Pixlriffs simply vanished from Empires Season 1 leaving us without knowledge on what happened to his character(yes I know that in real life this was because of his Survival Guide series), on top of that, we know Pixandria was not destroyed by the Grimlands explosion, so what it is very much possible that he survived. It's also shown that underneath Pixandria, there is a shrine that operates using totems of undying as fuel, so assuming that Pix survived the explosion, he was able to use the shrine to grant himself immortality. This could explain several a few things about season 2 Pix with them being

1) How he knows so much about the ancient history of this world that the others don't know

2) His yearning for preservation. He seeks to preserve the history of the world because it's his only remaining connection to his past as well as a form of guilt for failing to save his deceased friends

3) The consistency of his love for emerald ore