Archive of Our Own ^beta

“It has been a long time…old friend,” Jing Yuan had said to him. Which wasn’t right, because Dan Heng didn’t remember this man like that. There were a lot of things that haunted him—must’ve come with the reincarnation-past-lives deal, but it never got easier: confronting his ghosts. The worst part was not remembering them.

“I’m not him.” Dan Heng had tried not to sigh, but it happened anyway. A bit more exasperation leaking into his voice than he’d intended, but that wasn’t Jing Yuan’s fault. Running from your past meant there was there to give chase, and by choice or not, Jing Yuan was there following him out of the dark.

Jing Yuan had smiled in a way that had his eyes pressing closed. Maybe, perhaps, in a way that windows shuttered closed. And he hummed, low in his throat, before he said, “Mm…I’m sorry.”

Dan Heng could forgive him because it was an honest mistake. Centuries of memory could do that to you—though, he personally wouldn’t know. He couldn’t remember his own centuries of life, but this current incarnation as Dan Heng was practically a baby, still a sprout in the massive oakwood forest of the Xianzhou Alliance. But still, still, still, there was a certain amount of grief to knowing the way people remembered him and looked at him for answers, for closure, but all they could find was a wall. Dan Heng had ghosts and the being still tying them here had died a long time ago.

“You’re here,” Blade had rasped when Dan Heng stepped onto the platform, the timbre of his voice rattling through Dan Heng like a shockwave. In his dreams, he’d seen Blade’s face peeling out of the shadows—first the bloodred of his eyes, then the bones of his teeth glinting white from the depths of his wild smile, all of it beautiful and terrifying like a beast ready to bite. Blade always had that hunter’s hunger to him: like finding Dan Heng was salvation. In his dreams, the cracked sword moved swifter than a blink, but time slowed to a crawl a moment before it cut him, before he felt the pain.

I can’t be who you want me to be. Dan Heng wanted to say, though he could never open his mouth in those dreams.

Blade was here now, laughing like a madman as the words tore desperate and triumphant out of his throat: “It’s time to pay the price! It’s time!”

The question was: where did Dan Feng end and Dan Heng start?

Surely, it was the memories. Surely, it was the history. But on a cellular level, weren’t their bodies the same? Cells recycled differently in the bodies of the Vidyadhara because of their life cycles of rebirth; so by those accounts, he and Dan Feng shared a body. But could you say that each egg shell made the same thing if the yolk inside was different?

(It was certainly not the appearance, nor the power, nor the criminal charges. Dan Heng found it unfair: that he could not just be Dan Heng. That he had to be the High Elder, that he had to be Dan Feng’s next incarnation, that he had to be someone’s retribution or someone’s old friend when he knew none of these faces the way they knew him.)

When Blade had stabbed him and forced Dan Heng back into his other form, he remembered the pain of the horns sprouting from his head: two tusks bursting from his skull like saplings taking root. Part of it felt reflexive—a memory his body knew that his mind did not—but another felt awkwardly like returning to a home that had forgotten you, a teenager not yet entirely grown into his limbs.

And still, Blade looked at him like he was the end of a very long story. Dan Heng had to carry the weight of someone’s reprieve from the world, but the smaller, petulant, more youthful part of him complained that it wasn’t fair. He was still new to this life, still running, and he’d barely had the time to get his own footing for himself.

Dan Heng remembered dread turning in his stomach when Jing Yuan brought Dan Heng to his friends of the Astral Express. March 7th, who had as much control of her facial expressions as a newborn did over its limbs, went wide-eyed and covered her mouth with her hands.

“Is that Dan Heng?” she’d asked.

Yes, I am. Though no one else here seems to believe it, he wanted to say.

“You are Dan Heng, right?” Her hands had fallen from her mouth, leaving only her wide eyes staring endlessly at him.

There goes another one, Dan Heng remembered thinking. Not just Dan Heng anymore, but Dan Heng with horns, the traitor, the High Elder, old friend, retribution. At least with the Express he could pretend he was none of those things, but perhaps Dan Feng’s crimes were too great to allow Dan Heng even the smallest of mercies.

But maybe a god higher than him must’ve felt kinder that day, because March didn’t press further than that. She looked at that statue of the High Elder and wondered—wonderfully, mercifully—if it was his brother instead of him.

(Of course, he didn’t answer. And March wasn’t one who demanded answers anyway.)

Now, before the parting of the waters, Dan Heng stood at the base of the statue. It had been a long, long time since he looked like the High Elder everyone was chasing, and the horns on his head felt heavy like a broken crown. It took a bit of adjusting, head-tilting, trial and error to make his head not feel too big for his neck. Nearby, March was standing near the statue and gazing up at the reconstruction of him.

Despite it all, he walked up to her.

She turned at the sound of his footsteps and smiled. “Hey, Dan Heng.”

Just Dan Heng with her. No old friend, no bounty, no prices or debts or penaces with her.

“March—”

“Your hair’s so long in this form.” She turned to him fully and tilted her head. “I could totally braid your hair like this. I can’t believe you were holding out on me!”

He faltered. “Uh…”

“You know Himeko won’t let me touch her hair. And mine’s too short.” She stepped up to him, still half a head shorter than him, eyes still bright. “I can’t believe your emo boy haircut just got longer and more in your face. Let me get that out of the way for you.”

