As they approached the cliffs above Dihua Marsh, the wind felt strange, and even Xiao slowed his pace.
The sun filtered weakly through broken clouds, casting pale light on the sloping hills that led to Guili Plains. Cracked remnants of forgotten stone jutted from the ground like ribs, as if the earth itself had tried and failed to bury what once lived here.
Furina walked slightly behind him, unusually quiet. Her summons wasn't floating at her shoulders. Not even a seahorse.
They had followed the leyline trail for nearly half a day now, tracking the residual pulse of the corruption from the last attack. But here…
Even the birds didn't sing.
Xianyun had met them briefly at a ridge, her usual teasing tone gone still. "You're not far from something old," she'd said. "Older than even we know. The name of this place…in all honesty has been forgotten by choice."
Now, only Xiao and Furina remained.
They stopped at the edge of a broken path, where twisted roots curled around blackened stone. Ahead, half-swallowed by the earth and hidden beneath a tangle of overgrown bamboo, lay a pair of ancient doors.
Circular and bronze. It was carved with a faded script that shimmered faintly under Xiao's vision.
"It's a Domain," Xiao murmured.
Furina stepped forward. "But not a recent one."
"No. This predates even Morax's founding of Liyue."
She looked closer. The carvings made her stomach twist. She couldn't read them—but they almost looked like Fontaine script. Or a version of it, distorted through time.
A pedestal stood before the door. Empty, save for a small engraving:
To enter, speak what the gods have forgotten.
She tilted her head. "What kind of riddle—?"
"Try your name," Xiao said.
Furina rolled her eyes. "Very well. I am Furina, former Hydro Archon of Fontaine."
The door remained silent.
"No reaction. Maybe it wants something else. Maybe—"
Xiao stepped forward and, without inflection, said:
"Furina. Former Hydro Archon of Fontaine. Vessel of the Focalors."
The stone glowed faintly.
The doors shuddered open.
Furina's jaw tightened.
She said nothing as they entered.
Inside, the Domain was impossibly vast.
Corridors snaked into darkness. The walls were covered in pictographs—prayers in dead languages, fragments of myths, and strange overlapping shapes that moved when you didn't look directly at them.
Furina touched one. She was filled with images of falling stars, screaming oceans, and a broken and bleeding mirror.
"Did you hear that?" she asked.
Xiao didn't answer. His eyes were fixed ahead.
The path opened into a wide antechamber. The floor was covered in broken tiles, each etched with different glyphs. Many were scratched out or overwritten.
At the far end stood an altar.
Furina stepped closer. The air shifted.
A faint voice, or maybe a lot of voices, brushed against the edge of her hearing:
False vessel… false name… dreams are dying…
She stumbled back, hand to her chest.
Xiao moved beside her instantly. "What is it?"
"I—I don't know. I felt something. Like a… memory that wasn't mine."
She looked at the altar again.
It wasn't a shrine that stood in front of her, but It was a prison.
Sealed behind a veil of divine glass was a fragment—a pulsing core of refracted light and sound, barely contained. It shifted color with every glance: silver, violet, pale blue. It watched her.
Etched into the wall around it were names.
Old ones. Familiar ones.
Guoba.
Egeria.
Havria.
All dead gods.
And then—her breath caught.
One name was carved deeper than the rest. Long, graceful, and Fontaine-like.
But not Furina.
It was a name she didn't recognize. And yet it felt like someone calling from across a lifetime.
Xiao turned sharply as she swayed.
He caught her by the shoulder.
"What's wrong?"
"That…" She pointed. "That name. It—it's me."
"You're sure?"
"I'm not." Her voice trembled. "But I am."
She stepped forward. The moment her fingers brushed the wall, the fragment flared to life.
And the Domain spoke.
"You've never been just Furina."
Xiao instinctively moved between her and the altar, his spear drawn.
"Show yourself," he growled.
The light twisted into a barely humanoid figure—limbs made of fractured memories, voices echoing through empty mouths. They were many of them.
"I am what remains of divinity when memory fades," it said. "We are what is left behind when belief dies. We are what she was meant to forget," it said, gesturing toward Furina.
"Get back," Xiao said to her quietly.
"No," Furina whispered. "I want to hear this."
The entity tilted its head, a dozen faces blinking across its surface.
"You were forged, Furina. You were forged to rule a land that was in need of a god. But before you… there was another name. One that chose to leave."
Furina took a step back.
