Tear Jerker / Stellaron Disaster AU

• The entire premise of this fanfiction. It's made clear that everyone in Teyvat, including the playable characters, are all dead with the exception of the Sole Survivor whose story we see unfold from their POV. Everyone is dead and gone and Teyvat is left a shadow of its former self with nothing but ruins left behind. And there is no way to come back from the sheer destruction that the Stellaron has wrought.
• Xiao. In recent years, he's developed from focusing solely on his duty of protecting Liyue to finally being able to live for himself. However in his story he becomes the sole survivor of the Stellaron Disaster who, after everyone else has died including the Archon who he devoted his life to, is simply going through the motions of fighting monsters because he no longer knows what else to do.
  • When Xiao is finally able to move on from Teyvat after remembering Zhongli's last words to him.
• Even though Zhongli has long died, from Xiao's flashbacks it hints that the Geo Archon began to despair in the face of his friends, people, and nation dying to the point that he says he doesn't want to survive to see or live through the aftermath. In the game, Zhongli's dream is for Liyue to be able to continue to prosper without him under the ruling power of humanity. Instead, thanks to the Stellaron, he sees his dream shatter completely as an endless wave of monsters kill his people and trample and desecrate his lands. And when he dies, he dies alone with no one to witness his death as Xiao only saw the aftermath. According to the Last Yaksha, the land mourned the Geo Archon more beautifully than he ever could.
• In Lingering Carmine where Hu Tao is the protagonist, the 77th Head of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlour, she is traveling Teyvat to help the ghosts who still linger in the destroyed Teyvat move on. For the most part she avoided helping the Vision Holders of Liyue because she wasn't ready to help those she personally knew move on quite yet.
• Xiao feels he failed his duty in protecting Liyue but he still lingers around to protect Hu Tao, who not only is the last living person in the world but the only remaining piece of Liyue he can still protect when he failed to protect everything else. It isn't until Hu Tao tells him that she's planning on traveling with the Astral Express that he says he will move on to the afterlife.