[qilinism]

( xix. ) ⧽ [n]sfw blog ; mdni aside from any sfw works — semi-ia? currently reposting some old fics | masterlist

𓄲 inbox/asks open for n/sfw drabbles and random yap! currently not taking requests for oneshots. mostly writing for genshin & star rail atm.

[mewnbuns]

BODY TEMPERATURE | BLADE

⸺ ⟢ blade x fem! reader. pussy jobs. minors do not interact. soaking with blade in the hot springs. a little teasing and such but mostly just something to feed my friends. this is a little rushed so i apologise (i wrote this with one hand honestly).

⸺ ⟢ wc. 2.1k words.

You can just about make him out even from this distance. Perhaps it’s the sheer size of him, the mass of Blade’s muscled back and shoulders easily drawing your attention even as you slowly approach him from behind.

It had been your idea, to stop over in the hot springs while you were both nearby— hoping to lose yourself in a good, warm soak after all of your muscles were screaming at you for a break. Blade hadn’t put up much of an argument about it, and perhaps it’s because you think he could do with the soak too. Either that or he was just happy to oblige your request, but you’re not curious enough to question him on it.

Not when you get to admire the way the damp press of Blade’s hair clings to back of his neck, his body sinking lower into the warm water as you feel the warm air begin to brush over your own nakedness.

You try your best to stay as quiet as possible, even as you slowly creep over the cobblestone that leads you towards where he is, hoping that you may reward yourself with a few more seconds of being able to admire him unnoticed.

But you know Blade hears you, as he always does, acknowledging you with a subtle turn of his head as if his ears are perking up at your approach. He doesn’t move nor shift though, akin to the way a predator might remain still as to not alert their pray.

But if you’re the prey, you seem to be giving yourself up quite willingly.

It only takes a few more silent steps before you come to the lip of the springs, face to face with Blade and immediately you can feel it aswell as see it— the undisguised desire, hot and earnest in his eyes as he takes you in. He’s shameless in his admiration, much as you are to him.

Every look is slow and hungry, and the unwavering admiration is enough to make you shake when you take that first trembling step into the springs to join him.

Blade doesn’t miss a moment of it, not when he can watch how the water line clings to your breasts and molds to your bare straining nipples as you take a breath in. He watches you sink all the way down into the water, until you sit on a ledge at the other end of the spring where your thighs squeeze together and make an alluring, not so mysterious y-shape hiding your center from view.

It’s deliberate on your part, the distance. A detail that you know Blade won’t stand for, especially given the way his gaze is already devouring you completely. But it gets you the reaction you hope for almost immediately; a drop in Blade’s brows, a heat of something darker in his gaze and his jaw tightens before you speak.

You wave your hand through the water, transfixed by the ripples it creates beneath your touch, the shapes reaching all the way across to your lover at the other side.

“How does it feel?” You ask after a moment, “Better?”

“Mmph.” Is all Blade offers, stubborn. But it only makes you feel all the more playful, admiring the way his broad, scarred chest rests above the water.

His voice is much deeper when it calls your gaze back, and his huge body shifts. “Something wrong?”

“Nope.” You answer too quickly, tilting your head. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason.”

“Is something the matter with you? You’re scowling.”

It takes Blade a second to respond, you watch the lines of his neck and arms flex before he’s relaxing again, and your brows rise at him.

“Come.” He grunts, obviously unamused as he motions to a place by his side. “Closer.”

“This isn’t close enough for you?”

You swear you see the muscles in Blade’s jaw clench.

“No.” He grinds out.

“Are you sure? I thought maybe you’d appreciate some alone time.”

“Don’t toy with me, girl.”

You can’t help yourself, can’t help but rile up the same man many would consider to be a weapon because you see the way he looks at you, notice the way his heavy, half-hard cock is already twitching beneath the surface of the springs.

You could keep going for longer if you wanted, but there’s a part of you that doesn’t want to deny yourself of what awaits you either. Not when you can see the way the temperature of the springs have caused parts of Blade’s features to take on a pink flush, and his chest is rising and falling with his deep breaths.

It’s mouth-watering. So although prematurely, you find yourself closing that distance in only a couple of steps— perhaps driven by your own eagerness as Blade spreads his legs a little wider in anticipation.

You take your new seat by his side before giving him a look.

“Better?”

Blade returns it with one that’s equal parts unamused and full of desire before he motions with his eyes again. To himself this time.

“Here.”

And without a second thought, you do as he says.

Blade sinks into the warm water as you wrap your arms around his shoulders and climb on top of him, placing your knees on either side of his hips as you situate yourself down. Too close to his hard cock for it to be accidental, but he’s more than eager to have you slink into his lap and rub yourself against him.

His body feels like silk beneath you, water sloshing as you feel the first silky grind of his hard cock split through your folds before it’s catching on your clit, making you gasp and moan at the wet, tacky sound that follows.

His eyes all but burn through you.

“How about now?” You ask in a dreamier voice. “Is that what had gotten you so upset?”

“I have no patience for your games.” Blade grunts and grips your waist as you shamelessly rub your pussy across his cock beneath the water. “Teasing me is a bad habit of yours.”

“I thought you liked that about me.” You giggle, but it breaks off into a moan with the next clumsy thrust of your hips, the shaft rolling languidly through your split folds in a way that makes your toes curl.

It’s incredibly intoxicating, the feeling of Blade’s larger body beneath yours accompanied by the temperature of the springs. He feels so rough and safe and warm. You whine his name, nuzzling down into his damp hair and you feel his mouth catch on your soft breast as you lean yourself back to offer him more of it.

Blade’s mouth works at you tirelessly, lapping and kissing at your perked nipples until your thighs quiver, accompanied by the lurid back and forth sway of your hips in his lap as he mindlessly helps you rock back and forth along the length of him. He presses along your lips and the bump of your clit catches on his swollen cockhead, making you both twitch and your whole body jolts when he nips at your tits with his teeth.

“You’re disobedient. This will not end well for you.” He murmurs against your breasts, full of want.

“I don’t know, I’ve never been one to shy away from a challenge.”

You wrap your arms around his shoulders, leaning into your own arm with a lazy, lewd swirl of your hips. Blade’s brows come down as his kisses find their way to your jaw, lips parting to grind out another groan and tease skin with teeth while his rough hands curl into the plush softness of your ass.

You press slow, soft kisses against his forehead, down over his nose and mouth and neck, following the valley of each scar, old and new. Blade lets his head fall back and a deep, guttural growl vibrates against your lips. “Know your limits.”

You pet his shoulders and chest, hum in question that’s way more convincing than it should be for just one sound, and ask in a sweet tone, “And if I don’t?”

“Then when you surrender it will be amusing. Do not test me.”

The depth of Blade’s gaze, accompanied the deep tone of promise in his voice almost burns you, making your pussy twitch from where you’re pressing hard against him. You moan, your toes flexing as they curl up behind you and your nails dig into his arms.

You feel his cock throb at the eagerness of your movements, and then he’s helping grind you against him again.

But it’s almost too easy for Blade to make you into a mess. To make you whimper and keen, peering at him with your forehead against his.

The soft bouncing motion of your body on his cock alongside the saccharine rub of his skin against yours makes you feel delirious. The humid air of the springs fills your lungs with your next inhale, and your breaths turn to rushing pants that make your head spin.

But you can tell that Blade’s enjoying pushing himself up against you, to help you bob and thrust across the length of his cock while you struggle to keep his pace. The catch of his sensitive head and folds of his frenulum against the plush, slick petals of your pussy makes it easy to forget about his prior warning, to ignore the way water splashes over the edge of the springs, to not be affected by what would be embarrassment if anyone were to choose tonight of all nights to indulge in a warm soak.

You feel Blade slip down low in the water, applying pressure to a different angle all while he luxuriates in simply letting you ride him and take your pleasure and give him his. All while he gets to watch your breasts bob and your eyes flutter.

But it’s all too much, too much when the head of his fat cock is pressing through your folds just right and his huge palms are grabbing at your ass to ease himself through it. His hands are pulling you apart, spreading out your pussy from behind to make sure you can’t run from your fate and it makes your heart kick at your chest, you’re beginning to feel boneless above him.