It struck him then what she was planning to do. “March, don’t—”

And then she was reaching up, brushing strands of hair out of his face. Both of their skin still felt damp from the fight, from the sea salt, but the pressure of her thumbs rooted him in place as her other hand moved a hair clip up to her mouth. She unsnapped it with her teeth before sliding it through his hair, the metal biting lightly at his skin. March pressed down, snapping the clip in place before stepping back to admire her handiwork.

“There!” She smiled, satisfied. 

Dan Heng looked at her flatly.

Her smile didn’t falter. She stared at him for a moment longer before her smile cracked and she let out a quiet laugh. “You look goofy.”

He frowned. “March…”

“Ah, keep it.” She waved her hand. “Who knows, maybe it’ll keep your hair out of your face at a critical point in battle.”

Here would be the point that he’d sigh in exasperation and remove the hair clip before giving it back to her. It wasn’t the first time March had stuck her hair clips on him after all. More than once on the Astral Express, she’d break into his room out of boredom and push his bangs to the side until there was an even split in the middle and clip it in place.

“March, what are you doing?” He’d sigh.

“I’m opening the curtains,” she’d laugh before dashing out of the room.

Now though, they weren’t on the Astral Express. They were in the homeland that had thrown Dan Heng away. But March stood with her hands on her hips, grinning wildly at him like she’d just “opened the curtains” again, and he could feel the pressure of the hair clip like a hand on the back. March’s colors—pink and blue and white—clashed entirely with the colors of the High Elder, yet he couldn’t find it in himself to care.

He left it in place.

“You should talk to her.” March jerked her head towards the Trailblazer. “It’s been…a bit crazy here. We’re both really glad to see you again.”

“Alright.” He inclined his head and turned to leave before he paused. “March…”

He glanced back to see her tilting her head. “Yeah?”

“Thanks,” he said.

“For what?” Confusion flitted across her face like they were back on the Express and he’d said something confusing about the databases. And that made his chest squeeze harder.

“For the hair clip,” he finally said before turning and making his way towards the Trailblazer.

Stelle watched the sea silently. She hardly seemed to hear him approach, but turned around when he finally stopped.

They stared at each other for a long moment. If March were here, she’d say something about two stone walls facing each other.

The Trailblazer broke first. “Your eyes are glowing.”

Dan Heng blinked automatically. “They’re not.”

“They are.” The corner of her mouth turned up. “Or they were. March would say that we’d never need a flashlight again.”

Dan Heng huffed and a laugh escaped him before he could stop it. “They hardly project that much light, which makes that statement highly impractical.”

“That’s why she would say it and not me.”

He was startled by the second laugh bubbling out of his chest. Or maybe it was the relief sagging into him. “You’re right.”

“I know I am.”

Dan Heng smiled, despite himself. He felt something heavy and awful draining out of him giving way to the tentative hope that maybe, perhaps, not everything had to change.

The Trailblazer watched him for another moment, mouth turning serious.

“You don’t want to ask anything else?” he asked tentatively.

She shook her head, windows shuttering again. She turned and stared at the sea, and Dan Heng took his cue to leave.

The question was: where did Dan Heng end and Dan Feng start?

Some reflexes you build with time and practice, like the way he learned how to fight with Cloud-Piercer. The way his wrists twisted, how his feet shifted into position, how his muscles twitched into action because he trained and trained and trained until the movements drilled themselves into his bones. Or the way he knew how to duck away in time when March came bounding up to him with a hairbrush and barrettes and a dangerous gleam in her eye. Or—the newest one—the way his eyes went searching for the nearest trashcan when he realized Stelle had disappeared.

Dan Heng couldn’t take his eyes off Jing Yuan when Phantylia lifted him into the air and flooded his body with light. How could he—when the beauty of destruction laid wonder and fear side by side?

And perhaps it was a good thing he’d been watching so closely because Dan Heng saw the exact moment Jing Yuan called his name and closed his fist. The muscle memory came rising again and he twitched into action, throwing the spear before his mind had a chance to catch up and then Jing Yuan was falling from the sky like a star. Dan Heng caught him, Jing Yuan landing heavily in his arms. He had the brief, flitting, terrible thought that wondered if Dan Feng had been stronger, if he could have caught Jing Yuan without losing a breath, then he swiped the thought away and focused on the world in front of him.

“It would seem the two of us can still coordinate our efforts,” Jing Yuan said to him.

The question of muscle memory: could the body truly be his if it remembered things his mind did not? 

He couldn’t deny that he had acted on instinct, and that instinct had driven him to do something he didn’t know he’d meant to do. But Jing Yuan was looking at the wrong person. Dan Heng may be a living ghost, but he had none of the memories.

I can’t be who you want me to be, he wanted to say, but his chest clenched so painfully it squeezed all the air out of him.

Jing Yuan had a face that rested in a smile, but his eyes held the weight of all the centuries of things he’d seen and lost and missed. Dan Heng wondered what Jing Yuan’s smile must have been like without all that grief, and then he realized that he might’ve known once.

Dan Feng did, he snapped internally. You did not.

And here was the smaller mercy, perhaps: if he couldn’t remember Jing Yuan or Blade the way they remembered him, he had a fuzzier sense of what he’d lost. Grief came from memory, and without the memories there could be no true grief. The mercy: the edge of loss dulled by more loss.

Still, though, when he looked at the sadness in Jing Yuan’s eyes, he felt an ache so deep and yawning it left something hollow in its wake.

On the Astral Express, Dan Heng kept his horns only because March wanted him to. Truthfully, he wanted to change back the moment Jing Yuan walked away, but March fixed him with a glare that said if she didn’t get a chance to look at them, she’d annoy him until she did.

