Archive of Our Own

~~~

The painful throbbing in his temples gradually made itself known, joining the steady, accursed rhythm of his heartbeat. Sleep began to fade away, his awareness sharpening on the feeling of soft bedsheets tangled around his legs.

He could smell incense– A vague scent that enshrouded him in the thorny embrace of nostalgia.

He slowly opened his eyes to the bleary sight of a familiar wooden ceiling and folding partitions around his bed.

Familiar.

Familiar… but not because it was where he’d fallen asleep.

He sat up quickly, lurching forward with a sharp breath as he stared at the room around him.

Familiar, familiar, familiar.

A ceramic vase with a single budding branch in it. Screen doors painted with cranes and stalks of grain. A red travel bag with a few sewn-in patches because it was cheaper to just repair it over and over rather than get a new one. A shelf that held various disorderly scrolls and blueprints. An ornate dresser that was home to more sketches and plans than actual articles of clothing.

His blood chilled with a peculiar combination of abject horror and shock.

This had to be impossible.

His chest shook with trembling breaths, his eyes lowering to the silken sheets that had twisted around him and the loose red and black robes that he hadn’t worn for hundreds of years now.

Was this a dream?

Or was everything else a dream?

The unsteady thrum of panic was seeping into his veins. 

He raised his right hand, the bare flesh scarred by years of reckless fighting. He closed his fingers inward, the joints stiff.

He dug his fingernails into the meat of his palm, making sure he felt the pain.

This felt like reality.

Swallowing thickly, he reached for a piece of his hair, rubbing the red-tinged strands between his fingers. 

He was still stained by the Abundance.

That fact brought both relief and the shattering of what little hope had dared to twinge in his chest.

But if this wasn’t a dream, how was he here?

This terrace, the Yuque base for the High-Cloud Quintet, had been demolished not long after Imbibitor Lunae’s sedition. It didn’t even exist anymore.

“Yingxing?”

Blade went completely still.

That voice was one he’d never forget. Not that he hadn’t tried at some point.

Slowly, he glanced up at the screen doors, through which he could see a lithe silhouette with long, flowing sleeves and two horns gracing the top of its head. A myriad of emotions burned him from within, but the mara was silent.

The figure knocked at the door frame brusquely, the way he always did even though he would let himself in regardless.

He did exactly that, quickly sliding the screen door open after only two knocks and then closing it behind his back once he’d stepped into the room.

Blade just stared at him blankly. Anger, remorse, and panic swirled through him like a maelstrom of hazy memories that were suddenly clear as day. It was nothing like seeing his current incarnation– No, this was the truest form of a sinner, one that was assured of his name and stood with the imposing grace of someone with little guilt or empathy for those that hadn’t earned it.

Dan Feng met his gaze, jade eyes unreadable and his head held high.

A million thoughts hit Blade at once.

Had he gone back in time somehow? If so, when was this? How old was Yingxing supposed to be? Should his hair have been white with age by now? Was it obvious that he wasn’t quite the same person? 

Dan Feng’s cold gaze didn’t reveal answers to any of Blade’s questions, but his brows did furrow slightly as he looked Blade up and down.

Instinctively, Blade’s hand opened to summon the Shard Sword.

It didn’t come.

As Dan Feng stepped closer, an odd sense of fear crept up Blade’s spine. He couldn’t call the Shard Sword. Was it because it was still in Jingliu’s possession in this time?

“Your hair… It’s red.” Dan Feng came to a stop at the edge of the bed, one hand tenderly taking a lock of Blade’s hair between his long fingers. Blade was filled with dread so potent he felt like he was choking on it.

His hand opened again, begging for the Shard Sword to answer his summons. It still didn’t.

“What did you do to it?” Dan Feng’s eyes raised, meeting Blade’s. He blinked, his expression washing over with surprise. “And your eyes…What…?”

Blade steadily held his gaze, dark brows set low over hard, red-gold eyes that had once been blue. Slowly, like an animal with its prey in sight, he raised one hand, placing it over Dan Feng’s.

Could he kill Dan Feng here and now? Would it prevent the Sedition from ever happening? If this was real, if it wasn’t some cruel joke, then maybe… was this a chance to change the future?

Somehow, that didn’t sound as palatable as it should have.

Blade didn’t have a weapon, but Dan Feng’s guard was down. It was safe to assume that whenever this was, it was after Dan Feng and Yingxing became close.

“Yingxing?” Dan Feng’s voice was lowered to a whisper, the jut of his throat bobbing as concern seeped into his eyes. His left hand, the one that still lay at his side, twitched slightly.

He wasn’t stupid. He could sense that whatever thoughts were running through Blade’s mind weren’t gentle.

Blade’s hand closed around Dan Feng’s, holding it tightly, keeping him from moving if he tried to back away. He turned his head to look at it, something softening in his chest, a weakness that thrummed in his pulse.

“...It’s just some alchemy that went wrong. It will fade.” Blade’s voice was more strained than it should have been. His eyes, which were definitely the wrong colour and definitely not the byproduct of alchemy lingered on the delicate slopes of Dan Feng’s knuckles. He squeezed Dan Feng’s hand, feeling the realness of it.

Dan Feng sighed. “When did you manage to do that? I saw you just this morning and you looked the same as usual up until you said you were going to take a nap.”

“It was a delayed effect.” The lie was quick to come to Blade’s tongue.

The mara was almost suspiciously quiet.

Dan Feng’s eyes fell to Blade’s hand. Confusion was etched into the faint lines between his brows. “And those new scars? How did you–”

“They’ll fade too.” Despite the curse of the Abundance, they’d been with him for centuries now, and they certainly weren’t disappearing anytime soon.

Dan Feng frowned. “Don’t interrupt me. What are you even doing to cause something like this?” His expression gained some kind of gentle exasperation as he looked back at Blade’s face.

“The usual.” Dan Feng’s nose scrunched up at Blade’s vague response, but he didn’t push further. He probably had a feeling that he wouldn’t get a better answer if he tried. After all, there had been plenty of times that Yingxing had been secretive about his work, usually when he was forging something particularly special.

If his hair and eyes weren’t the wrong colours, if his body wasn’t scarred by Jingliu’s cruel training and the centuries of pointless battles after that, if the knowledge of the future wasn’t burned into his mind, Blade would have been completely fooled into thinking that none of it had ever happened.

But he could smell the incense that always permeated this terrace; he could feel the hard lines of Dan Feng’s fingers in his own. And looking up at him, he could see the subtle differences between this Dan Feng and the future Dan Heng.

He was taller. Thinner. His features were a little more mature, though the sternness of his brows and the cold aloofness of his face never changed.

Dan Heng would have been pleased to hear that Blade could catalogue distinctions between them, but in Blade’s mind, that still didn’t mean they were completely different people.

A few hundred years from the true present, they would be identical, and Blade would still have to put up with the painful awareness that the Dan Feng he knew and loved and despised with every aspect of his being insisted on ignoring the foggy memories that tormented Blade day and night. If they weren’t both dead by then.

“You seem… different,” Dan Feng commented simply, jade eyes narrowing. Still, he didn’t draw away.

“Do I?” Blade raised a brow and brought Dan Feng’s hand to rest against his cheek.

His eyes trailed up the line of Dan Feng’s neck, vulnerably open. 

It was tempting. Like a delicacy served on a silver platter, just waiting to be destroyed by a single stroke of a knife.

Blade turned his head, closing his eyes and pressing his lips to Dan Feng’s gloved palm. He breathed in slowly, still waiting for the illusion to fade, for the mirage to dissipate. 

It didn’t. 

Dan Feng’s hand was real and solid against his lips. It surfaced hazy recollections in the back of Blade’s mind, warm moments that had slipped away from him over the years like they’d never even occurred in the first place. 

If only that were the case.

Dan Feng let out a short sigh, something like disappointment and agitation. “...I told Jing Yuan I’d help with his training today.” A warning slipped into his voice.

Blade took the fabric of Dan Feng’s glove between his teeth and slowly tugged it off his hand. When he opened his mouth to let the glove fall, he spoke in a low tone with obvious implication. “Did you?”

If Jing Yuan was still chasing after Dan Feng’s shadow and begging for his help with training, that meant he was still rather young. Dan Feng hadn’t been concerned by the fact that Blade’s hair was dark… no, he’d specifically mentioned that it was red. And he hadn’t been perturbed by the fact that Blade looked much younger than he was by the time of the Sedition. 

Blade was slowly piecing together where he was in both time and his own sharpening memories. 

Not that it was particularly important.

He glanced up to see the complicated expression on Dan Feng’s face, lips drawn thin and eyes narrowed like he was debating whether or not to indulge Blade.

Blade was still somewhere between deciding to rip Dan Feng’s heart out of his chest with his bare hands or pushing him down and taking him more roughly than he ever had when he’d gone by the name ‘Yingxing’.

He exhaled against Dan Feng’s bare palm, hot breath ghosting over pale skin. Dan Feng’s fingers twitched in his grip. At this point in time, he still preferred cloudhymn magic to physical confrontation, so his palm wasn’t nearly as calloused as the present Dan Heng’s. 

“Jing Yuan can wait. His master is Jingliu, not you.” The corners of his lips rose as he watched Dan Feng’s will waver. Blade could feel himself slipping into a role, falling back into an easier demeanour like a bad habit.

