Liyue Harbor shined like gold in the setting sun. Between the reflections of the sinking sun, the water, and the gradual activation of the lights around the city, for a moment everything looked to be made of mora.

It almost made Lumine glad that she'd come to this stupid party.

The Student Association had thrown it for all of the new and returning students to the Liyue Academia. To kick off the new year, according to the flyers they'd handed out.

Lumine did have to admit that they'd gone all out for the whole affair. They'd rented out the deck of the Jade Chamber and parked it so that it loomed over the city like a second moon. Railings had been erected for the event, mostly to keep students from stumbling to their drunken deaths.

Said students were getting drunk on wines imported from Mondstadt, only the finest from the Dawn Winery. And if they weren't drinking, they were sampling the catering from Liuli Pavilion and Xinyue Kiosk.

That was the detail that had gotten Xiangling to drag Lumine along and insist on going.

"Where else are you going to get the chance to try premier Li and Yue-style cooking for free?" Her amber eyes had gone so wide, Lumine didn't have the heart to deny her. "Come on, don't let me go by myself!"

It was funny, then, that Lumine had quickly lost her roommate in the crowd. To be fair, they'd managed to stick together for a while as their friends appeared. But somewhere after Hu Tao arrived, she'd managed to lose track of her friends and instead made her way to the edge of the party.

From there, she could admire the city as she had when she first arrived on the star-rail a week ago. It was midday then, but Liyue Harbor had still made just as brilliant of an impression on the Mondstadt-born girl.

One moment, she was fiddling with her cellphone, sending messages to reassure her parents and friends back home.

The next, she looked up as the train pulled into Liyue Harbor Station and was overcome with a flood of deja vu.

She knew this city, she loved this city. It had changed, and yet its heart was still the same. She could recognize the buildings, the streets. It felt like a homecoming.

Lumine had never been to Liyue Harbor once in her life.

She'd never traveled farther than Dorman Port.

The confusing swirl of memories that never were had her stumbling out of the train with her luggage in a haze. It was then that she found her eyes drifting to one particular figure within the crowd.

It was his long golden braid that caught her attention. Not many men had hair like that nowadays. Or maybe it was the scarf, which had a similar pattern to her own, in gold and white instead of blue and white.

Whatever initially drew her attention, it was completely captured when she caught a glimpse of the stranger's face, the golden eyes so much like her own.

He saw her too, in the middle of the crowd of seemingly thousands on that platform. He stood so still, no one else sparing him as much as a glance. His expression was infused with the melancholy of a ghost.

Lumine found herself pushing toward the crowd. She couldn't remember this stranger's name, but she knew that she knew him, she knew the feeling of searching for this person, the primal feeling of loss. She just knew she had to take his hand, convince him to come with her, give her answers—

Before she could reach him, the spell was broken. But not because of any rationality kicking in, the reminder that this was certifiably insane, this guy was just some random stranger—no, it was because of the ginger asshole who bumped into her.

"Hey, watch yourself, girlie." With the way he grinned, he wasn't trying to be rude or anything. "I nearly knocked you over."

"Sounds like a you problem," she mumbled as she searched the crowd for the stranger again.

But he was gone, in the blink of an eye, a second of distraction.

The ginger asshole continued as if she hadn't just said something mean, the exact kind of armor that was perfect against misplaced and outdated chivalry.

"I saw that you're wearing a student badge for the Academia at Liyue Harbor," he continued, holding up his own. "Maybe we should walk together to the dorms."

"I can get there on my own just fine," she huffed as she straightened her clear plastic jacket. "Next time, watch where you're going."

She made the mistake of glancing skyward to his face.

She knew those eyes. Knew them like the city, knew them like the stranger.

Lumine shook her head and snatched her suitcase to her chest and hurried into the crowd.

She could see the same asshole now at the party, hanging around one of the older students. Zhongli was the name she recalled of that particular student. She'd seen him around campus, heard his reputation many times over. A student of geology, he could also just as easily study history given his near-perfect memory for dates and events. He knew almost everything and could solve any problem an underclassmen brought to him.

As for the asshole, she somehow managed to avoid his name—but not him, even after arriving on campus.

He'd been the one who had pressed the flyers into her and Xiangling's hands two days ago.

She'd taken it mostly to get him to go away, and avoided looking at him as much as possible, in hopes it might help her deny the strangeness.

