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The lighthouse stands silent beneath a bruised sky, its beacon swirling and fracturing light through the thick foggy expanse and the oncoming dark wall of storm clouds. It does nothing to dispel the gloom that threatens to drown its keeper. Kyryll rests alone against the railing of the catwalk, staring out at the horizon where the sea meets the first incoming storm of the season.
Two months was the rhythm. Varka always returned by then. He stayed for two weeks, just long enough to reclaim Kyryll’s heart, keep the muscle forgiving and exposed with promises, soft words and roguish charm, then he’d vanish again like a tide heading back out to sea.
This time, the silence stretched. The days dripped past the mark like water through cupped hands, leaking, until all Kyryll could do was stare at the basin of his hands and acknowledge their emptiness. He wonders now, if Varka had ever really meant to return to Nod Krai, to the Lightkeeper, or if Kyryll was simply a shadow chasing the first warmth of sunlight.
He hates how little he understands. How every answer twists into another question. Why did Varka seem so excited to return only to vanish? The ache of confusion digs deep, sharp and raw. It claws bloody ribbons, leaving him struck with such tangible restlessness that it drew him up here to the catwalk despite the threat from the skies above.
Kyryll feels this must be the definition of madness, turning over every moment, every word passed between them, searching for a meaning that slipped through his fingers, searching for the parts where what he mistook for a spark was no more than a trick of the light.
But then—then there were the quiet moments. The way Varka’s laugh had lost its bar quality and gone soft and unguarded. How his eyes had dropped their teasing gleam and opened with vulnerability, like their talks were a sweet indulgence and meant only for Kyryll. Those memories didn’t fit the harsh puzzle of his doubts. They were softer, and maybe he is truly delusional because he can’t accept that man is the same one who left.
It was easier to an extent (it wasn’t), the brief time he decided that Varka had met an untimely end on the Moon Flats. Back then, the Wild Hunts were new which in turn made them more unpredictable. Abyss creatures tearing their way from the ground and assaulting unsuspecting travelers? Wrong time, wrong moment—that’s how a lot of people met their end.
Varka wasn’t like that though, a man like him, as strong and broad and loud as him, wouldn’t be toppled by something as paltry as an ambush. He told Kyryll himself it’s part of the thrill; the wind in his face, the adrenaline of an unexpected battle, the symphony of metal on metal. No, an ambush of all things would not rip Varka from the world. If Kyryll thought it could, he would’ve found a way to convince Varka of a different destination and force him on a new safer course.
(Who is he kidding? Nobody could make that man do anything.)
It was a resupply trip of all things that pulled back the curtain. A week ago Kyryll put in a word with the Speranza about Varka’s disappearance, and asked them to let him know if the knight came through.
When the lightkeeper came to check up on his inquiry, the Speranza confirmed that Varka had eagerly boarded a boat just the day before, not for Kyryll’s domain or another location in Nod Krai, but for the foreign waters of Mondstat. Kyryll felt something in his chest fracture.
(“I won’t be going back to Mondstat anytime soon. If I needed to, I’d tell you first.”)
Kyryll is not an over emotional man. He prides himself on his level headedness. He thought he had guarded the parts of himself that could still bleed so carefully, locking himself away at the lighthouse for months at a time, trying to focus on becoming a Lightkeeper the Order could be proud of. He dismissed distractions of both the mind and commodity wise and yet Varka has blasted apart his defenses as if he too was a battlefield to be won.
And the most egregious sin of all? Kyryll let him.
A year after they first met, after trying everything to survive the storm that was the Knight of Boreas, Kyryll, worn thin by Varka's persistence, his despicable charm, and his overwhelming life, bared his throat to the knight's honeyed words and with a breath caught between fear and desire, the lightkeeper bowed to the latter and let himself be conquered.
A bitter laugh escapes his lips—he, Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins, Lightkeeper, reduced to this; still sifting through memories for a man who might never return. Is that all he is good for in life? Chasing ghosts?
The first boom of thunder rolls across the sky.
It is distant, low, but it rattles the bones of the lighthouse like a warning. The air thickens—electric, tense yet Kyryll stays where he is, fingers gripping the railing as if it might steady his tempestuous thoughts.
“Maybe it meant nothing,” he whispers, tasting the words and the electricity in the air. Maybe the softness in Varka’s voice was just a trick of the light. “Maybe I imagined it all” These words feel more sour than the last. The leather of his gloves audibly strains.
And yet, he knows he hadn’t imagined the way Varka lingered in the doorframe asking for just one more press of his lips, how his chest nearly rumbled with contentment when Kyryll, flushed, pulled away after the fourth.
He hadn’t imagined the way Varka had looked at Kyryll like he was something worth coming back for nor imagined the promise warmed by candlelight that someday Varka would bring his adopted kids from Mondstat to meet him since Flins couldn’t leave Nod Krai.
