“The banner of the Pale Star continued its eastward march, encountering human refugees along the way. His merciful Majesty could not bear to see living beings suffer in cold and hunger. He hurled spears of ice, slaying the monsters that preyed upon them. He then created a sacred tree and brought down a rain of sweet dew to fill their bellies. He permitted the humans to journey alongside his honor guard, heading toward Mondstadt. Bound by the humans’ faltering steps, another twelve days elapsed before they reached the border of Mondstadt.”
—*Annals of the Pale Star Spirits: Chronicle of the Early Reign*
***
Morning light washed over the joint procession of humans and spirits as they set off once again from beside the colossal honey tree that had become a local landmark.
Only this time, the pace of the caravan had noticeably slowed, and the atmosphere was a far cry from that of a purely ceremonial outing.
A practical problem stood before them: carriages were limited.
The spirits’ aesthetic favored exquisite grandeur over practical payload.
The few carriages accompanying the party were originally intended for His Majesty, the Grand Duchess, and high-ranking masters of ceremonies—none were particularly spacious.
“Give my carriage to the elderly, the women, the children, and the wounded who have trouble walking,” Monomakh ordered.
And so, the ornate imperial carriage was thoroughly cleaned, lined with thick fur cushions, and converted into a temporary sanctuary for the frailest among the human refugees.
Meanwhile, Moh himself squeezed alongside Anastasia into the slightly smaller carriage that originally belonged to the Grand Duchess.
“Your Majesty, you could actually use elemental power to condense a vehicle…”
Anastasia could not help suggesting as she watched her sovereign contract his legs somewhat awkwardly into the narrow side of the cabin.
Moh waved his hand, his ice-blue eyes glancing out the window.
Outside, the humans huddled in the distributed pelts, leaning on each other as they trudged forward.
“Creating a sled or carriage out of ice is a trivial matter for us, but not for them. The pristine ice created by spirits is far too cold. Prolonged contact would cause frostbite at best, and threaten their lives at worst. I’ve grown so accustomed to the Court that I almost forgot humans are far more fragile than we are.”
Even so, he used ice to shape a few deer and horses to help the humans pull their baggage.
This decision, along with His Majesty’s act of “condescending,” stirred no small ripple among some of the spirit guards and attendants.
During rest stops, faint snippets of hushed chatter in the ancient Spirit Tongue occasionally drifted into Anastasia’s sharp ears.
“…How exalted is His Majesty! How could he share a carriage with those… creatures? Now he’s even given away his imperial coach.”
“…Those humans still reek of dirt and grass. How dare they defile His Majesty’s ride?”
“…The Hyperboreans… Hmph, remember how they used to drive our ancestors?”
The discontent had deep roots.
Present-day Snezhnaya was a realm of spirits.
This land, once struck by a Skyfrost Nail, had been transformed into a frigid, harsh wilderness partly due to Hyperborean experiments.
Survival here was arduous for humans, and even among spirits, aside from snow spirits and frost spirits, others were sometimes sensitive to the severe cold.
The few surviving human descendants of the ancient golden realm of Hyperborea mostly gathered in the southern border—the relatively warmer Nod-Krai Region.
In the core territory inhabited by the spirits of the Pale Star Court, humans were practically unheard of.
Historically, the Hyperboreans who created the spirits had indeed treated them as mere tools and labor.
This rift, rooted in bloodlines and history, had not been erased by time.
Now, the sovereign they revered like the sun and moon—an elegant and powerful monarch—was not only delaying his journey for these fragile beings who shared a bloodline with their former oppressors, but was also hunting monsters for them, working miracles to conjure food, and even giving up his carriage.
For spirits set in their old ways or harboring lingering grudges, this was truly hard to swallow.
Though Moh had explicitly forbidden anyone from mistreating the humans, the spirits could only bottle up their grievances.
It manifested as a cool detachment during the march and quiet complaints in the Spirit Tongue, which the humans could not understand.
The sensitive humans naturally picked up on the distance and implicit hostility from some of the spirits.
They became even more cautious, keeping pace as best they could on the road and gathering tightly together during breaks, heads bowed, trying their best to minimize their presence.
They feared making a single wrong move that might anger these gorgeously ethereal yet powerfully intimidating spirit lords and get thrown back into the frozen wilderness.
Compared to when they first met, the refugees’ complexions had grown much rosier.
Though exhausted from the long trek, their steps were no longer weak and powerless.
This was all thanks to that golden rain and the subsequent bottles of SoulGlad juice.
