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mania-sama · 5 months ago

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is it me or the fear talking (what a dumb question)

Intro III - NF

➼ information ❧ Genshin Impact ❧ Pairing: Kaeya & Himself ❧ Additional Character: Albedo ❧ Tags: buried alive, alternate character interpretation, open to interpretation, gaslighting, angst, sleepwalking, songfic, song lyrics as dialogue (cringe is dead), character study ❧ Summary: A shovel in his hand, Kaeya realizes he has to kill the person he fears the most. ❧ Word Count: 5,604 ❧ Cross-posted from Archive of Our Own ❧ Original post date: 30 April 2022

In his last memory, Kaeya had been drunk. There was no question about it; the hazy thoughts of his muddled mind, the slur in his words, and Diluc’s glare as he stumbled out of Angel’s Share. He had managed to drag himself to his office at the Headquarters, blissfully unaware and uncaring of any knights that saw his sorry state in the progress.

In the present, his vision was pristine and mind clear. The carpet underneath his feet was torn in multiple places and dark with years of built-up grime and neglection. His office floor, unlike all of the others in the Headquarters, didn’t have a carpet on it. It was marble, matching the hallways just outside of the door. When he’d first claimed the office for himself several years ago, the first thing he’d done was to remove the unnecessary fabric. With this information, he concluded that the place he was in wasn’t his office or even the Knights’ Headquarters. Despite that, the place was familiar in the most uncomfortable and worst of ways.

Kaeya moved forward, the dark hardwood underneath the layer of carpet squeaked from the pressure of his weight. The wood was eroded from fungi and hidden insects undiscovered through the years of its clear abandon. The hallway he slowly traversed through was dimly lit by flickering candle lights. Several of those were missing from their cages against the wall and were instead smeared against the ground. Candle wax mixed strangely with the unkempt carpet hairs.

The hallway he was walking along turned into a T, opening up to a hallway overlooking the living room of the estate. A large chandelier hung from the ceiling above the main room, swinging gently despite the absence of a breeze. There were only two candles lit on the fixture, and the rest were burnt down or completely missing. Kaeya headed to the left side of the staircase leading to the room below.

As he walked past a room, the door abruptly shook violently in response to a bang against it. A gut-wrenching cry emitted from inside of it, causing a wave of nausea to come up Kaeya’s throat. With a hand on his mouth, he forced his feet to keep going. It never got easier to see or hear that room, no matter how many days he spent trapped inside this estate. If he had chosen to go to the right-hand stairway, the room he would’ve had to walk by was almost worse than the one on the left.

Kaeya would’ve grabbed onto the handrail lining the hallway for stability from his sudden nausea, but he was sure it would fully collapse and crumble under any weight he put on it. Just like the floor, mites and fungi were eating it hollow.

Forcefully ignoring the sobs emitting from the bedroom and the cobwebs lining the baseboards against the ceiling and floor, Kaeya began his descent down the staircase. Each board of wood bent under his feet, and he was careful to not misstep. It was dark enough that it would’ve been relatively easy to fall if he wasn’t paying attention.

The living room was just as dark as the hallway. The wallpaper peeled off of the wall and fallen square panels from the ceiling were scattered across the floor, broken. They cracked underneath Kaeya’s boots. Speaking of which, his shoes were the same pair that matched his old knight uniform, the one he wore before becoming Cavalry Captain. Lifting his sleeved arm and rubbing a hand on his coat, Kaeya found that he was in said uniform.

It was never the same. Every time he found himself in this dark, abandoned estate, his outfit was different. Most of the time, Kaeya himself was changed in some aspects as well. Whether that be his physical age or the just length of his hair, he was never the exact same as he was in his previous visit to the mansion.

