Content Warnings For this Chapter: Descriptions of Murder, Bodily Injury, Child Trafficking and Blood (relevant to Wriothesley's backstory).

--

There was a boy whose fingers were stained vermilion.

First, it was with the cherry-red juice of plump strawberries. These, he was given because he was a good boy who behaved well and did as he was told. "Smart," said Father to others, a proud smile spread wide across his face. "Sharp like a whip. Reads quickly and is good with numbers. He will be good at keeping books."

The boy didn't know what that meant, just that Father ran him through numbers, had him pour over spreadsheets, and weigh the accounts. There was never a reason; only a demand for it to be done, and because the boy wanted to please, he did as he was told.

"Good." The ruffle of paperwork as Father rifled through it. "Keep this up and you'll be worth your price."

The price of having a child, the boy had thought. Mother and Father fostered a gaggle of them, their front door revolving through the years. In with one and out with another; the boy would smile and wave goodbye when his siblings left for their new homes. There wasn't a worry even though he would never see them again, there were never any thoughts because a new brother or sister quickly took their place.

That boy cherished them all by ruffling their hair and sneaking them sweets under the dinner table. He taught them their letters by candlelight, and how to count with their fingers and toes. Good children were smart—that was the thought instilled in his mind, and so the boy made sure that he wasn't the only one with a bright future at the end of a dark, dark tunnel.

And those account books—they never made sense until one day they did. That boy balanced those numbers again and again. He cross-referenced names and titles, added and subtracted, and figured out just what it was that Mother and Father were in the business of.

That day, the boy changed, and the cherry-red juice that used to stain his nails was long forgotten for something more viscous.

Second, it was blood—not blood red, just blood, the sort of vermilion that stains the soul not the skin.

The boy was older now, a teenager too heavily weighted by lofty expectations. He learned to bide his time. He'd practiced those numbers and balanced those books, and kept secret notes of who, when, where, and why. Just for the knowledge. The damage was done and there was little he could change of the past, but the future was something that was yet to be written.

He also tinkered. Father was proud of this too. The first time the boy pulled apart an Electro Kettle and put it back together, Father knew his worth had just tripled. And so now it was numbers, accounts, and books on mechanics.

The boy enjoyed this, stripping appliances of their components, and seeing what made them tick. Swapping out the bad bits for new. Refurbishing old and rusted parts.

If a toaster can be fixed, why not him? Or one brother, or another sister? The boy was old enough to see that the children who were shuffled in and out of his home were beaten and battered things. But if that boy could slide in a new battery and give an old, busted lamp new life, could that same logic be applied in a thousand other places?

So the boy tinkered. He tinkered, and tinkered, and tinkered until he was a threat.

The knife slid easily into flesh. The boy marveled at how deep it went, lodging right between Father's ribs. The anatomy books helped. The boy knew exactly where to strike, exactly where the lungs were. He wanted to hurt, to make Father suffer—and suffer he did.

Father fell to the ground with a pained grunt. Mother was beside him, blood spilling from her throat, eyes already dulled by death. But Father suffered with wet and rasping breaths. He cursed the boy; cursed him for his insolence, for all the money and time spent grooming him, now wasted.

"Why didn't you sell me?" asked the boy, curiosity getting the better of him. "Why didn't you sell me off the way you did the rest?"

Father laughed, lips and teeth stained red with the blood that soils the boy's hands. "You were too expensive," he said, "and too smart. Folks want soft, docile children, not whip-smart boys, too smart for their own good. I would have taken an offer worth its salt, but—"

"But?"

"I had thought you would take over. We need an heir—" Father loosed a bitter, wet cough. "Needed an heir. We needed..."

The boy stood over him as he wasted away. That surprised him too, how long it took for Father to die. An eternity of short, rattling breaths; of watching blood seep from the knife in his side. The boy could've made it quicker, cleaner, but he didn't. He relished the slow-going agony and the fear in Father's eyes.

An heir. They would've made him their heir. He would've been made to take over, and sell his siblings, and then his children too. The thought of it was numbing. There was no surprise, only quiet understanding because in Teyvat you made money when and where you could, no matter the method.

And children—children were a high commodity. Those poor on the surface had too many mouths to feed, and the rich in the sky were too lazy to carry their own. So they bought them, the children they wanted, and then tossed them away when they didn't work out.

Even Mother and Father had the same stone-cold and bitter hearts. The only love they afforded anyone was to the useless ones who never learned, who never behaved. They're buried out in the back—but buried at least. They could've sold their bodies off too.

