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His first memories were of a brilliant sky.
He recalled opening his eyes and finding himself amongst a beautiful sea, the water shielding him in its warm embrace. Though only fleetingly, he felt content, gazing up at the night sky dotted with stars.
Then he fell unconscious, freedom slipping from his grasp. Though he hadn’t realized it, he mourned a life that could never be.
His next few memories were of darkness. His eyes fluttered open, and he couldn’t see a thing. As his eyes adjusted, he could only make out a few details of the cell he was kept in. Bleak walls, and a locked door with a panel that opened, which would allow guards to give him food.
But he could not see what he looked like, as there was no object he could use to look at his reflection. His world was limited to one small room.
He didn’t quite remember when he learned how to speak, but when he did, he tried in vain to communicate with the guards that would come to give him his food. They simply ignored him, and where he had begun to view the light that signified their presence as an opportunity, only dread remained.
The only thing he was really able to do was read books. They were his escape, and it was there that he learned more about where he was.
The Xianzhou Luofu, one of the ships in the Xianzhou Alliance, was where he was currently located—in the Shackling Prison, no less. He read books about how various systems on the ship worked and, on the flip side, more about the people that resided there. What caught his interest were the Vidyadhara, with their horns, pointed ears, and reincarnation cycles. As he ran his hands across his head in an attempt to discern some of his features, he realized that he, too, was one of them, judging by the feel of his ears and the horns on his head.
After a nearly unbearable amount of time in prison, the door finally opened one day to reveal a man named Jingyuan with long white hair and gold eyes, his movements telling of his eternal regret. It was quite obvious—when he looked at him, Jingyuan felt guilty.
“The terms of your punishment have changed. You will be freed from the Shackling Prison, but you are eternally banished from the Luofu,” he told him, but what should’ve been a sentence said unfalteringly was instead delivered with tinges of sorrow.
He was stunned into silence, but Jingyuan handed him a few things he’d been carrying—a bracer, new clothes, and a spear. He was allowed to change and, briefly, view his reflection.
Ironically enough, despite the mental turmoil he had gone through, his physical appearance remained pristine, save for his eyes. He faintly recalled how one of the books he’d read said something about how eyes are the window to the soul. He realized the truth in those words as they remained dull, betraying his true misery.
Despite his newfound freedom, he felt terribly empty, as though a part of him was missing. It was laughably ironic.
When he was to be sent off in a ship, it was nighttime—or artificial nighttime on the Luofu, as it wasn’t a planet—and a soldier escorted him to the docks.
One of the things he had learned during his time in the Shackling Prison was how to hide his horns and ears, instead opting for a far more human form, as it allowed him a semblance of safety in subtlety.
The soldier removed the last of his shackles, and he walked forward without looking back. It wasn’t until the ship took off that he took one final look back. Just as the books had described, it really was a magnificent and grand place.
Eventually, he turned his head away and didn’t look back.
—
He boarded an IPC spaceship, then another. He didn’t have a particular goal; he only wished to get as far away from his past. Thankfully, he was able to come and go all the time; the IPC crews didn’t mind, so long as he was able to work. Once, a man cared enough to ask for his name.
He thought for a few brief moments before he lifted his gaze. “My name is Dan Heng.”
“Nice to meet you, Dan Heng. The name’s Adrian,” the man said, a faint smile on his face. “Where are you from? Do you have a family or a home?”
Dan Heng knitted his brow. A family? Home?
“Parents? Siblings?” Adrian pressed.
Ironically enough, the Xianzhou Luofu had been the closest thing to a home he’d ever had. It was where he’d been imprisoned, yes, but it was all he knew for the longest time.
Home, from what he’d gathered, was supposed to be a place where you had people you loved no matter what who cared for you just as much—a family.
Dan Heng didn’t have a home or a family—as he thought about it, did he even deserve either? After all, his past incarnation must’ve done something unforgivable if he was punished so severely. If his sins were so great that he couldn't escape them in another lifetime, why should he burden others with them? Wishing to have a place amongst others was a selfish desire, considering his past mistakes.
Realizing Adrian was waiting for him to respond, he spoke hesitantly. “I... don’t have a family or a home. I suppose I haven’t found them yet.”