"No. That's not possible. I—"
"Your memory was sealed. Your body reformed. But the name remains. Carved into the stone of us."
"I'm not…" she whispered. "I'm not a fake."
"You are not false," said the fragment. "But you are unfinished."
It pulsed again, then vanished, leaving only a single sigil in the air: the same name on the wall.
Furina reached for it—and screamed.
The moment she touched it, the sigil burned white-hot against her palm. She collapsed.
Xiao caught her.
Furina lay crumpled in Xiao's arms, her breathing ragged, her fingers clenched tight around air that no longer burned. The sigil, or name, was no longer on her skin, but she could still feel it throbbing beneath the surface.
Xiao carried her from the altar chamber without hesitation.
The corridor he found was narrower than the others—likely unused for centuries—but still intact. He pushed aside a fallen pillar and lowered her gently against a carved stone bench.
Furina sat up slowly, pushing her hair from her face.
"I'm fine," she mumbled.
"You are not," Xiao said.
She didn't argue.
They sat in silence for a moment. The air in this part of the Domain was less volatile, though the hum of unseen forces still reverberated faintly beneath the stone.
Finally, Furina spoke. "It said I'm unfinished."
"It lied," Xiao replied instantly.
She looked at him, her expression guarded. "You don't even know what it meant."
"It is not. However, I have fought against things that are similar to it. They derive their power from the state of confusion. From the trembling of faith."
She chuckled dryly. "Then it picked the right target."
Xiao looked away.
Furina traced a finger over the bench's carvings—delicate spirals that meant nothing to her. Or maybe they did. She didn't know anymore.
"What if it's true?" she whispered. "What if I'm not who I think I am? What if… Furina isn't real?"
"You are real," he stated.
"You don't understand. You were never replaced."
His jaw tightened.
"I was," he said quietly. "Once."
She blinked.
He didn't elaborate.
But he sat closer now.
Once her pulse steadied and the weight in her chest dulled, they moved again. Xiao didn't press her. He walked ahead, his gaze sharp, listening.
They passed several smaller chambers—each holding murals of forgotten pantheons and altars to long-dead gods. Some had offerings crumbled to dust. Others had claw marks across their stone.
"The world once held more than seven," Furina murmured, brushing her fingers across the etched visage of a woman with seaweed hair and no mouth. "Fontaine had another before me. Or perhaps several."
"They were erased," Xiao said. "Just like those here."
"And if I were one of them?" she whispered.
"You aren't dead."
They turned a corner and found a small, circular room with slanted walls, like an observatory turned inward.
On every surface were carved names.
Thousands. In languages neither of them knew. In scripts that bent around themselves like labyrinths. Some shimmered faintly; others pulsed in pain.
Xiao turned slowly. "These are all gods."
Furina didn't speak. She stared at a small inscription halfway up the curve of the wall. It flickered as she approached.
Not her name. However, she sensed a familiar presence.
"I've dreamed this," she said suddenly.
Xiao turned.
"I've seen this room before. I didn't know it. I thought it was some illusion, some remnant from Fontaine's ruins. But it's this exact shape. These words."
"Your dreams are a reflection."
"Or a warning."
Xiao took a step toward the wall and raised his fingers to it.
The names whispered.
He flinched. Then steadied himself.
"They're remembering," he said. " they are trying not to be forgotten."
Furina wrapped her arms around herself. "What does it mean to be forgotten? Do we cease to exist? Or do we become… this?" She gestured to the Domain.
"A name forgotten is a life lost in two directions," Xiao said. "No past. No future."
"And what about a name I never knew?"
He looked at her.
That silence, the kind he rarely allowed, felt heavier now.
As they pressed deeper, the Domain changed.
Where once there had been stone, now the halls shimmered with illusions; half-seen visions of past worship. Choirs singing. Cities crumbling. Oceans rising.
They passed through a courtyard filled with statues of half-formed gods, one with wings but no body and another with a mask but no head.
"These were tries," Xiao said softly. "Creations are never done. Dreams that never came true."
Furina looked at the statues and saw her reflection in them.
Each one held something she had once pretended to be: majestic, commanding, flawless.
She turned away.
In the center of the courtyard, the ground cracked open like a mouth. A faint glow pulsed from within.
Xiao stepped forward and looked down.
"There's something below."
"A heart," Furina said. "Or what's left of one."
They descended carefully. The air grew thicker with each step, like walking through water.
At the bottom, they found another door.
This one bore no script, not even carvings. There was only a mirror embedded in the stone.