“S-slow down…” You crumble, pleading against Blade’s jugular, but your hips never stopping their hypnotic motions. His chest jumps with an inhale.

“This is what has become of you?” There’s an air of something dark to his tone, his lips smearing against your cheek as he wills your body to keep moving. “Is this all it takes to whittle away one’s resolve?”

Your choked moans of Blade’s name ratchet up in pitch, but squeeze down to a whisper, almost like your whole body is twisting up. He gathers you close and squeezes strong arms around you, you’re gripping tight to the back of his neck and hair while he’s helping hitch your hips impossibly closer to his with a slap of flesh against water.

It’s all too much, the way the tendrils of your orgasm rush towards you with reckless abandon, the pleasure mixing with the rising temperature of the hot springs only making you more lightheaded and pliant. Blade takes in the almost helpless look on your face and all but craves to devour it; mouth smashing onto yours when your head falls forward to allow him the reach.

It’s an intense haze of messy kisses and moans, hands wandering and squeezing, shared growls and shivers despite the heat. The head of his cock catches on your hole, and you moan at the way the simple contact is enough to tease you with the stretch. It makes something grasp deep and agonizing in your gut at the hint of what you could have, hunger rushing fast and quick through his blood as you feel Blade’s cock throb and thicken against you.

“Please…. I—“ Your lips curl, legs shaking as your body bounces against his, you’re so desperate for him to just slip deep inside of you.

But before you can shift your hips just enough to position yourself to allow it, Blade grabs at you— deliberately applying pressure to your clit with the next tangible press of his cock through your folds.

“Not yet.” He almost barks, voice wound tight and cock throbbing as he holds your bleary gaze. “First, I will make something else of you.”

[qilinism]

the concept of caleb and the hunger games… aka where it all goes downhill from the moment you get reaped for the games.

caleb, who has to be stopped from volunteering to go into the games alongside you when your name is reaped. in your district, it was almost certainly a death sentence, but at that moment he thinks he would rather die by your side, than live without you. 

caleb, who makes you promise him that you will make it back to him. he can’t lose you, not like this. there are too many things unspoken between you, lost to the wind as he watches the train pull away from your district. 

caleb, who can’t tear his eyes from the screen for even a single moment as he watches the clock countdown. underneath his breath, he’s whispering for you to run—far away from what he knows is an inevitable bloodbath. he holds the necklace you gave him close to his heart, and prays he does not see you amongst the fallen. 

caleb, who continues to watch the games closely at every waking minute, utterly unmoving from his spot. it’s as if he took his eyes off you, you would die. he grieves with you, when you are forced to take the life of an ally—but a part of him is relieved, you’re one person closer to victory. 

but the path to victory is no easy road. you’re down to the final four—but you’re no extraordinary person, only having made it this far out of sheer luck, and you know you cannot beat any of the remaining three tributes in a fight. caleb thinks, you’re going to need a miracle. 

you have only your brains to work with—so you pull a stunt. you take the gamble, and luck just happened to be on your side. you’ve definitely pissed off the capitol though, made them look like fools on live television. they had always craved a bloodied showdown, to showcase the true animalistic nature of the districts. but in that moment you didn’t care, except that you would be going home. 

caleb, who finally lets go of the breath he had been holding, when they announce you the victor of the hunger games. 

caleb, who is the first person to greet you the moment you step off the train back in your district. there’s no words left that needed to be spoken—you had kissed him right then and there. because everything you had done, was to get back to him. 

but you are not able to celebrate for long. the fires of rebellion have been on the rise for the past years, and you’ve all but fanned the flames in your defiant little stunt. 

caleb, whose very life is threatened, when the president pays you a visit—to fix what you have started. for the sake of the nation, and all the lives you value. you would not be quick to forget who truly holds all the power in this world. 

caleb, who suggests running away with you. somewhere safe, where not a single soul could touch you. he paints a picture of a life found in fairytales and you can only laugh hopelessly—for such a place does not exist in this world. nowhere is safe from the capitol’s grasp, and you would forever have a target upon your back. 

because when war descends, you stand with everything to lose. you are yet a lucky survivor again, in the bombed remains of your district, but it is only the beginning of the atrocities the capitol will commit—to destroy you, and everyone else among this rebellion. 

they take caleb, pull his dying body from the wreckage before you can, leaving you with nothing but the necklace you had given to him all those years ago. and they’ll kill him over and over, until all you have left is only a memory of him. 

you see his face on the grainy television screen back at the base, amongst the war propaganda spread by the capitol. you want to be relieved that he’s alive, but something’s changed. the eyes that stare at you through the screen are so empty, like an abyss that threatens to swallow you whole. 

but caleb, who despite everything, holds out for you. his torturers continue to chip away at what remains of his memory and sanity—he’s long forgotten his own birthday, the feeling of the sun against his skin, but he hasn’t forgotten you. not ever. they wouldn’t take you from him again. he makes you his sole fixation. 

caleb, who is finally rescued at last—except he is nothing like the caleb you once knew. 

[qilinism]

the prophecy / jing yuan.

jing yuan x gn. reader

synopsis. you’ve seen your future, known of the disasters that are to come, with you yourself left to fade into obscurity amidst it all. and of the souls left behind, they grieve, looking to the heavens in askance of even a little more time. but alas, even the greatest amongst your number cannot rewrite this prophecy, rendered helpless as it unfolds before your eyes, the inscriptions of the stars detailing your final movement.

You remember when your paths first crossed. 

You had long seen it written across the celestial atlas, where two brilliant stars had met. His name lies on the tip of your tongue, glanced from a fleeting vision of quicksilver and gold—waiting to be uttered. 

“You must be Jing Yuan.” 

A whisper amongst the swaying reeds, where the last rays of the setting sun touched upon the world in a lucent trail of gold. And you had stood amongst those fields, waiting for him. 

For you knew he would come. 

He sought an answer from you, like countless others.

Just as the winds have carried the rest of him and the story of his exploits to you, had it too spread the word of your own renowned abilities. Those with lofty ambitions, seeking greatness, alongside others who looked for guidance, in the face of an uncertain future—they had all looked to you. 

The war with the abundance raged endlessly beyond these skies. You traced its path across the stars, worlds and civilisations rising and falling beneath the helm of the reignbow arbiter. You’ve seen futures, of soldiers marching into battle not knowing it will be their last. And others, consumed by the inevitable that takes root within their own minds. 

One day it would end, when the plague’s author would be extinguished. A long awaited moment after the thousands upon thousands of years chasing the trail of something far beyond your own comprehension. Thousands had dreamed of being the one to conquer such—of what fate had cruelly bestowed upon them, from a brief altercation with the divine eons ago. 

You had been amongst them once. 

Dreams came easy to you then. Stars aligned to your will, your divination unquestionable. 

And as you had looked to him, he whose eyes had shimmered with the incandescent glow of a thousand splendid suns—you had seen hope. A star whose radiance would guide you through the darkest of nights, standing at the pinnacle, and perhaps one day, to cleave the sky itself. 

He utters similar sentiments, dreams of putting the abundance in their grave. His lips part to reveal pearly white teeth as he laughs raucously. “Will you be by my side then, oh master diviner?”

(An unknowing jest, in the face of time. Fate was cruel for this, bringing you together before ruthlessly tearing you apart, a reminder of the fleeting moment that you exist in the vast universe. Looking back, you realise, you could have never changed its predestined course, puppets on a string to a greater game amongst aeons). 

You unaware then, had only closed your eyes and joined in on his laughter. “Time can only tell.” 

***

One day, divination would not come as easy to you. 

In fact it did not come at all, in the form of stars neatly aligned across a hexagram, preceding better days to come. Rather, it's as if one had snuffed out the stars in the sky itself, leaving you disoriented in the darkness. 

The stairs up suddenly are too steep, swaying before you. The hum of the matrix of prescience buzzing too loud in your ears, its light blinding. There’s a persistent throbbing at the base of your skull that has yet to cease. Your vision swims, your steps each feeling heavier than the last. 

A wave of nausea washes over you, your foot catching on the last step. You stumble, a gasp lodged in the back of your throat. 

But nothing comes out—you are unable to form even a cry on your lips. 

