"The Eternity in my heart..."
Ei was momentarily adrift. Her instinct was to ask Makoto why she was being asked about Eternity at all, when they had just agreed to put away these grand, hollow, intangible concepts.
But she caught the deep significance in Makoto's gaze, and stopped herself.
A flash of light passed through her mind. She felt herself grasp at something.
She closed her eyes. Everything from her past swept through her at once.
Birth. War. The founding of a nation. Companionship.
Time spent alongside Makoto. The battles fought with her retainers against monsters. The fog of loss after Makoto's death. The creation of the Shogun, in the name of upholding Eternity.
The debates with the Shogun over what Eternity was. Everything she had experienced in the MC World.
And even, just now, Ryen cheerfully pulling Musou no Hitotachi from her chest.
Thousands of years of memories passed through Ei's mind again like a long dream.
This time, she read through all of them as someone standing outside, looking in.
After a moment, Ei opened her eyes. The brilliance within them had settled into something calm and contained. She carried, in this instant, something of Makoto's quality: the bearing of someone who always had the answer already in hand.
"My Eternity is memory."
"My Eternity is the people I love."
"My Eternity is Inazuma."
"Everything that endures, everything brief, everything changing, every fleeting instant, everything possessed, everything yet to be had..."
"All things in this world are Eternity. The Eternity I should be pursuing is the pursuit itself."
"To give the people the dream of a thousand generations. To give the people of Inazuma happy and peaceful lives."
"This is the Eternity of the shadow warrior, Beelzebul."
The eternally composed expression Ei wore cracked, just slightly, into something warm and luminous.
She raised her hand gently and pressed it to the seed.
"To strive always for a better life for the people of Inazuma: that is the true and unchanging Eternity."
Beside her, the Shogun's eyes lit up. The bewilderment in them dissolved. In Ei's words, spoken from the depths of her heart, the Shogun had found the Eternity she herself needed to pursue.
The seed released a soft pink radiance, full and gentle, like a drop of dew, settling quietly into the ground.
The sound of time's river flowing reached them from somewhere unseen. The seed that had just touched the earth began, quietly, to take root.
Ei stepped back to stand beside Makoto, watching in silence as a tender green shoot pressed steadily up through the soil.
The landscape around them transformed. What had been a grey, lifeless consciousness space bloomed into birdsong and flowers.
Five hundred years of Inazuma's history unfolded before them in an instant, carried on the current of time.
Mt. Yougou. Tenshukaku. Inazuma City.
The Inazuma that Makoto had not seen in five hundred years told her, in this moment, everything it had lived through in her absence.
Then, from somewhere unannounced, a crowd of small foxes appeared.
They called out happily and ran to the foot of the Sacred Sakura, circling it. Every now and then they joined hands and danced in a very human fashion.
In what felt like the passing of ages, the seed had become fully grown.
The Sacred Sakura reached the sky. Cherry blossoms fell in drifts from above.
Only, this Sacred Sakura looked somewhat different from the one everyone knew.
It did not look like a fox at all. Just a tree.
Everyone exchanged a knowing smile.
If anyone wanted to know why the Sacred Sakura had developed its own particular character...
That would be a question for Inazuma's foremost horticulturist, Yae Miko.
But as Yae Miko herself had said: after five hundred years of tending the tree by herself, surely she had earned a few privileges.
The collapsed consciousness space was alive now, full of birdsong, flowers, and the feeling of something growing.
Makoto took Ei's hand gently, her eyes warm with everything she felt.
"My Ei, always my proudest sister."
Ei's expression softened. She tightened her grip on Makoto's hand.
Beside them, the Shogun looked at the two of them and felt, unexpectedly, something like loneliness.
Before she could sit with it too long, Makoto reached out and took her hand as well.
"From today, Shogun, you are my second little sister."
The Shogun's eyes flickered. She looked at Makoto in silence for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice carried a complexity that had no simple name.
"Yes. Sister."
Ei was slightly disgruntled, but given everything she owed the Shogun, she understood this was Makoto's way of making things right. She said nothing.
Looking at the Sacred Sakura before them, all three seemed to see the Inazuma to come: flourishing like this tree, strong and full of life.
"The unchanging pursuit of a happier life for our people. That is our Eternity."
"Inazuma will only get better."
Makoto murmured it softly, with a smile of infinite gentleness.
Ryen, standing not far away, smiled too. He waited a moment, then offered a quiet reminder.
"Things seem to be in order. We should head out. With Istaroth's power manifesting here, who knows how much time has passed outside."
He was not particularly worried that Istaroth had tampered with time while they were inside. He now held the seed of her temporal coordinates. If Istaroth truly dared pull something, the Imaginary energy he carried could take him to wherever and whenever she was, and they could have a proper conversation.
Temporal power was formidable. But that depended entirely on what it was being compared to. Against the fundamental power of the Imaginary Tree, it still fell well short.
Makoto and the others took one last look at the Sacred Sakura, pressing the image firmly into memory.
Then they followed Ryen back along the way they had come.
When the last person, the Shogun, had stepped out, everything in the consciousness space seemed to freeze into a still image.
Some time drifted by. Then a weary sigh sounded in the stillness.
A streak of flowing light gathered briefly and dissolved back into the current of time.
"The fated cycle fragment of Inazuma is complete at last. There were complications, but on the whole, things went smoothly."
"Mm. Understood, Haagenti."
"Baal has not awakened. In the end, she is still..."
