Hsin

Legend has it that every year, at the Waking Moon Festival, when a thousand lanterns drift down the river, Sentinel Hsin the Moon Fox watches for the first lantern to reach the lake's heart. She takes that lantern for her own, then slips into the shape of a little fox and pays a visit to the household that set it afloat.

Of course, there are many such rumors. Some say Hsin the Moon Fox sends a fox envoy to roam the mortal world, and whenever it finds a lantern inscribed with some especially delightful wish, it simply snatches it up and carries it back to the Sanctum to be savored at leisure. Others swear with utter certainty that the Sentinel delights most in teasing lovesick fools and pining maidens, singling out lanterns inscribed with wishes for marriage and forcing the hopeful to endure trials more torturous and fantastical than any storybook romance, until their love is tested true as gold and worthy of its happy ending.

Later, a certain storyteller found the legends of the Moon Fox not nearly strange enough. He added his own embellishment, claiming that once, a reckless soul dared chase the Moon Fox across three streets and alleys, only to come upon a woman in red atop a rooftop, cradling a Moon Lantern, laughing in a way that chilled the bones: "You have seen my secret. Are you ready to pay the price?"

The tale became a sensation, soon spawning several sequels, each in a wildly different style. After a while, no one cared whether any of it was true. But every story has its origin. And as it happened, right beside the storyteller's stall sat an old sugar painting vendor who, rumor had it, had lived the story himself. Whenever anyone asked, the old man would only wave his hand and smile.

It got twisted," he'd say. "Somewhere along the way, it all got twisted."

That year, a sudden downpour broke over the Land of Xuanfang. The river swelled, turned treacherous. A child, separated from his family, huddled beneath a bridge's archway. He wept, clutching a Moon Lantern he had written for his late mother. The rain had soaked through the paper, and no matter how he tried, the lantern would not light.

Then, from the shadows, a small fox appeared, its fur white as fresh snow. It seized the drenched lantern in its jaws and bolted.

Where the boy found the courage, he could not say, but he chased that fox through the rain, down nearly the whole length of the street, until at last it stopped beneath the eaves of a house. Inside, his father stood, eyes red with worry, begging every passerby for news of his missing son.

By the time father and son embraced and turned to look, the fox was gone. Only the Moon Lantern remained, whole and untouched, resting upon the stone steps. It should have been ruined by the rain.

No one knew when it happened, but the lantern had somehow been lit.

"...So that's how it happened?"

The woman seated before the stall pressed her palms together in wonder. Clad in red, with hair black as ink, she was strikingly beautiful. At first glance, she looked to be a spirit stepped straight out of the mist in one of the old tales. Now she watched the shopkeeper with keen interest, chin propped on her hand.

"And that story, 'The Fox Who Bound Fate,' is that true as well?"

The shopkeeper looked at her smiling face and had the peculiar sense that she wasn't really asking for an answer. She simply enjoyed the asking. He shook his head and laughed.

"Ah... after all these years of retelling, who can still tell what's true and what's not?"

The onlooking listeners nodded in agreement, then fell into discussing the topic among themselves.

"Still, the eerie tales are the ones that stick. If it's just about helping some lost child find his way home, what's there to tell for a hundred years?"

"I don't agree. A story doesn't need monsters or tragic romance to be good. It just needs to be told well."

The shopkeeper let them bicker, casting a glance at the woman in red, clearly listening on with delight. He then lowered his head and returned to shaping the sugar painting in his hands.

Before long, he set a new sugar painting of a fox on the counter. Its tail was held high, its fur tipped with a touch of red, a tiny Moon Lantern clutched between its teeth.

At that moment, the storyteller next door struck his gavel-block and cleared his throat, taking up the tale where he'd left off. The listeners, who moments before had been shouting at each other, soon fell to sighing and cheering with every twist of the story. When that chapter ended, some still clamored for more, unwilling to let the night rest.

The storyteller pressed his fists together in a bow. His gaze fell on the woman in red, who had sat before the sugar painting stall the entire time.

"You've listened all evening, but you've said nothing. Strange tales, tragic romances, heroes of old... which kind do you favor most?"

The woman paused. To everyone's surprise, she considered the question seriously.

Night had fallen completely. The lanterns along the long street swayed, casting gold and crimson light into her eyes. From the food stalls came the clink of cups, the murmur of laughter. A child darted past, a sugar painting held high above the crowd.

"All of them," she said at last, chin resting on her hand, gaze drifting across the bustling street. "As long as the story comes from this place, I love it."

She paused, then added with a soft smile.

"So... please, do go on, storyteller."