You’re stopped once more, choked by decay and every vile reparation that is woven into your flesh. Crimson splatters across the ground in front of you, its ugly blotches swimming before your eyes, twisting and morphing into crude shapes that reenact the same scenes over and over in your mind. 

This must be it, you think, as the panicked shouts of your subordinates surround you—and this time, a familiar head of silver hair amongst them. 

It’s a reminder of the price you pay to gaze into the very abyss where the light fears to tread, encompassing the stars in its entirety. You‘ve seen the fate of others unfold before you, destinies outlined by an invisible hand—the knowledge of it all passed through you. But even you cannot fully steer yourself away from tragedy. 

Your own fate is just as precarious. You are no different in flesh and blood to those whom you observe. You know all too well that every word, every movement is upon a tipping hourglass, the grains of sand falling into place as its motions play out across history. Some stories, you will not live to see with your own eyes. 

And as death and bloodshed overlap with one another, scarlet red dyeing your vision—you know that time is running out. Your prophesied end flashes before your eyes, growing closer by the day. 

The shadows that dance before you are no longer unnamed, marked with familiar faces twisted in agony, their once ghostly presences now more real than ever. They’re taunting you almost, being close enough to observe, but never to touch, to change what unfolds before you. 

Your trembling hands grasp at nothingness, led on by the haunting echoes that permeate the air.  

He’s so far away. 

His blurred form swims before your eyes. It’s as if he himself is a distant star you are unable to reach, shrouded in silvery moonlight and imbued with eyes of the brightest living gold, glistening in the shade of divine ichor itself. Perhaps you may have walked among them once with your peerless mind, but now you’re reduced to a mere scrap of existence that the famed general looks down upon in pity. 

Nothing lasts forever. Even the brightest stars cannot stand the test of time. It is the harsh, embittered truth you face—that against what is inevitable, even the greatest will crumble, torn apart by their own minds which had once birthed such brilliance, felled by its predilections that tend toward madness. 

You’re merely another victim to this perpetual eternity, this eternal samsara of the sins from those who had come before, its curse etched upon your flesh from the moment you had opened your eyes to this world. 

“Y/N.” The utterance of your name is both strained with anguish and this hollow realisation. He echoes what you already know with certainty. 

“You’re sick.” 

Sick, not dying. You note his choice in words, the way his hands grasp your outstretched ones as he sinks to his knees before you, cradling your face, beholding you with those trembling hands. 

Indeed, you are just sick, this merely a passing affliction. You pretend as if there isn’t more than just concern in his eyes as he brings himself to meet your own. Fear and doubt linger amongst it, casting a shadow over its renowned brilliance. 

Jing Yuan himself wants to believe that this isn’t what he fears it to be. 

But he’s dealt with enough marastruck soldiers to recognise the signs. Endless clashes with the abundance have brought nothing but horrors to behold, rendering the mind asunder in this perpetuating cycle of vicious conflict scattered with grief and despair. It festers and consumes, capable of bringing down even the brightest of minds across his troops. 

And to you, who discerns the futures of these people, tracing the path of carnage across their memory—what is it that you have seen? 

Too much, he thinks, answering for your curled up form in his arms. It builds up within you, all your fears combined with the atrocity you witness, of the past, present and future replaying in an endless loop across your mind.

He will never be a prophet, nor you a general. There’ll always be a part of you he will never fully hope to understand. But he wishes to, and so much more, anything to stop the ebb and flow of time that is wearing down upon your delicate frame. There must be some piece of foresight into all this. You must’ve known this was coming—but for how long? 

He looses a shaky breath, fingers twitching, grasping the fabric of your clothes as if afraid to let you go. “Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“Could you handle it?” You seem to ask with raised eyebrows. 

You yourself barely could. 

You’ve always been impartial. Fate has never made such distinctions toward any singular being as it comes to pass by you time and time again, heralding both fortune and tragedy. And you’ve foretold the possibilities of a thousand distant futures like so, unhesitating in the deliverance of these imminent catastrophes, marking others with their accursed fates. 

Truly, you of all people should not be stricken, frozen in the face of dwindling time. 

But when memoria floods you, chokes you under the crushing weight of tragedy entwined with your own prophesied demise—for the first time, you had faltered, against the comprehension of fate. Your fate, one of which you had never seen before in such piercing clarity, looming like a malevolent wraith over you. 

You see it, his future, your future, and fragments of something else amid rivulets of dried scarlet glistening atop pale, lifeless bones—where the howling wind that echoes deathly recluse. You can almost feel its biting chill creeping up upon you, sinking its frigid claws into your flesh, paralysing you as its prophecy lies unspoken on your tongue. 

It teeters there, back and forth across your vision, this incessant tick of time that counts down toward oblivion. 

“How long…? How long until—”

“One month.” 

He’s silent. Not in a good way. 

You see the way his entire countenance seems to shift, as if struck in the gut by such an admission, eyes squeezing shut as a shaky exhale pushes past his lips. It’s a hard pill to swallow, no matter how many times one has witnessed similar occurrences. 

You merely confirm his worst fears. The words upon your tongue have always been of absolute truth, dictating a fate set in stone. 

And what can he do now? The daunting reality of it all hangs heavy over the silence shrouding the room, a suffocating thing that closes up his throat and holds his breath. He can only watch as you crumble beneath its burden, weakened and frail, as it chips away at your life whose spark has an end in sight. An end you yourself have assured, down to the very last moment. 

But that is not all you had seen. You close your eyes, grimacing. You’ve seen more beyond this present moment, this marking but the beginning of countless tragedies. 

This would not be the greatest tragedy yet. One such vision tears into you, of a world painted in crimson, as a draconic abomination rears its head in outrage at the skies. And you see faces, clearer than before, rushing towards death, with assuredly more to follow, as you trace the path of carnage, where even the greatest are not able to escape, blades interlocked in furious battle. 

They too will die. 

He will witness this future too, the demise of more than your passing soul. You could tell him that too. 

But alas, can you bring yourself to hurt him more than you already have—with this utterance of your own dwindling life? 

As to him, his world is already falling. 

It had plummeted the moment he had seen you, keeled over, blood splattered across the floor and golden cracks spiderwebbed across your skin. His first thought had not been this, as he had rushed to your side. 

For this, it should have been impossible, the one thing he had refused to accept so soon—that he is going to lose you. 

But it’s real. 

It’s happening before his eyes. 

Where had all the time gone? 

(It’s burrowing into your flesh, decaying your figure and wearing down your mind—taking and taking, until you will be nothing more than a lifeless corpse). 

You laugh your last laugh in the face of it, humourlessly. “You know nothing, Jing Yuan.” 

He really doesn’t know. 

***

You’ve always been the elusive and all knowing one, with him naive to the sensibilities of the world, holding dreams of high honour and devotion, chasing the stars as you had watched them from afar. Truly, you couldn’t have been more different, but he had believed you were bound by the same dream. 

You were supposed to be brilliant, like him. But the world seems to make distinctions between you even now—him standing here on the cusp of greatness, while you crumble beneath its burden. Did you know this dream would fall apart before his eyes? 

A part of him curses himself for not knowing with each passing day, its hopelessness eating away at him. There could’ve been something he could have done, anything for a little more time. 

Because how can he stand here with this knowledge now? You will die, laying forgotten beneath the stars you had once gazed upon so fervently. Is there truly nothing he could do? He would cut down the stars in the sky had you bid him to do so, tried his hand to defy what fate has set for you. 

It’s not fair. 

There are so many questions he wants to ask you. Ones that will go unanswered, its words dying upon his tongue as he’s dragged back to reality by bony fingers digging into his side.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to,” comes the cold, cutting voice of his master by his side, piercing red eyes meeting his own as her grip tightens on his shoulder. “It’ll only make your parting more miserable.” 

It’s not easy for them either, he realises, as Jingliu turns away, both looking on at the proceedings—the high elder of the Vidhyadhara hunched over your sickly frame, murmuring lunar incantations as your body twitches fitfully beneath him. 

He sees your agony. Such affliction tears at your mind and body, driving you toward an inevitable descent into madness. It’s doubtless your thoughts are already a jumble of anger and regret. He wonders if you can even recognise yourself anymore in its swirling miasma of chaos, clawing at the remaining scraps of reason.

You who had once been revered for your brilliant mind, reduced to but a fragment of your former self in nothing but name only. 