So, they boarded the Astral Express with the High Elder of the Vidyadhara in tow. When Pom-Pom saw him, they did a double-take.

“Dan Heng?” Pom-Pom stared at him with wide eyes. “What happened to you?”

“It’s a long story.” He tried to hold the weariness back.

Pom-Pom tilted their head skeptically. “We have a lot of time until the next stop.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Welt glance at him.

“We’ll explain later,” said Welt. “We all had a rough journey.”

“Right, of course.” Pom-Pom nodded enthusiastically. “Pom-Pom understands.”

Welt tossed another glance at him before walking toward the window where Himeko stood, leaving the three of them alone.

“I’m—” started Dan Heng. “Gonna go to my room. So…”

March latched onto his arm. “Nuh uh, not so fast, Dan Heng.”

“March—”

“Stelle! Grab the other arm!”

Before he could blink, the Trailblazer grabbed his other arm and she and March started dragging him toward the passenger cabin. March seemed to be straining more to move him than actually moving him, but he felt the Trailblazer’s strange, inhuman strength tugging him forward.

“What are you doing?” The speed and surprise caught him off guard more than anything, so all he could do was let himself be dragged toward the door.

“I don’t care about what we all just went through or your past or anything,” March said with gritted teeth. “I am braiding your hair now that it’s super duper long like this.”

The Trailblazer kicked open the door to the passenger cabin and dragged them all through.

“What are you talking about?” he asked, bewildered.

“Also!” March ignored him and barrelled forward. “You lost my hair clip! It was my favorite hair clip!”

“All of your hair clips look the same!” Dan Heng didn’t even know why he was yelling.

March flicked him in the cheek. “And they’re all my favorite! You owe me Dan Heng.”

They completely moved past Dan Heng’s room and stopped in front of March’s. The Trailblazer held him still while March stepped away to open her bedroom door before she grabbed his other arm again and they both hauled him inside. 

He stumbled onto the carpet and turned around just in time to see March hastily pulling the door shut while the Trailblazer stood in front of her with her arms crossed.

“Did you two coordinate this?” Dan Heng grumbled, rubbing the arm where the Trailblazer had been holding. He wondered if he’d find bruises where her fingers had been if he pulled down his sleeve.

March turned around and fell back against the door, panting. “Nah. When we were just talking with Pom-Pom, I noticed that you didn’t have the hair clip on anymore. So I thought: ‘I can’t believe he lost it and he should let me braid his hair’ so I grabbed you. Good thing Stelle’s quick on her feet, right Stelle?” 

March nudged the Trailblazer with her elbow. Stelle shrugged, but he thought he saw the slightest hint of warmth in her cold eyes.

“You two…” Dan Heng sighed and rubbed the space between his eyes.

“Yeah, I know, I know.” March moved around the Trailblazer and stepped toward him. “Come on, I was serious about braiding your hair.”

“March.”

“Dan Heng.” She smiled as she pushed him back toward her bed. Maybe he was just tired, or maybe he needed the normalcy, but he let her push him until his legs hit the edge of the bed. Then, she pressed down on his shoulders so he sat on the ground, back resting against the bed, before she climbed onto the covers and positioned herself behind her head.

“I’m not a toy you can play with,” grumbled Dan Heng.

“What, do you think I’m five? I know that.” He felt March shifting behind him before he felt the bristles of a brush tugging at his scalp. “You are my good friend who’s letting me braid your now super long hair because you love me and owe me for losing my hair clip. Stelle, come sit by me.”

March patted the spot next to her and Dan Heng watched the Trailblazer walk over, throwing both of them a slightly amused glance.

“Do you know how to braid, Stelle?” March asked.

Silence answered her, which made Dan Heng think the Trailblazer just shook her head.

“That’s okay, I can teach you. Watch this.” 

An old protest rose in his throat automatically. He’d learned that he couldn’t indulge March too often or else he’d turn her whims into a habit, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask her to stop today. 

She pulled strands from his face and started to braid. She weaved his hair together while chatting idly with the Trailblazer, murmuring quiet instructions about weaving under and over and so on and so forth and keeping the tension so the braid didn’t fall apart. March, truthfully, wasn’t the most skilled braider, which was why she needed the practice. But somehow, all the tugging and scratching felt soothing and soon he felt his spine sinking further into the side of the bed, one vertebrae at a time.

Did she even know what she was doing? Probably not. And that was probably the most wonderful thing about knowing March: that she bore no falsehoods, that she had nothing to give except what she held out in front of you.

Like the clip in his hair as if the greatest concern of his new form was the long hair getting in the way. Like the way she wondered if the statue was Dan Heng’s brother. Like the way she braided around his horns without skipping a beat. Like Dan Heng was still just Dan Heng to her, and the relief of knowing that made something crack inside of him.

March had never braided his hair before because it obviously hadn’t been long enough, but something about the room, about the carpet, about the way March laughed and the way the Trailblazer snored quietly that made him feel how bone deep his exhaustion was, and how finally, finally, he could let himself close his eyes sink into the dark.

“Are you falling asleep?” March shrieked with glee, jerking him out of it.

Dan Heng peeled his eyes open. “I was trying to, until you spoke.”

“Dan Heeeeng.” March’s face appeared sideways next to his head, her ear parallel to his shoulder. She was giving him her puppy dog eyes. “You’re like a cat. Oh my god. Do you feel safe in my room?”

He pushed her away and moved his knees under him to stand.