His eyes fell to Dan Feng’s chest. He wasn’t stupid enough to think it would only take a single strike– No, Dan Feng would heal himself, even if Blade’s sword went right through his heart. Unless Blade sliced his head off or took his heart from his body, Dan Feng would fight back. 

The real question was whether or not he could kill Blade in turn. 

He couldn’t feel the mara at all– Not even a distant hum. It made his mind feel oddly clear, as though a blurry mist had parted before him like hazy red curtains being momentarily tied to the side.

But did that mean he wouldn’t regenerate? Was death finally a possibility?

Even if it was, somehow, in the back of Blade’s mind, he felt like he owed his death not to Dan Feng, but to the present Dan Heng.

‘I will stay with you until the end.’

That look on his face, earnest and stubborn, and painfully familiar.

Despite himself, Blade smiled a little as his mind drifted. His expression softened slightly and though it hadn’t been his intention, Dan Feng seemed to falter in response.

If Blade attacked him right now, he would catch him off guard. If he bit hard enough, he might be able to rip his throat out with his teeth, which would buy him some time to shatter the vase by the shelf and use the shards as a weapon. He could cut right into Dan Feng’s chest and crush his beating heart in his hand.

His hand tightened over Dan Feng’s, adrenaline coursing through him.

“...I promised Jing Yuan…” Dan Feng said quietly, more like he was trying to remind himself rather than Blade. It was something he did often, and something that Yingxing had always found hilariously endearing because it never actually worked once the tension between them had been stoked.

Blade felt himself hesitate. His gaze trailed further down Dan Feng’s body, down the tempting line of his waist, before he looked back up at his face.

Dan Feng met his gaze, his eyes heavy with consideration. Blade returned the look with cold bloodlust that had been temporarily layered over with want.

Dan Feng’s lips parted to say something else, but Blade suddenly tugged harshly at his hand and flipped him over. A breath was pushed out of Dan Feng as he hit the bed, but he didn’t struggle. He just stared up at Blade in surprise.

Blade shifted, straddling Dan Feng’s hips and leaning over him, his crimson-gold eyes dark with a combination of murderous intent and carnal desire in every possible sense. Dan Feng frowned slightly as his hand trembled in Blade’s grip. Blade felt the static glimmer of the silent, subconscious urge to summon Cloud-Piercer against his own hand. 

Dan Feng’s instincts were strong enough to know that even though Blade was ‘Yingxing’, something wasn’t right. But because he couldn’t place what that something was, he wouldn’t do anything until Blade struck first. 

With his free hand, Blade cupped the side of Dan Feng’s face, a gesture so gentle that it nearly covered up every ounce of bloodthirst in his pulse. His hand trailed down, following the line of Dan Feng’s jaw and then coming to rest over his throat. Dan Feng took a short breath and let it out in a shaky exhale. The hand that Blade held slowly closed, fingers intertwining with his.

With the hand on Dan Feng’s neck, Blade circled his thumb down, pressing it into the dip under the jut of his throat. He felt Dan Feng swallow and pressed harder, his vision going blurry with the way Dan Feng’s life was right in his hands, practically begging him to grab it and tear it to shreds.

He blinked, and the look on Dan Feng’s face came into focus.

Tentative, but trusting.

Confused, but aroused.

It was an expression that he’d never seen as ‘Yingxing’, but as ‘Blade’ he’d seen it plenty on a face that was all the same, yet different in the most miniscule of ways.

It made his chest go warm in a way that it really shouldn’t have– the familiarity of the future somehow intertwining with the past in the most unexpected of ways.

He let up on Dan Feng’s throat and leaned down, pausing when their lips were just barely shy of brushing against each other.

Yingxing had been a fool, blinded by love, blinded by companionship and trust. Blade was well aware of the cruelty that Dan Feng was capable of, and even more aware of its consequences.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t still a fool when faced with the irresistible offer that was Imbibitor Lunae, whichever name he happened to go by.

Blade closed the distance, kissing Dan Feng gently at first, still waiting for the world to open up beneath him and drag him away from this bizarre phantom of the past. When it didn’t, he turned his head and parted his lips, shoving his tongue into Dan Feng’s mouth without any warning.

A small sound escaped Dan Feng, something like surprise. Blade muffled it by pressing closer, intruding into Dan Feng’s mouth aggressively. His hand fell from Dan Feng’s throat to the collar of his robes and roughly tugged them open.

The muscle-memory of how to quickly tear Dan Feng’s layers off kicked in and the delicate, embroidered cloths were falling to the floor and crumpling on the bed in mere moments. Blade yanked Dan Feng’s belt open and shoved his pants and underwear down his thighs, leaving him bare and gasping against Blade’s mouth.

The sheer amount of trust that Dan Feng had in this illusion of Yingxing before him was ridiculous to Blade.

In contrast, Dan Heng flinched if Blade’s touch lingered just a little too long on his neck. His survival instincts were always active, especially around Blade, especially when things got heated, even if Dan Heng was the one to initiate it. Like a cat whose haunches never went down. At this rate, he would eventually be able to feel the mara coming before even Blade felt it.

Blade’s left hand lowered to the bed with Dan Feng’s right, his fingers closing around Dan Feng’s the way he was still half-considering closing them around his throat. His other hand dragged down over Dan Feng’s chest before curving around the side of his ribs, pressing hard enough that he could feel the outline of each bone in his grasp.

He hadn’t realised until now, but the current Dan Heng did have a bit more muscle than he’d ever developed as Dan Feng. It made sense, considering that these days he tended to prefer fighting with Cloud-Piercer in its spear form. He probably ate better too, with the Astral Express looking after him all the time.

Blade shifted, moving one leg between Dan Feng’s thighs and pushing upward.

“You–!” Dan Feng’s voice was rough with the exclamation, his ears a vibrant crimson before Blade’s hand trailed down from his ribs, curving over the soft angle of his hip. His skin… His skin felt the same.

It thrummed with that same power, that same hint of an ocean hymn just beneath the surface of a humanlike lie.

Dan Feng’s breaths were quick and heavy, but Blade just kissed him harder, almost like he could somehow consume his soul through his mouth.

His hand moved down Dan Feng’s side until his fingers dug into the supple curve of flesh and pulled, splitting him wide.

Blade released his other hand from Dan Feng’s, bringing it down to cup the underside of his erection before slipping down further, blindly feeling for Dan Feng’s hole.

A sound was muffled between them, a hand raising to lightly push at Blade’s shoulder. When he didn’t move, that hand pushed harder, shoving Blade back just enough for Dan Feng to breathe. “You– Do you remember where you put the lube?” Blade looked from Dan Feng’s lips, red and abused, to his eyes, clear and tinged with suspicion.

An amused grin split on Blade’s face.

Dan Feng was catching on. And this was his way of testing Blade.

Of course he would– No matter how reckless he was, he wasn’t an idiot.

Blade’s eyes fell back down to Dan Feng’s lips, contemplating if he could get out of this by shoving his tongue down Dan Feng’s throat. Probably not.

He had two options here.

Guess out loud, or take the chance of seeing if it was actually where he thought it was depending on what scope of time he might be in.

Or, he could kill Dan Feng here and now.

Momentarily, Blade wondered, if he killed Dan Feng here, would he reincarnate into the same Dan Heng? Would he be different somehow?

Dan Feng’s chest was still stuttering on heavy breaths, though his stare was silent and wary, waiting for Blade to say something. Slowly, he shifted, his legs closing in front of his body, defensive.

Bothersome. Blade wanted to roll his eyes. He didn’t.

Instead, he released Dan Feng and leaned to the side, his hand feeling around under the edge of the bedframe.

He found what he was looking for easily.

As he raised himself back up, Dan Feng’s eyes followed the bottle in his hand, something pensive turning behind his gaze.

“This?” Blade tilted his chin, looking down at Dan Feng before he tossed the lube carelessly to the side. Dan Feng blinked in surprise, watching it fall to the floor before his eyes quickly darted back to Blade’s.

Yes, he was catching on, but he was on the wrong track. He knew Blade was Yingxing, but it seemed he was making sure Yingxing was actually present in both mind and body, rather than making sure Blade was the right Yingxing. Granted, the situation was so absurd that Blade wouldn’t have guessed the truth either.

“So you do remember.” Dan Feng’s expression cooled as he searched Blade’s face.

Blade raised a brow, playing the fool, as though he hadn’t been wildly guessing depending on whatever year this was meant to be. “Why wouldn’t I? I had to hide it under there when Jing Yuan decided to go through my dresser looking for the ribbon I stole back from him.”

Dan Feng’s eyes softened, but there remained a hint of confusion in them. Still, he had his proof and then some. “I gave that ribbon to him. You didn’t have to be so petty.”

Blade finally rolled his eyes. “That ribbon was a gift to you. You didn’t have to use it to bandage some scratch on his arm. He would have healed anyway.”

Dan Feng levelled Blade with a stare before his eyes flickered uncertainly to the bottle on the floor. “If you’re hoping I’ll use cloudhymn, you’re sorely mistaken.”

Despite his tender relationship with the Preceptors, they’d done a decent job of ingraining the concept of sacrality in the young High Elder. Not that it would hold up through his relations with Yingxing.

Though it would have been greatly entertaining to once again witness for the first time the way Dan Feng’s face coloured with shame as he used his divine power for such a filthy purpose, Blade hadn’t actually been planning to use any lubrication at all.

He would have forced himself in dry, and it wouldn’t have been particularly comfortable for either of them, at least not until Dan Feng tore and his blood eased the way.