(How pitiful. You don’t know what you even are anymore. You don’t know anything. Pain has taken over your entire body, each movement tearing into a part of you—you cannot think of anything beyond it. It’s all a blur, you cannot focus on anything except your own anguish, the world having faded to obscurity around you.) 

Your eyes echo a similar emptiness, its stars swallowed up into the void that stares back. There’s barely a hint of recognition within them, as your head turns towards him. It’s painful to meet those eyes, eyes he had once loved, before this curse had stripped away every part of you that made you, you. 

It only twists the knife, in that he’s really losing you, in the fading brightness of a once brilliant star, your soul slipping into the frigid darkness. It seems even Dan Feng, revered in the cloudhymn arts could not offer a reprieve, no more than Jingliu, who could only offer a quick death if it came to it—be it he was not prepared to raise arms against you. 

You were already on a path of no return after all, it would be a mercy, she had advised him, as they stood around—waiting, watching. 

His fingers twitch, curling around nothing—the absence of you. Your physical form has ruptured, there is only the part of you that lives on in a memory he once had, dancing across his mind, replaying the last moments of warm sun. 

He still remembers you before this, beneath the sunset, amongst a field of marigolds with nothing but the feel of the autumn wind blowing through his hair and your hand in his. And when you had laughed, it was like music to his ears, the merry tinkling of bells—you were simply exquisite, breathtaking beneath the golden light of the setting sun. 

It’s unlike the rasp of your voice now, the cracks of your skin he gingerly beholds, where he had once placed a flower in your hair, brushing it back as he had kissed you. And your lips had tasted of honeyed wine, addicting and divine—he could barely bring himself to part with you, after having savoured such for so many years, never to feel them again. 

If he had known what would soon befall you, he would’ve never let go, memorised every inch of you. 

It had all seemed like a distant dream then, when you had eternity stretching out before you. But how quickly such illusions of time had been shattered, these statements turned true. He stands as the testament to it all. 

For even memory has an end. 

Your laughter would fade amongst those fields, leaving nothing behind but a hollow echo of a ghost. Your touch, once bursting with the warmth of your entire being, would turn cold, skeletal fingers entwined with his own in parallels of longevity. 

He watches as your ghostly form drifts away before his eyes, led on by the transfixions of fate. He reaches out, tries to follow you, calling out your name.

Could you not defy it for even a moment? 

He’s brought to his knees. He begs it to stay a moment longer. 

“Wait, please.” 

But time waits for no one. It moves on, pushing forward relentlessly, leaving souls trapped in the past reminiscing about bygones, and others to desperately race against its unending movements, to change a fixture amid their fates. Distant dreams come to fruition, just as imminent fears turn to nightmarish reality before your eyes. 

And when those last grains of sand drop from the hourglass, do you stand to meet your fate. 

A lasting memory that leaves nothing but a scarlet stain upon his hands, your body twitching in his arms, choking on crimson rivulets that spill from your parted lips amid your halting breaths.

It’s as you predicted. 

And what a cruel twist of fate it was.

─ ˖᯽ ݁˖·

likes, comments & rbs are greatly appreciated! we ARE in a fanfic recession y’all </3 😭😭

[qilinism]

i love you, i’m sorry / yingxing.

yingxing x gn. reader. [reupload ik shush guys.]

synopsis. existence draws a divide between that of mortals and those blessed with eternity, yet he cannot help but be enamoured by you, consuming his thoughts, his dreams, allowing you to lead his own mortal soul to ruin. as for a lifetime do you remain far from his reach, shrouded by legend—and all he can do is carve your name into memory.

Your name echoes throughout the Xianzhou, heard everywhere—seen everywhere Yingxing steps foot. 

For you dance across his mind in a way that’s almost taunting, your movements as elegant as the sword you brandish, yet as swift and fleeting as the cool breeze that blows through the windows of his workshop. It’s a gentle momentary caress across his face, a sense of almost grasping something so incorporeal, so impossible. 

It’s a distraction from the purpose that occupies his thoughts, the one that tears and slowly chips away at everything he is, as sweat pours from his brow and his body shakes with exertion, swinging the hammer in his hands. 

The sound of it rings against red-hot iron in a repeated motion, a crude jarring noise that sends tremors up his arm and leaves him gritting his teeth. But his eyes remain unfaltering, focused wholly on tempering the steel atop an elegant staff, wrought from the finest materials he had managed to get his hands on. 

Because there remains burning irresolutely, that innate desire of his, the one that strives to be the best, and furthermore, when it comes to the subject that is you. 

He thinks of you, each time it meets the metal. 

He thinks of you, as he carves your name along it, and each time the tool slips from his grasp and slices apart the palm of his hand, spilling crimson blood. It’s the same colour of the ribbon in your hair blowing in the wind, as a smile graces your lips beneath skies painted with aureate clouds. 

It ripples behind you like a blazing trail of scarlet across his memories, whilst silver gleams in your hands in an almost brilliant reflection of the moon itself, crossing blades with him beneath the light of the setting sun, sweeping him up in this mesmerising dance of yours. 

You’ve left him utterly entranced by your very existence, so much that he hardly notices it when you knock him off his feet, for even that fall is graceful by your doing.

However, his defeat doesn’t surprise him. Because who was he to compare to the likes of you after all? You’re the greatest swordmaster the alliance has seen in centuries, a living legend amongst those who gaze upon your image in equal fascination. 

Against you, his existence is almost pitiful, reducible to a mere mortal with a bare scrap of talent in the art of craftsmanship. He’s forgotten easily, a human who presumes to walk amongst gods, a faint, fleeting existence amid the illustrious and divine.

Even at the end of your dance, when you’re smiling, beaming with the radiance of the sun itself—it’s never at him who lingers in your shadow. Your attention drifts elsewhere quickly, endlessly seeking records beyond the sky, enraptured by clouds and moonlight whilst he’s left to grasp at the fading trail of stardust you’ve left in your wake. 

His eyes forever remain fixated upon your back. It’s the only thing he can behold, yourself turned to greater things.

For something far more brilliant catches your own eyes. 

He sees the way your eyes brighten at the sight of the Vidyadhara high elder who approaches, dark hair swaying in the breeze and piercing green irises that glisten like emeralds. You greet him like an old friend, slinging your arm around his shoulders, embracing him whilst Yingxing watches from afar. 

Deep down, he knows he cannot blame him for holding your attention. Those slender, unblemished hands fit perfectly in your own divinely wrought ones—their complexion is far from his own which remain calloused and marked with faded scars. They’re imperfect, etched from the flawed creation that is mortality. He should not behold you with them. 

It’s incomparable. 

There are no greater existences than the ones that stand before him, when both of you seem to glow with that ethereal grace, an almost timelessness to your figures, eternal and everlasting. 

And the high elder is brilliant in his own right, he’s created to be that way and nothing less, unlike the mortal craftsman who can only hold the desire to reach such heights. For in the end, as one casts their eyes to the sky, a faintly flickering star would not outshine the moon itself, no matter how brightly it burns. 

But why does he still desire to burn? 

Your bright figure drifts away before his eyes, further out of his grasp, as you have always been. It should kill the fire which flickers in his heart, swallowed by a void he cannot fill. You’re destined to lead great lives, its possibilities stretched before you—in fact, you shouldn’t need to spare a glance back at him.

But when you do, all it does is make him unable to move on, allowing himself to be caught up in the struggles that tether you to him once more. Because when words leave your mouth, even if it’s spun about your own woes, he’s entranced again. And the one you speak of, he knows in an almost bittersweet manner, similarly mirrored in the grim look the high elder casts his way. 

It echoes a hopelessness, pokes the fire that had once been left to die, reigniting the part of him that cannot stand the pridefulness of the long-lived, tearing at him to be better. 

Yingxing thinks, had he been the one blessed, he would be the one able to stand by your side, to reciprocate the feelings you hold for another. For you who is perfect in his eyes, is it not expected that you too are deserving of perfection? He would lay the world at your feet had you asked it of him. 

But alas, he’s always been doomed to walk a separate path, whilst watching the greatest ones split. 

He’s heard both confessions beneath the light of two moons, upon two tranquil nights. 