Before leaving the campsite, Moh had used ice elemental power as a tool to gently extract almost all mature juice from the branches and leaves of the giant honey tree, properly sealing it into hollow ice bottles formed in an instant.
The juice was roughly divided into three portions: one distributed on the spot to the refugees to replenish their strength for the journey ahead; one bestowed upon the spirits of the honor guard as a shared treat to sample his handiwork; and the last saved as reserves.
As for the tree he had created on a whim?
After fulfilling his main goal of producing food, Moh lost most of his interest in it.
“Perhaps humans or spirits passing by in the future will find energy from it to press on through the snow.”
Inside the swaying small carriage, the space was somewhat cramped, yet it held a peculiar warmth.
Anastasia sat near the window with a book on northern geography open in her hands.
Her eyes rested on the words, but her mind was not entirely on them.
Opposite her, Moh was playfully entertaining a sleeping infant cradled in an old woman’s arms.
The woman was the eldest among the refugees, arranged into this carriage due to her failing legs.
The swaddling clothes around the child were actually Moh’s own cape, generously given.
The old woman sat stiffly, deep wrinkles etched into her face from tension, completely afraid to look directly at the Emperor of Snezhnaya sitting so close.
Moh, however, seemed entirely oblivious—or rather, unbothered.
He leaned forward slightly, his ice-blue eyes gazing gently at the cute little face.
A trace of extremely subtle, harmless frost mist floated at his fingertips, condensing into tiny, exquisite snowflakes and star patterns that drifted slowly before the baby’s eyes, attempting to catch the little one’s attention.
Looking at the tiny infant, Moh’s inner “old father” mindset began to bubble up again.
Thinking back to his days aboard the Astral Express, in terms of seniority, he belonged to the same tier of “elders” as Welt and Himeko.
When Dan Heng and March 7th first boarded the train, he had fussed over them plenty.
A dragon descendant imprisoned in jail for ages, and a little girl encased in ice who had lost her memory—reclaiming their lost, bewildered hearts was no easy task.
Moh had spent a long time playing the dependable elder brother.
Later, when the grey-haired raccoon duo, Stelle and Caelus, joined up, things turned into total chaos.
Heaven knew how much breath and wits he had expended to stop those two Trash Can Warriors from rummaging through garbage cans on every planet they visited.
He had truly experienced the bitter trials of raising rebellious children.
So much so that later, alongside their “biological mother” Kafka, “foster mother” Himeko, and “godfather” Veritas Ratio, the rowdy pair bestowed the glorious title of “stepdad” upon him.
Whenever their allowance ran out or they got into trouble and needed someone to save their sorry selves, their cries of “Daddy Moh!” were exceptionally sincere and heartfelt.
They even constantly tried to drag the relatively sensible Dan Heng and the simple, easily tricked March 7th into helping them cause trouble.
Even Sunday—their former colleague from The Family who boarded the train later—had received plenty of care and attention from Moh, who helped him integrate into the big family of the Express Crew.
It could be said that when it came to raising kids, especially troublemakers, Moh considered himself highly experienced.
Later, when he fell into Teyvat and met little Anna, she wasn’t having an easy time either.
Moh took her under his wing and raised her like his own cub.
Though single, and though looking young, as an old fossil who had lived nearly several centuries, Moh possessed abundant experience in raising younglings.
The human child before him had a pair of pure golden eyes, which reminded him of the raccoon duo once again.
A familiar desire to take care of someone welled up within him.
He had truly been molded by the Express into a veteran dad—every time he adapted to a new place, he just had to adopt a kid.
“Does this child have a name?” Moh looked up at the nervous old woman beside him, speaking in a very soft voice.
The old woman trembled, hurriedly lowering her head, her voice barely louder than a mosquito: “N-No, my lord… she doesn’t have a proper name yet. Her mother met with tragedy right after giving birth—attacked by monsters and passed away… This little one was just born a few days ago…”
Moh mused for a moment.
“Veronica… How about that? In some dialects of ancient Snezhnaya, it means ‘Hope in Winter.'”
The old woman froze.
Then her eyes reddened, and her arms tightened around the baby.
She choked back tears.
“T-Thank you, my lord, for the name… Veronica… It’s a wonderful name…”
Moh smiled softly, light coalescing once more at his fingertips.
This time, it wasn’t playful frost mist, but a crystal snowflake that would never melt, cool and smooth to the touch.
At the same time, a palm-sized Light Cone appeared in his other hand, a new memory etched within it.
Five-Star Light Cone: *Hope in Winter*.
