Chapter Text
## Chapter 1 — The Last Ordinary Morning
Diluc woke before dawn knowing exactly how his father would die.
Not in the way of a nightmare—no waking scream, no sudden jolt into cold sweat—but with the quiet certainty of memory. The kind that sat behind his eyes even when he tried not to look at it.
He lay still for a long moment, staring at the ceiling.
Wooden beams. Familiar cracks. A faint draft near the window where the frame never quite sealed properly.
Mondstadt Manor.
Not the version of it he had lived in for years as a man.
The version before everything broke.
His hand moved before his thoughts fully caught up. He pressed two fingers against his own palm, then flexed them slowly, as if checking whether they belonged to him.
They did.
Smaller. Younger. Unscarred in places they should not be.
That realization did not bring relief.
It brought dread.
Because if this was real—if this body was real—then so was everything else.
He sat up.
The room shifted with him, unchanged and mercilessly intact. The sword rack by the wall. The desk piled with practice reports Crepus used to insist he complete. The faint scent of polished wood and ink.
A life not yet ruined.
Diluc swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat there for a long time without moving.
He had been here before.
That was the worst part.
Not in dreams. Not in imagination.
In memory.
A year before the fire.
A year before the Abyss.
A year before—
He stopped that thought before it could finish forming.
Outside, birds began to stir. Mondstadt was waking.
He stood.
---
Crepus Ragnvindr was already in the dining hall when Diluc arrived.
He was reading something—trade reports, perhaps, or correspondence from the Knights. The kind of paperwork that always seemed to follow him even into meals. A cup of tea sat untouched at his right hand, steam curling upward in soft spirals.
When he looked up and saw Diluc, his expression shifted immediately into something warm.
“Good morning,” Crepus said.
Just that.
Simple. Ordinary.
Alive.
Diluc’s throat tightened in a way he did not understand how to name.
“Good morning,” he replied.
His voice came out steady.
That, too, felt wrong.
Crepus studied him for a moment longer than necessary. Not suspiciously—just attentively, like a man used to noticing when something in his household was slightly off.
“You’re early,” Crepus said.
Diluc almost laughed.
Early.
If only that were what this was.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said instead.
A safe answer. A meaningless one.
Crepus nodded as if that explained everything and returned to his tea.
From the hallway came the sound of light footsteps.
Then a voice.
“Well, that’s unusual.”
Kaeya stepped into the room like he belonged there in a way Diluc had once taken for granted.
Younger. Easier. Smiling.
Alive.
Diluc’s chest tightened.
Kaeya leaned against the doorway with practiced ease, watching him with open amusement.
“Did the great Diluc Ragnvindr finally discover the concept of insomnia?”
“I always knew it,” Diluc said automatically.
Kaeya’s grin widened.
“Lies already this early in the morning? How industrious.”
Crepus gave a quiet, tired sigh that suggested this was not the first time they had had this exchange.
Diluc watched them both.
The rhythm of it. The familiarity. The unbroken shape of a morning that had not yet learned how to end.
Kaeya crossed the room and reached for a piece of fruit from the table.
“Father,” he said lightly, “if Diluc starts acting strange, we should have him examined.”
“I am not strange,” Diluc said.
Kaeya hummed. “Debatable.”
Crepus shook his head, a small smile tugging at his mouth.
“Eat,” he said gently, sliding a plate toward Diluc. “Both of you. You have training later.”
Training.
Diluc looked down at the food.
His stomach did not move.
He could remember training after this morning.
He could remember mornings after training.
He could remember mornings that came after that, too.
And then he could remember when there were no more mornings here at all.
Kaeya was still talking—something teasing, something unimportant—but Diluc was no longer listening.
Because the problem was not Kaeya’s words.
It was the way Kaeya looked at him.
Like he was safe.
Like nothing had ever been broken between them.
Like there was still time.
Diluc’s fingers tightened slightly against the edge of the table.
