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Dan Heng was born in the dark. The Shackling Prison is a quiet place, to the point the silence hurts his ears. The walls are rough, his chains chilling and the food pushed through the slot in the door is mushy.
This is his world.
There’s supposed to be more sound, he knows this though he doesn’t know how, but when he is released this knowledge doesn’t help him get any less overwhelmed. So much so he doesn’t even properly realize what’s going on until he’s boarding his first starskiff to leave his home.
Can you call a prison your home? Maybe you can, if you spent countless lives loving it.
With leaving, with the sound, comes light. With the light come other things.
Sight. People. Reading.
He can read because he remembers how to, he knows what the names on his wrists mean — but he cannot understand why they both say, in stark, jagged letters, Blade. They throb with the heartbeat of those at the other end, though Dan Heng wonders how cold steel would have a heartbeat in the first place.
One name for your soulmate, the other for your worst enemy, and it’s up to you to figure out which is which.
As he drifts among the stars, lost and not a clue as what to do next, he wonders if it means his life will always be of violence — the blade both his worst enemy and his closest companion.
He slips his finger underneath his bracer, as he sits down, feeling a slow heartbeat beating as proof of life as the starskiff shakes and takes off. Both words beat in unison.
He sighs, eyes on the stars ahead as his fingers trail over to the blade of his spear — the only thing that has accompanied him across lives.
The blade is cold.
Space is cold too, he’s told, It can’t be colder than prison, though, he thinks to himself, watching the gleaming lights in the distance, lighting up the dark as nothing ever did where he comes from.
He’s left the dark behind now. The blade has taken its place.
The crowd is very loud, close, and the smells and bright colors are blinding, but Dan Heng is slowly learning to deal with people. The hubbub is not… pleasant, so to say, but he can survive it now without shutting down.
The market stalls are filled with a thousand things he’s never seen before. Exotic fruits ranging from bright pink to dark green, spiky and covered in bumps. Fabrics so smooth they flow like water or sparkle like gold, even in the shade the cloth coverings of the stall provide. Street performers are out in the sun, smiling brightly, shaking their hips to the beat of the music, the bells attached to their clothing ringing all the while.
Everything is eye-searingly colorful and lively.
The stranger dressed in black is all the more obvious for it.
He stands still in the crowd, this dark stranger in his cloak, like a rock in a river, people streaming past him. The flow of the crowd drives Dan Heng towards him, and there is something so familiar about that silhouette, that he cannot help but stop before him, a second before passing.
He wants to see the stranger’s eyes.
Someone inadvertently pushes him, and he bumps into the man. Piercing red eyes fall onto him, like fresh blood welling up from a wound, and all of a sudden all Dan Heng can hear is his own heartbeat in his ears, louder than any bells or music could ever be.
The dark stranger attracts him, for all his instincts are screaming danger. Is this what it feels like to be caught in the gaze of a hunter, a predator?
The stranger’s expression twists into something ugly, a hand reaching for him, the cloak falling away from his body with the movement and revealing a sword on his hip.
All of a sudden, Dan Heng knows that if he gets caught here, he dies.
Adrenaline shoots through his veins, his heartbeat speeding up, and all he can do is flee. He wrestles himself through the crowd, zigzags and turns corners at impossible speeds, not daring to look behind him for all he feels in his bones he’s being pursued.
When he finally shoots into an alley and finds a small, hidden hole in the wall he won’t be found in, he throws himself into it, heart beating in his throat, clutching his spear.
The hours pass, the sun goes down, and though it’s cold, he eventually falls into a fitful sleep, cradling his weapon all the while.
He dreams of hands gentle instead of harsh, of companionship so lovely he wants to sink into it forever, of a caress so soft it makes him want to unwind and purr, to climb into their lap, curl his tail around them and never let go.
He wakes up with his heart in his throat, leaves his hideyhole and runs.
Dan Heng knows how to react to violence better than he does to love. This is a fundamental truth of this life.
For a while, he wonders if he had made up the stranger after all — he certainly was nightmarish enough for it with his crazed eyes and looming presence. But he turns up again and again, weapons brandished, ready to draw blood, wearing a bracer identical to his.
The heartbeat underneath it continues to beat steadily.