However, it was clear that Dan Feng was still on edge, carefully keeping note of Blade’s every reaction. Purposely choosing the roughest option possible likely wouldn’t ease his suspicions.

Blade let out a short sigh, clasping one hand over Dan Feng’s knee and bringing the other up to his own mouth, steadily holding Dan Feng’s gaze all the while.

He licked his tongue over his fingers, staring right into wide, baffled emerald as he coated them in his own saliva. He withdrew them from his mouth slowly, almost sensually, his eyes falling pointedly down to Dan Feng’s twitching member.

With the hand on Dan Feng’s knee, Blade pushed and found only a hesitant moment of resistance. He shoved that leg open, completely baring Dan Feng’s nude form to his keen gaze.

Blade pressed his fingers to Dan Feng’s hole, though he didn’t apply enough pressure for them to slip in; just enough to keep Dan Feng balanced on the edge of his own anticipation. He circled his fingers teasingly, his eyes flicking up to watch Dan Feng’s face contort in irritation.

Dan Feng took in a small breath of almost imperceptible apprehension, something he probably thought Blade wouldn’t notice. His eyes were closed tightly, his nose wrinkled in a deep frown. His pointed ears were a delectable red, as they always were when he was embarrassed, even when they were rounded in a false illusion of humanity. 

A curt, annoyed sound growled through his throat. “One of these days…” His eyes opened, glaring down at Blade. “I might have to attack you myself to make sure you know exactly how it feels to be forced to wait for every little thing.”

Blade raised his chin, tilting his head as a sly smile spread on his face. “We both know you’re too far gone to try that. You’ve taken me in time and time again, and now your body is practically programmed to accept nothing else.” Blade tugged, stretching Dan Feng’s rim slightly as though to make a point before he finally slipped two fingers in at once, making Dan Feng flinch under him. “Tell me, Dan Feng,” He added the emphasis on the second part of his name out of habit, something he was too used to doing with Dan Heng’s name. “When was the last time you actually managed to come without me?”

“Gh–” Dan Feng lowered his head, his hair falling over his eyes, shielding his expression from Blade. What it didn’t hide was the vibrant crimson of his ears, something Blade would never get enough of seeing. It was like a silent reward, every single time he saw it– a glimpse at Imbibitor Lunae’s thoughts that no one else would ever be privy to.

“Well? Can’t remember?”

Dan Feng’s hands found Blade’s forearms, his grip wrinkling the cloth of his sleeves. “...Why would I need to when I have you?” He muttered through his teeth.

“Hm, good point.” As Blade pushed his fingers deep, the restrained sound that Dan Feng made pooled in his stomach as liquid heat, making his member strain against his pants.

He wasn’t intending to prepare him much. 

Blade wanted Dan Feng to feel the imprint of the man he would ruin with his own hands, wanted him to burn with the hints of resentment stemming from actions that he had yet to commit. It was a small way of expressing his centuries of loathing and longing, the arduous entwinement of sentiment and vengeance that had taken root in his heart like a weed. 

But he was planning to twist Dan Feng around his fingers and make him strangle his own moans on that indomitable pride of his.

Blade hooked his fingers right into that bundle of nerves within Dan Feng’s body. As expected, Dan Feng bit down harshly on his own lower lip, a low groan barely making it through his throat. His hands clenched down on Blade’s arms, digging into the fabric of dark robes.

Blade leaned down, his pulse thrumming wildly in his veins with cathartic excitement as warmth seeped through his body, gathering in his gut. He bit Dan Feng’s lip away from his teeth, the iron taste of Vidyadhara blood soaking on his tongue like a sweet liquor, before he forced his way into Dan Feng’s mouth, muffling his sound of indignant surprise.

An unintentional smile, something cruel and eager, split on his lips as he dug his fingers in, making Dan Feng jolt against him, the thigh under Blade’s weight tensing. Dan Feng’s erection hung heavy between them, twitching and unattended.

Blade’s tongue traced over the points of sharp teeth, dangerous edges that Dan Heng refused to wear, as his free hand moved up to rub over the end of one of Dan Feng’s glass-like horns. 

He hadn’t felt this sensation, the smooth coolness of Vidyadhara horns, in far too long. It filled Blade with a gratification that burned in his veins and fueled his desire. As though trying to convey this deep-rooted satisfaction, almost like he was grateful for the chance to close his bare hand around that crystal-like solidity, he exhaled a sigh against Dan Feng’s mouth, his hips pushing forward to shamelessly rut against his thigh, stoking his own arousal.

Last time, on Penacony, he’d been searching for that feeling– whether consciously or not, he wasn’t sure. His hands had moved with absolute certainty that those draconic horns would be there, but every time he tried to grasp them, there was nothing but air and dark hair that was a little too short.

Now, he’d finally found them, right where they were supposed to be, gracing the top of Dan Feng’s head like a crown crafted from the ocean.

Blade rubbed at the horn, Dan Feng’s irritable warning nothing but a blurred sound against his hungry mouth. He trailed his hand down sensually, stroking down the blue-green clarity like he would Dan Feng’s length.

He dug his nails into the sensitive, cuticle layer of skin at the base of the horn, and at the same time violently thrust the fingers inside Dan Feng up into that bundle of nerves, pressing up as though trying to lift Dan Feng’s hips off the bed just by the two fingers within him.

Dan Feng flinched, a surprised shout escaping him. One of his hands flew up, shoving at Blade’s shoulder roughly.

It was enough to force Blade back, his eyes dark as he stared down at the delightfully offended look on Dan Feng’s face.

Dan Feng was panting slightly as he met Blade’s gaze, his eyes wide in bewilderment. His stern brows were furrowed, his entire face flushed, and his lips bitten bloody.

“You– What’s gotten into you?” His words were breathless, tinged with a combination of helpless arousal and agitation.

Blade just narrowed his eyes, taking in the sight beneath him. Yes, that face was a little more mature than Dan Heng’s. And to see this look on it was priceless.

Yingxing had never dared to push into aggression– not as a human, most certainly not as one who would kiss Dan Feng’s feet like a worshipper kneeling before a god. He’d come close, nearing the flickering flames of brutishness and letting his touch turn rough, almost dangerous at times, but he’d never pushed into the heat of that fire, never the way Blade was willing to shove right through. 

Blade understood what Yingxing had tentatively concerned himself with: Imbibitor Lunae was not weak. If he truly felt he was in danger, even against someone who supposedly held his trust, he would protect himself.

And it would seem that, despite all evidence, he had yet to categorise Blade as a threat.

Dan Feng, still breathing hard, scanned over Blade’s face, as though he might be able to see some disparity between the past and future by merely looking. Blade wondered what he would do if he did realise that the Yingxing before him was a man who had been forcefully torn away from his own humanity.

Would he be repulsed? Would he recoil from Blade like he was a stranger?

Or would he be distraught with the effects of his own actions? With the proof of the trust that he would inevitably tear to shreds?

No, hadn’t Yingxing seen this look of perplexed arousal before?

But the face that he’d seen this expression on… it had been younger. Dan Feng’s hair had been shorter.

Blade’s head ached, his eyes blurring as his own heartbeat seemed to echo in his ears. This moment that he was in, was it his present? Or was it a reenactment of Yingxing’s present?

He could have sworn he’d never been so brazen, never–

A hand brushing over the side of Blade’s face snapped him away from his own thoughts. He hadn’t even noticed Dan Feng letting go of his arm.

Blade leaned into that hand without meaning to, his grip loosening on Dan Feng’s horn. Dan Feng’s lips pursed in a look of indignant confusion. His hand shifted, suddenly gripping Blade’s chin and holding it tightly.

Blade blinked in surprise as Dan Feng held him in place.

He may have looked thin, but the High Elder’s strength was not to be underestimated.

“...You’re acting like a brute.”

Blade licked over his own lip with his tongue, tasting the lingering flavour of Dan Feng’s blood, an ambrosia that only partially sated a deadly need within his soul.

“And you’re acting like you like it.” He curled his fingers again, grinning at the way he watched a shiver take over Dan Feng’s body. 

The hand on Dan Feng’s horn moved, lowering to his hard member, scarred fingers closing around reddened flesh. Dan Feng’s eyes squeezed shut, his hand flinching on Blade’s jaw.

With the fingers on his face loosened, Blade tilted his head down, his teeth poised to bite into the thin skin between Dan Feng’s thumb and index finger.

He didn’t.

He wasn’t sure why.

Instead, he raised his chin back up. “Not going to deny it, High Elder?” Dan Feng opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Blade rubbed his fingers slowly, pressing just barely, and tightened his grip with his other hand. Dan Feng tilted his head back with a groan, exposing that neck of his, open and bare and so, so vulnerable.

Before Blade could consider that open weakness, something washed over him, washed over his very concept of self, a sense of wonder at his own thoughts, at the violence that had become an indisputable core of his broken, cursed body.

His brow twitched.

This sensation was… familiar.

The ebb of sentimentality, forging his consciousness into some mutation of the past and present, as though they were somehow one and the same, as though everything that had happened had yet to occur at the same time that it was doomed to take place anyways.

The only other time he’d experienced this was on Penacony, when the memoria had latched onto him like a leash trying to tug him backwards and forwards at the same time.

Dan Feng’s hand slipped off Blade’s face, finding purchase in the collar of his robes, tugging them open slightly. “...Just quit taking your time.” His voice was low and his expression was serious, almost endearingly so, considering how bright red his ears were. Blade nearly laughed.

