Lumine took Kiyo from Mikoshi Chiyo and gathered him gently into her arms. The boy blinked his deep-blue eyes and forced a faint, reassuring smile.
Burns covered most of his body. The blood in his wounds had been seared dry, and the scabs crumbled at the slightest touch, drifting into the air like ash.
He was gravely wounded.
But this time, he had not died.
Kiyo's plan had succeeded. He had exhausted most of La Signora's strength.
"Bastard," Lumine cursed. "I really am stuck with you for life."
"I'm a bastard," Kiyo answered haltingly, staring at her. "But Lumine is a bastard too... You went behind my back... challenged La Signora... planned to fight her alone. You're a bastard too."
"Can't let Lumine do it alone... We do it together."
He paused and blinked at her.
"Guess I'm stuck with you for life."
Lumine lowered her amber-gold eyes and pressed her lips together. She said nothing more.
Kiyo simply watched her. After some time, weariness seemed to overtake him. His arm fell, and he sank into Lumine's embrace, slipping into a deep sleep.
In the final instant before consciousness left him, Kiyo raised Kamigiri and offered it to her.
"Together," he murmured through the haze.
Lumine laid Kiyo gently upon the ground. She closed one hand around Kamigiri's scabbard and slowly rose.
When she raised her eyes again, she seemed like a different person. Her golden gaze was cold and empty, fixed upon La Signora as though staring at a corpse.
Still not enough...?
Is it still not enough for you? You already killed Kiyono Fugin... and it still isn't enough?
Rosalyne Lohefalter, what would it take to satisfy you?
Rosalyne Lohefalter!
Lumine lowered her stance and slowly drew Kamigiri.
Hatred.
At that moment, nothing remained within her but the purest hatred and the desire to kill.
Kill her.
Under the Raiden Shogun's witness, the Duel Before the Throne began.
"Thus spoke the wind," Lumine whispered.
The wind rose.
It swept the crimson maple leaves across the courtyard. Before a single leaf could touch the ground, Lumine vanished.
Kamigiri dragged a long trail of fire through the heavy air. That blaze struck La Signora, and the blade cut into her flesh, drawing blood.
Scarlet droplets scattered across the desolate sky, reflecting the yellowed light of autumn.
La Signora staggered.
Only now did she truly feel the toll the earlier battle had taken. The endless flame within her heart seemed to be dying.
Kiyo had shattered the Hydro Timepiece and driven La Signora to the verge of losing control.
The same thing had happened five hundred years ago. When the witch lost control, she burned everything along her path. Wherever she walked, corruption was reduced to nothing, leaving only ashes as barren as her own heart.
The fire butterflies had dwindled as well. Kiyo's relentless assault had destroyed them one after another—the same butterflies that had once raised seas of flame across the land.
La Signora breathed faintly, feeling the wind cut against her skin.
Lumine's slender figure left layer after layer of afterimages in the air.
The clash of blades sounded from every direction. Their ringing strokes piled one upon another until they became the rising howl of a storm about to break. Every slash was a current of wind; as the blade-light converged, the currents joined.
La Signora found herself trapped within the wildest and most chaotic of tempests.
A storm formed entirely from Kamigiri's strikes.
Fire butterflies struggled within the sword-wind, releasing mournful cries as they shattered bit by bit.
Hah...
Lumine's assault continued without pause. Kamigiri rang like a song upon the wind as it cut through the air and through the fire butterflies. Every stroke carried her killing intent.
From beginning to end, her eyes remained fixed upon La Signora.
She never hesitated.
"Rosalyne-Kruzchka Lohefalter." Lumine ground out each syllable of her name. La Signora's face was reflected in the dead cold of her golden eyes.
"Are you still not satisfied?"
I am not satisfied...
What would satisfy me?
La Signora lowered her eyes and murmured the question softly.
She felt weakness. She felt pain she had not known in ages. The blade sliced across her body, leaving one bloody wound after another upon her pale skin. Trapped within the storm, she heard wind howling all around her, and her body swayed.
As though she were trapped within five hundred years of frozen time.
Tick.
Tick.
Another sound reached her.
The sound of falling sand—or rather, sand spilling away.
Her Hydro Timepiece had been completely shattered.
