Retrocognition | Xiao x Reader

iii.

A e o n i a n

.~___✥﹤┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈﹥✥___~.

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The sky has always been a witness to the plethora of Teyvat's memory, be it dolent or not, it weeps for the memoria left in the vespertine dust of old. By nightfall will the specks of heavenly white decorate the caelum as if they were souls of the forgotten history, meant to relive their lives in the firmament without end.

An eternity—of bliss or tribulation, within that miniature garden after death, what is there to see?

It remains unknown to all immortals.

To step foot unto whatever it is beyond the span of a short life, they were given no such privileges. A blessing and a curse, that was.

Xiao was on the receiving end of both—there were no seams to line the two to create something new and better, it stays the way it is.

Centuries of locking away, erasing what he deemed is nonexistent—that warmth of a human—only for it to gnaw on his conscience through the hammering of fate's caprice.

That piteous girl who earnestly declared love after clinging unto for more than two lifetimes was nowhere to be found.

Now, he's on her previous footing, chasing after an ascian with little traces of existence. It's a miracle, truly, that she still managed to step into his perpetual wake even if she ranged from different kinds of nations in her lives.

What is it but fate, indeed?

Does that mean that he's meant to walk on the same path she has trudged upon, looking for the missing piece that's soon to grow empty once she ceases?

The Yaksha traipses down the stairs that led to the heart of the city, planning to scout the wilds for the second time that day after having speared down the highlands of northern Mondstadt only to find the ruins of a windy temple in the morning. 

He's been staying around the city of wind for a couple of weeks now, and plans to stay for a whole month just in case she was a traveller this time around.

One can never be too sure, after all, and he must take any kinds of chances.

His inner demons, however—remnants of his phase as Alatus—proved to be more troubling than ever.

Especially now that he's more vulnerable because of the missing lady.

"What if she reigned from a different country?"

Shaking his head of the droplets of water from the downpour a while ago, the Guardian flicks and watches as his polearm vanishes in gold and cyanic fragments. With the demon still stubbornly prowling in his head, he sighs, making an attempt to rid him of it by being rational.

That would be troublesome, but it's not something that cannot be overcome. He thinks to himself.

His jog brings him to the city square, golden eyes catching sight of an evanescent crystal fly. It sufficiently fed his demons more ideas to gnaw on his remaining fortitude, a feat he's more than habituated to.

It doesn't mean that it's healthy, though, because it wasn't. He's had this, the aphotic claws that endeavored to rear him back to his previous duties as Alatus.