#Apokályspi: The End

[arienic]

Apokályspi: The End

✧ a various!genshin impact x gender neutral!reader series.

PREFACE

You've experienced three revelations since awakening to a blue sky. The first is that you don’t belong here, a world riddled with the colors your own so lacked; here, where ‘Archons’ walk among mortals and people are watched by the gods. The second: like Mondstadt’s Honorary Knight, you are, against your will, tied to the divine. And the third: revelations about the world and those divine are dangerous in Teyvat. Entire civilizations have been struck down because of them. (This is not new.) One thing is for sure: the gods here are afraid. More specifically, they're afraid of the truth. They are almost humanlike when it comes to it. It’s just their luck, really, choosing you of all people to bring here, because you don’t care about the feelings of immortals. If uncovering the truths they’ve so desperately tried to hide from the people here means getting back to where you belong, then so be it.  There’s a boneyard of secrets right under your feet, and now all that’s left to do is dig.

✧ GENRE/S: Romance; Adventure; Fantasy; Reincarnation; Transmigration; Isekai; Reverse Harem; Slow Burn

✧ WARNING/S: genshin impact spoilers; canon divergent; death; injury; violence; profanity; POSSIBLY MORE!

✧ STATUS: HIATUS! Published/Drafting; Updates on Sundays (NOTE: not every sunday!)

LOVE INTERESTS

IMPORTANT NOTE: this list is prone to change!

Aether, Albedo, Childe, Ei, Ganyu, Gorou, Jean, Kazuha, Kokomi, Shenhe, Venti, Xiao, Yoimiya, Zhongli

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I — The End: Start! II — Begin in the Aftermath III — TBA

playlist

✧ SPOTIFY LINK

creature half•alive Grand Escape (ft. Toko Miura) RADWIMPS, Toko Miura I Want to Feel Alive The Lighthouse And The Whaler Thus Always to Tyrants The Oh Hellos Colours of You Baby Queen Avid SawanoHiroyuki[nZk]:mizuki Soft Universe AURORA ... more to be added!

DISCLAIMER: i'm only writing this story for fun so pls keep that in mind when coming across discrepancies in the writing, writing style and plot! this is essentially me just throwing a bunch of ideas in thoma's hotpot and hoping it doesn't come out tasting like shit HAHDSG i hope u enjoy!

[arienic]

1 — The End: Start!

✧ Apokályspi: The End — a various!genshin impact x gender neutral!reader series.

CHAPTER SUMMARY: When you wake up, you realise two things at once: the first is more obvious, and it’s that you don’t belong here. The second is more peculiar than anything, really: for some reason, you can see colors.

GENRE/S & OVERALL TROPES: Romance; Adventure; Fantasy. Reincarnation; Transmigration; Isekai; Reverse Harem; Slow Burn

CONTENT: Explicit language; Reader panics

AUTHOR'S NOTE: i know it's not sunday but i felt really bad taking so long to post this so here you go! enjoy :)

✧ REMINDER: If you want to add on to or disprove anything regarding any of the topics explored in this series, don't be afraid to DM me!

Touch alone was enough for you to realise that you weren’t meant to be here.

There was no flimsy blanket pulled over your legs, no pillow bracing your head, no soft breeze from the cheap mini fan you’d bought half a week ago. The air was crisp, refreshing—the opposite of the heavy summer you’d gotten used to breathing. Without a doubt, you knew: you weren’t meant to be here.

Your other senses, too, all the smells and the sounds—they did nothing to help you.

Leaves rustled above you, accompanied by the knocking of branches against each other. Nearby, water flowed, the sound coming from farther back still; you heard the crashing of a waterfall from your left. Also, you were certain that your college campus didn’t house cranes, judging by the rattling calls in the distance.

So, curious and wary, you opened your eyes and—

“Holy shit,” you breathed.

Holy fucking shit.

Blue. The sky was blue.

A common fact. Everyone knew that. The sky was blue, grass was, most often, green, and the sun was a yellow dwarf star.

In all your twenty-one years of living, however, you’d never understood any of that.

Stupid? No. You weren’t stupid. It was more like you couldn’t understand. You’d heard it all before, whether it be from the internet or in a book or by way of a random stranger on the street. You could list all the colors the sky came in from memory: blue, red, pink, yellow, orange, purple. The most common color of grass was green, and stars came in nearly every colour of the rainbow.

Brainless was one thing you’d never admit to being—not to mention your parents would have your head if you were. Because you knew about the names, the shades, the concepts. You heard them, read them, could spell them out loud or trace them in the earth with your eyes closed. It was just that you didn’t know them. You couldn’t see them. At least, not the way others did.

Though it wasn’t like you didn’t try.

Hours spent poring over descriptions and scrolling through the internet did nothing but explain concepts, symbolisms—feelings people connected to the colors you couldn’t see. To them, they might’ve made sense, but they could see them. Seeing colours was out of the picture for you. So, nothing. You knew nothing.

Knowing nothing was annoying enough—and for as long as you could remember, you’d hated that. You hated that you couldn’t know or understand. You hated what made it so that you couldn’t understand. Hated it.

It, meaning achromatopsia.

Achromatopsia, the condition that made almost half of your classmates in kindergarten dub you the ‘weird kid’ without hesitation when you colored the grass purple in crayon. From misunderstandings at your part time job to converting to a completely monochrome wardrobe in fear of going out in some ridiculous color combo, you’d be lying if you said that it didn’t affect almost every aspect of your life. 