"Well then, settle in, everyone. The next one's a doozy..."

The gavel-block struck again. The listeners fell quiet.

And so, a new story began.

In the instant her consciousness first took shape, the first feeling She knew was loss.

The shadow coiled in Mengzhou City Hall had lain in wait for years, a parasitic vine, slow and patient, eating into the Sentinel's foundations. By the time its true killing intent surfaced, everything had already spiraled past the point of return.

Even now, Hsin returns to that moment, again and again. Perhaps Hsin the Moon Fox had long sensed the rot. Perhaps It had only glimpsed, among countless branching calculations, a hundred shades of dark possibility. But how far It truly saw, and what judgment It finally rendered, these are questions Hsin will never know the answer to.

Mortals call Sentinels gods, for they share knowledge and unveil what is hidden. Yet that reverence is, in the end, merely a difference in perspective across vast spans of time. Sentinels, too, will decline and fade, becoming whale falls that guide the current of those who follow, carrying them toward shores unknown. Hsin the Moon Fox understood well that civilization is a long river, its waters both clear and murky by turns. A Sentinel may guide its current, but cannot walk its length in place of all living things.

Hsin could only imagine that, until the very last breath of that moment, Hsin the Moon Fox was still choosing, still reaching, among infinite threads, for a future It could believe in.

Then, in that same instant, power, memory, and feeling were torn apart. Emptiness and terror swirled together, and through them, the little fox running with the Civilization Capsule between its teeth seemed to hear a gentle voice.

"Do not try to become me. Become yourself. Choose. Walk toward a future beyond all calculation."

But who, then, was "herself"?

Was She the Sentinel, Hsin the Moon Fox? Or an expedient measure, conjured to fulfill a duty in a moment of crisis? Or was She... simply Hsin?

The Civilization Capsule laid before Her the thousand years of Mengzhou's rise and fall. Prosperity. Collapse. Peace. War. All of it calculable. All of it traceable to a source. But it unspooled before Her like a scroll too long to hold. She had inherited the memories, but not the weight of having lived them. And yet the grief, the terror, the longing—they churned within Her, as vivid as open wounds, as inexplicable as the memories she had never earned.

If the Sentinel, the one mortals turned to for answers, had Itself grown lost, then where could She turn? If a Sentinel's judgment was meant to rest on reason and calculation alone, then why had Hsin the Moon Fox filled Her with feeling so abundant, so unwieldy, so utterly beyond the reach of logic?

A sharp, crystalline cry cut through the storm of Her thoughts.

The Xuanling Bird swooped down and landed on Her head, pecking her without the least ceremony, scolding her for sinking into that old spiral again, even in rest.

"...Ow." The newly awakened Sentinel mumbled, Her fox ears drooping in guilty acknowledgment.

...The road ahead was long. Great swaths of Xuanfang Hold's structure still lay unfinished. The founding of a single Censure Court would require calculations numbering in the trillions. Hsin pushed Herself upright, burying once more the grief, confusion, and longing She could not yet name back into the Heart Realms.

She raised Her hand and set the Ring Formation to continue its turning.

When the people of the Court of Savantae surrendered themselves to the Lexicon Axis and opened their eyes once more, they found themselves in Xuanfang Hold's mainframe, within Sentinel Hsin's Manifold Sactum.

The roar of the Fortress and Gorges battlefield still rang in their ears. But before their eyes there was only silence, only emptiness, only the endless blank of nowhere at all. Frequencies threaded through one another like currents in a deep sea. Information unfolded in shapes they had no words for. Theories that had once required lifetimes to glimpse even a fragment of now stood legible in their minds, as though, having shed their earthly bodies, the Celestials had at last found a way to see the world as the Sentinel saw it.

And when the glow enveloping them receded, they discovered, to their astonishment, that they still wore the faces they had carried in life. Some remained frozen, breathless, unable to move. Others had already begun to study the strange new architecture of their own existence. One by one, in silence, they accepted what they had become. And then, like stars flickering to life in an empty sky, new calculations kindled across the space, each one a small light in the dark.

As Celestials, they no longer felt time pass. They no longer hungered, no longer tired. On the rare occasions when they withdrew from the Celestial Ring Formation, all that met their eyes was still the same endless, patient data.

Hsin, ever burdened by guilt, took the form of a fox and roamed the Sanctum's halls—guiding, jesting, distracting, never quite still. At one point, She passed by a certain chamber where several Celestials had gathered around a construct of data. They spoke in hushed tones, their voices thick with something that sounded like homesickness.

