Elara
I woke before dawn. The room above the stables was cold, the window fogged with my breath. I lay still for a moment, listening. The singing was fainter here, a distant hum like a radio playing in another room. Diluc had said the room was old, older than the city maybe. Protections. I didn't know if I believed in protections, but the quiet was real enough.
I sat up. The mattress creaked, that honest, worn sound that meant something had been here before me and would be here after. My pack was on the chair where I'd left it. My coat was folded on top. My boots were on the floor, exactly where I'd kicked them off.
I looked at my hands. They weren't shaking. They were steady and pale, the same hands I'd had for twenty-four years. The same hands that had gripped the railing of the observation deck. That had tucked my mother's photograph into my pocket. That had reached toward a tear in reality because there was nothing left to reach for.
I pressed my thumb to my palm. I felt the pressure, the warmth, the solid, unremarkable sensation of skin against skin. The decay was still paused. I didn't know why. I didn't know for how long. But the weight I had been carrying for six months, the counting and tracking and waiting for the next symptom, was not gone, but it was distant. Like a clock that had stopped ticking but hadn't been wound down.
I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, just breathing. The cold air filled my lungs. The distant singing pressed against the walls. The wood creaked beneath me. I thought about the painter and her shaking hands and the colors she had lost, one shade at a time. I thought about my father and the blank space in the photograph and the name I didn't know. I thought about the Cathedral and what Diluc had said. The Cathedral takes her to a room with white walls and white lights and white sheets, and they pump Dandelion Essence into her lungs until she can't remember what her hands were shaking for.
I needed to see it. Not because I wanted the blessing. Not because I believed in Barbatos's love. I needed to understand what this city was doing to its people. I needed to see the place where the painter's mother had gone, where Diluc's father had gone, where everyone who couldn't hold onto themselves eventually ended up.
I stood up. I dressed. I pulled on my boots and tucked the photograph into my pocket. The key was on the chair, the one Diluc had given me last night, old iron and heavy, the kind of key that opened doors that hadn't been opened in a long time. I picked it up and felt its weight. I would return it when I left. But I wasn't leaving yet.
The stables were quiet when I stepped out. Horses slept in their stalls, their breath misting in the cold air. A young man, a stable hand maybe, was leaning against the wall with his eyes closed and his mouth slightly open. His hands were folded across his chest. His lips were moving. Happy, happy, happy, happy. Even in sleep. Even in dreams.
I walked past him, out the door, into the street.
The city was waking. Not slowly. Mondstadt didn't do slow. The transition from night to day was sudden and mechanical, like someone had thrown a switch. One moment the streets were empty, the windows dark, the singing soft. The next, the flower seller was at her stall arranging flowers. The baker was stacking crates. The children were running their loop around the fountain. The same sequence. Every morning. Every day. Every year.
I stood at the edge of the plaza and watched them for a moment. The woman's hands moved in the same loop. Select, turn, place. The man's pyramid was always three high, two wide, one on top. The children's laughter was the same pitch and the same duration every time. I wondered if they dreamed. If they woke up in the morning with fragments of something else, a memory of a different life or a different self. I wondered if the wind took those fragments too, or if they were simply never there to begin with.
I turned away from the plaza and started walking toward the Cathedral.
The streets leading up to the Cathedral were empty at this hour. Not empty like the plaza. The plaza was full, performing its morning routine. But the side streets, the alleys, the spaces between the performance, those were empty. No one walked them. No one had reason to. The performance was in the plaza, in the market, in the taverns and shops. The spaces in between were just connective tissue, forgotten as soon as they were traversed.
I passed door after door. Green with lion knockers. Blue with grapevines. Red with something else. I counted thirty-seven green doors, twelve blue, four red. The numbers didn't change from block to block.
I thought about what Dainsleif had said. Everything is designed. The god believed that if he controlled the environment, he could control the experience. He had controlled it so completely that no one remembered why the doors were painted the colors they were. No one remembered the festival, the celebration, the god's favorite colors. The pattern remained. The meaning was gone.
I wondered if that was what happened to people too. The pattern remained. The smile. The routine. The performance. But the meaning, the reason for the smile, the purpose behind the routine, the self that performed, was gone.
The Cathedral loomed ahead, growing larger with each block. White stone against the pale blue sky. Spires that seemed to pierce the clouds, though the clouds never moved. Stained glass windows that caught the morning light and turned it into colors that shouldn't exist. I kept walking.
