Chapter Text
One o'clock.
An absolutely terrible beginning to the twenty-eighth of May, and the streets surrounding the Knights of Favonius headquarters rested beneath silver moonlight so still that even the banners hanging from the stone walls barely stirred that knew nothing of the disaster hidden behind the headquarters.
One shattered window overlooked the training yard like a fresh wound carved into the building itself.
Below it, Albedo lay motionless where Claus had sent him crashing into the ground, pale hair stained dark where blood continued creeping slowly beneath his head.
The amount of blood was... concerning.
Kaeya remained kneeling beside him, one knee pressed into the dirt while both gloved hands hovered uncertainly over the unconscious alchemist, his usual confidence stripped away by the simple reality that he had absolutely no idea what he was doing.
"...Right." He inhaled slowly "Cryo should help."
He extended one gloved hand.
Cryo gathered instinctively around his fingers before blooming into the familiar icy glow of his Vision as he carefully directed the energy toward the swelling at the right side of Albedo's head.
A faint shimmer of blue drifted through the air.
The Cryo brightened, then flowed directly back into himself.
The bruises covering Kaeya's own arms, the fresh injuries from being thrown through a second-floor window only minutes earlier. The ache in his shoulder disappeared, simply vanished beneath the icy glow.
He blinked.
Kaeya stared at his perfectly healthy hand "You've got to be kidding me."
He tried again.
The exact same thing happened, the Vision cheerfully repaired its owner while refusing to acknowledge anyone else existed.
He looked skyward while holding up the middle finger aggressively "Fuck you Celestia "
Nearby, Claus flinched violently at the curse.
Kaeya turned.
The enormous stallion paced back and forth along the stone wall bordering the training field, hooves striking the ground in restless uneven rhythms that never settled into a pattern. His ears flicked wildly between every sound in the city while his tail lashed anxiously through the air, each pass sharper than the last.
Every few seconds he looked toward Albedo then immediately looked away again.
Kaeya watched him for several moments.
Compared to the unconscious Chief Alchemist...The horse was somehow the easier emergency.
He rose carefully, brushing dirt from one knee before approaching at an angle rather than directly, deliberately keeping his movements slow and predictable.
Claus noticed immediately which made his entire body stiffened.
"Easy..." His voice lowered instinctively, almost becoming the gentle tone "It's alright."
Another cautious step.
The stallion hesitated but didn't retreat.
Good.
Kaeya finally reached him.
Very slowly he lifted one hand before resting it against the broad bridge of Claus's nose. His thumb absentmindedly rubbed slow circles through the dark coat.
"Claus...I need you to listen."
Of course, Kaeya knew perfectly well the horse couldn't actually understand him but that had never stopped him from talking to animals anyway.
Sometimes tone mattered more than words.
"Albedo is going to be alright."
Claus gave what sounded suspiciously like a guilty whine. He looked toward the unconscious man, then back at Kaeya, his ears flicked uncertainly.
Kaeya nodded with complete confidence despite possessing absolutely none himself.
"He has survived considerably stupider situations."
That part was, unfortunately, true.
Claus blinked. Kaeya decided optimism was currently the responsible choice. Then a ridiculous idea appeared. It was exactly the sort of idea that only occurred to him at one in the morning while standing beside an unconscious alchemist and a visibly traumatized horse.
"Besides." He smiled faintly "If you think about it." Kaeya leaned in conspiratorially "you're about to become a hero."
The stallion stopped moving, ears rotated toward Kaeya.
Excellent.
He had his attention.
Kaeya spoke with the solemn dignity of someone announcing an official military promotion "You see that man lying over there?"
He pointed casually toward the unconscious alchemist.
Claus cautiously looked again.
"He drugged your master."
Claus froze.
"And..." Kaeya continued gravely "he experimented on horses."
If horses could experience existential collapse...Claus achieved it.
His eyes widened so dramatically that even Kaeya noticed and stumbled backward so quickly his hindquarters bumped into the training wall before immediately lurching forward again, staring between Kaeya and Albedo with growing horror as though re-evaluating every decision he had ever made.
"Exactly." He gave a solemn nod worthy of announcing military honors "You delivered justice on behalf of horse-kind."
Claus simply stared.
The panic slowly began giving way to something much closer to stunned disbelief.
"I believe ALL horses will speak of your bravery for generations."
Claus stood a little straighter and buffed his chest out almost imperceptibly.
