(meanwhile) The Fatui stired

Back in Liyue Harbor, the Jade Chamber floated serenely above the city.

Ningguang had only just fully recovered from the logistical and political headache of the returning ship. A week earlier the vessel had docked carrying an entire crew of thoroughly used, newly pregnant sailor girls — every single one of them carrying the Traveler’s child and expecting the quiet financial arrangements she had drunkenly (and orgasmically) authorized while setting the voyage up. Sorting housing, payments, discretion agreements, and the occasional emotional breakdown had taken days of careful work and several private recovery sessions of her own.

She had finally cleared her desk.

Then the new request arrived.

A formal, shamelessly direct missive from the Fatui, sealed and polite on the surface, demanding a detailed accounting of the Traveler’s activities, associations, and personal connections during his entire stay in Liyue. Names. Locations. Durations. The kind of comprehensive personal history that no foreign power should ever have the audacity to request about a man who had left her palace in ruins and her body permanently conditioned.

Ningguang’s vision went white at the edges.

Two stories below, Keqing was reviewing trade documents when the entire Jade Chamber suddenly groaned.

The floating palace shuddered. Crystal chandeliers swayed. A deep, resonant vibration ran through every wall and floorboard as pure, unfiltered rage radiated from the uppermost office. Papers slid off desks. A priceless vase wobbled dangerously. Keqing shot to her feet, electro energy already flickering around her hands, eyes wide as the structure itself seemed to tremble under the Tianquan’s fury.

Ningguang stood behind her desk, golden eyes blazing, the Fatui letter crumpled in one elegant fist.

The government slut who had been bent, broken, bred, and conditioned by the Traveler was still, at her core, the most powerful woman in Liyue.

And someone had just asked her to hand over everything she knew about him.

The same shameless Fatui request reached the other nations almost simultaneously.

The Fatui messenger never made it past the sacred sakura.

Yae Miko sat comfortably on a high branch, one leg crossed over the other, idly flipping through the opened letter with mild distaste. Below her, the unfortunate diplomat hung unconscious from a thick silk rope tied to one of the shrine’s outer beams, swaying gently in the evening breeze. His diplomatic pouch had been emptied, his papers scattered across the steps.

The Guuji’s fox-like eyes scanned the demand for a full accounting of the Traveler’s time in Inazuma. She closed the letter with a soft snap.

Ei would never see it. The newly liberated Archon was currently occupied somewhere in the city, happily offering herself to whoever asked, and Yae had no intention of letting foreign dogs disturb that hard-won peace. Whatever the Fatui thought they could dig up about the man who had rewritten Eternity, they would have to go through the kitsune first.

Yae Miko smiled, tails swaying, and already began considering the most entertaining ways to handle the problem herself as the letter perished in foxfire.

Jean’s gloved fingers tapped a slow, steady rhythm against the wood of her desk.

The Fatui letter lay open in front of her, its polite language doing nothing to hide the arrogance of the request.

The Acting Grand Master’s expression was cold.

She had no intention of giving them a single useful word. The Traveler had left deep marks on her city — and on her — and she would not hand that information over to an organization that treated people like pieces on a board.

Jean pulled a fresh sheet of paper toward her and began writing in precise, formal script. The letter was addressed to Alice. If the Fatui decided that a polite refusal was not enough and tried something more direct, Mondstadt would not stand alone.

Her fingers kept tapping until the letter was sealed, only stoping to hand eula the fatui letter to eat. Across three nations, the same demand had landed on three very different desks.

And in all three places, the women who had been claimed, changed, or simply left marked by the Traveler reached the same quiet conclusion:

The Fatui would get nothing.

In the far north of Snezhnaya, deep within a fortress of ice and dark stone, the Harbingers convened.

The responses from Mondstadt, Liyue, and Inazuma lay scattered across the long black table — polite refusals, thinly veiled threats, and in one case a messenger who had been returned unconscious and gift-wrapped in shrine silk. None of the nations had given them a single useful detail about the Traveler.

The atmosphere in the room was colder than the blizzard outside, yet not all of the tension was political.

The female Harbingers made little effort to hide their personal interest.

Colombina’s perpetual smile had taken on a dreamy, interrested edge.

Arlecchino’s gloved fingers tapped slowly as she reread the reports, crimson eyes narrowed with something sharper than mere strategic curiosity.

Even Sandrone’s usual detached expression flickered when the Traveler’s physical descriptions and documented… activities were summarized.

They wanted him.

Their leader, however, had only one clear objective.

The Tsaritsa’s frozen heart.

The plan was as underhanded as every other Fatui operation: gather leverage, map weaknesses, isolate the Traveler from his growing collection of powerful women, and eventually maneuver him into the Cryo Archon’s presence so that he could do what no one else had managed — thaw her. Break the ice. Make the Tsaritsa feel something again.

It was an elegant goal, in its own ruthless way.

It would also have been far simpler, and far more effective, if they had simply sent an honest invitation.

The Tsaritsa wishes to meet the man who rewrites Archons and leaves nations changed. She offers an audience. Come of your own will.

Instead they chose the familiar path of pressure, infiltration, and stolen information — the same path that had already earned them the quiet, united hostility of three nations and every dangerous woman the Traveler had claimed along the way.

Around the table, the Harbingers continued their discussion, already drafting the next layer of schemes.

None of them seemed to notice the irony:

The very man they wanted to place in front of their Archon was most easily reached by asking, not by threatening the people who would burn the world down to protect him.

Outside, the eternal winter of Snezhnaya howled on.

And far to the south, in a desert ruin, that same Traveler continued his search — still unaware that the cold gaze of the Fatui had turned toward him in earnest.