Chapter Text
moodboard by my amazing friend azucaryjoon <3
Chapter 1 : The River Finds its Bed
History was just a tale. It was sung in the harmonies of a church mass, intersected in children’s nursery songs, threaded across tapestries hanging in museums and old castles. Everywhere — old roads paved with worn-out stones, stained glasses in gothic cathedrals, carved inscriptions in divine statues, cemeteries built on top of one another — it permeated the life of Mondstadt.
There was one thing Diluc knew about tales: they could be rewritten.
He stared at his pocket watch half-open on the table, twilight winking off its silver surface. It was the most precious object he owned — and not just in monetary value. His grandmother had given it to him when he was a child, claiming it was a gift from his late father. Sometimes, when Diluc fiddled with it to calm his nerves, he could swear he felt a benevolent, loving presence watching over him. What tale did it hide behind the regular ticking of the clock? Behind that date carved in its back — a drop in the ocean of Mondstadt’s blurry Victors’ Tales?
1521 - 1610
“Diluc?”
Diluc raised his eyes from the book he had been reading — ‘The Great Rewrite of Mondstadt: How the Victors’ Tales Turned Myths Into Reality’. Sucrose stood on the other side of the table, amber gaze questioning his. She was wearing her coat — supposedly to go home. Autumns were harsh in Mondstadt, especially near Dawn Winery where the Winery’s Library was located. “You called me?” he finally replied.
“Yeah. Just to let you know I was leaving. I’m not on closing duty tonight so you won’t be able to stay past closing hours; my coworker is kinda strict about that, sorry.”
Diluc smiled at her, hoping he looked reassuring. Sucrose overthought everything and blamed herself for things she had zero control over. “No worries, I was about to leave. I have a shift at the bar tonight. Sorry for the trouble by the way; I really appreciate that you let me stay late.”
“It’s nothing.” She hopped a little on her feet to readjust her large backpack. A kitten was drawn on it. “You should be careful about night shifts. I heard the attacks have been closing in on the city center.”
“I heard as much, yeah,” he said as he stood up, putting his books in a satchel and slipping his watch into his pocket, giving it a light squeeze for good luck. “But my tuition won’t pay for itself, so.”
“It won’t matter when you’re dead.”
Diluc snorted. “‘When’, not ‘if’? Thanks.”
“I’m a scientist, Diluc. I deal with facts.”
“Alright, professor. Thanks for prophesying my upcoming death.” He wore his coat, then took his satchel. Its weight was comforting — fulfilled this need for something heavy he was missing, though he could never tell what. “I’ll walk with you,” he said while freeing his ponytail from the satchel strap on his shoulder.
“Sure.”
Dawn Winery’s library was nothing like the grand, fancy one that stood in Mondstadt’s city center. In the past, it used to be — duh — a winery, but with the expansion of the city, its outskirts always gnawing more and more land, it had become a mini-city for college students. With one library, a few cheap bars, convenience stores, student dorms, and the campus on which Diluc spent most of his time. He met Sucrose on a day when he was so absorbed by his reading he didn’t realize it was way past the closing hours. Instead of reminding him, Sucrose let him stay, using her own extra time to read more. He wouldn’t call her a friend; a close acquaintance was more like it. She showed as little as he did and to that day he didn’t know much about her beside her major in chemistry and her love for books.
“I was watching the news earlier,” Sucrose broke the silence as they walked past the library’s gates. Outside, the air was crisp, smelled of sap and leaves. The streets of cobblestone were slippery, coated with the moody mist of fall. “The police found two more bodies in a week.”
“It’s about that serial killer, hm?”
“They were dubbed ‘The Beast of Dragonspine’.”
“Sounds fun. Why is that?”
Sucrose readjusted her glasses on her nose — meaning she was about to ramble. “Because the corpses were abnormally cold. It was actually theorized they were left in a freezer before being placed where they were found, but the initial autopsies can’t pinpoint any freezing pattern on the cells nor stiffness beside rigor mortis.”
“Okay, that’s strange. And why a beast?”
“Well, the victims all look like they were attacked by some animal — goes for the neck, tears out the throat, then feasts on the flesh as a beast would. Also, fun fact: the bodies all miss their heart.”
Diluc shuddered. “Very fun fact, thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Another fun fact: the killer doesn’t have any preference. Usually serial killers will have a particular niche, a subpopulation they target for whatever reason. Quite often sex workers and homeless people — which sucks. More than often, women and children — at the cost of other atrocities. But this time the killer seems to attack at random.”
