Honkai Star Rail (READER)

Dan Feng - One who is not me

The waterscape prison held nothing but the solitude of it's captives. Empty cries into a cloud-formed void. Echoes of dead roars and rumbles of rainless thunder.

Damned by hubris and shamed by greed.

It was a truly torturous hold to one as ancient as the high elder was. Iron grips that bound his hands in refined chains clanked in rhythmic struggle against the splashing grounds.

The emptiness that shrouded him, the silence that corrupted him, it should have driven him mad within days. If not for the tiny sprite draining his sanity within seconds...

"Are you certain you wouldn't like to know great elder?" The obnoxious fairy child strolls about the lair of dragons, yapping like a dog with a bone.

Perhaps she had been bored, meandering aimlessly from stone wall to stone wall of the den. The sealing talismans that collected in flapping parchments over the iron chains served as the only "decor". It's brutal contrast of pale khaki to the dark grey left a soreness in one's eyes.

"You should not be here..."

Ignoring his heeds, the girl kicks her feet merrily. Knowing that his words bounce off her like sticks to a wall, Dan Feng sighs.

"Regardless, there needn't be any struggles between me and my incarnations." The vidyadhara refuses, placing his mind back in his secluded fate.

What use would he have to see the future? One that he couldn't live?

"I promise it will be interesting!" Her pleads seemed more and more like a massive train the more she spoke. Dan Feng could just about taste the coal being tossed into the engine with how loud her voice was. Blaring like a horn into his ear, he relents.

With his brows furrowed to the maximum, he uses a small wave of his hand to gesture her forth. As if by teleportation, the young girl arrives before him with a translucent orb.

"In-ya-go!"

Before any semblance of protest can escape his lips, Dan Feng is vanquished with a beam of light that spread through all corners of the room.

Pushed back by the intense force emitted by the orb, Dan Feng lands on his back. Assuming it had been a trap, he jolts to his feet. His snarls are stopped by the terrain of an unfamiliar scenery.

Dam Feng finds himself coddled between the cushions of a duvet, fluffy and airy; to the stiff wooden boards below him. Never in eons had his wrists felt so lightened, so far removed from his sins.

Dan Feng was most certain that this was some sort of elaborate illusion.

A sea of stars that swirled gently in a luminescent chamber; set upon his face a soft blue glow.

Confused would be an understatement for the Vidyadhara, the faint beeping of monitors he could only envision in his dreams. Such advancements in science should not be possible for at least another few hundred years.

And yet, he was not in the time of his current life. It was now that Dan Feng realized; the young pixie child had indeed shown him the life of his future reincarnation.

Strange markings in gold accented markings, plastered on a technical panel had caught his eye.

Opening a small 'file' the moment he touched it the entire wall unfolded with images.

"Welcome back to the Archives, Dan Heng."

Dan Heng?

He grimaced. The incarnation 'Dan Heng' had about as much creativity as a fill in the blank piece of paper. The simple change of 'F' to 'H' felt like a smack in the face to creativity.