Shattered by that mortal.
It had carried the only promise the young wolf ever left her. He had sworn that once the timepiece completed its cycle, they would meet again. So La Signora had preserved it, yet never dared allow the sand to continue falling.
She was afraid that its cycle would truly end—and Rostam would not be there beside her.
She could not endure that.
So she stopped the timepiece.
She buried her life and her memories in the past, surviving upon a promise that could never be fulfilled.
Now the Hydro Timepiece had been destroyed. The promise had shattered with it, along with the final reason upon which she had relied for comfort.
The solace she had treasured for centuries was gone.
And now Lumine dared ask whether she was satisfied?
She would never be satisfied.
One who had been reduced to ashes could never be satisfied.
She would not stop.
Never again.
She would burn everything in this world and, at the end of the timepiece, reunite with the one she loved beneath pure-white light.
The Hydro Timepiece was broken.
Broken.
Broken!
When the last grain of sand was gone, what would remain to her?
Only the ashes of a letter beneath the statue of the Anemo Archon. Only a promise whose day would never come. Only an empty glass shell without a single grain of sand, its surface cracked beyond repair.
Just like her.
La Signora lost control completely.
Just as she had five hundred years ago.
Then something no one could have foreseen occurred.
The flames that had already withered, the power that had already run dry, began to kindle anew within the dead ashes.
Their fuel was her boundless hatred. Dark emotions piled up like kindling, and an uncanny bonfire rose among them.
Within those black flames, moths beat wings trailing streams of fire. Crimson Lotus Moths took flight from her heart and danced through the air. The sea of flame swelled until it overwhelmed the storm and surged into the heavens, tongues of fire licking at Inazuma's darkened sky.
La Signora stood amid the Crimson Lotus Moths, wreathed in flowing scarlet flame like the corona of the sun.
This was the true power of the Witch of Flames.
Whenever she lost control entirely, an immeasurable inferno would rise and burn until it consumed everything in the world—or until it consumed her.
Her fire was endless because its fuel was her own heart.
Kiyo had exhausted most of her elemental power. Yet the flames would not go out, for it was no longer elemental power that fed them.
It was her soul.
As the storm of blades broke apart, the course of the battle began to reverse.
The terrible heat distorted the air. Each breath drew not air but liquid flame into Lumine's body, searing her throat and lungs until they blackened.
The Crimson Lotus Moths were more troublesome still. Every beat of their wings released strange currents of flame. Lumine could neither cut those flames apart nor kill the moths that carried them.
Her breathing grew faster and more labored. The ceaseless assault of moments before became halting and sluggish.
The wind slowly fell silent.
The sea of fire had only begun to spread.
Madness filled La Signora's violet eyes. She burned everything in her path as she walked across Tenshukaku, just as she had once walked across Mondstadt's scorched earth five hundred years ago.
Burn everything.
She had lost control, but this time was different. She did not wander without purpose as she had five hundred years ago.
La Signora knew exactly where she was going.
She heard the sand within the Hydro Timepiece, but she also heard the beating of the heart.
That heart.
The heart that belonged to Rostam.
It was with her.
Just as it had been in Mondstadt. At her loneliest and most helpless, that heart had saved her within the storm and helped her rekindle her withered sea of flame.
From that moment, La Signora had known that their hearts would one day become one.
Just as they had now.
The heart beat steadily and powerfully. Following its rhythm, La Signora advanced step by step toward her final destination.
She knew Rostam was watching her.
Watching the pure-white dream they shared.
At the end awaited the radiance of a new world, the final grain completing the Hydro Timepiece's cycle, and Rostam smiling as he said to her—
"My dearest Miss Rosalyne, how are you?"
At last, she drove Lumine into a desperate position. The girl still struggled to resist, but the witch's flames would not go out.
No wind could rise within the hottest molten fire.
Flame was the grave of wind.
Lumine gasped painfully as the sea of fire drove her back one step at a time.
But she could retreat no farther.
Kiyo lay unconscious behind her. One more step, and the Crimson Lotus Moths would consume him.
She could not retreat.
She had to stand between Kiyo and the flames.
