𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙩𝙧𝙪𝙚 𝙙𝙚𝙨𝙘𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧

32 - a meteorite, a firebird, and y/n walk into a bar...

Y/n found herself standing at the entrance to what used to be her bedroom. It was just as she remembered it, but also not. The room was stripped of all the belongings and memories she'd accumulated during her time here. It was barren, almost as if waiting for her to begin anew.

As Y/n was lost in her thoughts, she suddenly became aware of a peculiar sensation enveloping her. Her eyes widened as she looked down at her own body, or rather, the body she was inhabiting. The angles were more pronounced, the build decidedly more substantial. And the attire...rich, ornate fabric with a design she recognized from Khaenri'ah's ancient history.

"This...this isn't right..." Y/n's voice emerged, but it was deeper, resonating with a timber that was utterly foreign to her. It sounded...male. Her heart thudded in her chest, which was not her chest. In a place she remembered as home, but was simultaneously alien, she felt adrift. She frantically searched for a reflective surface but found none in the austere room. Determined to find answers, she plucked a solitary strand of hair from the body—an ashy light-blond strand. The body possessed blond hair.

She felt an overwhelming mixture of loss, nostalgia, and confusion. She was back in a place that should have been lost to the sands of time, a place that was both her refuge and a reminder of the tragedy she could never forget.

Y/n sank to the floor, her thoughts racing. If this was a dream, it was a merciless one, playing with the raw edges of her soul. If it was reality, then she had to figure out how she ended up in this timeline, and more importantly, how to leave.

Y/n's gaze narrowed as she took in the contraptions and machinery scattered around the room. Her analytical mind swiftly absorbed the details and patterns. There was something intriguingly methodical about the placement and construction of each device.

"Khaenri'ahn designs...definitely Khaenri'ahn," she mumbled to herself, as her brain started racing through her mental encyclopedia. She recalled her time at the Hidden Palace of Guizang Formula, where she had seen samples of ancient technology from Khaenri'ah. Her memory was impeccable, and the similarity was too pronounced to be mere coincidence.

She could feel her intellect firing on all cylinders as she started piecing together the information. "Alright, let's deduce," she whispered to herself. "I seem to be in a body that's inextricably linked to Khaenri'ah. The tech here, the alchemy - it all screams Khaenri'ah. But why? What's the connection to the Guili Assembly?"

She then spotted the diary on the desk. Her heart raced a tad bit faster – could this be the key to the puzzle?

She quickly opened the book. Pages filled with undecipherable script left her flummoxed. She was conversant with Khaenri'ah's language as it stood in her timeline, but this archaic script bore only a faint resemblance to it. The symbols and glyphs had mutated over time, leaving her blind to their meaning.

A diagram, however, caught her attention. It depicted a meteorite with an arrow gesturing towards the center, adjacent to a rectangular box. The visual cues immediately sent Y/n's mind whirling. A rush of realizations and recollections flooded her.

"That's it. That's freaking it," Y/n whispered with wide eyes, her voice quivering in awe of her own deduction.

The meteorite in the diagram was a doppelganger for the one she had made her grand Teyvatian entrance in; she could almost hear Guizhong's voice, recounting the tiniest details of its contours and markings with the fondness one would reserve for a beloved pet. And that simple rectangle sketch - she couldn't help but snicker; it was her loyal cell phone, an object so inconspicuously mundane yet seasoned by countless escapades and exploits.

A cascade of understanding washed over her. This was not just any body she was inhabiting. This was a vessel from a time before she even set foot in Teyvat. And the puppeteer pulling the strings? Probably the same nefarious 'unauthorized access' troll that had been joyriding in her contact lenses like they were a pair of VR goggles. This person had known of her arrival, and he had been studying it. Her head was buzzing with the enormity of the discovery.