“Wait, no! I’m not done yet!” She slammed her hands onto his shoulders and forced him back onto the carpet. And if he didn’t give as much resistance as he usually did, she didn’t comment on it. “You’re not allowed to move until I get to the end.”

“Hurry it up,” he grumbled without much weight.

“Don’t rush me, Dan Heng. And I still have to let Stelle try.”

He glanced back and looked at the Trailblazer. “Don’t rip out my hair.”

Stelle smiled, fully, and it was startling. “No promises.”

He turned back around and let March resume. She’d reached the nape of his neck, the part where his hair had grown long in the fashion of the High Elder. In all the scrolls and murals and paintings of him, Dan Heng had never seen him depicted with anything other than long, free flowing hair. Certainly never a braid. But here he was now. And maybe, it brought a quiet satisfaction that he could cast himself apart, even minimally.

March’s fingers paused a third of the way down as she leaned away from his head, muttering something about looking for a hair tie. Something deep and aching surged up in his throat and he suddenly couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

“March,” he blurted gruffly.

March paused. “Yeah?”

“Thanks.” His mouth felt dry, throat tight, the back of his eyes feeling itchy and hot.

“For what? Braiding your hair?” He could hear the smile in her voice.

“Sure.”

There was a pause. March’s hands stuttered before she leaned back and resumed braiding. “That’s the second time you’ve thanked me in thirty-six hours. If you keep that up, I’ll have to assume you like me playing with your hair.”

Dan Heng tried to scowl, but couldn’t muster up the annoyance for it.

March must have seen anyway because she laughed, and then Stelle laughed. And then, despite himself, Dan Heng laughed.

When they fell back into silence, he spoke again.

“By the way, I do still have your hair clip,” he murmured. “It’s in my pocket.”

“WHAT!” March shrieked, dropping the braid entirely. “You do? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You just assumed I’d lost it and didn’t give me the chance to explain.” Dan Heng reached into the folds of his robes and pulled out the hair clip she’d stuck onto him. “I took it off before we confronted Phantylia because I didn’t want to lose it.”

“What—” He turned to find her eyes watering. “Aww, Dan Heng. That’s so sweet. You do like my hair clips!”

This time, he did manage to scowl as he tossed the hair clip back up to her.

“Looks like you are trustworthy after all,” she said, sounding entirely too satisfied with herself.

He felt his eyebrow twitch. “How did you get to that conclusion?”

“I know you, Dan Heng. You’ve always been reliable, even with your super mega ultra mysterious past.” She grinned. “But look at you—keeping it safe without me asking. You’ve still got a heart under all your fancy robes.”

Dan Heng rolled his eyes.

“Okay, turn around, turn around. I have to fix your braid because half of it unraveled.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“Yours . Because you surprised me while I was in deep concentration!”

Dan Heng sighed and turned around. “I didn’t think braiding was such a mentally strenuous activity.”

“That’s because you’ve never done someone’s hair before. After Stelle, I’ll teach you how to braid and see how you do with braiding and talking.”

“Hmm.” Dan Heng hummed and closed his eyes again, unable to find it in himself to protest.

“Hey Dan Heng, can I ask you something?” March asked.

“Sure.”

“Do you know the general? I mean Jing Yuan? He said something about how you can still, like, work well together or something after that thing with Phantylia.” March pulled a strand away from his face. “But I thought the Xianzhou kicked you out. When did you get the chance to become friends with him?”

When indeed.

Dan Heng exhaled through his nose, soft enough to hide the rise and fall of his shoulders. “Who knows.”

That night, he dreamt of Jing Yuan’s eyes without grief and Blade’s without hunger. In that dream, he saw a younger version of the general, his hair still wild with youth like a lion coming into his age. In that dream, Blade’s voice was still rough but less sharp, all the lines of his face softer. There was an edge to him that may have always been there, but it had been refined like a blade on a whetstone instead of the jagged thing he was now. 

All of Dan Heng’s memories of the Xianzhou were of prison. He’d been born into punishment, cradled by his shackles until he grew old enough and finally left in exile. A place of origin that had never been home, yet the dreams showed a Xianzhou that was as warm as the Express.

In his dream Xianzhou, he knew the sound of Jing Yuan’s laughter. In his dream Xianzhou, Jing Yuan bubbled and babbled and tugged at his hands like an eager child. But they were the same height in this dream. Jing Yuan was a bit lanky, not yet grown all the way but approaching it soon. He was endearing like this. Endearing enough to bite.

“Imbibitor Lunae, will you watch me train today?” Jing Yuan’s eyes were wide and pleading, though he tried to hide it with a flatter mouth.

In the dream, Dan Heng smiled. “You don’t need to try to impress me. I already believe in your skills.”

Jing Yuan flushed in a way the old general Dan Heng knew would not, which was to say: down to his chest, eyes darting down bashfully with the most wonderful shade of pink coloring the skin under his beauty mark. “The High Elder can see through me so clearly, huh?” 

Dan Heng felt this itching feeling to pull that color out of him again and again. He reached forward and tapped the bottom of Jing Yuan’s chin until he tilted his head up. “There’s no need to call me that. You can just call me Dan F—”

The dream changed.

Jing Yuan was gone, off training or sparring or battling stars. Now, Dan Heng was here at the mouth of the forge. There was a shadow inside, but when Dan Heng blinked, the shadow took shape—lips, eyes, arms, calluses. 