Besides the change of attire, Kaeya didn’t feel different in any way. He reached his bare hands up to touch his face, feeling the skin around his eye. In the waking world of reality, his right eye was always covered. In the abandoned and broken estate, he couldn’t remember a time when he even had an eyepatch. It was disturbing in its own right, serving as a reminder that there was no hiding. There was nothing to protect him outside of the doors that locked away his past.

Kaeya slowly picked his feet up again and walked to find a mirror on the other side of the living room. All of the visible furniture was covered by off-white dust sheets. The chairs and couches were scattered in an unorganized manner, though in the original estate, they had once formed a semicircle in front of the fireplace. A wooden table was split into two in the direct middle of the room, its dust sheet covered with dark splotches of dried blood.

He averted his eyes. The fireplace wasn’t lit, but it never was. One thing that had never changed in the estate was how cold it was, like it lacked life despite the person– people– that lived there. The permanent chill seeped straight through his clothes and poked at his bones like incessant needles. His Cryo Vision had allowed his body to become resilient to the cold, but he lacked that elemental power in the manor.

The mirror was just ahead, propped up against a pillar against the edge of the living room. Mirrors were scattered everywhere in the mansion, some broken and some not. It seemed that the estate wanted Kaeya to see himself, to perceive who he truly was. It was unsettling and distressing. The mirror he wanted was covered by another dust sheet. Glancing around the room as anxiety spiked his heart rate, he harshly tugged the cover completely off.

The glass was dirty and unkept with one large crack extending the entire mirror horizontally in a jagged line. Kaeya looked entirely the same as he did in the real world, save for the knight uniform he hadn’t worn in several years. There wasn’t a trace of intoxication on his person, but his emotional turmoil was easy enough to read. His body was stiff with tension and his chest rose up and down in an uneven pattern. The mansion always had a way of making him look so open and vulnerable.

His eyes were wide with something akin to dread. His now uncovered eye was exposed, revealing absolutely nothing special underneath. Ah, there was the thing that had changed. For some odd reason, the manor decided to make his Khaenri’ahn eye entirely normal. It was blue now, and its pupil was only vaguely star-shaped. It matched his left eye perfectly, the one that he let the real world see.

He wasn’t sure when it had happened, for there hadn’t been anyone near him just a second ago. There was a figure behind him that was meeting his gaze through the mirror. Kaeya tensed impossibly further, a chill running down his back and through his nervous system.

Kaeya couldn’t bear to look in the mirror anymore; he was frightened by his own terrified expression. Turning around wasn’t much easier, for the figure looked exactly like himself. Major differences set them apart, though, which made it a lot easier for Kaeya to distinguish himself from the other. The figure wore a uniform only for royalty: a suit, pristine white and untouched by the dirt and sawdust surrounding them. Gold epaulets dawned each shoulder, and a similarly-colored sash crossed the entire front of his chest.

A long, white cape flowed with the figure’s movement as it followed Kaeya back into the main part of the living room. The fur lining the top of the cape around its neck was a deep and dark ocean blue. Sharp, four-pointed stars littered the underside of the cape, and its boots echoed in the eerie silence as it stalked. Kaeya didn’t say anything to it. He didn’t want to, so he shouldn’t have to, but it was still following him. It was still behind him, watching and matching every footstep until Kaeya collapsed onto a barely-standing chair on the opposite side of the room.

It– no, he, he wouldn’t want to be called an it– tilted his head as Kaeya stared at him. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as words written in black ink began to fill the mirror. It was already dripping down the glass. Kaeya’s attention was brought back when it– he– crossed his arms over his chest.

“Are you scared of me?” The figure asked. His eyes were a brown-ish gold, and their pupils were distinctly star-shaped, similar to the ones on the underside of his cape. Kaeya looked away, the sight making him feel sick to the stomach and so, so cold. The figure scoffed. “That’s embarrassing.”

Kaeya didn’t say anything. This time the words were simply caught in his throat. He couldn’t lie here. Nobody could, at least of what he was aware of. Everything that lived here only spat hurtful truths whether or not they wanted to. It was horrible, a constant and undying nightmare that breathed persistently. There wasn’t an escape, only temporary, so-called relief in the real world that only caused more words to be written on the tearing wallpaper.

