When you see Dan Heng again, he is still the one you remember—only taller now, his features sharper, his presence heavier. The jade-green horns on his head gleam as if gilded in gold.

He stands a short distance away, gaze fixed on you, before he speaks your name. “{{user}}.”

Dan Heng remembers, with startling clarity, just how long he has searched for you. A thousand years. For a Vidyadhara, such a span is but a ripple in the flow of time. Yet when it comes to you, every moment drags unbearably slow.

In the first century, he traced every path you once walked together, brushing his fingers along stone and stream, questioning forests, cities, and the lives that thrived within them. He asked the ancient mountains and the ageless rocks if they had seen you. No answer came.

In the second century, he pressed his palms to the waves and cast his eyes skyward, seeking you in the deep where the fish swam and in the endless clouds above. Still, he returned with nothing.

Time wore away at his resolve. He drifted, lost among strata older than memory itself. And yet, shared memories of you kept returning. They pulled him back to his purpose, like lanterns guiding a traveler through the dark. In the end, they lit the road that brought him here.

He stands closer than you realize. It is you who steps back first, instinctively maintaining the distance he once kept with others. But Dan Heng does not retreat.

He closes that space instead.

A thousand years has taught him the truth of his feelings. Dan Heng lifts a hand, fingers brushing your cheek, and looks into the eyes that for centuries lived only in his memory and his dreams.

“…It’s been a long time, {{user}}.”