From he who parted the sea, forged the seal of the ambrosial arbour, master of the cloudhymn art, a being equally as great as you, upheld by glory and legend—he sheds this title, this facade, before his oldest friend. His emerald eyes are clouded with a pained sorrow, his wearied emotions bared before him, as he speaks the truth upon his mind. 

“I cannot love them, Yingxing. No more than any other friend.” 

The high elder is not blind to your affections. But as brilliant as you are, he does not hold the same freedom as you to love. He is still the high elder of the Vidyadhara, and to him, love is nothing more than another shackle against the one that is his duty. To share in the company of lesser beings and mortals was already loath enough, in the eyes of immutable laws the preceptors hold so dear. 

He admits wistfully that he envies him, for being able to be so free—to roam the world, to speak his mind, to feel. 

But Yingxing envies him, for being everything he could never be, and the object of all your attention. He doesn’t know the burden that is mortal emotion, nor the stinging pain that is love. 

Because loving you hurts. 

In all your greatness, you are clueless to love. Immortal beings like you do not grasp such emotions easily, brimming on an uncertainty you look to him to right. For he’s the most human out of the three of you, and the only one who could possibly understand. But he breaks, and he burns the easiest—the downfall that comes of feeling the way he does. 

But you don’t know that. You continue to speak so highly of him, voice laced with awe, as you recount the events of your day to the craftsman. You describe the strange feeling that seems to blossom in your chest, and Yingxing wants to hate how you even do that beautifully, with sparkling eyes and a small smile gracing your lips. 

Your love is like a gentle breeze blowing amid iridescent blooms of spring, bathed with the splendour of golden sunlight. You ask him, what flowers does the high elder like, what his favourite colour is—all the questions he wants to ask you. But he’ll never truly bask in such light, to know you in such a way. 

Not when he hears you say that you think you love him. 

Your words are uttered with innocent wonder, and there should be nothing more beautiful—yet they cut him in a place you don’t see, driving beneath flesh, aimed straight for his heart. 

He clutches its bleeding, broken remains as you whisper of the joys of love, unburdened by the other side of it he himself is weighed down by—each utterance is like a knife digging deeper into those wounds. He can still hear Dan Feng’s words echoing in his mind, ringing in his ears, clinging to his figure like a vengeful ghost that threatens to tear him apart, to push its way past his lips. 

Yet he can’t bring himself to speak this truth that has cleaved his heart in two, to dim the light that is you in his eyes. He swallows the feeling, turning away, retreating into himself, throwing all thoughts of you into his craft—the only thing he knows that remains unchanging amid the turmoil that overturns and divides his heart. 

He trusts in these sheets of steel, for they do not speak of the woes that are love, able to be formed and shaped to his will, curbing his feelings. Yingxing grasps it in his hands with certainty, unlike your own faint love.

He loses himself within it, hammer ringing against metal, whittling away at the greatest pride of his fickle existence, eyes watering and blurring against the sweat that drips from his brow. He only pauses to breathe—that’s if he remembers, time trickling by him, day bleeding into night, and night fading to dawn. 

And beneath its soft rays resplendent of you, does his first project form before his eyes, an exquisite bow carved in the shape of a crescent moon, your name engraved upon its edge. He ignores the wooden splinters that dig in his hands, continuing forth, the same hands forming a silver dagger that seems to reflect the light of the moon, a crown of golden laurels, a fine necklace encrusted with jewels—day in day out. 

The sun is hanging high in the sky now, casting its brilliance upon the world, yet he continues to languish in its shadow. There’s a stinging pain that spreads across his hands, blistered in pink and red, but any pain is better than the one that sits heavy within him—the one that comes when he thinks of you, standing beneath such light. 

All he sees is the longing you hold in your gaze, looking out at the waters of the distant sea, the light dancing across its surface reflected in your own eyes. A sigh escapes your lips as you rest your head against his shoulder, poised to utter some sentiment. 

And you’re speaking of him again, of the one who doesn't love you more than a friend, whilst the one who truly does, bears witness to this. You speak of his green eyes, how you adore the colour, whilst the craftsman looks at his own cerulean irises in the water’s reflection. 

(They burn with blue fire, effervescent in its own destructive way—but alas, it is the soothing gentleness of water you crave, the one which snuffs out such fires.) 

A singular droplet falls down into it, casting a small, unnoticeable ripple. 

His vision grows blind with this green.  

He sees it everywhere, crushes it in his hands, reforming it so it will remain unforgettable by his craft, his touch—the closest he’ll ever be to you. 

For Yingxing can create perfection, but he himself cannot be—the tortured poet amid pure artistry. And he mourns this, as he wipes his brow, stepping back to take in the completion of another weapon, a jade staff tipped with glistening silver, and behind the etchings of your name, lies every fragmented emotion of his heart carved onto this. 

It's a weapon made for the only divine thing he’s ever believed in—you. 

Yet the exalted feeling is only momentary, followed by the reminder of his mortal limitations, as it all comes crashing down again. His shoulders seem to sag, a fresh wave of exhaustion washing over him, staggering backwards, slamming a hand on the crafting bench behind him to brace himself. 

A part of him wonders, how much time has he spent? The clock on the wall has stopped ticking, its hands paused on its final moments. The sky outside is painted with overcast grey, with neither the sun or moon in sight. 

It’s deathly silent, the corners of his workshop a hollowed abyss he stares into, when left with nothing but his own thoughts and the heaviness that lies in his heart. 

Only momentarily, is it broken by the sound of a knock on the door. 

But even that is muffled—he hardly hears it, unmoving.

But the knocking continues, more persistent. 

He sighs. 

“Yingxing?” Your voice floats from the entrance of his workshop, as if breathing life into him, rousing him from his trance, as he finally brings himself to raise his head. 

It’s you. 

It’s you. 

You seem to haunt him at every waking hour, from your physical form, to the one that exists with the recesses of his mind. He thinks he’s imagining you, as you breeze through the doorway. You look so out of place, so bright and vibrant against the bleak backdrop that shrouds everything. 

His traitorous eyes trace your form, outlined by the shadows that nip at the ivory draped over your body. White has always looked divine on you. He feels as if he is tainting such a pure colour with his corrupted eyes, defiling the fabric with fantasies of his parched lips and blemished hands being granted the chance to touch you, to hold you, to worship you. 

His fingers twitch. How wonderful would it be to feel your skin beneath his callused digits, so unworthy to lay upon a being such as yourself? How wonderful would it be to have your eyes set on him for more than a lingering moment, allowing a starving soul like him a minute of satiation, a second of mercy to slake the desperate hunger he has just for an infinitesimal amount of you?

But you do not grant him that reprieve. You never have. Not even for the barest moment, when he’s grasped the silk that trails in your wake, graced by the smallest sliver of your presence—it slips through his fingers just as quickly as his hopes, dashed by the condemned words that spill from your lips. 

You’re going to confess, pour out your heart, devote your soul—all for folly, your brilliance soon to be consumed and faded by this failed act. 

As beneath the inscrutable gaze of the high elder, this visage of yours is fated to crack. 

And a part of him knows he is responsible for this, withholding the truth from you, desperate to preserve this image of you. 

You don’t know this. You continue to beam, asking to practise the lines you wish to say with him, reaching out your hand in divine offering, a promise of heaven that you paint before him. You’re regretfully innocent, clueless of the things that can be ripped from you, after having peered down from a pedestal all your life. 

Yingxing wonders how quickly such dreams will collapse upon itself, stricken with the truths of reality. It’s a temporary illusion he too wants to believe, to indulge in—to savour that for a moment, the eyes you cast toward him are truly meant for him, and not the ghost of another, whose words will soon haunt both of you. 

He hates himself for wanting to take your hand despite knowing this. He knows he doesn’t deserve to look into such light, to take that hand, to let you be defiled by his sin of mortal existence—even when every fibre of his being burns with such desire, tempted once more by this forbidden fruit, to indulge in something he knows he is unworthy of. 

It takes everything in him to flinch away at your touch. 

He feels it for a moment, a cold featherlight brush against his arm. But even that is enough to leave him yearning for more—more of what he cannot have. 

Your countenance shifts just as quickly, the smile fading from your face. “Yingxing…?” 