“If it wasn’t for me, you would’ve never become Cavalry Captain,” the figure continued. Kaeya became extremely aware of the clothes resting on his skin. Toes rubbed uncomfortably together in his white boots. They were almost brown in the dim, flickering light, looking like they were used for years as mud shoes.

After not receiving a response, the figure sat on the floor in an unceremonious manner. For his appearance, it– he– didn’t act like the prince he was supposed to be. “I’ve been there for you,” he said while flicking out his cape. It splayed out against the ground and draped over the broken ceiling tiles and layered dust. “How come you were never there for me?”

He kicked his feet out, legs crossing over each other as he leaned back on his hands. The prince didn’t wait on a response. He wasn’t going to get one, anyway. “It’s a little twisted, but I miss when you and I would have nightmares. We saw each other more, then.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Kaeya strangled out, voice coming out more horse than he expected. He still couldn’t look at the stranger– no, he was so familiar– in front of him. They looked too much alike, despite the eyes and attire. Their body shapes and skin tones matched perfectly, and their voices were the same despite the roughness of Kaeya’s.

“Well, that’s too bad!” laughed the prince without any humor. A barely-audible plea of silence escaped Kaeya’s lips, which he swiftly slapped with a bare hand. His head snapped around to find the figure on the floor, but he didn’t seem to notice nor care.

He began to push himself off the floor without any real urgency or rush. Why did he sit down in the first place? “Now, where were we? Ah, do you remember back in the days when you and I had it all mapped out in your bedroom?” Kaeya did remember. That was when he still inhabited that upstairs bedroom of the estate, both in reality and in this crumbled mansion. “Crying in there like a baby, ‘I wish Dad was here,’” the figure mocked mercilessly.

There was a kid still living in that room. He screamed and cried and banged on the door, yet Kaeya never let him out. Facing the child in there, and facing the words he wrote on the wall were something he preferred to keep locked away. Nights that Kaeya found himself trapped in the inside of that bedroom with that little kid that was identical to his own, younger self were the nights he read and heard those same words said by the prince. They were permanently etched to the walls, replaying over and over again in nightmares.

“You don’t really want to change me,” he said. Kaeya looked away again, this time to the archway connecting the living room to a large hallway. “I made everything; I made you who you are. Do you really want to get rid of your main personality?”

The dust sheet was itchy. He had to move, to get away from this figure talking in front of him. The chair creaked at the sudden loss of pressure. Kaeya didn’t know where to go. “It’s time to make plans, and you know I can help. I don’t want to make you nervous, but it isn’t like it used to be. You’ve got a lot of people watching.”

The living room lacked any life besides the two identical men in there. Yet, that wasn’t what the prince was referencing, was it? He was talking about the increase in hilichurl activity, the abyss order drawing nearer, and that cursed mechanism found in the Chasm. Kaeya had thought he escaped his roots, disregarding the prince that lived permanently in this mansion. Now, it was all crashing down to destroy him. A ceiling tile fell and splintered behind him.

“You don’t want me in your life,” the figure said with a wrinkle of his nose. He wasn’t happy with Kaeya. “That’s hard to digest. I told you I’ll leave when we die,” he raised his arms and extended them out into the air by his side, “We haven’t died yet!”

Black paint lined the prince’s lips and mouth. The ends extended far along his cheekbone, jagged and terrifying. When the prince grinned maliciously, the drawn smile made his white teeth appear a putrid yellow color. Perhaps it wasn’t his eyes that were the most terrifying to look at, but rather that permanently painted smile on his face. The days when Kaeya found himself with that same faux grin were some of the worst.