Their reflections stared back, warped slightly. Furina looked taller and older. Xiao looked younger, with softer eyes.
When she stepped closer, the mirror shimmered.
The air changed.
A voice whispered, "Your name is not your own."
Furina reached out.
Xiao grabbed her wrist.
"Wait."
"I need to see." She was desperate for the truth.
"You're not ready." He said.
"I have to be." She touched the mirror.
It cracked.
And the Domain trembled.
The mirror cracked like thunder.
Shards of reflected light spiderwebbed across the stone door, and a low, humming vibration emanated from within, like the groan of an ancient turning over in its sleep.
Furina stumbled backward, the air knocking her balance. Xiao caught her shoulder and steadied her, eyes scanning the chamber's shifting corners.
The mirror began to bleed light.
A memory.
Images poured from the fractures like smoke—coiling around the two of them, forming shapes too large to be fully seen. Towers rose and fell. Oceans surged backward into nothing. Stars blinked out of alignment.
Then came voices.
Thousands. Layered atop one another like echoes in an endless chamber. Some sobbed. Others sang. Most simply called out.
It was a single name that was repeated over and over.
Not Furina.
Something older. Sharper. Fontainean in structure but not in its sound. She couldn't say it aloud, but she knew it now like a scar hidden under layer of fabric.
The name the stone had shown her.
The name the fragment had whispered.
She fell to her knees, clutching her head.
"Furina!" Xiao knelt beside her. "What do you see?"
"I—I remember pieces." Her voice was hoarse. "Like I lived a thousand lives that weren't mine."
The mirror shattered completely.
From the broken frame rose a figure.
The divine fragment no longer assumed the form of light alone. It had formed itself into an amorphous, fluid, and humanoid shape. Its face resembled dozens of others and was constantly shifting. Arms resemble flowing scripts. Its eyes reflected the emptiness of drowned altars.
"I know you," it said in its chorus of voices. "We were once the same."
Furina staggered to her feet. "I was never you."
"You were what was made from our collapse."
Xiao stepped forward. "You feed on her memory."
"And what is memory but divinity's final gift?" the fragment asked. "This world has forgotten many gods. Their prayers went unanswered. Their followers lost. But we remain, forged from their residue, waiting for recognition."
Furina stared and whispered "You think I'm part of you?"
"We think you are what remains of the one who chose to be forgotten."
"That's not me." She shook her head.
"Isn't it?" The fragment extended a hand, as if it was inviting her.
"You feel the echoes. The language you almost remember. The way this place opens for your breath. You are a vessel built atop another. And now, your old name returns."
Furina's lips parted, but no sound came.
Xiao stepped between them. "You will not take her."
The fragment tilted its head.
"We do not take."
Subsequently, it retreated abruptly. As the room grew darker. The walls were filled with the low hum of energy gathering.
It had delivered its message. Its presence began to withdraw.
But not before leaving something behind.
A sigil, carved in air and glowing faintly blue, descended gently between them.
Furina instinctively reached for it.
Xiao caught her wrist again.
"Don't."
"I have to." Her voice sounded desperate and she touched it.
It didn't burn this time.
Instead, it passed through her and sank into her chest like mist drawn into a deep cavern.
She gasped and stumbled, as her knees buckled.
Xiao caught her as she collapsed, cradling her gently against him.
Her eyes were wide and unfocused.
"Furina. Stay awake." He whispered sharply.
"I… I see water," she whispered. "A city made of glass. I'm… singing?"
"Don't talk. Breathe."
He lifted her, arms firm beneath her.
The chamber rumbled again. Cracks spread along the walls. The divine fragment had withdrawn, but the Domain was reacting—to her touch, to her memory, to the name returning.
They had to leave.
Xiao moved fast. He retraced their path by instinct more than memory, feet barely touching the shifting ground. The halls pulsed like veins now, bleeding fragments of broken divine essence. Illusions clung to the corners—faces, names, pleas.
Furina drifted in and out of lucidity in his arms.
Finally, they got to a hallway that led to a small, stable side shrine with long-faded protective wards on the walls. For now, it was the safest place.
Xiao laid her down gently against a moss-wrapped pedestal.
She exhaled slowly, as the tremors had stopped.
Her fingers twitched, and her eyes fluttered open. "Still here," she murmured.
"You didn't fade," Xiao said.
"I know it's disappointing." She gave a weak smile.
Xiao sat beside her, silent for a time.
Then he spoke. "Once, I had another name."
She turned her head toward him.