She turned away now, as he seemed to have the uncanny ability to know when she was around, and she wasn't in the mood for the asshole tonight.

It had now gotten dark, for the sunset was only a flash of brilliance, burning brightly before fading to embers entirely.

Lumine tilted her head as she took in the moon and stars. They didn't shine as brightly here as they did in Mondstadt, with more light pollution from the city. Only the major constellations were visible here.

Lapis Dei. Viator. Alatus Nemesos. Sinae Unicornes.

Lumine's mother had loved showing her the stars up in Mondstadt. They would sometimes sit out on the little sloped section of the roof outside of their apartment and trace the stars.

The stars were all different there, though. Most interesting was the appearance of Monoceros Caeli.

The narwhal constellation hung over the northern part of Liyue, where the mountains bordered Fontaine, where the waterways connected to the great river of Snezhnaya.

According to the night sky-simulation app on Lumine's phone, Monoceros Caeli was usually over Snezhnaya itself, not visible from Liyue or even Mondstadt.

There was no way for it to shift that much, was there?

Lumine frowned, stepping closer to the railing to get a better look. The stars were brighter now, even though the city had not dimmed beneath them. Then she looked to the east and nearly toppled over.

Viatrix was visible. Toward Mondstadt, for sure, so there was at least that sense of direction maintained. But Viatrix was best seen directly over Starfell Lake, that was too far from the southern mountains of Liyue!

In fact, as Lumine watched, the constellation seemed to be coming closer and closer.

No, not just Viatrix. As she looked around her, she realized in mixed wonder and horror that all of the stars were closing in, shining brighter than she'd ever seen them, even in Springvale or the Tyrant's Tower.

Cries sparked up around them—no longer was Lumine the only observer.

"What's going on?"

"Is the sky. . . falling?"

Even the ginger asshole's permanent smirk was wiped off his face. Lumine watched as he shot Zhongli an uncertain glance.

Zhongli, to his credit, looked completely unperturbed by the sky falling toward him. The young man had to be as steady as a rock, she decided.

She looked back to the sky—the stars were no longer in constellations. There were only the golden, pink, and blue lights, pinpricks in fractures of six, falling toward them in a brilliant rain.

Lumine found herself propelled forward by curiosity and some sense of divine intuition.

She cupped her hands as Viatrix was the first to fall, settling in a pool of light in her hands. It wasn't liquid or air, but something in-between. It was warm between her fingers, but gave off an aura like a sea-breeze. It danced like sun-beams on the water, shifting and dancing in her hold.

Then it lifted gently out of her hands, flying directly into her chest.

She gasped, the burden of a heart taking her all at once. She stumbled back—but she didn't hit the floor of the chamber.

Instead, the asshole had caught her.

And then they were no longer standing on the Jade Chamber in the early night as the stars rained around them.

"Come with me." He nodded toward a branching path off of Yujing Terrace, illuminated by golden daylight. The smell of glaze lilies hung in the air with the spices of the offerings to Rex Lapis, now useless.

He was her gallant hero with ocean eyes. She, in a dress from a century prior, stepped forward. The shouts of the Millelith faded around her.

The moment dissipated as soon as it had materialized, and as soon as the asshole set her right, he was struck.

The six stars flew into his chest, bringing him to his knees.

A flicker of a hundred years ago, of a blood splatter and a discarded mask, the ominous figure with the large hat and veil laughing in the storm—

"Ajax!" She cried then and now.

He looked up.

"It's going to take more than that, girlie." She didn't believe him, she dropped to his side—

"Besides, I didn't know you knew my name." His smirk was back.

Lumine recoiled, leaping to her feet.

Not everyone at the party had been felled by the fallen stars. But many had, all looking shaken by what had just occurred.

Zhongli must have been one of the only ones not to get hit, as he was helping others to their feet and ordering those who had not been struck about.

Lumine looked back up to the sky. The constellations hung in their proper places now—but there was something sinister and dull about all of them.

She opened her mouth to demand that someone, anyone tell her what had just happened, to tell her that this made sense somehow—

That was when she felt the wind.

But not as before, a force of nature in the trees. This was different. The wind was alive and in her blood, hers to command.

She twirled her wrist and watched as a burst of teal wind swirled forward in a tiny gale.

The world felt more alive than it had before. Everything in it hummed. Everything in it was hers.

The elements were here to be commanded once more.