It’s hard to think him a nightmare when he leaves paths swathed with blood behind him — when he hurts others, not just Dan Heng, in his relentless pursuit.
It is this that drives him towards Duhkha, a planet once ravaged by earthquakes until its people fled to a nearby moon. Nature has now reclaimed it, waterfalls flowing through broken cities and temples, the fallen faces of giant statues along the path between them seemingly crying tears of happiness as vines creep over them, expressions of ecstasy upon their faces. Broken and abandoned, they are content.
Dan Heng cannot help but trail through the temple complex, avoiding the pools of water. He kneels next to inscriptions on the marble. Etched into stone, it speaks of the pools, the water, reflecting the true face of the soul — of god.
What god they mean, he does not know.
With the sunlight trailing over the water, it is a peaceful place nonetheless.
The rustling of the wind in the trees and the sweet gales of song of the birds create a symphony, which makes any disturbance all the more obvious: a splash in the distance and the birds go quiet.
Dan Heng freezes. The world outside, unlike the prison he grew up in, is never silent. Not truly.
…Surely, it can’t be.
He’s just paranoid, he’s sure, but he can’t help it — like a scared wild animal, he skitters to the side to hide behind one of the fallen pillars to get the best vantage point to look at the road leading to the temple. And there, once again appearing on the horizon like a dark shadow heralding a tempest, Dan Heng’s nightmarish stranger appears.
Dan Heng breathes in sharply. He curses himself — he should have known that abandoning the hustle and bustle of people, the safety of crowds, was an immensely stupid idea. But he’d been so tired of it all — the blood, the violence, others getting hurt in his stead.
That is no excuse for his foolishness, however. It’s clear by now that the stranger is powerful, that his intent is to hurt and that Dan Heng will never, ever escape him as long as he lives. Not unless he comes up with a more… permanent solution.
He swallows thickly. This is insane. This should never have been an option in the first place. But Vidyadhara, as all sentient beings, came from animals, and a cornered dog is at its most dangerous.
He’ll have to play it smart. The stranger is both larger and stronger than him, and likely better trained too. The only chance he has to strike will be when the man has his back turned and it will likely be one chance only — he’d prefer not to kill, but he’s not sure he’ll get out of it alive himself if he doesn’t fight with everything he has. So far he’s mostly utilized his surroundings and crowds to distract and flee, but that isn’t an option here. The element of surprise is his only advantage.
He inches around the pillar to get in the best position possible to attack once the man has actually entered the temple. His grip on his spear is white-knuckled, and he forces himself to breathe in and out steadily, as quietly as possible. Panic is mounting, but he can’t afford to lose his cool now.
Inhale, exhale. The world narrows down to the entrance of the temple. To the sound of approaching footsteps, splashing through the water on the path. To the cold metal of his spear against his skin.
The man enters the temple, a sharp contrast of black against the crumbling white marble. Dan Heng holds his breath, waiting for the right moment to strike. Cold sweat drips down his back. Unexpectedly, the man kneels in front of the pool, reading the inscription, putting his blade down next to him.
Dan Heng’s breath catches. If he could just get him away from the sword…
He strikes, right at the man’s back — and misses. The man shoves himself out of the way, but the spear lands right between him and his sword, and the spear is stuck now, there’s only one desperate gamble left before the man has the chance to stand up—
Dan Heng grabs the sword, and stabs the man straight through the back. His breath speeds up, the hilt poking out of the man’s back making it crystal clear what he just did. For a second, he thinks that’s it — that it’s over now.
But it isn’t. Even pinned down like this, the man continues to move, like an unkillable monster, attempting to get up, dislodging the sword bit by bit until blood seeps past, dripping down his back.
Dan Heng’s heartbeat sounds like a war drum in his ears, threatening, loud, and panic-inducing. He grabs his spear, tugging until it comes loose, and edges around the man. If — if the back didn’t work, then surely the throat would, right?
Just the thought of it makes him want to throw up. But he must, he has to, if he ever wants the chance to run, to survive this. He desperately wants to squeeze his eyes shut, but he can’t — he needs to keep them on the man.
And what a pitiful sight it is, once he’s face-to-face with him. Though the man is moving, it’s more of an aborted death struggle than any real fight left in him, and Dan Heng…
The man looks familiar. He always has. He can’t place it, but somehow, facing him now, he cannot bear to hurt him, no matter the cost to himself. Tears blur his vision. Frustration, anger, sadness — he can’t even tell why he’s started to cry in the first place.