“Around the city center you said?”
“Started on the outskirts then migrated closer to the center, yes. But I think that might be random too — like their choice of victims. It’s been recommended to stay home.”
“Sure, if they pay for my education.”
Sucrose smiled. “It’s true that the government doesn’t really help.”
“That’s an understatement.” Besides, as a history student who liked to snoop in Mondsadt’s rumored Great Rewrite, it wasn’t like Diluc would attract himself any good reputation. He was pretty sure it was why his application for a scholarship had been rejected. Despite not being vocal about it — and never admitting to anyone that he believed the rewrite wasn’t a myth — it was easy to blacklist a student based on books they borrowed or bought. It was something Diluc had never considered, candid as he used to be.
Mondstadt prided itself on its peaceful past only marred by one war — the war of the seven nations, which had ended with the fall of Khaenri’ah. But there was a rumor that the entire war had been rewritten to serve Mondstadt’s interests, painting a story where the victors were justified in what they had done to protect the people. Like burning an entire country to the ground. It was what they were taught at school; Mondstadt merely defended itself against the greed of the other nations, it didn’t cast the first stone. All because of one Khaenri spy — the catalyst to the war so often referenced in history books, but never by name. Losers of a war didn’t deserve their names passed down memories.
But Diluc studied history through a different eye. He knew better than to believe governments had no hand in what was taught of the past — not when every day, scholars discovered more proof of incoherences about the last treaties Mondstadt had signed with Liyue a century ago. It was easier to sell a story about cultural appreciation at the root of diminished importation taxes than one where residents of Liyue would be banned from entering Mondstadt would the treaty not be signed.
Sometimes, Diluc wondered if those half-truths marred with lies were the reasons his father had died. He had been a scholar — something Diluc’s grandmother vocally abhorred, or used to. Diluc never knew him beyond the few pictures his grandmother had kept. If she knew he had followed his father’s footsteps despite her constant nagging, she would never forgive him.
Thank god, the dead can’t hold grudges.
But they also can’t talk. His father had left him with nothing beyond an empty house he couldn’t stand and that silver pocket watch, engraved with a date that fell during the war. At least when he researched the war and its potential revisionism, the only lead he had about this pocket watch, he felt worthwhile. A little less lonely.
He traced the numbers carved at the back of the watch. The only other distinctive traits of this watch were the carvings on the front — beautiful swirls and arabesques shaping an elaborate snowflake. He had no idea what they meant — just that they meant something to him.
“Alright, I think I’m gonna leave you here,” Sucrose said as they reached a crossroads. “Be careful at your shift, okay?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ve been told I look as approachable as a cell door. Hopefully it will work in my favor.”
“You know that’s not true.”
He shrugged. “I do look a little menacing. No?”
Sucrose laughed lightly. “No, not really. Sorry. The fluffy hair doesn’t help your case.” She left after a timid wave while Diluc continued walking toward the subway station.
The station was aptly named Waypoint Dawn Winery. Normally, at this hour, it was packed, but not that evening. The wagons were eerily empty, save from a few old people with their groceries bags and teachers heading home. How uncomfortable. Diluc was so used to the bustling crowd, with its rudeness and urgency, he wasn’t supposed to see the empty seats lined in front of him with their funky patterns, the dry chewing gums stuck against the walls, the phone numbers scribbled on the window and subway roadmaps.
He clutched his bag against him, tried to let the whirring of the train lull him, but it was hard to relax when he knew what awaited him. Demanding customers, unwanted advances, the occasional TikTokers singing while ordering… And all the glasses he would monitor to ensure they remained safe for consumption — especially for the few women hanging around. He couldn’t count how many of them he had found in the lounge, drunk and drugged and helpless, predators flocking around waiting for a chance to pounce.
He sighed. Squeezed the pocket watch.
Hopefully not that night.
Diluc’s shift had been blissfully calm. No creepy people, drunken fights, or spilled drinks all over his counter. From the moment he put on his bartender uniform to the one he shedded it, he had only gotten a dozen customers. The most interesting, he remembered, was a sister with a sharp smile and a piercing gaze under her veil. It was the first time he saw a woman of the cloth casually sipping alcohol — and holding her own weight in it — at his bar. She was a new customer, but Diluc hadn’t tried to spark a conversation like some of his coworkers did — mostly for the sake of business. He had a personal policy of never befriending his customers; they mistook his obliged friendliness for romantic advances and it never ended well.
