Chapter Text

Being of sound mind and sufficient competence to manage my own affairs, I, Crepusculum Ragnvindr, as testator of this last will and testament, do confirm the following to be true:

I, as testator, am older than the age of 16 – resoundingly so.

I, as testator, am a resident and citizen of Mondstadt, the city-state in which this will is legally recognized.

I, as testator, have handwritten, dated, and signed this document.

With such gauche business out of the way, it is high time to discuss something of much lighter note: how my assets shall be split in the event of my death. To the reader and listeners of this will, some small items may seem strange. However, all shall be explained in this self-same document. I beg of you the patience, and the grace, to finish reading my every droning word. Now to begin.

Dawn Winery, as a business, encompassing all of its monetary and physical assets, trade agreements, contracts of employ, and patents, shall be inherited by my eldest son, Diluculum Ragnvindr.

My city estate at 16 Main St., Mondstadt City, shall be inherited by my eldest son, Diluculum Ragnvindr.

25% of my private wealth shall go to my eldest son, Diluculum Ragnvindr.

Another 25% of my private wealth shall go to my youngest son, Kaeya Alberich, soon to be known as Kaeya Ragnvindr at time of this document’s creation. 

Another 30% of my private wealth shall go to the care and support of my four charges, Elzer, Adelinde, Hillie, and Moco, as detailed in a separate trust document. 

The (so far) eight personal diaries I have kept over the years shall be granted solely to my youngest son, Kaeya Alberich, soon to be known as Kaeya Ragnvindr at time of this document’s creation, for reading over the course of six months, after which they shall be permanently inherited by both of my sons. 

And the final 20% of my private wealth shall go to the projected bail and legal fees of the following people under my employ: my head maid, Heinel Schäfer, my butler and bookkeeper, Finn Bartz, and my guard, weaponsmaster, and personal friend, Roland Eckardt – contingent on their agreeing to testify against me on the crimes to which I will now willingly confess.

one

Mondstadt is a game, and Master Ragnvindr has always known how to cheat it. Even young, sickly Crepusculum, hiding in the kitchens when his frail constitution drove him from the training fields. He learned from maid and Mother how soft skills could cut as deeply as the knife, how sharp business acumen and sharper charm could make him worth a damn to the bloodline – how sometimes the most dangerous person in the room is the man who speaks softly but holds nothing but ambition in his heart.

This is how Master Crepus Ragnvindr took over his father’s mantle: with a gentle but iron grip. There, on the mettle of his middle finger, sits the family seal, the heirloom upon which the maidstaff swore their oaths of loyalty. There, on his ring finger: what he thought to be a lifelong partnership, molten in the fires of treachery, reforged into a golden opportunity for growth. 

He removes both rings when he enters the kitchen and rolls up his sleeves. Punishment is such dirty work when you haven’t the muscle for honor. The deal has already been set into motion; all that remains is routine. The hour is late, far too late for any staff to shoo him away from his own private kitchen, so he sets to work immediately to prepare the object of his Lady’s demise.

A simple boar stew. Her favorite. After washing his hands as per habit, he strikes the stove alight and leaves the boar cut to render in a pot, dicing a root hastily imported from Natlan to caramelize in the lard.

The odor of a good cut of boar wafts out in noxious fumes. The oil clings to his skin—thick, hot, and suffocating.

A splash of broth brewed from last night's chicken bones deglazes the pan, and a dash of cream helps thicken the soup. The broil emits a low growl on the fire as his hands hover aimlessly over a selection of spices. Salt, perhaps. Sumeran cumin—what she always prefers—and a dash of it would help it go down. Coriander and oregano, both imported from Fontaine, peppercorns from Liyue, Inazuman Rayu. She's a Mondstadtian native, but her palate is well-traveled; he moved heaven and earth to line the cabinets to her tastes but the pungent odor of foreign spices only reminds him of why she roamed the length of Teyvat.

The moment his people discovered her lies, she ceased to be his Lady.

In the end, he settles for Mondstadtian bay leaves, and salt and cumin to taste. It's simple, but rich. As Crepus’s late father would say, he’s taken to the skills of a woman, and he’s come to favor their weapons too, from the heft of the vial in his pocket.