Pathetic.
It’s stupid, letting his guard down like that. It makes him miss the hand reaching out, that catches his wrist.
It’s the man. The stranger that is not a stranger. His grip is harsh, desperate, but for the first time, it almost feels like it’s not meant to hurt.
Dan Heng doesn’t understand.
"Please," the man heaves, his voice as broken as his appearance, bleeding on his knees as if begging for salvation, head bowed. "Dan Feng."
Dan Heng tries to take a step back, but the iron grip doesn’t let him. "My name is Dan Heng," he snarls, voice high and reedy with panic.
The man doesn’t seem to register any of it. "Please, do not abandon this Blade," he begs.
Blade. It rings in Dan Heng’s ears.
Blade, like both his wrists, like his soulmate, like his enemy.
Blade, a cold, hard thing that has a heartbeat nonetheless.
He doesn’t want to be here. The grip on his wrist doesn’t allow him to move away, but he can avert his gaze, and his eyes fall on the pool.
Their reflection in the water seems to warp and twist and—
Once, when the night had been dark and the inside of their room all the warmer for it, Yingxing had whispered in Dan Feng’s ear, "Of course your next incarnation will be my enemy, because their existence will mean your demise in this lifetime."
He’d meant it, that truth, buried in their sheets, flush with love.
"Don’t talk like that," Dan Feng had mumbled into his neck, so close it felt like butterfly kisses against Yingxing’s skin. "I’m more worried about you."
And the little time you have left, had been left unspoken, for all it hung over them like a cloud.
But ironically, despite all Dan Feng’s endless years stretching out before them compared to Yingxing’s few, Dan Feng had been the one to die first, forever his own worst enemy where Yingxing was his soulmate.
In contrast, Yingxing had had "Dan Feng" and "Dan Heng" on his wrists. He thought he knew which one was his soulmate. Maybe he was both right and wrong. Either way, after all these years the shards that remain of him are still paying for it.
This life is pain and Dan Feng — Dan Heng, whatever incarnation — to touch those lips would still be worship.
The water ripples again.
Tears are streaming down Dan Heng’s face, dropping into the water below. He doesn’t understand, but he’s crying over Blade, overcome by an emotion he can’t explain.
This attraction to his hunter, this revulsion towards himself for not being strong enough to resist, this cursed, enduring ember of love towards something so soft, and so long gone.
Blade’s breath is slowing now, marching steadily towards his end, and as Dan Heng watches the way he lays there, dying, and cannot help but crouch to cradle his face.
He wants to see his eyes.
Blade lets go of his raised wrist, his red eyes a fire dying down, his fingers grazing Dan Heng’s lips as his hand falls down in a caress so soft it might as well not have happened.
Dan Heng leans in and kisses him, stealing what little breath he has left. All he can taste is the salt of his own tears.
When he lets go, Blade’s eyes are closed. They don’t open again.
The heartbeat under Dan Heng’s bracer starts to slow.
Ever so gently, he lowers Blade into a resting position, and leaves him there — a final farewell for a sword-riddled lover, bathed in the holy waters of the temple, finally at peace.
Dan Heng is not, torn apart by the storm inside of him, but then again. Peace seems not to be for the living.
Almost numb, he stands up, takes one last look at Blade, and walks away, his gait disturbing the water as he goes.
The heartbeat under his bracer fades… fades… and stops.
Only to start up again.
Blade’s memories spread like blood in the water.
Flashes of Dan Feng and Yingxing’s happiness drift by, golden and warm. Sharp shards of their sins and eventual end, his hatred and his love mingling. At last, one final memory: Dan Heng, this time, standing over him like a god granting salvation, kissing him as he kills.
Slowly, Blade is put back together again, broken tissue repairing, organs regenerating. Finally, his senses come back online fully: he hears the wind in the trees, the gentle rippling of the water as leaves fall into the pool.
He breathes. He stands up. He opens his eyes.
He is resurrected, eyes on the horizon where Dan Heng disappeared — and this is equilibrium, their souls connecting, the hunt starting again, this push and pull between hate and love.