Then Kaeya ruined it "But."
He raised one finger "Please don't make a habit of knocking out government officials."
The stallion immediately deflated.
He reached forward again, gently scratching beneath Claus's jaw "One time is memorable." Another scratch "Twice becomes paperwork."
Claus gradually relaxed beneath the familiar touch, his ears lowered.
Kaeya smiled faintly "Now comes the important part."
He looked toward the headquarters. Sooner or later...Someone would notice and if they found a horse standing beside an unconscious captain...The explanation would become extraordinarily unpleasant.
Kaeya’s expression grew serious.
"Claus."
Then leaned closer "I need you to disappear." and pointed toward the sleeping streets stretching away beneath the moonlight.
"This is your first visit inside the city." His tone remained calm "But you remember where I live."
The apartment wasn't far, just several quiet streets away.
"You've seen the route." His voice softened "Stay in the shadows without anybody seeing you."
Claus looked around nervously.
"If you hear footsteps" Kaeya smiled "Walk confidently. Nobody questions confidence." Then stepped aside.
"Go."
Claus hesitated only a second longer before turning toward the sleeping streets.
It was almost unsettling how naturally he moved, placing each hoof with exaggerated precision as though trying to convince the stone roads themselves not to make noise. Streetlight after streetlight failed to touch him as he drifted between patches of shadow with surprising elegance for an animal of his size, disappearing down narrow streets where the moon itself struggled to reach.
The wind drifted lazily through the empty streets, carrying sounds that had no obvious source.
The distant rhythm of galloping hooves, steel striking steel, the faint echo of shouted commands, an army that wasn't there.
Kaeya frowned.
The sounds rolled through the night like memories refusing to die, never drawing closer, never fading completely, lingering within the same narrow stretch of the city as though trapped between one century and the next.
He had noticed them before always after midnight and despite the ghosts that now wandered openly through his life...None of them belonged to those sounds, no spectral cavalry charged through the streets or phantom soldiers crossed the rooftops.
Only echoes old enough that even death itself seemed to have forgotten who had made them.
For one strange moment, the city felt less like a place where people lived and more like somewhere history had simply never stopped happening.
**********
Diluc sprinted through the empty streets without slowing, disappearing into the darkness. His boots struck stone in rapid succession, every stride fueled by an increasingly catastrophic realization that his evening had somehow continued finding new ways to become worse.
"Walk on the walls as you always do."
The sentence replayed itself until it became genuinely offensive.
His eye twitched "The fucking audacity."
His pride had been personally assaulted; he had spent years ensuring nobody connected him with the Darknight Hero, carefully separating two identities until even their walking patterns differed.
And then Kaeya had casually thrown the disguise aside as though discussing tomorrow's weather.
"Walk on the walls."
Diluc's irritation grew with every step ‘Like hell.’
His foot landed against the side of a warehouse.
One step.
Two.
Three.
The vertical surface became horizontal beneath practiced momentum as he climbed without breaking stride before launching himself onto the tiled roof above.
Cold wind struck his face as Mondstadt stretched beneath him, lanterns scattered across sleeping streets like stars fallen to earth.
His thoughts slammed into a considerably larger problem, his horse had just assaulted the Chief Alchemist of the Knights of Favonius.
‘No’
Diluc's pace faltered for barely half a heartbeat before accelerating again.
‘How...How did this become my problem? I specifically avoid involving myself with the Knights. And somehow every single one of their catastrophes still finds me.’
Less than three days ago he had been peacefully managing a winery. Now he was illegally sheltering evidence. The evidence happened to be approximately six hundred kilograms, possessed four legs, and answered to the name Claus.
The image appeared anyway. Knights leading Claus away, stable doors closing, hooves disappearing behind iron bars.
That possibility ended there.
His stomach dropped.
The last time one of his animals had ended up in the Knights' hands... Just retrieving his falcon had nearly driven him insane. He still remembered every miserable day of that week and every miserable hour of it.
He refused to repeat it, his breathing grew sharper "Fuck..."
Another rooftop.
"...Fuck."
A chimney flashed past.
"Fuck."
His expression hardened "Fuck, fuck, fuck. I hate all of you."
The words vanished into the night directed mostly toward fate itself, and every inefficient Knight of Favonius currently breathing inside city walls. Because somehow, he had been dragged into a military cover-up involving experimental alchemy, invisible ghosts, unconscious captains, illegal horses and whatever psychological warfare, Kaeya and Albedo considered a normal Wednesday while the only thing he wanted was to report the treasure box!
