Archive of Our Own ^beta

there is no monster here, only the shape of
a falling star where your heart should be.

Natalie Wee

One.

Diluc stopped running when he got to the river. In all honesty, he should have stopped chasing his quarry long before that, but persistence was a trait that rewarded him just enough to keep the habit alive. He squinted blearily down the river, unlit despite the silvery fog that lingered over the surface, and decided it would be a bad idea to try crossing it.

Instead he reached for his compass, frowning when the needle swung drunkenly first in one direction and then the other, unable to decide which way was north.

Mondstadt, he knew, was to his south, but surely he couldn’t have run so far in half a day that a compass would stop working. Where was he, anyway? Concerns like directions tended to fade to the back while he hunted monsters; he always knew what direction those were in.

He looked at the silvery river again. He was thirsty and exhausted and hungry and worn out, and even if he managed to return to Mondstadt tonight there would be nothing for him there. It would be smarter to wait until morning and then chase down the Lector he'd been on the trail of; hopefully he’d find other things to kill on the way.

But for tonight he needed shelter.

He was a reasonably seasoned tracker, and not afraid of nights or forests. He hadn’t seen anything useful on his way here, though, so he considered his options and tucked the compass away before heading upstream. If nothing else he’d come to a tributary without the odd fog, and could drink some water there.

No such luck, however. He’d been walking for an hour when he realized that the river was leading him further north—as best as he could tell with a still nonfunctional compass—and by then it was too late to turn to another path. Nothing to it but to keep going. He kept trampling through the sparse undergrowth, grimly determined not to give up.

Another hour of walking, and he came to the source of the river. For a moment he was blinded by the sight of a high silver waterfall, glowing despite the dark of night. And behind that, silhouetted against the northern lights, a castle.

The spires and turrets were unmistakable, but Diluc seriously considered the idea that he’d ingested some of the weird water and was hallucinating now. A castle this far north felt nothing short of impossible.

Still, he scaled up the damp sides of the wall, trying not to lick his lips for the drops of water that sprayed onto his face and exposed skin from the force of the waterfall. He was so thirsty, and it had been so long since he’d eaten that his head was pounding. He’d fought under worse conditions, of course, but it never got easier. His whole body ached.

Thankfully, it wasn’t a particularly tall wall. He leapt off the other side into an overgrown garden, the smell of flowering plants assaulting his senses and making his eyes sting.

He stood up carefully, dusting himself off by habit. There was no point; his clothes were hopelessly dirty and damp to boot. He hesitated only for a moment before following the sound of a small fountain to the center of the garden. This water had none of the silvery quality of the river. He couldn’t convince himself of the need for caution; he dipped his head into the soft spray and made an embarrassing sound of relief as some of the soothing, cool water poured over his cracked lips and dry tongue. He scrubbed his face clean, failing to care about how dirty he was making the fountain, and shook the water out of his hair like a wet dog as he straightened to examine his surroundings again.

A narrow paved path wound away between the bushes and low trees, vines spilling across it in places and grass poking up between the stones. He followed it, stepping over the plants, until he came to a stone terrace.

He was pretty high up, he realized. He could see windmills in the distance.

Briefly curious, he pulled out his compass. It swung unsteadily and then pointed, with stupid confidence, in exactly the wrong direction. He shook his head and put it away. He didn’t think compasses could break, but what did he know?

He kept going along the terrace until he came to an opening; a wide pair of doors that led to a massive, darkened room.

It looked to be… a ballroom? Who was throwing balls in a place like this? He conjured a ball of fire over his hand and held it in front of himself as he wandered inside. There was a faint music echoing through the room, its notes indistinct but its cadence sweet and melancholy. He paused to listen, then shook his head and kept walking. He rounded the whole inside perimeter of the ballroom without finding anything of note. It was completely empty but for the chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling and the unremarkable landscape paintings on the walls.

“Looking for something?”

Diluc reacted on pure instinct; threw the witchlight in his hand, summoned his blade, and swung before he’d even got a good look at what he was swinging at.

“Oh,” the voice said softly. “Looks like you missed.” Diluc’s eyes darted around desperately, trying to see by the light of his blade, but there was only shadow and firesmoke. He lunged and swung again. “You’re a very rude guest, you know.”

“Guest?” Diluc growled, but he’d paused. The voice was smooth and entirely human, and between one blink and the next he could see the owner, a slender young person with a bright blue eye. “Who are you?”

“I should be asking the questions,” the young man said. “You’re quite inconsiderate. I’m Kaeya, and I live here. It’s my castle.” He smiled, and it was the friendliest smile anyone had directed at Diluc in years. He didn’t trust it at all. “Now, your turn. Start with your name, and then anything else you consider important.”

“Diluc,” Diluc said reluctantly. “I’m—I was a knight. From Mondstadt.”

“Mondstadt,” Kaeya said, his accent making the sounds sharper and smoother at once. “That’s quite a long way off.”

“I got here in about a day.”

Kaeya tilted his head like Diluc wasn’t making any sense to him. There was an unnerving air about him. His motions were birdlike, but when he stood still he seemed to dissolve. “How do you plan to go back?”

“I’ll… walk. Same way I got here.”

“Oh,” Kaeya said, and he sounded disappointed. “Well, it’s quite late at night, isn’t it? You can’t go back now. And your clothes are filthy.” He darted forward, and Diluc once again reacted without thinking, throwing up his arm to block Kaeya. For a moment they remained in lockstep, Kaeya’s transparent shock bleeding into the air and Diluc refusing to give in, until Kaeya melted back like a sulky child. “They’re torn,” he explained.

“Yeah,” Diluc said. “I can take care of that by myself.”

Kaeya shifted on his feet. “You’re very rude,” he said dully.

Diluc didn’t trust him. He fit too well in this gloomy castle, like a shadow come to life and given words. But… Kaeya hadn’t hurt him, and Diluc had another six hours to go before dawn. He could try to be a little nicer. “Sorry,” he said. It sounded unapologetic anway; he winced. “Thank you for the, uh. Castle. It’s nice.”

“Isn’t it?” Kaeya said, bright again. “It’s gorgeous. I’ll have to show you around sometime!” He threw Diluc a conspiratorial smile, like they were little kids and he was planning to sneak Diluc out of his lessons. “But well, it’s late, and you must be so tired.” He was talking faster and faster. “You’ll need a room to sleep in, of course, and fresh clothes, and—you haven’t eaten dinner yet, have you? I know it’s quite late, but one can’t have everything I suppose—”

“Shut up.”

“—and books, in case you can’t sleep at night—”

“Shut up,” Diluc snapped. Kaeya finally fell quiet, his eye wide. “You’re rambling.”

Kaeya looked confused.

“Just a room is fine. I don’t need anything else. I’ll hunt food for myself on the way back tomorrow.”

For a moment, Kaeya vanished. Some instinct burnt the image into Diluc’s mind right away; one second, Kaeya was there, looking helpless, and then he was gone, leaving behind nothing but darkness. And then he was back and Diluc was starting to feel crazy, truly crazy, like everyone back in Mondstadt had been absolutely right about him and it had taken this fucking fever dream for him to realize the truth too. 

“A room, right,” Kaeya said softly. “Come on.”

At a loss for other options, Diluc followed. He made sure to keep half a step behind Kaeya, his eyes pinned to his back. He ended up noting other things; the embroidered patterns across the shoulders of his white nightshirt, the way he walked so smoothly it looked like gliding. He tried to pay attention to their route too, but the castle was straightforwardly arranged in a grid and he was less worried about finding the way out than he should have been. Kaeya himself felt like a more pertinent threat.

Diluc could kill him.

It would have been very easy. Kaeya did not turn back as they walked, and Diluc was very fast and very quiet when he had to be. A burning blade to the back and whatever Kaeya was would be no more, though in Diluc’s experience monsters did not die so easily.

He curled his hand into a fist. Books, he reminded himself viciously. He wanted to give you books and you’d murder him in cold blood.

If the intent had been to summon up some guilt or remorse it didn’t work. Diluc couldn’t stop thinking about killing Kaeya the whole time, and it was a long walk, a full fifteen minutes up staircases and down wide dim corridors and all of it spent imagining the weight of his blade in his hand until he had to keep clenching and unclenching his fist to remind himself he didn’t yet have it. That it wasn’t real.

“Here we are,” Kaeya said at last, bright and inanely cheerful. Diluc thought about wringing his neck, and then dismissed the idea. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“Where do I find you?” Diluc asked, with inspired lack of wisdom.

Kaeya pushed the door open and gestured Diluc inside. “Just call my name, I’ll hear it.”

“How?” Diluc asked. “Aren’t you human?”

Kaeya vanished again. He was back a split second later, but he’d definitely vanished, or Diluc had drunk that silver water and was now a fucking nutcase. He was trying to keep his options open, but for fuck’s sake, he had no idea why his brain would come up with a vanishing person.

“Entirely so! But I have some very special tricks up my sleeve.” He threw Diluc a silly wink and backed out of the door. “I’ll see you in the morning. Try not to dirty any more of my fountains! There’s water on the bedside table.” He waved to Diluc and turned on his heel, gliding down the corridor. Diluc watched him without blinking the entire time, and he didn’t vanish even once before he turned a corner and was gone.

Diluc closed his eyes for a long moment.

The room was comfortable, if small and sparse. There was a crystal jug of water on the bedside table and a tray; when Diluc uncovered it, he found a simple dinner of bread and cheese and meat. Diluc had been lying about not wanting food; he was starving. There was a candle, unlit. Diluc pinched a spark to life at the wick and sat down heavily on the bed.

He wondered what that Lector was up to. Probably murdering cattle and performing dread rituals, whatever they did in their spare time. Filthy creatures.

In the morning, he’d find it. He could figure out how to find its trail again.

But tonight—there was a better meal than he’d had in a few months, busy as he’d been chasing down monsters to protect Mondstadt, never staying in one place for too long and sleeping outdoors when he did give in to the need for sleep. He ate mechanically until the food was over and fell into bed without undressing. His last thought before he fell asleep was wondering if he could perhaps bother Kaeya to arrange a bath.

/

Diluc woke up to sunshine.

He’d slept in later than he thought, but he was awake within seconds. The room looked a little more pleasant in the morning than it had at night. There was a painting of a fluffy tabby cat on one wall, curled up in an armchair, and a change of clothes was folded neatly on top of the dresser though Diluc had said he didn’t need it.

There was no breakfast. Diluc wondered if there were servants in this place, discomforted by the thought of silent strangers padding around him while he slept but even more put off by the consideration that this shit just happened.

He opened a door he hadn’t noticed last night and found a toilet and bathtub, and decided he didn’t actually care how this castle worked. A hot bath could make up for plenty of strangeness.

It was nearly an hour before he managed to drag himself out of the bathroom and get dressed in the fresh set of clothes: a soft shirt made of fine linen, pants that fit, new socks. Diluc was going to try really hard to steal these. But he eschewed the velvet gloves in favor of his own, fireproof, and decided he didn’t need the jacket, only clipping his Vision to his belt before heading out of his room.

His plan was to stay until midmorning, long enough for his clothes to be cleaned by whatever mysterious servants this castle had, and then leave. That would give him plenty of time to be in familiar territory before nightfall. For now, he wanted to find Kaeya.

It took a while—almost half an hour—before he came upon a half-open door and glimpsed Kaeya through the crack. He paused to collect his manners and rapped sharply.

“Come in,” Kaeya said. “Did you have trouble finding this place? I should have come to get you.”

The words were delivered in a monotone, with none of the sugary liveliness of the night. Diluc sat down at the table, which was empty but for a cup of tea and a few books. Kaeya himself looked absolutely exhausted, dull and dazed in the bright sunshine streaming in from the window.

“It’s fine,” Diluc said. “Are you sick?”

A smile flickered over Kaeya’s lips, quickly gone. “Tired, that’s all.” He pulled himself straight, expression clearing up. “Nothing you have to worry about. Do you prefer tea or coffee?” 

Diluc stared at him. “Coffee.”

A maid entered minutes later, bearing a tray piled high with breakfast. Diluc tried not to stare at her too, but she looked normal and natural and he felt suspicious of that in a place like this. She placed the tray down and unloaded the plates, pouring coffee for Diluc. “Sugar, sir?”

“I’ll manage that.”

“Thank you, Hillie,” Kaeya said, not looking at her. “We’ll be fine.”

“Didn’t know this place had servants,” Diluc said, picking up the sugar tongs. 

“Using magic for everything is a bit wasteful,” Kaeya sighed, and then tilted his head. “That is your third sugar cube.”

“Yes,” Diluc said, adding a fourth. “So?”

“Just wanted to let you know,” Kaeya said faintly. “Will you be leaving soon?”

“By midmorning.”

“Ah,” Kaeya sounded sad. “Will you come back?”

“No,” Diluc said. Kaeya looked so crushed by this, that for a moment Diluc considered staying. For fuck’s sake. Still, he tried to explain. “This castle is weird. I think you’re some kind of monster, and I can’t let you live if you are. But you’ve been hospitable, and I don’t want to kill you.” That was a lie, he very much did want to kill Kaeya if only to find out what color he’d bleed. But he was trying to be a little better than that urge.

He realized belatedly that that explanation could only make things worse.

“You’re right, of course,” Kaeya said wanly. “I am, as you surmised, some kind of monster.” His gaze drifted to the edge of the table. “And you probably should kill me.”

“No,” Diluc said forcefully. “Don’t say things like that. I just want to go back to Mondstadt.”

Kaeya vanished. In the daytime, Diluc could see a blur darkening the air where he had been, like the reflection of a shadow without a person to back it up. And then Kaeya was back, exactly as he’d been, but smiling now. “You never did tell me how you came to be in my castle,” he said. “But let me guess, you got lost?”

“My compass stopped working,” Diluc admitted, perplexed but unwilling to be the first to comment on the weirdness.

“Let’s see it,” Kaeya suggested, holding out his hand. Diluc put the compass on the table, letting Kaeya pick it up and turn it over and over, frowning slightly. “Tell me about yourself.”

Diluc couldn’t remember a single thing about himself. “I’m—I was a knight in the Ordo Favonius. A Captain, for a while. Then I did some things that—” An image flashed in his head, of houses burning. “I shouldn’t have done. And I said some things that made people very angry.” He shrugged. “Now I travel on my own, hunting monsters to keep Mondstadt safe. It’s all I can do.”

“Loyalty is an admirable trait in a Knight,” Kaeya said absently. “How much does it benefit a wanderer?” He held out the compass. “I got it to point to Mondstadt. You’ll always be able to find your way home, now.”

Diluc blinked. “I’d prefer for it to point north.”

“Oh,” Kaeya’s frown deepened. “There you go, then.” He handed it back. 

It pointed steadily in the right direction. 

“What,” Diluc exhaled. Shook his head. “What kind of monster are you?”

Kaeya didn’t reply.

/

Diluc reached Mondstadt by late evening. For once, the sight of the windmills and dandelions inspired no sense of sickening relief. At some cheap inn, he ate a dinner of gruel and washed it down with watered wine and found himself thinking still about that castle with its mysterious occupant. Suddenly curious, he took the compass—directing him north with unwavering certainty—and probed at it with fire, wondering if its magic would respond. The needle wavered but held to its direction.

He sighed and put it back in his pocket before he wound up breaking it.

Two. 

If Salome saw him like this, Diluc would never hear the end of it.

He thought that was the only thing keeping him going anymore. His mind was foggy with pain and the thick unforgiving stupidity of shock. He clutched his blade in one bloodied hand, afraid that if he dismissed it he wouldn’t be able to summon it again. He hadn’t lost so much blood that dying out here was a possibility—Parsifal had told him once that pyrogenes were like cockroaches. It took a lot to kill one. Diluc clung to that endorsement with grim faith, tactically ignoring that Parsifal had followed it up with a declaration that Diluc’s recklessness might just prove him the exception. 

What the fuck did Parsifal know? He was dead. If Salome saw him like this, he’d never hear the end of it— Ah. His thoughts were going in circles. That was always a bad sign.

He scrubbed at his clouded eyes with his free hand and looked blearily around himself. He’d gone north, further than he’d been before, chasing a pack of rifthounds that seemed even more dangerous than usual. At the end of that chase he’d found out just why that was the case; they were being dominated by an Abyss Mage attuned to pyro—between that and the electro of the hounds, he’d been knocked around a whole bunch before managing to lure the mage into a shallow pond to break its shield.