Kyryll presses the heel of his palm to his chest, frustrated as the ache only seemed to compound on itself. He is not built for this kind of longing, but if there is anything that the odd romance novel or two tucked among the shelves has taught him, this ridiculous affliction called love has no regard for the delicate architecture of an unstable heart.
Naming it even that much had been a trial, but Kyryll has no more energy to spare towards trying to shape it into any other form. Love. Stupid and wasteful, so far from the ideals he has practiced before that blonde whirlwind tore up the floorboards.
Waste nothing, want for less, and honor all sacrifices to the Light. To waste something, even something small, is to disrespect its value and if there is one thing he has learned from his time on this earth, it’s that everything in this life has value and the world is a greedy thief. It steals what is not watched closely, rips away what is not tightly held and gives misery as a calling card.
His Father, dead.
Family? Gone.
The Lightkeepers? Dwindling.
His homeland’s safety is now besieged by Wild Hunts that get closer to Nasha town every day. It is no ridiculous thought they may encroach upon his island at some point and make a strike for him, a violence that he is still searching for a means to defend against.
And at the pinnacle? Domestic and foreign entities are vying for control of Nod Krai, making catastrophe and strife sink in all the quicker.
For all these losses, these have all been plucked quickly, behind his back with a pickpocket’s efficiency. Their gifts of pain he can soldier through because they hadn’t been his choice. At least, that’s what Kyryll tells himself.
Lies start to taste like truth under the syrup of helplessness, and pain aches instead of sears, going down his throat all the sweeter.
But Varka, Kyryll had given permission to take from him.
He had welcomed the thief in, given him food, his council on the Wild Hunt, and let him cast affection on puppet strings in the quiet corner of Nod Krai Kyryll called his home. How could Kyryll, a man so used to being forced to drink the draught of misery, keep turning down what he thought was his first sip at genuine happiness.
There was no dignity in this. No pride in waiting like a dog in the rain, yearning for something that might never come back— that might never have been real in the first place.
“No more.” Kyryll laughs miserably to himself, the sound gaining more weight as thunder cracks overhead, like mother nature too is laughing. Her laughter leaves him near vibrating as rain spatters his cheek cold and sharp.
“I won’t…let anything or anyone take from me or mine again.” His voice splinters on the last word, shivering as sheets of water descend from the heavens. It's not a vow but a warning, hissed between his teeth and carried away by the whipping wind. Being the Lightkeeper is all he has left.
Kyryll lifts his face to the clouds, eyes wide, defiant. He doesn’t believe in benevolent Gods anymore, only greedy omniscient beasts and their selfish creations. And, if they are only beasts, whose hunger knows no bounds, who do not consider anything sans victory before they reach, then Kyryll will break their hands and give them their first taste of helplessness, of defeat. “Just try it and see what happens!”
A bolt of lightning tears through the sky—jagged and blinding, striking him directly in the chest, stealing every sensation save for the feeling of being split open . His feet leave the catwalk, body shot backwards and spine bowing with the arc of it, arms flung wide as if crucified--
Windowpanes shatter.
Kyryll crashes through the lantern housing, the impact sending shards spinning around him—jagged, prismatic pieces catching white light or twisted little vignettes of the violence as they pass.
The beacon's metal cage is strong enough to keep him from sailing clear out the side, but he wouldn’t call it a mercy. He hits it, hard, and for all that explosive, wild fanfare, it pathetically drops Kyryll smoking, boneless, and face first to the floor with a shower of glass raining down on and around him. For a while he just lies there, barely conscious and unable to act.
The storm around him is noisy, rolls of thunder shaking the glass and metal beneath him and bleeding into a high-pitched ringing. Bright flashes of lightning eclipse the corners of his vision off beat. Time passes like that, insurmountable, maybe minutes or an hour; distant pain splinters across his chest and heartbeat in his ears. He’s not sure how long it takes him to recognize it, something searing and hard attempting to concave his sternum.
For a moment, panic claws at his mind: Has he been impaled? The dark stains on his gloves and glittering red dipped shards scattered around make the thought frighteningly plausible.
But no, a tentative breath in and then out reveals his lungs are working just fine as far as he can tell. That pressure and heat, however, persists.
Shakily, Kyryll forces himself to roll onto his side, his vision swimming as he looks through the jagged hole he crashed through. A foreign pulse, not his heart, grows stronger and slips just enough with gravity to identify whatever he is feeling is an object that somehow got inside his clothes. Is it glass? Metal? Delirious, he brings a trembling hand to his chest, lamenting his choice for wearing a coat at all as he fumbles to part it at the zipper.
Nestled there, over his heart is a vision, a soft violet light still sparking and cradled between the scorched fabric and the nauseating smell of burnt flesh.
Kyryll blinks, the haziness in his mind slowly thinning as reality sets it. He tastes the metallic tang of blood and rain in his mouth and savors it as it slides to his stomach. Something colder, sharper—ignites from the mixture.
The vision responds in kind, flaring.
This—this is the start of his reckoning.