He exhaled soundly, watching his breath puff up in little clouds of steam. The night was cold and quiet, his favorite kind. He took a shortcut to the subway station through the park, breathed in the nostalgia of dewy grass and flower bushes, of earthy petrichor transporting him to walks with his grandmother in Springvale. There was not a soul, not a single passerby walking toward a life he knew nothing of, their paths crossing for a split second. It was comfortable — the silence only perturbed by animals. In moments like these, he allowed himself to forget just how much he struggled — with college and work, the constant noise in his head, the unforeseeable future awaiting someone who dared to question history. His own loneliness.
He reached for the watch in his pocket, fingers closing in its cold surface. It wasn’t much, but it helped. As a kid, he had accidentally trained himself into believing that pocket watch was a friend. Kids always did that — talking to inanimate objects like they had a conscience. It just so happened that his imaginary friend wasn’t a plushie.
It didn’t matter, though. It soothed his anguish anyway.
At first, everything was perfect. From behind the clouds perked the moon, casting its pale light onto the leaves that littered his way. Diluc was planning his weekend. He had one assignment to finish, but since he didn’t have any dog-walking duties, he was mostly free — which meant he could go library-hopping, snooping for some obscure esoteric book with even a footnote about the Great Rewrite of the Victors’ Tale. In his hand, the pocket watch kept him grounded.
Then, a ruffle in the leaves froze him. A massive shadow cut through his moonlit path, like a hunched figure bending over a silhouette. After a repugnant squelching sound — like flesh torn apart, blood spilling through someone’s last gasps for air — Diluc sucked in a breath, retreating slowly into the safety of the dark. The air shifted — rosebuds and autumn leaves morphing into the scent of rust.
What? What in the world had he stumbled upon?
“They were dubbed the Beast of Dragonspine.”
Sucrose’s words rewound in his mind. He glanced at the scene, taming the nausea rising in his throat as it appeared clear to him: a beast, twice the size of a man, feasting on a human heart. Its talons were red with the blood of its victim lying on the grass, their throat and chest slashed open.
No. No no no . This had to be a joke. Maybe a set for a horror movie or some elaborate YouTube prank he was interrupting. There was no way a monster like this could exist. With a bare skull, fangs and claws like small sabers, and those glowing golden eyes… Cosplayers were good enough to pull that shit off, right? A good makeup artist could make some fake blood, and— and hell, even that growl rising from beyond the grave could be entirely manufactured… right?
Yet the scent — intoxicating, wafting all over him like a fog — was too real to be staged.
And when the beast rose its ghastly eyes toward him, Diluc knew there was nothing superficial to it.
How long could a history student run after twenty hours of incessant work?
Pretty long, it turned out.
Diluc’s lungs could not feel the air they ingested anymore. His thighs burned and his calves cramped but he kept running — because if he didn’t, he would never run again. He had thrown his satchel at the bottom of a tree, promising himself that he’d pick it up once he escaped. Because he had every intention to survive — though the panic rising in his chest believed it less and less with every passing second.
Behind him, the beast was closing in — running intermittently on all fours or on its hind legs. The pitter-patter got louder with every inch the beast gained on him. His heart squeezed — both at the horror he desperately tried to outrun and the inexorable exhaustion gradually numbing his limbs. Yet he refused to give up. He still had too much to learn — about the world and about himself. He gasped, didn’t dare to look over his shoulder to check the beast’s position — he didn’t have time. He just had to run. Bite the cement, surrender himself to his fear — and let it pilot his body toward somewhere safe.
From time to time, Diluc would yell for help, hoping someone would come to his aid, offer him shelter, or call for whoever one could call to take down a monster. Out in the streets, surely someone heard him or the beast’s inhumane roars, but no one would come to help. Across the distance, sirens rang — but they were far, the sound fading each time.
Please, hang in there, just a little more. Just run. Survive.
That thought, threaded in the kind of despair only a dying man knew, looped through his mind. He latched onto it, rewound it back and forth until it was both fuel and spark to his tiring body. A little more and he could slip in between the two houses at the end of the street; his body was thin enough to fit in the gap unlike the beast’s—
His foot caught under the forking root of a tree. Diluc cried out, heart sinking as he collapsed onto the pavement, the air knocked out of his lungs when his chest and elbows hit with a deafened thud .
