They say she came from the abyss.
Silkock – this name is like a drop of water dripping from a glacier, cold, pure, without a trace of extra temperature. You will not see impetuousness and enthusiasm in her, only the sharpness after extreme restraint. In her world, there is no romance and weakness, nor shoulders to rely on. There are only endless training, fighting, and an almost obsessive belief in strength.
She does not belong to the current Teyvat. She is more like a character abandoned by time, waiting to return in the distant darkness – like a dream that has been closed for many years and finally opened its eyes.
The update of version 5.7 made her appear in the card pool, a five-star character belonging to the ice element. Her skill mechanism is complex and precise, as if every action has been rehearsed in her mind thousands of times. She creates virtual cracks, and affects the flow of power between enemies and teammates in the reaction of freezing and ice diffusion. Every time a skill is released, it is like a quiet narration, unhurried, but step by step.
And I think of the relationship between her and the “Young Master”.
That was another name, called Tartaglia – the Ajax we are familiar with. At the age of fourteen, he accidentally fell into the abyss. Time tore him into pieces, and everything became unreal. And Si Ke Ke, the cold abyss warrior, became his only teacher. Three months of living together day and night, she didn’t have much warmth, but taught him all her martial arts and secrets.
This is not love. Not care. It is a more primitive connection. A mentor who believes in power, a test for a gifted boy.
After returning to the surface, Ajax became the “Young Master” we later knew. He looked for her traces more than once. But she never responded. She never belonged to anyone, including him.
This time, she returned as a character that players can extract, but it seems that she has never really returned.
Her combat mechanism and the new weapon “Cang Yao” are almost too well matched. That kind of precise sense of attack is addictive. The setting of the virtual rift seems to be the embodiment of the broken dreams deep in her heart. She needs to constantly absorb these broken things to maintain the energy of “Snake’s Cunning”. And this setting is somewhat metaphorical: her power comes from constantly harvesting the “traces” left by the past and others.
In the same pool, another new character also quietly appeared. He is Taliyah, a four-star water element character, the first water element shield supporter in the game. He provides shelter for the team and increases the attack speed of teammates with the increase of the upper limit of health. He is not sharp, nor is he as legendary as Silk. But he is like the gentle parts of life, silently existing, but irreplaceable.
One of them is sharp ice, and the other is soft water, which intersects in this summer version. And this intersection is quiet, restrained, and full of uneasy power.
All of this makes people feel a familiar illusion. It seems that they have always existed on the edge of this world, but we have not seen them until this moment.
Games are always like this. When you think everything has become repetitive and formulaic, it suddenly gives you a kind of concrete romance. And this romance is not the noisy showmanship and numbers, but the hidden structure behind the characters, the silent past and scars, and the feelings that rely on each other in the abyss but have never been promised.
In the finale of the deep corridor, the set of holy relics that seemed to be tailor-made for Silkock almost perfectly strengthened her attack rhythm in terms of mechanism. When the energy is zero, both the general attack and the big move will gain huge gains, but after triggering one of them, the other will be blocked for 6 seconds. It’s like a choice – between attack and restraint, between the present and the future, between nostalgia and severance.
These settings are not just numerical optimizations, but more like an extension of a certain emotional structure.
She is such a person. She does not allow herself to be vulnerable, nor does she allow herself to be influenced by anyone. She does not get close to anyone, nor does she really leave. She is lonely when fighting; in the story, too.
Will we be the same outside the game? We collect characters, brush relics, and pursue maximum values every day, but what we really want is a character who can understand our silence, a shadow who can quietly accompany us to brush dungeons in the middle of the night.
And Silk is such a shadow. Distant, indifferent, and deadly, but it really exists in a corner, quietly accompanying you until you are willing to look her in the eye.
This is not romantic love, nor is it a fateful bond. This is a mutual recognition between silent travelers. In this fragmented era, between one tug and one battle, we are all looking for someone who is willing to be silent with you.