[Honkai: Star Rail] A Thousand Eternal Lost Moments

[The blurb and title are tentative. For now, here's a placeholder for the preorder page.]

"Welcome to the Rift of Fate."

1

Dan Heng opened his eyes and found himself in an unfamiliar place.

The pure white room had no windows. A round conference table stood in the middle, with several strangers already seated around it.

An unfamiliar Xianzhou hero, the general of the Luofu at the time, and four Vidyadhara High Elders from four different Xianzhou.

Dan Heng stared blankly at this group of people he had never met, unable to understand why he had joined them.

The first round of the game began. Seeing the pointer land on him, Dan Heng took a deep breath and pushed open the pure white door.

He had returned to the starting point of his memories, to the time ten years ago when he boarded that company starship.

"Rewinds remaining: 1."

"Rewind checkpoint: 00:00."

"You can earn more rewinds by finding any overlooked clues, and unlock other System functions. Have fun!"

The ??th time he stood at the rain-lashed harbor, Dan Heng looked back into the endless darkness for the first time. There, he saw the corner of a garment embroidered with cranes dancing among flowing clouds vanish into the boundless dark.

2

Sometimes Jing Yuan would find himself lost in thought. Life on the Luofu was peaceful, but he always felt as though something was missing.

What was missing? He couldn't remember.

Not until he came to this mysterious room.

Inside sat his master, Jingliu; Jingliu's friend, Baiheng; and Yingxing, the genius craftsman from the Artisanship Commission. He even saw the four High Elders from other Xianzhou. The last to arrive was a black-haired young man no one knew.

Jing Yuan rubbed his chin.

As a child, Jing Yuan once accompanied his parents to the seal on the Ambrosial Arbor.

There weren't many Vidyadhara on the Luofu. The seal on the Ambrosial Arbor was set in turn by the four High Elders, while the Six Commissions jointly managed it the rest of the time.

He got lost among the complicated mechanisms and formations of the Scalegorge Waterscape, but there he met a shadow dressed in white, with black hair and a red paper umbrella. It led him out of the maze.

The ??th time he stood at the exit of the formation, facing the outside world, Jing Yuan turned around for the first time and caught the departing shadow by the hand. In an instant, the paper umbrella fell. His hand came away covered in blood, clutching a shed scale.

3

Since ancient times, there had only ever been four Vidyadhara High Elders.

Tianfeng had always been certain of this. Yet every time he went to reinforce the seal and gazed at the tides of the Scalegorge Waterscape, he would feel strangely dazed.

The strange room, the inexplicable game, the unfamiliar young Vidyadhara...

He pushed open the door and saw the eternal dusk over Tang Hai. A hand covered his eyes and tied a ribbon over them to block out the light. "Your eyes haven't healed yet. Don't expose them to the light."

That familiar voice led him through the broken walls and ruins of the ancient palace, away from the polluted ancient sea. At last, it said:

"...It's time to go, Tianfeng. The pact has taken effect. From now on, Tang Hai will no longer be the homeland of the Vidyadhara."

"Aren't you coming with us?"

"...No. That is your future."

"Then what about your future?"

The voice drifted over on the wind, carrying an ancient weariness and tenderness. It said, "I have no future. I am a ghost from the past."

"No, you can't leave... You, Dan Feng, come back!"

He tore off the ribbon. Blood tears streamed from his eyes as they faced the dazzling light of the eternal star. As the world spun around him, he saw that person's face clearly for the first time.

[Fake rewind story + a little bit of watching-the-past setup + Great Tree Rukkhadevata Feng-ge (?) + memories + a jumbled timeline + lots of headcanon and OOC]

[Simply put, in a worldline where Feng-ge has disappeared, his friends repeatedly revisit their memories and the past to find the bugs caused by his disappearance, and eventually recover the correct memories (probably).]

Theme: Do not forget