worlds. >>"It'ss too much... too much pain!"<<
The Abyss Lectors who had seemed so powerful a moment ago, now looked like tiny vermins. Their positions were "unfixed" because they did not exist in Noxira's memories. To this memories are they like anomalies glitches in this reality that had to be deleted.
Every strike which Noxira landed was no longer a physical hit It was as if she were erasing the Lector's right to exist from world history. One Lector tried to flee but his body began to flicker and dissolve into geometric fragments, he tried to scream, but no sound came out.
>>"You are not part of these memories!"<<
Cried Noxira with a multi-layered voice.
>>"You... you are the virus eating away at the truth!"<<
The echoes of her own pain tore the Lectors apart from the inside out, they didn't just suffer from Noxira's power, they suffered the collective agony of millions of souls stored in Noxira's "Ash" or rather Memory. It was a deletion so absolute that not even dust remained of them only the faint, weeping echoes of the fallen city hung in the air for a moment longer before Noxira broke the connection and with a violent jolt the world fell back into the here and now but suddenly... the ground began to shake...