Omnipresence Over Mortals

Resolved to keep searching for their lost sibling, the Traveler sets their sights on Inazuma — a nation sealed off from the world by the Sakoku Decree and ringed by an impassable storm. The Inazuman merchant Atsuko warns them off, then points them toward Beidou, the one captain daring enough to break through. Aboard her flagship, the Alcor, anchored at Guyun Stone Forest, the Traveler meets Kaedehara Kazuha, a gentle wandering samurai serving as a temporary crewman — and a fugitive from his homeland.

Beidou will only ferry them across if they win the Crux Clash, her Vision-free fighting tournament, whose prize is a masterless Vision in Kazuha's keeping. The Traveler sweeps through the bracket with ease, but the final opponent never shows: the Treasure Hoarder Fei the Flyer has stolen the Vision and fled. Together with Kazuha, the Traveler runs the thief down and recovers it.

Kazuha then reveals the Vision's weight. It belonged to a friend who challenged the Raiden Shogun's Vision Hunt Decree in a duel before the throne and paid with his life; Kazuha snatched the Vision in the duel's final moments and fled Inazuma, hoping someone might one day reawaken it. Crowned champion by default, the Traveler earns their passage — once the Alcor is resupplied, she will sail into the storm.

The Alcor lands the Traveler at Ritou, Inazuma's tightly controlled port of entry, where Beidou's business partner Thoma — housekeeper of the Kamisato Clan — smooths their arrival. Ritou's foreign merchants are being bled dry by the Kanjou Commission's arbitrary taxes; the Traveler exposes the corrupt officer Keijirou's extortion scheme, and Thoma's Yashiro Commission credentials defuse the fallout. With a travel permit arranged through the quiet help of Hiiragi Chisato, the commissioner's daughter, the Traveler finally sets foot on Narukami Island proper.

Thoma brings them before the Statue of the Omnipresent God, studded with Visions seized under the Raiden Shogun's Vision Hunt Decree, then to Kamisato Ayaka, who asks the Traveler to first meet three people whose Visions were taken: a samurai who forgot why he keeps waiting, an officer torn between duty and conscience, and a swordmaster driven half-mad by the loss of his ambitions. At the Grand Narukami Shrine, the sly Guuji Yae Miko untangles the final case — and hints that she has high expectations of the newcomer.

Having seen the decree's toll firsthand, the Traveler agrees to help. With the fireworks maker Yoimiya, they break Master Masakatsu — forger of the resistance's fake Visions — out of a Tenryou Commission jail, with General Kujou Sara tacitly letting them slip away. Word spreads that the Shogunate is preparing a grand ceremony.

Disaster strikes: Thoma has been seized by the Tenryou Commission to become the hundredth victim of the Vision Hunt Decree, his Vision to be torn from him at a public ceremony attended by the Raiden Shogun herself. Since Ayaka cannot intervene without compromising the Yashiro Commission's neutrality, the Traveler storms the ceremony instead. The rescue succeeds — but the Shogun witnesses the Traveler wield elemental power without a Vision, declares this "exception" an enemy of eternity, and crushes them in a single exchange. Only Thoma's desperate intervention lets the three escape as wanted criminals.

On Thoma's advice, the Traveler seeks refuge with the Watatsumi Army, the resistance fighting the decree. Crossing the war-torn islands, they save a cornered young soldier named Teppei, who brings them to General Gorou. Impressed by their deeds at the ceremony, Gorou welcomes the Traveler into the resistance, where they help reinforce the beleaguered camp.

Then Kujou Sara herself marches on the front lines to demand the Traveler's surrender. Gorou refuses, and the Traveler answers Sara's challenge to a ceremonial fight of honor, winning bout after bout and lifting the resistance's morale. When open battle turns against them regardless, the resistance's true leader, Sangonomiya Kokomi, arrives with surprise mercenary reinforcements — Beidou and Kazuha among them — and forces Sara to retreat. Kokomi invites the Traveler to Watatsumi Island to plan the counterattack.

On Watatsumi Island, Kokomi makes the Traveler captain of a special operations unit, while an anonymous "sponsor" keeps the strained resistance supplied. The sponsor's gifts prove to be Fatui Delusions — weapons that burn the wielder's own life force. Teppei, withered into a dying old man by his Delusion, perishes before the Traveler's eyes. Storming the Delusion factory in fury, the Traveler walks into a trap laid by the Harbinger Scaramouche and falls to the Tatarigami's corruption — only to be rescued by Yae Miko.

Miko reveals the truth: the Shogun is a puppet built by the Electro Archon Ei, who watches from within the Plane of Euthymia. To cripple the Tenryou Commission's war, they expose Kujou Takayuki's collusion with the Fatui, turning his adoptive daughter Sara against him. At Tenshukaku, the Traveler defeats the Harbinger Signora in a duel before the throne — and the Shogun executes her with the Musou no Hitotachi.

When the Shogun turns that same killing blow on the Traveler, Kazuha blocks it with his dead friend's reawakened Vision. Drawn into the Plane of Euthymia and strengthened by Miko's charm and the light of a nation's confiscated ambitions, the Traveler defeats Ei, who concedes that her frozen eternity breeds only suffering and abolishes the Vision Hunt Decree. The price surfaces afterwards: Miko bought the Traveler's life from Scaramouche with Ei's Gnosis — and the trail now points to Sumeru.

A miner's commission about strange hilichurl activity draws the Traveler and Paimon into the depths of the Chasm, where they discover an ancient Inverted City — and Dainsleif, stepping out of an Abyss portal mid-pursuit of an Abyss Herald. Speaking of himself at last, he reveals that "Twilight Sword" was his title as captain of Khaenri'ah's Royal Guard five hundred years ago, and that the Traveler's sibling was once his traveling companion, though they "did not make it to the journey's end together."

The hilichurls, they learn, are cursed Khaenri'ahns come to the Chasm to die, drawn by an ancient pool that eases the curse of immortality. Guarding them are the Black Serpent Knights — Dainsleif's former subordinates, minds long eroded, still obeying his last order to protect the people of Khaenri'ah — among them the elite guard Halfdan. A vision drawn from an Inteyvat flower exposes the sibling's plan: amplify the pool's power, strip the curse away, and "restore the homeland." Dainsleif deems the attempt doomed to inflict only greater agony, and the Traveler resolves to stop their own sibling.

When an Abyss Lector activates the amplification device, every cursed soul convulses in torment. Halfdan sacrifices himself to stall the machine; the Traveler defeats the Lector and destroys it. Halfdan's spirit exchanges final words with his old captain before passing on, and Dainsleif departs alone to trace the Abyss Order's next scheme — the Loom of Fate.