It was just light enough to see the oddly out-of-place spires and turrets of a grey castle, closer than he’d expected. He frowned. Calculating time and distance was a bit beyond him at this point, but—that strange creature had been reasonably friendly last time, hadn’t it?

Diluc didn’t like relying on the kindness of monsters. In his experience, they had none, but then—neither did he, by all accounts.

And god damn, his ribs hurt. He forced himself onwards.

This time he didn’t scale the wall, not trusting his core strength to do anything other than keep him barely upright. Instead he found the gates and applied raw pyro to the iron lock until it melted through and let him swing the gate on its creaky hinges.

Kaeya hadn’t complained much about him breaking in last time. Diluc hoped he wouldn’t mind this either. 

The front door opened just as he reached it. Kaeya was dressed ostentatiously, in sea-green and midnight blue, a fur cape draped around his shoulders. “Hello!” he said brightly. “You look absolutely awful.”

“I know.”

Kaeya moved aside to let him enter, then darted in before Diluc could stop him to wrap an arm around his torso. It was so abrupt and shocking that Diluc’s brain went blank for a second, caught between what the fuck and kill him now.

“You seem like you’re about to fall over,” Kaeya whispered, his cool breath washing over Diluc’s sick-hot cheeks. “No funny business, promise.”

“Don’t do that without warning me,” Diluc gritted out. “You could end up dead.”

“I am not so easy to kill, Diluc. Give me a little credit.”

Diluc stiffened, but allowed the support as they stumbled into the castle. He didn’t like the familiar ease of Kaeya’s tone. He didn’t like needing help. There was a significant part of him that was convinced Kaeya would kill him once he was inside, and he hated knowing that he was at the point of being too injured to effectively fight.

Kaeya laid him out on a sofa. Diluc made an embarrassing sound of pain when his injured ribs bumped into a cushion. The offending pillow was whisked away at once.

“It’s been a while since I’ve taken care of someone else who was wounded,” Kaeya mused. “And I am not dressed for this.”

When Diluc turned his head to look, Kaeya was wearing neat black. Diluc looked away at once, unable to deal with this shit at the moment. Moments later, a glass of water was held to his lips. He allowed Kaeya to trickle it into his mouth in small amounts, too worn out to issue a protest despite detesting the vulnerability.

“So what happened?” Kaeya asked.

Diluc took a moment to gather his words. “Rifthounds.” 

“Anything else?”

“Abyss Mage,” Diluc added grudgingly. “Why?”

Kaeya hummed. Magic coalesced suddenly, bright and cool around his hands—Diluc flinched and tried to jerk away from it, but there was nowhere to go. It poured over his skin and into his injuries like rain. And then it was over, leaving behind the lingering scent of water lilies and a strange sensation that Diluc took a moment to identify as the absolute lack of pain.

“You’ll feel better now,” Kaeya said, sounding satisfied. “Though you still look tired. Magic can’t mend it all, I’m afraid.”

Diluc slumped, giving up. “I’m tired,” he admitted, closing his eyes.

“I can feel how deep it runs,” Kaeya said conversationally. “When I heal you.”

“Don’t fuck with people like that.”

He sensed it when Kaeya vanished, a brief ripple in the air, before he was back. “I can hardly help it,” he huffed. “Besides, I don’t have to feel it with magic. It’s obvious.” 

The couch changed, becoming wider, the arm under Diluc’s head becoming softer and fluffier. He flailed stupidly before realizing that they were somewhere entirely different—a room, more ostentatious than the one from last time, and he was lying in a proper bed. Even his clothes had been changed into soft linen nightwear. “I thought using magic for everything is wasteful.” 

“You have a good memory,” Kaeya laughed. “I said that, didn’t I? Well, lately I find that I have a lot of magic lying around and little to use it on. I guess I’m bored.”

“Get a hobby,” Diluc groused.

“Magic is my hobby,” Kaeya said conspiratorially.

This whole situation was bizarre. Diluc was in the clutches of some fucking—foppish half-wizard half-monster—and he was making what amounted practically to small talk. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had such a long conversation without money changing hands in some way. He had a new headache.

“Any chance of your magic producing a meal?” he said, against his better judgement.

Kaeya snapped his fingers, causing a tray piled with food to appear on the bed. Diluc sat up slowly, reeling at the variety. “I didn’t know what to make last time, so I opted for simplicity, but since we’re both here perhaps you can tell me your preferences.”

“I just like food,” Diluc said honestly. His life wasn’t conducive to preferences more specific than unmoving and nontoxic. This was going to be the best meal he’d had since he was a child.

“You’re a strange one,” Kaeya said, drifting the tray into Diluc’s lap.

Pot, kettle, Diluc thought, but he elected to stuff his face rather than attempt a response. Every time he was done with a dish, it melted away, and a fresh one from the next course took its place. It must have taken a tremendous amount of magic to keep up, but Kaeya had located a book and was reading with his feet propped on the edge of the bed, idly twirling a coin between his fingers, not at all paying attention.

Many years ago Diluc had run into a Snezhnayan Virtuer—though the Snezhnayans called them something else—who had made it a point to betray no sign of effort as she spun seemingly endless Hydro into waves for her ship. But nothing about Kaeya pointed to a similar deliberate arrogance. Unlikely as it seemed, Kaeya was simply that powerful.

Kaeya noticed Diluc staring at him and looked up, smiling. “Had enough?”

“I’m full,” Diluc replied. “What are you? Some kind of wizard or…” Kaeya disappeared, and Diluc abandoned the line of questioning. He would have to come to his own answers later. “Nevermind.”

A moment later, Kaeya reappeared. He looked a touch self-conscious. “I hope the incorporeality does not put you out,” he said, when Diluc looked at him hard enough that he couldn’t pretend Diluc hadn’t seen that.

“It’s crazy,” Diluc said flatly. “It doesn’t upset me, though, if that’s what you’re asking.” It only made him want to kill Kaeya. Did that count as upsetting?

“Alright,” Kaeya said, hesitant. “I can’t help it. I’m trying to be better, though.”

This had nothing to do with Diluc. “Fine.” He realized a moment too late what Kaeya had been getting at, and adjusted his expectations. “Why does it happen? The vanishing?”

“Because I’m nervous,” Kaeya answered at once. “It’s been a long time since I really spoke to people.”

Diluc shook his head. That explained a lot. “How long?”

“I have no idea, frankly… A few years now, I believe.”

“A few years,” Diluc said carefully. “And you’ve been in this castle all that time?”

“More or less,” Kaeya said, sounding unconcerned.

“I don’t understand,” Diluc said under his breath, and then, “Are you cursed? Trapped here somehow?”

“Cursed?” Kaeya echoed. “Trapped? No, I—of course I am not trapped,” he sounded indignant. “I was told not to leave this place for my own safety. The outside world is a dangerous place.”

“It is,” Diluc agreed. “So why did you let me simply enter this castle? You have enough magic to stop me, don’t you?”

“Why would I stop you?” Kaeya asked blankly.

A sense of surreality had descended over Diluc. “You live here,” he explained, trying to be patient. “The world outside is terrible. But you just allow strangers to waltz in—or am I special?”

“You’re the only person who’s ever come back,” Kaeya said, fumbling over the words. “It’s not like—people do come here! Just not often! And they’re usually lost, so I try to help them get home.” He waved his hand, blurring at the edges. “It’s dangerous outside. You’re in here, aren’t you? Here it’s safe.”

Diluc gawked at him.

“Right?” Kaeya said, small and uncertain.

“No,” Diluc snapped. “You’re an idiot. Anyone could come here.”

“I like when people come here,” Kaeya whined.

Diluc groaned. He really had no choice, did he? “I’ll come back,” he said. “To make sure you haven’t been kidnapped and sacrificed by Abyss Mages, if nothing else.”

Kaeya flinched a little, but grinned. “I knew you’d come around,” he said, doing that silly one-eyed wink again. Diluc wondered if he’d been manipulated somehow. “Well, now that that’s settled, you better sleep! Your body needs to rest.”

The lights went out, and Kaeya vanished. Diluc closed his eyes.

/

There was a bath drawn and waiting when he went to relieve himself the next morning, with powdery pink soap in a fired clay pot on the rim. There was even a large mirror set against the wall. Diluc eyed it warily, then undressed without looking. But he couldn’t avoid it as he settled into the bathtub.

Startled, he reached up to touch the scars that should have laced over his body—the deep scores in his shoulder where Ursa the Drake had mauled him, the frostbitten skin in his upper arm from an Icevine’s tendrils, all the evidence of countless injuries sustained and never properly healed. The scars weren’t entirely gone but they didn’t even twinge when he touched them, as though the underlying wound had been perfectly healed. He turned and craned his neck to check his back—the scars there were almost invisible, no longer tense with ropy tissue.

Only the burns that crisscrossed his hands and wrist remained, though they were fainter than before and his muscles gave no protest when he flexed his fingers. How far had Kaeya’s healing reached—and why? It took no small skill to heal an open wound, and even greater to heal old ones. He hadn’t asked for this.

He dressed in his own clothes and made to leave, but Kaeya ran into him almost deliberately as he was going down a flight of stairs for what he was sure was the third time. “You healed everything,” Diluc said accusatorily, the moment he saw him.

“Well, yes,” Kaeya said, all innocence. “Should I not have?”

Diluc did feel better than he had in about a decade, but it was the principle of the thing. “Don’t do things like that,” he said uselessly.

Kaeya gave him a curious look. “Can I at least walk you out?”

“Fine.” 

So Kaeya guided Diluc all the way to the gate, clucking in disapproval when he saw the destroyed lock. He twisted a small copper key out of the air and held it out to Diluc. “Use this next time.”

What next time? “You’re too trusting,” Diluc told him. “And if I come back with an army?”

“I can deal with an army,” Kaeya said easily.

“And if I come with Allogenes and Virtuers? What then?”

“I could handle them,” Kaeya said, his self-confidence deeply irritating. “Don’t worry about me, Diluc. Use the key.”

Diluc pocketed it, still unconvinced, and pushed the gate open to leave.

“When will you come back?” Kaeya called from behind him.

“When I have the time,” Diluc replied shortly, and walked away without looking back.

Three.

Despite his intention of keeping his promise, life took over the minute he was back in Mondstadt. The trial of a witch was a biannual spectacle that Diluc loathed with every fibre of his being; he remembered when he’d been seventeen and they’d executed an astrologer for her forecasts. The witches were always found guilty, naturally, and the whole city was forced to attend whether they wanted to or not.

For the past eight years, Diluc had taken it upon himself to help free the unfortunate women that had been branded a witch. He may have attained near-pariah status amongst common people, but there were a few who accepted him long enough to work on this goal.

He caught up with Marian to discuss their heist plan for this year. Her ability to foresee the future was limited but deeply useful, the urgency of their rescue mission spanning across the network of the resistance. The girl on trial this month was young—too young, no older than sixteen, branded a witch for having a pet bird that spoke in a human voice and called her a princess. Diluc’s days were consumed by executing the parts of the plan allocated to him; figuring out a route to smuggle her out of the city and a ship to whisk her to the neighboring country, where she could lie low. Salome would disguise her and extract her, while Marian ensured that their plan had no holes.

There was no time to think about Kaeya. There was no time.

In the aftermath—Renee was safely on a ship, and Diluc’s heart still hadn’t slowed down—Salome surveyed their faces and dragged them to her townhouse. During the day she was a Virtuer-slave in a noble household. Diluc never asked her how she kept her mask in place, or how she had risen to her position; she always seemed tired. The resistance tried to know as little about each other as possible—intimacy was painful when one of them could be captured and tortured, and usually he would have declined the invitation. But he was tired too.

Salome poured drinks. Diluc declined. Marian curled up in a comfortable armchair, staring off into space with a hollow expression and sipping at her wine.

When Parsifal had been with them, victory had always seemed like it was around the corner. With him gone, it seemed further every day. Sometimes Diluc thought the resistance was whittled down to holding on, holding on until another generation took their place. None of them had that fatal fervor for revolution that had driven Parsifal.

As for Salome herself—years ago, she had asked him how come Barbatos—gentle and drawn to freedom as the winds to the plains—never came for his people. He would rather have died than abandon his people, right?

Who says that’s the only choice? Diluc had countered. Maybe he gave up on us.

I don’t think he would, Salome had said. He must be trapped somehow.

How do you trap a god? Diluc said. He must be dead. It’s up to us.

But Salome’s faith was unshakeable. “So,” she said now, in an attempt at cheerfulness. “Any prophecies for us, Marian?”

Years ago when Marian had been on trial Crepus had used his wealth and resources to hire a lawyer for her, though it was futile when the outcome was set in stone from the moment a witch was selected. When that hadn’t worked he’d snuck her out. She’d stayed in their house for three months until her arrest warrant expired, then came back under a new name. The first rescue, proof that it could be done. After Crepus’s death, Diluc had maintained the tradition.

“None for you,” Marian said sourly. “That I haven’t told you already.”

“And for him?” 

“I’ll pass.”

Marian swirled her drink with one finger. “If you get a chance to be happy, you should take it,” she said. “Not that you’ll listen to me now, will you?”

There would be no such chances for Diluc, he knew, so he said “You know me so well,” and took his leave of Salome’s townhouse, wandering down the streets and ducking around patrols by instinct. He’d memorized their unchanging routes years ago.

He dealt quietly with a man harassing a child in an alley, managing to get away before they could ask him any questions, and scaled the wall out of Mondstadt.

It was nice to be out of the city proper.

He spent a week hunting around the canyon, killing bands of hilichurls and the occasional Stormeye, trying to avoid the inevitable.

But he’d felt that tug northwards for the past month and a half. There was only so long he could procrastinate. He took every detour he could on the way and only managed to extend the journey by a week, his stomach tight and heavy with something uncomfortably close to anticipation.

The grey castle.

It seemed smaller than usual. Perhaps it was the high walls that surrounded it, dwarfing its frontal facade, or simply some trick of the eye. He slid that copper key into the lock and slipped inside. It was autumn—the wild grass of the grounds was turning brown and yellow in patches, wildflowers retreating against the cold.

The door opened the minute he put his hand on it, swinging into a wide, echoing empty room. Kaeya didn’t come out to greet him.

He took the first door to his left and walked down a narrow corridor, doors at even intervals to his right. He tried one or two of them but none of them opened, even when he tried the copper key. Too much to hope that Kaeya would give him such unfettered access. It was a bit of a relief. Maybe he wasn’t as stupid as Diluc had thought.

The corridor was a dead end. He traced his steps back and opened the door into a room that wasn’t the entryway—it looked like some elaborate sitting room, furnished in an unfamiliar style. Diluc trailed his hand over carved wood, opening doors and stepping through them at random.

Out of one he stepped into the garden he’d seen the first time he came to the castle, every flower and plant withered and dead. The fountain was dry. Down another he came to a room meant to store furniture, strange shapes shrouded by dusty cloth. Two corridors and a hallway full of paintings with their eyes scratched out and he came to a vast library, but when he pulled a book off the shelf and opened it the pages were blank and empty.

His heart was beating very fast.

“Kaeya?” he called out hesitantly. “Are you here?”

An indistinct sound echoed in the distance, a high-pitched peal. Diluc dropped the book and raced towards it. Some doors opened as he ran past them—he took every one, not caring that he might get lost.

Corridors, staircases, rooms full of antiques melting into the ground. He didn’t stop to look, though he summoned his greatsword and let flame spark down the edge.

A new door opened, a door Diluc could have sworn he’d run past already. Momentum carried him over the threshold even as some final shred of self-preservation in the back of his head screamed about the blackness that lay beyond, the way it could have plunged him off a cliff without him knowing.

But there was ground under his feet, shifting like mud in a flooding river. He couldn’t see past the tip of his sword. The darkness clung to his skin and whispered without words.

“Kaeya?” he said again. The pitch swallowed up the sound.

Then a scream shattered the thick silence. Diluc abandoned his scruples and sprinted forward blindly. This is it, he thought. I have to kill him now.

