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It is cold, on the mountain.
The cold, it has a way of sneaking into his skin and beneath, settling in his bones. He does not quite feel it, but he knows it is there, for his breath fogs the air and the wind sounds like crystals ringing against each other.
He does not breathe when he is on his own. It is a waste of energy – stone does not need oxygen. It only needs time.
Lately, he has found himself wandering at his sibling’s remains. He does not quite know how to fear – it was never taught to him – and he often finds himself wondering whether he would finally learn such a primitive emotion upon his own destruction. He wonders whether Durin felt any fear, whether he was capable of it; whether his giant gentle beating heart raced in his ears when he fell. It is calm now, quiet – but the pace has picked up a little, tone by tone, an accelerando that takes months.
What are months, to stone?
Despite his clear goals and obvious endearment to all that is chemical, he has always liked music. It is one of the reasons he likes being on this mountain – it is not silent, not at all. The earth sings. It has tales to tell of civilisations, both ancient and yet to come. It is glad to finally have a listener.
Sometimes, he cannot quite make out whether it is the earth that sings, or Durin’s heart.
It is warm. Humanity can count itself lucky that there are no paths leading up to its final – temporary – resting place. The environment is much too dangerous, much too harsh, for the average mortal to climb.
He himself does not make the trip often. Whenever he does, he stays right there for days on end. At night, when the air grows so crisp it might freeze itself and the sky reveals its solemn, lonely hoax of a beauty, he lies down in the snow and listens to Durin’s songs.
Sometimes he pretends they’re both dreaming.
He always does return to his camp eventually. It takes him longer and longer to do so, the more he stays in the cavern, but there is still something in the back of his mind, urging, whispering. He is not to touch the heart. He is to come home.
He has made a promise, after all.
This time, though it’s different. He has barely spent two days by Durin’s side when suddenly, inexplicably, the earth – shifts.
No. Not the earth itself. Something within it. Braced against the caverned walls, he closes his eyes for better concentration. The Ley Lines that usually flow nothing but steady, golden and intricate and oh so fragile right beneath his palm – they’re disrupted now. Something old has jagged itself in between, something which once was part of history but no longer has a place in the presence. It sends a strange jab through his ribs.
He recognises that energy. It is great. It is ancient. It is a Ley Line disruption on a large scale, so large it could only be done by a single being.
It sends him pondering. Instead of deepening his usual research, he finds himself sketching, patterns and wires and the nervous system of the world born from his fingertips faster than he can keep up. Occasionally, he looks up at the sky to find the snowflakes heavier, thicker, and the sky crawling with clouds much too low even for Dragonspine in June. It is June, right?
When he eventually arrives back at his camp a week later, backpack heavy with drawing utensils and examples of the lovely red quartz found around Durin’s heart – his blood, crystallised, just as poisonous and just as beautiful – he is surprised to find the fire burning. There is an adventurer rubbing her hands, dressed much too lightly for the weather. Her cheeks are flushed red from the cold. She looks up as Albedo approaches.
“Chief Albedo!” she calls out, relieved. Albedo blinks. Right. That’s his name. It tends to slip from him sometimes, when he goes weeks without talking. The earth does not have a name. It does not need one, for names are simply something to tether beings to the ground. And well, the earth is quite literally – the ground.
Albedo sets his backpack to the ground, taking in his surroundings. The adventurer must’ve spent the night here, judging from the way his little working bench has been rearranged into something that could resemble a bed, with some imagination. She follows his gaze and shrinks.
“…Sorry,” she says, “it’s just, I arrived yesterday and you weren’t here, but my orders were clearly to find you, and night was approaching, and since you don’t have a cot or any of that sort…” She looks at him, suddenly puzzled. “Where do you sleep, sir?”
Albedo does not indulge her curiosity and only turns around to sort through one of his shelves. He is quite sure there was something edible in here a few weeks ago.
“Would you like some tea?” he asks, quietly triumphant to himself upon discovering a box of dried leaves. “You must be cold.”
The adventurer glances towards his own clothes, stunned, but thankfully decides not to comment. Albedo grabs a kettle from another table, quickly sniffing it to make sure there is no harmful leftover substance waiting to poison the tea. She hands him some water and he starts boiling it. They settle around the fire in absolute quiet. The only sound is the gentle cracking of wood.
He’s almost blissfully lost in thoughts again when suddenly, the adventurer clears her throat. This is what Alice has called an awkward silence.
“Sorry,” she says, “I never introduced myself. Barbatos, where are my manners… I’m Brienna. Iris sent me up here to come get you.”
Albedo frowns. Brienna can’t be much older than twenty. “All alone?”
Brienna stares into the flames, sheepish. “There was no one else to send. They were all called back to Mondstadt.”
Albedo’s suspicions are confirmed. “Why? Did something happen?”
“I suppose you can’t see it from here, with all the snow… It’s storming. It’s been storming for almost a week. The fields are flooded, so all the knights and adventurers in Dragonspine Camp have been sent back to the city to help.”
“And they sent you to come get me.”
“They said they need your expertise.” Brienna shrugs. “I personally think it’s just a bit of an anomaly, but Iris was convinced there is more going on. I’ve never seen her so worried before. I’m sorry, I really didn’t want to disrupt your work…”
She really does apologise a lot. She reminds him of Sucrose, a little. He wonders how she is faring. He wonders how everyone is faring – if there are floodings, then the storm must be greater than the soil and the rivers can hold naturally. Nothing in Mondstadt is ever unnatural – unless it is caused by a god.
He gets up to stand at the entrance of his cave, looking out over the landscape. Usually, if he stepped out a little further, he would be able to make out the very outlines of Mondstadt’s forests and roofs through the fog. But now, there really is nothing to see – only white whirling wind, billowing up snow in drifts. The clouds chase by almost as if they were pulled somewhere, racing North.
“Sir?” Brienna asks from besides the fire, voice even smaller than before.
“No, I think Iris is right,” Albedo calls back, already mentally going through all he needs to take along for the journey. “It would be better for me to return to the city.”
“Does that mean you’re coming with me?”
“Yes.”
Albedo turns around, grabbing his usual satchel for travelling. Brienna begins chattering again. He does not pay her any mind as he packs. He thinks of Klee. He is not worried – he is not capable of that – but he does hope that she is safe and dry somewhere.
Well, perhaps the rain would keep her bombs from working for a while, at least. Jean probably has enough on her plate already.
The walk down the mountain is a long one. They’ll be lucky to reach another campsite by nightfall. Albedo lingers behind Brienna, making sure she does not slip on the icy paths. It is rare that such inexperienced adventurers get sent up to bring him a message. Iris should know better.
But as the clouds remain thick in the sky even as they descend further and further, Albedo starts to get the feeling that perhaps Iris simply had no other choice. The snow keeps falling, thick. He can only imagine the situation if it were to be rain in a valley.
Albedo does feel dread – he cannot – but when he looks up, the Ley Lines beneath the earth flickering tensely, the earth not humming, he cannot help but frown.
It is cold, on the mountain.
The first thing he knows is warmth.
There are hands cradling him. There is liquid gold flowing through him. There is light blinding him.
There is a voice, guiding him, gently molding his flesh. It carves lines into his skin. It breathes his own breath into him.
“You shall be named Albedo,” it says.
He does not yet know that many have come before him; that many would come after him, if he failed. He only knows that he is warm, and Albedo, and for the first few moments of his hand-made life, he mistakes it for love.
The snow and rain of his journey barely melted on his skin, Albedo makes a straight beeline to the Favonius’ Headquarters.
Wind whips against his cheeks. Mondstadt is different than when he last left it. He has seen caved in roofs on the way, tiles and windows shattered, fallen trees; the city is not meant to withstand such a storm. The buildings are centuries old, wooden beams and crooked walls, and groan beneath the weight. Not a single soul is seen in the streets. Most of the windows are nailed shut to keep the glass secure.
The Barbatos’ statue towers over the city like a looming shadow. In the darkened light, rain almost like fog in the air, it appears almost cold in its everlasting smile. Albedo takes two steps at once as he climbs up the endless stairwells.