The stairs were wide enough for twenty people to walk abreast. They rose in front of me, each step the same height as the last, worn smooth by five hundred years of feet that had never stumbled. I stopped at the bottom and looked up. The Cathedral sat at the top like a crown. White stone, white steps, white statues of angels with their mouths open in silent song. The singing was louder here, not coming from the Cathedral itself but from everywhere. The air. The stone. The ground beneath my feet.
I started climbing.
The steps were cold under my boots. Smooth and polished. No cracks, no chips, no signs of weathering, as if the stairs had been carved yesterday and installed this morning and never touched by rain or wind or time. Statues lined both sides. Angels with lyres, angels with swords, angels with their hands raised in blessing. Their wings were folded. Their eyes were closed. Their faces were smooth and peaceful and utterly empty.
I counted the steps as I climbed. It gave me something to focus on besides the singing. Forty-seven to the first landing. Another thirty-eight to the second. Another fifty-two to the top.
At the top, I stopped. The doors were open. They were twice my height, carved from dark wood that had been polished to a mirror shine. The carvings told a story. A young man with a lyre, standing on a cliff, wind swirling around him. People kneeling at his feet, their faces lifted toward the sky. Birds. Clouds. Light pouring down from above. A story about freedom. About a god who loved his people enough to give them wings.
I wondered what the carver would think if they knew how the story ended.
I stepped through the doors.
The inside of the Cathedral was vast. I had seen cathedrals before in my world, with stone vaults and stained glass and the smell of incense and old wood. But this was different. This was too large. The ceiling rose so high that the details blurred into shadow. The pillars were so thick that ten people could have hidden behind them. The floor stretched so wide that the far walls seemed to shimmer, like a desert mirage. It was designed to make you feel small.
I walked forward. My footsteps echoed, not a sharp echo like in empty spaces but a soft one, muffled by something I couldn't see. The sound seemed to sink into the stone, absorbed and swallowed. The singing was everywhere. Not loud. It never got loud. Just present. A continuous thread of melody that wrapped around itself and kept going, like a river that had been flowing for five hundred years and would flow for five hundred more.
And then I saw the people.
They filled the pews. Dozens of them. Maybe a hundred. Heads bowed, hands folded, mouths moving. They sat in neat rows, their backs straight, their postures identical, like soldiers waiting for orders. I stopped walking. They didn't look up. They didn't acknowledge me. They didn't react to the echo of my footsteps or the rustle of my coat or the fact that a stranger had just walked into their Cathedral and was standing in the aisle, staring at them. They just kept whispering.
I moved closer. Slowly. Quietly. My boots made no sound on the stone floor. I had learned to walk quietly in the lab, during the long nights when the lights flickered and the silence felt like something alive. The whispers resolved into words.
Happy, happy, happy, happy.
The same word. The same rhythm. The same rising and falling cadence that matched the singing outside. Over and over and over.
I passed a woman in her sixties, her hands folded so tightly that her knuckles were white. Her lips moved. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing. Happy, happy, happy, happy. I passed a man in his thirties, his jaw tight, a vein pulsing in his temple. His lips moved. His eyes were open, staring at nothing. Happy, happy, happy, happy. I passed a child no older than ten, her hair in braids, her dress pressed and clean. Her lips moved. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing. Happy, happy, happy, happy.
I stopped beside her. I looked down at her small, serious face. She didn't look at me. She didn't blink. She just kept whispering, her voice blending with the others, a single note in a choir of forgetting. I wanted to touch her shoulder. To say something. To ask if she remembered what it felt like to be anything other than happy.
I didn't. I kept walking.
The altar was at the far end of the Cathedral, raised on a platform of white stone. Behind it, a stained glass window rose three stories high, its colors bleeding across the floor in patches of blue and gold and red. The light shifted as I walked, not because the sun moved but because the angle of my approach changed the way the colors fell. And in front of the altar, arranging flowers, was a young woman.
She was shorter than me, with pale hair in twin tails and a deaconess's habit that looked too large for her frame. Her hands moved in a slow, deliberate sequence. Select a flower from the basket. Turn it toward the light. Place it in the vase. Select, turn, place. Select, turn, place. She didn't look up when I approached. She didn't acknowledge me. She just kept arranging, her lips moving in the same whisper as the people in the pews. Happy, happy, happy, happy.
I stood at the edge of the platform and waited. The singing pressed against my back. The whispers pressed against my ears. The colors from the stained glass pressed against my eyes. Blue that felt like a held breath. Gold that tasted like honey. Red that pulsed like a heartbeat.
