(meanwhile) a harbinger show's interest

in the frozen halls of Snezhnaya, the Harbingers began to understand the scale of their error.

They had prepared the usual tools: pressure, infiltration, quiet disappearances, and the slow tightening of leverage against Mondstadt, Liyue, and Inazuma. The same methods that had worked on lesser targets for decades. They expected resistance. They did not expect what actually arrived.

Their men simply vanished.

Mondstadt stayed clean. Alice personally ensured it. Every Fatui agent that crossed the border or tried to operate inside the city became a new test subject for the legendary witch. She played with them to her heart’s content — cheerfully, creatively, and with no regard for the diplomatic consequences. By the time the Harbingers realized their entire Mondstadt network had gone silent, Alice was already requesting “a few more” if they felt like sending replacements.

Liyue answered more permanently. Entire regiments dispatched to apply pressure simply disappeared into the mountains. Stone folded. Paths sealed. Whole companies were swallowed by the land itself with no survivors and no recoverable remains. Zhongli, acting on the quiet but absolute requests of a still-furious Tianquan, had decided that the contracts of Liyue would not be threatened by foreign dogs digging into the Traveler’s affairs. The Geo Archon did not issue warnings. He simply removed the problem.

Inazuma grew a new kind of forest. On the outer edges of the sacred sakura’s influence, where the trees thinned into wilder growth, a horror took root. Fatui operatives who entered the region never returned. Travelers and locals began telling the same stories: distant screams that stopped too abruptly, and bodies found hanging from the branches in ways that no ordinary rope or human strength could explain. Yae Miko never claimed responsibility. She only smiled when the reports reached her desk, tails swaying, and made certain Ei remained undisturbed in her new, freely offered eternity.

Back in Snezhnaya, the remaining Harbingers sat with the accumulating silence from three nations.

Their usual tactics had not merely failed.

They had been erased — quietly, completely, and with a level of coordinated finality that made it clear the women (and Archons) marked by the Traveler were no longer willing to tolerate even the suggestion of interference.

In the frozen halls of Snezhnaya, Arlecchino listened to the last of the failed reports in silence.

When the final confirmation of lost agents and closed borders settled over the table, the Knave leaned back in her chair. A slow, hungry smile spread across her face. She lifted one gloved hand, idly tracing her lower lip with the tip of her tongue.

“This is no longer a matter for underlings and quiet pressure,” she said, voice low and almost intimate. “I will handle the Traveler personally.”

The other Harbingers exchanged glances. None of them questioned the look in her eyes.