The heat from the forge billowed out in waves in a way that made him feel like he was being burned by the sun. And at the center of the corona: the blacksmith.

This was what Dan Heng saw in his dreams: a man at the anvil, his snow white hair tied up in a knot revealing the column of his neck sparkling with sweat, the long stretch of his forearms bared to the sun as they flexed and twisted around the hammer, banging a new weapon into shape. There was a smear of soot right across his forehead, peeking out through the curtain of snow, alluring in the contrast, alluring in the fact that it was on him.

“Will you be assisting me or are you just planning on standing in the way?” The blacksmith’s voice had a low, rough quality to it that felt like two tectonic plates scraping against each other. There was no warning in his voice, no hunger or bite.

“Is that anyway to speak to the High Elder?” asked Dan Heng, raising an eyebrow.

“You like the defiance,” the blacksmith said simply. “Now will you be moving or not?”

In the dream, Dan Heng smiled. “I believe I’m standing across from you and away from your tools. And therefore, not in the way.”

The blacksmith let out a quiet laugh, rough like an engine. “You think yourself clever, don’t you?”

“Not just think.” Dan Heng took a step forward. “But I believe you like that about me, am I wrong?”

The blacksmith laughed louder and the sound of it sent a dizzying spiral of elation down his spine. Dan Heng didn’t know this blacksmith, but he knew the heat in his stomach—low and warm like an ember—could not be caused by anyone but him. Dan Heng thought he reached forward, grabbed the collar of the blacksmith’s shirt, and—

The dream shifted. 

In another part of the dream, one where they were not at the forge and instead walking along the docks at dark, Dan Feng ran his fingers through the blacksmith’s hair, glowing white like the moon above them.

“I’m surprised the ash hasn’t stained your hair,” he whispered.

“It’s because I’m so pure of heart,” the blacksmith said wryly.

Dan Heng laughed because his heart felt warm and light, like the dying embers of the blacksmith’s forge. “You have the most wonderful sense of humor, Yingxing.”

The dream froze. The blacksmith went rigid. Dan Heng’s body moved as if nothing had changed but his mind prickled with unease, started to scream that something was wrong.

“What did you call me?” The blacksmith asked, voice hollow.

Dan Heng, throat moving of its own accord, laughed lightly and said with all the warmth and light of a hearth, Yingxing.

“Yingxing died.” The blacksmith turned to him, the roots of his snow-white hair turning black like ash. “Yingxing died because you killed him.”

Dan Heng finally wrested control of his body and stepped back.

You killed him. The blacksmith turned on him, bloodred eyes filling with bloodlust, with hunger. Black bleeding through the rest of his white hair like ink. The knot came undone. The broken blade appeared in hand. You killed him. YOU KILLED HIM. YOU KILLED HIM. YOU KILLED HIM. YOU KILLED—

And now, the dream turned into one he knew well: Dan Heng running, his lungs heaving with pain like he’d been punctured—and maybe he had. It happened so often in these dreams that it felt like coming home.

I am the maker of your weapon, said Blade. And I will be the weapon to unmake you.

The ground fell away beneath them, the sky dripping like blood into the dark and then it was just him and Blade and running—always running—down the long corridor of darkness and fear. Dan Heng decided this was much, much crueler: to give him something warm before snatching it away. 

I’m not him. He wanted to yell, and again he could not speak.

The fear thumping through him like a heartbeat, the way he was born into prison, left in exile, knew how to run before he could talk, knew blood before water. This endless cycle of knowing and morphing and changing but never staying, never solidifying. Dan Heng was a thing to be pulled at, something to be fought over and molded into a shape they wanted him to be. Not Dan Heng, but the High Elder. Not Dan Heng, but old friend, retribution, savior, traitor. 

He was so tired of this story. Where was the end?

Dan Heng slammed into a wall he could not see. He turned to the side and met another wall there, and turned to find another wall. An invisible box had risen up around him leaving one side clear—the one back to Blade’s rough engine voice and his broken sword.

“Found you,” said Blade. Found you.

Dan Heng slammed against the invisible walls ahead of him, to the side, trying to make it crack. He couldn’t see Blade anymore. All he could see was darkness, and all he could hear was the sound of Blade’s voice getting closer, closer, closer.

I’m not him! Dan Heng yelled, but no one heard. He left no echo.

“Deny it. Deny that it was you who killed me.”

I didn’t do it. I didn’t—It wasn’t me. He opened his mouth but the void stole his voice away.

“Imbibitor Lunae, I’ve finally found you—”

The dream lurched.

Dan Heng slammed against the walls. He shoved himself off only to be tossed in the other direction. He banged against the three walls and finally the fourth. Blade must have gone up in smoke, suddenly gone, and the fourth wall had risen to box him in.

I’m not him, he whispered. “I’m not—”

Dan Heng fell into a room full of light. 

Suddenly, everything was quiet, his ears ringing in the new silence. He couldn’t quite see, couldn’t quite make out the shapes around him, so he closed his eyes and let himself fall backward.

He didn’t make it far. His head landed on something soft—a pillow? A bed? 

“Aw man, your hair’s short again,” a familiar voice whined. “Ugh, it’s fine. We’ll make do. I can still braid the longer bits at the front.”

His body moved of its own accord again, batting an approaching hand he could not see. “Don’t.”

“It’s fiiiiiine. I’ll make it look cute.” The hand ruffled his hair. “You trust me, right?”

“...yes,” he admitted reluctantly.

“Awwww,” the voice shrieked. “ I trust you, too, you know? You’re such a big softie, Dan Heng.”

