The chaos of the hilichurl civil war raged on below the walls of Mondstadt, but gradually, the defenders began to notice something strange happening in the center of the battlefield.
A circle was forming.
Not intentionally—hilichurls weren't exactly known for their organizational skills—but the fighting had naturally created a clear space where two figures stood facing each other. One was a regular hilichurl, slightly larger than average, with the confident posture of someone who'd watched too many martial arts movies. The other bore the red markings that had become synonymous with organized menace and poor life choices.
Marcus squinted down from the wall. "Are they... are they having a conversation?"
"Hilichurls don't have conversations," Thomas replied. "They have aggressive grunting sessions."
But this was different. The two hilichurls were definitely talking, their voices carrying up to the walls with an intensity that made everyone lean forward to listen.
"Upa nunu!" the regular hilichurl declared, pointing dramatically at his red-marked opponent. The tone was unmistakably cocky, with the kind of swagger that suggested he'd never met a problem he couldn't solve with sufficient amounts of violence and attitude.
"Muhe ye," the red-marked one replied, his voice deeper and somehow more ominous. Even without understanding hilichurl, everyone could tell this was the verbal equivalent of 'you're already dead.'
"Did that normal hilichurl just... challenge him to single combat?" Jean asked, forgetting for a moment that she was supposed to be commanding a desperate defense.
"I think so," Kaeya said, appearing beside her with his usual perfect timing and immaculate hair. "And unless I'm very much mistaken, that red one just accepted."
The regular hilichurl cracked his knuckles—or whatever hilichurls had instead of knuckles—and dropped into a fighting stance that looked suspiciously like something from a martial arts anime. His posture radiated supreme confidence, the kind of unshakeable self-assurance that could only come from being completely unaware of how outclassed he was.
"Upa!" he announced, which roughly translated to "I'm the strongest!"
The red-marked hilichurl's response was a low, rumbling chuckle that made the nearby regular hilichurls back away nervously. "Muhe ye dada," he said, which probably meant something like "How amusing."
And then they fought.
What followed was simultaneously the most epic and most ridiculous battle anyone had ever witnessed. The regular hilichurl moved with impossible speed and precision, his attacks flowing like water as he struck from impossible angles. Every movement was accompanied by dramatic one-liners in hilichurl that somehow conveyed absolute confidence despite being complete gibberish.
"DALA UPA!" (Translation: "Hollow Purple!")
The red-marked hilichurl responded with equal skill but opposite temperament. Where his opponent was flashy and dramatic, he was cold and methodical. His counterattacks came with the inevitability of death itself, each strike calculated to cause maximum damage with minimum effort.
"Kucha gusha," he said calmly, which definitely meant "Cleave."
The regular hilichurl barely dodged, his confident expression finally showing a crack of concern. "Upa nunu?!" (Translation: "Throughout Heaven and Earth, I alone am the honored one?!")
"Nye," the red-marked one replied flatly. (Translation: "No.")
The battle intensified, with both combatants displaying techniques that should have been impossible for creatures whose primary strategy usually involved hitting things with sticks until they stopped moving. The regular hilichurl was weaving through attacks that could have leveled buildings, while the red-marked one was methodically dismantling his opponent's defenses with surgical precision.
"This is incredible," someone whispered. "They're fighting like..."
"War veterans," Marcus finished. "General vs general."
"The normal one's actually holding his own," Thomas added. "I didn't think that was possible."
But even as he spoke, it was becoming clear that the red-marked hilichurl was simply playing with his opponent. Every exchange left the regular one slightly more battered, slightly more desperate, while his adversary remained untouched and unmoved.
"Muhe ye dada ika," the red-marked one said, which somehow conveyed the meaning "Did you think you were special?"
The regular hilichurl's confident facade finally cracked. "Upa... upa nye?" (Translation: "I'm not... the strongest?")
"Muhe," came the cold reply. (Translation: "Weak.")