The young woman finished her arrangement. She stepped back and admired her work. Then she turned.
Her face was smooth and round, the face of someone who had never been allowed to frown. Her eyes were pale and washed out, the color of water that had been left in the sun too long. Her smile was wide and bright and perfect.
"Welcome," she said. Her voice was soft and musical, the same melody as the singing outside. "Have you come to receive the blessing?"
"The blessing," I said.
"The gift of freedom. The release from sorrow." She gestured at the pews, at the whispering people, at the stained glass window that poured impossible colors across the stone floor. "Here, in the presence of our Lord Barbatos, all burdens are lifted. All pain is healed. All sadness is transformed into joy."
I looked at the whispering people, at their moving lips and empty eyes and folded hands. "They don't look joyful," I said.
Her smile didn't waver. "Joy takes many forms. Some find it in laughter. Some in silence. Some in the simple peace of knowing that all is well." Her eyes moved over my face, my coat, my hands. Cataloging. Assessing. Deciding something. "I'm Barbara," she said. "The deaconess of this Cathedral. I've been hoping you would visit."
"You know who I am."
"The wind knows everyone." She tilted her head. The gesture was almost birdlike. "But the wind doesn't know you. That's unusual."
"I'm not from here."
"I know." Her smile widened. "The wind tells me things. Not everything. But enough."
She led me to a pew near the front, not the very front because that was reserved for the ones receiving the blessing, the ones about to be healed. I sat. The wood was cold beneath me. Polished and unworn. No scratches, no stains, no signs of the hundreds of bodies that had sat here before me, as if the pew had been carved yesterday and installed this morning and never touched by human hands.
Barbara sat beside me. Close. Too close. Her shoulder almost touched mine. Her hands were folded in her lap, the same posture as the whispering people, but her eyes were alive. Watching. Waiting.
"You're tired," she said. "I can see it in your eyes, in the way you hold yourself. You've been carrying something heavy for a long time." I didn't answer. "The blessing can take that weight. Barbatos's love can carry it for you. You don't have to be tired anymore. You don't have to be sad anymore. You don't have to be anything except happy."
"I don't know if I know how to be happy."
Her smile softened, became almost kind. "That's what the blessing is for. To teach you. To show you what happiness feels like when you're not carrying all those heavy things." She reached out and touched my hand. Her fingers were cold. Not cold like the room above the stables. Cold like something that had never been warm. "Let me help you," she said. "Let me take that tiredness. Let me make you light."
I looked at her hand on mine. Pale. Small. Trembling slightly at the edges. "What does it cost?" I asked.
"Cost?" She blinked. "There is no cost. It's a gift. Barbatos's love, freely given."
"Nothing is free."
Her smile tightened. "You sound like the Liyue merchants. Everything is a contract with them. Everything has a price. But here in Mondstadt we are free. Free to be happy. Free to be loved. Free to let go of everything that hurts." She squeezed my hand. Her grip was stronger than I expected. "Let go," she whispered. "Just let go. I'll catch you. Barbatos will catch you. You don't have to carry anything anymore."
I looked at her pale eyes, her perfect smile, her trembling fingers. "I don't want to let go."
Her smile didn't waver, but something in her posture changed. A slight stiffening. A tightening around her eyes. "Why not?" she asked. "Why would anyone choose to suffer?"
"Because suffering is mine. It's the only thing I have that no one else can take."
She stared at me for a long moment. The singing pressed against the silence between us. The whispers in the pews seemed to grow louder. "That's not true," she said finally. "Barbatos can take it. He wants to take it. He loves you."
"He doesn't know me."
"He knows everyone." Her voice was still soft, still musical, but there was an edge to it now. A warning. "The wind sees everything. The wind knows everything. The wind loves everything." She leaned closer. Her eyes were wide and bright, fever bright. Her breath smelled like dandelions, sweet and cloying and overwhelming. "And you are not in the wind's memory. You are not in the records. You are a blank space, and blank spaces are dangerous."
"I'm not here to be dangerous. I'm just passing through."
"Passing through?" She laughed. It was a high, bright sound, the same pitch as the children's laughter in the plaza. A loop. A recording. "No one passes through Mondstadt. People arrive, or they leave. There is no through."
"Then I'll leave."
"Not yet." Her smile softened again, became almost kind again. "You haven't received the blessing yet. You haven't been healed. You haven't been loved."