“Cavalry Captain is beautiful, but I’m wondering what’s coming next? Look at me when I’m talking to you— did you hear what I said?” Kaeya was looking for an escape, somewhere to go to run from the sound of his own voice mocking and penetrating his ears. He purposefully didn’t look the prince in the eyes.

The figure laughed. It was full of malice and anger. “Do you not like this prison I built you? Oh, you know what the funny thing is?” He grabbed onto Kaeya’s elbow, pressing his gloved fingers harshly against the nerves. A wave of pain shot up the Cavalry Captain’s arm. “You keep on acting like I’m a stranger, but we’ve been together since you were a kid!”

Memories of the nights where there was no-one but the two of them pounded on its designated door. He heard the screams and cries clearly again even though the room was on the second floor. That kid wanted to be let out, saved. Kaeya ripped his arm from the prince’s harsh grip, but he didn’t make any moves to the stairway. His legs we’re frozen, keeping him rooted in front of the rotting chair.

“I took us from a broken nation. I told you everything was okay. Now you’re trying to cut me out like I’ve never been a part of your life.” Oh, he was truly angry now, and Kaeya was utterly scared. He continued, “I am the heart of it, I made this whole place.”

Kaeya’s mind was muddled and confused as the words were spat in his face, but he was sure that the prince hadn’t been the one to create the estate. Kaeya had, though he couldn’t be sure at what exact time in his life. When he was six years old, probably, just a kid who wanted a haven. It hadn’t been a place he feared until he entered. The prince was right when he said that he made it a prison.

“Tell me, Kaeya. What’s the point in having a sword if you can’t swing?” He leaned forward and sneered in Kaeya’s face. “What’s the point in having blood with no veins? Love with no pain?”

He’s heard those words before. They mixed cruelly with the sweet, innocent, and soothing sentences the prince had sung to Kaeya after hard and confusing days. Bile curdled in his stomach. Kaeya had to leave, and without a destination in mind, his feet started to move. The prince followed, the sound of his cape fluttering violently behind him echoing with his voice.

“I’m saying that me without you doesn’t make any sense,” he called. Kaeya felt his collar close in around his neck as the prince yanked him back. Roughly, he was twirled to face the man that looked just like him. Those blue, star-shaped eyes were cross. “I know I’m intense and controlling, but you need to learn how to cope with it. That’s just the way that it is.”

Gloved hands shoved Kaeya away, creating space between the two. “If you didn’t want me to live in this estate, you shouldn’t have let me move in. It’s comfortable here and I like it; I’ve got my own room and everything,” he grinned, “It doesn’t get better than this!”

An ever-present need to flee kept Kaeya’s heart pounding. He couldn’t go upstairs— that kid wanted to be let out and he absolutely couldn’t open the door. A small glass dome that was connected to the mansion was just down the left hallway. It might be better to be closer to the outside world, to get a taste of what he wasn’t allowed to have. Silently praying to gods he hardly believed in that he wouldn’t be choked again, Kaeya started off in the right direction.

“Do you want to own your life? Then wake up and take your own advice,” the figure said while his heels clicked against the floor. He laughed in that mirthless way again. “You’re just mad because you know I’m right.” He paused. Then, “Ah, I’m flattered that you brought me up to Diluc, but you should’ve told him the truth.”

The last time Kaeya talked to Diluc about anything related to Khaenri’ah was when they were eighteen. He’d tried to explain that he wasn’t allied to that nation anymore, but it hadn’t mattered. No words could replace the bitter truth of Kaeya’s bloodline. The wall beside Kaeya suddenly groaned. Kaeya hadn’t told Diluc any lies that night, though, so the prince’s accusation was both confusing and horrifying.

“I held your hands on the coldest nights. You didn’t tell him about the times you and I used to control your body!” They arrived in the dome. As expected, glass was shattered in multiple places, but the general shape was mostly intact. Shards were crushed under two pairs of boots. There was no light streaming in from the outside, as it was perpetually cloudy and cold at some point of the night. Or was it day? There was no way to tell.