‘Enough.’
‘If he I was going to commit several crimes tonight... then I am going to do them efficiently.’
Diluc exhaled once slowly.
‘If the Knights wanted the Darknight Hero...Then the Darknight Hero they would get.’
Without breaking stride, his hand swept across the Vision hanging at his waist.
Crimson fire erupted around him, wrapped itself around his body like flowing silk before consuming every trace of his ordinary clothing, swallowing dark fabric in silent embers that never touched his skin. For one brief moment he became nothing more than a moving silhouette inside burning light.
Then the flames vanished.
The transformation lasted barely the space of a heartbeat.
By the time his next foot touched stone...
Diluc Ragnvindr no longer existed.
Only the Darknight Hero continued forward.
Momentum became impossible.
Gravity quietly accepted defeat.
Every jump landed exactly where intended before launching immediately into the next, each movement impossibly quiet despite the distance covered. He never lingered beneath the moon longer than necessary, allowing shadows to swallow him before emerging somewhere entirely different as though the darkness itself had decided to change locations.
Below, patrols continued their rounds completely unaware that someone had already passed overhead.
If someone happened to glance upward...they might notice movement.
Or perhaps they imagined it.
By the time the Cathedral came into view, his gaze swept upward towards the tall stained glass reflected pale moonlight across the stone roof. A single leap carried him onto a supporting ledge. His gloved hand caught weathered stone before he silently pulled himself toward the window to look inside.
Warm candlelight filled the sleeping quarters beyond, the silence felt almost sacred.
Several sisters rested peacefully in their beds while Barbara occupied one near the far wall, fast asleep, curled peacefully beneath a blanket on a narrow bed inside one of the side chambers. Completely unaware that the city's current disaster had unanimously selected her
Diluc quietly unlatched the window, it opened without complaint then slipped inside. His boots touched the polished stone so gently that not even the nearest candle flame reacted.
Behind him, another figure drifted silently through the wall.
Gōng Míng watched with mild curiosity, then with increasing concern as Diluc took several careful steps across the room until he stopped beside Barbara’s bed.
Diluc studied the blanket, thought for exactly two seconds then simply gathered the entire thing around her like wrapping an exceptionally important package.
Gōng Míng's eyebrows rose as he watched the entire operation unfold in absolute disbelief.
‘Surely not.’
Barbara merely shifted slightly, instinctively pulling the blanket closer around herself without opening her eyes. She even sighed comfortably as the blanket tucked itself more snugly around her.
The sleeping deacon now being carried out of the Cathedral like an expensive loaf of bread wrapped in blankets.
Diluc lifted her effortlessly.
‘He's doing it.’ The ghost floated closer ‘No...’
Diluc adjusted the blanket to stop it from slipping.
‘He absolutely is’ Gōng Míng stared ‘The man is kidnapping a nun!!!!’
Barbara murmured something unintelligible as Diluc turned and walked toward the window.
Gōng Míng followed ‘This is the least respectful rescue operation I have witnessed in several centuries.’
Diluc stepped onto the windowsill...
‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!’
Then jumped.
Gōng Míng instinctively looked downward with transparent eyes widened.
The world dropped away beneath them.
Instead of falling, Diluc landed with effortless precision before immediately pushing forward into another leap with impossible grace, as though their combined weight amounted to little more than another travelling shadow.
Gōng Míng floated beside him, openly staring now ‘I withdraw my criticism’
Another leap and the blanket never slipped and Barbara never woke.
Gōng Míng stared ‘Remarkable.’
The admission escaped before he could stop it .
‘I must admit’ The ghost folded his ghostly hands behind his back while floating alongside the rooftops ‘The boy possesses extraordinary physical conditioning.’
Diluc continued through Mondstadt like a living shadow, Knight patrols crossed streets beneath him.
No one looked upward or ever noticed the figure passing silently over their heads carrying the beloved deacon wrapped snugly inside her own blanket.
The journey back took only minutes, soon the familiar training field appeared beyond the headquarters.
Kaeya remained kneeling beside the still unconscious Albedo.
Diluc descended without making a sound with one final leap and controlled landing directly behind Kaeya.
He bent slightly to lower Barbara onto the wall beside the Cavalry Captain.
