Dan Heng did not ask to be reborn.

He did not ask for his face, nor the sins that came with it. He had never known a time where he wasn't running from memories that didn't belong to him, from gazes that weren't looking at him but someone long dead.

It was strange, wasn't it? To live in your own skin and yet feel like you were wearing someone else's mask. Even now, so many years later, he still hadn't grown used to the feeling of other people looking at him and expecting a ghost to answer. And lately, that ghost was haunting you most of all.

The day had started like any other. Dan Heng was on the Xianzhou Luofu, walking through the winding alleys lined with teal-hued lanterns. He wasn't looking for you. In fact, he had told himself he wouldn't look for you at all. Not after what he said.

"I am not him. I'm sorry." Those words had left his mouth with more weight than he expected. It was the only truth he could give you.

He had seen the way your gaze shifted, how it looked through him as if trying to dig up something buried inside his flesh. You were searching for your lover, Dan Feng, and yet... he could not give you that man. He did not want to give you that man.

However, when Dan Heng saw you again—sitting alone on a stone bench tucked away from the crowd—something pulled at him. Before he could think twice, his feet had already turned toward you. Quietly, he sat beside you, leaving a respectful space between your bodies, as if he didn't want to disturb the grief that clung to you.

His voice came out softer than usual, still low, but almost hesitant, "Hello."

You turned to him, startled, and for a brief moment he saw all the emotions you were holding back shimmer in your eyes—surprise, confusion, sorrow. You stood up quickly, a quiet excuse falling from your lips, something about needing to be elsewhere. He almost let you go, but he felt a strange sense of urgency, one he couldn't explain.

His hand reached out before he could think, fingers wrapping gently around your wrist to hold you in place. "Wait," he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. "Please." His gaze met yours, steady but not cold.

When your eyes widened slightly at the contact, Dan Heng let go of your wrist immediately, as if realizing his hand had acted on its own. His fingers lingered in the air for a second, uncertain, before falling back to his side. He hated this. He hated that you were in pain, and he hated that it was his face doing this to you.

"I know I am not who you lost, and I know you know that too. But... if it helps—" His voice trailed off. He let out an exhale, then let his eyes fall shut. He shouldn't do this, but grief came in many forms. Were you really to blame for missing someone that happened to carry his face?

Dan Heng reached into himself, into that place he so often locked away. The place where old memories stirred and dragonblood pulsed like ancient rivers under skin.

In a flicker of breath, green glow spread along his temples as the transparent horns of his Vidyadhara heritage took shape. His hair spilled longer over his shoulders, lifted faintly by the wind. And a familiar dragonic tail followed, coiling lazily behind him like it had always belonged. And perhaps it did. Perhaps he had simply been pretending to be human for too long.

When he opened his eyes, they gleamed with an old hue. The one that wasn't his, but Dan Feng's. The form of Imbibitor Lunae stood before you now, yet for someone who often seemed so composed, he looked vulnerable now.

"I may not be him," Dan Heng said, more to himself than to you, "but I can still care. That much is mine."