Jean’s office is filled to the brim. Papers are shoved from tabletops and chairs onto the ground for people to sit on. A single candle is flickering. The grey light filtering through the window does absolutely nothing.
Jean smiles upon his entry. Her face is sunken, pale. Someone hands Albedo a towel. He hangs his coat by the door, wincing as water drips onto the wooden floor.
Well. No one is off any better, really.
“Thank you for your swift return, Albedo,” Jean says, “and apologies it was on such a short notice. Now.” She sighs and looks around. “I suppose everyone is here. Let’s start the meeting.”
The room is much too cramped to be comfortable. All the high ranking officers of the Knights are attending, including Lisa, Kaeya and Sucrose, who he both shares a look with. Diluc, strangely enough. Last time Albedo checked, he despised the Knights greatly – but perhaps owning the most important part of Mondstadt’s economy does put him into a position where he is let in on national security matters, too. Even stranger, however, Albedo finds the bard lounging on Jean’s couch, hat pulled low into his face.
Their eyes meet, for just a moment. Despite the dim light they are very much visible; teal, like the Vision on Sucrose’s collar; turquoise like the crystalflies in Albedo’s lap, trailing anemo energy with every beat of their dream-bound wings. There is something off about him, about the way his energy is tied to no- and everywhere at once; tracing all around the room and-
The bard merely smiles and winks at him. Albedo returns to the conversation.
Jean speaks of things he already knows and things he doesn’t. She speaks of a god sitting above the clouds, and the words almost sound as if she had heard them somewhere else. It makes Albedo ponder. The storm is caused by a god, then, and the god is caused by a disruption of the Ley Lines – can it be a disruption if it has always been there, waiting? – and the disruption of the Ley Lines is possibly caused by the Abyss. It is difficult to trace back their fingerprints when they’re everywhere. Perhaps the god has risen himself, without any urging but the urging of his unbeating heart, throbbing in the depths of Irminsul; or the god has been risen by some other force.
The Traveller mentions an artifact, down in the belly of a beast, of a womb, or a tomb, and Albedo perks up. That sells his theory.
“I think I know what we are dealing with,” he states as everyone falls silent, stunned by Jean’s reveal.
Jean leans forward in her seat. “And what would that be?”
“God remains.”
The office bristles. Suddenly Albedo feels the dampness of his clothes, the tightness of his skin. His eyes meet Kaeya’s, briefly. He is pale. Next to him, oddly enough, Lisa’s mouth is set in a tight line, alarm flush on her face.
Jean blinks. “Could you elaborate please?”
Albedo clears his throat. “Like any living being, gods leave remnants of themselves in the Ley Lines upon death. It could be anything – wishes, emotions, words – but most of the time it’s memories. Usually this would pose no problem other than some distress in the environment upon encountering such Ley Lines, or confusing situations for humans, however, since gods are such high beings, their death can impact the world around them in a much more severe way.”
He nods towards the Traveller, their eyes golden, alien, light filtering at their back and universes braided through the threads of their hair. “If what you encountered in those ruins really were God remains, then we are dealing with a massive Ley Line disruption that has been lingering for thousands of years.”
He hesitates. “I’m just wondering why it was triggered now of all times…”
Is touching a single artifact really enough to trigger something like this? It must’ve slumbered just below the surface then, protected in a prison of its own making. A failsafe, so to say. Or perhaps an accident? No god has died since the Archon War, and those that did died far away from any functioning society. The aftershock of their powers could’ve simply been absorbed by the environment. He thinks of the desert, then, and all the Sumerian textbooks tracing back the giant oasis by the sea to the death of Eugeria.
The death of the former Electro archon, Albedo distantly remembers, happened during the destruction of Khaenri’ah. It was a bitter thing for his master to talk about, eyes always hard and relentless, and yet gleaming with the curiosity of a scientist. It left massive disruptions of Electro energy, rendering the very army of machinery that had killed her in the first place useless and utterly melted in the span of several miles. The only reason there are no official records about it is because, well… There was no one left write them.
If such a death happened near civilisation, even if by a non-Archon, though… Civilisation stores artifacts. Civilisation stores history. Civilisation stores emotion. All things that flow into the Ley Lines, feeding them, and in turn feed the world. If the Abyss touched it just the slightest bit with their alien force, even without intention, who knows what could happen?
“So what you’re saying," Diluc drawls slowly from his corner, snapping Albedo out of his thoughts, “is that the storm out there is caused by something that isn’t even real?”
Albedo wants to laugh at that. Stars and stories, his master used to say, stars and stories. Ask Nicole. Find the mirror. That’s all there is, really.
“Nothing about this world is real, Master Diluc.”
Diluc’s face, as expected, distorts in confusion. Jean chimes in, always the pragmatic one. “And what would that mean for us?”
“You usually cannot fight Ley Lines head on,” Albedo explains. “You can try, certainly – but it’s never possible to predict the outcome. If we were to attempt to stop this storm by normal means – let’s say, crudely shooting the sky to see if we can hit a god – it could make it much worse.”
The machinery in Khaenri’ah certainly managed, that much he knows. But the line between machinery and divinity had been blurred then. It still is. Flesh and the organic; iron and the mechanic. There is no victor among them, only time. The iron fears the rust as much as the flesh fears the rot.
Even stone can be dragged away by time. Even chalk is carried off into the sea over the centuries.
The Traveller suddenly steps forward. “Ley Lines connected to memories are always somehow tormented,” they say, in their archaic accent from beyond the stars. “I encountered it in Inazuma. The only way to solve the problem was to fulfill the Ley Line’s avatar’s wish in some way or another.”
“I don’t know if anyone else has noticed,” Sucrose hesitantly adds, eyes on Albedo and then back on the ground, always believing her theories to be flawed, “but sometimes, when the wind howls very clearly, it’s almost like it’s saying something.”
Silence rings out, everyone shifting.
Sucrose flushes a bright red. “I’m not the only one who heard it! A lot of the town’s people have claimed it, too. Timaeus, too.”
Albedo huffs at that, thinking to himself of all the times Timaeus had come running with another discovery that had already been discovered by some Akademiya student fifty years ago. “Yeah, well sometimes Timaeus likes to hear what he thinks should be heard…”
Lisa hums at Sucrose’s words. “You do have a special connection to the wind, sweetie.” She gestures to the vision dangling off Sucrose’s collar. “Perhaps that’s why you are more sensible towards it. What does it say?”
Sucrose’s eyes are as wide as dinner plates. “Sometimes incoherent words, sometimes curses… But most of the time it calls for Barbatos.”
Even Albedo is surprised by that.
Suddenly, Kaeya is spinning around, addressing the so far passively lounging bard on the couch. There is meaning behind his burning gaze, meaning lost to Albedo but very much caught by the bard, who blinks owlishly.
“It seems our favourite bard here bears an anemo vision, too,” Kaeya says, voice like ice screeching, scraping, over ice, slightly shrill for those who know to listen. “Do you hear what the wind says as well?”
The bard only shrugs smugly. “The wind says many things.” His voice is a strange thing, lilting at the edges, almost as if the breeze of Windrise and the open sky had become corporeal just in order to sing, like the brushing of wind through grass; there and gone again; a raindrop. “Like, for example, that it must be very cold outside.” He glances towards the window in mirth, drumming his fingers onto the couch. Albedo blinks.
Well – that much is obvious.
“Or that the Cat’s Tail is down one cat, poor creature.” Perhaps he has heard it in some reports?
“Or," the bard pauses, and suddenly his eyes are on Albedo, clear and intangible as the ice of Dragonspine’s frozen lakes, air trapped beneath, shifting, taunting, expecting, “that our Chief Alchemist knows an awful lot about gods and Ley Lines for someone of his profession.”
Albedo freezes.
The bard watches him, air suddenly eerily still around them. Albedo feels watched, suddenly, as if the mountains had sprung to life with their archaic, ancient eyes. It makes a shiver run down his spine, cold and unfamiliar and so very wrong, he wants to rip his skin off and create it anew just to get rid of the feeling.
Master had told him about it – the gaze of the gods, ruthless on all of Khaenri’ah’s sinners. Albedo knew even then that he does not count as one. He’s never been the sinner; he is the sin.
