[Honkai: Star Rail] Imbibitor Lunae Decides to Rewrite the Bad Ending

What if the Shuhu Rebellion had not yet begun when Dan Feng, High-Cloud Quintet's Vidyadhara High Elder, suddenly died in an accident?

Twenty years later, Dan Feng wakes up aboard the Stellaron Hunters' ship. In his mind are memories of the Shuhu Rebellion and the Moon Rage Rebellion from Aha's main world. Before him is Kafka, inviting him to steal a Stellaron and deal with Shuhu ahead of time.

Dan Feng: ...Shuhu, huh? Just you wait.

To stop the tragedy, Dan Feng heads to Belobog in search of a Stellaron.

The good news is that he finds one.

The bad news is that he runs into the Astral Express.

One of the Nameless aboard is a young man named Dan Heng, an experimental subject Dan Feng created twenty years ago using a miraculous draconic transformation technique.

#Oh no, the little dragon and the big dragon are fighting#

*

After finally getting away from Dan Heng, Dan Feng takes the Stellaron to Shuhu's hideout. He turns around and finds his four friends there too.

Dan Feng: Why are you all here?

#The High-Cloud Quintet logs in from another location#

*

After dealing with Shuhu and returning to the Luofu, Dan Feng discovers that the Vidyadhara elders are planning to lead a rebellion, seize the Ambrosial Arbor, and join the Abundance.

Dan Feng: I just want to throttle these old geezers right now.

#A Vidyadhara rebellion, and who's the only one not invited? The High Elder#

*

Dan Heng: Dan Feng, actually, I came back from the future.

Dan Feng: ...Huh?

Dan Heng: Even though you defeated Shuhu, this world is still going to be destroyed. So I'm afraid you'll have to become the Aeon of [Permanence].

Dan Feng: What?

#I only wanted to save my friend and the Luofu. How did it turn into saving the whole world?#

#How did I go from being a High Elder to the progenitor of the ten thousand dragons of the Abyss?#

#I thought I was reborn, but turns out I'm part of the plan#

[Old Blurb]

When he sacrificed himself to the Ambrosial Arbor, Dan Feng never imagined he would wake again.

In the fleeting moment between life and death, Lord of Eternal Joy happened to pass by and plucked his consciousness from the brink. Then he laid out before Dan Feng a tragedy that had yet to happen: another Dan Feng losing his dearest friends in the Shuhu Rebellion, before finally falling to his death from the edge of fate.

His body and reputation were ruined. His old friends were scattered.

After returning from the dead, a woman with plum-blossom-colored hair made him an offer beneath the dim starlight. The Stellaron Hunters would help him obtain a Stellaron and rewrite the future he had seen.

A wandering soul, never knowing when it might be called to pay its price, should not make his old friends suffer again. He would go to Jarilo-VI to find the Stellaron and die alongside Shuhu, in exchange for a future in which his friends and countless others could survive.

And yet. And yet.

The young man he had created from his own flesh and blood happened to arrive aboard the train traveling through the stars. The familiar winds of the Luofu and the damp dust of the endless sea of stars caught up with him, forcing him to stop and look back.

He discovered that the road behind him did not lead only to a cliff, and the path ahead did not lead only to the abyss. In the endless snowstorm of reincarnation, someone had lit a lamp to guide his soul home.

The young Nameless bore the light of the stars on his shoulders. He was the first bird to fly out of the cage called High Elder. He said, "...If I were standing here, I would do the same thing as you. So I won't stop you anymore. But no matter what, remember to come home."

*

That was a very, very long time ago, and also a very, very long time from now.

At last, the long journey reached its end. They watched the universe approach its end, with starlight fading, civilizations perishing, and all things returning to one.

The end was also a beginning. As the only beings remaining after the universe's destruction, they would become the creators of a new universe.

All the regrets, resentment, and missed chances of the past would be buried along with the old universe. The world would begin anew, yet an boundless sorrow suddenly welled up in them.

The tragedies of the past could never be undone, and all the friends and loved ones who had left would never reunite in the new universe.

They did not like this future. Neither of them did.

[Reading Notes]

1. An adventure for the original Dan Feng. No CP. Any out-of-character moments are because I'm not good enough.

2. Slow burn, an extreme amount of platonic friendship, and an ensemble cast.

3. The outline is based on version 2.0. For the sake of the plot, the worldbuilding is somewhat alternate and heavily modified.

4. I lean toward the two-person interpretation. At least when I started writing, there wasn't enough in the story to make me support the one-person interpretation. There are a few references to the Tree and Sea cosmology, but the focus leans toward the Cloud Knights.

5. This is my first long novel. I'm inexperienced but enthusiastic, and there are plenty of problems. I revise it from time to time. I'm terrible at writing blurbs, so just give it a try.

If all that sounds fine, thank you for reading. The ending is HE.

*I doodled the character designs myself. Only these cute little chibi heads can sort of look like people ()

Theme: Defying fate