Then stepped backward into the shadows only then did Kaeya finally turn around to find Barbara had simply...
Appeared out of thin air, wrapped tightly in blankets, sleeping peacefully.
Kaeya's entire body recoiled, his soul nearly abandoned him.
"OH MY GOD!"
Barbara's eyes fluttered open, blinked slowly "...Mm...?" Confused blue eyes wandered across the moonlit training field. Then toward Kaeya.
"Captain Kaeya?"
Then toward the unconscious Albedo.
“OH MY GOD!! WHAT HAPPENED!”
Behind him, a whisper drifted from the darkness, quiet enough that only Kaeya heard it.
"Say Barbatos delivered justice."
Kaeya froze.
"If you mention me or Claus..."
Another pause.
"...you're done."
Silence.
"I disown you."
Kaeya spun around immediately.
Nobody.
Only shadows.
Only moonlight.
Diluc had already disappeared.
**********
The following morning had been profoundly inconvenient because Diluc hadn't slept at all.
Sometime before dawn on the twenty-eighth of May, he had managed the impossible task of escorting one deeply traumatized horse back to Dawn Winery without a single knight noticing that the same horse had spent the previous night illegally inside the city’s walls.
Claus had remained unusually quiet the entire journey home, neither of them possessed the emotional energy required for conversation.
The stable doors had barely closed behind the stallion before Diluc collapsed into bed with the sincere belief that perhaps—just perhaps—the nightmare had finally ended.
It had not.
Because someone from the Knights of Favonius arrived the following morning, naturally. The polite knock upon the winery door sounded less like a visitor and more like destiny personally arriving to ruin his day.
Apparently several knights stationed inside headquarters had distinctly remembered seeing Diluc enter the building alongside Kaeya shortly before eleven o'clock on the night of the twenty-seventh.
Rumours spread with astonishing speed, some swore they had heard hoofbeats behind headquarters.
Others insisted they had briefly caught sight of something large disappearing into the darkness near the training grounds before convincing themselves, they must have imagined it.
One particularly confident recruit claimed he had seen glowing eyes watching him from behind the weapons shed before discovering it had merely been two lanterns.
Eventually the collective conclusion became wonderfully useless.
Perhaps there had been a horse.
Perhaps there hadn't.
Nobody could prove either.
Diluc intended to keep it that way.
Meanwhile, Kaeya spent the next 24 hours performing what could only be described as 'Advanced Creative Writing.’
Every few hours he invented another entirely fictional explanation for Albedo's condition. That Albedo had slipped from the window, one of his own experiments had exploded, or he had attempted something incredibly intelligent that unfortunately possessed an incredibly unintelligent outcome.
By the afternoon of the twenty-ninth, Kaeya had mentally constructed enough contradictory versions of the same incident to accidentally confuse himself.
The only constant among every single explanation was that the horse had vanished so completely from every explanation that Kaeya himself almost began forgetting there had ever been one.
If anyone uttered the word horse, Kaeya's mind immediately discarded the entire version and started over. Because the moment Claus entered the narrative, everything collapsed.
Unfortunately, Jean had no intention of accepting creative fiction as an official report.
Barbara, Sucrose and Durin each questioned separately, comparing answers with increasing concern as every explanation somehow remained technically plausible while simultaneously explaining almost nothing.
The only person capable of confirming what had actually happened remained unconscious.
So, everyone waited and eventually the entire situation reached Varka.
He listened quietly without interrupting as Jean finished presenting the facts, the Grand Master remained thoughtful for several long moments before making a decision that immediately confused almost everyone present.
"They stay."
Jean blinked "Who?"
"Kaeya and Diluc."
Barbara looked equally surprised "Inside the Cathedral?"
Varka nodded once "If Albedo wakes up in the middle of the night, I don't want you dealing with" His hand made an unusually vague gesture "whatever this is."
Jean frowned "We can assign additional knights."
"No."
"We can—"
"No."
Jean folded both arms "Why?"
Varka looked toward the Cathedral windows where the afternoon sunlight filtered quietly across polished stone.
Then he sighed "The three of them need to settle this before the rest of Mondstadt gets involved."
Jean waited "That's it?"
"That's it."
She continued waiting, surely there had to be more.
Varka scratched thoughtfully at his chin "Because sometimes men need to solve stupid problems without an audience."
Jean stared "What?"