It was so dark he couldn’t see the walls, nor any light but that of his claymore. And then, without warning, the blackness splintered off into grey, letting his fire show him more of the room he was standing in. It looked like it was underground, pillars holding up a ceiling so low he would’ve bumped into it if he stood on his toes. Rotted tapestries covered the walls. The smell of damp saline earth hung in the air, unpleasant.

He could hear someone crying.

Diluc stepped carefully over a deep crack in the floor, searching for the origin of the sound. A round doorway led into a smaller room with a shallow depression at the center. More deep cracks spiraled across the floor around the depression, forming letterlike shapes.

The crying got louder. It sounded like a child.

Was this some kind of puzzle? He couldn’t see anyone here, and he didn’t trust the castle to not produce sounds simply to trap him and throw him off. There was no evidence that there was a child. He hardened his heart and kept going, still searching for the sound. Some instinct wanted him to avoid that depression.

But perhaps…

He stepped into it.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then something fell into him, light, and he raised his hands to push it away but ended up touching something almost solid.

A body.

Kaeya.

He was crying.

Diluc couldn’t think of anything to say, now that he was here. He had a lot of questions. Kaeya wasn’t in a position to answer any of them. He let Kaeya lean against him, raising his free hand to keep him steady.

Kaeya was holding a knife loosely, its edge brown with dried blood. Had he killed someone? Diluc pried the knife out of his fingers and he let it go without protest, jerking into a fresh round of sobs when Diluc tossed it into a corner of the room. “Kaeya,” Diluc tried. “What happened here? Did you kill someone?”

More sobbing. Diluc sighed.

It took about ten minutes for Kaeya to finally subside into shaky gasps. “I hope it wasn’t too much trouble to find this place,” he mumbled.

“It was,” Diluc said. “Your castle’s going crazy.”

Kaeya exhaled heavily. “Did you get hurt?”

“No,” Diluc said. It was true. Nothing in the castle had hurt him. That darkness had been disturbing, nothing more. “Did you?”

“You could say that,” Kaeya giggled, hysteria edging his voice. “It’ll be a while before I’m…corporeal again.”

Diluc blinked. He hadn’t really noticed in the dimness, but Kaeya was practically translucent, his edges blurring into the background. Touching him should have been as impossible as holding water.

“I’ll be alright,” Kaeya added. “It just takes a while for the body to regenerate.”

“And the castle?”

“A little longer.” Kaeya tried to pull away, but Diluc wasn’t letting go so easily. “I’ll wait until I’m better to replenish my magic. If I do it now, I might vanish entirely.” He giggled again. “That happened once. It took a year for me to come back.”

Diluc’s head hurt something fierce.

He helped Kaeya back upstairs. The castle had calmed down and led them unerringly to a ridiculously comfortable room, all thick sheets and embroidered curtains. Kaeya stumbled to the bed on his own and collapsed entirely, looking exhausted and smokey. Diluc dithered, uncertain. “What happened?” he asked again. “To make you so…”

“Oh,” Kaeya said, voice low. “A man came while you were gone. A Sunspot had attacked his home—it nearly killed his family. They were still alive, but only just. He wanted my help, that’s all, so how could I refuse?”

“You’re nearly dead.”

“Not permanently,” Kaeya said absently. “Besides, there were—six of them? His parents, his wife, and their three children. It’s a lot more effort than healing some cracked ribs and a few years worth of unchecked scarring, you know!”

“I believe you,” Diluc said, angry for no reason. “I don’t know a single healer who could bring people back from the brink of death. So the question is, how did you?”

Kaeya opened his eye. It was the most solid part of him, that chip of irreplicable blue. “A life for a life.”

“You sacrificed other people for his family?” Diluc demanded. He didn’t know a lot about magic, but he knew that. You couldn’t sacrifice an ant for a cat, or a cat for a person.

“No,” Kaeya said, like Diluc was being obtuse. He pointed at himself. “A life,” he enunciated.

Diluc felt a wave of horror so strong he took half a step back. “Six times,” he muttered, trying and failing to grapple with this. “How are you still here?”

Kaeya rolled over and buried his head in the pillow. “Painfully.”

“Shit,” Diluc said, at a loss for other words. “Fuck.” He walked out, closed the door quietly, and punched the wall so hard he felt it jar horribly, satisfyingly, all the way to his shoulder. “Fuck,” he said again, to no one in particular, then shook his hand out impatiently and headed for the staircase. “Where’s the kitchen in this godforsaken place?”

He found it about thirty seconds later and set himself to making a tray with one hand, bread and cured meat and soft goat cheese. A bottle of wine slid itself over to the edge and he took that too, along with some strange pink pastry and a bowl of something that smelled like concentrated herbs that sloshed aggressively at him until he accepted it. And then it kept sloshing, soaking into the bread, until he tried to vaporize it with his still-injured hand and instead experienced a wave of pain relief as his fingers touched the surface. 

He rolled his eyes. Idiot castle. But he soaked his hand until the throbbing in his knuckles had quietened to the dullness of almost-healed bruises and took the tray back to Kaeya’s room.

Kaeya was fast asleep, curled up on his side with an arm thrown over his eyes to block the light. Diluc exhaled deeply to himself, hunted around for a comforter and tucked it around him. He was unaccustomed to the too-real feeling clogging his throat: a tenderness for whatever Kaeya was, for his magic and his kindness and his castle full of doors that always opened for Diluc. He hated this feeling. He wanted to dig pits full of fire around this castle so no one could ever get in here and hurt Kaeya. 

He didn’t want another lost cause to care about. He had enough already. But he sat in the armchair next to the bed and read a book whose pages filled with words as he turned them and no sooner, a helpless spark of hope awakening in his heart.

Four.

Kaeya slept for a long time. Diluc checked once or twice to make sure he was still breathing, and he always was—he stirred a little when Diluc touched him but seemed entirely too exhausted to bother with waking up. Diluc reminded himself that he’d died six times and left him alone. 

He occupied himself reading—more books appeared whenever he reached for them—for a day or two before his body protested the lack of activity and he went to explore the rest of the castle. Despite the deceptively straight lines in which it was laid out, the layout of the castle seemed to shift and change without rhyme or reason. 

Out of one window he saw the white-capped peaks of Dragonspine, clouds circling the peak. But the window next to that one overlooked the sea, and when he went back to check the first window it wavered for a moment between the shoreline and the mountains before a decision was reached. He stuck his head out and smelled salt and the clear wet air of the sea.

“What a weird place,” he grumbled, and when he pulled his head in it went black like it was sulking. He walked around in circles after that for fifteen minutes no matter how many stairs he climbed, until he swore under his breath and said out loud, “Sorry.” It hurt physically to apologize to thin air. “Can I see the fucking garden now?”

Apparently satisfied, the castle led him down a new corridor that opened into a terrace. He quickened his footsteps, eager for real fresh air, but the wall closed up right as he reached it.

“What the fuck?” A small window opened up to his right, letting him glimpse the garden—grey and withered and dead. “Are you embarrassed?” he asked incredulously. “I don’t care that the grass isn’t green!”

The wall opened up again, somewhat sheepishly.

He stalked through, rolling his eyes. The garden was in an absolute state. It wasn’t just the grass. It looked like a storm had ripped through the place. The stone bench was overturned, the fountain dry and cracked down the middle. He felt an odd sadness at the sight. It was like the castle had panicked as Kaeya died over and over and tried to pour life back into him. He wondered if it had helped at all. He couldn’t look down on it for trying; there hadn’t been anyone else lining up to take care of Kaeya.

Diluc turned the bench the right way over and walked back inside. “Kaeya,” he said out loud. A door opened down the corridor to his left.

Kaeya was awake at last, sitting up and blinking blearily at his surroundings. “Hello,” he said, as though surprised to see Diluc. “You stayed.”

“Of course I did,” Diluc frowned. “How are you?”

“Solider and solider,” Kaeya said, with what Diluc could suddenly identify as fake cheer. “I can almost hold a glass of water now.” He smiled ruefully. “Not quite.”

Diluc poured a glass and sat down on the bed, holding it to his lips. Kaeya allowed him to trickle water down his throat in small gulps, turning his head away once he was done. Even this little exertion seemed to have tired him again.

“I really did think you would have left by now,” he said slowly. “What were you doing? Were you bored?”

“So what if I was?” Diluc asked, irritated. “You died half a dozen times, worry about that.” He paused, trying to sort through the annoyance. “Your castle is very…interesting.”

“Ah,” Kaeya said. “Tell me what you found.”

Diluc told him about the bowl of antiseptic, the strange windows, the garden. Kaeya didn’t interrupt him even once. Diluc trailed off in the middle of a conjecture about the castle, embarrassed by the way he’d gone on and on without stopping. He usually didn’t talk so much. “Did you make this place?”

Kaeya thought deeply before answering. “Magic has its own weight, yes? The more there is of it lying around, unused, the more it attracts sentience and comes alive. My magic is what…pulled this place together. But it is a separate creature, not an extension of me, though we draw from each other so much now that I’m sure the distinction is purely academic.” He waved a hand vaguely and the curtains swished open, letting in daylight. “It’s a lovely place to live, which is the important thing, even if it does have a tendency to eat small birds.”

“Small birds,” Diluc muttered. “Don’t tell me.”

“Rats, too,” Kaeya said, frowning. “Oh, alright.”

“What,” Diluc asked. 

Kaeya ignored him, hauling himself out of bed with visible strain. He half-drifted, half-limped to the door, which refused to open until he snarled a word in an unfamiliar language at it and it vanished with a sickening crack. Kaeya clutched the doorway for a second, swaying, then squared his shoulders and kept going.

Diluc followed after him. “Where d’you think you’re going?” he inquired.

“Not far,” Kaeya answered shortly. He could be surprisingly evasive when he wanted. Every door resisted him, but he destroyed them unhesitatingly if they hesitated too long. It was a concerning display of raw strength from a man who was having trouble staying on his feet.

They ended up at the entrance of the castle, and this time Kaeya didn’t even bother arguing with his house—he just turned into smoke and slipped under the threshold, leaving Diluc to try the handle. It swung open easily for him. Kaeya was almost at the gate already, visibly translucent in the bright light of day.

“Your wizard is an idiot,” Diluc told the house. It shuddered angrily under his fingers.

By the time he reached the gate, Kaeya was already talking to someone. “—the poultices,” he was saying. “You’re sure you boiled it in an iron skillet?”

“Yes,” the young woman he was talking to said. “And I tried straining it with powdered lampgrass, which was the other thing you recommended, and qingxin, which grandma used to swear by. None of it’s working. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

“It’s not your fault,” Kaeya said, earnest and impressively opaque. “The human body is remarkably resilient, but remarkably fragile too. Hello, Diluc.”

“Get back inside,” Diluc said without preamble. He ignored the woman.

Kaeya rolled his eye. “This is Esther,” he said pointedly. “She’s the witch for a village nearby. And this rude oaf is Diluc, a recent acquisition.”

Acquisition, Diluc mouthed incredulously. Rude oaf?

“Anyway,” Esther said, ignoring this entirely. “I was hoping you’d take a look—”

“No,” Diluc snapped. “Absolutely not.”

Esther eyed him with distaste. “What is he, some sort of groundskeeper?”

“I am not,” Diluc began.

“Yes,” Kaeya cut in. “And of course, just give me a few minutes to get a scryglass set—”

“He’s not coming,” Diluc said, shouldering Kaeya aside. “He’s unwell.”

“Looks perfectly well to me.” Esther tried to peer at Kaeya around Diluc. He blocked her line of sight without moving, folding his arms across his chest. “What is your problem? I have a couple back at the village that’s sick and the woman’s pregnant, this is an emergency—”

“Are they dying?” Diluc demanded. 

“Not yet,” Esther snapped back. “It won’t take him a minute, he’s like a hundred times more powerful than I am.”

“And how far away is your village?” Kaeya was prodding his back. “An hour? Two hours? I know there aren’t any villages truly near here. Do you want him to walk or fly? He was bedridden until half an hour ago. Have a care what you ask for—what is it, Kaeya?”

Kaeya shrank back the moment Diluc swung around, having lapsed back into translucency. “She walked all this way,” he said, voice small. “I can make a potion at least.”

Diluc threw up his hands. “Fine,” he growled. “Come in,” he added to Esther, who had gone a little white less from Diluc’s tirade than the sight of a wispy Kaeya.

“I’ll wait out here,” Esther said quickly.

“Wasn’t asking.”

They trooped back into the castle. Kaeya snapped his fingers at it and demanded an alchemist’s laboratory, but it refused to oblige until he unleashed a stream of threatening words in that unfamiliar language he’d used earlier. Then it acquiesced, albeit grudgingly, opening a door into a dusty room with high ceilings and birchwood panels lining the walls. Kaeya jerked a little at the sight but his footsteps didn’t slow. Esther folded herself into a corner to watch, wringing her wool skirt in her hands and glancing nervously around herself like she expected the house to eat her.

Kaeya went to work immediately. Diluc watched him for a moment and then sighed. “I suppose you’d better give us lunch,” he murmured to the walls.

Three plates covered in napkins appeared on an empty lab table. Diluc lifted the corner of one and found soup and some kind of colorful salad. The second plate held a sandwich and grape jelly. He picked that up and nodded at Esther. “There’s food.”

She squeaked. He clearly didn’t frighten her as much as the house did. “It won’t like, trap me here, will it?” she asked anxiously. “If I eat it?”

“What kind of fairytale do you think this is?” Diluc replied. “It’s just food.”

“You never know, with wizards,” Esther muttered.

Diluc would have concurred a few months ago. “I’ve eaten here and left this place without trouble,” he said. “I doubt the castle likes you enough to keep you, anyway.”

“Gods, you do not mince words,” she huffed. But she lifted both napkins and also left the soup alone. The third plate was some sort of heavily spiced rice dish. “Hey, are you a groundskeeper? Only, he says stuff sometimes and I realized it’s just to make people stop asking.”

“No,” Diluc said. He put the last tray on Kaeya’s table, and didn’t even receive a glance for his trouble. “I’m from Mondstadt.”

Her eyes widened. “Really?” she said. “My uncle went there once. He said it’s beautiful.”

“It’s pretty,” Diluc said, though he was thinking about the rats. “Do you want to go?”

“I’d like to,” Esther sighed. “I heard they kill witches, though.”

“They do. You can do magic if you’re a Virtuer—anyone with magic who trained in the Church of the Anemo Archon is called a Virtuer—but you can only use it in service of the Crown.”

“That sounds barbaric.”

Diluc was about to agree, when he heard Kaeya hiss. He turned around. Kaeya was holding a bloodied silver knife in one hand and holding his other wrist over a glass flask. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Don’t be precious,” Kaeya said briskly. “It’ll heal.” He tapped the table impatiently with the back of the knife until a roll of white bandages appeared. “Ah, there.” He bound his wrist efficiently with one hand, tied it off with his teeth, and poured the blood in the flask into a softly-spluttering cauldron balanced over a pale blue flame. It went quiet. He poured all the contents into two bottles, one red and one yellow, both of which were half-full already. “Here you go. The yellow one for the mother—watch her for fatigue, though it’s common in pregnancies, she shouldn’t be sleeping for over half the day.”

“And the man? Do I watch him too?”

“Not necessary,” Kaeya said. “It’s a matter of potency—the yellow bottle is medicine for two people, but being processed essentially by a single body.”

“That makes sense,” Esther nodded. “Thanks.” She put her half-eaten lunch aside and pocketed both bottles. “How much do I pay you?”

“Don’t be silly,” Kaeya said easily. “Get back home safely, that’s all. Diluc, walk her out, would you?”

“Are you going to fall over?” Diluc asked bluntly.

Kaeya set himself to cleaning up the table in a way that made it clear that question would not be answered. Diluc watched him for a moment before giving up and walking out with Esther. 

“You said he was unwell,” she said, once they were out of the castle. “What happened to him?”

Diluc hesitated. “I don’t really know.”

Esther hummed. “Can’t he heal himself?”

“I… I don’t know.”

She shrugged. “That’s blood magic for you,” she said succinctly. “I live in Riven Cross—it’s about two hours that way.” She pointed east. “I’ll be going now.”