And then, with a movement too fast to follow, the red-marked hilichurl struck.
The regular hilichurl froze, his eyes wide with shock. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, slowly, a line appeared across his torso, growing wider and wider until—
"KYAA!" (Translation: "GYAAAAAHHHHH!")
The regular hilichurl split cleanly in half, the two pieces falling to either side with the dramatic flair of a defeated anime protagonist.
The red-marked hilichurl stood over his fallen opponent, radiating the kind of smug satisfaction that only comes from utterly destroying someone who thought they were hot stuff.
"Muhe ye," he said simply. (Translation: "Know your place.")
On the walls, the defenders stared in stunned silence.
"Did we just witness the most epic hilichurl fight in history?" Marcus asked.
"I think we did," Jean replied. "I also think I'm going to have nightmares about hilichurls who can actually fight properly."
The red-marked hilichurl was still basking in his victory, probably composing hilichurl poetry about his own awesomeness, when a shadow fell across him.
He looked up just in time to see a mitachurl—one of the regular army—falling toward him like a very large, very angry meteor.
"DALA!" the mitachurl bellowed as he crushed the red-marked champion flat.
There was a moment of perfect silence.
Then every defender on the wall burst into laughter.
"OH COME ON!" Marcus wheezed. "He had this amazing, dramatic victory, and then he gets squished by friendly fire?!"
"The mitachurl didn't even know there was a fight happening!" Thomas added, tears streaming down his face. "He was just trying to get somewhere else!"
The mitachurl looked around in confusion, apparently wondering why everyone was staring at him. He looked down at the flattened red-marked hilichurl, looked back up at the laughing humans on the wall, shrugged, and wandered off to find something else to hit.
"That," Kaeya said, wiping tears from his eyes, "is the most anticlimactic ending to an epic battle I've ever seen."
"It's like watching the final boss get defeated by a random encounter," Jean agreed, struggling to regain her composure.
The legendary duel would be talked about in Mondstadt for years to come—not as an example of fearsome enemy power, but as proof that sometimes the universe had a sense of humor about these things.
Haru had been heading toward the walls when the sound of battle reached his ears. After the disaster of the morning's mission, he'd been trying to find some quiet corner where he could figure out the system had gone silent and why the system seemed to be malfunctioning at the worst possible times.
Instead, he'd found Lumine rushing toward the eastern gates with a worried expression that made his chest tighten with concern.
"What's happening?" he asked, falling into step beside her.
"Attack on the city," she replied without slowing down. "A hilichurl army, but something's wrong with them. Jean said they have these red markings, and they're organized like a real military force."
Haru felt a chill that had nothing to do with his cryo powers. Red markings on hilichurls, organized attacks, the strange energy signatures that had been interfering with his abilities... something big was happening, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that he was woefully unprepared for it.
They reached the walls just in time to witness the tail end of the most ridiculous battle in Mondstadt's history. The sight of hundreds of hilichurls fighting each other while the city's defenders watched like spectators at a sporting event was surreal enough that Haru had to stop and recalibrate his understanding of reality.
"Are they... are they fighting each other?" he asked.
"Apparently," Lumine replied, looking just as confused as he felt. "Jean said a second army showed up and they just started attacking each other instead of us."
They found a spot on the wall where they could observe the chaos below. Haru kept his senses alert for any sign of the mysterious energy that had been causing him problems, but for the moment, everything seemed relatively normal.
Well, as normal as a inter-hilichurl civil war could be.
"Look for anything unusual," he told Lumine. "This whole situation feels like a setup for something bigger."
She nodded, her hand resting casually on her sword hilt. Together, they watched the battlefield, ready to intervene if the situation took a turn for the worse.
The turn, when it came, was worse than either of them had imagined.
A figure emerged from the chaos of battle—larger than the regular hilichurls, with the distinctive bulk and aggressive posture of a mitachurl. But this one bore the red markings they'd been warned about, the corrupted energy radiating from it like heat from a forge.
