#specifically indarias i love her so much

[journey-to-the-attic]

Vibrates intensely YOU MENTIONED MENOGIAS AND I GOT INSTANT BRAINROT. You say no angst but LISTEN

So IK is an full-blooded adeptus connected to Menogias somehow. Menogias is a yaksha, a subspecies of adeptus. What is their connection? SIBLINGS. So what does that make IK? A yaksha as well! So the other guardian yaksha are naturally adoptive big siblings.

They were called upon by Rex Lapis during the Archon War. Menogias and the other four Guardian Yaksha take on the task but when IK is so young and personally precious to them it doesn’t feel right to let her join in knowing that it’ll stain her with karmic debt. But since IK is a yaksha and yaksha are naturally given to battle she wants to help the war effort anyway. And because she’s so young the karmic debt accumulates much faster, and ultimately Menogias can’t stand to watch her deteriorate so quickly and begs the adeptus from Mt Hulao (can’t remember which right now LOL) to seal her in amber so as to prevent her from accumulating anymore karmic debt. 

But he doesn’t tell anyone that this is what happened because he doesn’t want any of them to unseal IK and bring her back into the battle. He writes it down somewhere secret that will only be discovered in peacetime and doesn’t say antyhing about it but the others are worried sick and eventually what he tells them is that the karmic debt drove IK mad and he had to kill her. And then this is why Bonanus attacks him when her own karmic debt catches up with her in the AU, because off the rage and grief combined with the karma. 

Much much later, long after the Archon War has ended and the other yaksha are dead, Xiao finally finds Menogias’s message. He barely dares hope it’s true but when he follows the instructions he finds the piece of amber exactly where it says it is, and when he breaks it open IK really is right there.

Probably some combination of being sealed away + intervention from the other adepti and exorcists n stuff, IK’s karmic debt is already greatly reduced, and with no war to wage she doesn’t accumulate anymore. Lots of angst potential considering Menogias sealed her away against her will and now she’s finally awake again and him and nealry eveyrone she loves is dead. Oof. But Xiao takes her under his wing and they fiercely protect each other from then on and she meets lots of friends from the Harbour and in the Chasm where she gets to laern the truth about Bosacius.

By the time she gets summoned to the Devildom she’s mostly let go of her past (unlike Xiao lol) so the others don’t know about it until she speaks about it. She makes even more best friends and when she eventually figures out how to summon Xiao with adeptus arts he nearly fucking annihilates the demons for kidnapping his little sister 

y’all really can’t let my girl catch a break huh (/lh)

this is some good stuff though!! i do also like that ik gets her closure BEFORE being summoned to the devildom, so her exchange year can stay mostly fluff 

with her having lost her big brother and other adoptive big siblings but also having been able to recover it, plus her having spent a lot of time observing and trying to help xiao with his own lack of emotional closure, i reckon this whole angsty backstory might even justify her best friendship with belphie even more, since she’s very well equipped to help him let go of lilith

luckily in this au xiao no longer has a real reason to attack the demons (apart from the sort of kidnapping, and i guess lucifer if the underground tomb thing still happens? but ik would be able to defend herself and not be harmed, so it’s fine) - so once they’ve talked things through and established that this ‘conqueror of demons’ doesn’t kill devildom-type demons, xiao might begrudgingly settle in the devildom for a bit, just to keep an eye on ik. though he’d almost definitely return to liyue after some time, since he still considers it his duty to protect it

i feel like this ik would want to return to liyue but also simultaneously considers the devildom a second home? maybe they set something up so that she can somehow jump between them regularly. xiao and the demons share custody essentially lmao