It is public knowledge that the very essence of an Alchemist’s job are the studies of Ley Lines. Therefore, it is only natural for Albedo to be equipped with knowledge in that regard. Of course, if the bard had a way of knowing about Albedo’s background, his sudden interest would make much more sense – after all, Albedo does know more than the usual alchemist, and his tomes are written in the languages of old, star-signed, falling apart beneath his hands if he did not keep them alive with golden ichor-stained power.
There is no possible explanation as to how he would know this, however. Unless-
Once, whispering in crumbled ruins, Master had told him about the wind and all its tales. The wind knows all, she’d said. Looking back, perhaps it hadn’t been a case of the mere wind for her, but of the Wind. She’s never spoken of the God’s names. Had Albedo not read about them himself upon beginning his mission, he would not have known they have any at all.
It makes sense now, why the bard is let in on an official meeting. It makes even more sense why he hasn’t talked yet – Barbatos has, naturally, always been a god of free reign, and what is a people more free than a people that govern themselves?
Barbatos’ eyes are not as piercing as Albedo expects it to be – he inspects him much like Albedo would watch the most abnormal of his crystalfly experiments, curious, challenging; knowing. Still, he feels as if plummeted through the sky, for just a moment, blinking to lose the feeling of dizziness washing over him.
As the bard’s gaze shifts, so does the air in the room again. He gets to his feet in one flighty motion, rambling about something concerning drinks and a tavern. The others watch him leave with bewildered expressions, all none the wiser. The door slams shut behind him without him ever touching the handle.
Albedo feels inexplicably cold. He glances at Kaeya, who looks just about ready to bolt after the bard, and shakes his head in warning. He knows what to do. This is no conversation for Kaeya to have. This is no conversation for any of them to have – they are all human, after all, and if there is one thing gods love, it is humanity.
If there is one thing they have proved to despise, it is the imitation thereof.
At least that’s what Master said. Albedo finds it a little hypocritical – what are Gods, if not mimics of men? This one apparently walks free amongst his own people. Is it protection? Is it humour? Is it jealousy? Albedo understands why gods would envy mortals – after all, they can leave.
Not further paying any attention to the conversation, Albedo is quick to excuse himself. The hallways of the Favonius Headquarters are dark, shadows in every corner, wind rattling against stone. The building is much too sturdy to be damaged, but if the wind was blow on for a hundred years, two hundred, two thousand, even the marble would fear its relentless endurance. In the end, time wins all; and what else is the breeze?
Albedo tracks the elemental energy left by the bard towards the library. He wonders how he did not notice it any sooner, teal dripping, flowing, so fast and shifting and humming it would make Sucrose’s vision pale. There is no purpose in its stains – only true, unfiltered energy. The second he touches it, though, it disintegrates, leaving only cold stone – as if it had never been there at all.
The library is a secret chamber of knowledge. Lisa, of course, is not behind her desk. The dust on the shelf speaks to him. The books are old, some even older than Albedo. There is always a certain weight overcoming him when he stands in the library, wooden shelves high, high. He could lose himself for hours in the silence.
And silent it is – no breathing, no shifting, no nothing.
The bard – Barbatos, a god, something between Master’s enemy and sculptor – waits in the Snezhnayan section. His eyes seem to glow in the dark. Albedo wonders whether this is how people see him, the star on his neck alight with golden blood, pulsing but not quite beating. Would they also ask themselves how they’d ever seen him as anything other than what he is?
Albedo sits beside him.
Barbatos draws patterns into the dust, not looking at him. Albedo reads every title in their section one by one, from left to right and then back again. Snezhnayan fairytales about houses on chicken legs and melting girls of frost. Neither of them breathe. It feels strangely nice to not pretend for a while; even if it means the prize is being exposed; being seen.
“You know who I am,” Albedo eventually says into the silence.
Barbatos tilts his head, eyes alight, face just a tad too smooth to be completely human. Perhaps he enjoys not having to a role, too. “Do I?”
Does he? Does he know the formulae of the golden blood running through Albedo’s sewn veins, stolen from the ichor of the gods bleeding out over their own creation? Does he know of chalk, of the mountains, of the cold, cold snow; of how even stone cracks beneath the freezing might of it? Does he know what it is to feel the warmth of tiny hands on a lying heart, a heart that does not even beat?
Does Barbatos have a heart?
Does he have anything at all – or is he just a mirror of himself – itself, the wind contorting into a shape as solid as a stream, untouched by time and yet torn away just as easily?
Is Barbatos, like him, nothing but a shell?
“And I know who you are,” Albedo adds. Barbatos merely hums.
One could, of course, argue that like all things and beings in this world, Barbatos is a part of nature – a bigger part than some, granted, and definitely purer than most, but nature nonetheless. Humanity is nature. It is flesh and bones and blood and death. Humanity is the variable – the gods, the elements, are the components shaping them into what they are.
Eventually, though, it does not matter. Every equation has its end, and that is always equality. All things mortals have in common is their very own end – all is equal, and all is dead.
Albedo, though, does not fit into that pattern. He is not of nature – he is purely made by hands that should not have been able to make him, with knowledge that should not be known. His very existence goes against all laws.
“I’ve never met a god before,” Albedo admits, and it is only a half-truth, as they were gods in in the books of Master, made of cogs and metal and magic. “My master despised them.”
“I suppose your master had every right to.”
Albedo ponders that. Master never talked about what happened in Khaenri’ah besides of the things he already knew upon his creation – that it is gone, that it is something worse than ash, that he carries its soiled legacy; that he is to success in what the Khaenri’ahn scientists failed.
She never prayed. She never talked about death, only ever about life – the life she’d created. She’d called him defying nature and god-resistance and divinity created by human hand. It never tasted sweet, when she’d said it. There was always something dark lurking in her eyes.
“I’m starting to realise that perhaps she didn’t. It was her own creation that brought upon the destruction of her home. It was her own fault.”
Albedo does not know a lot about his creation – but in the past years, he has come to the conclusion that his birth, that stolen divinity was part of why Khaenri’ah fell the way it did. His existence is a sin. He is a sin.
Barbatos, to his surprise, only hums in disagreement. “I believe," he says slowly, “it is only human to create. And it is only human to destroy.”
Something in Albedo – stills. He turns towards him. The silence around them is thick and tangible. He realises neither of them are breathing.
“…What are you suggesting?”
“You know the answers to your questions already. You must only find them within yourself.”
Albedo blinks – a human notion he does not need, something he has trained himself to do to fit in better. An impostor, all of him. Humanity drawn all over his face, and yet none of it real. He is hollow inside, poison flowing through his veins.
Poison that could soil the ground and crush all dreams.
“I may bring devastation to Mondstadt,” Albedo says, almost pleading. If even God does not see his truth, his lies, his wrongness, who can? If even God cannot condemn him, who will?
“Or you may bring its divination,” Barbatos says, the future in his gaze.
“I could harm it.”
“So could I,” and Albedo wants to protest at that – for in what way could Barbatos harm Mondstadt without harming himself? – but his word is not let through. “Or the Cavalry Captain. Or your little sister.”
…He knows of Kaeya, then. He knows of Kaeya and his burning past, burning eye, all burning etched in Albedo’s throat. He knows of Kaeya, the most painfully human of them all, the most imperfect and thus most perfect, and lets him walk free.
“We all have the power to destroy in this world,” Barbatos continues. “No matter in which way. The difference between you and Durin-," and Albedo’s skin clenches at that, sharp regret shooting through his chest, “-is that you are not alone. You possess the freedom to choose.”
That’s right. Durin saw the light of the sun for exactly one day, moments ago before Albedo himself was born – and then he was felled by Barbatos and his dragon. His bones up in Dragonspine sing a gruesome tale – one of woe and pity and love. He had died adoring the world, for he had not yet seen its cruelties.
Albedo wonders whether Durin loved music, too. Albedo wonders whether Barbatos sang to him, in those last few moments of sharpened ice and a blanket of snow. His voice is said to be inhumanly lovely. Albedo can hear it in the way it drifts through the library as if it filled every corner, hushed and yet ringing clear in his mind.