“Fuck!” he yelled, fists scratching the ground to drag himself further, but his body was so heavy, so tired, so painful. He had twisted his ankle and the ache flared through his whole leg. “No, I can’t die like this,” he whispered to himself, words sputtered through his labored breath. “Not like this, not now, not—” His sight faded to a blur. He couldn’t tell if it was from the exhaustion or the tears. He couldn’t tell anything except that it was over.
The growls came closer. The beast was charging in.
Diluc was about to die. Alone, friendless, orphaned. Broken and discarded in a dirty street of a neighborhood he didn’t even know. Nobody would miss him. Nobody would even know he was gone except Sucrose. He would be another name in an obituary — one that might as well disappear, like all those historical tales scrapped and rewritten dozens of times.
Eventually, he would be lost to time.
A silvery spark glinted off the pavement, the only thing Diluc could see through his tears.
His pocket watch.
He reached for it, cradling it in his arms. It was silly, but it was all he had. His only friend, his one soothing song. And when the monster pounced on him, fangs and claws hungry for his throat, he felt a little less lonely, pressing the artefact against his chest. So he closed his eyes, tightened his grip on the pocket watch.
And slowly, he let go.
A searing light.
A biting wind.
A silvery sound, like a little bell.
One moment, Diluc was alone, battered and bruised and crying quietly, hoping for a swift and painless death.
The other, a man stood in front of him with a sword of ice, a fluffy cape covering part of his back. With his blade, he caught the monster’s fangs — but its claws slashed across his ribcage and he cursed.
“Easy now! I’m still rusty from years of sleep,” the man exclaimed, parrying the beast almost effortlessly. He pushed it with a firm, swift strike, his sword piercing its chest with a squelch — one soon masked by the beast’s ungodly roar of pain.
Diluc propped himself on his arm, his sight coming into focus on the man who had just saved him. “What?” he blabbered, swallowing anxiously, his shaking hand gripping the pocket watch. The crest was glowing blue like a small star in his palm — moonlight nestled in the carvings, a river finding its bed.
The beast struck once more but the man, beautiful like only the night could be, was light on his feet. He dodged his attack, a long ponytail of dark hair flowing along his graceful movement. He fought like a dancer — fluid like water yet sharp like the bite of ice, with the precision of a needle threading a trap around the monster. He knew what he was doing — unlike Diluc, who just lay there in shock, his chest spasming with sobs because just a few seconds ago he thought he would be monster dinner.
“Get to safety!” the man shouted, parrying another of the beast’s attacks. With a quick jab of his sword, a surge of ice froze the beast’s bloodstained hand — then the man cut it and the monster erupted in more pained cries. “Quick, he can smell your vision and he won’t stop until he’s had a bite of you!” he insisted, turning a single blue eye toward Diluc — the other hidden behind an eyepatch.
Vision?
Diluc scrambled to his feet, too glad to leave the situation to someone who was clearly more competent. But the beast sensed its prey was escaping. It jumped high above the knight, its remaining claws bursting into the size of a sword, and it lunged for Diluc. Diluc, who limped toward the gap between the buildings he had seen earlier, trying with all his might to ignore the pain in his legs, his ankle, his entire fucking body that pulsed like one giant wound. He turned just in time to see the beast’s claws inches from his face, had the good reflex to duck, but stumbled as a result.
As he fell, the beast struck again.
Diluc did not close his eyes, this time. He did not panic, or cry, or yell. A wave of calm submerged him — one that warred against his purest instincts. Don’t panic , it said. I won’t let it hurt you.
Who are you ? he wanted to ask.
Just trust me.
And Diluc did. In that split second hanging between life and death, he trusted the man who had come from nowhere to save him — just as he dashed and slipped in between the monster and Diluc, shielding Diluc with his body. When the beast’s claws sank into the knight’s back, piercing through his chest, it was as if Diluc’s heart had been the one impaled.
“NO!” he cried out, but the man caught the beast’s claws skewering his own chest, trapping it, and gestured for Diluc to calm down while the beast wriggled to break free.
“I’ve got this,” he said, coughing blood onto Diluc. “Sorry… about your shirt.”