Adrian smiled. “Then I wish you the best of luck in doing so, Dan Heng.”
—
Dan Heng boarded an IPC ship embarking on a particularly dangerous route when its alarms began to ring and it became swarmed by monsters.
He’d been doing his best to clear them out until he entered a large room with a man standing in the corner, sword drawn, and looming over the bodies of the abominations he’d slain. Upon his arrival, the man whirled around, and they made eye contact.
Dan Heng was about to speak, only for the strange man to lunge at him, a maniacal grin on his face. “It seems we finally meet again, Dan Feng!” He cackled, aiming a powerful blow at him. Drawing his spear, he jumped backward to dodge, his eyes widening at the sudden attack.
Before he could speak, a name emerged from the recesses of his mind—Yingxing.
This man—Yingxing, apparently—walked toward him, his red eyes alight with malice. “Of five people,” he began, lifting his sword, “three shall pay the price. You are one of them.”
“I don’t know who you are. My name is Dan Heng, not Dan Feng. Whatever my past incarnation did to you, I don’t remember!” He snapped.
“You attempt to deceive me with a new form? How foolish. So long as I am able to wield my blade, I vow to get my revenge.” Yingxing hissed.
As Dan Heng watched him approach, the sight felt wrong. The part of him that’d identified the man as Yingxing now recoiled, alarm bells ringing in his head. Now, he was all but a shell of what Dan Feng remembered him as.
Glancing at the exit, he took his chance and ran. Surprisingly, he succeeded, with the man calling after him, “No matter how far you run, I have as much time as I’d like to follow—you made sure of that, didn’t you, Yinyue-jun?”
That night, when sleep finally took him, he dreamt of a man with white hair and indigo eyes, lost to the passage of time.
—
On one particular instance of boarding a new ship, Dan Heng realized very quickly that something was amiss.
It would’ve been normal, save for the fact that everyone was wearing strange masks. What the hell?
Immediately, the people nearby turned on him, and before he knew it, they were rambling on and on about their radical ideologies. Unfortunately, he was forced to listen because they were blocking the exit. Apparently, they were the Masked Fools and worshiped Aha.
At some point, they tried stealing his memories. In any other situation, it wouldn’t have been that terrible. Except now he was starting to remember more from his past life and couldn’t afford to lose those memories, which led him to beat up some of the members in order to flee.
Dan Heng had taken down countless monsters after leaving the Luofu, and yet his experience with the Masked Fools was pretty unsettling. Thankfully, I don’t follow the path of elation. That would’ve made them even more frenzied.
As he disembarked at the next port, he was stopped by a woman with striking red hair. “I was with one of the ships you’ve rescued. I wanted to thank you,” she said kindly.
He nodded and was about to turn and leave when she spoke again. For the first time, he noticed the parked train next to her. “Where’s your next stop?”
Dan Heng crossed his arms over his chest. “I haven’t decided yet.”
She smiled at him, then gestured to the train. “Then would you like to board our Express?”
As he remained silent, she continued. “We’re retracing our previous journey. There’s so much to see all over again. We need a guard. and an archiver.”
When he continued to hesitate, she added, “You can get off at any time once you make up your mind on where to go.”
At that, he relented. “Alright.”
—
When Dan Heng woke up, he rubbed his eyes, exhaustion still annoyingly present. As he’d done many times before, he stayed up through most of the night in order to comb through the data bank and input new information—in this case, about Jarilo-VI.
After he finished getting dressed and briefly checked the data bank once more to make sure everything was in order, his room’s door slammed open to reveal March and Stelle standing there, the former’s arms crossed over her chest.
“Dan Heng, get up! You’re going to miss breakfast!” She complained. “I don’t want to make Pom-Pom mad, so get over here!”
He sighed, exiting the pop-up of the data bank he’d opened on the screen, and walked over to the two of them. It was better to agree if only because otherwise he'd be forced to listen to March's incessant nagging afterward.
Among the members of the Astral Express, he smiled. Though he had once found solace in the presence of his comrades in the High Cloud Quintet, that was, in the end, Dan Feng’s family. This was his.