"I know. Asmodeüs has not yet revived. But she has covered the current space-time with her descent power, and the closed loop still requires that traveler."
"I believe she will grow strong enough to confront Asmodeüs before her awakening."
"But that Lord of the Outer Domain is still watching. He bears no ill will, but I cannot say whether he will have some unintended effect."
"What does Phanes say? Should we seek guidance from the Divine One?"
"Is that so. Understood. I will withdraw my temporal presence. But have Phanes convey this to the Divine One: that Lord of the Outer Domain has taken hold of a portion of the Imaginary Tree's fundamental power."
"I understand, Haagenti. Yes, it is astonishing, but it is true. He has already obtained the seed of my temporal coordinates."
"Don't worry. I may not be able to overpower him, but he will not necessarily have any particular interest in me."
"I understand. Khaenri'ah? You mean that human nation at that temporal node? Is it truly so important?"
"The power of death is not something they can comprehend. I don't feel it warrants concern, but if you say so..."
"Mm. I will pay attention."
Like something half-dreamed, the words seemed to speak themselves into this frozen stretch of space-time.
The voice was distant, carrying a trace of something wistful.
More time passed, undefined.
A soft, drawn-out sigh.
"Paimon? She is doing well now. There is no need to disturb her. She has a life she is content with."
"The fated cycle does not absolutely require Paimon's power. We will revisit the matter if it becomes necessary."
The voice fell silent. The frozen space-time began slowly to dissolve, like mist clearing, and in its fading edges, something like ancient gears could be glimpsed, briefly, before they vanished.
On the path heading up toward Mt. Yougou, Ryen's lips curved into a quiet, subtle smile.
He glanced back at the consciousness space they had just left, then let his gaze drift to Makoto's smiling face walking ahead.
"Istaroth. Asmodeüs. Baal. Paimon. Interesting. The Supreme Four Pillars?"
"Flower of Life. Feather of Death. Sand of Time. Goblet of Void. Circlet of Logos."
"So then, who is Phanes?"
Ryen found himself thinking that the secrets of Teyvat were becoming increasingly fascinating.
If his reasoning held: the so-called four shadow archons of the primordial being Phanes in ancient times were simply the code names of the Supreme Four Pillars.
Baal, representing Life. Istaroth, representing Time. Paimon, representing Space.
And Asmodeüs?
Feather of Death? Or Circlet of Logos?
If Asmodeüs was the entity known as the Heavenly Principles...
The cycle of the artifacts was still missing one piece.
Was it Phanes herself?
In that case, the Heavenly Principles igniting the Second Throne War and overthrowing the First Throne carried a number of interesting new implications.
Going by what Istaroth had said, the Heavenly Principles was, in all likelihood, Asmodeüs.
A knot of fog gathered in Ryen's mind. He turned it over for a while, then arrived at a cheerful decision.
"If I can't figure it out, drop it."
Ryen laughed quietly to himself and booted the question out of his head.
He and Hu Tao shared essentially the same philosophy.
Don't make yourself miserable. What doesn't concern you, let float by above you.
What does concern you...
Punch it first, ask questions later.
Better to spend this free time thinking about how to have a proper date with Ningguang and the others than to puzzle over the First Throne's secrets.
Strolling in no particular hurry along the path up Mt. Yougou, Ryen gave a quiet laugh and said, half to himself:
"The Supreme Four Pillars, archons of the Archs... this Divine One that Istaroth and the First Throne answer to, could it possibly be the great demon king Belial?"
"Too on the nose."
His muttering was overheard by Ganyu walking alongside him. She tilted her head with curious eyes.
"What are you saying, Ryen?"
Ryen waved a hand and smiled.
"Nothing. Just thinking that Teyvat might have its own King Solomon."
"King Solomon?"
Even by Ryen's usual standards of saying strange things, this particular phrase gave Ganyu a vague feeling that it touched on something fundamental about Teyvat.
She couldn't pin down why.
But Ryen didn't elaborate. He just smiled and gave her head a light pat.
Which was enough. Ganyu forgot what she had been about to ask, narrowed her eyes happily, and wound her arms around his with great contentment.
King Solomon.
Ryen's eyes moved with thought. It didn't seem entirely impossible.
The Supreme Four Pillars. The names of the archons.
Were these not straightforwardly the Seventy-Two Archons?
And if so, the so-called Phanes, the primordial one, who created four archons from shadows: the Four Pillars.
Were they truly created from shadows?
In the mythology of Solomon: King Solomon struck a covenant with the great demon king Belial. Belial surrendered to him his first legion, the Seventy-Two Archons, to serve in his campaigns.
In a certain sense, every element corresponded neatly to the story of the First Throne.
To defeat the seven great elemental dragons, Phanes struck a covenant with the higher-dimensional being at the Imaginary Tree's crown: Belial.
Belial granted him the legion of Seventy-Two Archons.
Afterward, something happened to Phanes, causing the Seventy-Two Archons to become unbound. And then...
In the mythology of Solomon, it was Babylon who found the vessel in which Solomon had sealed the Seventy-Two Archons.
Who opened it.
Releasing them.
Well.
Too complex. Thinking about all this served no purpose anyway.
It had nothing to do with him regardless.
Even if there were some Belial, even if Phanes had some scheme in motion.
What did any of it have to do with a Lord of the Outer Domain?
He was just an ordinary World Master who wanted to fall in love, develop his world, and live a good life.