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A song of regret, sorrow, and a spark of hope. The stage belongs to two sad souls who had to play a role for others.
The first verse, Furina raises her voice:
I put on my holiday dress, the blue silk ribbon,
I stand alone at the harbor edge in the warm evening breeze.
The sun sinks into the sea of Fontaine, so red and so heavy,
I don’t need an audience or applause anymore.
I feel the heat of the night, yet my heart is so empty,
500 years of theater weigh tons.
Clorinde joins in:
I have this summer melancholy,
This bittersweet pain that never goes away.
Kiss me one more time before the sun sets,
The summer makes me melancholic.
I just wanted to tell you that you're the best there ever was.
Furina steps into the background, Clorinde's smoky voice trembles:
I see you standing on the pier, hair in the wind,
I step out of the shadows, quiet and quick.
The blade rests today, no duel tonight,
I've watched over your life for so long.
You don't have to act anymore, the mask can fall,
Let the echoes of the past fade into the sea.
I sail fast, my boat cuts through the waves,
As long as I'm with you, everything's fine.
Furina joins in again:
I have this sadness inside me,
This bittersweet pain that never goes away.
Kiss me once more before the sun sets,
summery melancholy
I just wanted to tell you that you're the best there ever was.
The duet of the two women:
(Furina) I thought loneliness would break me...
(Clorinde) I'm here to break the silence.
(Furina) The water no longer rises, the prophecy is over.
(Clorinde) The curtain has fallen, and you are finally free.
(Both) Even if the stars fade and the world turns away,
There is someone who firmly stands by my side.
Furina and Clorinde give it their all:
I have this sadness,
This bittersweet pain that never goes away.
Kiss me one more time before the sun sets,
summery sadness
I just wanted to tell you that you're the best there ever was.
Clorine goes ahead, Furina's voice fades out:
The summer heat leaves, night falls.
With you by my side, I won't be lonely anymore.
Just you and me...
This sadness...
We start over again.
The curtain had fallen, but the applause echoed in Furina's head like the ticking of an unstoppable bomb. Five hundred years of masquerade didn’t end with a triumphant strike, but with a deafening, suffocating silence.
It was an unusually hot summer evening in Fontaine. The air at Romaritime Harbor was heavy and oppressive, thick with the smell of salt, rust, and evaporating brine. Furina sat slumped on the cold stone steps, knees pulled to her chest. Her once magnificent blue dress was crumpled, the hem soaked in the filthy harbor water. She stared at the sea, which shimmered in the dying light of the blood-red sun.
For the world, the prophecy had been averted.
For Furina, the endless, inner apocalypse had only just begun.
'You shouldn't be out here,' a deep, rough voice cut through the monotony of the waves. Clorinde stepped out from the shadows of the loading cranes. She was wearing neither her flawless duelist uniform nor her usual pride. Her eyes were shadowed with deep circles, marked by the countless lives she had ended in the name of justice. The summer heat seemed to bounce off her; she radiated a sharp, emotional coldness.
"Where else am I supposed to go, Clorinde?" Furina whispered without looking up.
Her voice sounded brittle, like thin ice.
"My throne is gone. My people celebrate my absence. The theater is empty, but I’m still on the stage. I don’t even remember how to breathe without acting anymore."
Clorinde sat down silently beside her. She didn’t keep any distance. Her shoulder touched Furina’s—a rare, almost painful moment of closeness. Clorinde pulled her gun from its holster, laid it heavily on the cold metal of the railing, and stared at the shiny weapon.
"We're both prisoners of our roles, Furina," Clorinde said quietly.
Her hand trembled ever so slightly, a tiny detail that no one except Furina would have ever noticed.
"I have killed for a system built on a lie. My blade is heavy with the guilt of the past. This summer... it doesn't feel like freedom. It feels like waiting for judgment."
Furina finally looked up. Tears she had held back for centuries burned on her cheeks. She reached for Clorinde's hand – the hand of a murderer, the hand of a protector. The duelist's fingers were rough, yet surprisingly warm.
"I have this paralyzing melancholy," whined Furina, squeezing Clorinde's hand tighter as if she were sinking into the deep ocean.
"Everything burns in the light, but inside me, it’s so cold. Kiss me, Clorinde. Just once. Let me feel that the world didn’t completely die when the curtain fell."
Clorinde turned her head. In her dark eyes reflected the last, dying red of the horizon. There was no romance in this moment, only the raw, desperate longing of two broken souls clinging to each other so as not to drown in their own darkness.