The image depicted a tiny infant, with a hand gently teasing her.
[*In a tiny snowy field, the Emperor of Frost and Snow bestowed a name upon an infant. “May you grow strong and become the hope in winter,” he said.*]
He gently placed the unmelting snowflake and the Light Cone against the edge of the baby’s swaddling cloth, making sure they wouldn’t poke her. Find the original chapter at g.com.
“This child and I share a bit of fate,” Moh said to the old woman.
“A small gift. May she grow up healthy and strong.”
Anastasia’s fingertips unconsciously pinched the edge of her book page.
She appeared to be reading intently, but every word His Majesty spoke was crystal clear to her ears.
Hearing Moh bestow a blessing on the child, her gaze finally rose from the page and settled on the side of His Majesty’s face, where a gentle smile still lingered.
He liked children very much—Anastasia had known this for a long time.
Whenever he encountered a youngling he took a liking to, whether spirit or human, he always liked to stuff little trinkets into their hands—often a Light Cone recording that very moment.
When she herself had just taken human form, she had been quiet and sullen, brimming with guard and detachment toward this strange adult who had fallen from the sky.
To make her happy, Moh had once used piled snow on the barren waste to build a tiny, spired castle for her.
Then he sat beside it, playing lively yet elegant tunes on his instrument, claiming he was performing music for “Queen Anastasia’s Coronation Ceremony.”
He had even fashioned a crooked, silly-looking little snowman at her feet, calling it her “Royal Guard,” Olaf.
She remembered how he rambled on while working, muttering things she couldn’t understand at all.
Things like “Hurry up and cosplay Queen Elsa,” and “Let it go~ let it go~…”
In the end, he left behind a Light Cone named *Frozen*.
Recorded within was that crude yet whimsical snow castle, along with her younger self giggling foolishly around it, trying to teach the little snowman how to walk.
Back then, Anna had only thought this man was noisy and strange.
Though he looked not much older than her, his mindset was like a child even more naive than she was.
Yet those leisurely days, where time seemed to slow down, faded into the past as she gradually learned the ways of the world.
Moh became busy.
He needed to unite the scattered spirit clans, mediate conflicts and grudges that had persisted among tribes for countless years.
He needed to lead his followers across the frozen soil to build the very first city belonging to the spirits—Kitezh.
Even after he was crowned “Emperor of the Pale Star” in an ancient ritual through strength and prestige, the challenges did not end.
Externally, the spirit factions of the Beast-Monster Alliance eyed them hungrily, and the prelude to the Archon War was slowly unfolding across Teyvat.
The Northern Realm grew more dangerous, the situation more complex, and Moh was kept so busy his feet hardly touched the ground.
More and more capable, ambitious spirits gathered around him—generals, strategists, dukes of various clans…
Countless eyes fixed upon the throne, countless people seeking to draw close to the newborn “sun” to acquire power and glory.
Anastasia was no longer the only person who could approach him and share his quiet hours.
Some had even tried to challenge her unique position as “His Majesty’s earliest follower.”
Anastasia hadn’t relied on her status to argue.
Instead, she chose solid battle exploits and political achievements to silence every doubter.
Yet she also clearly felt that Moh was changing.
The man who used to build silly snowmen with her in the snow and tell her ridiculous fairy tales grew more and more like a true emperor seated high upon a throne.
In her childhood, she could discern his true feelings from the subtle shifts in his expression—whether he was amused, helpless, or bored by something.
But during the war, she had seen with her own eyes how he could, with a chilling calmness, order the execution of traitors or personally swing his blade to decapitate powerful foes.
Anna knew those people deserved their fate, that it was the necessary cruelty of war.
Yet the vibrant, eccentric, uniquely gentle figure of the otherworldly visitor in her memories seemed to gradually blur amidst the temperings of blood and fire, donning the majestic and mysterious armor of an emperor.
Not until this moment, inside this carriage crammed with human refugees, watching him carefully tease a human baby, did Anastasia suddenly realize:
The man who had built a fairytale snow castle for her had never truly changed.
He had merely buried the rich inner life and emotions that belonged to “Moh” deeper beneath the imperial majesty and responsibilities of “Monomakh.”
Outside the carriage, the biting spring wind of the Northern Realm blew, spirits whispered occasionally, and human refugees trudged heavily toward an uncertain future.
Anastasia closed the book she hadn’t read much of, her eyes resting quietly on the silhouette of the man sitting opposite her.
The journey continued.
Ahead lay the nation of wind and freedom.