“Okay,” Diluc said. He watched her tramp off into the woods and went back inside, to the laboratory. Kaeya was nowhere to be seen, and he wondered briefly why the castle hadn’t taken him directly to the bedroom, when he heard a soft coughing sound.

Kaeya was a shadow in a corner. He slumped weightlessly into Diluc when he reached out, so immaterial Diluc could barely hold him. “I can walk,” he whispered.

“Shut up,” Diluc suggested.

“Bully,” Kaeya was wavering with every syllable. Diluc didn’t bother replying, half-dragging Kaeya up the stairs. But he dissolved into smoke before they were even halfway there. “Kaeya?”

“Here,” something murmured. Diluc couldn’t be sure where it had come from.

He searched for Kaeya in the cracks and under lamps without any luck. Finally, a door opened for him and led him to what the castle had designated as Diluc’s room. He wanted to keep looking, but the sight of that bed reminded him how poorly he’d been sleeping of late. He crawled in intending to take only a nap and passed out right away.

Five. 

Kaeya didn’t come back that day or the next. Diluc read until he couldn’t read anymore, then explored another section of the castle. Bored, he tried his hand at gardening—the castle obligingly offered up all the right tools. He caught up on sleep. He searched for Kaeya.

He tried to find that room he’d found his first day back, with the hole in the ground and the runelike cracks that he now suspected were meant to carry blood. But the castle refused to take him there again. He couldn’t very well argue with it so he gave up, but he kept an eye out for anything similar.

In the meantime he found out that the castle could play chess, and it could hold its own against him. He won two rounds out of five, but there was only so long he could do that too.

He wanted Kaeya to come back. It was silly—he’d spent far longer without company. Except, he hadn’t really appreciated how easy it was to talk to Kaeya. He carried most of the conversation, letting Diluc weigh in only when he had something to say, but he also managed to draw opinions out of Diluc that Diluc would ordinarily have had no trouble keeping to himself. He missed that. He missed the sight of Kaeya, clever and elegant and shadowy and far too kind to strangers.

A woodsman came to the gate a week later. Diluc went to deal with it, half-convinced it would be another request for some magic only Kaeya was capable of. It turned out to be a nest of vishaps that were raiding cattle and wolves alike, a problem Diluc was relieved to take over.

He spent a couple of days hunting and slaughtering vishaps, after which he was pleasantly exhausted but unpleasantly covered in sticky green blood. He cleaned off in a lake and caught some fish. It was dark by the time he reached the castle, struck by the arresting sight of all the windows lit from within.

Music echoed through every room he made his way through, all of them golden, but Kaeya was nowhere to be found. It was strange and dreamlike, all that beauty and no one to see it.

Was it the castle or Kaeya himself? He asked, but received no answer. 

That night his dreams weren’t his own—full of men and women in fine and elaborate clothes, their lips cracked and their cheeks hollow, dancing in precise circles down every floor until they swept out of the castle and into the river. He woke up and went out onto the balcony that gave him a clear view of the waterfall and wasn’t surprised at all to find that it, too, was golden tonight. In the morning he would wonder if it was some trick of the light but in the clear night under the stars with eyes that still ached for sleep it all seemed perfectly real and natural. He wanted to go out and stand in the river until he, too, was gold from within, but he went back to bed without giving it any further thought.

He woke up in time for lunch—fish stew—and Kaeya still wasn’t there. Diluc hadn’t really expected him either. He thought, once or twice, about going back to Mondstadt for a few weeks. He never did. Every time he considered it seriously he thought about Kaeya saying, you stayed? astonished and heartbreakingly lonely. Diluc didn’t want to inspire that surprise again.

That evening, between dinner and midnight, he heard a childlike crying around the corners. He was oddly certain that it was Kaeya, somehow, and he went looking for the source but it eluded him. The castle only brought him back to his own room.

“Is he alright?” he asked.

A black pawn fell over on the chessboard that lived on a table near the window. Diluc sighed. It didn’t get any clearer than that with the castle.

His dreams continued to not be his own. In a shadowy hospice room he saw a thin shape huddled under blankets, and knew it to be Kaeya, but every time he tried to get close the floor dropped away and he fell until he woke up. Those childish wails rang through the air. Sometimes he stood in a field of tall grass under a red sky that rained blood until the grass bloomed into wheat.

Kaeya reappeared days later. He was standing in the doorway when Diluc looked up from planting bulbs of water lilies in the garden. “Hey,” he said, almost too soft to be heard.

“You’re back,” Diluc said stupidly. “Are you back?”

“Not quite,” Kaeya answered. “It’s better than before.”

“What does that mean?”

Kaeya held up a transparent hand. “I can’t even drink water yet.”

“You’re too generous,” Diluc admonished. “Does it usually take this long?”

“It’s been about a week,” Kaeya said. “Last time, it took a month.”

Diluc felt sick just thinking about Kaeya as a shadow, thirsty and lonely, untethered. “You were here when I came.”

“Because,” Kaeya corrected absently. “What are you doing?”

“Gardening.”

“Yes, I can see that. What are you planting?”

“Water lilies.” Diluc cleared his throat. “They need wet soil, so I’m trying to convince your castle to make a little pond or stream for them. It’s fine, though. They’ll grow well enough if I water them regularly. Don’t magic it into place.”

Kaeya dropped his hand. “I’m not that fragile.”

“Shut up,” Diluc said flatly.

“I want to see the lilies bloom,” Kaeya pouted.

Diluc rolled his eyes and turned away, only to see a delicate pool filling up with water. “Seriously?” he asked, irritated. He’d been pleading for an hour. Kaeya giggled and then yawned, shoulders drooping with tiredness. “Do you want to sleep?”

“Perhaps,” Kaeya said slowly. “It’s all very…grey right now. If I sleep I might dissolve again.”

“You need to rest,” Diluc pointed out. “You could at least go lie down.”

They went inside together. Kaeya drifted through doors without noticing. Even when he lay down, his body sank into the mattress. He was hovering on the edge of corporeality. Looking at him made Diluc ache, but not looking at him felt worse, like Kaeya would vanish entirely if Diluc didn’t keep an eye on him.

When Diluc tried to put a blanket over him, it drifted to the bedcovers and left Kaeya bare. He was trembling. “Will you stay?” he whispered, small and worn-out. “I’m so cold.”

“Yeah,” Diluc sighed. “I’ll stay.”

He lit a fire in the grate and pulled the curtains closed. Warmth leached into the air, and Kaeya’s shoulders relaxed as he drifted off. That night, at least, Diluc’s dreams weren’t someone else’s—they were his own, the usual nightmares about burning houses but this time there was a child inside, crying.

/

Kaeya was gone again the next day. Diluc went back to gardening, concerned but unable to do much with that concern. It was an uncomfortable feeling. He wasn’t used to worrying about problems that his claymore couldn’t solve. He went back to gardening; the castle offered him cuttings of some faintly-glowing seaferns that he placed in the shallow water between rocks and some shell-like seeds that he threw to the bottom of the pool to feed the fish or grow as they pleased.

He didn’t know where the castle had found the fish. He didn’t ask.

A little after dinner Kaeya tapped him on the shoulder. His clothes were fancy—white silk embroidered with dark blue patterns, lace gloves. “Come on,” he said, airiness covering up how faint his voice still was. “I want to show you something.”

“Is it magic?” Diluc frowned. “I would rather you took a nap.”

“Aren’t you bored,” Kaeya whined, still tugging at him.

“No,” Diluc said, frowning harder. But Kaeya was insistent and Diluc was a little curious.

Kaeya led him upstairs, rounding around the castle as though searching for the right door. “The castle is fickle,” he explained when Diluc looked questioningly at him. “And it likes you better—it won’t stop me, but it won’t lead me exactly where I want whenever I ask either.”

Diluc tried not to preen. He failed, and Kaeya giggled.

The door was tucked into a niche they walked past thrice before Kaeya swung into it, yanking the door open and swearing at the castle in that unfamiliar language again. “What did you say?” Diluc asked.

“Reminding it who’s the boss here,” Kaeya said absently. He went ahead.

That…wasn’t what Diluc had asked. He let it go and followed Kaeya up a narrow, spiraling flight of stairs. It was cold and dark in this narrow space. Diluc lit a witchlight in one hand just in time to see Kaeya stumble.

“You better put that out,” he scolded. “It’s blinding.”

“I can’t see.”

Kaeya glared at him for a moment, then lit a witchlight of his own. Diluc put his fist down. Kaeya’s was softer and paler, less rude on the eyes. “We’re almost there,” he added.

He reached up to open a trapdoor a few moments later, magicking a ladder before Diluc could offer to hoist him up. He emerged behind Kaeya into an open room, the wind whipping swift and sharp across his face.

He wandered to the balustrade and looked down, breath catching. The river was a slim silver line winding southward—in the west he could see Skyfrost Nail rising above the clouds. “How high up are we?”

“As high as I can take us,” Kaeya said, speaking above the wind. Diluc looked at him, suddenly afraid that he’d get blown away. He was barely solid enough to eat, for heaven’s sake.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you bring me here?”

Kaeya gave him a stupefied look. “For the view, Diluc.”

Oh. He looked down again, shoving the fear of heights to the back of his head. It was a remarkable view. The moon was high and round in the sky and flooded the whole valley with faint light, skimming over the crowns of trees in the forests. Beyond that he could see windmills, and the thin shimmering line of the ocean.

“Come here,” Kaeya said. Diluc crossed over to him, looking down now at woods that weren’t as dense, all pine and snowfall in the distance. There was a city beyond that with an unfamiliar silhouette. He felt keenly that he had never been anywhere but Mondstadt and Liyue, that he didn’t know the name of that city or anyone who’d been there. If he hadn’t come up here he may never have known. He’d always believed that the world was bigger than he could see in one lifetime—it was something else to be faced with such tangible proof. “Look up,” Kaeya murmured, placing a light hand between Diluc’s shoulder blades. “At the sky.”

Diluc tilted his head back and lost his breath again.

The sky was covered in stars. In Mondstadt, windmills and the ever-present light that rose from the city folded it into an isolated pocket where only the brightest stars peeked through. Tonight, here, even with the moon—Diluc could see constellations whose names he’d learnt years ago but never set eyes on. He searched, instinctively, for his own sign—the night owl, Noctua, always westward.

He found it within minutes, the star between its eyes that led to its heart, then traced the shape of its wings.

“Which one is it?” Kaeya asked softly.

“There,” Diluc said, pointing with childish excitement. “Confodius, Venatura, Obstine, Tenebrae, Lucerna and—” he hesitated, self-awareness setting in. “Diluculum.”

“Is that your star? The one you were named for?”

Diluc looked at the stone balustrade until his eyes refocused. “Yes.” He felt inexplicably like he’d done something wrong. “Which one is yours?”

Kaeya leaned against the balustrade next to Diluc. He was still looking up, craning his neck. “I wasn’t born here,” he said. “I don’t know.”

“The stars are the same everywhere.”

“If you have a sky to look at, yes.” Kaeya wrapped his arms around himself, shivering. “I love the stars. They seem so close, but in a hundred years I wouldn’t be able to find the magic to take myself there.”

“Are they so far?” Diluc asked, interested in an abstract sort of way. The question of their distance had never occurred to him.

“Farther than we can imagine, I think.” 

Diluc wasn’t interested in looking at the sky anymore. Moonlight filtered through Kaeya as through a stained glass window, lighting him up from within. “Where did you come from, if not here?”

“There are kingdoms that never see daylight.”

His reticence was abrupt, throwing Diluc off. He’d become accustomed to Kaeya being free with words. “Will you tell me about it?”

“It’s not a very pleasant story,” Kaeya said flatly. “I brought you here to stargaze, not—ruin a lovely night with a tale about my personal woes.”

“You’re not ruining anything,” Diluc snapped, faintly annoyed. “If you don’t want to tell me about it, you’re free to keep it to yourself. Don’t dismiss my curiosity.”

Kaeya didn’t vanish outright, but his form wavered. “We were a small nation,” he said, his voice so quiet that Diluc had to strain to hear him. “With clever people. But we were cursed, and no god would take us in—it was said that a child from our nation would create the means to kill the gods. And I suppose the gods couldn’t bear even the idea that someone might slay them.” His voice was bitter. “So they drove us out of every land, until we built our own nation underground. A place where divinity wouldn’t find us.”

“There are no gods anymore,” Diluc interrupted, a little unwisely. “Surely it’s safe for them to come out now.”

“And still, they waged war on us. Not just one god—which is difficult enough to withstand—but often several at once, knowing that we posed a greater threat to them than they did to each other. You do know gods don’t die, right? They dissipate, but their essence and energy remains. It always comes back.”

“Mondstadt’s waited centuries for its god,” Diluc snorted. “I don’t think he’s coming.”

“That doesn’t mean he isn’t out there!”

Kaeya sounded genuinely terrified. Diluc dropped it. “Sorry,” he said gruffly. “Go on.”

“Where was I—right. Yes. We were always poor, before I was born. Always afraid. Our country was ravaged and we could never stop defending ourselves long enough to rebuild it.” He sighed. “But perhaps someone was looking out for us, in their own way. There was a prophecy about me. I would die at the hands of something that didn’t exist in a godless land. And we had a very clever court alchemist.”

He looked dazed, like he was seeing something entirely beyond Diluc’s imagining and couldn’t pull himself out of the memory. “It makes a lot of sense, when you think about it from—from their point of view. My parents had a child who couldn’t die and, and a kingdom that would be dead within a decade if they didn’t do something. And Rhinedottir,” he choked on the name “was terribly inventive and unconcerned with morality, whatever morality still remained in a country like that—it took her three years and she must have loved every minute of it—”

Diluc grabbed Kaeya’s shoulders, interrupting him. “Breathe,” he ordered. Kaeya gave him a wild look. “You’re panicking.”

Kaeya made a pained sound, shaking in Diluc’s grip. “I’ve never told this to anyone,” he mumbled. “I didn’t expect it to be so…”

“I shouldn’t have asked,” Diluc said. “You don’t have to keep going.”

“I’ve started, haven’t I?” Kaeya replied, with a dull attempt at breeziness. Diluc let go of his shoulders carefully, but Kaeya looked so upset at that for a second that he ended up knitting their fingers together, still feeling guilty for having insisted on this. “Your hands are so warm.”

“They usually are.” Diluc picked up Kaeya’s other hand, squeezing. He felt human, soft-skinned and dry. “Are you sure?”

“Well—let’s see.” He gave Diluc a rueful look. “There’s not a lot to be said after that point. The sacrifice of a life, as you know, releases a vast amount of raw energy. The trick is harnessing it before it dissipates. Rhinedottir’s innovation was simply capturing and storing all that—magic that could be redirected into other purposes. The prophecy worked by other means. It brought me back every time.”

“How many times?”

“Once a week for half my life, about exac—” He trailed off; Diluc had yanked him close and held him there, refusing to let go. “Ah. Are you upset?”

“I’m angry,” Diluc muttered. “You were a child.”

“A very special child,” Kaeya said, sighing. Holding him was like holding smoke. “You can’t blame them. It did help. All that magic—they could grow food, heal injuries, restore houses and roads. They could protect our people. They did. My parents cared about Khaenri’ah more than they cared about anything.”

“And what about you?”

“Even me.” Kaeya pulled away slowly, though he stayed close enough to touch. “They loved what I did for our people. They didn’t…I don’t think they knew me. How do you love a child that was always either dying, dead, or too tired to speak?”

Diluc didn’t reply. He couldn’t very well say fuck your parents and fuck your people. If I saw your nation I would burn it. Kaeya didn’t see anything wrong with what had happened, so Diluc wouldn’t waste time trying to change his mind; he didn’t want to insult the depth of Kaeya’s sacrifice, however unwilling. That resolution didn’t make him feel any calmer. He couldn’t stop thinking about the childlike crying that echoed through this castle. 

“I must have been fourteen,” Kaeya continued. “When one of the guards smuggled me out of there. I didn’t protest—I was convinced I was dead—but he was very insistent that I had done enough. That if I stayed I would only be used over and over without end, no matter how much prosperity I brought. And he said that if the people knew the price of the magic that had saved them they would have turned themselves in to the gods that wanted us dead, so it was better for me to be gone. He had a lot of arguments. I think he was trying to convince himself. But he brought me here when it was only a ruin and stayed with me long enough to make sure I could survive.” He paused. “He told me he’d return, but I never saw him again.”

