Before Khaenri'ah fell, Dainsleif held a title: Bough Keeper. It was not a military rank. It was older than the kingdom's army, older than most of its institutions — a role that existed to guard something the kingdom had found and could not bring itself to destroy. The details of what that something was have been stripped from every account that survived the Cataclysm. What remains is the title, and the man who still carries it.

The Abyss did not always exist in its current form. What became the Abyss was once a passage — not metaphorical, but literal: a place where the boundary between Teyvat and whatever lies beneath it wore thin enough to cross. The first person to cross it voluntarily was not a monster or a god. They were a scholar from Khaenri'ah who believed the passage led somewhere worth understanding.

That scholar made a choice at the threshold: go back, or go deeper. Dainsleif knew them. He was the one who watched them go. The Traveler, moving through Teyvat, has encountered the residue of that choice in three separate locations without recognising what they were looking at — a pattern of decisions that feels like coincidence until you map it.

What Dainsleif has never explained is why he did not follow. He had the authority. He had the capability. He chose to remain at the boundary and watch someone else cross it — and whatever they found on the other side is what the Abyss Order has been trying to retrieve ever since. The Traveler is not the first person Dainsleif has guided toward that threshold. They may be the last.