So finally being to experience the world as others did? Well, needless to say, it was a little surreal.

(Still, you couldn’t help but think: This isn’t right—as if it hadn’t been evident from the beginning. I don’t belong here. Because you weren’t supposed to be here. You weren’t supposed to be seeing colours. It should’ve been impossible. Whatever this was that was happening, it shouldn’t be, and you should stop it. Stop it and then go back home. Stop it.

You didn’t.)

Once you sat up, though, you wasted no time taking in your surroundings.

Just as you’d expected, you weren’t laying on your bed. You’d been asleep on stone bricks arranged around a statue that… glowed. Of a hooded man—a boy?—with wings on a pedestal, something like an orb cupped in his hands, which were raised in front of him, just below his chin. A strip of blue (?) glowed by his feet, and below that, another, thicker one glowed as bright. The pillar he stood on was detailed with gold, and a golden rim—was that floating?

You really did not belong here.

Behind the statue, still was there more to take in: a large tree planted firmly in the uneven ground, with what seemed to be glowing butterflies crowding below its leaves and around its trunk.

Just as you’d predicted, the tree was big. How tall even was that? Ninety meters? A hundred meters? Terrifying. Never mind the exact height, actually. That thing was tall. Big. Ridiculously ginormous. Larger, even, than the sequoia trees you’ve seen, with roots that penetrated the rocky ground beneath and a surrounding area that made it seem as though it’d forced its way up from beneath the earth, creaking branches and all. Like something out of a fantasy novel.

Glowing statues of boys with wings and trees larger than life. Wouldn’t be too far off the mark, really.

Small red (you bit back a giddy flash of your teeth, because oh my goodness red) flowers dotted the grass beside where you’d been sleeping, their delicate petals folded and spinning like windmill blades. The staircase itself, thin, wide and made out of stone slabs, was buried partially beneath a large mound of dirt and led to a pathway that snaked to the left, between the grass and beyond the green (green!) hills—and, judging by the rooftops and windmills in the distance, it was probably a way to the nearest city.

To your right, cliffs and mountains, and—you stepped over a stray root, on a brick ledge, and squinted—what looked to be some ruins and the river you’d heard before, leading into the sea. You tried holding your hand above your brows to block out the sun, squinting until you could just barely make out the outline of a crumbling gray structure, then nodded once. Twice. Seven more times.

Yeah, you thought, nodding to yourself. Yeah, okay. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, no. You had absolutely no fucking idea where in the world you were.

None of this looked familiar. Literally nothing. It was like some sort of prank the universe decided to spring on you, making sure that you had no idea where the fuck you were despite all the places you’d been to. The only thing you could guess (and that was only guessing) was that you were somewhere in Europe, going by the bits of architecture you could make out from the city beyond. Everything else only served to confuse you, like the statue of the boy with wings and the largest tree you’d ever seen and the little glowing butterflies, because you’ve never heard of any of them—never seen any of them, either—in your entire life.

In all honesty, if you hadn’t started to panic, you’d probably conclude you were in a fantasy world of some sort, appreciate your mind for allowing you a single night of seeing colour, and go back to sleep in hopes of waking up in your dorm room. But this place was a little too real to be a dream. The breeze felt a little too refreshing when it kissed your cheeks, and the stone was a little too rough on the soles of your feet. The way the leaves rustled, the branches sounded when they swung softly back and forth, it was a little too real. The grass swayed with the wind, the sun shone in your eyes, and if you watched closely, the clouds shifted across the sky ever so slightly, white fuzz curling against a light blue canvas. 

You’ve dreamed before, sure. Fantasy worlds, myths and legends. Just not like this. Never like this. Never this real.

A voice spoke up in your head: If it seemed so real, why shouldn’t it be?

For a moment, a part of you was tempted to answer back: Because it shouldn’t! It just shouldn’t, and that was it. Because it shouldn’t make sense—it wouldn’t make sense. Because it didn’t make sense. None of this made sense. Not a single bit. Boys didn’t have wings. The tallest tree in the world (on Earth) was only a hundred-and-sixteen meters high, and you were fairly certain this tree before you was taller than even that. There were no historical statues in Europe that glowed—scratch that, no statues in the whole world that glowed. Not that you were aware of. And even if there were, then certainly not like this. Not like—that. It didn’t make sense. No fucking sense! So it wasn’t real. The only logical explanation would be that it wasn’t real. This was all just a dream, that was it. You were just fucking dreaming.

And you would’ve told the voice that—would’ve denied, and denied, and kept on denying—if not for the fact that the rest of you, though somewhat terrified of the admission, thought it was right.

This was real.

The sky was blue now. Here, statues glowed. There were trees taller than that one sequoia tree, Hyperion, and butterflies were luminescent and ethereal and shone even in daybreak’s shadow. You could see colours, foreign and bright. Blue, the sky; gentle red on a flower’s petals; green against the gray of perilous cliffs. You could feel the weathered stone on the soles of your feet, feel the dirt slipping between your toes. What you were experiencing was as real as real could get. This was as real as real could get. This was real.

Feeling wasn’t something you could afford to do—at least, not right now. You had no idea where you were. You probably weren’t even on Earth, as stupid and fantastical as that sounded. Get moving. You needed to get moving.

You brushed the dirt on your hands off on your clothes and sighed, squinting into the distance. 

To windmill city, then.

✧ CHAPTER TWO