Diluc thought he’d get that man a drink if he ever saw him. At least someone had found it in themselves to care about the cruelty of what they were doing.

“Also, I can’t breathe.” 

“What—oh, sorry.” He loosened his hold, a little ashamed. “Are you alright?”

“I think that’s the most anyone’s touched me in years,” Kaeya said, and made a face. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s concerning,” Diluc said diplomatically. “Actually, it’s horrifying.”

“There, you see? Ruining the night—”

“Shut up.”

Kaeya laughed, though it was high with hysteria. “You’re incredibly rude, you know that?” He took several deep breaths before he loosened. “Let’s go down again.”

They went back down the stairs in silence. The route back to Kaeya’s room was through the same corridors they’d taken while searching for the tower, as though the castle itself was too shocked to play its usual tricks. Diluc felt much the same. Every time he glanced at Kaeya, he wondered at Kaeya’s sheer unwavering kindness. That he still used his magic, much less for good, was miraculous.

“Why do you do it?” Diluc asked. “Why do you let people take advantage of your generosity?”

Kaeya rolled his eye. “My generosity,” he repeated, a little mocking. “I am not a selfless person. I let people come to me for help because I’m lonely, and helping people lets me be close to them for a little time. Do you think I don’t know what they’d do if they knew about my curse?”

“I climbed in here. You didn’t throw me out.”

“You didn’t come looking for magic,” Kaeya replied. “You turned it down when it was offered. I suppose I was curious. I’d never met anyone like you before—and I thought at first you were pretending to not care for it, to lull me into letting my guard down, but you were hopelessly sincere and then you turned out to have the self-preservation of a lemming to boot.” He gave Diluc a sardonic look. “You may think I’m stupidly naive, but you broke into a wizard’s castle twice. I could’ve turned you into a frog.”

“Well, you didn’t,” Diluc said, honestly a little insulted. 

“You can thank your good looks for that.” Kaeya patted him condescendingly. “Here’s your room. Try to sleep well.” He opened the door, but Diluc lingered.

“Try?”

“Do you hear a child crying at night?”

“Yes,” Diluc said. “Is that you?”

“In a manner of speaking—it’s a ghost of me. Don’t go looking.”

“Why is there a ghost of you?”

Kaeya looked horribly sad for a second. “A ghost is a reminder that something died,” he said, avoiding Diluc's eyes. “I was four years old and it hurts a lot to bleed to death. You can’t talk to that ghost, Diluc. You shouldn’t try. It has more magic than it knows how to handle and if its memories trapped you, I’m not sure I’d be able to get you out.”

“Because it’s your memory,” Diluc said. “It would trap you too.”

“Yes,” Kaeya tried to smile. “I hope it doesn’t keep you awake.”

Diluc couldn’t find it in himself to care if it did. “Good night.” 

“Good night, Diluc.”

Kaeya walked away with smooth long strides. Diluc shut the door and climbed into bed, so disturbed that he doubted he’d be able to sleep anyway. But he could hear music in the distance, sweet and low, and the child was nowhere to be heard. He fell asleep thinking about the way it had felt to hold Kaeya, and the fact that no one had called him sincere in years.

Six.

Things were different after that, though they were also the same. Kaeya was around more and more. He was more free with his words and more conscious of them, sharing pieces of information that he must never have said out loud before. Diluc felt strangely aware of Kaeya’s loneliness, of the depth of his pain, but every time he looked at Kaeya it was difficult to see him as anything but an entrancing otherworldly wizard who was also, quite by chance, the first friend Diluc had made in a decade. It was easy to talk to him.

It was so easy that Diluc was forgetting why he didn’t allow himself to have these things.

In lieu of dwelling on it and driving himself up the wall, he explored the castle. It tricked him into circles more than once, but he found more wonders around strange corners. On a mezzanine floor he found an electro regisvine, its crackling fronds waving idly. White runes on the wall signaled what Diluc presumed was a containment. The floor above and below crackled with static, but had no evidence of the regisvine ever having awakened to rage.

Out of one room, he stepped into a field of wildflowers and dandelions. He wedged the door open with his greatsword and set out to explore, glancing back occasionally to check that the way to the castle remained open.

The field was on top of a cliff. The scent of cecilias hung in the air; the tight buds glowing faintly blue. As he watched, one unfurled, releasing a pale baby seelie.

Kaeya was waiting in the doorway when he turned around. “Where are we? Diluc asked.

“The Dandelion Sea, I think,” Kaeya said, folding his arms over his chest. “It looks like a sea, doesn’t it?”

It did. As far as Diluc could see down the cliffside, the fluffy heads of dandelions bloomed and blew in the faint breeze. In the distance, across the sea, red mountains puffed dark smoke into the sky. It was all so far away.

“Come out,” Diluc said.

Kaeya shook his head. So Diluc carefully unearthed a cecilia that didn’t look to be home to any seelie, trying not to destroy the roots. He’d always loved the scent of these flowers.

It was strange—years of fighting, but his hands had never forgotten that he’d grown up in a vineyard, drawn to dirt and fresh soil. There was no real joy to fighting, only the grim satisfaction of doing his duty. A compulsion that had hardened into instinct.

No explanation for the muted longing on Kaeya’s face when he saw Diluc digging a fresh hole for his new flowers. The garden was growing back slowly—there was plenty of room for new ideas. Kaeya seemed to think so, too. He asked, “What else do you want to plant here?”

“Grapes,” Diluc said without thinking. “Strawberries,” Kaeya made a face. “They’re not actually straw, idiot. They taste wonderful. Pears, peaches, apples.”

“Those are all fruits,” Kaeya mused. “No more flowers?”

“Flowers are pretty, but you can eat fruit,” Diluc answered.

“How practical.”

“They taste better from one’s own garden, don’t they?”

Kaeya stared at him and didn’t reply.

Late one evening Diluc found himself following the sound of music echoing through the castle to a practice room behind the statue of some strange snake. Kaeya played the violin with almost-impeccable skill, gaze trained on the strings. It was this music Diluc had heard through the walls for so long, and it was beautiful—so beautiful that the castle lifted it out of this one chamber and echoed it everywhere.

He put the bow down when he noticed Diluc. 

“You don’t have to stop on my account,” Diluc said. “How did you learn to play?”

“Trial and error,” Kaeya grimaced. He set the violin and bow on a table, flexing his fingers absently. “I sounded much worse than this.”

“You sounded lovely,” Diluc countered.

Kaeya gave him a blank look. “I suppose I wouldn’t know,” he said tersely. “When I was—bedridden, there wasn’t much I could do except try to recover before the next time… well. There was a group of musicians who played for me from behind a curtain. I wanted to learn to play like that, but I hardly know what they played—or even the instruments they used. I’m not very good at this, am I?”

Diluc tried to pick his words. “The castle loves it,” he said finally. “I’ve heard you playing ever since I arrived.”

“Oh.” Kaeya’s fingers twitched towards the bow. “I don’t know if they knew who they were playing for,” he said, words rushing out with rehearsed fluidity like this was a thought he’d had a hundred times before. “I know they tried to keep my deaths a secret. But when they played, I almost felt like someone was listening to me. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

“You were alone,” Diluc said gently. “You wanted more than what you had. That’s not ridiculous.”

Kaeya frowned, considering. “What was your childhood like?”

“Play for me, and I’ll tell you.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” Kaeya whined, but he reached for the bow eagerly.

This tune was quick and graceful, light notes rising together into a harmony that reminded Diluc inescapably of fields of wildflowers, late summer rain. Kaeya was smiling when he finished; Diluc couldn’t help smiling back.

“I grew up in a vineyard,” he started. He hadn’t really spoken about his childhood to anyone. “My mother—she died a few months after I was born. My father wanted me to become a Knight. I wanted to be a knight. It seemed so…fated, back then, to all of us. I swear my father was hardly surprised when I received a Vision, though I was ten. He said it was proof.”

Even thinking about it was bitter and exhausting. “Everyone said I was a happy child,” he said finally. “You can’t imagine… how much my father loved me. And I thought he knew everything.”

A memory pricked at him, a storybook his father had written and illustrated about an eagle and his son. There never was a happier family. His throat ached. “I wish,” he choked out. “I wish he could’ve been your father too. Then you wouldn’t have—”

Kaeya was there, suddenly, holding Diluc’s face in one hand. “Don’t feel bad,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I asked.”

“I’ve never talked about it.” He leaned into Kaeya’s palm. “I miss him.”

“Tell me about him?”

So Diluc did. They sat on the floor of the practice room and Diluc talked about his father until his mouth was dry. Kaeya picked up one of Diluc’s hands in both of his, pressing his cheek against the backs of Diluc’s fingers; his tender attentiveness dissolved some enormous silencing weight that Diluc had carried for decades.

/

Kaeya was missing again the next day. Tired, probably. After lunch, Diluc waited to see if he’d reappear, but he thought it unlikely. Instead he went looking for the electro regisvine again, hoping to occupy an afternoon fighting it.

He trailed his hand along the stone wall, looking for a stair to the mezzanine without any luck. A portrait of some stern woman dissolved into a glass window through which he saw a room filled with deep green water, furniture floating. Skeletal white fish swam in and out of a half-open dresser. A pale crab scuttled up the door. He searched in vain for another way in, but the castle whisked the room away and when he went back down that corridor it was gone.

In its place there was a narrow room filled with sand. On every wall, massive landscape paintings brooded at him—their artist had imbued them with an overwhelming sense of depth, so that even though the details were warped and strange he thought he could have stepped right inside.

One painting depicted a massive, ruined tower that stretched and curved into a green sky. Its black silhouette was oddly distorted: when Diluc moved closer, he realized that those shapes resembled twisted bodies, clinging to window sills and walls.

At the very top of the tower, a spiderweb cage floated unsupported, threads of red energy trailing out of the dark human shape in the center.

Thoroughly disturbed, he turned to another wall. This painting, too, was dominated by darkness. High arches with crumbled keystones overlooked a red delta. Red fish with spiny teeth hovered above the water, their pupils tracking Diluc’s gaze in an unnerving fashion. A person stood on a black staircase, small and cowed by the endless river.

“Do you like them?” a threadbare voice asked. “I made these, you know.”

Diluc turned slowly. A young boy stood in the middle of the room, barefoot and worn. He looked like Kaeya, without the long hair or the eyepatch—his other eye was black all the way through, without iris or sclera. “How?”

“Magic,” the boy—Kaeya, it had to be him—said listlessly. “I dream of them, and when I wake up…” He lifted his shoulders and let them fall. “Here I am.”

“Surrounded by your paintings,” Diluc said. Kaeya had warned him to be careful of the crying child, but this child was far older and didn’t seem dangerous at all. He was only wearing a thin silk shirt and pants, and it was cold in this strange pocket of the castle, like a basement crypt. Mostly he seemed sad and tired, like he needed a hug and a bowl of soup.

“My dreams,” Kaeya corrected. “My nightmares. Watch out!”

Diluc whipped around, drawing his blade and summoning fire to it. A red fish had wiggled out of the painting—he slashed it in half in midair and it fell in a splatter of meat and bone, smelling like oil paint.

“Thanks for the warning,” Diluc looked around in vain for something to wipe the blade on. Kaeya’s gaze fixed on it, transparently desperate.

“You have fire,” he said, sounding eager. “Please, can I have some?”

“How do I give you some?”

Kaeya shuffled, drawing into himself. “I’m so cold,” he moaned. “I’m so cold, I’m so cold, I’m so cold—” his voice rose to shrillness. “Cold!”

Diluc tightened his grip on the hilt, unnerved. “I can light a fire for you,” he offered. “Is there a fireplace?”

“Fireplace,” Kaeya repeated. He walked swiftly past Diluc in a brush of icy air. He had a knife in his hands, a knife Diluc hadn’t seen him take out—bone-white and steel-sharp, which he slashed across the painting of the red delta until he could rip out huge strips. Diluc could only watch in faint horror as the strips fell to the floor one by one, Kaeya’s small shoulders trembling with exertion. The marred painting hung in its frame, its depth and beauty gone. “There.”

Diluc tried. He really did. But his fire wouldn’t catch on the oil-painted canvas, and it guttered out within seconds.

“Wood is better for fire,” he said finally, his throat dry.

He helped take the frame off the wall, using his greatsword to cut it into smaller pieces. There was a fireplace behind the painting. He shoved the pieces inside, but when he tried to light them his fire slipped and turned into smoke like he’d stuck a matchstick in water.

“Oh, I see,” Kaeya said. “Let me think.”

“What are you?” Diluc blurted out. “Why am I here?”

“I’m Kaeya Alberich, Crown Prince of Khaenri’ah and the Star of Hope, last and brightest—” He frowned. “That’s not what you asked, is it?”

“Not quite.”

“I’m—I’m just me,” Kaeya said. “I came here with one of my Royal Guards. He said he’d come back, but I don’t know how long it’s been. I’ve been here for a while now.”

Diluc felt strangely sick.

“Every time I try to leave, something stops me,” Kaeya continued. “You know, I believe there’s something nearby that’s almost as powerful as me and doesn’t want me to threaten its rule.” He smiled, childishly confident. “I’m sure I can defeat it, if I just find a way out.”

“How are you so sure?”

“I have you, don’t I?” Kaeya leaned forward. “Someone sent you here, didn’t they? Dainsleif would never leave me in a place like this without protection. And you have fire, which makes you perfect. Monsters loathe fire.”

That was an incredibly tenuous chain of assumptions. Diluc didn’t say that. “What will you do if you get out?”

“Find the monster keeping me trapped and kill him, of course. But first, enough talking. I’m cold. Why aren’t you lighting the fire?”

“There’s nothing to catch it and keep it burning,” Diluc said, deeply nervous in the face of this affable child as he’d never been while facing down snow giants and murderous plants. He would have greatly preferred an electro whopperflower. 

Kaeya gave him a look, as though he was being stupid on purpose. “You have to use khemia, for starters,” he said, putting his hands on his hips. “Do I have to show you how?”

Diluc nodded. Despite his nervousness, there was a mesmerizing quality to the child, a raw unrefined charisma that echoed Kaeya’s. He was so compelling in his desire and focus; he didn’t even doubt that Diluc would do as he wanted. He acted precisely as Diluc would expect a prince to behave.

It was almost—too good an impression. Kaeya had told him on that tower that he hadn’t spoken to people for most of his life—which surely included giving them orders.

While Diluc was thinking, Kaeya had drawn a semicircular rune in front of the fireplace. “Now use your Vision,” he instructed. “Start by visualizing a sun—the real sun, not the fake one those silly children worship. It is the star at the heart of every blaze.” His voice was hypnotic. “The light by which the moon and white night rise…”

Against his will, the sight of it expanded in Diluc’s mind: proud fire rising, smoke and dread, chasing foxes and deer through a beech forest and into the fields where the grass was thin and low and men waited with blank eyes and traps and knives. He thought of fire deep underneath the ground, waiting and murmuring until a crack opened into the earth and it could come pouring out, fire hot enough to melt through stone. Heat, the ache of burning, houses on fire—

No.

“Stop!” someone screamed.

It might have been him.

Kaeya was there, suddenly, his magic familiar but blinding. The child cried out like it was in pain, a sobbing wail that quietened within seconds to hiccupping sobs. “Why did you do that?” he begged. “I was so close. I was so close.”

“Close to what?” Diluc asked. Kaeya didn’t respond. Diluc blinked the red spots out of his vision and took another look.

Kaeya was holding a sword loosely, pointing it at the child’s neck. His expression was pitiless. “You are filth,” he said, imperious and implacable. “What you almost did could have destroyed us all, do you understand?”

“Hey,” Diluc said. “Hey, Kaeya.” He stumbled over to them, nudging Kaeya out of the way. He allowed it with blank surprise. The child was crumpled on the floor, hunched over with his face in his hands. “What just happened?”

“I was so close,” the child kept saying. “I did it for us. I thought you wanted this.”

“Things have changed,” Kaeya replied. He dropped the sword with a clatter. “You’re the one stuck in the past.”