The boy did not fight when the Gardes showed up. "I did it," he said to them immediately, hands held up to be easily seen.

"Hush," said the Garde who reached him first, a youngish woman with a kind face. "At least have your trial."

Empty words. There were no trials in Teyvat. Everyone knew that.

So the boy just said it again, looking her straight in the eye. "I did it, and I don't regret it."

#

There was a boy who, like most others, did not get a trial.

There were no trials in Teyvat, which sat underneath the watch of the authoritarian land in the sky.

When the boy was young, he used to look at Celestia and think of a better future there. That's where his siblings went after being taken home by kind, sweet parents who could not have children of their own. A lie, of course. A silky, soft lie meant to stop the questions of the young ones. That boy was older now and wondered just whatever happened to Ellie, or Frances, or—

There was no point in wondering. The boy would never see them again. No, he was going down, down underneath the ocean where criminals lurk for the rest of their days.

"Do you understand that you are confessing to your crime?"

The question was condescending enough for the boy to curl his lip. "Yes, I understand that. How many times do I have to tell you?"

A soft hum from the woman who held his paperwork. She glanced at a man beside her. He had authority, from the stiff way he held himself, and the cane in his grasp. But he was quiet—quiet unlike the woman. He watched the boy but said nothing else, just gave him a look of appraisal.

"And so you understand that if you plead guilty, you will—"

"If I plead innocent, will anything change?"

The boy was encouraged to talk, to ask questions, to seek answers—but there were no trials in Celestia, there was only a single outcome: everyone was guilty in the eyes of the Heavenly Principles.

The woman's throat bobbed. The man beside her remained silent but tilted his head in newfound interest. He watched him with silvered, calculating eyes.

"I wouldn't, for the record," continued the boy. "Plead innocent. I killed them. I spent time planning it, and I spent years cultivating the skills required to make them suffer."

The clerk shrank back in discomfort, hiding the gesture by clearing her throat and pretending to straighten the boy's court records. "Right, then. This court recognizes that you have pleaded guilty to your crimes. As with cases of murder, you'll carry out a lifetime term within the Fortress of Meropide. You will also carry the same risk for any cullings for the Travails..."

The woman washed her hands of him once her monologue was over. It was the man who escorted the boy away from the courts and to the entrance of the prison, a long and silent walk.

When at the gate, the man hesitated, glancing up at Celestia in the sky.

"They deserved it," said the boy.

"I know," said the man. "I read your file."

"What will happen? To my siblings, I mean? To the others that they..."

The answer that came was exactly what the boy expected.

"Nothing." The man did not tell him the truth to be cruel, he told him the truth because it was the truth, and there was so little of that in the confines of Teyvat. Celestia's grip on information is iron-clad. Such honesty came as a relief to the boy, freeing in a way.

The boy stepped into the elevator with shackles tight around his wrists. As it took him down, he stared at the sky because he knew it would be the last time he would ever see it.

#

There was a boy who when asked for his name and birthday, hesitated in his answer.

The secretary was patient. She looked at him with pity and spoke to him with soft words not because he was young, but because she felt he deserved the kindness. "Think about it boy," she'd said. "You can be whoever you want in here. No one will care, and no one will ask questions."

The boy smiled at that—not a true smile, not a smile that was wide with humor, but rather one that split his face as a painful grimace.

She waited for as long as he needed.

"Wriothesley," said the boy eventually. It was a name from a book, some story he'd read to a younger sibling. He didn't remember what, just that name, and how hard it'd been to teach to another as he spelled out syllables and pointed out letters. "And would you look at that? As it turns out, today is my birthday. Who would've thought?"

The secretary offered him a soft hum as her pen scratched over parchment. "Alright, Wriothesley, that will be it for paperwork." She then paused and looked up at him. "Do you remember the laws which govern Teyvat?"

They'd been drilled into his head from the time that he could talk. How could the boy not?

"The Law governs all," he said. "Loyalty brings success and fortune. Calamity awaits for those who embrace rebellion."

The woman nods. "Good boy. Remember those, and remember all the good that they once did, for within Meropide those laws mean nothing."

That boy stilled at her words, mulling them over. They were not good laws. He knew it, she knew it, everyone in Teyvat knew it. There were no trials in Teyvat, and death always came in fours.

He told himself that he did not fear death.

That boy was wrong.