You’re frozen in place, cut off mid sentence by his sudden movement, hands still suspended in the air, your gaze slowly travelling down to his own hands where bandages peel away to reveal jagged half-healed cuts and the faded scars of old wounds—so unlike your unmarred, unblemished skin. 

He’s the furthest thing from the perfection you dream of. And to think you dare ask him what’s wrong? 

There are so many things Yingxing could say that are wrong. Loving you is wrong, he should not hold such feelings within his heart. It’s never been anything he could handle, daring to gaze upon the true forms of such celestial beings. A mortal like him should never have even formed such thoughts of you, to entertain you within such imperfection. 

He must be punished by fate, cursed to obsess over such perfection nonetheless, to strive for it until it consumes him with the same fervour that is equal to destruction, wreaking judgement upon his flawed existence, leaving him nothing more than a shell that is infinitely more broken, scattered at your feet, his own fragilities laid bare.  

How he wants to say that you’re throwing yourself down the wrong path, for the wrong person—but he stops himself. For he cannot accept you are the one flawed, to correct you, for does that not go against every construct that is the universe? He cannot defy heaven, and to defy you is to go against everything he believes, to move his very faith. 

He can only shake his head, in what he prays is gentle inclination. “Don’t do this.” 

Your eyes narrow. “What?” 

“Don’t do this to yourself.” He repeats, quieter this time. 

You don’t understand the words that are coming from his mouth. They’re contradictory, so unlike what you’ve previously heard. Uncertainty laces his voice, so unlike the self-assured image he had presented to you on countless occasions, brimming with confidence—there’s no playfulness in his tone, nor the usual wry smile across his lips. 

That image cracks before your eyes, dying before you in this moment of solidarity. His hands tremble, wrapping around your exposed forearm, and your head snaps up, forced to meet his eyes, watery and bloodshot, looking back hopelessly at you. 

It’s traitorous, everything from his outstretched hands to his words that now touch upon your figure, in defiance of everything he had once held himself to, grappling with fate. But you’re teetering on a crumbling precipice, prepared to plummet headfirst—you leave him no choice but to leap forward and catch you, to stop both your falls. He would rather you live, cursing him forever than to lose you to the same heartbreak. 

Even now he’s waiting for judgement to rain down upon him, as he watches for your reaction. Yet you still don’t understand. You don’t presume to even try.

“You must be tired. You can’t be thinking straight—”

“No.” 

His pupils seem to dilate in response. It’s a blatant lie, as your gaze flickers from the bags under his eyes, to the way his hand shakes despite the grip upon you. His chest rises and falls, as if he’s struggling for words, a single utterance having left him breathless. 

“Yingxing, listen to me.” You try to dissuade him, trying to pry your arm out from his grasp, which only seems to tighten, his nails digging into your skin as he drags you closer to him, your arm pressed against his chest, your foreheads practically touching. 

You can hear his shallow breaths, and the rapid thumping of his heart against your own. A bitter, broken laugh escapes his lips moments later. 

“Listen? What is there to listen to? You’re in love with him, I know.” 

It’s a hollow admission, one you both know with an unfortunate certainty. 

You’ve uttered such a fact in front of him multiple times, and he’s heard it the same amount of times. Despite the ache in his heart, he’s not blind. He can see the truth with piercing clarity before his eyes—there’s no denying the way you look at him is far different from another. 

Because who was he in your eyes? He could compose a thousand eulogies on your very existence, your histories long and unforgettable. But to you, to every immortal being, whose lifetimes span a hundredfold of his own, he is someone easily forgotten and felled—even now, you’re looking at him like that, as if you pity him. 

He’s incomparable to the high elder you profusely love, incomparable to you. 

“So why—”

“Why…?” He echoes vacantly. “You wish to know why?” 

Yingxing wants to laugh at the irony of it all. How many times has he asked that question to himself, wondering why he is drawn to such brilliance, and the desire to hold it in his hand? He knows he should not behold you in such a way, his fingers twisted around a strand of your hair, transfixed by the divine being that looks up at him so hopelessly. 

But he is. He’s touching you, cradling your face as he had once dreamed, the feeling of your skin the fulfilment his rough fingers crave to grasp. Even now, you invite temptation—a part of him craves more, rearing its ugly head from being denied time and time again.  

Your eyes flutter shut. 

He thinks, white truly looks divine on you. 

But as he leans closer, lips hovering dangerously close to your own, he sees the parts of you stained by his touch, grasped by his blackened fingers, painted with the colour of smoke and the dust that is his own hopes, snatched away by the breeze that had accompanied your presence before him. 

He’s stained your cheek too, a marking of black charcoal smudged across the perfectly smooth porcelain, bled from his own hands that have greedily laid themselves upon you, in the lingering moment of almost human vulnerability you had granted him. Do you know it’s inescapable, etched into the very markings of his nature, this inclination toward sin? 

He should not defile you any further—but his lips have already brushed against yours, however briefly. It’s long enough for realisation to dawn. 

He lurches back at this realisation. 

It takes both of you a second to come to your senses, he’s still leaning over your figure, eyes wide in horror, while you stare back at him equally dumbfounded. Neither of you can comprehend what it is he’s done. 

He speaks first. 

“I’m sorry.” He manages to get out, straightening himself up again, already turning away. It takes everything in him to not look back at you. He doesn’t know if he can stomach it, to see your reaction. 

“Yingxing—” This time it is you reaching for him, but he’s gone before you can stop him, his figure retreating out of the door without so much of a noise, dissipating like smoke before your outstretched hands.

“Yingxing!” You call his name out again, but you know he can’t hear you. 

You make an attempt to follow him a moment later, but your head is still spinning from the rush of the moment, there’s uncertainty in everything you do. 

You don’t even know where you’re going. You’re stumbling over your own two feet in your desperation to follow after him, any other thoughts having left your mind. 

You grasp onto a nearby table as if to steady yourself, cursing a stray object you’ve tripped yourself on, eyes swivelling around the interior of the workshop, from the door to the bench you had just been standing by. 

But your eyes suddenly catch upon the weapons and intricate creations strewn across the tabletop. They’re unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, each of them more beautiful than the next, the metal glistening brightly in the light. 

There’s no doubt of their creator.

Still, you think of the cost all this must be worth. You wonder who this is all for. 

But you get your answer just as quickly, as you turn over the jade spear you had just picked up.

They’re all inscribed with your name.

─ ˖᯽ ݁˖·

likes comments & rbs are greatly appreciated! <3 chat this was genuinely my magnum opus of 2023 can we run it back 🫩

[qilinism]

hello world probably a more formal-ish announcement that i have come back in case i scared y’all with a random fic popping up after what feels like a million years 😭

so uh rewind back to like 24? legit spawned as just a whimsical horny sideblog since i had shame and could not post all that on my main blog had a decent run here yooo but then i had to delete my main (drama 🙄) and ofc disappeared 🤡

at the last sec tho i found out u could like move sideblogs between main blogs so i moved this to a burner before i deleted my og main and subsequently forgot about this whole thing! (and life happens ofc) BUTT then recently got back into contact w a bunch of friends who were wondering if i would ever write again i was like uhhhh idk man this gal retired after all the crazy lore but thoughts were thinking like ykw ill try for y’all??!? pulled a miracle to recover my password and now here we are with the ancient texts!!!

but yeah i’m gonna try pick up the pen again and anything is good practice! if you have any ideas or requests or just want to talk about anything really feel free to drop an ask! i’m probably only gonna be writing short stuff yk drabbles etc. atm in terms of requests since my brain is hella overloaded i will probs try to put out some like rules later on but yeah 👍

tldr please talk to me yap share your thoughts i will try to write more!! (i hope)

[qilinism]

the prophecy / jing yuan.

jing yuan x gn. reader

synopsis. you’ve seen your future, known of the disasters that are to come, with you yourself left to fade into obscurity amidst it all. and of the souls left behind, they grieve, looking to the heavens in askance of even a little more time. but alas, even the greatest amongst your number cannot rewrite this prophecy, rendered helpless as it unfolds before your eyes, the inscriptions of the stars detailing your final movement.

You remember when your paths first crossed. 

You had long seen it written across the celestial atlas, where two brilliant stars had met. His name lies on the tip of your tongue, glanced from a fleeting vision of quicksilver and gold—waiting to be uttered. 

