How to finsih your bucket list before you die by kaeya alberich

Chapter 1: Blood Contract

⚠️TW⚠️

Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Major Character Death
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It all starts, and ends, with a mistake. Kaeya, usually so lithe on his feet, pushes himself just a little, tiny bit too hard, his legs far too tired to dash that extra moment and when he sees the last Mitachurl’s heavy axe, glowing red with heat, swing down he knows he’s finished.

It burns his flesh, searing pain bursts his nerves as Kaeya feels the blade tear through his shoulder, hears the cracking of his collarbone, the rip of sinew, his sternum being sliced through and he collapses. It hurts so much, it hurts to breathe, his body so heavy and he gasps for breath, trying to reach for his dropped sword with a barely twitching hand.

The Mitachurl, satisfied with it’s kill, turns away from Kaeya and slings the axe over its shoulder. It lumbers away as Kaeya slowly fades, staring at the night sky and the single moon.

A corpse.

“Kaeya,” his mother says as she cradles him in her lap, “the three moons, Aria, Sonnet and Canon, how they grieved when they turned on each other. They loved and loved until their love became war, and now all that is left is that corpse up there, watching over us, cold and weeping.”

“I wonder, Kaeya, can she see beyond the borders of our forsaken lands? Does she weep for the blessed souls too?” His mother is thin, everyone in Khaenri’ah is, with how ravaged the lands are, the soil is barren and crops barely ever take. Kaeya looks up at the white moon, the pale light that seems to tint ever so slightly red from the constant smoke and fires, “Mama, do the gods really exist?”

She strokes his hair gently, “not for us now, not for us that have been left behind, not for those who were born here and managed to leave, never for us, not anymore.”

A land eternally trapped, forsaken by the old gods, far from the sights of the new ones, stuck in a single moment in time, starving, burning, in ruins. Unable to die, unable to live, unable to dream. Kaeya, for one moment, wonders what Khaenri’ah could be called.

Later, he learns the word.

Hell.

His parents bring him to what once was a large hall, a crumbling altar before a stone throne. From an age when we were blessed, his mother once told him with a faraway look, when we would worship and celebrate and prosper.

Kaeya looks at the man seated on the throne, “Uncle Dainsleif,” he says. Kaeya doesn’t believe that he’s his uncle, his hair is too light, but that is what he calls him.

“Kaeya,” Dainsleif replies, “we will be sending you away.”

Ice crawls up Kaeya’s stomach, he doesn’t want to, being sent away means leaving everyone behind. Khaenri’ah is a suffering to survive in, but his family, everyone, is here, and this suffering is all he knows. His mother’s slips her hand into his, she looks relieved, “Kaeya, isn’t that great?”

He doesn’t feel great.

“You can escape,” she says, her smile makes her look like she’s crying, “you don’t need to be trapped here anymore. You can live a better, happier life.”

“What about you?” Kaeya feels his fingers going numb, “what about Papa? And Uncle Dainsleif? And everybody else?”

Dainsleif rises from his seat and moves to stand towering over Kaeya. He places a heavy hand on his head, “Kaeya, when you were born, everyone celebrated. The first life was created in this cursed world. You are our hope, when you dream, we dream.”