And it was looking directly at Haru.
The creature's eyes—if they could be called eyes—burned with an intelligence that no mitachurl should possess. It stood motionless in the middle of the battlefield while chaos raged around it, its attention focused entirely on the young man standing on Mondstadt's wall.
"Haru," Lumine said quietly, "I think that thing is—"
The mitachurl spoke.
Not the grunts and growls that passed for hilichurl communication, but actual words in a language that sent chills down everyone's spine. The voice was deep and resonant, carrying across the battlefield with unnatural clarity.
"So you are the pretender," it said, each word carefully enunciated. "The false hero who carries stolen light."
On the walls, the defenders went silent. Mitachurls didn't talk. They certainly didn't talk in fluent common tongue with the kind of eloquent malice that suggested intelligence and planning.
"I have watched you," the creature continued, its burning gaze never leaving Haru's face. "Watched you stumble through encounters that should have ended you. Watched you succeed through luck and the intervention of others. Watched you play at being something you are not."
Haru felt his blood turn to ice. This wasn't just a corrupted hilichurl—this was something else wearing a hilichurl's form. Something that knew about him, had been studying him.
"Who are you?" he called out, his voice carrying across the battlefield.
The mitachurl's mouth twisted into what might have been a smile. "I am the echo of your future, boy. The shadow of what you will become when the mask finally slips and those you claim to protect see you for what you truly are."
The corrupted energy around the creature began to intensify, red light pulsing in rhythm with some unholy heartbeat. "But first, let me show them what their false salvation costs."
The mitachurl began moving toward the city, but not with the lumbering gait typical of its kind. It moved with purpose and terrible intelligence, and as it approached the bridge leading to Mondstadt's gates, that red energy began to build toward something catastrophic.
"It's going to explode," Haru realized with horror. "It's going to take out the bridge and everyone on it."
The creature's voice rose to a battlefield-carrying bellow as it charged toward the bridge, its entire body beginning to glow with destructive power.
"KUCHA DALA AKHBAR!" it roared in a mixture of hilichurl and something else entirely.
Haru moved without thinking, his powers responding to desperation in a way they hadn't all day. Ice erupted from the ground in massive walls, layer after layer of frozen barriers between the charging mitachurl and the bridge. At the same time, stone and earth rose to reinforce the ice, creating a fortress of elements that groaned under the pressure of containing what was coming.
The explosion, when it came, was beyond anything Haru had experienced. The mitachurl detonated with the force of a concentrated leyline surge, raw energy that turned night to day for a brilliant, terrible moment. His barriers held—barely—but the strain of containing that much destructive force pushed him past his limits and into territory his body was never meant to handle.
Pain lanced through him like lightning, his vision blurred, and he felt something vital tear inside his chest. Blood filled his mouth as he collapsed to his knees, his powers flickering and failing as consciousness began to slip away.
"HARU!" Lumine's voice seemed to come from very far away, full of panic and something else—something that sounded like loss.
But as the dust and debris began to settle, as the echoes of the explosion faded into silence, another voice cut through the aftermath. Young, melodic, and completely unexpected.
"Well, well," the voice said with the lilting cadence of a bard tuning his instrument. "That was quite a performance."
Through the settling dust, a figure emerged. Small and slight, with the distinctive clothing and confident demeanor of a traveling musician. He held a lyre in one hand and wore the kind of knowing smile that suggested he'd been watching the entire affair with great interest.
"Though I have to say," the bard continued, his green eyes twinkling with mischief, "your technique could use some work."
Haru tried to focus on the newcomer, tried to make sense of what was happening, but darkness was creeping in around the edges of his vision. The last thing he saw before consciousness fled was Lumine reaching toward him, her face etched with worry and something that looked like recognition as she stared at the mysterious bard.
And then everything went black, leaving only questions and the sound of wind through lyre strings.