"If other people are watching" He shrugged "they become even stupider."
Jean hated how that sentence almost sounded logical to everyone except herself.
There was something about Varka's expression that prevented further argument. His gaze shifted toward Diluc and Kaeya.
"You two started this. You'll be the ones sitting beside him until he wakes up."
Jean stared at the quiet confidence of someone who had witnessed enough disasters to recognize which ones benefited from official procedure and which ones benefited from closing the door and letting the idiots involved exhaust themselves first.
Varka smiled "They're men. They'll sort it out."
Diluc and Kaeya exchanged one horrified glance before simultaneously nodding far too quickly.
"Yes."
"Absolutely."
"Wonderful." Varka sounded genuinely pleased “Then it’s settled!”
Jean, however, narrowed her eyes. She disliked mysteries, especially administrative ones, slowly closed her eyes; nothing had ever prepared her for whatever this conversation had become.
She opened her eyes again to see Varka remained completely sincere.
Jean's fingers slowly curled into a fist.
‘Very well. If the Grand Master insisted this was somehow an enlightened masculine solution beyond my comprehension... Then he would also inherit every consequence.’
She exhaled through her nose "Fine."
Varka smiled "I knew you'd understand."
"Not even slightly." Another pause "But if this decision proves catastrophic..."
Her smile appeared; it was frighteningly calm.
"I will personally lock every single one of you inside the confinement room until you collectively rediscover your ability to respect protocol."
Varka laughed.
**********
The cathedral had become strangely quiet over the past hours, because everyone eventually became too exhausted to question what was happening anymore.
Outside, the stained-glass windows swallowed the moonlight, allowing only pale ribbons of blue and silver to spill across the stone floor. Every candle had burned lower than before.
Albedo occupied the bed nearest the wall, perhaps the word ‘occupied’ was too generous word.
He looked less like Mondstadt's Chief Alchemist and more like someone who had been professionally wrapped for long-term storage.
Bandages covered the right half of his head, disappeared beneath his neck, crossed one shoulder, and continued beneath the blanket until only one pale hand remained visible. Even that hand rested limply upon the sheets with all the determination of a corpse politely pretending not to inconvenience anyone.
Gōng Míng floated nearby, none had prepared him for what he was witnessing now.
Kaeya had decided that eating pizza on top of the unconscious patient was somehow an acceptable medical procedure.
He sat sideways on the edge of the bed with complete confidence, balancing an open pizza box across Albedo's chest as though it was nothing more than an unusually expensive table.
Across from him, Diluc occupied the opposite side of the mattress with equal seriousness, one elbow resting against his knee while calmly explaining events with the analytical precision of someone presenting evidence before a court.
"...the angle makes perfect sense If you think about it," he said while chewing thoughtfully, "the sequence of events is perfectly logical."
Kaeya nodded with complete seriousness.
Diluc gestured with the pizza slice "The trajectory." He nodded once to himself "The impact."
Gōng Míng found himself unconsciously nodding along .
‘Wait. No. That couldn't possibly be right. I was there!’
He stopped halfway through another approving nod and blinked several times.
‘Why... did that actually sound reasonable?’
Kaeya immediately shook his head "No." He took another bite of pizza "Your explanation has structural weaknesses."
Diluc frowned "It doesn't."
"It does."
Diluc set his pizza down. "It absolutely does not."
Kaeya swallowed before lazily pointing his slice toward Albedo's sleeping body "My version is significantly stronger."
Diluc looked personally offended "You've recycled the same story fifty different ways over the past two days. The same lie wearing different hats."
""Ridiculous! They were artistically refined."
Kaeya stared lazily which irritated Diluc who suddenly reached across the bed over Albedo, grabbed him firmly by the front of his shirt and pulled him until they were face to face.
"No." His voice carried the authority of someone correcting history itself "The Anemo Archon descended into Angel's Share."
He said with terrifying calmness.
"He entered the wine cellar." Kaeya blinked as he gave the collar another sharp tug "Stole an entire barrel."
"Right...." His reply lacked conviction then rolled his eyes "He flew directly into Albedo and never even looked back "
His crimson eyes narrowed "Do you have a problem with that?"
"I have several." Before Kaeya could elaborate, Diluc silently removed the pizza slice from his hand smacked it into the box before placing both safely behind himself.
"No pizza” Diluc declared “Until you agree with the official version."