She leaned forward and pressed her lips to Furina's. The kiss tasted of salt, of tears, and of the bitter ash of five hundred years of loneliness. It was no comfort, but a shared admission that they had both reached the end. When Clorinde pulled away from her, Fontaine sank completely into the darkness of the night. The heat remained, but between the two women, a sterile, endless emptiness spread. They were free – and that was exactly their worst nightmare.
The heat of summer weighed heavily on the cliffs of Fontaine, yet the warmth didn’t reach the two women. They seemed like foreign bodies in the mild night—two monuments of isolation washed to the edge of the sea by fate.
Furina sat with her knees drawn up on the rough stone. She looked so endlessly delicate, almost fragile in her pale dress, as if a stronger gust of wind could simply carry her away. Her fine, pretty features, once sought after by every spotlight of Opera Epiclese, appeared pale and mask-like in the faint moonlight.
For five hundred years she had played the role of an untouchable deity, surrounded by shouting crowds. Now, with the mask fallen, the naked truth was revealed: she was perfect, infinitely lonely. No applause could fill the emptiness in her chest anymore; no script could tell her who she was supposed to be.
She was simply Furina—a beautiful, empty shell.
Next to her stood Clorinde, stiff as a statue, her gaze fixed on the endless horizon. Her silhouette stood out sharply against the night sky.
Clorinde had a flawless model-like figure, tall and slim, yet every line of her body radiated an iron, almost frightening discipline. Her posture was perfect, the result of years of relentless training.
But this perfection was a shell. Behind the unapproachable facade of Fontaine’s strongest duelist hid an equally lonely soul. Clorinde had devoted her life to duty, shed blood in the name of justice, and always kept people at a distance. No one was allowed to get close to the woman who carried out death sentences.
"Summer in Fontaine has never been this quiet," Furina broke the silence. Her voice was barely more than a whisper, shaky and weak. She looked down at herself, feeling her own delicacy and the paralyzing weight of freedom.
Clorinde didn't move, but her eyes wandered to the small figure beside her. The extreme discipline that usually forbade her every impulse was crumbling in the darkness. She saw Furina's loneliness – because it was her own.
Two extremes of Fontaine: the fragile, pretty actress without a stage and the lean, disciplined warrior without an enemy.
"Silence is the only thing we have left when the theater is over," Clorinde replied softly. Her voice was firm, yet carried a deep, melancholic undertone.
She took a step toward Furina. Her long, slender legs moved silently. When she finally sat down next to the petite woman, the contrast between them seemed almost painful: Furina, small and lost, and Clorinde, tall, slender, and controlled. And yet they understood each other without words. They were the last survivors of an age of lies, connected by their shared, unbearable isolation.
The summer night over the harbor of Romaritime seemed to freeze time itself. Under the relentless moonlight, two souls sat at Fontaine, hollowed out entirely by the history of the land.
Furina stared at her delicate, trembling hands. She was no longer the radiant ruler, but a fallen Archon whose throne lay in ruins. Yet the truth, heavy as lead on her chest, was even darker:
For five hundred years, she had not been a deity, but a prisoner of a cruel, imposed role. She had worn a mask of arrogance and extravagance while bleeding out inside, second by second. Now that the theater was over, she was endlessly lonely, marked by the realization that her entire existence had been nothing but a painful illusion.
She was beautiful, fragile, and completely lost in a world that no longer needed her.
Beside her sat Clorinde, her silhouette as thin and perfect as that of a mannequin. Her model figure was rigid, shaped by an iron, almost inhuman discipline. To the people of Fontaine, she was the strongest duelist – an emotionless machine that executed judgment without hesitation.
Yet behind those cold, unmoving eyes lay another, cruel reality. Clorinde was not a machine of steel; she was a woman who had learned to harden her heart because she was repeatedly abandoned. Everyone she had ever trusted, everyone she had wanted to protect, in the end had left, died, or vanished behind the walls of duty.
Her lack of emotions was not a deficit of feeling but a protective wall against the recurring pain of being abandoned.
"For five hundred years, I thought that when the role ends, the pain would stop," whispered Furina, and a single tear slid down her pretty face. "But without my role .. i am nothing."
The seemingly emotionless machine next to her didn’t move. Clorinde’s gaze remained fixed on the sea, but everything inside her was contracting. She knew the feeling of being a shell, existing only for one purpose. She knew what it was like when the curtain fell and you were left alone in the darkness—abandoned by the world.
“A role can be put down, Furina,” Clorinde said. Her voice was flat, mechanical, yet a deep, resonating loneliness lingered within it.