The hand brushed his bangs back and lightly poked his forehead, then Dan Heng jerked awake.

He sat up in bed, chest heaving. His legs were tingling like he was still running.

“Are you alright?” 

Dan Heng nearly jumped out of his covers. He turned to the side to find the Trailblazer sitting on the floor next to him, watching him in the dark with her ghostly amber eyes.

“What are you doing in here?” He tried to sit up and accidentally pressed on the length of his own hair. In the dream, he looked like Dan Heng again. But out here, it seemed he still looked like the High Elder.

“March heard you screaming.”

“Hmm, did she?” he muttered wryly. It seemed for all the screaming he couldn’t do in his dreams, he did in real life. “So you came in to check on me?”

She nodded. “I have nightmares, too.”

That made him pause. “I didn’t know that.”

“Because I don’t tell people.” 

A silence fell between them. This was why March was usually here: to fill the space between them. But it was just them, March tactically staying out of the room, so Dan Heng spoke instead.

“What do you dream about?” he asked.

“Lots of things.” She turned to look at the digital map on the wall, the lights bursting faintly off the screen like solar flares. “Where I came from. The Aeons. The Stellaron in my chest.” She idly traced a pattern on the ground, though he didn’t think she noticed. “I have dreams about—Preservation. And Destruction. Sometimes I dream about a monster being inside of me that only comes out to battle, and that one day I’ll lose control and it’ll devour everything.” 

A different kind of dream then. One where you were the monster chasing instead of being chased.

He turned to her tentatively. “How do you deal with your nightmares, then?”

“I don’t.” She pulled her eyes back down and looked at him, gaze piercing. “I wake up.”

The thing about running was that it left part of him still wanting, which was a terrible thing to admit. How could you run from something and want more of it? At what point do you turn back?

Here on the Astral Express, there was less weight to the knowing. No one there demanded answers or retribution—over half of them there had mysterious pasts anyway—they were happy to let him keep his past mysterious if he so wished it.

But that was the thing about multiple lives: there were pieces of him scattered through the stars, and even if he gathered all the large bits to himself, no one ever truly saw him whole. High Elder, old friend, retribution, savior, traitor. And when he tried to find the shards of himself in others, it left him coming away more hollow.

When he’d been born, he did not wake to the kind Pearlkeeprs the way the rest of the Vidyadhara did. He’d been born to darkness, in chains, then cast off like a newborn with extra baggage. Some Vidyadhara wrote their old memories to each other, others did not.

Dan Heng never got the choice. 

Would he want to know all of it? How fair would that be to his current incarnation? Would he ever just be Dan Heng, or was the whole of him tied to all the lives he didn’t remember? The question then was: was he the sum or the parts?

What a life to live. What a thing to yearn for: a question with no answer. A voice with no echo. Perhaps this was how Blade felt. Perhaps this was how Jing Yuan felt. 

The question now: how do you wake up from a nightmare when you’re already awake? When does the story end?

The crew headed back down to the Xianzhou Luofu after some time to rest. Truthfully, it may have been more efficient to stay down there rather than head back up to the Express. But again, small mercies, after everything they’d gone through, it’d been nice to return to his blanket and pillow on the floor of the archives room.

Dan Heng didn’t know if he was allowed back on the Xianzhou or not. Scalegorge Waterscape had been a special circumstance, but now that that special circumstance was over, where did that leave him?

Thankfully—in some definition of the word, Jing Yuan greeted them again. In a private alcove, they boarded the Luofu once more where the general hid them away from public eyes and other Cloud Knights.

“Won’t you get in trouble for this, General?” March asked, earnestly worried.

“I could,” said Jing Yuan, unbothered. “But don’t worry about me, I can take care of it.”

Jing Yuan hadn’t looked at him once since they stepped back onto the Luofu. 

There was a small, secluded inn that Jing Yuan led them to where they could sleep away from prying eyes while they finished up their business on the Luofu.

“It’s a bit…rundown,” he said. “But they will keep quiet on the matter of…of Imbibitor Lunae.” Then, Jing Yuan finally turned to look at him, and Dan Heng regretted wanting his eyes on him all at once. 

Jing Yuan looked at him like he had the power to ease his grief, but the tragic part was that he didn’t. Dan Heng couldn’t ever be what anyone wanted him to be.

“Rundown,” repeated Stelle, pulling Jing Yuan’s gaze away.

“I think it’s…cute?” tried March.

The inn was, in fact, a bit more than “rundown.” The wood looked like it was rotting off its skeleton, and it was two stories tall and nestled between a stack of cargo crates and a dying tree. Only someone like March could see it as cute. To Dan Heng, it looked like an early coffin.

“Thank you for your hospitality, General,” said Welt.

Jing Yuan nodded slowly. “I only wish I could provide better lodgings.”

“This will be fine for now.” Welt gestured. “Come on you three.”

Dan Heng went to follow but Jing Yuan held out a hand. “Wait, if I may.”

They paused.

Jing Yuan turned to Dan Heng. “May I speak to you for a moment?”

No, he wanted to say. An answer as reflexive as memory. But he was hiding again. Always hiding. How do you wake up from a nightmare with no end?

Welt looked at him curiously. March gave a kind smile, though she still seemed a bit confused at his unease. And the Trailblazer watched him, eyes unreadable.

“Sure.” Dan Heng suppressed a shudder, though he didn’t know why. “Yeah, you all can go on ahead.”

