The training grounds behind the Knights of Favonius headquarters had never known such glorious disarray.

  Varka stood in the center of what used to be a neatly trimmed practice field, now resembling the aftermath of a localized hurricane. Dandelion seeds floated in perpetual lazy spirals, training dummies lay splintered across the grass, alchemy vials rolled in every direction leaking harmless but vividly colored smoke, and a faint, perpetual breeze carried the scent of singed feathers and overripe sunsettias.

  At the heart of the chaos stood his twins—five years old, already taller than most children their age, and twice as troublesome.

  Boreas, blond hair wild as his father’s, was attempting to “focus his sight” on a distant target dummy. Instead of a clean prophetic flash, he had summoned a looping vision that replayed the same three seconds of a hilichurl tripping over its own club—endlessly, projected in shimmering violet light across the entire field. The dummy now appeared to be dancing an awkward jig in slow motion.

  Elowen, silver blonde hair glowing faintly, was “practicing wind control.” What she actually produced was a miniature tornado that chased its own tail in ever-widening circles, scooping up every loose object in its path: leaves, feathers, one of Kaeya’s spare eyepatches (how it got there, no one asked), and—most alarmingly—Jean’s favorite teacup, which now orbited the whirlwind like a tiny porcelain moon.

  Varka pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “Children,” he said, in the tone of a man who had once commanded armies and now commanded… this.

  Boreas looked up, eyes wide and innocent. “I’m trying to see the future, Father! But it keeps looping on the funny part.”

  Elowen giggled, clapping her hands. The tornado wobbled happily in response. “Look! It’s dancing!”

  Varka exhaled slowly. Being a father to ordinary twins would have been challenge enough. Being father to twins whose powers manifested before they could properly tie their shoes was proving to be an entirely different battlefield—one where the enemy was adorable, unpredictable, and immune to stern lectures.

  He loved them with a ferocity that sometimes frightened him. He also occasionally fantasized about locking them in the manor’s safest room until they were thirty.

  Training had become both necessity and daily catastrophe.

  That morning he had decided to introduce proper instructors.

  Amber arrived first—Outrider extraordinaire, glider expert, and possessor of endless patience. She landed lightly on the field, bow slung across her back, Baron Bunny already hopping at her heels.

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  “Grand Master! I’m here to teach gliding basics!” she announced cheerfully, then froze at the sight of the tornado-teacup-orbiting disaster. “…Oh. Wow.”

  Elowen beamed. “Hi, Miss Amber! Want to fly with me?”

  Before Varka could intervene, Elowen sent a playful gust that lifted Baron Bunny straight up and deposited it neatly atop the swirling vortex. Amber laughed—half delighted, half terrified—and summoned her own glider to stabilize the air.

  “Okay, okay! Let’s start with controlled bursts, not… tornado tea parties. Come here, little wind sprite.”

  While Amber gently coaxed Elowen into directing smaller, safer breezes (and retrieving Jean’s teacup before it achieved orbit), Sucrose arrived—nervously clutching a satchel of vials, notebooks, and one very anxious little anemoboxer she had named “Subject Windy.”

  “Um… Grand Master Varka? You wanted alchemy lessons for… enhanced elemental control?” Sucrose adjusted her glasses, peering at Boreas, who was now trying to make his looping vision play backward. “I-I brought calming reagents and focus elixirs. Also… um… emergency antidotes. Just in case.”

  Boreas turned, eyes lighting up. “Miss Sucrose! Can you make a potion that lets me see ten futures at once?”

  Sucrose paled. “Th-that would probably cause catastrophic cerebral overload and—”

  Varka cleared his throat loudly. “One future at a time, son. Let’s start with ‘don’t explode the alchemy station.’”

  The afternoon dissolved into beautiful mayhem.

  Amber taught Elowen how to glide using controlled updrafts—resulting in the girl soaring in delighted circles until she accidentally summoned a thermal that carried her halfway to Starsnatch Cliff before Amber swooped in with her own glider to catch her.

  Sucrose tried to teach Boreas basic elemental resonance through safe, low-yield reactions—only for him to accidentally project a vision of the reaction’s outcome before it happened, causing a feedback loop that turned a simple wind-anemo crystal reaction into a five-minute fireworks display of harmless rainbow sparks.

  Varka spent most of the lesson running between the two groups: catching Elowen mid-air, dousing small alchemy fires, apologizing to startled knights who wandered too close, and trying (failing) to maintain some semblance of authority.

  By dusk, the field looked like a festival had exploded on it.

  Amber sat on the grass, laughing breathlessly, Elowen curled in her lap fast asleep with wind still gently ruffling her hair. Sucrose was scribbling notes furiously, glasses askew, muttering about “unprecedented synergetic vision-elemental feedback.” Boreas leaned against Varka’s leg, exhausted but beaming.

  “Father,” he yawned, “did we do good?”

  Varka looked at the wreckage—then at his children, flushed and happy and utterly, impossibly his.

  He knelt, pulling both twins into his arms despite their sleepy protests.

  “Haha! You did wonderfully,” he said, voice rough with emotion. “Messily. Chaotically. Perfectly.”

  Elowen mumbled into his shoulder, already half-asleep. “Love you, Father.”

  Boreas echoed, softer, “Even when we break everything?”

  Varka kissed the tops of their heads.

  “Especially when you break everything.”

  As the first stars appeared above Mondstadt, Varka carried his sleeping twins back toward the manor—Amber and Sucrose trailing behind, still laughing about the day’s disasters.

  First-time fatherhood to extraordinary children was exhausting.

  It was terrifying.

  It was the greatest adventure of his life.

  And he wouldn’t trade a single shattered dummy, lost teacup, or runaway tornado for anything in all of Teyvat.