"Let the world… forget you entirely…"
Nahida's eyes went wide. She stared at Buer as though the words had struck sothing physical, and when she found her voice, it ca out unsteady.
"How , how can that be possible? No. I can't. I won't do it."
She tried to pull her hands back. Buer held them.
The gentleness that had characterised every expression Buer had worn since she appeared did not waver, but beneath it was sothing that did not yield , sothing decided, long ago, without drama.
"Nahida. I was born of Irminsul, and I will return to Irminsul. This is my purpose. It is my fate."
"In that sense, I was never a truly great god , not in the way you will be. Because for , Irminsul always ca first. Before Suru's people. Before anything."
"But that is not your burden. That chain ends with ."
"After this, you can simply be the God of Dendro , without conditions, without limitations. You can lead your people toward sothing good. You can live the future that was always ant for you."
"You will surpass . I am certain of it."
"I cannot walk with Suru any further than this. I cannot stay to watch you grow into everything I know you will beco."
She reached up and touched Nahida's face, her fingers light.
"But I can still give you one last thing before I go."
"Nahida, I will lay the foundation for your greatness."
"Let the world forget entirely , and in doing so, save Irminsul. Save Teyvat. Save the people of Suru."
"This is your purpose, Nahida. And it is my ending."
"Let the world forget , and then , we will beco one, completely."
"There will be no Greater Lord Rukkhadevata in this world. In the end, at the very end, there will only be the first Archon , Lesser Lord Kusanali, Nahida."
"This is what is best for you. For Irminsul. For Suru."
She drew Nahida close, holding her the way a mother holds a child who has not yet learned that so goodbyes are final.
"Don't grieve. You won't rember , but forgetting is not the sa as parting. You are the continuation of my life."
"Sleep, and tomorrow will still be bright."
Nahida was no longer trying to speak in complete sentences. The tears had taken over, and her small hands had locked around Buer with the grip of soone refusing to let the tide take sothing away.
"I don't want , I don't want to forget you."
"I won't let the world forget you."
"We only just found each other. You have done so many things , so many great things , and you deserve, "
"You deserve better than this ending."
"I refuse this ending!"
The others had understood, by now, exactly what Buer intended.
She had known, for as long as she had known anything, that her own existence was the source of Irminsul's contamination. As long as her mory persisted , as long as any trace of her remained woven into the World Tree , the Forbidden Knowledge that had taken root in her would remain woven in as well. There was no separating them.
So she had created Nahida.
She had brought this to a mont where Nahida could, with her own hands, delete her predecessor from Irminsul's record entirely. A clean severance. The Forbidden Knowledge, bound to her mory, would go with her.
It was the sacrifice of everything , not just life, but the record of having lived. The most complete erasure possible.
And she had done it alone, without asking permission, without allowing anyone else to carry the weight of knowing until it was already decided.
Ningguang and the others stood in a silence that had no easy words inside it. The quality of what they were looking at was the kind of thing that did not invite speech.
Makoto pressed her lips together, then turned and looked at the Cryo Archon for a mont. Both of them understood, in the way of gods who had existed long enough to know what removing sothing from Irminsul actually ant. They had seen it done. They understood the chanics.
"If you are erased from Irminsul," Makoto said carefully, her voice carrying the particular steadiness of soone asuring every word because the alternative is breaking, "then you are gone from every mory. Not simply unrembered , never rembered. No trace. No impression."
"From that point forward, Teyvat will have no record of a Greater Lord Rukkhadevata nad Buer."
"Everyone who ever knew you will lose that knowing."
"The world will have forgotten you from the very beginning."
"Was it worth it?" Makoto asked. Not an accusation. An honest question, from soone who understood the cost of impossible choices because she had made enough of them.
Buer had already known Makoto was alive. The information had been in Irminsul, and Irminsul had no secrets from her. She looked at Makoto without surprise, only recognition, and the warmth in her expression deepened slightly.
"One life exchanged for a world that continues intact." She did not hesitate. "Yes. Entirely worth it."
"Besides , Nahida is my continuation. I have not disappeared. The world will not rember , but I will remain in Ryen's mory and in Lumine's. That is enough."
She turned her gaze to Ryen, and sothing in the angle of it was almost gentle amusent.
"As Ryen once said , as long as one person still carries the mory of you, you have not truly died."
Makoto breathed in deeply. She bent at the waist, a bow that carried the full weight of what she ant by it.
"Buer." She straightened. "Thank you."
"Ryen!" Hu Tao grabbed his arm, pulling him around, urgent in the way she beca when she had decided sothing mattered. "Think of sothing! You have to think of sothing!"
"She is extraordinary and she is brave and she has already done too much , you cannot let everyone forget her! You must have a way! Resurrection totem, milk, Totem of Undying , sothing, anything, just think, "
Ryen had not spoken.
Buer turned toward Hu Tao, her voice gentle.
"Please don't make this harder for him than it needs to be, Hu Tao."
"I understand, genuinely , the Resurrection Totem could restore . But the milk, and the Totem of Undying, and what they can accomplish , I have seen their properties in Irminsul's mory."
"They are remarkable. They are powerful. But they cannot resolve Forbidden Knowledge."
"Forbidden Knowledge is not a curse. It is not a disease. It is a presence , it has embedded itself into the structure of my existence the way a splinter embeds itself into bone, and it goes all the way down. As long as I rember it, it persists. As long as it persists in , it persists in Irminsul."