“You must be Jing Yuan.” 

A whisper amongst the swaying reeds, where the last rays of the setting sun touched upon the world in a lucent trail of gold. And you had stood amongst those fields, waiting for him. 

For you knew he would come. 

He sought an answer from you, like countless others.

Just as the winds have carried the rest of him and the story of his exploits to you, had it too spread the word of your own renowned abilities. Those with lofty ambitions, seeking greatness, alongside others who looked for guidance, in the face of an uncertain future—they had all looked to you. 

The war with the abundance raged endlessly beyond these skies. You traced its path across the stars, worlds and civilisations rising and falling beneath the helm of the reignbow arbiter. You’ve seen futures, of soldiers marching into battle not knowing it will be their last. And others, consumed by the inevitable that takes root within their own minds. 

One day it would end, when the plague’s author would be extinguished. A long awaited moment after the thousands upon thousands of years chasing the trail of something far beyond your own comprehension. Thousands had dreamed of being the one to conquer such—of what fate had cruelly bestowed upon them, from a brief altercation with the divine eons ago. 

You had been amongst them once. 

Dreams came easy to you then. Stars aligned to your will, your divination unquestionable. 

And as you had looked to him, he whose eyes had shimmered with the incandescent glow of a thousand splendid suns—you had seen hope. A star whose radiance would guide you through the darkest of nights, standing at the pinnacle, and perhaps one day, to cleave the sky itself. 

He utters similar sentiments, dreams of putting the abundance in their grave. His lips part to reveal pearly white teeth as he laughs raucously. “Will you be by my side then, oh master diviner?”

(An unknowing jest, in the face of time. Fate was cruel for this, bringing you together before ruthlessly tearing you apart, a reminder of the fleeting moment that you exist in the vast universe. Looking back, you realise, you could have never changed its predestined course, puppets on a string to a greater game amongst aeons). 

You unaware then, had only closed your eyes and joined in on his laughter. “Time can only tell.” 

***

One day, divination would not come as easy to you. 

In fact it did not come at all, in the form of stars neatly aligned across a hexagram, preceding better days to come. Rather, it's as if one had snuffed out the stars in the sky itself, leaving you disoriented in the darkness. 

The stairs up suddenly are too steep, swaying before you. The hum of the matrix of prescience buzzing too loud in your ears, its light blinding. There’s a persistent throbbing at the base of your skull that has yet to cease. Your vision swims, your steps each feeling heavier than the last. 

A wave of nausea washes over you, your foot catching on the last step. You stumble, a gasp lodged in the back of your throat. 

But nothing comes out—you are unable to form even a cry on your lips. 

You’re stopped once more, choked by decay and every vile reparation that is woven into your flesh. Crimson splatters across the ground in front of you, its ugly blotches swimming before your eyes, twisting and morphing into crude shapes that reenact the same scenes over and over in your mind. 

This must be it, you think, as the panicked shouts of your subordinates surround you—and this time, a familiar head of silver hair amongst them. 

It’s a reminder of the price you pay to gaze into the very abyss where the light fears to tread, encompassing the stars in its entirety. You‘ve seen the fate of others unfold before you, destinies outlined by an invisible hand—the knowledge of it all passed through you. But even you cannot fully steer yourself away from tragedy. 

Your own fate is just as precarious. You are no different in flesh and blood to those whom you observe. You know all too well that every word, every movement is upon a tipping hourglass, the grains of sand falling into place as its motions play out across history. Some stories, you will not live to see with your own eyes. 

And as death and bloodshed overlap with one another, scarlet red dyeing your vision—you know that time is running out. Your prophesied end flashes before your eyes, growing closer by the day. 

The shadows that dance before you are no longer unnamed, marked with familiar faces twisted in agony, their once ghostly presences now more real than ever. They’re taunting you almost, being close enough to observe, but never to touch, to change what unfolds before you. 

Your trembling hands grasp at nothingness, led on by the haunting echoes that permeate the air.  

He’s so far away. 

His blurred form swims before your eyes. It’s as if he himself is a distant star you are unable to reach, shrouded in silvery moonlight and imbued with eyes of the brightest living gold, glistening in the shade of divine ichor itself. Perhaps you may have walked among them once with your peerless mind, but now you’re reduced to a mere scrap of existence that the famed general looks down upon in pity. 

Nothing lasts forever. Even the brightest stars cannot stand the test of time. It is the harsh, embittered truth you face—that against what is inevitable, even the greatest will crumble, torn apart by their own minds which had once birthed such brilliance, felled by its predilections that tend toward madness. 

You’re merely another victim to this perpetual eternity, this eternal samsara of the sins from those who had come before, its curse etched upon your flesh from the moment you had opened your eyes to this world. 

“Y/N.” The utterance of your name is both strained with anguish and this hollow realisation. He echoes what you already know with certainty. 

“You’re sick.” 

Sick, not dying. You note his choice in words, the way his hands grasp your outstretched ones as he sinks to his knees before you, cradling your face, beholding you with those trembling hands. 

Indeed, you are just sick, this merely a passing affliction. You pretend as if there isn’t more than just concern in his eyes as he brings himself to meet your own. Fear and doubt linger amongst it, casting a shadow over its renowned brilliance. 

Jing Yuan himself wants to believe that this isn’t what he fears it to be. 

But he’s dealt with enough marastruck soldiers to recognise the signs. Endless clashes with the abundance have brought nothing but horrors to behold, rendering the mind asunder in this perpetuating cycle of vicious conflict scattered with grief and despair. It festers and consumes, capable of bringing down even the brightest of minds across his troops. 

And to you, who discerns the futures of these people, tracing the path of carnage across their memory—what is it that you have seen? 

Too much, he thinks, answering for your curled up form in his arms. It builds up within you, all your fears combined with the atrocity you witness, of the past, present and future replaying in an endless loop across your mind.

He will never be a prophet, nor you a general. There’ll always be a part of you he will never fully hope to understand. But he wishes to, and so much more, anything to stop the ebb and flow of time that is wearing down upon your delicate frame. There must be some piece of foresight into all this. You must’ve known this was coming—but for how long? 

He looses a shaky breath, fingers twitching, grasping the fabric of your clothes as if afraid to let you go. “Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“Could you handle it?” You seem to ask with raised eyebrows. 

You yourself barely could. 

You’ve always been impartial. Fate has never made such distinctions toward any singular being as it comes to pass by you time and time again, heralding both fortune and tragedy. And you’ve foretold the possibilities of a thousand distant futures like so, unhesitating in the deliverance of these imminent catastrophes, marking others with their accursed fates. 

Truly, you of all people should not be stricken, frozen in the face of dwindling time. 

But when memoria floods you, chokes you under the crushing weight of tragedy entwined with your own prophesied demise—for the first time, you had faltered, against the comprehension of fate. Your fate, one of which you had never seen before in such piercing clarity, looming like a malevolent wraith over you. 

You see it, his future, your future, and fragments of something else amid rivulets of dried scarlet glistening atop pale, lifeless bones—where the howling wind that echoes deathly recluse. You can almost feel its biting chill creeping up upon you, sinking its frigid claws into your flesh, paralysing you as its prophecy lies unspoken on your tongue. 

It teeters there, back and forth across your vision, this incessant tick of time that counts down toward oblivion. 

“How long…? How long until—”

“One month.” 

He’s silent. Not in a good way. 

You see the way his entire countenance seems to shift, as if struck in the gut by such an admission, eyes squeezing shut as a shaky exhale pushes past his lips. It’s a hard pill to swallow, no matter how many times one has witnessed similar occurrences. 

You merely confirm his worst fears. The words upon your tongue have always been of absolute truth, dictating a fate set in stone. 

And what can he do now? The daunting reality of it all hangs heavy over the silence shrouding the room, a suffocating thing that closes up his throat and holds his breath. He can only watch as you crumble beneath its burden, weakened and frail, as it chips away at your life whose spark has an end in sight. An end you yourself have assured, down to the very last moment. 

But that is not all you had seen. You close your eyes, grimacing. You’ve seen more beyond this present moment, this marking but the beginning of countless tragedies. 