Drip, drip, poison, into the golden-thick broth of the stew. Drip, drip, blood. Soldiers marching through the hallway.

“We can keep this between us,” says the Lord of Dawn Winery. Inspector Eroch nods.

“Of course, Master Ragnvindr. As for the items . . .”

“The timepiece and the glove, bagged for your convenience.”

“All in good order, I see. But there is that one other thing of hers that we discussed.”

Master Ragnvindr lets loose a bone-weary sigh, turning to call over his shoulder. It takes only a brief wait for the door to edge open and release pitter-pattering footsteps down the hall. 

Eroch raises an eyebrow. “How old?”

“Fifteen months.”

“Fast runner for fifteen months. It seems the Ragnvindr line has finally yielded some good stock.”

“Papa?” says his Lady’s boy, coming to a stop at his feet. He’s still in nightclothes. Crepus gives him a pat on the head for responding so promptly to his summons.

“Here’s her boy.”

“Diluc, was it?”

“Yes,” he responds with a humorless smile. “Diluculum Ragnvindr.”

Eroch nods. “Very well. Come along, then.” 

With a firm nudge from Crepus, Diluc stumbles out from his side and into the open hallway. It is only natural for a son to seek the comforting touch of his father when lost in the dark, so the boy reaches out, his short, pudgy fingers rebuffed by a man too hardened for affection. 

“Go on,” Crepus says. He turns his son around by the shoulders – the bare minimum required in contact.

And in the absence of his father’s affection, Diluc sees the Inspector’s outstretched hand in the dark. He takes it by the pointer finger. When they draw near the carried body bag, when the boy finds his mother’s hand dangling by his side, swinging limply to and fro, he grasps that as well. 

And then, flanked on either side by his father’s betters, the boy marches out of Crepus’s life.

Crepus jolts upwards from his bed, heaving deep, disturbed breaths. His hand scrabbles at his bedside table until he finds the burnt scarlet orb of the glove. His fingers drift to the side, knocking against the warm glass casing of the timepiece, its molten contents drip-dripping into its bottom compartment, and the tension rushes out of him in one colossal sigh.

The room is awash in morning grays. He considers tiptoeing out of his bedroom to check on his son, but then he recognizes the furniture as that of his City Estate, and thus his son is a day-long wagon ride away.

He hunches over the duvet, planting his face into his thin-fingered hands to calm himself. I will return home tonight, he assures himself, as the first drops of rain tap against the windowpane. My son is safe at home.

To put it rather crassly, Celestia decides to piss all over Crepus’s dinner. Greater men than he have perished in Mondstadt’s seasonal rains, and said rains have decided to come in cold, harsh, and – most obnoxiously – early this year. Early enough to be more sleet than rain.

Crepus mutters a token prayer to Barbatos, hand clasped over the molten timepiece that lies just over his heart. He trusts Finn to have rallied the workers, thrown tarps over the fields to save the harvest, so the least he can do as Master of Dawn Winery is stick to one measly schedule.

“Pencil in a tip for the wagon boys, Heinel. They’re risking life and limb out here.”

Head Maid Heinel heaves a long-suffering sigh in response. She sidles even further under the eaves of the Ragnvindr city estate before pulling out her planner, putting names to each of the men currently loading their cargo. “Something to the effect of a thousand mora per head?”

“More to the effect of ten times that. You haven’t been in Lawrence employ for decades now; you can shake the mora pinching.”

Heinel clicks her tongue. Just like Crepus’s father, she must find him disappointing in every regard. “We’re a business, Crepusculum, not a charity. You can indulge in this generosity now, but someday you’ll be out in the cold and wishing you were a worse man.”

“We’ll worry about it then,” he mutters, tugging at the lining of his gloves. They hold no stolen power, no darkened red orb, but the itch is the same. Little does Heinel know, Crepus already suffers a debt of penance. “Looks like they’ve just about finished. Let us make haste. This sleet aches my bones.”

She makes a non-committal humming sound before scolding, half in jest, “Don’t go picking up any rats this time, boy.”