He leaned back down, so close that he could see the minute fluctuations of Dan Feng’s oblong pupils. “I’ll do as I please.” His voice growled through his throat, an unspoken threat hanging on the edges of his smile, along with a promise of doing anything but picking up the pace.

He dragged his hand up Dan Feng’s length, making him shudder as Blade pressed a deceptively gentle kiss to his temple.

Dan Feng’s hand pulled at Blade’s robes, exposing his chest. He seemed to freeze, a small breathy sound leaving him. Blade pulled back, sitting up to let Dan Feng stare. He took in the look on his face, the confused horror etched into those jade eyes, with no small amount of satisfaction.

“Yingxing…” Dan Feng muttered, the name practically a whisper. His brows furrowed as his eyes darted over Blade’s chest, over the deep scars that marred his skin. He quickly raised his other hand, pulling Blade’s robes down over his arms, revealing more of his torso, more of those scars. “What is this?” His eyes hardened as he glared up at Blade. “Exactly what kind of ‘alchemy’ caused this?”

Blade’s expression revealed no answers. In fact, his face was perfectly nonchalant, almost uncaring.

“They’ll fade,” he lied simply, hooking his fingers intently into that sensitive knot inside Dan Feng. Dan Feng winced, his fingers clasping in the fabric of Blade’s robes as Blade rubbed his other thumb through the pre-spend gathering on Dan Feng’s tip.

“They don’t look–gh…” Blade stroked his hand down, eased by Dan Feng’s own fluids, as he slowly pulled his fingers back only to thrust them back in. He leaned down again, his lips grazing against the shell of Dan Feng’s ear.

His member was almost painfully hard, bulging against the front of his pants as he pushed down against Dan Feng’s leg again.

Dan Heng had stamina in excess. Dan Feng had double that. After all, he had more experience and access to a young, energetic Yingxing.

These days, Blade was barely keeping up with Dan Heng, who had apparently been a virgin up until that night on the Luofu. Which meant if Blade really wanted to torture Dan Feng on the precipice of shameful arousal, he’d have to drag things out even more. 

Still, in his lifetime of dealing with Imbibitor Lunae’s startling lack of patience, and in his base urges to test that patience to its very limits, Blade had learned to keep it in surplus.

“Yingxing, answer– mnh!” Dan Feng bit down on his lower lip again, his entire body jolting against Blade. The twitch of his leg granted a provocative pressure against Blade’s clothed erection as Blade’s teeth sank into his ear unforgivingly. Dan Feng’s hands released Blade’s robes in favour of grabbing his arms, his fingers digging into scarred skin.

Blade pressed the nail of his thumb into a prominent vein in Dan Feng’s member before scratching up along the hard curve of it. At the same time, he bit down even harder, considering the urge to rip Dan Feng’s ear in half. 

All he had to do was turn his head fast enough.

A low moan interrupted his thoughts, one that bordered on a frustrated whine. “The… scars…” Dan Feng was nothing if not persistent.

Blade slowly, almost hesitantly released Dan Feng’s ear. His body felt like it wasn’t his own, his mind conjuring gruesome ideas that were beyond savagery. “It was just an experiment… I won’t do it again,” he whispered, turning his head and closing his eyes as he breathed in the familiar scent of Dan Feng’s long hair. 

It wasn’t an experiment. It wasn’t even alchemy. It was merely the proof of the monster he would become.

He stroked his hand faster, rhythmic movements up and down Dan Feng’s throbbing erection as he rolled his own hips slightly, pushing up against Dan Feng’s leg.

The only response Dan Feng managed to give was a coarse groan. His arms shifted, moving up to wrap around Blade’s neck and pull him down, keeping him close. Dan Feng’s entire body shuddered, his release splattering over his own stomach and Blade’s hand as a long, deep sound was muffled against Blade’s shoulder.

Rather than slowing down, Blade stroked up Dan Feng’s length even faster, his teeth once again closing on his ear, though this time the bite lacked the prior ferocity.

Dan Feng flinched, his arms tensing around Blade’s neck, his hands tugging slightly at his hair in a weak attempt to pull him back. “Wait– I already…” Alarm filled his voice, along with a plaintive edge.

“Wait?” Blade repeated against Dan Feng’s ear with a mischievous smile, his hand stopping abruptly to clench tightly around the head of his length. Dan Feng made a short, surprised noise, the fingers in Blade’s hair tugging harder. 

Blade’s other hand withdrew with a lewd, wet sound before moving to shove the waistband of his own pants down over his hips, exposing his hard, swollen erection. Then, that hand pushed on Dan Feng’s thigh, forcing his leg fully to the side.

Blade pushed forward, the tip of his member pressing against Dan Feng’s entrance as he breathed an open-mouthed kiss to the hollow of Dan Feng’s shoulder. Eager desire was thrashing in his veins, adrenaline thrumming loud in his ears.

Suddenly, Blade’s heart lurched in his chest, a painful feeling nagging at the back of his mind, a desolate grief that made him falter. 

His brows furrowed as he lifted his head to look down at his own hand, down at the scars that had never belonged to Yingxing. He had more than he could count, but he could have sworn his fingers were less blemished than they should have been.

He blinked, hesitation slipping over him like a dark veil.

Blade swallowed thickly. He’d been intending to attack Dan Feng like an animal, even more violently than he’d taken Dan Heng under the bloody haze of mara. He would have sought his own pleasure and Dan Feng’s pain, forcing the two into a feral coupling of bodies that weren’t meant to exist in the same time.

But as he took a long strand of Dan Feng’s dark hair between his fingers, not pulling, just holding, he was overcome by something he couldn’t even name. Some kind of mourning, paired with a sense of severe displacement, like the feeling of trespassing on a hallowed grave.  

He pulled back before lowering his hips, his member brushing against Dan Feng’s, the heat of the contact sending a shiver up his spine.

He pushed, dropping his weight against Dan Feng to create more friction, grinding his hips down harshly, as though if he tested the limits between pleasure and pain he might have been able to regain the parts of himself that he could sense slipping away.

“Are you… trying to find new ways to annoy me?” Dan Feng’s voice hitched up, his head tilting back as Blade rocked against him. “Just… put it in…” His lips drew thin in an embarrassed grimace and something seemed to crack deep inside Blade’s chest.

Dan Heng had said the exact same thing, in that exact same tone with a voice that was only slightly different.

Just as impatient as he would always be.

“...Not this time.” The words felt heavy on his tongue, a quote from a self that he had yet to become.

A quote from a future that he would only witness through the eyes of a man that would never be able to turn back, never be able to return to those moonlit nights of laughter and warm kisses that tasted like wine.

Blade went still for a moment. He took a breath, and it felt like the first breath he’d taken in an eternity. 

Uneasiness washed over him with the realisation that his own present had just briefly become his concept of the future.

Dan Heng groaned in frustration beneath him, one of his hands curling in the bedsheets while the other held firmly to Blade’s arm.

Blade cleared his throat, letting out a shaky exhale. He controlled his expression, letting Dan Feng’s hair slip away from his fingers. He brought his hand down, closing on the side of Dan Feng’s hip.

Even his hips were slimmer than Dan Heng’s.

Blade tilted his head, letting his eyes narrow. “What happened to helping Jing Yuan? Or do you want my come dripping out of you for the rest of the day?”

Dan Feng’s entire body tensed, his face scrunching up in distaste as his ears and face burned red. “You are insufferable.”

“I’ll take that as a no,” Blade said dryly, rolling his hips again, his hand opening briefly to create a warm cage around both Dan Feng and himself.

On Penacony, he’d kept himself from the pleasure of sinking into that warmth for a reason he would never tell Dan Heng, even if he were begged for it.

Blade had sensed the past and future slipping into himself, his own self and selves merging as one.

And selfishly, he hadn’t wanted to share that moment with them.

He didn’t want to share the bright blush of Dan Heng’s ears and shoulders, he didn’t want to share the solemn reminder of his short hair slipping between his fingers, and he didn’t want to share the lithe muscle of someone that had trained dedicatedly with the spear crafted by self-assured, tireless hands.

But this time, something else held him back.

Maybe it was the fact that this Imbibitor Lunae before him, this piece of that timeless being, was no longer… his.

Dan Heng and Dan Feng were the same soul, and that soul would only ever belong to the shattered heart within the man that once called himself Yingxing.

But the portion of time that called itself ‘Dan Feng’ belonged to the brief humanity of ‘Yingxing’, and the rebirth called ‘Dan Heng’ belonged to the eternally damned ‘Blade’.

Dan Heng and Blade were not lovers. They couldn’t be.

But at the same time, Dan Heng was his.

Dan Feng…

He belonged to ‘Yingxing’.

Blade's thrusts slowed slightly, to an unhurried pace. He lifted up to kiss Dan Feng long and slow, just taking in the taste of him for a drawn out moment, as though he were a sweet intoxication that could only be sampled once. Dan Feng seemed to melt against him, his hands shifting to cup the sides of Blade’s face, his legs hooking around his back.

Blade had forgotten how silently possessive Dan Feng could be.

Would Dan Heng be the same way one day, once he managed to break past his youthful awkwardness?

Would Blade be forced to live long enough to witness it?

He exhaled a sigh against Dan Feng’s lips before slowly, almost painstakingly drawing away, his eyes opening just enough to look down at the expression on Dan Feng’s face.