He watched March give him a thumbs up before heading inside. Welt followed her shortly after. Stelle lingered for a moment longer before she gave him a single nod and disappeared into the inn.

Then, like a dream, he and Jing Yuan were left alone.

Dan Heng spoke first before he could think. “I’m not him—”

Jing Yuan held up a hand. “I know. You’ve said that already, and I believe you.”

He fell silent.

“How…are you?”

Dan Heng startled. “Is that what you kept me behind for?”

Jing Yuan let out a quiet laugh. If Dan Heng didn’t know any better, he would’ve thought it sounded slightly bitter.

“Forgive me. I’m sure there are more natural ways to ask this question, but I can’t bring any to mind right now.” Jing Yuan gave him one of those sad smiles. 

Dan Heng couldn’t bring himself to return it. 

“Let me speak more plainly: are you happy on the Express?”

He blinked. “Yes. I am.” That was an easy answer. No tricks there.

“I’m glad.” Jing Yuan hummed. “Will you keep riding with the Express?”

“Of course.” Dan Heng tried not to fidget, but he couldn’t read Jing Yuan—not like Dan Feng could have—he didn’t know where he was being led.

“Would you ever return to the Xianzhou?” 

Ah, so there was the question. Reflexively, he wanted to wince. But Dan Heng didn’t find the question as painful as he expected. 

“If the Express takes me here again, yes,” said Dan Heng.

“And if it does not?”

Jing Yuan was watching him with those eyes again—the depth of which you could drown in. He smiled at Dan Heng like it was a reflex, like his mouth had learned to fall that way like a soldier in formation.

“I won’t return to a home that does not want me,” he answered truthfully. “It seems that after all Dan Feng did, no one here wants anything to do with me anymore.” He tried not to sound too bitter. “Not that—” Not that Dan Feng didn’t do the crime. Not that he didn’t understand the desire for justice. But Dan Feng did his crimes and left it all behind for Dan Heng to clean up. What kind of justice was that? “Not that I don’t understand why. I just—” He swallowed. “I like the Express. I like who I am there.”

“That’s good,” said Jing Yuan slowly, like he was trying to parse through the few words Dan Heng had said. “I’m glad.”

Dan Heng waited. He shifted his feet and glanced up at the open sky. “If…if that’s all…”

“Dan Heng,” interrupted Jing Yuan. “If I may, once again: I wouldn’t say… no one here.”

He froze, breath catching and crystallizing. But Jing Yuan was already turning to make his leave.

“Go catch up with your friends. Thank you for indulging me for a bit.”

Dan Heng didn’t move as Jing Yuan walked toward him. But when their shoulders brushed, he suddenly thought about waking up. He thought about the end of the story. He spun around quickly and called, “General.”

Jing Yuan lifted his head, back still turned.

“I think…I think barring hypotheticals, no matter what, my path would lead me back here.” He swallowed, throat thick with something he didn’t understand. “Whether I want it to or not. So, I don’t think this would be my last time here.”

Jing Yuan finally glanced back, and Dan Heng thought his smile looked a little lighter. “I’m glad to hear that.”

Then, he turned around and he was gone.

In another dream, Dan Heng ignored his sense of duty and stayed on the Astral Express while Welt, March, and the Trailblazer descended onto the Luofu themselves. He was not there, so they died. They all did. End of story.

In another dream, they never visited the Xianzhou at all. In this dream, Dan Heng never revealed his horns. Imbibitor Lunae never came out. He kept his doors shuttered and no one ever asked about his past because they all cared for him and they all had something to hide, but part of him was still reaching, still wanting. Anything to lighten the burden. Anything to free the parasite off his tongue.

In another dream, the Trailblazer and March held out their hands, looking at him with all the light in their eyes like this was another mission; and to them, it was. But for Dan Heng, it was the centuries of running slamming into him all at once. In this dream, he didn’t put his hand in. In this dream, he turned and kept running.

In another dream, he didn’t take March’s hair clips.

In another dream, he died in prison. The Vidyadhara lack of reproduction be damned.

In another dream, he was Dan Feng. He knew because of the body: physically older than he’d ever been as Dan Heng. Which was fitting, because after all, Dan Feng had centuries on him, had the wisdom he’d never had. Dan Heng was a colt still twiggy in the knees and trying not to bleed out onto the snow. But Dan Feng was old enough to leave a mark on the world.

In the dream where he was Dan Feng, he stood in an impossible Xianzhou because Blade stood across from him. Impossible—because Blade couldn’t be here while Dan Feng stood across from him. Blade was born because Dan Feng died. Dan Feng died because of Yingxing.

In this dream, he dreamt that he was the person Blade wanted him to be: the final retribution. The ghost that would finally lay him to rest.

“Caught you,” whispered Blade, voice grating like stone on stone.

“Caught me,” murmured Dan Feng.

What did I do for you? He wondered. What did I do to you?

You know the answer to that, Imbibitor Lunae.

The monster he made was beautiful like a sword fresh from the forge, eyes glowing like molten metal.

Are you done running? asked Blade, turning that lovely, broken sword in his hands over and over.

Could he ever say he was done running? Could he commit to something so finite?

Come at me, said Dan Feng. 

Blade came running, the sword held perpendicular to his shoulder. His form was perfect. The weapon was perfect. Both the man and metal. And when the blade went straight through his heart, Dan Heng felt air rushing into his lungs like light.

Dan Heng woke up in the hotel room— alone was the hope, but when he turned onto his side, he saw a pair of molten eyes staring at him in the dark.