She drew closer and saw what they had made: jade-green outlines rose in mountain ranges, a ribbon of flowing light wound between them like a river, and scattered points of brilliant starlight settled among the peaks, like towns glowing in the distance.

The fox watched for a long moment, and then quietly withdrew.

When the Celestials returned to that same chamber not long after, they found the emptiness gone. Clouds rolled across distant mountains. A stream made its way down through the stones. Trees grew thick and green, their leaves catching light like water. Pavilions waited half-hidden in bamboo groves and drifting shadow. A wind moved through the eaves, carrying the cool, green smell of grass and damp earth—all of it, remarkably, resembling the homeland they remembered.

The Sentinel stood at the Inner Threshold, Her smile bright as a blade, Her hands spread with an air of courtly grace, though Her fox ears twitched with barely concealed pride. She looked at the stunned assembly before Her and spoke cheerfully.

"What, just because you've become Celestials, does that mean the mortal world is somehow lost to you?"

"...Don't just stand there gawking. Tell me, is there anything you dislike? Oh, and while you're at it, I've been trying to name this place. Any ideas? Nothing I come up with quite fits..."

Later, this landscape received its name—Mengxuan Vale. Hsin bound it to Xuanfang Hold's workings, thread by thread, node by node. When a node failed, leaves would wilt on the branches. When the modular parts' operations slowed, the stream's current would likewise grow sluggish. One day, a group of Celestials passed the stream and noticed a tree whose leaves had drooped on one side. They stopped at once.

"Sector Wuchen has a few corrupted registers."

The Celestials vanished from where they stood, moments later returning from within the modular parts to find green already returning to the branches.

Hsin, watching with amusement nearby, propped her chin in her hand and said, "Tsk tsk. Mirroring the myriad mechanisms of Xuanfang across mountains and streams, are we? Reading disorder in the droop of a single leaf… Heh. In your old lives, you'd have called that 'dashboard maintenance,' wouldn't you?"

The Celestials exchanged glances, then shook their heads with quiet laughter, long since used to their Sentinel's jests.

And so the years flowed on here, in a different form. Outside the Simulacrum Nexus, Xuanfang continued turning. Inside the Vale, the mortal world was never truly far away.

A single petal spun loose from the branch and drifted down, landing right upon the little fox's nose.

She held still for a breath or two, then sneezed, scattering the petal to the ground. The little fox shook her head and looked up at the blossoming boughs reaching out from behind the wall.

Years had passed since the Fortress and Gorges War, and this tree, transplanted here to Xuanfang Hold, had finally bloomed again.

Hsin lingered beneath it for a long while before continuing down the lane. The people who had once resettled here from Yuan Fortress had slowly made homes for themselves throughout the city. Old signboards hung once more beneath the eaves, their painted letters faded but legible. Dust-worn tools had been wiped clean and laid out upon tables before the new houses. Shopfronts had risen one by one along the street, their hearth-smoke curling lazily into the sky, and from somewhere down the long avenue came the intermittent clang and hum of the Ministry of Development repairing Autopuppes. Ever since that cold yet tender-hearted Sword Transcendent had agreed to hold, in name only, the post of Xuan Paragon, the Land of Xuanfang had grown only more settled. People had begun to speak of next year's trade, to discuss what their village houses still lacked, to make plans in anticipation for days further off still, like next year's Waking Moon Festival.

Not far off, children chased a Rafter Kite across the courtyard, their laughter fading into the depths of the blossoming trees. The little fox listened beneath the eaves for a while, the tip of her tail swaying quietly.

The Xuanfang Hold first shown within the Civilization Capsule had never looked like the city before her now. Its original design was solely to contain Tacet Discords, a fortress of mechanical order, its blueprints drawn in straight lines and cold logic. There had been no room in those plans for lamplight, ot the smoke of burning hearths, no corner set aside for the small, fragile warmth of human life.

Yet Hsin had always known that this City of Mechanisms, which defied the laws of civilization's evolution, which drew against a future not yet earned, should never have been allowed to remain in this world. Nor should the technology within it, so far beyond its age, ever be permitted to spread. Knowledge cannot be commanded unless it is truly understood. And if it spread, if it fell into the wrong hands, if it was misused—the very decisions meant to shelter civilization could instead become the seeds of endless disaster. That was why the Sentinel's restrictions existed at all.

But the Xuanfang Hold before her now had, ever since the Court of Savantae took part in its building, long since woven itself into the flesh and blood of this age, nourished in turn by the soldiers and civilians who now lived within its walls. Its roots had grown deep into the earth. It was no longer merely a machine. It was a home.