---
Later, the manor felt too loud.
Or perhaps it was too quiet. He could not tell which.
Crepus had returned to his duties. Kaeya had disappeared somewhere into the city, likely to annoy someone at the Knights of Favonius. The servants moved like ghosts through the halls, none of them noticing anything wrong.
Nothing was wrong.
That was the lie the world was telling.
Diluc walked through it anyway.
He stopped in front of a window overlooking the courtyard.
Sunlight spilled across the stone.
Everything looked exactly as it should.
And that was the problem.
Because he knew what came after things looked exactly as they should.
His reflection stared back at him.
Younger face. Familiar eyes. A version of himself that had not yet learned how to stop believing in permanence.
Diluc raised a hand.
The glass did not answer.
Neither did the future.
---
By midday, he had stopped trying to behave normally.
Not intentionally.
It simply became impossible to maintain.
Every sound reminded him of something he should not yet remember.
Every laugh from Kaeya in another room felt like a warning.
Every step Crepus took felt heavier than it should.
He found himself standing outside Crepus’s study without realizing how he had gotten there.
The door was closed.
Inside, ink scratched softly across paper.
His father was alive.
That thought should have been comforting.
It wasn’t.
It felt temporary.
Everything felt temporary.
---
He left the manor in the late afternoon.
No one stopped him.
No one questioned him.
Mondstadt opened around him like a story still believing it had a happy ending.
Children ran through the streets. Merchants called out prices. The wind carried the sound of a bard somewhere near the cathedral, laughing between notes.
Diluc walked through it all as if moving through something fragile.
Because he knew how easily it could break.
---
He ended up at the edge of the city without intending to.
The road toward the vineyard stretched out before him.
Familiar.
Safe.
Wrong.
A place that would exist even after everything else stopped existing.
He stopped walking.
The wind moved through the grass.
For a moment, he considered continuing forward.
Leaving Mondstadt entirely.
Just walking until the memory of this place stopped feeling like something he was stealing.
But that wasn’t the decision forming inside him.
The decision was already older than that.
He just hadn’t admitted it yet.
---
If he stayed, he would hurt Kaeya.
Not in some abstract future sense.
Not in fate.
In memory.
In consequence.
He had already lived it once.
He had already seen what it did.
He could not do it again.
Not to him.
Not again.
Diluc exhaled slowly.
The wind did not answer.
---
That night, Mondstadt was quiet.
The manor was quieter.
Crepus had gone to bed early, tired from work. Kaeya’s laughter had faded hours ago behind closed doors and candlelight.
Diluc stood in his room.
Fully dressed.
Still.
Listening.
He could hear the house breathing around him.
Wood settling. Distant wind. The faint shift of fabric as a servant passed in the hall below.
A normal night.
The kind that promised nothing.
He picked up his Vision from the desk.
It warmed slightly in his hand.
A gift he had once been proud of.
A symbol of everything he thought he could protect.
He looked at it for a long time.
Then he set it back down.
Carefully.
Deliberately.
Like placing something back into a life he could no longer afford to keep.
---
He wrote no note.
There was nothing to say that would not become a wound.
Instead, he moved quietly through the manor.
Past sleeping corridors.
Past closed doors.
Past rooms that would still be here in the morning, even if he was not.
He stopped once.
Outside Kaeya’s door.
Hand raised.
Uncertain.
For a moment, he stood there, listening.
Nothing.
Just breathing behind wood.
Safe.
Alive.
Diluc lowered his hand.
---
By the time the sky began to pale, he was gone.
Mondstadt did not notice at first.
It would take time for absence to become real.
Time for questions.
Time for fear.
Time for grief.
Time for everything that came after someone was no longer where they were supposed to be.
On the desk in his room, his Vision remained untouched.
And somewhere in the quiet, a life continued without him—still believing, for a little while longer, that it would not have to learn what loss felt like again.