“Yingxing…” Dan Feng gazed up at him, eyes half-lidded, his pink lips parted just slightly on heaving breaths. A heady blush was smattered over his face and ears.

That tone…

This. Blade missed this. All of it.

It made his chest ache, made him clench his jaw to subdue the way he was overcome by a feeling of palpable loneliness.

With a heavy swallow, he dropped his head to Dan Feng’s shoulder, hiding his face in long, silky hair.

It was painful.

Torturous.

Dan Heng would never speak to him with that voice, no matter how Blade might dread it.

Such things were behind them, after all.

Now, every glance was one of hesitation.

Now, every meeting was tenuous, either violent or brief, sometimes both.

Now, they both went by different names.

Now, he had other companions, people Blade knew practically nothing about.

There was something to that thought, something almost bitter that seeped into Blade’s veins.

The fact that Dan Feng had once belonged almost wholly to Yingxing. The parts of him that didn’t, they belonged to people that Yingxing was an equal part of.

The impact of the High-Cloud Quintet spanned across the entirety of the Xianzhou, possibly further, to other civilizations that were affected by the Abundance. But all five of them existed in a miniscule world, one that consisted of the High-Cloud Quintet and those few others close enough to be considered family. Even if they were hailed as heroes– Outcasts as they were, they belonged only to each other.

But Dan Heng… Dan Heng was a Nameless. The Nameless belonged to the cosmos itself, to every single heart that the Astral Express connected to.

It was… bizarre, to be able to revel in his own nauseating, raw emotions like this. Normally the mara would have dragged him away from it, pulled him into a haze of vengeful fury before he could linger on the throbbing of his own heartbeat and the thickness in his throat. 

“Dan Heng…” Blade whispered it quietly enough that Dan Feng wouldn’t have been able to tell it from his own name. 

He felt his face burn slightly, his lips still slightly parted on the words, that name that was the future of this person that he would willingly follow to the grave, but never, never to an eternity of life.

…Something was wrong.

Blade gritted his teeth, mentally wrestling control back from whatever this was, this parasite sinking into his thoughts and actions. He thrust forward roughly, sighing with the feeling of Dan Feng’s nails, longer and more shapely than Dan Heng’s, scratching into his shoulders, digging raw, red lines through his skin. His mouth found the side of Dan Feng’s neck and he bit down, forcing a gratifying gasp out of Dan Feng.

He was sure of it now– This was the same feeling he’d had on Penacony.

His head felt crowded. As though he were somehow remembering this moment at the same time that he was mentally recording it for the very first time.

It made him wonder what was real.

It made him wonder why Dan Heng looked so much older suddenly when they’d seen each other so recently, where that leanness of his had gone.

It made him wonder why he was so, so tempted to summon a sword that wasn’t even his to wield.

For a moment, the creature before him was neither Dan Heng nor Dan Feng. For that moment, Blade was… no longer ‘Blade’. He was something else, the same soul wearing a different identity, a new cycle of burning longing.

This was more than just ‘Blade’ or ‘Yingxing’.

This was an amalgamation of time itself. 

Before him, before this nameless amalgamation, was Imbibitor Lunae. Not Dan Heng, and not Dan Feng, but the soul that bound them together, the endless and timeless crux of the being that the arrogant forgemaster and the Xianzhou’s most wanted criminal once and forevermore cursed himself to long for.

He lifted up and his hair slipped over his shoulder, midnight strands dangling over a flushed, heaving chest.

He went still, somehow surprised to see his own hair so dark, as though it had been completely white only just the day prior. It seemed like something foreign– something that had long been put behind him, or something that should have actually been far into the future.

Dan Feng moved one of his hands, taking that piece of hair in his slim, trembling fingers. “You were right…” He muttered hoarsely. “It did go back to normal.”

Blade blinked back into the present. No, the past.

He glanced down at the strands of hair in Dan Feng’s fingers, not a trace of red to be seen.

The stain of the Abundance was gone.

A vague sense of fear creeped up his spine.

This, whatever this was, something was wrong about it.

His perception of his own existence was fracturing, splitting like the branches of an infinitely growing tree.

Blade was breathing hard, his eyes wide. His hand, notably unmarked, shook as he brought it up to Dan Feng’s face, his vision blurring as he stared at those emerald eyes capable of such cruelty.

That face was a little more mature than Dan Heng’s. It was Blade’s past and Dan Heng’s future.

Despite his dizzy expression, cheeks and ears dusted red with arousal, Dan Feng’s eyes narrowed, but not in suspicion, not in distrust. Blade flinched as a hand brushed against the side of his face, thoroughly startled by the contact despite the fact that Dan Feng moved fully within his sight. That hand moved up, pushing his hair back and away from his face, baring his lost, frantic expression.

It was gentle. Tender.

Sickening.

“Are you…”

Blade didn’t let Dan Feng finish. He couldn’t let him ask any questions, couldn’t let him get closer to the surreal truth of that moment. He kissed him quickly, their lips meeting so roughly that Dan Feng’s head sank deeper into the sheets beneath him.

He snatched his hand away from Dan Feng’s cheek, dropping it down to dart under the curve of his leg, fingers shoving back into him and immediately pressing up. Dan Feng inhaled sharply through his nose, his chest hitching on a startled gasp.

Blade closed his other hand around their members, dragging up through the wet warmth of pre-release as both of Dan Feng’s arms looped around the back of his neck.

He was losing his awareness of himself, of everything that made him the current ‘Blade’.

Without ‘Blade’, without his current self, he was nothing but an end-seeking shell. After all, there was no returning to ‘Yingxing’.

Right?

He couldn’t help but think of a conversation he’d had with Jing Yuan, when he’d sat on the floor of the Shackling Prison, his hands bound by chains and talismans. The disciple boy had been sent away, and Jing Yuan was apparently underestimating Blade enough to allow for guards to only be positioned outside of the room. In retrospect, it was likely because he’d been hoping to find some hint of sanity in Blade through nonthreatening conversation. 

It flashed through his mind as though he were imagining it to happen in the future, rather than recalling a factual memory.

“Looking at you now…” The corners of Jing Yuan’s lips had lifted, though in his eyes was a deep, tired melancholy. “I can’t even see the man I once knew.”

Blade had scoffed, sneering. “Disappointed? Or…” He’d raised his chin slightly, a cruel but delectably tantalising idea surfacing in the back of his mind. “Does it make you feel like you’ve finally found an advantage on me after all our years of pointless banter?” The mara was still boiling within him, a bitter flame that ached in his veins, making him want nothing more than to slice Jing Yuan’s head right off.

Jing Yuan’s eyes had narrowed, his lazy smile widening into a slight grimace. “Neither. I’m just… saddened to see you like this. You were… a mentor to me. A comrade. A friend.” His brows raised slightly. “A nuisance.” A hint of a laugh slipped into his tone. “A rival. Practically an elder brother.”

“‘Rival’?” Amusement glittered in Blade’s eyes. “For what?” He tilted his head mockingly. “Imbibitor Lunae?”

Jing Yuan blinked, remaining silent. It didn’t matter what he said. The truth was clear enough between them, and it always had been. 

After all, there once had been a tender understanding between them, a realisation of their common feelings for that unreachable figure and a meaningless series of unending quarrels as a result. 

Blade rolled his eyes. “That childish crush of yours was never going to see fruition. Compared to the rest of us, even a short-life species like me, you were just a brat.”

“And yet you still treated me like an equal, whether we were laughing or arguing.” Jing Yuan’s voice was slow and controlled, tinted with a gentle nostalgia.

“Well, I’m sure you’re glad to see this ‘rival’ of yours in such a predicament.” Blade’s tone dropped, annoyance filtering into his words. He struggled against his bonds to make a point, the chains clattering against the hard floor beneath him. “The ways he and I have changed– Is it fun to see us at such odds?”

Jing Yuan huffed a laugh. “Not quite. Though if you’re offering to leave him be rather than lording the past over him like a curse, I won’t object.” Jing Yuan’s voice softened. “He deserves freedom.”

“And what? Hand him over to you? So you can fulfil your naïve infatuation? I didn’t think you would hold onto that this long.” In the back of his mind, Blade was aware he was being unreasonable. But reason was far from the tip of his tongue, pushed aside by the ebbing bloodlust and spite pulsing through him.

Jing Yuan finally frowned. “Don’t speak of him as though he’s something to be controlled. He’s no property.”

Blade just grinned. “Even if I did think of him that way, even if he was so pliant as to let me do with him as I please, I wouldn’t let him go to you.” He spat the last word out, the red of his eyes glimmering with a warning. “You who stood by as though none of it had anything to do with you. You who claims so boldly that the Luofu doesn’t engage in torture.” Blade’s arms strained against his bonds as he took a deep breath. “We both know that isn’t true.” His expression shifted to a hateful glare without himself even realising. “Of five people, three must pay. You are not one of them. But that doesn’t mean you haven’t sinned just as the rest of us have.” 

Even if Blade was so filled with mara-fueled anguish that retribution seemed like the only course of action, only three were to pay the price. And no matter how wrong it might have seemed in that moment, no matter how Blade thought it should have been so, Jing Yuan was not among them.

Jing Yuan’s brows furrowed, something like grief momentarily layering over his features before his eyes hardened. “I was young. I was foolish and fearful. The Sedition–”

“You were an adult by short-life standards.” Blade felt a dangerous resentment simmering low in his chest. “By your age at that time, I was already holding my own and fending for myself. Immaturity is no excuse for purposeful ignorance.”