Albedo takes a shuddering breath he knows he does not need. Barbatos and his song. Durin and his blood. Soiled, soiled snow. Stained, stained stone. Durin was blinded by his love for the world so much, he did not notice how he tore it apart.
Is Albedo doomed the same? Is his everlasting pursuit for knowledge, half by order, half by will, destined to bring forth devastation? Will his awe of the sky, of the land, of the people and all the colours shifting in the sea, become reason for them to fade, washed away like a canvas dropped into a stream?
“…And if I do bring ruin?” Albedo asks. His heart beats in his throat. His heart rests on a mountain, far away, crimson.
Barbatos raises his brows. “Then you have the means and the people to stop you. This one included.” He points to himself.
Albedo falters. It is relieving to know that there is one more entity capable of ending him, if it comes down to it, if the Traveller is not within reach, and yet-
Barbatos smiles a smile of honey and spring. “Do you love Mondstadt?”
Albedo thinks of the grand blue sky. He thinks of warm fires in the adventurers’ camps and gently drifting snow. He thinks of Klee, sitting by the breakfast table, and Sucrose, stumbling through the wild with him, and Kaeya, leaving flowers by his desk. He thinks of the sun on his face.
“I do.”
“Do you want it to be free?”
Wide skies. Lovely winds. Stories hushed through the grass. People that smile and laugh and dance.
Albedo has seen cages, both rusted and golden. No matter the beauty of them, they were cages nonetheless.
“…I do.”
“Then that’s settled.” Barbatos gets to his feet in one swift motion. His tone is absolute – gentle. Not like that of Master, calm and collected, and not like that of Alice, either, smothering in its ecstasy. It is something in between – like the breeze at dawn. “There is nothing worth shackling yourself to a purpose for. Nothing at all. To be human is to choose.”
He leaves the library without a sound – almost as if he never was there to begin with.
Albedo sits in silence. He does not breathe, afraid he would choke on the flowers blossoming in his throat.
To be human is to choose.
It takes him a long while to sort the foreign, tilting mess back into the structure of his own mind. He stumbles through history and wood back out onto the hallway, where all is dark. It almost feels wrong, leaving the quiet behind. The air is cold.
Surprisingly, the Traveller is leaned against the wall.
Albedo raises his eyebrow. “Traveller? Did you wait for me?”
They look at him, those strange, alien eyes gazing right past his skin, and shrug sheepishly. “I saw you followed Venti. Did he talk to you?”
Ah. So Venti is the name he goes by – Albedo is not surprised. He probably would’ve noticed if the people suddenly were aware of their god walking among them. “Yes. He already left a while ago – did you not catch him?”
The Traveller looks taken aback. “He left the library? No, I didn’t. I’ve been here for half an hour.”
“Do you not have more important matters to tend to?”
“The well-being of a friend is always first priority. I was afraid he might…” They trail off.
Albedo chuckles at that, a little touched. “You are very kind. There is no need to worry – I am fine.”
“Then I’m glad.”
They lapse into silence. Albedo walks towards a window to watch the storm outside. It sweeps through the streets ruthlessly, grey and gruesome. He forgot to ask Barbatos – Venti – about it. Strange – he ever so rarely forgets anything.
“Traveller,” he asks, almost so low, the storm could carry it away. “What does it mean to be human?”
The Traveller does not move – no shifting, no breathing, no nothing. Albedo can still feel their golden gaze on his back.
“I wouldn’t know,” they say. “I’ve never been human.”
“Humour me.”
They hum. “I would suppose it’s the love, isn’t it? It’s the compassion. Nothing is as good at creation and destruction as humanity.”
“Venti said the very same thing.”
“…Did he, now.”
Silence, again. The Traveller waits. Albedo supposes they must be excel in that.
“…Do you think I am meant to be human?”
“I wouldn’t know,” they repeat, and lean against the windowsill next to him, eyes kind, “I’ve never been human.” They take a long, lasting look outside. “But from what I’ve seen of humanity, you might be the most human of them all.”
”You were not the only one I created,” ‘Mother’ says.
The thing called Albedo tilts his head and listens. ‘Mother’ like to tell him stories – of the outside world, of the inside world, of everything he has not yet gotten to see. He soaks it all in. He is curious by nature – she made him that way.
“There were others. I carved them just like I carved you.”
“What happened to them?” Albedo asks. She never reprimands him for questions. She never praises him, either.
“They were failures.” It is simple, and it is all he will get – he assumes.
But ‘Mother’ turns away. The candlelight dances in her eyes, water of distant shores. “One lies buried beneath the snow,” she says quietly, “and the other lies buried in his belly. I suppose you could call it a grave.”
She looks at him, and just like the candle, the burning star on his neck reflects in the depth of her gaze. “I suppose you could call them your brothers.”
“So, you want me to stabilise ancient tunnels from the time of Venessa,” Albedo concludes.
It is eight in the morning. It might as well be midnight judging from the darkened sky. The candle on Jean’s table burns low. She herself does not burn at all anymore, eyes heavy and skin pasty.
“Exactly,” she says.
“With all due respect, Acting Grandmaster, but that is quite the task to-“
She sighs, rubbing her forehead. “I know, Albedo, I know. But there is no other way. We have to evacuate somewhere.”
“You still haven’t told me why.”
“There is not a lot to tell you. I only know that the storm will become worse in three days time. We need to be prepared by then.”
Albedo blinks at her, irritated. In his mind, he is already mapping out the entirety of Mondstadt and the supposed tunnels. He could make it – if he had three months and not three days.
“Jean,” he says, “you have to understand this: I have no way of knowing what condition those tunnels are in. They might be completely flooded. They might be half eroded. There might not even be an entrance left! Experimenting with their stability now, when the city is already so damaged, could lead to a sinkhole. I could and would gladly do it, but in three days’ time, that’s just-”
“Insane?” She leans back, crossing her arms. A rough laugh escapes her. “I am fully aware. But we have no other option. This is our only chance at overcoming this crisis once and for all.”
Albedo exhales, relaxing his shoulders. Jean looks absolutely miserable. He softens his tone a little. “…What is going to happen?”
“I… don’t know if I can tell you.”
“I need to know everything, Jean, I can’t work on speculations. I need to know why and for how long we need those tunnels.”
Jean looks at him, conflicted, but then something in her expression gives way to acceptance. “I have… sources that tell me that in three days, Lord Barbatos will challenge Decarabian.”
Albedo stills. Suddenly it all makes sense. A smile tugs at his lips, even though he tries to suppress his amusement. “Would that source happen to be the bard?”
“How did you know-“
I know what it’s like to pretend to be human, he does not say, and neither does he mention the conversation with Venti. He merely hums. “An educated guess.”
Jean snorts. “I suppose you’re not the Captain of the Investigation team for nothing.” She sighs, suddenly a little less tense – almost as if the knowledge of not having to hide any information anymore would lift a weight off her shoulders.
“He was the one to tell me about the tunnels. Their existence was lost to history – but he said they shouldn’t be too eroded.”
Albedo nods pensively. “Possibly. Time is different in Mondstadt.”
Jean shoots him a strange look. “He said the same thing.” At the following silence, she clears her throat, voice back to her professional register. “Anyway – it will be chaos. He told me that he could not afford to keep up the barrier while going against the threat. Therefore, we need to evacuate the citizens to a place underground.
“Thus, the tunnels.”
“Exactly.”
“How many people?”
“Eight thousand, approximately.”
“Did he tell you about any entrances?”
“…No. But I already have Kaeya on the case.”
Albedo hums. “Well, then let’s hope he finds something soon. The earlier I can start, the better.”
“So you’ll do it?”
“What other choice is there? I cannot promise anything, though. It is a very risky plan. Almost impossible.”
Jean smiles. “That’s why I asked you.”
Wax melts into skin. Stone melts into life. Creation bubbles beneath his fingertips, staining them golden with ichor, staining them a sin.
“Again,” says ‘Mother’.
Bricks crumble apart at his touch. Flowers unfold and bloom and rot and wither in the span of seconds. Colours spill across a white canvas and dance in tandem.
“Again,” says ‘Mother’.
He gasps for air. Dust ripples off his skin. His not-human heart races, pulsing in the star by his throat.
