The air rang with the clash of wills.
The Fragment of Durin's Will shrieked as it reared, casting a blizzard of corrupted wind that scattered the team. Snow and darkness surged in violent spirals, blotting out the sky. Each breath stung like knives. Each step threatened to vanish beneath shifting ice.
Kiana dug her heels in, bat gripped tightly in both hands. She swung up with raw force as the beast's tail swept low, meeting it with a shattering crack. The impact jolted her to the bone but deflected the blow. "You want a fight?" she growled, spitting frost. "Then I'll give you a Kaslana welcome."
Lumine darted through the storm, her sword tracing arcs of pale green wind. She leapt off a jut of ice and carved a spiral slash across the Fragment's exposed wing joint. The impact forced it to stagger, but the wound quickly began knitting itself with abyssal frost.
"It's healing too fast!" Lumine shouted.
"Then hit it harder!" Alice's voice cut through the storm. She launched a cluster of Pyro bombs—small, spinning orbs laced with cryo disruptors. Her Pyro Vision glowed bright as she clapped her hands together. "Molten Bloom—ignite!"
The bombs detonated mid-air, casting red-gold flames in a flowerburst that melted chunks of the creature's armor. The roar that followed was pure rage.
Elysia moved like moonlight between collapsing spires, loosing crystalline arrows that shimmered pink and white. One embedded deep into the beast's chest, pulsing with a harmonic hum. "That one will destabilize its core for a few seconds!"
Venti stood back, lyre to his chest, voice rising in song. His melody summoned a storm—not chaotic, but precise. Slicing gales wrapped around the team, guiding their movements and softening the monster's counterattacks. "Move with the wind!" he called. "Let it carry your strikes!"
Noah's lightsaber clashed against the beast's claws, blue light flaring against frostbitten bone. But each strike grew heavier, the weight of the mountain pressing back. He parried another blow, stumbling slightly as the creature's corrupted energy surged.
"We're losing momentum," he muttered. His eyes narrowed. The Force whispered—then pulsed. Something ancient stirred at his back.
He reached behind him.
The Void Archives shimmered.
The worn tome at his side flared open, pages fluttering not with wind but with memory. Glyphs rearranged themselves midair. The ice around him cracked—but this time, it wasn't the enemy.
It was power.
The Void Archives shimmered—not as a book, but as a radiant golden cube, humming with ancient authority. Its shifting panels reassembled midair with eerie precision.
Elysia's breath caught. Her fingers tightened around her bow. She recognized it instantly.
That wasn't just any Divine Key.
That was hers.
Or rather—Vill-V's.
She didn't speak. But her gaze locked on the cube, filled with memory, disbelief… and something else.
With a flash of golden-blue light, Noah's lightsaber deactivated with a sharp hiss. He clipped it back onto his belt without a word, his other hand already moving.
The Void Archives pulsed.
From the cube's gleaming panels, energy flowed outward, coalescing in his hand—not into a blade, but into a compact pistol, sleek and deadly, its barrel glowing with crimson heat. A mimicry of the Judgment of Shamash, the sidearm form once wielded by a hero long past.
Noah raised it, hand steady.
The Void Archives pulsed beside him, the golden cube humming in harmony with the weapon's re-creation.
Kiana's breath caught. Her eyes widened. "That… that's my father's weapon."
Noah looked over his shoulder briefly. "Judgment of Shamash… stored in the Archives. So that was his weapon?"
Kiana nodded slowly. Her grip on the bat tightened. "Don't miss."
Noah didn't.
He fired.
The shot cracked like a divine thunderclap. A bolt of concentrated Judgement seared across the battlefield, striking the Fragment's shoulder. Abyssal ice shattered in a geyser of light and steam. The beast howled, reeling.
Elysia's breath hitched—but not because of the strike. Her eyes flicked once more to the Void Archives floating beside Noah, panels shifting with graceful complexity.
Vill-V's legacy… alive.
She said nothing.