He snapped his fingers. The fireplace sealed over, the painting repaired itself into a field of flowers. The other images changed too: a night sky full of stars, two figures at dinner that Diluc recognized as himself and Kaeya, talking about something. He didn’t have time to look at the last painting before Kaeya dragged him out of the room. He paused to draw a black rune on the wall, and the doorway melted away entirely.

“Why do you imprison him?” Diluc asked.

Kaeya was shaking. “There was a time when you wouldn’t have paused for breath before trying to kill him,” he said shortly. “I almost wish you had.”

Diluc opened his mouth to respond and found he had no adequate reply. He would have. And for some reason he simply hadn’t—it had hardly even occurred to him. He’d known, or felt like he’d known, that it was Kaeya. The thought of hurting him felt wrong.

“Why is he…what is he?”

“It's a ghost kept alive by a desire I couldn't fulfill.” Kaeya wrenched open a door into the garden. The orange evening outside was a welcome surprise after the claustrophobic quality of the child's quarters. “A fragment of me, I suppose, that tore itself away from me with the force of its longing. And now it's trapped, like a fly in amber, in its singular purpose. I lose something of myself in the parting.” He sighed. “It’s not always a bad thing.”

Diluc wrapped an arm around him, until he leaned in and relaxed. “But he can gather his own power?”

“Not quite,” Kaeya said. “It’s only a fragment—it can’t die, nor can it return. It can, however, think it’s dying—it believes, therefore, that by dying it can gather power.”

“You left him a sword.”

“I’m not a nice person,” Kaeya laughed sharply. “Better a sword than trying to bash your head open on the walls”

Diluc shuddered. “Does it always hurt to die?”

“Not as much as you think,” Kaeya said. He sounded very distant, suddenly, ghostlike in the evening light. “And it isn’t dying that hurts, really. It’s coming back.”

Somewhere in the castle, there was a dead child. Diluc tightened his grip on Kaeya.

Seven.

A few days later, Diluc glanced out of a window and saw that the sky was clear and pale, smeared with clouds. He found Kaeya sketching in the library and said, “I want to go out.”

“Won’t the castle let you?” Kaeya asked absently. It was an anatomical study.

“The castle is fine,” Diluc said. “Come out with me.”

Kaeya gave him a blank look. He’d been distant and miserable ever since the encounter with that child. “Where?”

“Out. It’s a nice day. You can sketch outside.”

“There are insects out there,” Kaeya said plaintively.

“There are insects in here.”

“No, there aren’t. The castle eats them.”

“I won’t let the bugs get you,” Diluc rolled his eyes. “Are you coming or not?”

“Oh, fine. Since you asked so nicely.”

Kaeya procrastinated anyway, spending about an hour scrounging together various objects that he insisted were absolutely necessary—a blanket, better shoes, gloves—which he never wore indoors. Diluc argued with the kitchen until it gave him a basket of food—mostly sandwiches, thick slices of apple cake, a bottle of some oddly flowery cider. 

They set out an hour before lunch, plenty of time by Diluc’s estimation to find a nice place to sit down and eat before continuing. He was a little relieved to be outside after so long indoors—even if he spent hours on the terrace, and the castle held no dangers that Diluc had to be wary about, he’d spent too long on the move to not feel antsy when cooped up. Even if he knew that hadn’t been Kaeya’s intention.

“Do you know any good places nearby?” he asked Kaeya.

“To picnic?” Kaeya stepped over a rock with ostentatious care. “There’s a lake not far from here.”

“There is?”

“Yes.” He made a nonspecific gesture in a direction that Diluc was sure wasn’t right. “It’s shrouded in a glamor, but nothing I can’t dispel.”

“Who glamored it?”

“The dragon Ivaldi.”

Diluc nearly missed a step. The mythology of Mondstadt was extensive, but the name Ivaldi cropped up vanishingly little. Most scholars couldn’t even agree on the gender of the dragon, only that one of the Four Winds was its child. “It’s real?”

“Of course,” Kaeya said, apparently unconcerned. “She’s a dear, I’m sure she won’t mind if we picnic near her lake.”

“You’ve been out of your castle, then,” Diluc said.

Kaeya shook his head. “Dainsleif scoured the countryside looking for somewhere I could stay. We must’ve spoken to about half a dozen mythological creatures—he had a knack for finding them, and I thought more than once he’d get me killed for real the way he disrespected them—I remember a massive wolf, a dragon, one of the lochfolk—”

“Dainsleif sounds insane.”

“More than you know,” Kaeya said fervently. “Absolutely devoted to the Twilight Dynasty, though he was four centuries older than my great-grandmother. Which, of course, meant he took certain liberties with the meaning of ‘loyalty to the line.’”

Diluc snorted.

“Anyway,” Kaeya went on. “He dismissed the idea of leaving me to one of the Four Winds when he realized they were associated with a god. So we came here, where the influence of the divine isn’t as strong. Ivaldi was fairly displeased with the idea of raising a child, and warned Dainsleif about the dangers of leaving one with a dragon, but she was the one who suggested the castle. I haven’t seen her since.”

“But you’re so sure she won’t mind,” Diluc said doubtfully. 

Kaeya grinned. “I have a fantastic sense for people.”

“And dragons.”

“And dragons! It’s a very beautiful lake, so cheer up.”

Diluc shook his head. “You’re awfully confident you can dispel a glamor set up by the mother of Dvalin. Is there anything you can’t do?”

Kaeya stumbled—Diluc reached out to steady him. “I’m still mostly human,” he said. “I have human limits.”

He sounded like he desperately wanted that to be true. They walked on.

The lake was eastward from the castle, their path parallel to the mercurial river but inching north. At intervals, Kaeya would pause to pick up dry leaves and weave them together swiftly into the shapes of small birds, breathing life into them so that they flew ahead, tracing a path through the thick woods.

“How does that work?” Diluc asked. “The creation of life is the highest form of alchemy, isn’t it?”

“They’re not alive,” Kaeya replied. “They’re like Hillie, who is only an automaton powered by magic.”

Diluc was stunned. “I thought Hillie was real.”

“Ah,” Kaeya looked embarrassed. “I thought the overuse of magic would alarm you. I made her many years ago—when I thought seeing a human face would, somehow, be an improvement. But it wasn’t. I only took her out when you came by.”

“And the birds?” 

“What about them? They’ve got enough magic to carry out a single task, and when it’s over they’ll be gone again—why do you look so sad about that?”

“I’m not sad,” Diluc lied. “It’s just—they’re so enthusiastic about guiding us—”

“Gods,” Kaeya said fervently, weaving another bird out of leaves and drenching it briefly in golden magic. “Here you go. Though I’ll warn you, it won’t last longer than a day.”

The bird flew up to Diluc and perched on his shoulder, chirping. Diluc grinned and held up his finger so it could hop on, then nudged it into flight. It darted about overhead, always coming back to Diluc, unlike the other birds that went ahead and were gone by the time they reached them.

It was well over an hour of trampling through grasses that changed in shape and color before Kaeya found a clearing with translucent quartzlike stones placed in a ring in the center. The stones were white but, as Diluc looked closer, he noticed that they all refracted light into the circle, irreverent to the direction in which shadows were meant to fall. Additionally, each little pool of gem-hard light was a different color—purple, pink, red, orange, and so on—all the way around the circle.

As Diluc was busy staring, Kaeya had found a white seelie, following it from stone to stone in a pattern that etched a star and pouring magic into the rocks as he went.

Lastly, he stood back. The ground within the circle melted away.

“Hold my hand,” he called to Diluc. His fingers were cold. Diluc hurriedly looked around for his bird and put it in his pocket. They stepped into the hollow pool together, Diluc not knowing what to expect but more excited than apprehensive with Kaeya at his side.

When he blinked again, they were still standing in the clearing. The stones had become small statuettes of frolicking magical creatures, each one a color that corresponded to their place in that circle. But instead of a thick forest ahead of them, there was an enormous crystalline lake. The bird stuck its head out of Diluc’s pocket, chirping madly.

He squeezed Kaeya’s fingers.

The lake was half a mile across. Kaeya dragged him to the edge, saying, “Look.”

Deep jewel tones glittered at the bottom of the pool, some coral that Diluc would never have imagined the existence of; mesmerizing shoals of bright fish swam in the clear depths, chased by sleek sunset sharks. There was a massive beautiful rock in the depths with a dark crack down the center, every color in the world contained in its fluid surface.

The rock blinked.

Diluc jumped back and swore. Kaeya laughed. “It’s just Ivaldi,” he said casually. “She might not come out to talk, but it’s her.” He waved enthusiastically with his free hand.

The cool black slit of the pupil dilated fractionally. Kaeya didn’t seem to want more acknowledgement than that. He spread the thick blanket out on some dry flat stones, sitting down with a sigh. He was probably tired, unused to walking so much. Diluc felt fine. He put the basket of food on one corner and joined Kaeya, keeping an eye on the lake in case Ivaldi decided to change her mind about joining them.

“How does a dragon breathe underwater?” he asked Kaeya.

“How do fish?” Kaeya countered. “Ivaldi is older than the Archons. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even need air anymore. The bottom of the lake is only her head—the rest of her is below us, deep within the ground.”

Diluc just barely managed to not embarrass himself by jumping up. “I still don’t understand.”

Kaeya hummed. He’d lifted the top of the basket and was poking around inside.

“Why does something as powerful as her not…do more with that power?” He felt like it was the wrong question to ask someone like Kaeya, but he couldn’t come up with a better one. He kept thinking about what Kaeya had said about the Four Winds, and now Ivaldi—it had been easier to believe that the gods were apathetic or dead or impotent. It was another to be faced with their reality, knowing that they still didn’t care about the suffering of Mondstadt’s people.

“There is a cost to using power,” Kaeya said quietly. “The more the power, the greater the price. At some point, the scales stop balancing out.”

“So they choose inaction.”

Kaeya shook his head, shifting over so he was sitting shoulder to shoulder with Diluc. The surface of the lake shimmered under the sun; Kaeya radiated coolness. “You are a strange person, you know. 

“How so?”

“You dislike the people who ask for my magic, and you don’t ask for it either,” Kaeya answered, wrapping his arms around his knees. “But you wonder why one of the great old dragons doesn’t…go about being a conqueror?”

Kaeya was beautiful. Diluc didn’t know how he’d never noticed before, or if he’d noticed but not been affected. He had to pull his mind back to the question, force himself to think it through. “All my life people with power have used it to hurt others,” he said slowly. “That’s what a monster is, isn’t it? Something so powerful that no one can stop it from caring more about itself than anything else. But you’re different.” He thought about Kaeya, holding his bleeding wrist over a glass flask. “I didn’t know it was possible to be like you. I’m trying to figure out what makes…” He searched for the words.

“What makes someone kill a child,” Kaeya offered, smiling. “And what makes a lake like this.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t answer that for you,” Kaeya said. “I must have asked myself the same thing a thousand times. Why did I deserve that?”

“You didn’t,” Diluc pointed out.

“And yet, it happened to me,” Kaeya sounded unexpectedly vicious. Then he shook it off, smiling again, though his expression retained a bitterness. “I don’t know, Diluc. I don’t think anyone knows. Not even the gods, for all they’re worth.”

He was sad. Diluc didn’t know how to comfort anyone, but he put his arm around Kaeya’s shoulders and let him lean against Diluc’s side. His misery was weightless; though he was lost in his head he seemed content for now to be held. Diluc watched silently as a pack of rifthounds came to the far edge of the water, stooping their skeletal heads to drink—he’d never known a pack to give up a chance to kill, but these hounds melted away silently once they were sated. 

Some of Kaeya’s cheer returned after they ate. He loved the cider and drank most of the bottle, then offered the rest to Diluc, who declined. Unconcerned and clearly a bit tipsy, he poured the rest of the contents out and went to fill it with water from the lake. 

Diluc ate two sandwiches, watching bemusedly as Kaeya continuously filled the bottle and then emptied it again. “What’re you doing?” he asked, going to him.

Kaeya made an irritated sound. Diluc bent down next to him. There was a small swarm of jellyfish, their crowns like soft red blossoms, apparently amusing themselves by going into the bottle when Kaeya tried to fill it and then falling out again. “They think they’re so funny,” Kaeya muttered. “Little devils.”

Diluc pulled off his glove and put his hand into the water, curious. Distracted by the presence of a new oddity, the jellyfish swarmed his fingers. They were a little warmer than the surrounding water and felt like congealed blood to the touch. Something about them made Diluc’s mouth taste sweet.

“Be careful,” Kaeya said. “They’re poisonous—not dangerous to you or me, but they have some strange effects.”

“Like making me taste molasses?”

“You get molasses, and I get soap,” Kaeya complained. “Typical.” He finally managed to fill the bottle without interference. A fish with a humanoid upper body swam up, gesturing wildly with a driftwood twig. The jellyfish chittered and abandoned Diluc’s hand, swarming the little merman affectionately and trailing after him without a backwards glance.

Diluc’s leaf bird was pecking at crumbs of sandwich on the blanket. Diluc picked it up and put it in his lap. It looked remarkably alive, though in texture it was unquestionably dry leaves. He felt awkwardly aware of his own fire and tried to feed it some apple cake.

“You know that’s not going to work,” Kaeya said, after watching him fail for a good five minutes. “It doesn’t exactly have a digestive system. It just imitates real birds.” He poked it and it took off again.

“You’re cruel,” Diluc told him. “Heartless.”

“Positively monstrous,” Kaeya agreed, mouth full.

They packed up and began the walk back to the castle after that—they’d had lunch quite late, and Diluc had no desire to be in the forest at night with Kaeya by his side to worry about. Though he could probably handle himself—both of them could—the thought of him in danger gnawed at Diluc’s ribs, and he ignored Kaeya’s whiny pleading for a nap.

In each place one of Kaeya’s birds had ‘died,’ it had left a white rune carved into a tree or stone. Diluc put his own bird in his pocket again for safekeeping, just in case Kaeya got some new ideas.

“Diluc,” Kaeya said suddenly. “Look.”

“What?” He noticed the moment he said it: snow. “It’s August,” he said slowly. “We’re in the north, but even so…”

Kaeya was staring past Diluc, expression blank with terror. Diluc gritted his teeth, summoning his greatsword and turning.

An enormous, slender figure stood against the trees, its long arms ending in twisted many-jointed fingers. It was snowing faster now. Fire sparked along the edge of his blade. “Stay back,” he hissed to Kaeya.

“I don’t think it’s dangerous,” Kaeya said, which was just so fucking typical. “It’s only an ice giant—”

“Yes, I know, and they eat people,” Diluc snarled. “Do you want to bet on how long it would take you to recover from that?”

Kaeya ignored him, stepping forward and switching to that lyrical language Diluc had heard from him before. The giant looked absolutely baffled, then responded in a rougher, more guttural version of the same tongue. “What,” Diluc said under his breath.

“He was exiled from his tribe,” Kaeya translated, pausing to hear more. “Ah, right. For being small,” he explained to Diluc.

The thing was the size of a windmill. “Is he gonna let us go?” Diluc asked impatiently.

Kaeya translated, then went still. “You’re not going to like this,” he said, biting his lip. “But, um. No.”

He was right, Diluc didn’t like that at all.

A blizzard whipped around them. Diluc launched himself forward and swung his blade at the giant’s legs, aiming to bring it down, and got two lucky hits in before he had to twist and duck to the side to avoid the hand that tried to grab him. For a moment he was stuck between a tree and the giant’s legs, saved only by its ineptitude at fighting in a forest. Its hands had so many fingers, Diluc noted dizzily, as it reached for him again— 

And missed, somehow. Its fingers slipped on a shield of some kind, brushing coldly against Diluc but unable to grasp.

He didn’t question the reprieve, just drew in all the fire as he could and threw himself forward at its legs, knowing that its joints were ice and could be melted with sufficient heat. The force of impact jarred through his bones, but knocked the giant back in confusion. 

Kaeya was standing behind it, a catalyst hovering above one hand. Naive, Diluc thought venomously, stupid, ridiculously pretty wiz—

His Vision flared at his side. He grinned, lifting his sword and summoning fiery retribution. The phoenix knocked the giant down entirely, searing off its ice armor. Diluc ran up its body, plunging his burning claymore right into its core. It died with a piercing shriek.

The freak snowstorm dwindled and dissolved. Diluc wiped his greatsword off on the grass, dismissing it. Kaeya was leaning against a tree, clutching his upper arm.