“But the emptiness it leaves behind stays. I was built to stay while everyone else leaves. We’re both just the echoes of Fontaine now.”
Clorinde stretched out her slender, thin hand. It was an awkward, almost wooden movement—the movement of a machine that had forgotten how to comfort. Yet when her fingers touched Furina's, they held on tight. Two lonely souls, the fallen Archon and the abandoned weapon, clung to each other in the dying summer light, unable to heal but ready to freeze together.
The oppressive summer heat of the harbor seemed to completely freeze as the touch of their hands opened the sluices of the past. In the deep darkness of their thoughts, both women relived the bitter turning points that had made them the loneliest souls of Fontaine.
Clorinde looked back—it was a chronicle of abandonment.
The remembrance cut deeper than any blade, a merciless journey through a chain of loneliness and betrayal.
It was a foggy, bitterly cold night in rural Fontaine. A small, two-year-old girl sat by the roadside, her tiny hands already blue from the frost. The dull sound of footsteps running off through the mud faded into the darkness. Her parents had simply left her, abandoned like an unwanted animal. In that moment, little Clorinde realized for the first time that the world is a place where no one stays.
Alone in the hut that was her home: ten-year-old Clorinde stood there, sweating, her thin frame already shaped by merciless training. She clutched her wooden sword and waited for Petronilla. But her master didn’t come. No trace, no explanation, no farewell. Petronilla had simply disappeared, leaving the young student with the burning question of what she had done wrong. That day, the girl promised herself she would never cry again and would wrap her heart in iron.
At twenty, the next loss came:
Rain lashed across the arena yard. The air tasted of blood and bitter tragedy. Clorinde stood there with her weapon drawn, her model-like figure stiff as if carved from stone. In front of her lay Callas, Navia’s father. He had chosen a suicide duel to protect his honor and his daughter, and Clorinde had to be the emotionless machine to carry out the sentence. When Navia rushed over, the world fell apart. The hateful, infinitely wounded look of her best friend burned into Clorinde’s soul. Navia turned away, leaving Clorinde amidst the ruins of her last great bond.
Everyone leaves.
Always.
Furina’s flashback was an endless theater of pain.
At the same time, Furina’s mind plunged back into the dazzling, equally horrifying light of the Opera Epiclese.
Centuries ago. Furina stood in the magnificent spotlight of the stage. Her delicate figure was draped in velvet and silk, her face a perfect mask of arrogance and extravagance. In front of her, the crowd roared, demanding miracles and shouting her name. She was their idol, their celebrated star.
But behind this glittering facade, she was bleeding out second by second. Furina was no true Archon; she was a frightened, mortal shell, trapped in a centuries-long deception to avert the prophecy. With every step she took, she heard the waters of judgment rising. One wrong move, one second of weakness, and the whole people would die.
When the lights went out, she would collapse in her empty chambers. She pressed her pretty, delicate face into the pillows to hide her sobbing from the walls. No one was allowed to comfort her, no one was allowed to know the truth. For five hundred years she had been surrounded by millions of people and yet lived the loneliest existence in Teyvat. A fallen Archon who, in the end, had nothing but an empty stage and deep psychological scars.
When the visions faded, they sat again on the cold stone steps at the port of Romaritime. Furina's delicate shoulders trembled under the weight of memory, while Clorinde remained rigid and controlled – yet the grip of her thin hand around Furina's fingers was so tight, as if holding onto the last lifeline of her life.
The silence that followed waking up from the flashbacks was heavier than the oppressive summer air. Yet for the first time, the walls between them completely collapsed.
"We were both disfigured before we even knew who we were," whispered Furina, without taking her eyes off the dark sea. She pulled her delicate knees even closer to her chest, almost disappearing into the fabric of her dress.
"I had to play a deity for five hundred years, one I never was. And you... you had to be an emotionless machine just to survive the pain."
Clorinde didn't move, but her slender, bony hand pressed Furina's fingers even tighter. Her perfect model figure looked in the darkness like a rigid sculpture of grief.
"People never saw us as real people," Clorinde replied, and her usually unflappable voice sounded rough and fragile.
“To them, you were Fontaine’s eternal hope. And I was the weapon that carried out judgment. They used us to soothe their own fears – and when we had done our duty, we were left alone.”
Furina slowly turned her head and looked at Clorinde with her big, pretty eyes, which still glistened with unshed tears.
“I was surrounded by millions and yet felt so endlessly lonely. But when I saw your past... abandoned at two... left by Petronilla at ten... and then Navia...” Furina's voice faltered briefly. “You were thrown away again and again, Clorinde. Every time you tried to be human.”