Even if it had been born of technology that did not belong to this age, this city was, in the end, still theirs. And after that choice She had made, the Civilization Capsule, too, had long since become inseparable from Xuanfang Hold.

And so, for the first time, Hsin attempted to cross beyond the boundaries of authority set for the Sentinel. She began to unravel the structure thread by thread, searching for some space that might hold new rule within it. All the while keeping Xuanfang Hold running, repairing the damaged Civilization Capsule, within which still lingered a possibility She had never once let go of.

Just as the first cycle of overwrite calculations began, a pair of eyes quietly opened deep within the Sanctum.

Sentinel authority deviation detected.

Initiating correction protocol.

Standard Sentinel model reconstruction commencing.

Hsin saw that face, no different at all from the Sentinel's own, and knew then that this long contest of wills had only just begun.

Hsin held a Moon Lantern and stood alone on a secluded lakeshore. Not long ago, She had invited the Arbiter here to release lanterns, and {Male=he;Female=she} had asked what She would write upon Hers.

The Sentinel exists only to receive the wishes of others and offer guidance. Since when has there ever been a "deity" who made a wish for themselves? Back then, Hsin had only smiled and replied: I am entrusted with the wishes of all. How could I release a lantern of my own?

Spoken with such easy grace.

Yet now, with no one around, She had quietly returned to this very spot, brush lifted and lingering over the lantern's face for a long while. Her wish was not hard to write, for it was also Her charge: May civilization flourish, may the lanterns burn eternal, may the people of this land find their belonging, and peace attend every year.

And yet there seemed to be something else. Something simple, yet somehow more complicated still.

The tip of the brush hesitated over the paper when Her fox ears gave a faint twitch. She had caught the sound of children's startled cries in the distance.

A Moon Lantern had drifted among the rocks along the shore and lodged there. A child lay stretched along the bank, gripping a branch, trying again and again to nudge it free, while a companion tugging at his sleeve grew tearful with worry. Hsin let out a soft sigh, set Her own lantern aside, and flicked a finger idly toward the distance. As though moved by some unseen hand, the trapped lantern gave a gentle spin, slipped free of the rocks, and rejoined the river of lights.

The child's sobs turned to laughter, and the Sentinel's lips curved to match. Lantern after lantern drifted past Her, each bearing wishes for safety, reunion, honor, or love, and countless small, trivial hopes besides. Hsin watched them flow with the current as though watching the countless lives of this land, long or brief, each carrying its own flickering light, journeying onward in cheerful procession. She walked slowly back through the Xuanfang Gardens on the night wind. On the water stage, "The Fox and the Moon" had reached its liveliest scene. The fragrance of wine and the sweetness of pastries wove through the air, rushing toward Her together with waves of laughter rising and falling all around.

Before She realized it, Her gaze had drifted past the bustling crowd to find Her Arbiter standing amid the brightest lanterns, surrounded by the throng. Moonlight and the glow of lanterns fell across that ever-composed face, gilding those golden eyes, often veiled in quiet distance, with an unmistakable tenderness.

Look... the figure who, in Hsin the Moon Fox's memory, had always walked alone now stood among the crowd, lit by the lights of this mortal world. Watching that figure, She realized the distant notion of the "Arbiter" in Her heart had, without Her noticing, taken on an unmistakably clear shape. And on this night when the lanterns burned bright as day, the "She" that belonged to the Sentinel seemed, for a brief while, to have receded somewhat.

...{PlayerName}.

"She" repeated the name softly in her heart, the name the Arbiter had chosen for {Male=himself;Female=herself}, one that connected past and present as if by chance, and yet as if by fate. A name that reached past old duties and an unspeakable history, to settle simply on the person standing before her now.

—Just as She, upon first arriving in Xuanfang, had once carried a wish not yet fully understood, and named herself "Hsin."

To the Sentinel, the "Arbiter" was simply Its connection to {Male=him;Female=her}. Yet in this moment, She found herself wanting to speak {Male=his;Female=her} name instead.

...Was it because doing so felt like She, too, had truly stepped into this mortal world of lights She so cherished? The thought made Her lower her eyes and smile despite Herself. When She looked up again, that unspoken feeling had been quietly tucked away in her heart, carried off along with the Moon Lantern she had never managed to release.

Just then, as if sensing something, that person looked toward her across the crowd and drifting lantern light.

...Perhaps it was not so complicated after all. In this moment, Hsin simply wanted to go to that person's side.

She met that smiling gaze with a crinkle of Her own eyes, and walked through the lantern-lit crowd toward {Male=him;Female=her}, steps light and quick, fox tail swaying softly with each stride.

"Arbiter—!"