He mends himself and she breaks him, over and over until he cannot quite tell where the cracks end and he begins. Light spills through the slivers. He bleeds it.
It has been days. ‘Mother’ shakes her head. “Not enough,” she says. “Again.”
Kaeya does find the tunnels. Albedo steps into the moist darkness to find the walls steady and calm, the inky blackness of its mouth almost inviting. Venti must have been right about the nature of erosion within Mondstadt – the dragon, after all, has lasted five hundred years in its slumber, and still barely has changed.
That night, he returns to his apartment to find Klee blinking awake. His clothes are covered in grime, his hands stained with dirt – but she pays it no mind and hugs him tightly. In the dark, he can just barely make out the sheen of tears in her eyes.
He puts her back to bed and tucks the blanket over her head. “Nightmare?” he asks quietly. Klee nods into his chest.
He sighs and pats her head. She is warm against him. He briefly wonders if he had ever been so small; if anyone had ever held him like this. He cannot remember – perhaps Master had created him just as he is now, with no capability to grow and age.
“The storm is too loud,” Klee says.
“I can imagine. Did the neighbours stay all evening?”
“They did. Magdalena even made dinner. But when they left it was so dark and scary.” Klee leans closer, tugging at his tie so that he leans towards her. “I saw a man by the window,” she whispers.
“A man by the window?”
“He scratched and groaned.”
Albedo chuckles, cradling Klee’s small hands in his own. “Those were branches, Klee.”
“No! It was an evil, evil dragon, coming to get me.”
“Nothing will get you. You have all the knights protecting you.”
Klee snorts, her breath a huff against his skin. “I didn’t say it’s a bad thing! I would’ve slain the dragon until he wasn’t evil anymore! And then Dodoco would have come and become his friend.”
“Is that so?”
Klee wiggles deeper into the sheets. Albedo can only see the outline of her face. The branches of the nearby tree scratch and groan. The shadows, tossed by the wind, really do look like arms.
“I’ll have to leave for a few days,” Albedo whispers.
“Are you going back to your mountain?” Klee whines. “You can’t go. Everyone says it’s too dangerous to leave the city, even to go fish blasting.”
“No, I’m staying here. But I have a very important and very special mission.”
“What kind of mission?”
“You’ll learn in a few days.”
Klee pouts. “That’s mean. You’re not supposed to keep secrets.”
Albedo smiles to himself and ruffles her hair. If only she knew. “It’s not a secret. It’s a surprise.”
“Say what you want. You’re mean.”
Klee turns over pointedly and squirms until the blanket covers everything except the top of her head. Albedo leans back on his heels. He rests his arms on the side of her bed and watches the branches shift, listens to the wind tumble and her breath even out.
If he did not know any better, he would almost believe he was lonely.
“Albedo?” Klee suddenly asks into the quiet, half-asleep already. “Do you dream?”
He hums. “I used to.”
“What did you dream of?”
“The same as you. Men and dragons.”
“Why did you stop?”
“It terrified me.”
”You do not need sleep. You do not need air,” ‘Mother’ tells him. “You do not need sustenance. The earth is your nutrition; Khemia is what keeps you alive.”
“What would happen to me without it?”
“Death.”
“…And what then?”
“Nothing. There is nothing beyond death, not for you.”
He stares at his skin, smooth and unblemished and cool, and imagines colours swirled across it. “Then I do not want to die.”
‘Mother’ leans forward, curious. “I did not create you like that,” she says, “I did not make you fear death. And yet you do it anyway.”
“What else is there to do?”
Albedo does not rest. Albedo does not take a break. He does not need to – the stone sings beneath his palm, his Vision burning, and it makes his blood sing along in tandem. There is no energy for him to run out of – for it is all he is made of, running right through him and stitching him into matter and mind.
Some parts of the tunnels are perfectly preserved. Some are dangerously cracked. Some are completely flooded. None of them, though, are in any serious risk of crumbling apart, at least not when they’re empty. It is almost a miracle – centuries of being forgotten and yet, the stone remains steady. Perhaps that is why none of the citizens or history books knew about them – they never crumbled, and thus their existence was never revealed.
When peering down into the depths, steep stairs leading into darkness, Timaeus chuckles nervously. “Would be kind of funny," he says, “to imagine how people would react if suddenly the town square broke apart to reveal ancient catacombs.”
Albedo promptly leaves him outside.
Sucrose and him work tirelessly, mapping out every single instance and ordering knights to prepare the sections they deem safe. Whenever Albedo is left alone, he leans his palms against the walls, hearing them hum, and lets pure Khemia flow into them to steady the structure. If anyone were to ask, he would simply reason it with his Vision – but in truth, it merely serves as a support, and there is no one in the tunnels to question him, anyway.
“Quite the work, Alchemist,” Barbatos says behind him.
Albedo does not quite jump, but exhales sharply before turning around. The bard is leaned against the opposite wall, brows raised.
“…Barbatos.”
“Careful, now. There are people working down here.”
Albedo shakes his head. “They won’t hear us. They’re much too far away.”
“Are they? I can’t tell.”
Albedo blinks, perplexed. “I thought the wind told you everything?”
Barbatos grins wryly. “Not a lotta wind down here, eh? This isn’t my element. I can’t stay long.”
Albedo continues to the next wall. “Why are you here then?”
Barbatos tilts his head. His eyes glow eerily in the almost-dark, lit only by a single torch. Albedo would not dare sending any of the knights down here on their own – but by now, he has the entire map memorised. Even if he didn’t, he’d still be able to find his way back.
“I figured you’d have questions,” Barbatos says.
“Would you answer them?” Albedo asks in return.
“Depends on the question. And its answer.”
“Why did you wait so long to tell us about the tunnels?”
“It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that we need them.”
“Why?”
“…Decarabian does not let himself be talked out of his devotion.” Barbatos laughs sheepishly, following Albedo’s every step. “Also, I was not aware that the existence of these tunnels had been forgotten.”
“History works in strange ways.”
“It does indeed.”
When Albedo turns around the corner, he runs into Sucrose. She stares at him with wide eyes, clutching her notes and panting as if she had ran all the way.
“Mister Albedo! Who are you talking to?”
Albedo looks back, an excuse on the tip of his tongue – only to find the bard gone. Not even the torch is flickering.
“…No one,” he says slowly.
Sucrose frowns, but probably simply stashes it away into all the other oddities she must’ve picked up from him, and moves on. “One of the sections further West is unstable,” she says, “but I think it’s salvageable. Can you take a look, Mister Albedo?”
He follows her through the winding tunnels for what feels like aeons, occasionally passing groups of knights already establishing order for the evacuation, hanging up wooden signs and torches. The deeper they go, though, the less people they see until eventually, it is just the two of them and the echoes of their footsteps again.
Neither of them talks. It is something Albedo has learned to appreciate about Sucrose. Where other people feel the urge to fill silence, she is just as content to lose herself in her thoughts as him. It makes working with her comfortable and is partly the reason she is such a good assistant.
Unfortunately, though, their soothing silence is quickly interrupted when they arrive at an outer section of the tunnels. Albedo can already feel the instability in the walls before Sucrose raises her voice. He presses his palm against them. The cracks run deep.
“We wanted to expand further this way,” Sucrose explains, “but the instability was too dangerous.”
Albedo hums. “Indeed.”
“Is there any way you could stabilise it?”
Albedo sighs and pulls his hand back. “This entire section is unstable. If I were to fix one part, another would probably tear even further and come down. However...”
Sucrose’s pattering steps quickly following, he wanders deeper into the tunnel. “Hold on, Mister Albedo,” she calls nervously. “We haven’t looked at these yet!”
Albedo pays her no mind as he runs his fingers across stone, pondering. If he were to stretch out his Khemia like roots through the entire blocks of stone, sealing the erosion and filling it with golden glue... It wouldn’t hold for long, surely, but it would be safe enough for people to stay for a few nights. He only ought to make the structure strong enough so the storm above would not influence its stability-
Albedo halts abruptly in the dark to plant his hands firmly on the walls once more. Sucrose behind him yelps. He pays her no mind as he closes his eyes, coaxing forth the Khemia running through his veins. The ground is slippery. The same moment that a reaction finally occurs between Albedo’s hands and the stone, Sucrose crashes into him.