"Milk and totems address afflictions. This is not an affliction. This cannot be solved that way."
The light in every pair of eyes in the room had dimd.
"Ryen." Ganyu's voice was very quiet. She was looking at Nahida , at the tears still running down Nahida's face, at the grip she had not released. "Is there anything else?"
"If Nahida has to erase her with her own hands , even if she forgets afterward , she will carry this. Sothing in her will carry it, even without the mory. She will spend her whole life in a pain she cannot na."
Yae Miko leaned close to his ear, her voice low enough that only he could hear it.
"You always have sothing. Don't you, my Lord of All Worlds?"
A pause.
"Think about it differently. Buer can't exist in Teyvat anymore , her existence here is what's killing Irminsul. Fine. Then she exists sowhere else."
"Your world is completely sealed off from Teyvat. If she lives there , permanently, without returning , the connection between her and Irminsul would be severed. The Forbidden Knowledge loses its anchor."
"And besides." A hint of sothing practical, and not entirely selfless, in Yae Miko's tone. "Do you really want to lose one of a pair of twins you haven't even properly t yet?"
Ryen looked at Buer and Nahida.
The two of them, indistinguishable in face and feature, holding each other in the pink-lit quiet of this space.
Sothing inside him settled with the particular decisiveness of soone who has stopped calculating and started deciding.
He nodded , once, imdiately, without qualification.
"There's a way. I'll find one whether there is or not."
Buer blinked, startled out of her composure.
"Ryen , you want to… restore ? But my existence is the most terminal illness Irminsul has. I must disappear. That is the only, "
"Then disappear from Teyvat."
He said it cleanly, without ceremony.
"Nahida has only just found you. I am not going to let Nahida delete you with her own hands and spend the rest of her life carrying grief she cannot explain."
"Your existence is rooted in Teyvat, which is why the Forbidden Knowledge is rooted there too. Then take your existence sowhere else. Co to my world. My world has no connection to Teyvat , they are completely separate systems. Whatever the Forbidden Knowledge is, it cannot enter Teyvat through a door that doesn't exist."
"And your contamination , once you're there, I have more than enough resources. Eventually, we will find a way to eliminate it entirely."
"This solves everything. Does it not?"
Buer was quiet for a mont. She was thinking , actually thinking, not performing consideration , and sothing careful and guarded was beginning, very slowly, to open in her expression.
If she were honest: she did not want to cease to exist. She wanted to see Nahida's future. She had been willing to give those things up because there had been no other option she could find, and she had calculated every possibility she had access to and found none.
She had not calculated Ryen.
The MC World. An existence completely sealed from Teyvat's laws. A World Master whose jurisdiction extended over every rule that operated within it. If she were simply no longer part of Teyvat , if the link were cut by distance and dinsional separation rather than by deletion , then perhaps the Forbidden Knowledge, which had always moved through that link, would find no path back.
The probability of success, when she ran it properly: high. Considerably high.
But before she could hold the feeling for long, sothing else surfaced, and her expression fell again.
She looked back at Irminsul , at the image she had shown them, the real one, the tree as it actually was: black-wrapped, root-deep with contamination, barely holding the shape of sothing that had once been light.
"Your intention is kind, and I receive it." Her voice was soft, and sorry. "But I cannot accept it."
She gestured toward the tree.
"Moving out of Teyvat would prevent new contamination from reaching Irminsul through . But the contamination already inside Irminsul , five hundred years of it, embedded in the root structure , will not leave simply because I do. The damage that has already been done is sufficient to destroy the World Tree on its own tiline. I would be gone and Irminsul would still be dying."
"The only path I have found is this: I gather every thread of Forbidden Knowledge that exists within , consolidate it, bind it to myself completely , and then I am deleted. The Forbidden Knowledge is deleted with ."
"That is the only clean ending."
The room, which had briefly lifted, settled back down.
Ryen's brow drew in slightly. He was quiet for a long mont, thinking with the particular quality of attention he brought to problems that required sothing to be cut rather than untied.
"You said you can concentrate the Forbidden Knowledge , pull it together, draw it into one place?"
"Yes," Buer said. "But even so, Forbidden Knowledge cannot be affected by external force. That's precisely why the only viable solution is, "
He raised a hand. She stopped.
He reached into the air beside him and drew out a sword.
It did not make an entrance. It simply appeared in his grip, unremarkable in the way that things are unremarkable when they have always been exactly where they belong. But the mont it was present in this space, the space knew about it.
The Sword of Cosmic Dominion.
He turned it once in his hand, unhurried, and looked at Buer with sothing that was not quite a smile and was not quite a challenge but was sowhere between the two.
"Everything that exists in form."
"Living things. Dead things."
"Gas. Solid. Liquid. Light."
"If it has a form , if it has any form at all , there is nothing this blade cannot sever."
He t her eyes.
"Cannot be affected by external force? That is a question of scale. Apply enough force, and it stops being a question. Enough force, and you could reach the base of the Imaginary Tree and rip it out of the ground with your bare hands."
"And as it happens, "
He tilted the sword slightly, and the edge caught the space's pink light and held it.
"Under the Sword of Cosmic Dominion, existence is the only criterion for destruction."
"Laws. Concepts."
A beat.
"Those too."
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