STARDUST ✶ honkai star rail.

ghost of you ◞ ‎ blade

He who pursues you across the landscape of your own dreams, a walking nightmare that wears the skin of a man, sinking his claws into your consciousness — he craves more than your simple compliance. For you can no longer say he's only a mere figment of your imagination, having become your own inseparable shadow, suffocating you with his fantasies. 

***

YOU WERE DREAMING AGAIN. Dreaming of him.

And in all your dreams, he hunts you, chasing you through worlds and dimensions you yourself cannot comprehend, the lines of nightmarish reality blurred with his own sickening desire to ensnare you within his grasp.

It's nothing but an endless game of cat and mouse, a vicious cycle you're trapped within, forced to replay time and time again. To think yourself to ever be free from it, has become nothing but a distant hope crushed beneath his heel, leaving you to resign yourself to the hollow despair that has clung to your frame ever since.

Because no matter what it is you do, whether it is to run or hide, it finds a way to play out to his whim. You're all but running around in circles as he watches you chase your own tail, knowing you will come back to him eventually — you have no other direction to go after all, within this plane encompassing his own existence. For every path leads back to him, and the further you run, the closer he gets. Yet if you don't run at all, he is still there, close as ever.

You hate how calmly he stands there, arms crossed expectantly, eyes glowing like embers against the dark and dreary landscape, as you entertain your foolish delusions that you can escape him — watching, as you take to the sea and leap from cliffs in an attempt to be rid of him. But even death cannot save you from his clutches, within a cage meant to trap you solely.

You may try, but he always catches you before you fall from such heights. And you never understand why he does not let you die, nor let you live in peace either — you strain within his arms, wishing for nothing more but to tear yourself away from him as he brings his face close to yours, a cruel smile painted across his lips.

"Run as far as you like, darling." He seems to repeat mockingly, with words coated in sickly sweet venom that makes your stomach turn at each jarring syllable.

It's nothing but a searing reminder that you will never be free of him, finding a way into your head even within the temporary hours of when you lie awake. You can still feel the cold sharpness of his claws raking against your consciousness, and his burning gaze upon your back, his presence lingering like a shadowy wraith at the edge of all your thoughts.

In the few good dreams you have, you kill him. You find yourself able to turn, to face him. You raise the knife in your hands and drive it into his heart. It feels all too easy, as if he lets you, to stand there in silence, those cold amber eyes of his gleaming in challenge. But you know that if you do not kill him, he will do far worse to you.

You should feel relieved when you see his blood pool at his feet. Yet he does not give you the satisfaction of his pain, rather, viewing the entire spectacle as some sick form of theatrics to him, reaching a bloodied hand to cradle your face. He laughs as you flinch away from him, rivulets of crimson dribbling past his lips — almost as if he had expected this, his very image taunting you even in his final moments.

You've stopped feeling any sense of victory from such. His death feels inconsequential, when now you know you have only played into his hands again, the remains of his touch, his possession lingering upon your skin.

A temporary respite, before this ever-spinning cycle of obsession repeats once more. You've seen the way such rotted flesh has knitted itself back together, bones snapping back into place in crude accompaniment despite the numerous wounds you inflict upon him. You both know he will come back to haunt you in some other way.