Jing Yuan was quiet for a long moment, his eyes falling over Blade in deep consideration. Something softened in his expression. “...I’m glad. I was wrong.”

Blade didn’t speak, but the tilt of his head was enough to convey a question.

“You…You’re still you, at your core. Driven by self-righteousness and vengeance, eternally holding others to the impossible standards you set for yourself.”

You’re still you.

Was he?

Was Blade really still Yingxing? Could he really still claim that name, and all the memories, all the gentleness and longing that came with it?

No.

No.

Yingxing was dead.

He’d died in increments, small moments of unbearable anguish. 

The first piece had broken away in that terrific, horrible moment on the battlefield, rain pouring down relentlessly from the heavens, a single starskiff shooting across the sky and crashing right into a vortex of darkness and fire. 

Then, another piece broke off when he’d first realised the abomination that he’d become, the grotesque creature he’d been made into against his will. 

What little remained of him shattered when the heartbeat on his wrist, something that should have continued beating for centuries beyond his own, went silent.

So if he was dead, how was he here, alive and well? How was he able to feel his heart pounding in his chest, the soft brush of his long, dark hair falling over his shoulders and back? How was he seeing that face beneath him, something that filled him with such sickening yearning?

Dan Feng sucked in a sharp breath as Blade pulled his fingers out quickly, almost frantically. He sat up, his eyes running wildly over this familiar yet utterly alien visage before him, something that felt so, so wrong to be seeing.

He was overcome by an intense urge to flee.

He wasn’t meant to be here. This was his past, and someone else’s present. But as seconds ticked by, as Blade sank into a corpse of an identity, his physical being gradually blurring into an effigy of what was once himself, he questioned even that. 

Dan Feng growled a low sound that seemed to come from his chest, his lips pulling thin in an annoyed grimace. “Don’t expect me to beg, Yingxing. Hurry up before I really do push you down myself.”

He glanced up irritably, but as he saw the look on Blade’s face, his expression shifted.

Dan Feng’s eyes scanned over Blade’s face, some kind of curiosity behind his gaze. His hands, resting on Blade’s shoulders, shifted just slightly, like he was reaffirming the solidity of Blade’s body under his touch. His palms were moist with sweat, though against Blade’s skin they almost felt too damp, too wet, slightly cold– like they’d just been submerged in water.

Dan Feng’s gaze fell, one of his hands falling with them, trailing over Blade’s collarbone, over blank spaces of skin that hadn't been blank mere minutes prior. 

Blade blinked quickly, forcing his breaths to even and closing his eyes. He inhaled deeply as Dan Feng’s hand drifted down his chest, slim fingers fanning out, their touch almost dewy against heated skin. A drop of Blade’s sweat fell, pooling against the junction between Dan Feng’s fingers.

Though Dan Heng’s hands were more calloused, though the skin of his palms was rougher, his fingers a little thicker, they were still the same hands.

If Blade kept his eyes closed, he could almost imagine that it was Dan Heng beneath him, that he wasn’t trapped in some bizarre nightmare masquerading as a dream.

That hand pushed up suddenly, groping Blade’s breast. The corners of Blade’s lips lifted incredulously, his eyes slowly opening as he raised a brow.

Dan Feng’s lips pursed, almost like he was deep in thought as he tested the weight of Blade’s chest against his hand. “You’ve gained some weight.” He said it matter-of-factly, as though making an observation.

Blade huffed something like amusement. “...You’ve lost some.” Though he’d lost it in reverse, since that weight, the effect of actually eating full meals and consistent physical training wouldn’t be gained until hundreds of years later.

Dan Feng’s lips parted, his eyes falling down Blade’s torso. “Yi-” He drifted off, his mouth closing. His eyes met Blade’s, and Blade was struck by an unnerving sense that he was being seen right through, right down to his core. It made him feel flighty again, the hair on the back of his neck standing up as though he were faced with a threat. His shoulders tensed, like his body was already subconsciously preparing to fight.

Dan Feng’s eyes searched his face, but there was no doubt in his gaze, no apprehension. 

“...You’re mine.” His expression was serious, perfectly resolute, as though he were stating a grim fact. Blade’s heart was racing in his chest. He’d thought for a moment that Dan Feng had somehow managed to figure out exactly what was going on, exactly how wrong this all was.

“...Of course.”

At this point, Blade had no idea if it was the truth or a bold-faced lie.

It could have been both. Perhaps, in the truest sense, it was.

Dan Feng inhaled slowly, his arms snaking back up to hook around Blade’s neck. “Then obey this command:” Dan Feng paused, a small smile rising on his face. “Hurry up and finish what you’ve started already. We can take our time later.”

Blade tilted his head slightly, feeling oddly complacent. “...Fine.”

He rocked forward, watching Dan Feng’s expression tighten in pleasure as Blade rekindled the tension between them.

Dan Feng tugged, and Blade let him, falling until their chests were touching, two heartbeats that should never have known each other thudding together.

Blade rutted against Dan Feng, pushing up against the heat of his member, while his hand rose to loosely cup them both.

He let out a restrained groan as Dan Feng’s mouth sucked a deep mark into the side of his neck, a sensation that Blade suddenly realised he’d been starved for. He tilted his head to give Dan Feng more space, closing his eyes to let himself imagine that those soft lips belonged to another version of the same person.

He moved faster, losing whatever rhythm he’d had, and Dan Feng’s lips moved up, sucking another bruise just under Blade’s ear.

Blade moved one hand under Dan Feng’s waist, tugging him into an arch, tugging him closer, while his other hand stroked the back of Dan Feng’s erection, getting quicker, less controlled with each push of his hips.

“Mngh–” Dan Feng’s lips parted on Blade’s neck, a gravelly sound hot against his skin as his arms and legs tightened on Blade’s neck and sides, his knees digging into Blade’s ribs. Warmth splattered between their bodies.

Blade’s hand closed tighter, his movements turning messier, more desperate. A low moan grated through his throat, his jaw clenching as he came, his spend spilling over Dan Feng’s stomach and chest.

“Yingxing… Dan Feng whispered into his hair, turning his face to kiss Blade’s ear. “I…”

Blade moved quickly. His hand clamped over Dan Feng’s mouth.

If he heard those words…

He wasn’t sure what it would do to him. To his soul, to the fragments barely holding him together in his knowledge that this past was not his present.

Imbibitor Lunae wasn’t one to often express his affection vocally.

This was a rare occasion. One that Blade wondered if he’d just stolen.

He took a slow, deep breath. He turned his head to press his lips against Dan Feng’s neck and released his other hand from his softening length. “Save it for the rooftop… Tell me under the stars, with wine warming our veins.”

Dan Feng huffed a small sound as Blade withdrew his hand from his mouth as well. “...Perhaps.”

Those words didn’t belong to Blade anymore.

He and Yingxing were one and the same, but at the same time, they were two different beings, two separate existences. Yingxing existed before Blade. Blade existed after Yingxing. There was no overlap. There shouldn’t have been any overlap.

But then…

Who was this person right in front of him?

Did it matter? Why would it?

Were Dan Feng and Dan Heng truly one and the same, the same way Yingxing and Blade were?

Were they different, the same way Yingxing and Blade were?

Even if they weren’t, the soul of Imbibitor Lunae was a soul nonetheless, and it was the truest essence of both Dan Feng and Dan Heng.

Even if Dan Heng hadn’t had Dan Feng’s memories, even if the rebirth hadn’t been a tampered mess, they still had the same core.

When Yingxing fell in love with Dan Feng, when he bound himself to the loneliness and self-dectruction that would come of a mere human seeking to covet a Scion of Permanence, he fell in love with the crux of Imbibitor Lunae.

Whether Dan Heng was or wasn’t Dan Feng, he was still the person that Yingxing, and now Blade, would inevitably find himself forced back towards, the person he would fall into time and time again.

‘And you? Do you think you’re just part of that cycle too?’

The indignant look on his face, a deep, pained hopelessness in grey-green eyes.

‘Why else would you be sitting here like I couldn’t tear your throat out any second now?’

The Vidyadhara cycle of rebirth was a paradoxical loop. Of this Blade was certain.

But that wasn’t the only cycle he’d been referring to with his answer, even if Dan Heng didn’t know that.

They were both trapped, endlessly parting and meeting again like a converging tide.

It was excruciating at the same time that it was intoxicating.

Blade wouldn’t have been able to honestly say whether he wanted it to end or not.

He could still smell incense. He could smell the heady combination of sweat and lovemaking along with it.

He could taste the lingering flavour of Dan Feng’s blood, the taste that Blade had forced from his lips and neck.

He could hear heavy breathing, both his own and Dan Feng’s, and distantly, he could hear a bird chirping outside.

He could feel various fluids turning sticky across his body, and the tacky sensation of Dan Feng’s arms still wrapped around his neck, his chest rising and falling against Blade’s. He could feel Dan Feng’s hair against his face, and his shoulder under his chin, and the way his robes hung loosely on his body, disarrayed and open.

He turned his head slightly, and he could see the gold earring in Dan Feng’s ear, the deep blush across his face and the slight part of his lips.

Whatever this was, it still smelled and tasted and sounded and felt and looked like reality.

Dan Feng let out a sigh and shifted, his arms loosening and one of his legs nudging at Blade’s side. “Let me up?”