"I don't want to be healed."
"You don't know what you want." She stood. Her habit rustled. The flowers on the altar swayed, even though there was no wind. "You're tired. You're lost. You're carrying something heavy, and you don't have to carry it alone. That's what the blessing is for. That's what Barbatos is for." She extended her hand again. "Let me help you."
I looked at her hand. Pale. Small. Waiting. "No."
Her smile froze. Not faltered. Froze. Like a photograph. Like a mask. "No?" she repeated.
"No."
The singing seemed to grow louder. The whispers in the pews seemed to grow sharper. The colors from the stained glass window seemed to darken, the blue deeper, the gold harsher, the red more like blood. Barbara lowered her hand. Her smile did not change.
"I see," she said. "Perhaps you need more time. Perhaps you need to see more of Mondstadt. Perhaps you need to understand what we're offering before you can accept it." She turned back to the altar and began arranging the flowers again. The same sequence. Select, turn, place. Select, turn, place. "The blessing is always available," she said without looking at me. "Whenever you're ready. Whenever you're willing to let go."
I stood. The pew creaked, the first real sound I'd heard in the Cathedral. "I should go."
"Yes," Barbara said. Her hands never stopped moving. "You should."
I walked back down the aisle. The whispering people didn't look up. The singing didn't stop. The colors from the stained glass window painted my hands in shades of blue and gold and red. At the doors, I looked back. Barbara was still at the altar, still arranging flowers, still smiling. But her lips were moving. Not singing. Not whispering. Praying, maybe. Or something else. Something that looked like prayer from a distance but wasn't.
I stepped through the doors. The singing followed me out.
---
Barbara
The outsider left. Barbara stood at the altar long after the doors closed. The flowers were arranged. They had been arranged for hours. She kept touching them anyway. Select, turn, place. Select, turn, place. Her hands were steady. Her smile was perfect. The wind pressed against the stained glass, soft and patient, filling the Cathedral with its endless song.
But something was wrong.
She pressed her hand to her chest. The Ideal was there. It was always there. The warmth of Barbatos's freedom, the gentle pressure of his will, the certainty that everything was as it should be. Except when the outsider had sat in the pew. For one moment, one breath, the Ideal had hesitated. Not weakened. Not withdrawn. Just confused. As if it had encountered something it could not process. Something that did not fit. Something that should not exist.
Barbara had never felt that before.
She stopped arranging flowers and stood very still. The Cathedral was empty now. The whispering people had filed out while she was speaking to the outsider, their prayers complete, their burdens lifted, their smiles firmly in place. But the outsider's burden had not been lifted. The outsider had refused to let go.
"The Ideal should have embraced you," Barbara whispered to the empty Cathedral. "Why didn't it embrace you?"
She did not understand the question. She was repeating doctrine, words she had heard from the senior deaconess years ago, before the senior deaconess received the blessing herself and stopped being senior deaconess and started being simply happy. The Ideal embraces all who seek freedom. The Ideal welcomes all who are weary. The outsider was weary. Barbara had seen it in her eyes, in the way she held herself, in the way her hands trembled when she thought no one was looking. But the Ideal had not embraced her.
Barbara knelt before the altar and pressed her forehead to the cold stone. The stone was smooth and polished and unworn, the same stone that had been here for five hundred years, waiting for knees and foreheads and hands folded in prayer.
"Lord Barbatos," she prayed. "Show me what to do. Show me how to love her properly."
The wind did not answer. It never answered. But Barbara's faith did not waver. It could not waver. Doubt was a poison, and she had built her immunity to it years ago, brick by brick, prayer by prayer, blessing by blessing.
She would try again. She would invite the outsider back. She would sing louder, pray harder, love more fiercely. She would find the crack in the outsider's armor, the weight she was carrying, the sorrow she refused to release. And then she would heal her. That was what Barbatos wanted. She was sure of it.
She rose from her knees. She brushed the dust from her habit and smoothed her hair and adjusted her smile. The flowers were arranged. The pews were empty. The Cathedral was ready for the next round of healings, the next wave of weary souls, the next opportunity to serve.
But the outsider's face lingered in her mind. Those grey eyes. That flat voice. The way she had said no, not angry, not afraid, just certain.
No.
Barbara walked back to the altar. She picked up a flower that was already perfectly placed, turned it toward the light, and set it down again. Select, turn, place. Select, turn, place.
She would find a way. She always found a way.