Kaeya stared in horror "You're bribing me with carbohydrates." Then lunged for the pizza.
Diluc moved it farther away "I'm preserving historical accuracy. Also, this pizza is trash, it lacks protein, why you eat like rabbits!"
"You cannot seriously expect me to testify that Barbatos assaulted the Chief Alchemist with a wine barrel. Nobody will believe that."
Kaeya reached again.
Diluc smacked his hand away repeatedly and by the fourth attempt they had abandoned all dignity and were engaged in an increasingly ridiculous tug-of-war over a pizza box balanced atop a man wrapped like a mummy.
Gōng Míng quietly wondered whether death had somehow been less absurd.
Then... exactly at Three o'clock in the morning of the thirtieth of May.
A small sound, barely audible.
A slow inhale.
Everything stopped.
Kaeya's hand froze halfway toward another slice and Diluc's fingers loosened around the box, both turned simultaneously at Albedo's only visible eye had opened while the other remained hidden beneath layers of white bandages.
His unfocused gaze wandered across the cathedral ceiling without recognition before slowly lowering toward the two blurred figures sitting beside him as though struggling to remember where consciousness was supposed to be.
Without saying a word...he weakly reached toward them.
Neither man moved.
Then Kaeya did something so astonishingly inappropriate that even Gōng Míng momentarily forgot how to haunt people.
He picked up a slice of pizza and placed it into Albedo's waiting hand who still wearing the distant expression of someone whose soul had not fully reconnected with reality, Albedo accepted the slice, simply looked down at it with the vague curiosity of someone who had forgotten both what pizza was and why he existed.
Kaeya gently slid one arm behind his shoulders, carefully helping him into a sitting position.
Across the bed, Diluc silently mouthed,
‘What are you doing?’
Kaeya answered by mouthing back,
‘Just go with the flow.’
Against every expectation... Albedo quietly took one bite.
Chewed.
Took another while still staring into nothing.
Diluc uncapped a bottle of soda and held it toward him. Without looking, Albedo accepted it. Drank. Returned it. Silence reclaimed the room.
Then...
His eye slowly focused as if the fog began lifting.
His gaze drifted downward and found Pizza.
Then sideways, Diluc.
His expression remained blank for exactly three seconds before memory returned all at once.
Kaeya smiled pleasantly.
"Welcome back."
The words had barely left his mouth.
Albedo exploded, there was no hesitation, no warning.
One instant he sat upon the bed.
The next, the mattress folded beneath the force as he tackled Kaeya completely off the bed, both of them crashing violently onto the cathedral floor.
The impact echoed through the chamber.
Kaeya barely had time to inhale before both hands wrapped around his throat.
"You."
Albedo slammed the back of Kaeya's head against the stone.
"You absolute monster."
Another impact.
"You stand there" His fingers tightened until Kaeya's face immediately lost color "acting as though nothing happened."
His breathing had become uneven from fury.
"What...was....that....thing" His voice cracked. "that turned my lights off?"
Veins stood sharply against the narrow strip of visible skin beneath the bandages, his face burning crimson beneath the wrappings while every carefully restrained emotion from the previous days erupted at once.
"How." His grip tightened further "did you know about the gas?"
Kaeya clawed weakly at Albedo's wrists.
"How..." He gritted his teeth "did you know about the document?"
Diluc watched Kaeya's eye widen to find that particular expression of someone whose life had just started reviewing itself.
Diluc sighed, not because he particularly wished to intervene. Merely because explaining to Jean why there had been another murder inside the cathedral sounded exhausting.
"Albedo. It was the Anemo Archon."
Albedo didn't even glance at him, his attention remained fixed entirely on Kaeya who was making an alarmingly undignified choking noise.
"He knocked the shit out of you."
Apparently divine assault no longer qualified as persuasive testimony, Kaeya's free hand weakly slapped against the floor several times.
Time out.
Mercy.
Anything.
Diluc pinched the bridge of his nose "Kaeya can see ghosts. Okay?"
Everything stopped.
Albedo's hands remained around Kaeya's throat, but they no longer tightened.
Slowly...He turned his head toward Diluc "What..did you just say?"
Then he looked back down "Kaeya." His voice had become almost unnervingly soft "Is that true?"
Kaeya stared at Diluc with the expression of a man who had just been auctioned against his will.
Across the room Gōng Míng looked equally offended ‘Seriously?’