“Why would you do that!” Diluc yelled. He grabbed the knight’s sword, lying by his side, and jumped to his feet — the pain suddenly distant, because what was a sprained ankle when this knight fucking impaled himself to save Diluc?
With his remaining force, Diluc drove the sword into the beast’s muscled neck. It roared, tossed the knight around while the latter moaned in pain. Diluc climbed its back, clutched the hilt of the sword with one hand while the other, wrapped in his torn shirt, held the blade. He drove the weapon further into the beast’s throat — until its head bent backward at an odd angle — shuddering at the warmth of its blood gushing onto his knuckles.
The monster died with one last roar, its body disintegrating in ashes, freeing the knight from its claws. He staggered, and Diluc caught him before he fell, helping him on the floor with trembling arms. “I’ll get you an ambulance,” he said, tearing his shirt and pressing the fabric on the man’s chest.
“I have no idea what you’re saying.”
“I’m saying that I’ll take you to a hospital! God, why the fuck would you use your body to stop that thing?”
“Was scared I wouldn’t make it in time otherwise; I just woke up so I’m out of practice,” the man replied, managing a smile. Rivulets of blood webbed on his chin, his neck, his exposed chest. “I’m… Kaeya, by the way. You asked who I was earlier.”
Diluc had never asked out loud. “Is that really important right now?” Diluc fished into his pocket for his phone but only found his pocket watch. “Shit, I threw my bag away.” He ran toward the street. “I’ll get someone to call for help! Don’t move!”
“So, about that, Master Diluc—”
Diluc didn’t hear the rest of Kaeya’s sentence — nor did he have time for confusion at the strange title Kaeya had used, or the fact that he knew Diluc’s name. He banged at the door of the first house he saw, bitterness flooding him when a man opened the door. Surely he had heard everything yet at no point had he called for help.
“Sir, sorry to bother you,” Diluc started, his voice sounding a lot more desperate than he would want it to, but it would help his case. “Could you please call for an ambulance? My friend out there was just attacked and he’s bleeding out.”
The man looked above his shoulder. “What friend? Attacked by whom? Are you the one who’s been screaming bloody murder for the past thirty minutes?”
Anger burned at the back of Diluc’s neck. He balled his fist by his side. “I— We were attacked by—” If he said monster, the man would slam his door at his face. “We both just got mugged. My friend is in a bad spot and I don’t have my phone — could you please, for god’s sake, call for help?” he repeated, raising his voice despite his best intentions. His hands were shaking — from fear or fury, he couldn’t tell.
The man mumbled something unintelligible under his breath. “Again, I am asking, what friend?”
Diluc resisted the urge to yell in frustration, he pointed toward Kaeya — who smiled and waved from his position on the ground. Diluc would finish that knight himself if he kept this joke going. “Right there,” he insisted. “Please, I’m—”
“Get help,” the man cut him off, shutting the door in his face. Then, from inside his house. “Go back to bed Sarah; it was nothing. Just some kid who partied a little too hard.”
A minute, two minutes. Diluc stood there in shock, then hurried back to Kaeya’s side. His mind was a giant tangled ball of yarn and it was about to take fire. “I’ll get back my own phone — it should be a few streets away. Wait for me—”
Kaeya caught Diluc’s hand before he stood. “As I said before, but you obviously weren’t listening, it’s no use. They can’t see me. And I can’t die. I’m fine , Master Diluc.”
“What do you mean, you can’t die? You’re bleeding—” Diluc blinked, watching dumbfounded as Kaeya sat up and exhaled. The holes in his chest had healed. “What. The fuck.”
Kaeya smiled. “I told you. Just trust me.”
Those were Kaeya’s last words before he passed out in Diluc’s arms.
Diluc let Kaeya down on the floor then sat next to him, his legs trembling. He needed a break. A minute to sob and break down — but he was too exhausted to cry.
He stayed there for a long while, watching the rise and fall of Kaeya’s decidedly alive and naked chest. The scars of the claws were fresh on his skin — a lighter color than his bronze skin glowing warm under the streetlights. Diluc stared ahead at them. It had to be early morning if they were on.
Despite his exhaustion and his wounds, Diluc stood, carrying a snoring Kaeya on his back. He walked a few streets ahead, retrieved his satchel, and finally took the subway home. He had all weekend to break down over what had happened — and come to terms with how close he had been to dying. So close that sometimes, he heard scavengers stalking over him.
But every time he glanced at the knight who had saved him, their screeches faded away.