stardust ✶ honkai star rail.

a dying star ◞ ‎ yingxing

In the dark uncertainty of an eternal existence, he had come into your life as a glimmering star — yet he does not burn for long. 

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟

Life is a precious blessing.

You've seen it all unfold before you, from the birth of a world, to the blossoming of a nondescript flower. It's something you wish you could experience forever, its beauty incomparable and full of wonder. Yet that's nothing but a dream among many — for no one, not even you, is an exception to the rules of existence.

Time is the curse that exists for all — a reminder that even the brightest stars can fall from the sky.

Because just as something grows, it has to stop and come to an end one day, to wither and fall away. Even to the immortal and undying, one does not remain in a perfect lifelike condition for eternity. The mara descends, and memories begin to slip away — a finality almost equal to death. But you do not age, nor truly die.

Still, you wonder how it is to age and eventually die — is such a fate happier than the one you face?

Such a question hangs upon your mind, as you look at the matching bands of silver that adorn both your hands — one scarred and wrinkled, intertwined against another glowing with immortal youth.

You're from two different worlds entirely, its differences growing more apparent as the years pass by — your perception and understanding of time far from the same. In the hundreds of years you've lived, decades pass by in the blink of an eye. This moment is fleeting to you, it feels too soon.

You feel as if it was only moments ago he was standing beside you, youthful as ever, eyes gleaming as if there was nothing else in the world but each other. Because when the sun catches his hair like that and turns it into white fire — what else can you think, that he's not divinity itself?

You're enamoured. Not only by him, but his craft; his talent that surpasses even the greatest Xianzhou legends, of the reverence people regard him with. He possesses the essence of creation within the palm of his hand, himself a heaven-sent gift. And he who speaks of souls that shall never be parted, as he holds a silver ring out to you.

It's almost too easy to forget his mortality.

Truly, you think the aeons cruel, to impart a mortal's lifespan upon someone so blessed.

You forget that he will only exist in a mere fraction of all the life there is to come, yet you can't bring yourself to imagine a future where he no longer walks in this world, to have to meet what you know to be inevitable — the lonesome eternity which stretches out before you.

But it's slowly becoming the reality in front of your very eyes — the man who now looks back at you is wearied with age, crinkles lining his eyes that reflect an austere look of melancholy.

"Do you think I'm still beautiful?"

( He's reminiscing on the life he's lived, these memories of you. He wishes he could go back in time and relive every moment with you. )

You wish for more time.

You're convinced neither of you are deserving of such a fate, someone like him left to age and wither away, before crossing over into a world you cannot hope to follow him to. You don't understand how he can be so calm and accepting, whilst you're grappling with the inevitable reality of losing him — you don't want him to go.

Your heart aches, tears pricking at the corner of your eyes as you raise your hand to cup his face, a saddened smile across your own as you reply sincerely. "Of course you are."

"You always will be to me, Yingxing."

Because you don't think you'll ever stop loving him. Not when he's come into your life like a brilliant spark, utterly unforgettable. He's an irreplaceable light in the dark uncertainty you face, and when he smiles at you like that, what are you to deny him?

He's still as beautiful as the day you met him.

And when you kiss him, you can almost imagine it to be like another day in your youth, where nothing else had mattered in this shared moment together — you had closed your eyes, losing yourself in the feeling of his lips against yours, as if you had all the time in the world.

You didn't want to be awakened from such a dream.

Rather, you wish for a little longer, a little more time. You've never had enough of it, itself long running out.

Your grip on Yingxing's hand tightens at the thought, and he pulls away, a weakened cough escaping him, breaking your dreamlike trance. You're struck again with the reality you don't want to face, your illusions of youth dissipating, the truth bared before you — the light fading, his life slowly weaning, each of these moments soon to be your last.

You don't realise the tears that have begun to slowly trickle down your face — that you're crying, until he reaches to hold you in his arms again. His hands are soft, his voice soothing as he rests his head on your shoulder, whispering reassurances in your ear.

You want to believe that everything will be okay, but you might as well be lying to yourself. You can hear his faint heartbeat, as you bury your face in his chest.

You're not prepared for that — you need more time.

You don't understand how he's been able to come to terms with his mortality so easily, because you cannot.

You can't do this.

You can't let go. Not yet.

It's an overwhelmingly selfish desire that continues to eat away at you, combined with your fear of what is uncertain, him the sole anchor that stops you from drifting back into that perpetuity of solitude, waiting for your own end, to one day succumb to the mara.

It's only with him, do you feel as if you're truly living and not existing.

And how short that life feels once more. You haven't experienced enough of it, the little time you had not enough for your satisfaction. You want more than what has been set forth before you, equivocal to merely a mortal's lifespan.

But there's only one way you can have more.

Yet is it worth it?

Worth it, to give your heart, in all its corrupt, immortal selfishness?

You question how you presume to recognise yourself anymore.

But what are you without him?

And now there's blood — so much blood on your hands, you don't know whose it is anymore, the world around you soaked in crimson, as you seek to disturb the dead, silver gleaming beneath the light of a blood red moon against scarlet skies.

Your mind screams this is wrong, and it reprehensibly is so — but you're beyond feeling, a hollow, empty feeling in your chest, unable to be filled again.

You question this final price.

Because when did such professions of love turn to this? To defy the laws of creation and existence, the divine inscriptions of your preordained fates, for a forged bond that one believes is deserving to transcend time itself, two souls inseparable by the cosmos.

All you see is red — from the lilies that bloom, to the colour of his eyes, as they open themselves to a changed world.