Crepus huffs a laugh. “By the grace of Barbatos, I shan’t be compelled to.”

It’s funny how despite being the most pious in the household, Heinel is truly despised by the Archons. Or so she must feel, considering their luck.

“I’m sorry, sir, we can’t drive through there!” shouts the wagon-driver over the rain. Heinel is resigned, neck hunched as she leans her head into her hand and pinches the bridge of her nose. “That there ground’s unstable! The wheels’ll lose traction and then we’re stuck for the night!”

“Just give me fifteen minutes. Can you make that happen?” Crepus bargains through the wagon flap, already buttoning up his coat. “I’ll go check on the child, then I’ll meet you right back up here on the main road, quick as anything.”

“Are you sure about that, sir? You got a son, don’t you? Ain’t he young? It’s nasty out there—”

“He’s sure about it,” Heinel interrupts flatly. “Stop the wagon.”

And that’s how Crepus ends up knee deep in mud and sleet, the shivering, near catatonic form of a boy wrapped in his coat. He feels ribs through the thin, threadbare cloak. He feels the sluggish, belabored breathing of a child on the edge of death, and it just about shatters his heart.

As he hauls himself and the boy back into the wagon, he braces himself for more of Heinel’s interminable scolding, but her fury is of the insidious sort today. Quiet, and best left to simmer.

And simmer it does, for several tense seconds, as Crepus struggles to catch his breath, until it boils over. 

“What will you say this time, Crepusculum?” she snaps. Finally, the tapping of rain against the cabin has something to contend with.

“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re on about, Heinel,” Crepus mutters. How pathetic is he, winded by a brisk walk through the rain? The boy is a cold weight against his side, barely moving as it is. 

“Will you take the poor, innocent child approach with this one? Or will you say he’ll be useful around the Manor? Or some mixture of both, I wonder?” The woman snorts. “Crepusculum Ragnvindr, there is a reason so many children end up abandoned on this very road. It takes only one for every deadbeat father in Mondstadt to know they can throw their children into the dirt of Dawn Winery, and some rich nobleman will pick up after their heartlessness. The moment you let one die, I assure you, you shan’t see another stray on this road.”

“You’d have me leave a hapless child to die?” he questions. “You’d blame me for another man’s folly? Listen to yourself, Heinel: the spitting image of Lawrence! You speak of madness.”

“You are not the origin of this horrid behavior, but your kindness enables it,” she mutters. Her words ring frigid, but her bony, wrinkled hands tug the shawl off her shoulders and tuck it around the shivering lump beside him. Her eyes stray to the side. For a woman subject to that same abandonment, some measure of agency must tempt her injured soul.

The boy burrows deeper into his side, twisting the coat tighter around the both of them. Crepus hesitates to place his arm anywhere. Around the boy? Lamely to the side? It hovers above the lump in his coat, aching with the strain. He will always provide these children what they deserve – a warm home and good food – but their mother he is not. Fortunately, Heinel provides the boy with what Crepus is unwilling to give, running her bony, aching hands over the child’s back. Those same gentle hands soothed a young Crepusculum to sleep decades ago, when the old Lady Ragnvindr fled her husband’s tyranny for weeks or months at a time, and then, in the end, once more, that time, never to return.

Crepus sighs in relief as the shivers gradually increase in magnitude, that spark of life blazing stronger and stronger, and the bundle tucked into his side grows warmer. He swipes the remaining rainwater off his face once again, rocking with the uneven trudges of the carriage as they pull up to the Winery front doors.

Three children and a man huddle on the balcony: Elzer, Adelinde, and the Ragnvindr Butler and Bookkeeper Finn. And then Diluc, the reason they all stand there in the first place.

Heinel stays behind to direct the carriage drivers as Crepus eases the stray boy back into his arms, still wrapped in coat and shawl. By the time he's made it to the front door, Finn has disappeared, no doubt to rally the servant staff in a by now routine procedure. The usual welcomes from the children make way for a respectful silence. Adelinde holds the door for him. Crepus dashes for the spot on the rug closest to the lit hearth, shucking his gloves on the way. Diluc trails after him with wide eyes.