Venti's song surged louder.
The Fragment wasn't finished.
It screeched, summoning pillars of dark ice to crash down from above. Lumine shielded Kiana with a swirl of Anemo, while Alice set off an explosive chain of flame that cleared the left flank.
But it kept rising.
Noah stood firm, the Void Archives shimmering beside him, pages flickering.
One more form.
The cube spun once, then burst outward in golden light—coalescing into a massive greatsword wreathed in fiery orange and red. It pulsed with burning judgment, its jagged edges forged in mimicry of the Judgment of Shamash's true form.
Venti faltered in his song, eyes widening. He felt it—an echo of something beyond his world. A memory of power not born from Teyvat, but something older, deeper. "That sword… it sings with a flame not of the Archons," he murmured.
Alice stood still, mouth slightly open, a rare seriousness flashing across her features. "That power… it's not just mimicry. It remembers. Whoever created this left their will imprinted in its fire."
The wind itself trembled around them, briefly swirling inward as if acknowledging the presence of a relic that should not be here—and yet was exactly where it needed to be.
Noah gripped the hilt with both hands, the weapon nearly as tall as he was. Flames licked along the blade's edge as if alive, roaring quietly in resonance with the Void Archives.
Kiana's breath caught again. "That's… that's the real form. My father wielded it like a storm."
Noah said nothing. The sword responded to his resolve.
He charged.
Each step carved molten furrows in the snow. He brought the greatsword down in a two-handed arc, slamming it into the Fragment's chest. Fire surged through the beast's core, ripping open frost-hardened plates. The explosion that followed was blinding.
The team surged forward.
Together.
Kiana darted in first, her bat a blur as she cracked it against the Fragment's exposed leg joint. Sparks and shards of corrupted ice flew. "Move!" she shouted.
But something stirred within her.
The Fragment's gaze caught hers—and in that moment, something ancient flared awake.
Her right eye flashed gold.
A pulse of immense pressure radiated from her. For a heartbeat, the battlefield stilled.
Kiana moved—no, surged—forward with newfound speed. Her next strike wasn't just a swing. It was a collision of Herrscher might. Void energy laced her bat in a ripple of translucent distortion. The blow sent the Fragment staggering back with a roar of disbelief.
"Don't you dare hurt them!" Kiana shouted, voice layered with another, older resonance.
Elysia was next, catching the shift with a flicker of concern and wonder. Arrows streamed in glittering arcs, each one targeting the now-exposed ruptures along the creature's torso. They struck true, bursting in pulses of crystalline resonance.
Lumine followed, her form carving through the wind like a living current. Anemo surged around her blade, the element responding to her will with ferocity. She ducked beneath a sweeping tail, rode a gust conjured by Venti's song, and spun mid-air—driving her sword into the Fragment's spine with a shockwave of emerald force.
Wind exploded outward.
"Feel that?" Venti grinned, his voice rising with the tempo. "That's the storm you've earned!"
The winds danced like allies—slashing through shadow tendrils, guiding every movement, harmonizing their assault. Lumine didn't need to look to know the wind would carry her where she needed.
Alice soared overhead, cloak trailing like a flame. "One last gift from Mondstadt's finest!" she declared, hurling a trio of bombs etched with glowing runes. They detonated in sequence, igniting a pillar of fire beneath the Fragment's jaw.
Noah stepped through the inferno, flames reflecting off the edge of his greatsword. Judgment of Shamash blazed white-hot. His grip was unyielding.
He raised the blade high.
Kiana, still glowing faintly, met his eyes and gave a nod.
He brought it down.
The blade struck true, burying itself in the creature's core.
Light erupted.
The Fragment screamed—its body cracking, breaking, burning from within.
All around it, the corrupted snow began to melt. The black frost turned clear. The abyssal wind faded.
The monster collapsed in a heap of shattered crystal and dissolving bone, its form crumbling into ash carried off by Venti's wind.
Silence returned.
But this time, it was peace.