Chapter Text
"If you could know-"
"I would not listen."
It is the same answer, and the same question, as every time before. Dan Heng dreams of shifting water. He dreams of a face that is not his own, a face he is cursed to wear, regardless.
He pleads with the past to hear reason. Lift the treason from his shoulders, he begs, let him be more than a mirror of sin.
Dan Heng wakes- and he is not in the archive. He is not anywhere on the Express. Scalegorge Waterscape stretches before him. It is flooded, as it used to be, but the small shore he has found himself on is not abandoned. There is no sense of long suffered history here. There are simply... people.
No, Vidyadhara. Both? More? So many races, stalls, and noise. This is a celebration. He grits his teeth and longs for his headphones. An earpiece can only do so much.
...Did March convince him to drink, is that how he came here? No, he doesn't have enough of a headache to have been blackout. She knows better, since last time, regardless. Something else... a practical joke? The Express Crew is not so cruel.
Some other thing. An unknown. Dan Heng is in potential danger, regardless of the festive atmosphere. He reaches for cloud-piercer -
She is not there. He jolts to his feet, searching frantically, and finds nothing. Hands dig into soft sand, grains scraping under his nails, and still, there is nothing, not even as he strays further and further from where he woke. A fog of disturbed dust begins to choke him.
The danger is no longer only 'potential' if he does not have a weapon. Pale grains slip through his fingers, and Dan Heng lifts himself from the ground with a dreadful unease. Many still have not forgiven him, though his sentence has been repealed, and the Cloud Knights ... save a few, they have been unhelpful. He cannot remain here.
He starts to run. He does not have a destination. Perhaps he will seek out the General. Perhaps he will simply keep running until exhaustion pulls his feet from under him and he succumbs to whatever force has brought him here, without weapon, against his will. It does not matter, only knowing he must do something. To be stationary is to await death. He is of the Hunt, but now, he is certain he has become prey.
Dan Heng disturbs the crowds without a care for their shouted admonishments. The layout of the streets is the same, but they look different, brighter and newer than they should. Vibrant banners string between buildings and bells ring cheerily in the wind. His breath comes even, but his heart races. This place is wrong. Is this still a dream, somehow? Vivid, unimaginably vivid, but unreal? It must be, it must be, for-
There is a parade in his path. He does not care, and he does not stop in his flight, vaulting over performers with ease and continuing lightly over the floats. Fire dancers singe his coat and a singer screeches when he interrupts their tune. Drums and intruments clatter to a discordant stop, and someone finally declares "Scoundrel!", spurring the Cloud Knights to chase him down.
The shouting feels real. The arrows zipping past, some only a hair's breadth from their mark, feel real. This cannot be real, and yet, it is. Dan Heng can only keep running, then. He has made himself a public nusiance. He does not intend to be arrested for this. It is prudent, now, to find the General. To beg answers from someone who always has them.
Dan Heng does not want to be begging for the rest of his life. The Aeons have other ideas, as he flees through a ruined parade, the last float bringing him to a dead stop. It is a beautiful construction, speaking of wealth and power, but he does not care for such frivolity. Glittering gold and the warmth of sun over an ocean are meaningless when he is frozen, helpless, before certain tragedy. Dan Heng stares up at a face that is not his own, sharp eyes searing into what is left of his sanity, and he breaks.
He is detained. Metal clacks coldly over his wrists, wringing some final panic at the memory of rebirth, of becoming. Yet he goes quietly. He is treated with no shortage of contempt, bullied along and surely bruised as a premature punishment for what could only appear as a rebellious youth seeking attention.
It does not matter, and he does not care. Only whispers, prays, begs a mantra - "Let this be a nightmare, let me wake, let me wake..."