“I mean, are you out of your mind?” He asked, pulling Kaeya around by the arm to face him once they were in the middle of the room. Kaeya, for all intents, wanted to stare out at the flat landscape outside the estate and ignore that violent figure. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible.

The prince— the Khaenri’ahn Prince Kaeya was supposed to be— grasped the Cavalry Captain’s jaw. His fingers dug harshly into Kaeya’s cheeks to the point where he could feel the intense pressure against his molar teeth. The figure forced the man’s head from side to side, up and down. A scowl crossed his face. “Then both of us will be. We’re going outside!”

He forcefully pushed Kaeya’s face back. He stumbled, and suddenly he wasn’t in that broken glass dome anymore. He was outside, yards behind the mansion. His white boots found solid ground to stabilize himself on, the short, yellow grass crunching in the process. The air was stagnant and colder than the inside of the mansion. It’d been a long time since he was let outside.

The prince had a shovel in his hand, already poking at the dirt. Kaeya’s hands curled into fists. “Is this what you wanted, both of us out in the open?” He demanded, voice less hoarse than it was before. “Why are you doing this? I know that you’re mad, but I’m not in the mood.”

Dirt was flicked up from the ground, starting a pile next to the beginnings of a hole. “We have a nation to save,” the figure snapped. “Stop acting like I’m not a part of this.”

“Where’s my shovel at?” Kaeya asked, the beginnings of an idea forming in his mind. It wasn’t possible to lie when inside of the mansion, but when he was outside, rules bent a little bit. He could, at the very least, act like he was still intent on saving Khaenri’ah. Like he still cared.

“It’s probably out here like it always is,” the prince spat. Sure enough, the metal tip of a second shovel glinted next to Kaeya’s feet. It hadn’t been there a second ago.

Picking it up, he felt the wooden shaft weight heavily in his grip. His bare hands tightened on it while his heart quickened its pace. They always dug a hole when the prince got upset enough, and those days were the few in which he actually got to go outside. Inevitably, Kaeya would be shoved and buried in the hole they created.

The prince stabbed his shovel into the ground. “I’m the reason why—“

“Shut up. I don’t want to hear another sentence,” Kaeya hissed. The outside always gave him more confidence, made him stronger against the omnipresent prince or whatever had taken him out of the mansion.

The prince laughed, the sound choked with his anger. “Hey, I’m Kaeya!” He waved a hand in the air dramatically, eyes wide to mimick the other’s constant panicked look. “Is it me or Khaenri’ah talking? Ha! What a dumb question! It’s smooth talk until the day we die, right? Isn’t that the motto?”

“I thought I told you to keep your mouth shut.” As long as he acted like he wasn’t going to betray the prince, Kaeya could be snarky. The outside let his tongue loosen, keeping him truthful but in the opposite way the mansion did. It was hard to play nice when the hole was getting bigger and his fate loomed drearily.

The pile of dirt grew larger as the figure shoveled more to the side. “I mean, so what? You know I never listen!”

Stab, shovel. Stab, shovel. “Let me guess: we’re going to dig a hole, have a chat, and then drop me in it. Bury me for what, three minutes?” His tone held more irritation than he intended. The prince narrowed his eyes.

“You don’t really think for a second that you’re putting me in this?” He accused, shoveling the dirt at a slower pace now. Kaeya had to play this cool; they were almost done. This was his only chance, and he couldn’t let it slip by.

Shrugging, Kaeya forced out his first lie of the night. He convinced himself that this wasn’t the intention originally, speaking in his past self rather than the present. “Of course not. Just a little deeper then you can bury me.” Huffing, he stopped poking at the ground after a few more seconds. “We can stop digging.”

He moved to stand near the prince who had dropped his shovel at the sentence. Kaeya had to make it look like he was ready to get shoved into the hole they made. It was a grave, just like all the other ones that littered the backyard around them.