"His body temperature is dangerously low," Crepus mumbles, after having disposed of the soaked clothing, including a dirtied bandage that reveals a winked shut eye. The other eye, a dull lilac, droops, but it’s still aware, and the boy still shivers. This one's a survivor.

He hears a little shuffle from behind him. "I can help, Father. I can use my vision."

Crepus turns to look. Diluc has a very serious frown on his face, focused like a soldier off to war instead of a ten-year-old thrust into a medical emergency. Crepus feels a tightness in his chest at the sight.

He holds out his hands.

"Control, Diluc. Show me your control." His son hesitates at first, unused to this kind of contact from his own father, but he eventually places his small hands in his palms. Crepus almost flinches from the heat radiating from the contact, just shy of burning. This is what happens when one demands restraint from a raging fire. "Control, Diluc. Gentler flames, son, you have this."

The heat mellows into a soft, protective warmth.

Crepus drops his boy's hands and lightly pats his shoulder.

"Was that right, Father?" the boy asks with hungry eyes.

"Yes it was. That's my son." Crepus flashes a brief smile, but the stray slowly listing to the side is his first priority. Crepus catches him by the arm. "Stay awake for me, boy! Stay awake! Now come here in front of the fire, Diluc . . . Yes, that's right. Hands on his chest, over his heart and lungs. He'll be fine now that he's next to the fire, but those are the most important spots . . . "

"He's naked and dirty, Father . . . " 

Crepus can’t stop his expression from turning grave in disappointment.

"Diluc, this boy is in danger."

"No, no! I mean . . . " Diluc trails off, placing his hands over the boy's chest, the perfect position to just barely feel the ribs rising beneath his skin. Those wide, Ragnvindr red eyes stare as the other child blinks sluggishly back, an earnest sadness filling Diluc's expression. His voice squeaks and breaks a little. "Why? Where are his parents?"

Crepus holds them all upright, releasing a heavy breath.

"We don't know yet, Diluc," Crepus says. "An accident, perhaps. Or desperation. Either way, you're here doing the right thing helping him through the night, okay? That's my brave, compassionate boy. If you see his eyes close for too long, let me know. We can't let him fall asleep," Crepus says, as finally, servants rush in with blankets, towels, and mugs of hot water. Somewhere in this house, the maids heat up a bath for the boy.

Diluc nods, fully fixated on his task, and Crepus feels just the slightest bit more secure, knowing in his heart of hearts that this stray will make it through the night. He warms at the notion that his son will be ten times the man he ever was, ten times the man Crepus tries to be with each act of generosity, each downtrodden soul brought in from the cold. And where Crepus might try, try so desperately and fail, Diluc will be everything this stray needs.

Good, he thinks. Good. Because no child deserves to be a bad man's penance, but every child deserves a home.

"Master Crepus, Young Master Diluc, let me handle the boy."

"Leave Young Master Diluc to his devices; he's doing good work. Master Crepus, you've had a long day, let's get you settled for the night . . . "

"No, no," Crepus says, swaddling the child in thick furs. A dull, lilac eye stares up from within, a strange star-shaped iris peeking from beneath a half-shuttered eyelid. Even through the hypothermia, there's a glint of recognition there. A connection, formed only when like meets like.

"I have him," Crepus says.

Diluc’s curfew is conditionally waived. After a hot bath, the stray spends the night in the older boy’s room, the two boys surrounded on all sides by flasks of warm water, replaced hourly. Come morning, Diluc’s eyes are ringed with dark shadows, his hands still pressing warmth into the boy’s fingers. It’s no wonder the two make fast friends.

Crepus does what he does best: support from a safe, impersonal distance. He pulls his staff and the wagon boys to the side, pays them each a small fortune to find the parents once the rains stop. Any man or woman with brown skin and/or navy hair. Any man or woman looking for their child. Any man or woman who was seen with a child and later without one. He pulls in every connection at his disposal, furiously sending and receiving missives until the light of early dawn touches the pile of papers devouring his desk.

And as Diluc and Adelinde nurse the boy up from nothing, Crepus receives inconclusive report after inconclusive report. His head falls into his hands.