"I don't remember it. It was given by the one who enslaved me. When Rex Lapis freed me, I cast it aside. I thought forgetting it would mean freedom."
Furina didn't speak.
"But it never left," he said. "Just changed shape, in a dream. There were screams. Even though I'm not aware of it, I still wear that name's mask.
She reached out, her fingers brushing his sleeve.
"That's why you understand," she said softly. "You know what it means to be…rewritten."
He didn't move, nor he didn't pull away.
Furina sat up slowly, bracing herself against the pedestal.
She looked down at her hands; unmarked now, but forever changed.
"Do you believe it?" she asked. "That I was someone else?"
"I believe you are who you choose to be now."
"And if I choose to forget again?"
Xiao's voice was calm.
"I will remember for you."
Xiao stood at the threshold of the side shrine, gaze cast outward. The stonework had calmed. The rumbling had stopped. After a period of memory and awakening, the Domain fell silent once more, as if its breath had finally drawn inward.
Behind him, Furina sat with her back to the mossy pedestal, arms around her knees.
Her usually immaculate hair was disheveled, and her dress bore faint ash marks from the chamber's collapse. But it wasn't the physical disarray that made her seem changed; it was something subtler. Her shoulders sagged in a way Xiao had never seen.
She was no longer the stage performer, no longer the jester or the prideful ex-archon.
She was simply silenced.
"You don't have to say anything," she said finally, not looking up.
He turned.
"I wasn't going to," Xiao answered. Then after a pause: "But I will stay."
She nodded. "Thank you."
They sat like that for a while, the low hum of the Domain a steady, almost meditative pulse in the air.
Furina finally stood.
"I don't think I can forget that name," she murmured. "Even if I want to."
"You don't need to forget it," Xiao said. "You only need to decide what to do with it."
She turned toward the exit of the shrine.
"I want to see it again."
He looked at her.
"The wall. The name. I didn't understand it before. I want to go back. Just for a moment."
There was a moment of hesitation on how to respond for the Adeptus. Then he nodded for the sake of protecting her.
The corridor had quieted. No illusions now, the voices are not there. Only remnants of the echo of something vast, like ripples after a god has left the water.
They reached the central chamber. The cracked mirror still lay in pieces. The name was still etched in the stone.
Furina approached slowly, one hand brushing the wall.
The name shimmered faintly, like condensation on glass.
Her fingers hovered just above it.
"I don't remember choosing this name," she said softly. "But it fits. It feels like my true self, but a deeper version of who I am. One I buried too long ago."
Xiao said nothing.
She closed her eyes.
"I've spent so long trying to be seen, but maybe what I really feared was this."
"Being forgotten?"
"No. Being remembered. And not liking what I see."
She finally pressed her fingers to the name.
This time, there was no burn, just warmth this time. A heartbeat pulsated through the stone and into her chest.
She smiled faintly. "I'm still Furina. But I think… I was more than once. Maybe I can be more again."
Xiao watched her quietly.
"You already are."
She turned to him. "You're not bad at this whole emotional support thing. For a grumpy Adeptus."
He looks away "I'm not trying to be supportive."
"That's what makes it effective." She smiled.
A silence stretched between them.
Furina looked down at the name one last time, then stepped away.
"Let's seal this place," she said. "At least for now. I think the world isn't ready for it. And I know I'm not."
Xiao nodded. He stepped forward and traced a sigil in the air with his fingers. It was a ward of binding from old adepti scripture. It sparkled for a moment before spreading across the entrance like frost.
Furina summoned a thin stream of hydro energy and added her mark—smaller, more delicate, but woven with care.
The Domain seemed to breathe once more.
They exited the fading sunlight.
The sky over Guili Plains was streaked in gold. Cicadas buzzed softly in the distance. Wind moved through the tall grass like a whispered song.
Furina exhaled like she'd been underwater for days.
They stood side by side.
"I used to think I had to be brilliant all the time," she said, watching the sun begin to dip below the hills. "To earn people's love. Their trust. Their eyes."
"You don't need to earn what's already given."
She turned to him. "Has anyone ever told you you're very poetic when you're not trying?"
He shrugged. "It happens."
They stood in silence a moment longer.
After that, she pushed him lightly. "Thanks for staying."
"I told you," he said. "I always do."
And though he didn't smile, there was something in the quiet tilt of his head, something almost warm.
They began the slow walk back.
Behind them, the Domain of Lost Names sank deeper into the earth.
End of chapter