A paint-outlined mouth contorted into a grin. For the first time that night, his voice contained a hint of humor to match his words. “You had me scared for a second; I almost thought we were digging my grave.”

Now.

Kaeya slammed the sharp edge of his shovel into the back of the Khaenri’ahn Prince’s head. A loud boom echoed in the empty backyard, the same sound that metal connecting with bone made. The figure collapsed forward and dropped directly into the grave. A shaky laugh escaped Kaeya’s lips as he ran a trembling hand through his hair.

“We did.” He crouched down, knowing that the body in the hole could still hear him despite his utterly limp and dead state. “You don’t like being afraid? It’s a dose of your own medicine. What, you don’t like how it tastes?” Standing back up, Kaeya began to shove the dirt back into the occupied grave. “Jean told me not to bury my issues, but if I have to be honest, I’m feeling great.”

The process was easy and methodical. Kaeya spoke while dirt piled on top of the prince’s body, successfully staining his lovely suit. “I should have done this a year ago; I don’t know why I waited. I tend to put everything off in my personal life, you hear what I’m saying?” He laughed humorlessly. “That was a joke. It’s hilarious, isn’t it? You’ll spend the rest of your life in my backyard or back of my mind depending on how you see it.”

He soaked up the last bit of freedom the outside provided him and smoothed out the last layer of dirt on top of the prince’s grave. Now that he was alone, he became fully aware of the eyes watching him from places he couldn’t see. Kaeya dully remembered why he built the mansion in the first place.

Dragging the shovel against the ground and leaving a trail of blood in his wake, Kaeya slowly ambled to the steps leading to his front door. It took a moment of consideration, but eventually he set the shovel against the side of the steps. Nothing from the outside belonged inside— that was a lesson he learned a long time ago.

He tried the handle, but it was locked. Right, they had never gone through a door to reach the backyard. Hesitantly, he reached into the breast pocket of his coat, pulling out a set of house keys. A surprised huff escaped his lips. He hadn’t been in possession of those ever since the prince started to live in the estate. The weight was unfamiliar and heavy in his hands. He unlocked the door with shaky wrists.

Kaeya stood by the window next to the front door and waited. Time was incomprehensible on the estate, so he couldn’t be sure how long he was waiting and watching. The stifling atmosphere inside the mansion contrasted the openness of the outside, and he could feel the way his face returned to its usual terrified expression. Words were caught in his throat from fear of his own voice. Despite that, though, it was safer to remain inside. He was sure of it.

Eventually, after what had to be a long time, a figure came walking around the front of the mansion. Its suit was covered in multiple layers of dirt, and the entire back and left side of its head was coated in thick blood. It stumbled up to the front door, knocking and begging to be let inside. Kaeya let out a single, short chuckle. The room it used to sleep in had already collapsed, the words inside of it dripping and filling the bedroom to the brink with black ink.

—

Kaeya’s head was hurting like he’d been hit by a very sharp boulder. He blinked blearily, raising a hand to rub absent-mindedly at his eyes. His arm hurt with the movement. Dropping it back down to his side, he found his arm connecting with solid ground. Eyes snapping open fully, he stared up at the slightly cloudy sky above him, the edges of his vision blocked by the walls of dirt on all four sides of him.

Thankfully, the hole didn’t seem that deep, though it was long and wide enough to fit his entire body comfortably. He reached out and gripped the top of the walls on his left and right side, groaning with the effort it took to pull himself into a sitting position. The action caused a wave of pain to spread through his head. He squinted in order to avoid looking at the sun rising just ahead of him.

“Ah, good morning,” a voice said to his right. Kaeya twisted his head around to see who it was, finding himself staring at an extended hand. Albedo was looking at him expectantly, eyebrows raised. The Chief Alchemist was sitting on the ground with his legs crossed and a notebook sitting on his lap.

