They're Both Guides, but You're So Useless, Paimon~~

The man's voice was as smooth as silk, yet it carried a chill that made their scalps tingle.

"Thank you for your efforts, Mr. Color, and you too, Manager... Thanks to your splendid performance, the doors between the City and Teyvat have now been thrown wide open..."

He took a small sip of red wine, his smile growing brighter, as though he were enjoying a grand opera.

"This beautiful movement has only just begun."

Beep. The video feed was cut from the other end, and the screen went deathly black.

"Argalia..."

"What do you mean...?"

Wei Zhenzu's heart gave a violent lurch. A sense of danger even stronger than facing an Abnormality gripped his heart in an instant.

He and Vergilius reacted at once, jumping off the bus and looking up at the sky.

Mondstadt's sky, which Venti had cleared to reveal a scattering of stars, had somehow changed completely.

It was nothing like the night sky Teyvat should have had.

An oppressive, suffocating, eerie shade of azure was devouring the entire firmament at a terrifying speed, like some pigment that refused to dissolve.

The light was cold and distorted, carrying the absolute malice of the City's higher-dimensional laws as it completely enveloped the continent.

The suffocating azure light did not last long.

Like a brief test of the lights before the curtain rose, the strange color that had distorted Mondstadt's entire starry sky flickered a few times, then quietly receded like the tide.

The night sky grew calm again, the stars unchanged. The broken walls and ruins of Stormterror's Lair looked utterly desolate in the moonlight, as though that chilling declaration had been nothing more than a shared illusion.

For the moment, there was nothing unusual to be felt.

Vergilius lowered his gaze from the sky.

He adjusted the collar of his coat and turned toward the bus, which was spewing thick exhaust.

Just before stepping aboard, the Color-grade Fixer stopped and turned his head slightly, casting Wei Zhenzu a glance with his scarlet eyes.

"Don't die too quickly. Your story has only just begun, Dante."

With that low-voiced farewell, the doors of Mephistopheles hissed shut.

Rumble!

The Limbus Bus's engine let out a deafening roar, and the demonic ornament on its front seemed to come alive.

The bloodstained steel behemoth lunged wildly forward, smashing straight through the barrier of space ahead and plunging into a rift in the void.

As the rift swiftly closed, the ruined plaza fell completely silent.

Only then did a faint rustling come from the void behind Wei Zhenzu.

A little head cautiously poked out.

Paimon's white hair was a mess. Her two big eyes darted around before fixing on the spot where the bus had vanished for several seconds.

"Phew."

Only after confirming that the terrifying metal vehicle with a mouth and the red-eyed man whose gaze could kill had really left did Paimon let out a long breath. She floated out like a deflated ball, patting her flat little chest.

"Th-that scared Paimon to death! What kind of monsters were those?"

Seeing the little floating creature finally willing to show herself, Wei Zhenzu's taut nerves immediately relaxed, and irritation flared up.

Without holding back, he reached out with both hands, grabbed Paimon's chubby cheeks, and mercilessly started squishing them.

"Oh, so you finally decided to come out!"

Wei Zhenzu pulled at Paimon's cheeks as though kneading dough, complaining through gritted teeth.

"The fight was so intense, even Dvalin turned into a Cthulhu monster! And what did you do? You hid inside and played dead! You didn't even come out to help!"

"Mmph... mmph!" Paimon struggled, her words garbled as her squeezed cheeks made her lips pucker.

"Look at him. You're both guides, so take a look at Director V."

The more Wei Zhenzu squeezed, the more enthusiastic he became, denouncing her in anguish.

"He showed up with his own BGM, split an ultimate attack barehanded, and even locked my HP so I could turn the tables! Now look at yourself. What can you do besides eat my Jueyun Chili hodgepodge?"

"Wah, stop it, Traveler! It hurts!"

Paimon flailed her arms and legs, finally breaking free of Wei Zhenzu's clutches. She covered her reddened cheeks and protested loudly, aggrieved:

"W-we have different roles! You can tell at a glance that that man is a violence addict, but Paimon is a professional Teyvat guide. Paimon's main job is... is to support you emotionally, and help you sample the spoils after a battle..."

"Sample the spoils? You're nothing but Emergency Food."

Wei Zhenzu rolled his eyes, but Paimon's antics had swept away the heaviness that had built up during the battle.

"Ahem... Sorry to interrupt your bickering, but shouldn't we be thinking about how to get down?"

Nearby, Kaeya and Varka came over, supporting each other. Kaeya pointed at the broken walls towering into the clouds around them.

Without the updrafts, climbing down would be harder than ascending to the heavens for an injured group like theirs.

"Oh, at a time like this, it's the great bard's turn to shine~"

Venti grinned and plucked the Holy Lyre der Himmel in his hands.

Gentle Anemo formed several enormous wind currents that steadily lifted everyone up.

"Let's go, everyone. It's time to go home."

Meanwhile.

On the pitch-dark reverse side of Teyvat, in the deepest reaches of the Abyss.

There was no starlight here, nor any flow of the elements, only endless chaos and suffocating silence.

Yet at this moment, a few faint azure lights flickered abruptly in this absolute darkness, wavering like dying candles.

"Cough... Hah..."

A bout of extremely labored breathing, heavy with the smell of blood, broke the silence.

Argalia was leaning weakly against a cold black rock wall.

He gasped for air, his long gray-blue hair soaked through with cold sweat and plastered messily to his paper-pale cheeks.

Forcibly intervening in a clash between the laws of two higher-dimensional worlds was no easy feat.

Just now, he had frantically seized the immense energy released in the aftermath of Wei Zhenzu activating the Sapling of Light.

Like a gambler staking everything on one throw, Argalia had used that residual energy as an anchor to forcibly tear open a rift in space and time in the sky of this other world, connecting the City and Teyvat.

But he himself had paid a terrible price for it.

Tap.

Tap.

Muffled footsteps sounded in the darkness, accompanied by a faint light like burning candle wax.

A figure in a finely tailored suit, emanating an air of weeping and sorrow, slowly emerged from the shadows.

Pluto silently stepped forward and reached out to steady the swaying Argalia.

"...It's nothing. That price was worth paying."

With Pluto's support, Argalia managed to straighten up.

Ignoring his severe injuries, he slowly raised his head.

In his deep gray-blue eyes, that chilling, feverish fanaticism and rapture rekindled.

He casually wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, his gaze seemingly piercing through layers of Abyssal rock walls as he stared fixedly in the direction of the City of Mondstadt.

"Everything is proceeding according to the script... To achieve our ultimate goal, that light must be grasped in our hands."

Argalia slowly pushed away Pluto's supporting arm and spread his arms in the darkness, as though embracing some unseen, tragically beautiful phantom in the void.

His voice was soft as a lover's whisper, yet its chilling obsession echoed through the vast Abyss:

"The laws of Teyvat, the curse of the Abyss, and that manager from another world... Every struggle and sacrifice is an indispensable note in this movement. Ah... listen to the lament played by the collision of two worlds..."

He closed his eyes in pain and intoxication, a single glistening tear even sliding from the corner of one eye.

"With this magnificent melody... let Angelica's elegy continue forever..."