It is, at this point, expected. What’s another stray taken in by the rich Lord of Dawn Winery?

“Come in.”

The door creaks open by just a sliver, a blue-haired boy slipping through silent as anything. Crepus barely keeps the smile on his face. His son’s old clothing bags around the boy’s shoulders. Bony limbs swim in fine fabric.

“Come, come . . . Kaeya, was it?” The boy nods. Diluc heard first and quickly reported the name to his father. “Thank you for agreeing to talk to me. Won’t you take a seat?”

Another silent nod.

Kaeya has to crawl into his seat, dwarfed by the delicately upholstered chair across from Crepus’s desk. There, he fails to fidget, fails to swing his thin, dangling legs, choosing instead to fold his hands respectfully in his lap. The only childlike quality he displays is a healthy curiosity, his eyes, one lilac, one striking gold, wandering the entirety of Crepus’s office. 

Countless Lords and Ladies Ragnvindr decorate the walls. Crepus’s mother and father flank the largest window, beside the previous lord and lady, and the previous lord and lady before them. Crepus himself is displayed partnerless. 

By the time he refocuses, he finds Kaeya’s gaze fixed uncannily upon him. The one golden iris glints in the afternoon light.

He coughs. “How have you felt lately, Kaeya? Was the doctor good to you?”

The boy nods, and does not speak.

“That is good. He told me you’ve recovered quickly. Given your malnourishment, walking unassisted in two days is nothing short of a miracle, did you know? You are a strong boy.”

After careful consideration, the boy only nods again.

Crepus smiles, reminding himself to be patient.

“However, Adelinde has told me that you often refuse to eat. Is the food here not to your liking?”

A shake of the head, no.

“You needn’t hold yourself back. You are not imposing. Think of this manor as your own home. Request all that you may need. Our resources are at your disposal.” A knock. “Ah. That must be the tea. Come in.”

Adelinde bustles in, a welcome break in the silence, and places the tray of tea down at the desk. When she makes to pour, Crepus raises a hand to stop her.

“Master Crepus, is it not customary for the younger generation to . . . ?”

“Only if you join us for a cup, young lady.”

She inclines her head. “Head Maid Heinel has many tasks for me today. I’m afraid I can’t stay.”

“Then I can pour my own tea. Your time is more valuable than that, Adelinde. Speaking of which, if that crone works you too hard, report her directly to me, do you hear?” He chuckles at her vaguely scandalized reaction. How long has it been? Three years? He’ll get her to laugh yet. “Run along now.”

“Yes, sir.” She leaves with a quick curtsy, leaving the two of them alone once more.

For want of anything to occupy himself with, the aging Ragnvindr runs his fingers over the tea set. It’s their finest porcelain, each cup painted with one of the Four Winds of Mondstadt.

“Do you drink tea, Kaeya?”

A moment of consideration yields a shrug. Not a no, then. He’ll leave the option. 

He pushes the cup adorned with the Wolf of the North across the desk, saving the Falcon, his personal favorite, for himself.

Then, as he learned to do for his father in youth, he scoops rum-soaked rock sugar into both cups, folding the warm scent thickly into the air. In goes the dark amber tea, rising around the rock sugar and swirling the traces of honeyed rum into an earthy, steaming liquid. Finally, a splash of cream, poured counterclockwise, blooms across the dark surface. More cream for the boy than for himself. Too much caffeine might wreak havoc on a starved system.

Kaeya glances quickly down at the steaming tea, and then back up to meet the man’s gaze. Crepus smiles, tries to encourage him, but ah, the tea must be too hot right now.

He passes the next few minutes updating the boy on the search, unnerved by his silence yet unwilling to push. He asks the boy of his family, to which he finally answers:

“My father left me here. He said he would go buy juice.”

There was certainly no juice sold on such a stormy night, which begs the question,

“Did your father treat you well, Kaeya?”

To which the boy replies, eyes so focused and clear, “ . . . I don’t remember.”

Further questions yield no response. Eventually, Crepus turns away in frustration, cursing the man who left his child so broken in a foreign land. Amnesia? Trauma response? How can they know when the boy can’t speak of it?

