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technically the abyss is not dark, or cold. it is simply the absence of things like light and heat. it takes things and wears them out, swallows them alive and spits them out dead.
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for as long as the eclipse dynasty ruled the kingdom of khaenri'ah, the alberich clan lived and worked in its shadows. quick with their words and quicker with their knives, the alberichs kept the royal family safe and led an intelligence network threaded throughout the whole of khaenri'ah and into the nations in the world above.
it was a dangerous job- khaenri'ah was powerful, godless, and only growing stronger. that combination meant a bloody target would be painted on the country's back, if there wasn't one already.
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stars of abyssal energy flicker in and out of existence around dainsleif. kaeya makes a game out of trying to poke them. they're strange, these stars- if you put your finger into their flat surface, it won't appear out the other side. they're cold, with a texture like liquid metal. but if you try to poke the side, you'll slit your finger on a glinting edge so thin it's barely visible. kaeya cuts himself on dain's stars and wonders if the abyss will one day take enough of his blood that he will belong to it.
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kaeya sits at gold's feet, watching stars flicker through her fingers. it's a stunning picture, until one looks closer. the stars blacken gold's flesh where they phase through her body, and sweat beads on her forehead from concentration and effort (and perhaps pain). kaeya nurses a split lip and twirls a knife through agile fingers.
gold is harnessing abyssal power, the kind that corrupts everything it touches. kaeya is there to learn khemia. he's also there to rip the stars out of gold's hands should they start to kill her.
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the world is ending. the air is thick with smoke and screams echo. it looks like the sky is falling. kaeya is running, running, running.
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kaeya stabs whatever gets in his path. he keeps running, and he stops at the feet of a god. kaeya has never met a god, but the aura of power radiating from this being means it could hardly be anything else. the thing tilts its head at him, considering. kaeya trembles, rage and fear combined. it (he? they? do gods take a gender the way many humans do?) looks at him and their eyes are solid with the gold of geo energy. they are wearing a white cloak. already, it has the rust of drying blood upon it. kaeya snarls, shows his teeth. it's a pitiable show of strength. just a child with a knife, adrenaline-shocked and desperate enough to try and fight a god. he will lose and die like the countless khaenri'ahns this invader has surely already slaughtered. but the god is not attacking. they do not seem to be saddened by the destruction around them, nor do they seem pleased.
"run child," their voice is deep and vibrates through the smoke like a shockwave. kaeya is gone before they even finish speaking. it takes only a split second for him to reach for the ever-present Abyss, and he makes it carry him as far away from the alien god as he can manage. and when he stumbles out of the abyss, he is still in hell.
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the electro archon cries as she fights. her tears, pure electro energy, kill whatever they touch.
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"aren't you afraid?" his father's voice, loud in kaeya's ear, is immediately swallowed up by the vast emptiness of the abyss.
kaeya considers. the abyss is a monstrous place he knows, and so is the place he's going. but the bitter cold of the endless plane has hollowed him out and reinforced him, as though he's just a field tiller awaiting a command. "no", he says, and means it.
his father's eye is flat, the starry pupil lightless. "good." his voice is dead, behind it the power of damned souls left in a wasteland. "you are khaenri'ahn, child, and an alberich at that. you are a soldier, and your war will not end."
the abyss flickers around them and they march on.
they walk forever, and kaeya is tired. but he has been tired since khaenri'ah fell, so he does his best to ignore it. when he and his father stop for rest, there is no fire. it's just as well, kaeya thinks he would flinch from it. he is not sure he can ever see fire again without remembering his mother burning at his feet.
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the abyss has never been a peaceful place. but now, after khaenri'ah's fall, everything there is always fighting. the things that have lived in the abyss long before the fall have always thirsted for blood, and now there is plenty more of it. the monstrous cursed khaenri'ahns fight back mercilessly, but the dead bodies of teyvatan soldiers are defenseless against the ever-hungry pit. gold's rift wolves wander too, sapping the life of everything they drift past.
kaeya and his father are constantly on high alert, even when it is silent and not even the air moves. when he first spent time in the abyss, back when he had a home to go back to, he learned to recognize the coming of anything that could hurt him (so, everything). some monsters could be anticipated by their massive footfalls- a bass so deep it was felt more as a vibration than heard. others were preceded by the hiss of their breathing or the rasp of their body on the dry ground. if something particularly magic-heavy was nearby, kaeya could feel it as a change in air pressure, or a light drain on his very life force.
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the child in the rain looks dead. their cheeks are sunken into their ashen face, thin arms barely shaking in the cold, tattered cloak doing nothing to shield them from the elements. then they blink open their single eye, and the air is violently sucked out of him. he is staring into the abyss, starry and empty and terrible. and then the child blinks, and crepus can breathe.
they make no noise, even though their breaths look full of effort. "are you alone?" crepus asks, although he and the child both know the answer full well. the child blinks up at him, silent still. crepus thinks that maybe they are trying to project an image of helplessness, and their body sells it well, battered and soaked to the bone. but there is a flat alertness in that eye that betrays a truth: this child is nowhere near defenseless.
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kaeya is not like any child crepus ragnvindr has met before. in fact, he's not entirely certain that kaeya is a child. he is small, yes, and his voice is high like a child's, but he moves with uncanny silence and acts with the wary grace of someone lethally trained. and behind the starry glint of his eye, there is a shadow of something, something massive and awful and ancient.
he may physically be a child, but whatever kaeya has experienced has made him far more grown up than many adults crepus knows.
a soldier in the body of a child, crepus decides. it is the closest he will get to fitting kaeya in a box, at least for now. it is how he will attempt to set rules to foster such a child.
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crepus finds out quickly that kaeya is extraordinarily slow to trust. he thinks of his own son, who despite training for hours each day with a sword still sees the world with the naïvety of a sheltered child. diluc cannot sense deception; sees no need to. crepus thinks that kaeya looks for deception even when there is none.
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kaeya sees the statue of barbatos looming over mondstadt and feels afraid for the first time since his journey began. it's an all-consuming type of fear, leaving him off balance and barely able to breathe. his vision tunnels until all that's left in the world is him and the unforgiving statue. distantly, kaeya thinks that he is about to die. he got lucky once, with the god (morax), but luck will not save him from being a sinner in a holy land. surely the god will see him and strike him down, and he will have failed his father and all those who believed in him as a the final hope.
kaeya is vaguely aware of someone standing in front of him, blocking his vision of the statue. he thinks they might be talking to him. but he pays them little mind, too focused on a new realization. the god will not obliterate him. because in this land of freedom kaeya will never be free, not in life or in death.