“Did it get you?” Diluc asked. “Or was it me?”

Kaeya grimaced. “It’s fine.”

“Let me see.”

The tip of a wing had grazed him, the flesh blistered an unpleasant pink. “It will heal,” Kaeya said, tight with pain. “Eventually.”

“I… I’m so sorry, Kaeya.” He hadn’t thought before unleashing fire, hadn’t considered anything but the quickest way of killing the giant. And that kind of thing was fine when the consequences would rebound only on Diluc himself, but Kaeya was—different, unused to fighting. Diluc was really no better than everyone else who had hurt Kaeya, was he?

“It’s fine,” Kaeya said again, more firmly. “You thought I would dodge in time. I should have.” He seemed angry at himself. “Let’s keep moving.”

Diluc shook his head. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“Not—not anymore. I healed myself.” He pressed a cold hand to Diluc’s cheek, washing out the minor scrapes and bruises and the lingering iciness in a bright surge of magic. 

Diluc frowned, a thought connecting. “But you can’t heal this,” he said. “Why?”

Kaeya opened his mouth, then closed it again. “I want to get home before dark,” he said, ducking past Diluc and walking confidently in the wrong direction. Diluc yanked him back and turned him around. “Besides, I’m not sure I have the magic to contend with another creature attacking us.”

“Fine,” Diluc said, a deadly anger awakening in the back of his head. “Walk and talk at the same time, then. Why can’t you heal this?”

“I don’t think now is the time for this conversation.” Kaeya’s tone was insufferable, like Diluc was a kid throwing a tantrum. 

Diluc gritted his teeth and kept walking. There was an overly-familiar guilt brewing sickeningly in his stomach, recrimination and betrayal souring his emotions. Kaeya had positioned himself deliberately so that his injured arm was on the other side from Diluc, but the sight was imprinted in his mind: Kaeya cut and bleeding from his flames when years of death hadn’t left a mark. He thought of his father, torn open and charred by draconic fire, a village hollowed out by flames—everything Diluc loved turning to ash. An old nightmare that kept coming true.

He slid his key into the copper gate, held it open for Kaeya with unfelt politeness before locking it firmly behind himself. He summoned his blade, fire still licking up its edge, and let it fall to the ground.

“Why can’t you heal what I did?” he asked, quiet and deadly.

“Do you want to talk about this now?” Kaeya said. “We’ve had a lovely afternoon, and—”

“Did I hurt you?” 

Kaeya folded his arms over his chest. “Not that badly.”

“But in a way you cannot heal,” Diluc reiterated, staring him down. 

“There’s a lot I don’t know about healing,” Kaeya said, stumbling over the words. “If I looked it up, I’m sure—”

“You’re lying.” Kaeya looked terrified. Diluc, beside himself with rage, couldn’t find a way to care. “What if it was worse than a scratch, Kaeya? Do you know what I wanted to do to you the night I came here?”

“But you didn’t,” Kaeya was wavering, slipping between smoke and solidity. “You wouldn’t have, because you’re good—”

“No,” Diluc said, breathing hard. “I’m not.” The urge to pull his sword to his hand was blindingly strong. He kept his eyes on the flaming blade, refusing to give in to it.

“I knew telling you would hurt you,” Kaeya said plaintively.

“Too late.” He kicked his greatsword away from himself. “Why is it me?”

Kaeya put his face in his hands. “I told you that—the only thing that could kill me was—”

“Something that didn’t exist in a godless land, I remember.”

“Yes, well… It’s fire. Holy fire.” Diluc reached behind himself to grip the gate, anything to keep himself from summoning his greatsword. Metal dripped over his gloves. “And you have to understand,” Kaeya continued. “I didn’t know what you would do, the night you came here. And after that— you wouldn’t have hurt me.”

“You knew that I could’ve killed you. Permanently.” He felt a wave of revulsion. “And the child knew too, didn’t it? That’s why it did what it did.”

Kaeya flickered out of sight. “It matters to me that you didn’t want to,” he said indistinctly.

“Nothing I want actually matters,” Diluc snapped. “I shouldn’t have been so careless, but between us—I thought—” He didn’t know what he thought. He hated himself for believing, even for a while, that there was anything good in the world that he couldn’t destroy. “Goodbye.”

He shouldered the gate open and walked out.

“Diluc, wait.”

He didn’t want to look at Kaeya again, but he stopped. “What.”

“Will you come back?”

After all of that, how did Kaeya have the gall to ask such a question? Diluc shook his head. “Go inside,” he said shortly. “And stop opening your door to strangers who want you dead.”

/

The walk back to Mondstadt was torturously uneventful. As night fell, the silver smoke above the river grew iridescent, figures shifting in the colors. He stared at it until the river underneath reflected his silhouette, inescapably monstrous. Even now, he ached to unleash his fire, to reduce the source of his pain to ash.

Enough. He unclipped his Vision from his belt with numb hands, dropping it into the shimmering waters.

It sank out of sight.

Eight.

A woman with clear, violently blue eyes accosted him the moment he stepped into Mondstadt. “Are you crazy?” she demanded, tugging up the hood of her blue cloak. There was a sunburst brooch pinned to her chest. “Just wandering in like this after more than a month away?”

He stared at her. “Can I help you?”

“Well, can you?” she said testily. “Diluc, for the love of Barbatos stop giving me that pathetic hangdog expression. A lot has changed since you vanished. Frankly, I thought you’d pulled one on us like Parsif—” her expression shuttered. “I didn’t expect you to return.”

“Here I am,” Diluc said, instead of who are you again? “What do you want?”

She gave him a disgusted look. “Half the army is looking for you,” she said. “You’re a wanted man, and you stalk into the city like it belongs to you—don’t look at me like that! like there aren’t posters with your face on them announcing a bounty in the thousands? Have you lost your mind?”

He had seen the posters. He just hadn’t been able to care. “Maybe.” He made to push past her, but she blocked his path with a spear, hauling him into a dusty alley with surprising strength. 

“What happened to you? Where did you go?”

“North,” Diluc said. It was the first word that came to mind. “I was hunting a—” the image of a slender dark wrist flashed through his head. “Monster.” He did that, didn’t he? It sounded likely.

“Okay,” the woman said, giving him an odd look. “Where’s your Vision?”

He stared at her. 

“You usually wear it on your belt or glove,” she said, snapping her fingers under her nose. He pushed her arm away, irritated. “Where is it?”

“I…”

“Did you lose it?”

He cringed. “There was a wizard…”.

“A wizard in the north?” she groaned. “Big fucking castle?”

“Something like that.”

She gave him a look that was almost sympathetic. “You do remember your own name, right?”

“You said it just now,” he paused to think. “Diluc.”

“Ragnvindr.”

“Okay?”

“That’s your name, idiot. Diluc Ragnvindr. By the Archons, this is a disaster.” She frowned. “Well, maybe not the worst thing that could happen but—close.” She gave him a critical once-over. “With some hair dye and a new name, you might be able to pass for a woodsman.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Shut the fuck up, you couldn’t think your way out of an empty barrel of wine right now. What’s your name?”

“Diluc Ragnvindr.” He folded his arms across his chest. “I’m not an idiot.”

“No Vision, no memory, do you have your claymore?” He shook his head. “No weapon. I’d say you’re pretty helpless right now, which is nearly the same thing. Luckily, you have me.”

“About that,” he tried. “What’s your name?”

“Salome. And if you forget that, you’ll be well and truly fucked.” She folded her arms over her chest, thinking. “We used to rely on you for this, you know.”

“Rely on me for?”

“To protect people,” she tried to smile at him. “Don’t look so shocked. You were good at it. But I’m not, not in the way you need right now. There’s nothing I can do if you’re arrested—except talk to Kirste or Darius Flark, for all the help they’ll be. I’m good at contingency plans, at least. I hope you can forgive my ineptitude, Diluc.” 

“It doesn’t matter,” Diluc said. His flatness didn’t seem to reassure her, but she nodded and was gone within seconds, pulling her hood down and lifting her chin with an arrogance that seemed learned more than innate. But what did he know?

A lot, apparently. He went where his feet took him, and he didn’t run into any soldiers. Eventually he was at a sleazy-looking tavern near the docks, the air thick with the smell of fish and cat piss. A well-fed calico wound around his legs and purred. He stepped around her carefully and went into the tavern.

Nobody looked up, though she’d told him there was an arrest warrant out. The bartender handed him a plate of fried fish and chips and didn’t look askance at his scruffy appearance. 

Everyone here was equally scruffy or worn out, anyway. He tucked himself into a table in the back and tried to pace his eating, but he was very hungry and he didn’t care if someone saw him stuffing his face.

The bartender came up just as he was finishing and said, quietly, “Beer for you?”

“No,” Diluc said. He was trying to remember this man’s name. He seemed familiar. “I’m done.”

“Okay,” the man agreed. “Then get out. Quickly, before one of this sorry lot gets ideas in their head about ransom payouts from the Crown.”

“Yeah—yeah. I’m going. Thanks. How much for the food?”

The man gave him a baffled look. “Nothing, kid. Get lost.”

Diluc slipped out without questioning this, but it didn’t make any sense. He glanced at the small signboard next to the door as he left, clumsily scratched with the words Angel’s Share. He shook his head and kept going. He intended to leave the city again, perhaps try to pick up a weapon on the way. He looped his route instinctively, turning through alleys and scaling upto roofs before hopping down into another district.

Down one trash-filled dead end he found a broken mirror propped up against a bin. He knelt to check his appearance. Scruffy summed it up. He’d tied his hair up roughly at some point, but it needed a good wash.

It was quite long. Memorable, probably. All the posters showed a clean-shaven man with hollow eyes and hair that reached the middle of his back.

He felt for the knife strapped against his calf, checked the edge, and let his hair down.

It was strangely final. The edges of the cracks in the mirror caught the sunrise and made it look like blood.

One very rough chop later he stood up, sheathing the knife and grinding his heel into the locks. Wondered, absently, if there was some way he could burn it. But breaking a lamp would draw too much attention, and he already knew he didn’t carry a matchbox. He felt lightheaded. 

He picked up as much of the hair as he could and tossed it behind all the garbage. No one had cleaned this alley in years. It was unlikely that it would be found there.

The bricks on the wall were exposed, making for easy climbing. He dropped lightly into a courtyard. A servant woman with a steel bracelet—a slave, he amended—was washing clothes in a little well. He exited that place as quickly as he could.

But he’d ended up in the wrong part of town. Too many big houses, and more slaves and servants—even a few sleepy guards. His heart was beating very fast. He couldn’t see his way out of here without a map to reorient himself, and he didn’t have a map.

One more stupid turn and he ended up in the inner city courtyard. A statue of the Anemo Archon towered above him. There was nowhere to hide here—the entire place was wide open.

He gritted his teeth and threw himself into a dead sprint.

“Guards!” 

This is so stupid, Diluc thought. He jumped onto a low balustrade and leapt to the roof. 

The alarms in the city went off all at once. He kept to the roofs, seeking higher and higher ground. But the gap between the last house and the city walls was too far to jump. Fuck. The guards were closing in—he spotted knight uniforms among them, some private soldiers, even a blue-cloaked woman holding a slender white branch. Salome? But it wasn’t—she was the wrong height.

She shouldered her way to the front. “Come off it, Ragnvindr. You’re never getting away now.”

“That right?” He kept glancing at the wall. It should have been possible—with a glider, perhaps.

“Yes,” she said, the pages of her catalyst fluttering. Water surged around his feet. He jumped to the chimney. “You’re a slippery rat, aren’t you? But you’re cornered, now.”

He didn’t bother quipping back. He couldn’t care less. If he’d had a weapon, he’d have taken his chances plunging down on them. If he’d had a Vision—he didn’t want to think about it. The idea of using it made him blindingly angry. All he had were knives and his hands.

“Your best option is surrendering,” the Virtuer called up. “Outlaws don’t get trials, besides, no jury would let you off! Turn yourself in, and we can still work something out.”

The house next to this one was taller. “Why am I an outlaw?” he asked, distracted.

“Why? Why? You murdered a whole village in cold blood!”

He suddenly remembered what had happened—it hadn’t gone down quite like that. When Ursa the Drake attacked the village, he and his father had taken up their arms to defeat her. But someone had poured oil in the streets and rooftops—no one had ever stood a chance against that blaze. Ursa had killed off everyone that tried to run from the fire, until it was just Diluc against her and the flames all around them.

The memory inspired no emotion. No one had ever believed him about the Drake. Branded a murderer and a traitor, he’d failed to convince anyone that their city was under attack by Abyssal monsters. Even as they closed in, this city stumbled on in its stupor. He’d spent so long battling the monsters back from its gates, and for what? For this?

He thought about a woman with a steel bracelet on her wrist, that bartender calling him kid. The risk of jumping now and missing, splitting his head open on the roads. Salome.

“I suppose all murderers come to justice eventually,” he said tonelessly. He dropped lightly to the ground in front of the woman, considered the scar on her neck that looked like it was from a botched hanging. “I’m coming quietly.”

Her eyes blazed with fury. A riptide whip struck his face. He hissed in pain. “Arrest him,” she hissed.

He half-expected a sound beating on the street, or back at the station, but the soldiers edged uneasily around him and even the woman made herself scarce after delivering some clipped orders to the captain. He rolled his eyes at her back, mumbling “Bitch.” He frowned at Diluc as he said it.

Diluc didn’t react.

The prison cell was astonishingly clean, bedded with straw. “Name of lawyer,” the captain asked.

“Kirste,” Diluc said.

“Kirste isn’t a lawyer, Ragnvindr. She’s a judge.”

“Some guy named Darius Flark?”

“That’s the Grandmaster’s bastard whelp. He’s a piece of work. Between you and me, Ragnvindr, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.”

“Looks like it,” Diluc thumped his fist against the wall. 

“A word of advice, then. The worst thing that can happen to you is that they kill you. The worst thing that can happen to this city is that your sham trial draws too many eyes and they decide to throw you into prison for the rest of your life. Aim to die.”

That was terrible advice. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“See that you do. And hand in your Vision.”

“Don’t have one.”

The captain boggled at him. “Of course you do. That’s why they want you.”

Diluc held up his hands. “Search me.”

It took fifteen minutes. Diluc bore it with poor temper, but he was aware of a fight lost and he was starting to wonder if he should’ve taken his chances running out of the city. But he didn’t know where he’d go if he’d done that.

The captain was none too happy about Diluc’s lack of Vision, and swore copiously at him. But he seemed a bit pleased in the end. “Maybe they’ll just kill you,” he said.

Diluc shrugged, indifferent. After the captain left he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.

Memories drifted beyond his grasp. A northern castle, red flowers, strains of music that dissipated when he reached for them. And something else, though he couldn’t remember anything but that it was important. Snow and silver smoke. He’d know if he saw it. 

/

They moved him into the chantry prison house the next day. It was almost an almost-peaceful little stone room, with a pallet in the corner and sunlight from a grilled window high in the wall. There was a ceramic basin and a wooden chair. But the walls were bare of anything to store his things in—because, as became very clear upon moving in—he wasn’t supposed to have things. They made him turn in his own clothes and everything he was carrying. It amounted to: a metal flask of water, two rings with the crest of his house that he’d looped into a keychain, a compass, and a handful of dead leaves, crumbling at his touch. 

“You can keep one,” a hard-eyed priest told him. He dithered, but finally ended up picking the compass. At least the needle would give him something to fiddle with.

“What happens to everything else?” he asked, changing into the plain grey wool shirt and pants they’d given him. They didn’t fit too great.

“That need not concern you,” the priest snapped. 

Diluc shrugged. He gripped the compass while the man left, then sat down on the pallet to play with it, idly turning the hand in the wrong direction only to watch it slide back in the correct direction. He couldn’t escape the feeling of having forgotten something important.

What is it? he asked the compass, but of course it couldn’t answer. What did I lose?

It pointed north.

/

The most unbearable part was the boredom. He was alone in the cell. During the day he heard the distant singing in the chantry, dolorous choirs for the grace of Barbatos.

In the morning, around ten, some priest or scribe came by to help him pray, preaching relentlessly about how the guidance of Barbatos could bring the most unworthy souls into Celestia. 