His palms slip. The walls crack even further. Debris rains down on them, stone weeping. Albedo barely manages to pull a frightened Sucrose beneath himself before the ceiling comes crashing down.
When he opens his eyes again, it is to darkness and dust. Sucrose shifts beneath him. Debris tumbles off him as he rolls to the side. His back aches.
The small cave-in must’ve blown out the last of their torches. There are only three sources of light – both of their Visions, and, as he awkwardly notes, the star by his neck. It is nowhere near as bright as the Visions, only a dim sheen, and he shifts his collar in hopes of being able to cover it. Sucrose gasps in the dark.
“Mister Albedo. Are you alright?”
Albedo blinks. “I am. Are you?”
“I’m sorry!” she cries. “I couldn’t see and I was so startled by you moving on all of the sudden and couldn’t stop in time-”
“It’s fine,” Albedo says, already standing up. There is a strange twinge to his cheek. “It was my fault. I should have heeded your warning.”
“Mister Albedo, no-”
He finds Sucrose’s hand in the dark and pulls her to her feet. As they feel their way back to the main path along the wall, he realises that he really should have. Only a small part of the ceiling crumpled, but that was pure luck – any further, and they could’ve been buried beneath debris until someone would’ve found them – if anyone would’ve found them at all.
Albedo briefly wonders how long it would take him to die in a cave-in; whether he’d die at all, or be trapped there for all eternity along his assistant’s body.
A bard may consider it poetic; born from the ground, buried in it. A prosecutor may call it judgement.
Back where the torches reach them again, Sucrose’s eyes are wide as dinner plates. She halts, turning around to look at the scattered debris, and takes a deep breath. “I suppose," she says, “this is a good example as to why we need to do a good job.”
Albedo only hums absentmindedly.
Sucrose glances back at him, opening her mouth to say something else – but the words freeze on her mouth. Something like horror creeps into her expression, pale and slack. “Mister Albedo, are you alright?!”
Albedo frowns. Did she not ask that already? Why would he not be-
Slowly, he lifts a hand to the sting on his cheek. There is a crack on his skin, feathery and thin and probably a heavy contrast to the flames. When Albedo pulls back his fingers, they are covered in fine white dust.
Ah.
Sucrose, much to her credit, manages to shift her expression from disbelief to concern. “You’re hurt!”
Albedo waves her off and begins walking again. “Do not worry.”
“We should treat you somewhere, or get you to the cathedral! Now that I think about it, didn’t you take the brunt of the collision? Are you sure you didn’t hit your head?”
Albedo winces. Sucrose’s concern is just like her obsession with science – rare but once there, it becomes an unstoppable stream. “We are not going to the cathedral.”
“But-”
“We are going to the lab.”
Letting his hair fall over his face, Albedo manages to steer clear of any suspicion from the knights. No one bats an eye at them hurrying past, covered in dust and grime. When they are finally back outside again, the wind hits them with full force, whistling, screaming. Albedo’s coat billows.
The Headquarters are deadly quiet. There is not a single soul inside, all of them stationed somewhere in the city to prepare for the evacuation. The endless basement hallways are cool and damp. Even when Albedo flicks on the lights in the lab, it barely makes a difference.
Sucrose watches in muted shock as he pulls out a box of powdered chalk and a mirror from one of the shelves. He sits down by the working bench and inspects his face. The sight only confirms his suspicion – a spiderweb-like crack spreads across his cheek, pulsing with a strange sensation. It is not quite pain – Albedo knows pain, if only rarely – but rather a kind of numbness, as if the cold skin was not his but mere smooth stone.
Fixing himself is almost routine by now. Albedo has lost count of the times he has feverishly put together the ingredients on his own, nursing a burned hand or a deep gash with nothing but pasty chalk and ancient runes drawn across them. The crack on his cheek is easy enough to fix; but only after the tingling there has faded does Albedo notice the dent in his arm, running much deeper and thus much more numb.
Sucrose’s gaze rests heavily on him. The light burns low, as if the night was long and the bench a stage for only his creation. He applies the chalk, writes his runes and breathes life into them in the ancient tongue of the dragons mixed with Khaenri’ahn. It slips from his throat like a secret.
Calmly, Albedo pulls down his sleeve, puts away chalk and brush and then finally turns towards Sucrose.
“I suppose you have questions,” he says, a strange trembling somewhere in his chest, “and I would answer them to my best ability.”
Sucrose’s mouth opens once, twice without a sound. She sinks down onto a chair. Her gaze flits from Albedo’s cheek to his arm, both unblemished and smooth again.
For a moment, there is silence.
“...Does it hurt?” Sucrose asks.
Albedo blinks. Out of all the questions she could-
“No,” he says, and it sounds like a lie; and he does not know whether it is one, but it tastes like one, too. “No, it doesn’t.”
“I’m sorry you got hurt, Mister Albedo,” Sucrose says. “If only I had moved faster-”
“Accidents happen,” Albedo interrupts her, palm on his chest to get rid of the knot twisting within. “There is no permanent damage. Everything is fine.”
“Still, you were wounded. It must’ve hurt.”
Albedo turns away, counting all the burn marks and nips in the table’s surface. It is covered in imperfections, in age. He almost feels sick, then, as if his skin was just as unblemished. It should be – there should be scars in his hands from research, age on his face. Even stone is marked by time – and yet he feels as if the only thing eroding is his mind, descending and ascending at the same pace.
“I don’t understand,” he says, trying to keep his voice honest. “I have lied to you. We have worked together for a long time now, and yet I hid such a truth from you. Are you not upset?”
Sucrose seems utterly taken aback. “Why would I be upset? It’s understandable.”
“But I am not even human.”
“So what? You are a genius regardless, Mister Albedo, and the best mentor I could ask for.” Sucrose grows a little flustered, cringing in her seat. “...Also, if we are to be so specific, I’m not fully human either.”
As if to prove a point, her ears twitch.
She clears her throat. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, Mister Albedo – I do have a lot of questions. Of scientific nature, of course!” She stutters. “But still, I don’t think it would be fair of me to ask those questions in such a forced manner when you did not voluntarily offer the answers in the first place. So...”
Albedo hums. “I understand. You can ask your questions – I will try to answer to my best ability.” He falters. “...Which isn’t a lot.”
Sucrose smiles. “That’s okay.”
Albedo glances around the lab. The labels on the shelves are dusty, the working bench cluttered. He realises how little he has been here in the past months; how little he has been in Mondstadt in general lately. Perhaps there is another crack forming, this time in his heart.
“...Mister Albedo,” Sucrose haltingly starts. “You said you are not human. Is that important to you?”
Albedo looks back at her, a little perplexed. Out of all the questions she could have asked....
“...Is it not?” he asks in return.
“I believe it depends on the definition,” Sucrose says. “Biologically, there is a distinction, of course – but socially? Spiritually? It blurs, don’t you think?”
“...In what way?”
“Well, biologically, humans behave a certain way. They eat and sleep in certain intervals, they have a predictable enough mentality...” Sucrose scrunches her eyes together. “Although, now that I think about it, it was quite easy to notice deviations in your behaviour.”
Albedo raises his brows. He’d never particularly cared much about putting up pretenses, but in his experience, no one had ever connected his lifestyle to the truth. “How so?”
“Well, Mister Albedo, for one, I once saw you in the lab for three days straight without sleep. At the time , I figured it was one of your oddities – excuse the bluntness – but now it makes sense. Wait – do you sleep?”
“I don’t.”
Sucrose sighs. “What a dream. The things I could achieve if I had more time on my hands...”
Before Albedo can retort anything, she shakes her head. “Regardless. Although biologically, humans are a definable organism like any other, there are things that make us human beyond that. Morals. Empathy. Laws. Love. Without those, would we be human?”
Albedo thinks of Klee, endlessly devoted and endlessy energetic. He thinks of Kaeya, caught in grief and past and yet running from the future. “...I suppose not.”
“And from what I’ve gathered, Mister Albedo, you do have all those things. Thus, even if not biologically, you are human in a way, maybe even more than others. Don’t you think?”