Blade hesitated only a moment before he moved, rolling over onto his back and releasing Dan Feng. He stared blankly as Dan Feng sat up, raising his arms to push loose strands of his long hair over his back.

He silently watched as Dan Feng walked over to the connected bathroom, and then when he disappeared Blade stared up at the ceiling above himself.

He wondered, briefly, if maybe that other reality, that future that was meant to be his present, was nothing but a dream after all.

The woman who felt no fear, the girl determined to break through every limit, the soldier who only wanted to dream, and the slave of destiny were nothing but characters he’d made up in his sleep.

And Dan Feng would only ever be Dan Feng, until the day that Yingxing inevitably met the end of his human tenure.

The High-Cloud Quintet would gather around his grave, but none of them would be sad. Yingxing’s death would be beautiful, it would be the glorious end of a brief brilliance, like a wilted flower whose vibrant red had finally faded away, exactly as it was meant to.

The Xianzhou would speak of the master craftsman for centuries after his end, would praise his accomplishments, his works of art, and his genius.

Jingliu might crack a smile when telling a story about him to some younger generation of disciples, their faces lit up with curiosity.

Jing Yuan would tie his hair with a ribbon that technically wasn’t supposed to be his, moving his mane of tangles so it wouldn’t fall in the way as he cleaned the flawlessly radiant glaive he’d been gifted.

Baiheng would look fondly on all the things he’d made for her over the course of his life, brushing her soft tail with a delicately carved comb and recalling the shy boy she’d met on the Zhuming.

Dan Feng would toast to a memory, raising a lone cup of wine to the moon, the other cup sitting full at his side.

Yingxing wouldn’t be there to witness any of it. He would be nothing but stardust.

But what of those characters from his dream?

Blade would never meet them. He would never find himself huddled back to back with a fearless assassin under enemy fire, he would never leave plates of food next to a bright monitor screen in a dark room, he would never watch over a silent, sleeping girl in a cryo-pod, and he would never find himself subconsciously scratching innumerable black cats behind the ears.

Dan Feng stepped out of the bathroom and walked back over to the bed to retrieve his clothes. He grabbed his coat from the bed, and before he turned away to pull it on, he paused, staring at Blade’s face. Blade met his gaze, too many emotions and thoughts flying through his head for any of them to show up clearly in his expression.

Dan Feng reached out, his hand brushing over the side of Blade’s face for a moment, his eyes softening before his fingers drew away. He went back to collecting his clothes, meticulously replacing each of his layers. 

Blade just watched, feeling almost… homesick. He waited to blink away from this reality, waited to wake up to the sound of low purring and the burnt smell of some failed attempt at cooking.

 Dan Feng folded his collar, tightened his belt, pulled his coat over his shoulders, and shook out his sleeves. He walked over to the door, pausing with his hand raised to pull it.

“I ought to go wake Jing Yuan up. I’m sure he’s fallen asleep at the training grounds waiting for me.”

Blade looked away from him. “I’ll… be there in a moment.”

Dan Feng hummed a low sound. “No. You’re going to go buy plum wine. Two jars of the finest quality available.”

Blade blinked as Dan Feng slid the screen door open. “I’ll see you tonight.” He paused, one of his slender hands slipping down the frame of the screen as he glanced back at Blade. “And I expect a little more than just hands and teeth later.”

If there was anything Blade was looking forward to, it was the day that Dan Heng finally decided to be as bold as Dan Feng had eventually managed to be, even if his ears never stopped turning red just by alluding to intimacy.

Unfortunately, Blade couldn’t admire that delectable blush for long, as Dan Feng turned once again and finally left, sliding the screen shut behind himself.

Suddenly alone, Blade sat silently, letting reality, if this could truly be called such a thing, sink in. He stared at the door for a long moment, settling into the resolute realisation that he was still so, so weak.

The opportunity had been right there. Dan Feng’s trust had been right in his hands, along with his pale throat.

But he hadn’t grasped it.

It felt like centuries of debilitating hatred and heartache amounting to nothing but the painful realisation of his own sentimentality.

Some part of him was expecting to be filled with a poisonous wish, a desire to remain here, to assume his own identity and relive the past for however many years were left of it.

Strangely, he wasn’t.

With a deep sigh, he stood from the bed. He grabbed the bottle of lube from the floor and put it back under the bedframe before walking towards the bathroom.

He would have to consider how to find his way back to his true present, but before that, he wanted to at least wash his hands.

He dazedly turned the sink on, his unmarred hands sliding against each other under the cool water.

He glanced up and his eyes found the mirror.

There were still some scars on his chest, and if not for their presence, he might have really believed that ‘Blade’ was nothing but a twisted nightmare.

His hair was dark, one solid colour.

And his eyes, tired and lined with dark circles, were somewhere between red and violet, looking far more human than they had in centuries.

Blade quirked one side of his mouth up in a grimace of a smile, seeing the familiar crease that only got deeper and deeper as he got older until it almost disappeared entirely on that fateful day.

He let his face relax and just stared at himself, at the peculiar situation he’d found himself in as water continued running uselessly over his hands.

As he stared at himself, watching in wonder as the marks on his chest slowly faded before his eyes, he began to wonder why he felt so peculiar in his own skin.

He raised a hand to his collarbone, felt the way his scarred flesh seemed to layer over itself, smoothing out beneath his fingertips.

Where had all these scars even come from?

A memory of a voice flashed through his mind.

“Listen.”

Whose voice was it?

The brows of his reflection furrowed in confusion.

“Listen.”

Listen. To what? To whom?

Why couldn’t he place a face with that voice, that gentle, lazy tone that made him feel as though he were being embraced by a warm cocoon?

A meow.

He looked around the room, baffled, water splashing off his hands as he moved. There were certainly no cats around him. And Mimi never left Jing Yuan’s side, so it wouldn't make sense for her to have slipped into his room.

“We could try dumping ice water on him.” A young, almost bored voice, though it was tinted with barely-veiled concern.

“His body is barely even tangible. I don’t think ice water would do much, dear.”

The young voice, a girl, grumbled in annoyance. “Gghhh, first Sam, now Blade… exactly how many of us are going to end up in comas?”

“This isn’t entropy-loss,” the older woman said resolutely. “Unfortunately, even our little stowaway didn’t know what it was, despite being the cause of it.” She sighed heavily.

He felt a pressure, as though he were laying on a bed and someone had just sat down on the end of it, even though he was standing in the middle of his bathroom. He looked back at the mirror and immediately recoiled.

His reflection was transparent.

Frantically, he looked down at his hands to see that it wasn’t just some trick of the light. He could actually see right through them.

“Listen.”

No, he didn’t want to listen.

He brought his shaking hands up to his head, his fingers tangling in dark hair as a horde of memories seemed to completely envelop him, flashing before his eyes. The sound of the sink running was distant, far in the background of his thoughts.

“Bladie, can you hear me?”

He felt something sink into his body, like a thread being pulled right through him.

He fell to his knees, though the pain of landing on the floor was muted, like he’d actually landed on a pillow. Images flashed around him, pictures of horrible things that he knew to be fact.

Blood.

Rain.

Jingliu’s face, twisted in agony and spite.

Jing Yuan’s back, turned away, his shoulders shaking with silent tears.

A small piece of Baiheng’s hair.

And those emerald eyes, on a face that was much the same, but slightly different.

Blade sucked in a breath, his eyes flying open, frantically wide. It was the same feeling he had every time he woke from the kind embrace of death.

He sat up quickly, but a slim hand pushed at his shoulder, pushed him back down. He stared at Kafka with a panicked expression, stared at her relieved, sympathetic smile.

“Welcome back.” Her voice was comforting, something familiar in a way that didn’t leave Blade reeling.

Silver Wolf shifted on her feet next to Kafka, her shoulders relaxing slightly, as though she’d been tense. “Guess we won’t need the ice bucket.”

Blade took a deep, shaky breath, bringing a hand up to his heart, letting his fingers close in the loose t-shirt he tended to wear to bed.

He could smell the hints of Kafka’s bath salts and Silver Wolf’s bubblegum.

He could hear the distant mumble of the ship engine and the sound of claws catching in the end of the quilt that hung over the edge of his bed.

He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, his sweat clammy on his skin, and his plain nightclothes sticking to his back.

He was staring at the ceiling, but in his peripheral vision he could see the wine-red of Kafka’s hair and the dark shape of Silver Wolf’s bow.

This was reality.

But a certain taste still lingered on his tongue, a sweet iron that could only be one thing.

“Silver Wolf, why don’t you go grab our ‘guest’?” Kafka spoke evenly, her voice clear in Blade’s ears.

Silver Wolf hummed a sound of acquiescence, her footsteps moving away from the bed and out of the room.

A hand landed over Blade’s, and he tore his eyes away from the ceiling to glance at Kafka.

“Maybe I should apologise,” she said slowly.

Blade’s brow furrowed. He sat up again, slowly this time, feeling as though he’d been laying in bed for days on end, his body heavy and his eyes bleary. “For what?” His voice was hoarse in his throat. He winced at the feeling.

“On Penacony, I helped the dragon boy with a memosnatcher, remember? Well… it seems she followed us and snuck on board. I guess she took an interest in your memories and tried to dig into them, but something went wrong.” Kafka tilted her head slightly, her eyes scanning over Blade’s face.

