Chapter Text
The matters of the divine involves the matters of many, nameless mortals’ fates. As such, in order to avoid catastrophic casualties, one should learn how and when to let go.
Kyryll’s first sacrifice was his own freedom, for the lives of many that lived under the blanket of ice.
He used to walk the palace’s corridors like a phantom while bearing a child in his embers. He would grace the cold walls with his silent presence, with the brand of the Tsar’s all around his vessel.
Kyryll was seen as the forgiving and sympathetic consort, but just as the curtains fell and the stage is left desolate, Kyryll becomes the caged lantern fae; the Tsar’s first and last consort.
For, his flame is encased in a gilded, inescapable cage—it has been in that state since the night of their consummation built on betrayal and a love too much for him to bear.
Kyryll’s second sacrifice, then, was his sight.
He has lost his vision in order to trade for his daughter’s mind to be left untainted.
Amidst the cataclysmic disaster that befell all of Teyvat, Kyryll bravely bargained against a superior god. He was considered a blasphemous fool, but he left with his heart just as full. His dear Anastasya will live, and her own vision will spread far and come to fruition in a future he hoped will be bright enough to illuminate lands where the void has touched.
“You have sacrificed too much for something less.” A Khaenri’ahn once told him, with Kyryll stopping on his tracks with a dull crunch of snow. “Why don’t you find another footing? This time, it will be sturdier than the last.”
Kyryll laughed, lacking the joy it usually had. “I’m afraid you and your faction won’t find any use on a worn old thing like me.”
When the man spoke, it was laced with hesitation. “Even if it’s to bring new hope to Anastasya?”
Kyryll froze, his demeanor shifting back to melancholy. “Pardon?”
“Your daughter. She is to rally against… that. In the near future, that is.”
The Khaenri’ahn must’ve had a pinch of jest in him left to gesture with his head when the Fae was completely unable to see. He could only find the minuscule body temperature nod somewhere, and that was all. But Kyryll understood what he was implying.
He fell silent, uncertain. As the wind whipped at his hair along with the fading taste of home, Kyryll sighed and shook his head. This invitation—it seemed rather impeccable for Kyryll’s plan to rest for eternity.
“…Has she, now?” Smiling to himself, Kyryll brought his hand to his chest, feeling the subtle ache there at the mention of his child. “Following in her father’s footsteps, my… and here I am believing that I taught her better.”
“It is for the new world.”
“A new world. Is it because this world is beyond saving?” Shifting on his feet to turn his back against the man, Kyryll, with a heavy set of his shoulders, asked. “Could you pass a message for a worn and forgotten Fae, my friend?”
The Khaenri’ahn watched, as the lantern fae started walking with firm yet small doubtful footsteps, his long, dark cloak billowing from a strong gust of freezing wind.
“Of course.” He ended up saying.
As blue fire flared inside his lantern, Kyryll opened his mouth. “Tell her that her mother raised not a fool, but a star that will outshine and freeze the whole land of Teyvat; Monomakh was one stubborn fool, may she crown herself not as the second, but anew.”
Then, his third sacrifice—or loss, to be precise—was his hope for humanity.
It could’ve been a punishment. Or it could’ve been fate’s cruel humor meant for a banquet’s merriment. For a legendary fae to fall and has his heart broken, not by a lover nor by friends—but by the catastrophe that crawled out from the deepest crevices of the Abyss—was a tale woven only with sorrow and a false sense of elation.
He couldn’t help but look back to the days of lesser worries and burdens. When Kyryll was yet to step into the palace, when Kyryll was just a young, fledgling deity. A flame, wondering the cold and bleak planes, guiding the fallen and keeping them safe.
When was the last time Kyryll had sat down, sighed, and shook his head as he mulled over life’s affairs? Where were the times of leisure and thinking nothing other than ways to ease his boredom?
With his sight no longer what it once was, Kyryll found it increasingly difficult to differentiate what was abyssal and what was real. With only dark silhouettes of landscapes and the livings’ rough colors that stemmed from their living embers, his remaining senses are in a verge of collapse from keeping the void from reaching his mind.
It wouldn’t be long before he, too, succumbed to its whispers.
And with nothing else to anchor him but the thought of Anastasya enacting revenge with the ending Kyryll detests, there is only either hate or despair fueling this decision that flared from this laughable desolation.
He took utmost care with setting up his grave, carved the symbols as best as his sightless vessel can, then looked back to where the sound of crashing waves began. Kyryll is not ending his life, no. It is simply…
A permanent farewell.
A coward’s escape.
A forlorn death.
A mother’s irresponsibility.
A toast, to life’s greatest stage.