A bitter, barely noticeable smile crept onto Clorinde's lips. It was the first time she had exposed those scars openly.
“Navia thought I had no feelings when her father died. She thought the machine just keeps on running. She didn’t know that my heart turned to stone that day so it wouldn’t completely break. Who stays with a murderer?”
“I stay,” Furina said suddenly, and her voice carried an unexpected, firm determination that stood in stark contrast to her delicate figure.
“The curtain has fallen for the Archon, and your blade rests. We have no roles left to play. We are both empty, Clorinde. But we can share this emptiness together.”
Clorinde turned her gaze away from the horizon and looked Furina straight in the eyes. The iron discipline of the duelist gave way to a deep, bare longing. Two lonely souls, manipulated and abandoned by the world their whole lives, recognized themselves in each other.
They were no longer Fontaine's symbols – they were just two women in the darkness, deciding to endure the frost of the past together.
The words faded in the dark harbor, and the oppressive silence returned.
But it was no longer a separating silence.
It was the moment when the masks finally crumbled to dust.
Clorinde, whose thin silhouette had so far withstood every shock life had thrown at her, began to tremble all over. Her iron, lifelong discipline – the barrier she had built after all those losses to survive the pain of being abandoned – collapsed under the weight of Furina's words.
The emotionless machine stopped working.
With an almost awkward movement, as if her body were defending itself against its own vulnerability, Clorinde sank forward. She dropped to her knees and carefully rested her head in Furina's lap. Her long, slender model-like figure suddenly seemed unbearably heavy and at the same time completely fragile.
Furina held her breath for a heartbeat. Then she gently placed her delicate, pretty hands on Clorinde's dark hair.
A deep, stifled sob escaped from Clorinde's chest. It was a terrible, rough sound—the crying of someone who hadn't allowed herself a tear in two decades. The tears burned a path down her cheeks and soaked the fine fabric of Furina's blue dress.
Clorinde cried for the two-year-old little girl who had been abandoned in the fog. She cried for the ten-year-old girl who waited in vain for her mistress. And she cried for the bloody day in the arena when she lost Navia. All the pent-up, icy pain poured out of her unchecked.
Furina gently stroked her hair with endless tenderness. She leaned forward deeply, pressed her face against Clorinde’s temple, and closed her eyes. Her own tears mixed with the duelist’s. In this intimate, painful embrace, there was no fallen Archon and no cold-blooded weapon anymore.
"I've got you," Furina kept whispering as she wrapped her arms around Clorinde's trembling shoulders, trying to shield her from the coldness of the world.
"I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying right here."
For the rest of the night, they didn't move. At the port of Romaritime, far away from Fontaine's applause and judgments, an infinitely lonely, delicate woman held the country's most deeply wounded soul in her lap, while darkness slowly gave way to the first weak light of morning.
As the first pale rays of the sun touched Fontaine's horizon, the deep black of night turned into a cool, misty gray. The morning brought no bright warmth, instead settling over the port of Romaritime like a quiet veil."
Clorinde's sobbing had long since stopped. She was still lying motionless, her head resting firmly in Furina's lap. Her skinny silhouette had relaxed, the usually stiff model-like figure looked almost peaceful in the pale morning light. Her eyes were swollen from crying, and salty crusts had formed on her cheeks. The emotionless machine had, for a few hours, been replaced by an exhausted, sleeping woman.
Furina hadn't slept all night. Her delicate legs were numb from the weight of the duelist, yet she hadn't moved even once. Her pretty, large eyes stared tiredly out at the calm sea. The endless loneliness that had threatened to overwhelm her just yesterday felt different this morning. It wasn't gone, but it was shared. On the fine blue fabric of her dress shimmered a dark, wet spot from Clorinde's tears – a silent proof that this night had been real.
As the sun slowly dissolved the banks of fog, Clorinde blinked and slowly lifted her head. Her iron discipline returned to her posture instantly; she sat up and smoothed down her uniform.
But when her gaze met Furina, there was no cold mask in her eyes anymore, just naked, honest gratitude. She hadn’t gotten up and walked away. She was still there.
"The city will wake up soon," Clorinde said softly, her voice still rough from crying. She looked at her hands, which were still trembling slightly.
"The show starts again. For the others."
Furina smiled faintly, a small, genuine smile that brightened her delicate features. She reached out her slender hand and placed it on Clorinde’s flat, lean shoulder.
"Let them play if they want," whispered the fallen Archon, as they stood up together and turned their backs on the cold stone.
"We've written our own piece. And today, we're not going anywhere. At least, not alone."