Sucrose looks a little uncertain, by the end of it. She fiddles with her hands. Albedo lets his gaze wander once more, past the door to the ceiling and back to the floor, and hums.
“...A formidable theory,” he says, throat tied. “A formidable theory indeed.”
”You," she says, “come from stone. You come from the earth. You come from the life I breathed into you.”
“Where do you come from?” he asks.
“A place that is long gone.”
“Did it have a name?”
“Khaenri’ah.”
He tries it, feels the way the word spills over his tongue like an underground stream. He halts in his task to look at her. Her back remains stoic.
“Can you tell me more about it?” he asks.
If there is one thing she never refuses him, it is knowledge. Every question is fed with an answer; every curiousity is encouraged. This time, though, she only stills, head unmoving against cold cavern walls.
“There is nothing to tell you.”
The evacuation is loud. It is messy. The entire city barely fits into the tunnels, huddled together in assigned sections where food and water is scarce and the light flickers with shadows. Albedo watches as for hours, people descend into the depths in thin lines, clutching meager belongings or nothing at all. Above them, the sky is as relentless as ever.
Kaeya and Albedo are one of the last ones to go. Before they close the door behind them, bolting it shut, Kaeya looks up.
Clouds have gathered in an even darker mass than before. They are swollen in storm., swirled in fury. Rain beats down on them. The air is heavy with something neither of them can name. Kaeya shivers; Albedo does not.
They watch in muted awe as a single teal strip ascends in the sky, flashing through the clouds. It almost looks like a beam of light; a beam of hope.
“Do you think," Kaeya asks, then, “this is what the people of Khaenri’ah saw, right before the end? Do you think the beauty of it made them afraid, too?”
When Albedo witnesses the open sky for the first time, he can do nothing but stare in awe.
It is blue. It is vibrant. It is brighter than anything he has ever seen, and wider than anything he could have ever imagined. Condensation drifts high, high above his head. Air, an open breeze, plays with his hair. It smells sweet. He takes a deep breath only to find no moisture in it, no groaning earth and ancient stone. It is an utterly foreign feeling.
For centuries, he had not known the things he was deprived of. But when he turns around, questions and paintings and poems on his tongue, he is frozen in his tracks.
‘Mother’ behind him, a hand on his shoulder, is smiling.
Sound travels through the tunnels as an echo. Albedo does not need it to hear the commotion. Some are crying. Some are praying. Most are utterly silent, hollow eyes watching the ceiling.
The storm outside must be brutal. Even as the walls hold on tightly and the stone does not budge, Albedo can feel the winds tearing at it from above. Sometimes, probably when another house crumbles apart at the surface, there is a slight tremor in the tunnels, sending dust drifting from the ceiling. The people cry out every time.
Albedo sighs, shifts closer to the nearest torch, and begins to draw.
A landscape, at first. A dragon’s half-beating heart. A flower, dew dropping from its petals.
When he focuses on the pictures for long enough, dark coal on stark white, hued light, then the sounds of the people around him fades away. He sees his Master standing there as he closes his eyes for just a moment, a face flickering in the flames. He grew up underground. It is where he will always return.
“Albedo!”
Klee barrels into him, barely giving him the time to react before she has pulled the notebook down to her level. He exhales in relief and smooths her hair. He has not seen her in days. The only glance he got of her was during the evacuation, safely nestled in with the neighbours’ children.
Those very children stand around them now. They watch with big, dark eyes. Klee proudly lifts his work into the air. “See!” she says. “I told you he is the best painter in the whole wide world.”
Albedo chuckles. She chucks the book back into his hands. “Do the thing!” she pleads, face lit up. “Make the flower come to life!”
He sighs, but does as asked. Warmth hums in his hands as he grabs the charcoal flower and pulls. The children gasp. It is a lovely shade of violet on his palm, stem watery as if it was freshly cut.
“That’s amazing!” one of the children says in awe. It is followed by excited shouts.
“So cool!”
“Mister, can you do another?”
“Can you make me a toy horse?”
“Or a real horse?”
Before he knows any better, Albedo’s hands are glowing by the minute as he pulls miniature after miniature from his work. More and more children trudge over to marvel at the abundance of toys and plants scattered on the floor. Soon, their parents follow along, and suddenly there is a whole crowd around him, gasping and wondering as if they were watching a street magician’s performance.
“You’re the best big brother,” Klee says when he finally retreats a little. His hands are hurting, the core of his body weakened, but the warmth in his chest almost makes up for it. “I told them all how cool you were and they didn’t believe me, but now they do!”
Albedo chuckles. “You shouldn’t let other kids’ opinions influence your actions, Klee.”
She pouts. “I didn’t! Also, they were really scared. Now they’re not. Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Very good. But how about you?” Albedo reaches out to gently ruffle her hair. “Are you not scared?”
“The Spark Knight is never scared!” She crosses her arms. “I know the storm will pass eventually. It always does.”
Albedo smiles. He presses a palm against the wall to listen to its hum, mixing and mingling with the people of Mondstadt whispering to each other. A few knights are handing out blankets and candles. Somewhere further down their section, a nun is holding a praying session, hands intertwined with the person next to her. A few paces elsewhere, people are singing. The children from earlier have taken to petting a cat. The torches flicker and shift, yes – but they do not cease to burn bright and to burn true.
Mondstadt, even during calamity, does not waver in its humanity.
Perhaps that is something his Master never understood – that there is not only ruin to be found underground, but hope, too. It prevails like the stem in winter.
“Indeed,” Albedo says. “It will pass. Everything does.”
When the stars are bright and the constellations tell sparkling lies of the world, he finds her sitting by a dying fire.
The sea is a roaring thing in the night. The sand is soft beneath his feet. The smell of salt stains his throat, his clothes. It clings to his hair so tight, even the breeze cannot rip it away.
She does not see him. He crouches by a rock. The flames throw shadows on her face, crackling and dancing and oh so lonely in the dark of the night. There is no one here to witness them. There never has been – always and forever, it is only them.
There is something strange shimmering in ‘Mother’s’ face. She is bleeding blood of salt and water. It drips down her cheeks and onto the sand, where it is swallowed. She makes no sound. No sound at all.
The waves roar. The night is a liar, but it is warm. ‘Mother’ has the ocean in her eyes.
When the storm has passed and the city has resurfaced and the days become less loaded with work, Albedo takes Klee outside for the first time.
They wander all the way from the Mondstadt gates to Windrise. Klee howls and shrieks and spins in the grass, delighted to feel the sun touch her cheeks again. Albedo breathes in deeply and tastes the wind. It is calm. It is sweet. There is no trace of malice left, not a hint of bitterness lingering.
They lie down in the softest of green fields, a bed beneath their heads. Klee grabs his hand. It’s warm. She pulls it upwards to follow her pointing finger.
“Look,” she says. “That one looks like a fish.”
The clouds are white and far away, distant mountains of imagery. Albedo smiles. “Yes.”
“And that one is a squirrel.”
“Yes.”
“And that one is Timaeus.”
Albedo squints. “No, I don’t see it.”
“You don’t? It’s got the same massive head!”
Albedo chuckles. A better brother would have chastised Klee for this, but... well. The grass is soft and the wind is kind and the sky is blue. Klee is here and the dragon’s heart is far, far away.
Sometimes, he could imagine it to be only a dream – but then the pull returns, a call in his very bones, and he knows it is not. The future is written. The past is unknown. The presence is merely a factor, calculating infinity.
“Albedo,” Klee says, suddenly solemn. It does not fit her voice. “Albedo, will you leave?”
Albedo turns his head to look at her, perplexed. “What makes you ask that?”
“You are gone more and more. No one tells me what you’re doing. And you said... You said everything passes. Will you pass, too?”
Albedo says nothing for a while. The clouds drift past. He thinks of seeing them for the first time, of believing them to be mountains and valleys.
“...I try not to,” he eventually settles on, and winces at his own words.
Klee lifts up her finger. “Pinky promise?”
He intertwines their hands. “Pinky promise.”
Klee pouts, something too heavy in her young eyes. “Mum pinky-promised, too. I wouldn’t remember her face anymore, if you didn’t keep drawing her. My teachers say only the immortals stay forever, the people who aren’t human, but both mum and you aren’t human, and keep leaving. Why is that?”