Kaeya remained silent and Albedo took the silence as confirmation.
Then he released him entirely.
He stood, or rather...attempted to.
The moment his weight settled onto both feet, the entire room tilted violently.
"If..."
He spoke quietly.
"If that's true..."
He caught himself against the wall before collapsing back to one knee, one hand dragging across his face as though attempting to physically reorganize his thoughts while breathing slowly through the dizziness.
Then...
The smile on his face was the kind when someone watching years of research collapse into dust while simultaneously discovering an even larger mystery beneath the ruins.
A laugh escaped him, it sounded like something breaking "then the entire experiment..."
His shoulders began shaking.
"Was invalid....from the beginning."
The laughter that followed belonged to no sane man. It echoed against the cathedral walls until even Diluc instinctively took a step backward.
Kaeya rubbed his bruised throat while staring "He's lost it."
"I think you broke him."
"I didn't hit him."
Albedo continued laughing before it slowly dissolved into silence. Blood dripped from his nose, he never noticed while his eyes stared through the opposite wall.
Seeing equations.
Variables.
Failures.
‘Eula, light-blue hair, golden eyes.’
‘Kaeya, dark-blue hair, blue eyes.’
Not identical, he had grouped them together because hair pigmentation appeared dominant.
‘What if... What if it wasn't?’
His breathing slowed.
‘Eye pigmentation as a second independent variable’
‘No... Two interacting variables. Hair...Eyes...Resonance...’
No previous model accounted for both simultaneously. His fingers trembled, then another thought struck harder.
‘Diluc, red hair, red eyes. Not a single recorded subject matched that combination either. Which meant... Everything was contaminated by uncontrolled variables.’
The irritation alone nearly made him dizzy.
Yet one question refused to disappear.
‘Animals. Why animals?’
Something impossible according to every conclusion he had written.
His smile disappeared as he thought while slowly looking between the two brothers as unique, irreplaceable data. Neither combination existed anywhere else in Mondstadt.
‘The entire study...’
He closed his eye briefly.
‘...needs to be conducted again.’
Finally, he spoke.
"Fortunately" A small smile returned "you burned the report."
Diluc blinked as Albedo looked directly at him "I hated Kaeya for it." then toward Kaeya "But had it survived..."
He laughed quietly "I would never have realized my own methodology was flawed."
His head slowly lifted "Diluc."
Diluc took another careful step backward.
That smile somehow frightened him more than the strangling had, this wasn't the smile of a defeated man. It was the smile of someone who had just discovered a far larger mystery than the one he had lost.
"What did you say about the explosion?" Albedo asked.
Kaeya immediately interrupted "Wha?" His tone sharpened "Trying to pretend it wasn't your fault now? It was clearly your gas."
"Quiet." Albedo didn't even look at him, the calmness somehow sounded more dangerous than shouting.
"I said..." Diluc answered slowly "that it didn't resemble an Overload explosion."
A long silence followed.
Albedo lowered himself fully onto the floor, leaning against the wall before summoning his clipboard and pen with practiced familiarity despite the blood still running from his nose.
He began sketching even though his entire body was trembling uncontrollably. Chemical structures. Reaction pathways. Variables.
His voice became strangely composed "I continue to believe" The pen scratched rapidly "that the gas you inhaled...was not.....the gas I intended you to inhale."
Diluc blinked "I beg your pardon?"
Albedo finally looked up, his expression had become almost painfully sincere.
"If..." He lowered the clipboard "we intend to determine why you hear animals, then I owe you both an apology."
Neither replied.
"I allowed obsession with results to outweigh ethics."
The admission sounded almost clinical, it made Kaeya think that was manipulation; he was confused looking at his innocent face as if he wasn’t actively attempting to murder him a minute ago.
"I used methods that should never have been employed. I cannot undo them and I am honestly sorry for what happened."
Finally Albedo inhaled slowly, then exhaled. When he finally opened his eyes again his voice sounded remarkably calm "Diluc."
Diluc immediately looked suspicious.
"I have a proposal."
Kaeya physically recoiled, that was never a good sign.
"I would like your cooperation."
Kaeya gasped, like a noblewoman witnessing a public scandal.
Both men ignored him.
His eyes settled upon Diluc "If you are willing, allow me to determine whether the original compound” He tapped the equations “without electro and pyro, produces the ability it was actually designed to produce.”
He genuinely looks fascinated by the scientific anomaly.