It was an odd, warped theology. Barbatos hadn’t given an Anemo Vision out in a few hundred years, and everyone knew that a Vision was a necessary prerequisite for ascending to Celestia. Secondly, Barbatos—when he’d been around, anyway—had been a god of freedom, wine and song and wind and laughter. In no tale did he ask his followers to pray, and Diluc rather thought that if he’d known his church had a prison in the basement he’d have killed himself out of shame.

In lieu of other forms of entertainment, he got into circular theological arguments with whatever hapless scribe had been assigned to his cell today. It was fun for about forty minutes and then they were gone, leaving him to brood over what he’d said and wonder if he could’ve phrased it better, been more cutting or more convincing. It was impossible to continue a conversation when the scribes changed day by day.

“We do one day a week,” a young woman told him, the second time he saw her. It was how he knew it had been a week. He hadn’t counted the days.

Lunch was usually terrible and always the same, featuring an excessive number of peas. Dinner was equally terrible, but exchanged peas for beans. As a prisoner, he couldn’t borrow books or writing paper, which made it all the more interminable.

There were hours in between each brief spurt of activity, hours when he could do nothing but punish himself with guilty recrimination for whatever he’d done that he’d forgotten. He felt inescapably like it had been his own fault. The compass only ever pointed north, no matter which question he posed to it. 

During the nights he curled around his loneliness, clutching the little device like a lifeline. This feeling was real. It was the realest thing he had.

Nine.

He heard the commotion outside, but assumed it had nothing to do with him. Prisoners sometimes attempted to kill themselves. He was aware of at least three in the other cells—four before one had succeeded. The chantry soldiers tried to prevent it, but not hard. 

Then the door of his own cell opened. “Are you sure about this, Lord Flark?” a Virtuer-slave was saying. “He is quite a dangerous and unstable man.”

It was the same one who had arrested him. She looked none-too-pleased about being here. Lord Flark was wearing ivory and green, his honey-colored skin and handsome features declaring him an outsider in the chantry where everything that wasn’t grey was white or tan. “I’m quite sure, Miss Celia,” he said, in an accent that was extremely unlike Mondstadt. “I have to speak to him alone, if you would please—I assure you that I can handle myself.”

“I’ll wait outside with the guards,” Celia said suspiciously. She closed the door behind herself.

Lord Flark shimmered oddly, then became someone entirely different. “We should leave,” he said distractedly, scanning the room. “I’m not sure how much longer I can do this without…”

“Kaeya,” Diluc said very slowly. “What are you doing here?”

“Staging a rescue mission,” Kaeya snapped. “You could be a bit grateful, you know.”

Diluc didn’t even know how he knew this man’s name, however familiar he seemed.

“That haircut is new,” Kaeya added. “Well, let’s get out.” He made an idle gesture in the air and shimmered back into Lord Flark. “Should I handcuff you?”

“No,” Diluc said. “People will wonder where you got it from.”

“I suppose you have more experience with this kind of thing than me,” Lord Flark said. “Which is a shame, because I was really looking forward to—” Someone rapped on the door. “Nevermind.”

“Why should I trust you?” Diluc asked. He didn’t particularly think he had anything to lose, but it was the right question to ask.

Lord Flark looked horribly sad. “I suppose you shouldn’t, but even so. Is anyone else trying to get you out?”

He had a point. Diluc was already standing. Lord Flark squared his shoulders and opened the door, sweeping past Celia and the two guards standing there without so much as glancing at them. Celia hurried to catch up, casting Diluc a disgusted glance. “I don’t know who you bribed or how,” she hissed. “But I will get you.”

“With what money?” Diluc threw back.

“Is making me wait really the best idea?” The impression of an arrogant, impatient nobleman was nearly flawless. “I don’t have all day, you know.”

It was stunning how well that worked. They stepped out into a late evening in Mondstadt, quiet citizens lighting lamps in storefronts and windows. The air was thick with something nameless and brittle—nobody even looked at them.

The real Lord Flark was slumped over a table in a tavern, too drunk to focus. Kaeya shimmered back into his own form, leaning over him and drawing a golden rune in the table. “You went to the chantry today on private business,” he said softly. “You let no one know you were going, and you’ll get really angry if someone asks why.”

“Who are you?” Lord Flark murmured.

“Don’t worry about that,” Kaeya said softly. The rune melted into the table. Lord Flark went back to his drink. They left the tavern.

“Lord Flark?” Diluc asked.

“The only name I knew in the city,” Kaeya replied, and didn’t elaborate. He seemed nervous. “You should have this back,” he added at last, drawing a red Vision out of his pocket and holding it out.

Diluc opened his mouth, couldn’t figure out an argument, and accepted it.

Oh, fuck. Had that really happened—fire, and Kaeya—his head hurt under the sudden weight of memories. He could’ve killed Kaeya. He still could. Why was Kaeya here? Did it matter at all to him that Diluc was—what he was? Did he have a fucking death wish?

“We need to get out of here,” Diluc said firmly, pushing every other consideration to the back of his head. “Can you take us to a teleport waypoint?”

“I’ve never tried,” Kaeya said. Diluc looked at him more closely; he looked awful. His cheeks were hollow, his entire body radiating a tenseness that Diluc had never quite associated with him before. Even against a snow giant, Kaeya hadn’t seemed quite so withdrawn. “Uh, there’s one near this big tree, and another one a bit further away. Closer is easier.” He frowned. “This is very interesting magic.”

“Big tree,” Diluc said. “Now.”

Kaeya gave him an owlish look. “Hold on.”

An odd sensation overtook him, like being sucked through an anemo ring. For a moment he was suspended in a featureless white void—then, just as quickly, he was falling through air. It was a minute drop. Kaeya looked rather pleased with himself, peering up at the Statue and around himself. “What is this place?”

Diluc grabbed him and pulled him close. “Windrise.” He couldn’t hold on tight enough; there was a nameless hollowness inside him that he hadn’t even noticed, all those weeks without memories, until he had them back and knew what he’d been missing.

“Oh,” Kaeya sighed. He wiggled around haplessly, then gave up and rested against Diluc’s chest. His arms slid around Diluc’s back. “I missed you so much.”

“Sorry.” He didn’t know what else to say, where to start. He’d never much liked apologizing. But he couldn’t think of anything else. “I’m so sorry.”

Kaeya made a sound in the back of his throat, protesting. “I’m sorry it took me so long to find you.”

“Shut up,” Diluc said. “It was only, what, three weeks?” He turned this over in his head. “How did you find me?”

“A little more,” Kaeya replied, sounding unhappy. “Your compass, actually. Its magic is, after all, mine—and it only works for you. Still, it feels rather—it was my fault you got caught, and no matter how upset I was I didn’t want you to get hurt or be imprisoned or die—”

“I’m not dead.”

“No thanks to me,” Kaeya muttered. Diluc wasn’t following this train of thought at all. Kaeya must have realized this, because he clarified helpfully. “I didn’t realize at first—why you left your sword behind. But the naiads were quite upset about having your Vision in their river—the currents wouldn’t touch it and it was making the ghostfish flocks fretful, so they made me fish it out.” He paused for breath. “You gave up your Vision so you wouldn’t hurt me and I didn’t—didn’t imagine it meant that much to you. That I…”

“It does,” Diluc said. “You do.” There was a frightening delight surging in his chest. “Did you think I make a habit of visiting wizards in their castles?” He raised a hand to cup Kaeya’s face, pressing their foreheads together. “Kaeya.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Kaeya whined. “And you were defenseless here.”

Diluc thought about Kaeya, alone and unable to understand why Diluc had left. All those years of loneliness—it seemed so hopelessly unfair. He’d never even gone out of his castle properly until Diluc had dragged him out, and now here he was in Mondstadt—to save someone who’d walked away without ever looking back.

“I can’t breathe,” Kaeya whispered.

“Sorry,” Diluc said, loosening his hold. And then he thought, fuck it. “Can I kiss you?”

Kaeya blinked at him in vague alarm. “I’ve never done that before.”

“Is that a no?”

Kaeya pressed their mouths together, soft and clumsy and wrenchingly sincere. Diluc stroked the line of his cheekbone, just below his eyepatch, guiding the angle so he could kiss deeper, trying to hold back the depth of his hunger. It was so hard when Kaeya was so eager, his sweet curiosity gentling the tide. Diluc couldn’t remember wanting like this. He couldn’t remember ever letting himself.

He forced himself to stop, to let Kaeya breathe. “I can still hurt you,” he warned.

“And I can hurt you,” Kaeya countered. “I’m inexperienced, Diluc, not entirely helpless. Besides, I’ll recover from anything you could wield that isn’t holy fire. You do a good job pretending otherwise, but you’re so much more fragile.”

Diluc exhaled. “You have a point.” He frowned. “Wait—”

Kaeya flashed him a grin. “Also, your clothes are itchy. And ugly.” He snapped his fingers like a fairy fucking godmother, transforming them into Diluc’s usual garb—except subtly nicer. “Better. Nothing much I can do about your hair, I’m afraid.” He tucked a stray lock behind Diluc’s ear.

The ease with which Kaeya touched him made his whole body feel unguarded, sensitive. Did it feel like this for Kaeya, who hadn’t been touched in so much longer? He couldn’t think properly.

You just kissed him, he told himself. Get a grip. It didn’t work. “Warn me next time.”

“So you understand that there will be a next time?” Kaeya patted his shoulder.

Diluc rolled his eyes. Kaeya was already distracted, following the glowing trail of a crystalfly through the air. “What are these?”

“Anemo crystalflies. They gather anywhere that Anemo energy is concentrated, like around statues.”

“I see,” Kaeya said. “This is him, then? The Archon?” He looked critically up at it.

“Yeah. We shouldn’t wait here too long, it’s risky for you.” He reflected. “And for me.”

Kaeya ignored him. “This may not even work.” He drew a knife out of the air, its blade straight and white. He knelt in front of the statue, pulling his sleeve back and drawing the knife down his arm.

Diluc wanted to tell him to stop, tell him that he’d never known a god worth Kaeya’s pain. But Kaeya didn’t look at him, and his blood flowed like river-water over the plinth and sank without a trace. He bled and bled and he made it look like it didn’t hurt at all, like he was used to it and now there was only the bliss of power.

Light burst through the statue, blinding. When it faded and Diluc’s eyes adjusted, there was a tiny young man standing in between them.

“Thanks for that,” he chirped. “I was sure I’d fade away this time.” He peered at them. “Who are you guys?”

When Diluc had imagined the face of divinity, he’d never thought it would look so much like an annoying schoolboy. And yet, his eyes glowed Anemo-green in the late evening, and something about his ephemeral grace made him seem like a crystalfly himself. 

Kaeya stood, pulling his sleeve down. “Lord Barbatos?” he said, surprisingly polite.

“That’s me! Heh… thanks for the infusion. A few dozen anemoculi, and I’ll be in top shape in no time.” 

“I’m Kaeya,” he looked uncertain and a little scared. “This is Diluc. He’s from Mondstadt.”

“And you’re from—let me guess—” He stared at Kaeya for a moment. “Oh.”

Kaeya inclined his head.

Barbatos looked thoroughly thrown-off. “I don’t understand,” he said helplessly, glancing between them. A crystalfly settled on his shoulder. “After what the gods did to Khaenri’ah… Why not just let me die?”

Diluc didn’t understand either. Kaeya, though, looked sad and tired. He was wavering in the dim evening light. “Your people need you.”

“I know,” Barbatos said. “I wished so long and hard that I could reach them, but—” He looked east, where Celestia hung in the sky. “I wasn’t quite powerful enough to reach them. When they stopped believing, I grew even weaker.”

“It is not only for them to have faith,” Kaeya said. “They’ve waited long enough for an answer.”

Barbatos nodded slowly. “And what about you two?”

“We’ll go north,” Diluc said. “I’m not staying here.”

“North,” Barbatos repeated, humming a snatch of song that tugged at Diluc’s memory. A little rhyme of the names of places around Mondstadt. “Alright.” He looked beyond them, at his city. “Well, then. Best I get moving.” He lifted a hand idly, drifting into the air. “Ah, I missed feeling the wind on my face. For that alone, and everything else,” he lifted Kaeya’s face, searching for something. “Clemency, from me and mine to you and yours.”

“Thank you,” Kaeya whispered. “Thank you.”

The wind rose. Barbatos vanished.

Kaeya was shaking. Diluc managed to catch him before he fell, though there was nothing he could do to ease the tremors. “That was exhausting,” he whispered. “Fuck.”

Diluc rubbed his back. “That was incredible,” he murmured.

“You, on the other hand, don’t seem to care much for the religious experience you just had.”

“So he’s here now,” Diluc shrugged. “I’m never going back to Mondstadt.” He’d always miss it, but he couldn’t stay in a city that had never really had a place for him. “I’ve done enough, and so have you.”

“I really have,” Kaeya said fervently. “Ah—one second, Diluc.” He pulled away, opening his hand. A Cryo Vision sat in his palm. They both stared at it, puzzled. “Why now, d’you think?”

“You know,” Diluc started, then gave up. The Vision pulsed, radiating coolness.

“What?”

“Every Archon is associated with an ideal,” Diluc said. “The Anemo Archon is the god of freedom, the Geo Archon is the god of contracts…”

“The Cryo Archon,” Kaeya prompted.

“She’s the god of love,” Diluc finished. There was a sort of secondhand pride to having Kaeya’s depthless capacity for kindness recognized and validated by the gods. A smugness. He’d known before they had.

“I see,” Kaeya said. “And protection, it seems.” He held it up between his thumb and forefinger.

Diluc’s own Vision flared up, agreeing.

Ten.

The gate refused to open for him. Kaeya leaned on his shoulder and laughed. He hadn’t been able to stop fidgeting with his Vision as they walked here, trying to magic shapes out of Cryo and infuse them with life. There was a little flock trailing around them now, all of them coming to a halt as the gate didn’t budge.

“You know,” Kaeya said eventually. “I think the castle isn’t too pleased with you.”

Diluc rolled his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he told the castle, trying to open the gate again. An icy sparrow flew through the bars. “About the lock, and—everything else.”

It let them through.

Kaeya relaxed when they were inside, then flicked out of visibility when Diluc turned away for a second. “This is very strange,” he said, vaguely distressed, trying to remain stable and failing. Just looking at him hurt.

“You’ve hardly been out of the castle before,” Diluc pointed out. “Nerves are normal. Let go for a while.”

Kaeya’s voice followed him as he tried to get the flock settled in. Eventually, they descended to the basement level, where the waters that ran into the fall pooled and glowed faintly. Lilac ganoderma and pink ferns dotted the cave. The flock, made up of half-a-dozen types of birds, twittered in excitement and abandoned Diluc to explore their new home.

Diluc watched, awestruck. Kaeya coalesced into shape. “They’ll still melt.”

“Even down here?”

Kaeya lifted a hand absently. Frost pooled over the waters, racing up the trickles that coated the walls, covering the plants and fungi in a layer of glittering ice. A snowcloud burst overhead.

“Not anymore,” he said, flexing his fingers. “What do you think?”

Snow drifted down around them in pale flakes. Where they fell, they grew like seeds into small trees, rising swiftly to become a frozen forest around them. “You’re magic,” Diluc said, turning to Kaeya. The birds were already finding their homes. Kaeya stared at him, his starry eye wide.

“I would never have thought about snow before—”

“Ice or not,” Diluc interrupted. “You’re magic.” He slanted their mouths together, trying to say without words what he knew, what he had known almost from the start. 

There was the castle, gods and dragons and the elements, but Diluc had never known them to be quite like this: a white garden, all this wonder and getting to kiss Kaeya, who was not-quite alive and not-quite here, and beautiful all the time. He kissed back easily, a fast learner, raising a hand to brush snowflakes out of Diluc’s hair. Diluc exhaled, aching with tenderness.

“I’m so glad I met you,” Kaeya murmured.

“I am too,” Diluc said fervently. He caught a clump of fluffy whiteness just before it could fall on Kaeya’s shoulder. It melted on his finger. “Are you cold, Kaeya?”

“Only a little.” Kaeya leaned into him, closing his eye. “You’re warm enough for both of us.”

Diluc put his arms around Kaeya and watched the snow fall.