When he collects himself, he turns back to face the boy and takes his first sip of the long cooled tea. Strangely light for his tastes. The boy’s gaze has fixed elsewhere by now.

“I see you’ve noticed my clock. Do you like it?” he asks, grateful for any escape from the lull. A moment of consideration. The boy nods. “A family heirloom hand-carved and passed down from my grandfather. Do you see the owl carving on the long hand? Have you seen such a creature before?”

On and on go the questions, simple and meaningless yes or nos, until finally, the boy takes a sip of tea. And then, at the rich, honeyed flavor, the boy finishes the rest of it in three quick gulps.

Eventually, calls for lunch pull the child away. Crepus has heard that though he barely eats, Kaeya enjoys simply listening to the conversation between Diluc and the maidstaff, something Crepus himself is rarely privy to.

It isn’t until after Kaeya leaves that the Lord realizes: a golden, painted Wolf adorns the porcelain cup in his hand, and the cup across from him holds the Falcon. Between his first sip and Kaeya’s, the owl on the minute hand traveled a full quarter circle, and their cups mysteriously traded places.

Wary of poison, he thinks, by instinct, and with any adult man he’d be certain. His hand starts towards his breast pocket, where the molten timepiece lies, and where that cursed, wine-red vial once hid. It is not, after all, without precedent.

But a young boy of his own son’s age . . . What boy thinks of poison? And what boy thinks to switch cups with his potential killer?

This is a boy, but he can’t dismiss his own observations. But this is a young boy . . . a young, foreign-looking boy, abandoned at his doorstep, who knows when to speak and when to keep silent, and with eyes that look decades older than his body. How perfectly he plays the miserable orphan. How easily he weasels under Crepus’s defenses, and how quickly he disassembles a Lord’s well-constructed ruse. He can try, but the Master of Dawn Winery has both a certain level of savvy and so little family left to lose; he can ill afford that level of ignorance . . .

His eyes drift to the portrait hanging by its lonesome over the window. Stress lines mar the painting’s smile. Bags too dark to conceal behind makeup sit heavy beneath the eyes. Despite the jovial facade, it is clear that this is a man so deeply unhappy that even acrylic fails to paint over his distrustful void. How pitiful. How needlessly unhappy, this Crepus Ragnvindr.

He sighs. His hand absently plays the two teacups around in a circle. The Falcon, then the Wolf, then the Falcon, then the Wolf. He can’t be older than ten, you loon, he thinks to himself, feeling just how easily he could mistake the cups on a fluke.

A knock. “Come in.”

Elzer enters and bows. Crepus notes that the boy seems to have settled well since his addition to the household three years ago.

“A missive from Sir Eroch, Master Crepus.” Curses.

“Leave it on my desk, Elzer. Thank you.” And here, an occasion to smile. “Those books you wanted from Inazuma finally arrived, by the way. I left them with Finn amidst all the chaos, so when you find the time, you may collect them from him.”

Elzer bows again, this time twice in quick succession. “Thank you! I mean, thank you, Master Crepus!” he says. Even at this young an age, that boy arranged a book club with multiple notable members of the Mondstadtian elite. Whether this was an intentional act or a result of blind, shared fanaticism, Crepus is none the wiser. Elzer, unaware of his scrutiny, backs hastily out of his office.

Leaving Crepus alone with the missive.

From the desk of the Head Inspector of the Most Eminent Knights of Favonius:

To the Respected Master Ragnvindr of Dawn Winery,

As Head Inspector of this country’s stalwart defense, I must once again emphasize the dangers of your late Lady’s possessions. I recently resubmitted the request to have your estate professionally searched by a collection of my most trusted Knights. You mustn’t allow this request to expire again. As it stands, eight years of unchecked exposure to such dangerous artifacts is egregious enough, and as such, it is imperative that these items be immediately found and removed from the premises. Your cooperation would be deeply appreciated in this matter . . . 

The rest of the missive goes unread. In fact, he loses the opportunity to finish reading it, just as he loses the ashes in his wastebin.