Genshin Horror Oneshots || Genshin Impact

2.

Kaeya's body was discovered at about 5:20a.m. by a dock worker making his rounds. It was kneeled beneath a lamp post at the end of the longest wooden jetty, its arms hung by its sides with its palms facing upwards. Its head tilted to its right, facing out at the open sea as the waves crashed against the stone barricades that lined the waterfront.

He was dressed in his usual dark suit pants, and a black suit jacket over a plain white button shirt, now stained by patches of his own blood. The top few buttons of his shirt were undone, and a mark of a pentagram with a slanted star was carved into the middle of his chest. Dried blood stuck to the neck of his tan skin, having ran down his cheeks from his eyes. His eyes were but empty sockets, as both eyeballs were missing.

Albedo stood with both hands on his hips, inspecting the gruesome corpse of his former colleague, with his light blonde hair ruffling in the relentless ocean breeze. A few officers stood by the scene to cordon off the jetty, some were taking notes from questioning deckhands that were potential eye witnesses. Two crimes scene investigators snapped photos of the body, and catalogued whatever they could find that hasn't been taken by the roaring winds.

"I hate to say I told you so..." Albedo said to himself under his breath, as a crime scene investigator approached him.

"Let me guess: All signs point to self-inflicted injuries, and possibly suicide?" Albedo spoke before the investigator, Timaeus, could.

"Unless something got blown away by this wind, that seems to be the case." Timaeus said, still looking at the body. "Cause of death is not entirely obvious, but I suspect it's by hemorrhage."

"From the eyes?"

"Yeap. Seems like enucleation, probably self-inflicted as well. Though the right one seems to have already been hollowed out long before this happened." Timaeus paused to contemplate. "In all those years in the force, I don't think anyone knew what he hid under that eyepatch of his... What did he do after he quit?"

"He still worked, mainly for his own leisure and self-interest. He was very secretive about it; you know how he is." Albedo played it casual.

"Well, if there's nothing else, sir, I'll call in the coroner."

"Thanks, Timaeus." Albedo gave him a nod.

Albedo watched the two investigators walked off along the jetty. With his left hand he held the back of Kaeya's head, and stuck his right index finger into Kaeya's hollow right eye socket. Albedo gently dug around the orbital, until he touched cold steel under his nitrile gloves, and inserted his right thumb and pulled out a small, slightly bloodied key. He took out his handkerchief and place the key in it and slipped the handkerchief into his front suit pocket.

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Albedo,

This will probably be our last e-mail. I have finally found the missing piece, and if my deductions are correct, completing the puzzle will make me or break me. I will have no regrets either way, for I will see at last the culmination of that quest we set upon many years ago.

Maybe I can finally put this to rest. Maybe the visions, and the nightmares will stop. Maybe we can go back to the bar for some beer again, like how it was before we got caught in this damned web of madness. I do not sleep by my own choice most days, I fear the nightmares that are sure to follow. I don't actually know if I still sleep anymore, since I can no longer tell a dream from reality. This thing that drives me with my life's purpose is drives me to madness all the same. Each day I feel myself slipping away from sanity, the decline slowed only by Archon knows how many bottles of dandelion wine.

Yet, the solution is always just a glimpse away, eternally hanging a hair's breadth away from my grasp. Everyday it becomes just a bit closer, and a bit clearer. A lone fish in a muddled pond, waiting for me to just reach out and take it. I cannot- must not stop, Albedo. I remember all that we have lost. The lives that were sacrificed will not be in vain. They will have justice.

I will share with you everything that I have gathered. In the event that I cannot continue the work, I hope it will serve you some use. I'll see you on the other side, my friend. Look under the prized gift for my brother.

The key is always in my sight.  

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He followed Kaeya's clues and found his secret trove of information and poured through them hour after hour. Albedo came to an old single story antique shop tucked in the alley between two apartment buildings. Blackness covered the alley, the only light was the flickering store sign that hung out above the entrance, its electrical buzzing drummed the alley.

Albedo entered the shoddy establishment, a thin veil of smoke blurred his vision, the air smelled of a pungent incense that Albedo did not recognise. A single lamp was all that illuminated the store, a labyrinth of odd trinkets and dusty statues of gods and monsters. A long desk sat under the lamp light, and a figure stood just at the edge of the cone of illumination.

"Enter, child." A rusty voice crawled like insects across the room, piercing the skin on Albedo's neck. He walked till he was under the lamp, reached into his pockets and pulled out an ancient dagger and placed it on the desk.

"How much for this?" Albedo stared at the shadowy figure.

A wrinkled hand, pale and sickly and infested with liver spots, reached out to touch the dagger. Its nails were long and brown, its ends chipped into jagged razors like eyes of a saw blade. The figure gave a laugh that was a long drawn-out wheeze.

"Such a shame for your friend, my child. Then again, you would not have come if not for him."

"What do you know?" Albedo's voice was demanding.

"A single stream of time would not be enough to fill what I know, child. But my knowledge is not what you seek. Your mark betrays the thirst in your soul, for I have seen many that have treaded the same path. But, unlike your friend, you course a path home." The figure unsheathed the dagger. "Give me your hand."

Albedo placed his hand in its withered grip and it carved the sign with the dagger into the back of his hand, the same sign that was etched on Kaeya's corpse. The blade dug deep into Albedo's flesh, his blood pooled and dripped copiously to the desk, the smell of iron casted out the scent of the strange incense.

"In the name of the Adonaios! Descend and manifest! The son has crawled home at last!"

The blood on the table floated and swirled into droplets in the air, twisting into a helix that flowed back into the wounds on Albedo's hand. Black tissue covered the trails of the crooked pentagram, as the skin on his hand reformed into a dark scar.

The space around them expanded and stretched, longer and further, and the shadow extended along with it into infinity.  A dark conscious took hold of Albedo's mind, his body surged with a gross lust for eternal domination. He felt the remaining light die out, all his senses meld into a single amalgam of thought, perceiving every scale and every spectrum in the universe simultaneously. All at once he could hear the violent swirls of dusty galaxies, the thundering heartbeats of a billion suns, and the muffled groans of existence lashing out against the cold endless dark. In a fraction of a moment he saw the beginning and the end. There was no joy nor justice. There was no terror nor death. There was only a void, and it was everything. 

Albedo's eyes turned into darkness. "Kaeya, its beautiful."

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