He jerked out of bed and lunged for his spear before turning the point on Blade’s chest.

Blade, despite the weapon pressing against his chest, laughed. “Have you forgotten? Something like this can’t kill me. You made sure of that.”

It wasn’t me, Dan Heng wanted to say, but he couldn’t force the words past the glue in his throat. “Are you here to kill me?”

“No.” Blade batted the spear aside like it was a stick. “I meant what I said when my task was complete.”

“Does that mean you’ll stop chasing me?”

His smile was sharp like a knife. “I never said that.”

“What was your task then?”

The smile fell and turned into something more serious. In Dan Heng’s dreams, the blacksmith always had an air of arrogance to him, like all the world was the audience to bear witness to his creations. Blade, though, had a face carved and recarved from stone. Now, he held the grief of immortals.

“I am satisfied for now,” said Blade. “But I will not leave you alone. Just like how you didn’t leave me.”

In another tone, it would have been a sweet promise. But because it was Blade, it was a threat.

“You may have changed your face,” said Blade, slowly. “You may have changed your name…”

What was it that was said about fleeting things? That the ephemerality of life was what made it precious, what made you bold. But Blade had faced the end and come out the the other side and now there were no more games for him.

“But you are still Imbibitor Lunae.”

Dan Heng sucked in a breath. “Why are you here?”

Blade stared at him with the weight of centuries of bloodshed. If he looked for too long, Dan Heng thought he would drown in it.

“I wanted to see what became of you.” His voice was almost soft.

Then, he flung Dan Heng’s spear into the wall. The point stuck into the wallpaper and stopped with a THUNK as it embedded itself into the support beams of the inn. Dan Heng barely had a moment to blink or scream before Blade leapt out the window and disappeared, leaving his heart hammering.

Moments later, the door flung open.

“Dan Heng!” March came barrelling in with her bow half drawn. When she saw him still lying on the bed, she dropped it and rushed toward him. “Dan Heng, are you okay?”

In his dreams, it was only ever him and Blade. But this was how he knew it wasn’t a dream: March was there, her hands on his face, her hands on his limbs, poking and prodding for injuries. Stelle was there, appearing a moment later with Alisa Rand’s lance in hand. Welt was there, holding his cane aloft. Dan Heng was always alone in his dreams, but never when he was awake, not with the Astral Express.

“I’m fine—”

“We heard a noise.” Welt turned to the spear in the wall and his eyebrows scrunched together. “What happened?”

“I—” Blade was here. Blade was here and he didn’t kill me. “Blade—came in through that window, I think. And left through it.”

Stelle gingerly pulled Dan Heng’s spear out of the wall, a terrible crunching noise screeching through the room as it made its exit. Cloud-Piercer landed on the ground with another hollow thump.

“Uh.” March’s gaze drifted to the hole in the wall where bits of drywall were raining down to the floor below. “You don’t think we’ll have to pay for that…do you?”

Welt looked at the wall and let out a long, weary sigh. “Probably.” He turned to Dan Heng. “Are you alright?”

Dan Heng touched his chest—the part where Blade had stabbed him in the dream. “Yes. I’m fine.”

“We should probably get out of here,” said Welt.

“Aww, already?” March rubbed her eyes. “I feel like I just closed my eyes.”

“It’s fine,” Dan Heng cut in. “I don’t think he’ll bother us for the rest of tonight, at least.”

Welt raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure? You—there was a Stellaron Hunter in your room.” 

He could imagine Welt questioning his recklessness. Perhaps it was a bit out of character for him, but small concessions. Small bites. Little steps forward. Blade had found him twice now, yet he’d survived both times.

He could stop running, even if only for tonight.

“I’m sure.” He glanced at the hole in the wall. “But, um, I’d like to sleep in a different room, I think.”

Welt sighed. “Sure, I’ll see what I can do.”

The question was: who was Imbibitor Lunae?

The High Elder, yes. Old friend maybe, retribution maybe, savior and traitor, certainly.

But Dan Feng? Dan Heng?

The question was: where did Dan Feng start and Dan Heng end? Where did Dan Heng start and Dan Feng end? How do you lay your ghosts to rest when you yourself are a ghost?

Are you a ghost?

Aboard the Astral Express, Dan Heng traversed the stars with his crew. As far as they were concerned, he was just Dan Heng. And if he was anyone else, it didn’t change his being, just added a new piece to who “Dan Heng” was, but still just Dan Heng.

Was he just Dan Heng?

The question with no answer. The voice with no echo. Even aboard the Astral Express, the stars couldn’t save you from your nightmares.

But that was no matter, when there was an option to wake up.

Which was to say: waking up wasn’t always an easy matter. There was the matter of ghosts in the dark and shadows to run from and all the baggage that came with rebirth. Dying and living and haunting and leaving. And memory. Always memory.

The question was: how do you wake up?

What was the difference between a dream and being awake? For Dan Heng, it was the ghosts and the people.

It was hard, sometimes, separating the ghosts from the people. There were always hands, clawing at his ankles, at his heart, at his throat, at his horns that were sometimes there and sometimes not. But there were hands, too, braiding his hair, clipping his bangs back, flicking his forehead, pulling him out of the dark, yanking him to his feet. Maybe that was the distinction.

Or maybe that was a question for which he had no answer, but an answer that he could find. With enough help and enough guidance and more settling and less running and time, always more time.

If he had the Astral Express, Dan Heng decided that it was an answer he wouldn’t mind waiting for.