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They don't call him Dan Heng. To them, he is Dan Feng. The same guilty person. He tries telling them he doesn't remember. Although he is engulfed by memories, swallowed by them, the shadows of his past. And the darkness around him. A fathomless ocean. He writhes and gasps for breath with every fibre of his being. He desperately tries to grasp a sliver of light in the endless darkness that has been his entire world since birth. Darkness that's so heavy, it's physically palpable. It's suffocating. They never listen. They treat him with the same disgust in their voices, the same bone-chilling coldness and ruthlessness that they once displayed towards Dan Feng.
"That's why you are here. Dan Feng."
"I'm not him." No longer imploring, he has given up on that long ago; voice now bitter, but trembling, nonetheless.
"A sinner must pay the price."
"I'm not him." Voice cracking, throat dry. Chains tightening painfully around his waist. Gasping for air and whimpering. It's dark but he can feel their hateful stares.
"I'm not him!"
Only silence answers.
Once, he cried, begged for relief. Once, he did, bitterly so, cried out with a broken voice. No one came to soothe him. No one answered, only the rattling of his own chains, cuffs, spikes and shackles. Once, he cried, he wept and begged for someone to hold him but no one came. And so he never cried again.
"I'm not him.
I'm not him!
Why must I suffer in his stead?" He doesn't care if his voice is filled with pain, if he sobs his words, if he pleads or if he breaks.
"Those are his sins. Why must I be the one to atone for them?"
"I'm not him!!"
He doesn't know if he screams it out into the dark or it remains in his dreams. Existing between consciousness and another realm, how many times has he said these words? "I'm not him!"
'Dan Feng, guilty of unpardonable sin -'
"I'm not him!" No one listens and no one hears. He stops saying it eventually, doesn't reply at all anymore. He takes the name like how he takes the shackles; he endures until the day he can shed both, never to return.
"I'm... Dan Heng."
*
"They say what you don't know, you can't long for. But I longed for freedom my entire life. Because I was born a prisoner. I longed for love because I was hated. I longed for acceptance and kindness because I grew up without either. They say what you don't know you can't wish for. I wished for all these. And yet I didn't know them. That's precisely why I longed for them. They're fundamental needs of every being. Don't tell me that I didn't have these makes my past less heavy or painful. How dare you suggest I wouldn't know what I'm missing?
"Would you not wish to be fed when you're hungry even if you've never felt a full stomach? Would you not yearn for water to soothe your dry throat and your aching body? Just because you've never felt what it's like to be hydrated. No. You would long for all these. So don't think my pain was any less because I yearned for that which I grew up without. Then you'd be blind to the truth. And even those without eyes long for a vision. Those without a voice may wish to speak. I wished to be loved. I wished for the sun on my skin, for light in my eyes and my soul. I desperately longed for it. But I didn't have it.
"All I had were stories and a mind kind enough to envision the scenes described on barely lit pages that I clung to in the surrounding darkness."
*
It was cold inside the prison. Cold and dark. He needed it warm.
His body ached from the weight of the shackles he'd had on him since birth. Dried blood made his clothes rub against him roughly. Dried blood from wounds he didn't know he received, nor could he see where they were. It was dark. And cold. Ice cold. He shivered from it and the pain. He cried softly and the tears dried on his dirt-smeared face. Cold, hard stone was under his feet.
He waited. Silence waited with him. He was sometimes given food. It was tasteless.
His slender fingers felt over pages of a book. His bright eyes seemed to emanate more light than the blue torch he was given. Barely enough to see at all. Its light didn't shine, it didn't radiate. He waited for his eyes to adjust. Even the cold flame hurt. He wasn't used to any light. He only knew darkness.
He slept and dreamt of battles. Of countless slaughtered souls and it was always his hand that led the spear, that dealt the finishing blow. It was always he who killed them. He awoke, bathed in sweat, shuddering all over and gasping for breath. His body knew the combat moves, he became aware of that. He was capable of killing. He had done it before. He wished it wasn't true as his sweat turned to ice, piercing him with tiny needles. He waited. Darkness waited with him.
He was drowning in an ocean of despair. Swept away by meaningless sins and memories. He wished to stop breathing but his body did not obey him. It seemed to follow a different reign, governed by another, not himself. He had never seen his face but he knew he shared it with countless others before him. Bearer of the Azure Dragon's Legacy. One of the five High Elder. Noble warrior. Wise healer.
He couldn't heal his wounds. And he could not free himself.
He hadn't lost all hope. He never had any to begin with. He yearned for it. Deep within him slumbered a force that pushed him onward. Within his troubled soul lay a desperate wish for freedom and a defiance against all odds.
He waited. And the shadows waited with him.
*
"I have food for you," the voice in the dark announced. He didn't reply.
"You must be hungry." The person moved closer, he could hear it. At last, he could see her face, the dark robes, the black hair. Maybe it wasn't black. She carried the dull light of a Spiritfarer lamp. He flinched. "I'll feed you." She said it kindly. She scooted closer. Closer to him. To his chains. Shackles. Cuffs. Spikes. She reached for them and he screamed. Lest they'd tie them closer. They'd tightened them just earlier. He could barely breathe. "No!" he screamed. She proceeded, much to his horror. She laid hands on them and he kept screaming with a broken voice. She touched his wrists. She found blood on her fingertips. And she loosened the chains. She loosened them with the spells she possessed, this odd Judge. She loosened the chains, placed the lamp on the ground and used her robes to wipe blood off his bare skin. Then she kneeled down before him - he too was kneeling now, half collapsed on the ground - and lifted a full spoon with something to his lips. "Eat," she commanded. Her voice was used to giving orders, to speaking sentences of punishment. Not to be kind. It was like she tried to bend a body that was a blade into a soft pillow to hold a wounded soul. She made the spoon touch his lips and he shivered - and collapsed. She held him. She wiped blood and ichor from the horns, gently petted his head and dressed a wound on his back. She even brought cloth for this.
*
Maybe the first time they let him read, he had no hopes. They gave him a book and he gazed with empty eyes at the object in front of him. But there is nothing else to do but this. And so eventually, since they let him move a little, he moves his aching body to pick up the thing and open it. Words make no sense but as he gazes at the paper, he remembers how to read. It's just a random page from the middle of the book. Yet he gets drawn into it. And before he knows it, he's read it all. And he's given more. Slowly but surely, he begins to long for the world and to picture many things. His brain, deprived of anything but horrors until now, is being fed things different from the dark. And he begins to grow. He begins to question and to think, to analyse and to connect. Until there is a whole world inside his head. He can read very fast now, devours the words and the worlds they form. The books pile up and the Ten-Lords Commission discusses if they are to continue giving him them. They conclude there's no harm in it. And so it goes on.
*
All this... because someone died.
Someone beloved.
All this suffering because of love and loss...
In the silent darkness of his world, he swore to himself to never love. Lest he would lose. He would not become the burden of his own future.
And if love leads to loss and loss to sin, then he would never give his heart to anyone.
*