Blade was quiet for a long moment. Various thoughts flashed through his mind, including the possibilities of what exactly ‘something went wrong’ meant.

“Relax,” Kafka said gently, seeming to read his mind. “Your secrets are still yours. Actually, you disappeared entirely.”

“I-”

“Hey! Not so rough!” Blade was interrupted by an unfamiliar, feminine voice from the hallway.

“Can it.” Silver Wolf grumbled.

“Ah!” A figure dressed in the Garden of Recollection’s uniform stumbled into the room, propelled forward by Silver Wolf’s foot. Her arms were bound behind her back with a glowing, purple thread that wrapped around her torso, and a blue mask covered her face. Silver Wolf stepped into the room behind her, pausing to lean against the doorway.

“Our little stowaway.” Kafka’s smile didn’t reach her eyes, but that was nothing new. “Now tell Bladie everything you already told me.”

The memokeeper hung her head slightly, apparently staring down at the floor. “I… I snuck aboard by turning my dharmakaya transparent and slipping by the-”

“Hm, too repetitive.” Kafka’s lazy drawl was perfectly apathetic. “Get to the point.”

“Gh…” The memokeeper raised her head, turning slightly towards Kafka. She seemed to give up on whatever she was about to say and turned to Blade. “I… snuck into your room and tried to concentrate your memories into a raw dream bubble, but you just flickered out of existence! Poof! Gone!” She sank to her knees. “I’m so glad I didn’t like, erase your existence somehow…” Her voice lowered, as though she were speaking to herself more than anyone else. “That definitely would have put me on the Garden’s radar…”

Blade blinked, a cold discomfort sinking into his chest.

So he had been under the effects of memoria after all.

His expression darkened and he shifted, moving to stand up, but before he could even leave his bed, he was overcome by a bizarre lightheadedness, something that made the room spin around him.

He made a frustrated noise, bringing a hand to his head.

“Don’t try to move too fast,” Kafka said softly. “You’ve been gone for three days.”

Three… days?

“Ghh, this has been more trouble than it’s worth,” the memosnatcher muttered on the floor. “First the Vidyadhara kicked you out of the dreamscape before I could even collect anything, and now you just straight up disappear without leaving even a whisp of memoria for me!” The memosnatcher struggled, but the purple thread around her arms held fast. “Keep your stupid memories to yourself then! See if I care!”

Blade’s eyes narrowed. “So it was you that tampered with that dream bubble then.”

The memosnatcher quickly looked away from Blade, seeming to sense that she was on thin ice. “...I was just trying to coalesce your memories into raw memoria so I could collect them without getting too close.”

Kafka raised a brow. “Do you actually work for the Garden of Recollection? You seem a little…” Her expression turned almost pitying. “Incompetent. Most memokeepers do their jobs without leaving so much as a trace, and as far as I’m aware they don’t usually need a roundabout method like converting memories to raw memoria first.”

“Uh, rude.” The memosnatcher raised her chin. Though her expression was shielded by her mask, it was perfectly clear that she was pouting. “Call me self-taught. I deviated from the Garden a little early, that’s all. And good thing too… I heard their memokeepers got caught up in something bad.”

“Oh?” Kafka narrowed her eyes. Apparently the memosnatcher finally said something worth her attention. “Do elaborate.”

“Well…” The memosnatcher looked from side to side, as though making sure she wasn’t being watched. “I can’t say for sure, but rumours have been circulating that the Remembrance is undergoing some kind of metamorphosis. The Garden sent some keepers to Amphoreus for a ‘seed of Remembrance’, but… they never came back.”

Silver Wolf let out a sigh. “Everything comes back to Amphoreus. But… What about Blade disappearing?”

“Good question.” Kafka raised her fingers and the memosnatcher flinched as the thread binding her tightened. “You still haven’t explained that.” Her voice gained a dangerous edge.

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” Her face turned towards Blade. “I- I saw that you’re weak to memoria… But exactly how incompatible can you possibly be to the point that you just wink out of existence when you come into contact with it?!”

“Where did you go?” Silver Wolf eyed him, her question innocently curious.

Blade looked down at his hands, the skin littered with scars. “...The past.”

“Trapped in your memories?” Kafka asked gently.

Blade was quiet for a long moment. Trapped in memories?

It had been difficult to tell while he’d been there, with time blurring into a jumbled mess around him. But that hadn’t been a memory. That wasn’t a moment that belonged to ‘Yingxing’.

“No.” The brief answer was enough for Kafka’s brows to lift in surprise.

“I… know I’m not really in the position to be asking questions but… you’re saying you spent three whole days in the past? Like, physically and mentally?” The memokeeper raised up on her knees slightly, some kind of curious excitement in her voice.

Blade glared down at her. “It was less than a day to me.”

“Oh… That’s… even weirder.” The memosnatcher trailed off, her head lowering as though she were lost in thought.

“Maybe not, considering how close we are to Amphoreus right now.” Silver Wolf said from the doorway. She pushed away from the wall, walking towards the bed. She looked at Kafka. “Elio did say something about a ‘loop in a simulation’. Maybe Blade got caught up in a sideways effect of that when he came into contact with the memoria.”

Kafka blinked. She looked thoughtful, her eyes falling over Blade.

Blade offered no insight. He didn’t know what to think.

He was questioning if his encounter with Dan Feng had really been nothing but an illusion caused by the memoria. Or some kind of hallucination? But what had happened to his body then? Why had it disappeared like the memosnatcher said?

Blade felt Kafka’s eyes lingering on him. He glanced at her, but she wasn’t looking at his face. Her eyes were trained on the side of his neck, a slow, amused smile lifting the edges of her lips. Finally, she turned her face away, covering a small sound with her hand.

Blade frowned, his mouth opening to ask what was so funny, but before he could, Kafka raised her phone and turned the face camera to him.

He looked at himself in confusion, before his eyes finally caught on two, small, quickly fading red marks on the side of his neck.

The Abundance was already healing them, but they were there, clear as day.

“I’ll go ahead and guess you aren’t too mad about this whole situation.” Kafka leaned a little closer and spoke quietly enough that only Blade would hear her. He looked up at her with nothing but tiredness in his eyes as she withdrew her phone.

Mad?

Not quite. But that didn’t mean it had been a pleasant experience either.

With a small hum, Kafka pushed away from the bed to stand. “Well, Bladie? What should we do with her?”

Blade let out a sigh and turned away, dropping down onto his pillow. “Whatever. Let me rest.”

“Alright.” Kafka flicked her fingers and the memosnatcher floated into the air, confused exclamations leaving her as she was lifted by the purple thread wrapped around her.

“Let you rest?!” Silver Wolf looked aghast. “You’ve basically been asleep for three days straight, and that’s three days too long with Kafka cooking dinner.”

“Come on Silver Wolf, help me take out the trash.” Kafka stepped out the door, the frantic memosnatcher floating behind her.

“Wait, waitwaitwait, what do you mean?! This is a dharmakaya, there’s no way for you to kill me, you know!”

“I know, don’t worry. Silver Wolf, let’s go.”

Silver Wolf whipped her head to stare wide-eyed at the open door, her ponytail swinging behind her with the motion. “Do you even need help?”

“Silver Wolf.” Kafka’s tone had a hint of a warning in it, one that made Silver Wolf’s expression fall flat.

“Got it, got it. Jeez.” She glanced down at Blade. “Rest up, I guess.” She turned, flicking off the light, walking out of the room and closing the door behind her, leaving Blade in a gentle darkness.

He could still hear her voice though, the faint sound of her footsteps as she caught up to Kafka.

“Why wouldn’t Elio tell us about this before it happened? We spent a whole three days searching for Blade, only for him to show up right back in his bed like nothing even happened. He could have at least spared us the effort.”

“Elio works in mysterious ways. And anyways… whatever little trip Bladie took down memory lane might have been a good thing.”

Blade closed his eyes tightly, shouldering his quilt up over his head as Kafka’s and Silver Wolf’s voices faded down the hallway, along with the memosnatcher’s incessant panicking.

A good thing?

He’d felt like he was being torn apart on barbed wire only to be put back together again with all the wrong pieces, over and over and over, his mind hurtling through shockwaves of time and recollection.

It had been bittersweet, and the memory of it left an uncomfortable feeling in the back of his throat, something that threatened to burn at the corners of his eyes.

He felt the mara’s claws reaching out in response, gently grazing against his beating heart.

Such was reality. Such was the present.

Part of him was overcome by regret. If he hadn’t been so caught up in revenge at first, maybe he could have seen Baiheng. He could have seen the smile on her face once more, even if just for a moment before he let himself be whisked off back to the present.

He curled in on himself, breathing slowly and deeply, focussing on the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears.

He’d already put the others through enough trouble. Letting the mara take over would only add another nuisance.

If the Astral Express weren’t currently caught up in the affairs of Amphoreus, maybe he would have gone looking for Dan Heng.

Just to see his face.

Just to hear his voice.

Maybe he could have used his cloudhymn magic, sending a droplet of his divinity right into Blade’s chest to quiet the lurking shadows that blurred his vision and brought his hands to seek the morbid warmth of blood.

A light weight landed on the bed, pattering upwards and settling down behind Blade’s back.

Somehow, Blade fell asleep.

He slipped into a dream, one that didn’t pull him limb from limb in a violent undercurrent of memory.

In that dream, he was just Blade.