"And when the resonance naturally fades..." His expression softened almost imperceptibly "I will do everything within my capability to understand what truly happened to you."
Silence swallowed the cathedral.
Kaeya stared even harder.
Diluc remained silent, thinking. Because despite everything...Albedo was technically right, nobody else in Teyvat had produced the same result. Especially when the entire project had supposedly been designed around communication between humans.
Eventually Diluc exhaled "Fine."
"Diluc." His voice cracked "You cannot just agree."
Diluc looked at him "Why not?"
"He blew you up."
Diluc considered that "In his defense."
Both Kaeya and Albedo turned toward him.
"apparently being blown up wasn't intentional."
The fact that this was technically true somehow made everything worse.
Kaeya slowly buried his face inside both hands "Barbatos preserve me..."
He immediately grabbed Diluc firmly by the sleeve and dragged him several steps away before lowering his voice.
"Diluc." He leaned closer "You are not thinking correctly."
Slowly, almost mechanically, Diluc turned his head and Kaeya immediately regretted asking for his attention.
There was something profoundly wrong with his face.
He didn’t even look particularly awake, Diluc looked like someone whose brain has reached the point where emotions have stopped functioning correctly.
The heavy shadows beneath his eyes were so dark they almost erase the natural shape of them, making his red irises seem unnaturally bright against an otherwise exhausted face. His eyelids hang lower than normal, because his body lost the fight against sleep. Yet despite that exhaustion, his eyes remained painfully focused.
It looked less like a person looking at him and more like a person whose brain had forgotten how to blink.
Kaeya swallowed "How many hours have you slept?"
Diluc frowned thoughtfully "Sleep?" He genuinely searched his own memory "What is that?"
Kaeya's stomach dropped, Diluc had asked the question with complete sincerity.
Kaeya instinctively counted backward while everything blurred together until the number quietly assembled itself inside his head.
"...Thirty-nine..."
His voice barely escaped above a whisper.
"You've been awake for nearly thirty-nine hours! "
Diluc blinked once, slowly as though processing unfamiliar information.
Kaeya suddenly remembered, with mounting horror, exactly what he had done less than two days ago when he had shoved him down an entire staircase and allowed him to smash face-first into stone flooring of the Knights of Favonius Headquarters and slammed Diluc's head into a wall. Twice for realism, before entering Albedo’s office.
Kaeya slowly covered his mouth "Oh..."
Then slowly looked toward the floor where Albedo remained seated against the wall, wrapped in enough bandages to resemble an unfinished archaeological discovery, staring silently at nothing.
If someone had entered the cathedral at that exact moment without context...they would have sworn he was mourning the love of his life. He looked utterly devastated like a widower contemplating an empty future.
Not a scientist who had an attempted murderer, just...Heartbroken.
Diluc finally broke the silence "This entire problem disappears..."
He spoke with the unwavering certainty possessed only by catastrophically sleep-deprived people.
"if Albedo simply accepts what I am about to tell him. I don't care how." His shoulders sagged "I just don't want Claus taken away from me."
Kaeya stared, for perhaps the first time in years, he genuinely felt like the most rational person in the room which terrified him.
Diluc crouched beside Albedo and, with complete seriousness, began reconstructing the increasingly impossible chain of events.
"The Anemo Archon entered through the broken window."
Albedo nodded thoughtfully.
"He weaponized a wine barrel, it struck you."
"Mhm."
"You exited the window voluntarily. You landed in the training yard"
"Momentum."
Diluc pointed confidently "Then Barbatos immediately fled the crime scene."
Albedo considered it "Yes." Another thoughtful nod "That explains how my skull cracked."
Kaeya's jaw slowly dropped "What?!"
Neither man looked at him.
Albedo's pen immediately resumed moving "Excellent."
He added another sentence beneath the existing notes.
Kaeya watched in mute disbelief as the two of them calmly refined the absurd fabrication into an internally consistent narrative, correcting one another's logic, filling gaps, improving transitions, until what had begun as the stupidest lie imaginable somehow evolved into a polished official statement worthy of submission.
Finally Albedo drew a neat line beneath the page.
Signed it.
Then looked up with complete satisfaction "I believe this version is sufficiently coherent."
“We will tell it to Varka” Dikuc agreed.
Both nodded then looked up at Kaeya.
A long silence followed.
"I'm surrounded by idiots."