Perhaps, Albedo wants to say, if it was not a lie, and if it was not Klee, I got it from my own mother.
Before Albedo can even begin to unpack that, she is on her feet, tugging her backpack closer. “Anyway,” she says cheerfully, “can we go fish-blasting now?”
Albedo huffs. The wind almost chuckles in his ear. The big tree sways with its song.
Same old. Same old. Albedo wouldn't have it any different.
The next morning, she leaves him.
She puts a hand on his shoulder and another to his temple. “I have a mission for you, Albedo,” she says, “an order. Betray it, and you betray yourself.”
The sky is a spinning thing. It is nothing against the glint of her eyes, not as shaded as last night, not as shaded as underground where only the torches bore witness to her.
“Find the truth of this world,” she says. It rings through him and settles in his very being, until he knows that if he were to ever defy, it would be as ripping his own skin apart, as breaking his chest open and reach past his ribs for his artificial heart.
“Why?” he asks.
“Because it is the thing to do,” she says.
“But, mother-”
“I am not your mother. You are not my flesh,” she says, eyes sharp and shuddering and sea-like, glistening like the sun in its depths. “I am your master. And you are my most beautiful creation.”
What is a womb, if not Eden? What is a womb, if not hell?
What is birth, if not salvation? What is birth, if not death?
Is one who creates a god, he wants to ask, or a mother?
But he asks nothing. He remains quiet, and her hands remain cold, and her eyes that of gold and gischt.
“And remember,” she adds as she sends him off into a green world, “you are not made to be free.”
Kaeya finds him late at night. They don’t talk about what drove him to the lab; they don’t talk about what kept Albedo in it for so long. They only look at each other, haunted gaze on haunted gaze, and settle for a midnight walk.
When they finally reach Starsnatch Cliff, the wind is blowing fierce but not unkind. Albedo settles by the ledge. Far, far below, the sea kisses the shore.
Kaeya looks at him. The star in his eye burns. It is much brighter and much truer than the stars above. It betrays him to anyone who knows what to look for – but those unknowing are traitors to justice, too.
At least that is the narrative.
Kaeya used to see him as a traitor to Mondstadt. Albedo used to see him as a traitor to his principles. It was difficult at first, Albedo brandishing the sky in his throat and Kaeya in his gaze, and the first time they’d talked, it was with Albedo’s neck inches away from Kaeya’s blade. Back then, he’d threatened to carve out that wretched sign right out of his skin. Albedo had said nothing. He didn’t have to. They both knew it: if only it was so easy.
“A few years ago you would’ve pushed me,” Albedo says into the quiet, tone light. His feet dangle in the air. Gravity sings.
Kaeya snorts. “I had every reason to.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. It would have been a bother.”
“Would you have died?”
“I don’t know. Want to find out?”
It is easy, being with Kaeya. It is easy and heavy at the same time. There is not a moment with him that does not remind Albedo of his origin, of what is to come; and he is sure Kaeya feels the same way. They laugh as if their voices did not know how to. It tastes like ichor in Albedo’s throat.
He thinks of Sucrose’s wide eyes. He thinks of stars stabbed through his back. He looks at his hands and imagines them broken, shattered like a porcelain doll, only to be mended together again.
“I don’t think it would kill me,” Albedo sighs, “not in any way that matters.”
Not in a way that would stop him from steering towards Durin’s fate; his blood corrupting the earth.
“It would matter to me well enough. And to Klee,” Kaeya says.
“You could just mend me back together. You could ask Sucrose.”
“She knows?”
“She does now.” Albedo sighs, leaning his chin against his hand. “I can’t help it. Somehow, the circle of people I care about keeps getting bigger.”
“Is that necessarily a bad thing, Alchemist?”
“I don’t know. You tell me, Captain.”
Kaeya goes quiet. The sky broadens beneath his gaze, and implodes again with every inhale. “...I need to talk to Diluc,” he says.
“Oh?”
Albedo remembers their fight only briefly – there is a rift between them, deepened by years of anger and bitterness. He himself has never known any of his siblings for long enough to form a close bond with them, whether it is a bond of love or of hate or of something in-between.
In a sickening way, he almost envies Kaeya.
“I need to set things right. It can’t be like this forever,” Kaeya says. “I don’t want to be angry at him. So much has happened, it would feel wrong. So much will happen, I have realised, and I do not want to be his enemy. Not until I have to be.”
“Do you have to be?”
“What do you mean?”
Albedo leans back, gaze carefully towards the sky. He calculates his every word. “…When the day comes that you have to choose – and you will have to choose, because that is the human thing to do-”
He thinks back to the bard in the library, and his head spins with it, lies to himself, lies to the world, the truth of this world, and oh how he envies Kaeya for being so painfully, accurately, tragically human.
“-you will be able to choose him, will you not? Him and the rest of Mondstadt.”
“But I would be a traitor to two countries.”
Albedo squints. “You are no traitor at all. Look at you. One of the countries you are speaking of is nothing but ashes, and the other one thrives under your care. You devote yourself to the city’s cause. You sacrifice your well-being, perhaps one day your life, for its safety” Albedo shakes his head. “No matter what you tell yourself, the facts speak of nothing but good you have done for these people. Why torment yourself by asking what you would choose? The answer is already clear.”
Kaeya says nothing, and Albedo wonders whether he has stepped too far.
“...I talked to Barbatos,” he says slowly after moments of silence.
Kaeya’s head swivels around. “You knew?”
“Not for long. It occured to me in the office, when Jean held the emergency meeting. He made no attempt at distraction.”
Kaeya laughs, a sound of knives scraping over ice. “So he’s been going around telling people of his identity, while I had to fear for my life the entire time trying to decipher metaphors.”
“He didn’t tell me. He showed me.”
Kaeya only looks at him, eye swimming. Albedo wonders what his other one looks like – if it is golden, if it is the same as his Master’s. He shakes off the thought and clears his throat.
“He said to me," he continues, “that there is no reason to shackle ourselves to a purpose.”
“What a godly response,” Kaeya huffs. “If there is no purpose, what do we live for?”
“What do we die for?” Albedo corrects. “And what do those do who cannot die?”
“What is your purpose then, oh immortal alchemist?”
“You know it already.”
“I want to hear it again.”
“Kaeya,” Albedo stops himself for a beat, so still, he could feel himself become a statue, “I have no choice. I am not human enough to choose. My purpose is not only a shackle, it is the cage of the world.”
“I think you look quite human.”
“Do you think I am human?”
“What does being human mean to you?”
“That is not what I asked.”
Kaeya raises an eyebrow. “Humour me.”
For a moment, Albedo’s mind is uncharacteristically blank. Only the stars shimmer far and wide. Only the night whispers its secrets. Only the cecilias sway in the breeze.
But then – the sky, and people watching it. The night, and people sharing it. The flowers of the world, and the people plucking them, painting them, gifting and loving them.
The smell of the earth; the scent of the sea. The sound of laughter by the hearths. The intimate silence of sleep in the hushed hours between night and dusk. The intertwining of hands, palm to palm, heart to heart, as if it was all hands were ever meant to do. A smile. A tear. A body, blemished and imperfect and a canvas for the watercolours of life.
They smudge, those colours, they smear and disappear and are reborn anew as they fade into each other with a kiss or a touch or a shout. There are skies to be found in humans’ voices. There are oceans to be seen in their eyes.
There is compassion next to indifference; hatred next to love. There is empathy and ignorance, and music and silence, and choice and duty. There is creation and destruction. There is godhood and motherhood. There is night and day and all the seconds in-between, an eternity spanning from death to birth and back. They spring from the earth and return to it.
Albedo sprung from the earth and will, one day, return to it.
He tells Kaeya nothing of this. He does not have to. Kaeya only smiles, the softest thing, and inclines his head.
“Then," he says, “I believe you are human enough.”
One day, Albedo might destroy Mondstadt. He will bring destruction and chaos and ruin. He will be his own demise. But before all that, for a moment as fragile as chalk-cracked, sea-parted skin, he is human enough, and beneath the gilded stars, he can pretend to bleed.