Chapter Text
Tired. So tired.
It had been nearly a century since his bard had passed—his dearest friend, the mortal spark who had once danced through battle with a lyre in hand and dreams on his tongue. A bard who took no lives but ran to war preaching of freedom. Barbatos had kept the promise unsaid between them. He had taken up the Archon's mantle to protect that dream, and oh, he had protected it. But even the wind wears thin after too long in one place.
He was tired before he ever swept his way to Liyue. Tired before all the nights spent haggling philosophy with Morax over bitter wine and brittle parchment, crafting contracts laced with careful goodwill. Tired before he carved mountain peaks into the sea, making the land more gentle, kinder, for the mortals who had no wings and found seasons to be far better than unrelenting winters.
Tired. So very tired.
Istaroth would be here. She would watch the timelines, hold the weave of fate steady for a while. If danger reached Mondstadt, it would first have to pass through Morax—and Rex Lapis did not yield easily.
It would be fine.
It would be fine.
Just... a little rest.
Xiao would manage. Just a few days, and he could return to sending calming hymns on the breeze, easing that stubborn adeptus's suffering in the only way he knew how.
So tired…
And so, with a breath like a final note left to drift on the wind, Barbatos closed his eyes.
He woke up confused. Prayers rang in his ears—desperate, fractured things begging for salvation from horrors that never should have been.
Barbatos stirred, disoriented.
His Mondstadt—his little land of song and freedom, the one he had nurtured to dream like his dear bard—it was crying out. Something had gone terribly wrong. He reached for time, grasping at threads, searching for the presence of their creator.
And he found... nothing.
The winds rushed to him. Too quickly. Too easily. They answered his call when they shouldn’t have. Not like this. They were her winds. They belonged to the one who had crafted time itself. They were supposed to listen to her. But they came to him now. Like younger siblings, confused and frightened, seeking the nearest warmth. They whispered to him of everything and nothing. Moments, centuries, flickers of futures that blurred the present.
Time.
Gone.
Missing.
Unmoored.
He staggered beneath it, divine and small all at once.
She was gone. When? Where? Why?
The winds tried to explain. They brushed against him with truths not meant for his ears. Fragments of futures, shimmering false memories, ephemeral warnings:
"Maybe don’t do that."
"Perhaps do this."
They didn’t stay in his mind. They fled the moment they landed, leaving only an echo. That meant this—this strange awareness, this flood of timelines—was a gift. A parting gift. From the one he had trusted to watch over his people while he rested.
The wind whispered again – She made you sleep.
And it stung. For a moment, it felt like betrayal. But then came the wind from the future. It brushed past him, cool and kind, laced with hope. Possibilities. Doors. Change. Even if it hurt. He didn’t understand why. Why he was abandoned. Why his people had to suffer during his absence. Why he hadn’t known sooner. The future rang of hope but what of the present, did she have no mind for that? What about the humans who suffered now, who didn’t have thousands of years in the future to look forward to.
But he could ask later.
He folded away his wings. He cloaked himself in garments reminiscent of his friend, his bard. A tribute to the mortal who once taught a god how to dream. There would be time to mourn. There would be time to question. But first, he had to see what had happened.
And find a way to fix it.