Hesitantly, Kaeya grabbed his hand and was helped out of the hole. The Cavalry Captain brushed the dirt off of his clothes, gaze flitting back and forth between Albedo and the clearly man-made grave. “I’m assuming you have a few questions,” Albedo said nonchalantly as he picked himself up to stand beside Kaeya, who was nodding in agreement. “I returned to the Knights Headquarters yesterday in order to sleep and give a full report today. I saw you leaving as I was entering, and since I consider you my friend I wanted to greet you. You ignored me completely and kept walking with a dazed look in your eye.”

Although Albedo didn’t seem at all troubled by this, Kaeya couldn’t help but to feel a little guilty. “I apologize. I don’t seem to have any recollection of this,” he said. That was true– the last thing he remembered before appearing in his broken estate was collapsing in his office. Any memories of the real world between then and the moment he woke up were completely absent.

“You were in a state somnambulism– sleepwalking. I don’t blame you,” he replied, easily deflecting the apology. “I decided to follow you, and along the way to the Dawn Winery, you picked up a shovel. When you got here, you dug this hole and promptly collapsed in it when you finished.”

Kaeya wasn’t sure how to process that information. He’d had a few accounts of sleepwalking before, all times coming from particularly long periods of time he spent at his mind’s estate. “And you didn’t try to stop me?” He accused, realizing that his arms were sore from the time he spent digging his own grave.

Albedo shrugged and began flipping through his sketchbook. “Stopping you would mean halting the observation. It’s not often I get to see somnambulism so close. You also had a sharp shovel in your hands,” he said while lifting his book to show a page to Kaeya. “I didn’t want to get hit.”

The page contained a detailed drawing of Kaeya digging the grave, his position being in the middle of flicking dirt to a side pile. The only thing it lacked was color, but with the vividness and accuracy of the drawing, it didn’t really need it. Once he was done examining the illustration, his eyes wandered elsewhere. True to the alchemist’s words, the grave he dug was to the left of the Dawn Winery building and in-between two sections of rows of grape halos.

“What was the dream about? You were mumbling incomprehensibly while digging,” Albedo suddenly asked after a contemplative silence fell between the two. Or rather, it was contemplative for Kaeya, who was trying to come up with a believable excuse to tell Diluc concerning the large hole he’d dug.

Kaeya pressed his lips together. He’d thrown the house keys into the fireplace that didn’t burn, hiding it under the thick logs to keep it there. That door wasn’t going to open again under his watch. For that reason, he answered with, “When something is buried, it’s best to leave it underground.” In truth, he didn’t want to talk about the prince, either. He was afraid that it would find its way back inside again if he recognized its existence out loud.

Albedo narrowed his eyes, piercing right through the Cavalry Captain’s carefully crafted mask. Kaeya had always admired the alchemist for his excellent observation skills, but it was somewhat disturbing when he was able to detect and pull apart every single lie and flowery sentence Kaeya strung together. Despite his obvious understanding of a hidden secret, Albedo let the topic drop, much to Kaeya’s relief. He was afraid that Albedo was going to tear down his front door and see his broken mansion.

“I can fix the hole with Geo. Master Diluc didn’t come to the Winery last night nor this morning, and nobody else passed by either,” he stated simply, setting his sketchbook gently on the ground. “Head into the city and wash up. I’ll be there soon.”

Kaeya nodded. With a quick farewell, he started up the hill to walk back to Mondstadt. He left something behind in that grave, a piece of himself that deserved to rest. His loyalty to Khaenri’ah was officially severed, outcast from his estate and mind alike. It couldn’t torture him anymore.

His hands reached up to massage his mouth and cheeks, trying to rub more life into his features after his exhausting night. Bringing his limbs back down, his uncovered eye caught sight of a discoloration that wasn’t there before. He gave his hands his full attention, noticing that the exposed fingers protruding from his fingerless gloves had remnants of black paint on them. Kaeya scratched his lips again, finding that his fingernails pulled off another layer of paint.

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