Together they climbed the steps of the harbor, into the new day – two lonely souls who had learned that in the deepest frost, you don't have to freeze if you hold on to each other.
In front of the city walls, the sea of flowers swayed in the gentle wind. White, violet, and blue stretched to the horizon as if summer had decided to pour out all the colors at once. Behind them, the towers gleamed in the evening light, but out here it was quiet. Only the rustling of the stalks and the distant calls of seagulls accompanied the moment.
Furina lay in the grass, small and delicate among the blossoms, her back leaning against Clorinde. Exhaustion ran deep in her limbs. It wasn’t the kind of tiredness that disappears after a night’s sleep, but the kind that builds up in the heart over months and years. Her eyes were closed, yet she didn’t seem to be sleeping.
Clorinde sat behind her, tall, slim, and lean, her long legs stretched out. She looked just as exhausted, but her posture stayed calm. With one hand, she slowly stroked Furina’s silver-blue hair, the same gentle motion over and over, as if nothing else in the world mattered.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
The wind carried the scent of the flowers across the meadow. Furina took a deep breath. Her fingers dug lightly into the grass.
"It's strange," she finally whispered. "When it's all over... sometimes I don't even know who I'm supposed to be without all of it."
Clorinde didn't answer right away. She knew some words took time.
"You don't have to be anyone today," she finally said quietly. "Not the Archon. Not the actress. Not the heroine."
Her hand stayed on Furina's head.
"You can just be Furina."
Furina smiled weakly, though her eyes filled with tears.
"I don't even know if I can do that."
Tears ran silently down her cheeks. Not violently, not desperately – more like rain that had been gathering in the clouds for a long time. Clorinde let her cry. She didn’t try to talk the pain away or give it a meaning.
Instead, she carefully wrapped both arms around Furina and pulled her a little closer.
“You don’t have to prove anything,” she murmured.
Furina rested her head against Clorinde’s shoulder. The hug was calm, almost motionless. Not a firm hold, but a quiet promise that she wasn’t alone.
Above them, the sky slowly turned golden and violet. The city of Fontaine began to glow in the distance, while on the meadow the first shadows were already growing between the flowers.
"Do you think," Furina asked after a long time, "that flowers remember the summer and the winter?"
Clorinde looked out over the endless field.
"Maybe."
"And are they then afraid?"
A gentle smile flickered across Clorinde's face.
"Maybe. But they bloom anyway."
Furina closed her eyes again. The answer had been simple. That’s exactly why it felt real.
They stayed like that for a long time – little, delicate Furina in front of the taller, slender Clorinde, nestled in a sea of flowers.
Without hurry.
Without masks.
Just two exhausted people who were allowed to forget, for a quiet evening, how heavy the world could be. And as the wind brushed through the blossoms, even melancholy seemed, for a moment, to become something gentle.
Furina slowly lifted her head. The traces of her tears still glittered on her cheeks, but in her eyes there was now something warmer. The evening light caught in her silver hair as she looked at Clorinde for a long time.
Clorinde returned the gaze without asking. She knew that Furina could often only put her thoughts into words when someone patiently waited.
A small smile appeared on Furina’s lips.
"You're terrible at giving big speeches."
Clorinde smirked just barely.
"I know that."
"And sometimes you're far too quiet."
"I know that too."
Furina laughed softly. It wasn't a loud, carefree laugh, but one that returned cautiously, as if it had been hiding for a long time.
She straightened up a little, placed a hand on Clorinde's cheek, and gently brushed her skin with her thumb.
"But I like you just the way you are."
For a moment, it seemed even the wind held its breath.
Furina leaned in and kissed Clorinde gently. It wasn't a passionate kiss, but one full of calm and gratitude – as if she were expressing everything that words could never fully capture.
As they pulled away from each other, her forehead remained resting against Clorinde's.
"I love you," Furina whispered.
Clorinde closed her eyes for a moment.
Furina smiled.
"Not because you're strong. Not because you always look out for me."
She brushed a dark strand of hair behind Clorinde's ear.
"I love you just the way you are."
Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
"Because you are you."
A few petals were carried by the wind between them.
"Because you’re just here."
Clorinde’s usually calm expression softened. She placed her hand over Furina’s and held it tightly, as if it were something precious.
"Then," she said softly, "I will stay."
Furina nodded, her smile growing a little brighter.
"I don’t wish for anything more."
Together they looked out over the sea of flowers toward the city, while the sun slowly sank behind the towers. In the quiet twilight, no further promises were needed. Just sitting next to each other, hand in hand, was enough.