The Raiden Shogun stood impassively at the summit of Tenshukaku, calmly observing everything before her. A Duel Before the Throne was a Duel Before the Throne. She carried out every rule with mechanical precision and would offer neither side her aid.
The Shogun had known what Kiyo was doing below the mountain, but she had not intervened. His actions did not violate the rules of the Duel Before the Throne, and to a puppet, rules were everything.
By the same measure, she did not care whether Kiyo died for what he had done.
The Shogun knew the duel's outcome was already decided.
Lumine stubbornly remained in front of Kiyo, cutting down one moth after another. She no longer tried to evade them.
The cost became apparent almost immediately. Her strength ebbed faster and faster, and every swing of Kamigiri was heavier and weaker than the last. The moths that slipped through struck her body and burned into her flesh.
More and more passed through her guard.
Slowly, the sea of fire set Lumine alight.
Pain.
Agony beyond measure.
Even so—
Even so, she refused to yield.
The inferno covered her body, but not one Crimson Lotus Moth reached Kiyo.
Just as Lumine had said, this time she would protect him.
She gritted her teeth and endured the burning. Blood spilled from the corner of her mouth. Every breath ignited her lungs. Soon she could no longer breathe, and exhaustion left her unable to raise Kamigiri again.
Stubborn madness had consumed La Signora's eyes. She could no longer distinguish reality from illusion. She saw only the pure-white dawn.
But it was not dawn.
It was a sea of fire that would consume everything.
Listening to the rhythm of the heart, she continued forward.
Burn Lumine. Then burn Kiyo Seigan. Burn Kunikuzushi. Take the Geo Archon's Gnosis. Take Narukami's Gnosis. Burn the entire old world.
The pure-white future unfurled before her like a painted scroll, already within reach.
Grains of sand fell into the bottom of the vessel—or scattered into the air. La Signora walked amid them as time, frozen for five hundred years, began to move once more.
"Burn it all," she said.
"Burn it all!"
A twisted smile rose upon La Signora's lips. Every Crimson Lotus Moth surged forward at once. The flame within her heart reached its zenith, and the swarm raised an inferno toward Lumine, who no longer had the strength to resist.
Lumine could not swing Kamigiri even once more.
In the next instant, the moths would descend upon her and reduce her to ash.
Crimson maples rose into the air.
They were beautiful.
In that final instant, amid the dancing moths, Lumine embraced Kiyo and shielded him behind her. As the flames came to consume the old world, they clung tightly to each other, their cheeks pressed together, embracing like lovers.
Until the final instant, Lumine continued to protect Kiyo.
And Kiyo did the same.
La Signora heard the heartbeat stop.
The moths froze in the air.
They could not advance another inch.
The madness consuming La Signora's eyes receded. Her pupils tightened, then widened in disbelief.
She would not believe what stood before her.
Hovering in front of Lumine, between the two sides, holding back the fire butterflies and Crimson Lotus Moths, was an object suffused with a faint and gentle radiance.
It was right before La Signora's eyes.
The heart.
Rostam's heart.
Just as it had once protected La Signora in Mondstadt, the heart continued to protect like a knight.
But this time, the knight was not protecting La Signora.
Not anymore.
Nothing.
There was nothing left.
A long, endless void where emotion should have been.
Her thoughts seemed to stop.
"Eh...?" she whispered. "Eh?"
Right before her, the heart protected Lumine from the sea of fire, just as Lumine protected Kiyo.
Within the flames that would consume the old world, Lumine and Kiyo held each other, protected each other, and seemed almost to offer each other salvation.
La Signora swayed and took half a step back.
Then another.
She had advanced one step at a time before. Now she retreated one step at a time, as though trying to flee.
There was nowhere left to go.
The strength holding her upright vanished. She could no longer stand steadily, and her eyes emptied of all color.
The heartbeat that had once filled her with joy had never sounded for her.
Not once.
The wind had died long ago within the fiercest flames. Only the faint echo of its song remained—and even that echo did not belong to her.
The wind would never sing for her again.
The last sand had already escaped the Hydro Timepiece.
La Signora felt dazed.
She heard something go out.
Her body swayed, and at last she understood what it was.
The endless flame that would have burned the entire world was slowly dying.
It had lost its fuel.
But it was not the flames that were dying.
It was her soul.