This would not be the greatest tragedy yet. One such vision tears into you, of a world painted in crimson, as a draconic abomination rears its head in outrage at the skies. And you see faces, clearer than before, rushing towards death, with assuredly more to follow, as you trace the path of carnage, where even the greatest are not able to escape, blades interlocked in furious battle. 

They too will die. 

He will witness this future too, the demise of more than your passing soul. You could tell him that too. 

But alas, can you bring yourself to hurt him more than you already have—with this utterance of your own dwindling life? 

As to him, his world is already falling. 

It had plummeted the moment he had seen you, keeled over, blood splattered across the floor and golden cracks spiderwebbed across your skin. His first thought had not been this, as he had rushed to your side. 

For this, it should have been impossible, the one thing he had refused to accept so soon—that he is going to lose you. 

But it’s real. 

It’s happening before his eyes. 

Where had all the time gone? 

(It’s burrowing into your flesh, decaying your figure and wearing down your mind—taking and taking, until you will be nothing more than a lifeless corpse). 

You laugh your last laugh in the face of it, humourlessly. “You know nothing, Jing Yuan.” 

He really doesn’t know. 

***

You’ve always been the elusive and all knowing one, with him naive to the sensibilities of the world, holding dreams of high honour and devotion, chasing the stars as you had watched them from afar. Truly, you couldn’t have been more different, but he had believed you were bound by the same dream. 

You were supposed to be brilliant, like him. But the world seems to make distinctions between you even now—him standing here on the cusp of greatness, while you crumble beneath its burden. Did you know this dream would fall apart before his eyes? 

A part of him curses himself for not knowing with each passing day, its hopelessness eating away at him. There could’ve been something he could have done, anything for a little more time. 

Because how can he stand here with this knowledge now? You will die, laying forgotten beneath the stars you had once gazed upon so fervently. Is there truly nothing he could do? He would cut down the stars in the sky had you bid him to do so, tried his hand to defy what fate has set for you. 

It’s not fair. 

There are so many questions he wants to ask you. Ones that will go unanswered, its words dying upon his tongue as he’s dragged back to reality by bony fingers digging into his side.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to,” comes the cold, cutting voice of his master by his side, piercing red eyes meeting his own as her grip tightens on his shoulder. “It’ll only make your parting more miserable.” 

It’s not easy for them either, he realises, as Jingliu turns away, both looking on at the proceedings—the high elder of the Vidhyadhara hunched over your sickly frame, murmuring lunar incantations as your body twitches fitfully beneath him. 

He sees your agony. Such affliction tears at your mind and body, driving you toward an inevitable descent into madness. It’s doubtless your thoughts are already a jumble of anger and regret. He wonders if you can even recognise yourself anymore in its swirling miasma of chaos, clawing at the remaining scraps of reason.

You who had once been revered for your brilliant mind, reduced to but a fragment of your former self in nothing but name only. 

(How pitiful. You don’t know what you even are anymore. You don’t know anything. Pain has taken over your entire body, each movement tearing into a part of you—you cannot think of anything beyond it. It’s all a blur, you cannot focus on anything except your own anguish, the world having faded to obscurity around you.) 

Your eyes echo a similar emptiness, its stars swallowed up into the void that stares back. There’s barely a hint of recognition within them, as your head turns towards him. It’s painful to meet those eyes, eyes he had once loved, before this curse had stripped away every part of you that made you, you. 

It only twists the knife, in that he’s really losing you, in the fading brightness of a once brilliant star, your soul slipping into the frigid darkness. It seems even Dan Feng, revered in the cloudhymn arts could not offer a reprieve, no more than Jingliu, who could only offer a quick death if it came to it—be it he was not prepared to raise arms against you. 

You were already on a path of no return after all, it would be a mercy, she had advised him, as they stood around—waiting, watching. 

His fingers twitch, curling around nothing—the absence of you. Your physical form has ruptured, there is only the part of you that lives on in a memory he once had, dancing across his mind, replaying the last moments of warm sun. 

He still remembers you before this, beneath the sunset, amongst a field of marigolds with nothing but the feel of the autumn wind blowing through his hair and your hand in his. And when you had laughed, it was like music to his ears, the merry tinkling of bells—you were simply exquisite, breathtaking beneath the golden light of the setting sun. 

It’s unlike the rasp of your voice now, the cracks of your skin he gingerly beholds, where he had once placed a flower in your hair, brushing it back as he had kissed you. And your lips had tasted of honeyed wine, addicting and divine—he could barely bring himself to part with you, after having savoured such for so many years, never to feel them again. 

If he had known what would soon befall you, he would’ve never let go, memorised every inch of you. 

It had all seemed like a distant dream then, when you had eternity stretching out before you. But how quickly such illusions of time had been shattered, these statements turned true. He stands as the testament to it all. 

For even memory has an end. 

Your laughter would fade amongst those fields, leaving nothing behind but a hollow echo of a ghost. Your touch, once bursting with the warmth of your entire being, would turn cold, skeletal fingers entwined with his own in parallels of longevity. 

He watches as your ghostly form drifts away before his eyes, led on by the transfixions of fate. He reaches out, tries to follow you, calling out your name.

Could you not defy it for even a moment? 

He’s brought to his knees. He begs it to stay a moment longer. 

“Wait, please.” 

But time waits for no one. It moves on, pushing forward relentlessly, leaving souls trapped in the past reminiscing about bygones, and others to desperately race against its unending movements, to change a fixture amid their fates. Distant dreams come to fruition, just as imminent fears turn to nightmarish reality before your eyes. 

And when those last grains of sand drop from the hourglass, do you stand to meet your fate. 

A lasting memory that leaves nothing but a scarlet stain upon his hands, your body twitching in his arms, choking on crimson rivulets that spill from your parted lips amid your halting breaths.

It’s as you predicted. 

And what a cruel twist of fate it was.

─ ˖᯽ ݁˖·

likes, comments & rbs are greatly appreciated! we ARE in a fanfic recession y’all </3 😭😭

[qilinism]

wax wings / sunday.

yandere! sunday x gn reader. [penacony arc! sunday.]

synopsis. his complacency has its limits, and now you’ve strayed too far from your cage, head filled with fanciful dreams, casting aside the world he had built to contain you, in blind reach for the skies. but as much as you may dream to fly, you are no more than icarus — he will ensure your fall, to remind you where your heart truly lies. because what are you, without your wings?

“A gift for you.”

You turn your head from the window to face the owner of the voice standing in the shadow of the doorway. You’re met with a pair of golden eyes—ones you know all too well by now, a placated smile dancing across his lips, as a servant wheels in something on a covered cart.

Your own eyes follow it with a look of narrowed suspicion as it comes to a stop in front of you. “What is it?”

You’ve learnt not to accept gifts from strangers. Especially from someone like him, who parades himself as some charitable saint—you’re not the first in his line of victims to be met with that same disconcerting smile that has charmed thousands equally well with similar acts.

No matter how much he showers you with generosity and priceless gifts, suffocating you with all he owns—you still have some sense within you to retain your wits, however faint they’ve grown with his overbearing presence slowly chipping away at you. He is no lover of yours, bearing these gifts.

First and foremost, he is still your captor—and it is still his roof that you’re trapped beneath.

“May I?” He indicates with his hand.

You don’t say anything further, hardly acknowledging him. You’re tempted to turn back around and resume your daydreaming, itself the smallest of resistances you can offer amid everything he holds over you. You know it’s futile nonetheless—he doesn’t need your permission anyways, stepping into the room and striding over to you.

Sunday approaches you slowly, footsteps silent against the carpeted floor, eyes darting between you and your unmoving position by the window. Each footfall, each breath is marked with the same wariness that flashes across your own irises. Unease roils in your gut, itself one of the few things he cannot eradicate completely, when you know of what he’s done, and what he’s capable of.

The halo that rests atop his head gleams with an almost blinding luminescence as he steps into the light, reflected from the rays of the afternoon sun filtering through the windows. He looks almost ethereal, divine even, as if he could truly move the world with nothing but a thought—despite being the furthest from any angelic being of good.

The notion he can, remains nonetheless. Everything that surrounds you is of his craft, his own thoughts and dreams made into this delicate cage. But he cannot move you as easily—you are not a nameless jewel among his dreamscape able to be carved and shaped to his will, yourself a figurine of glass he so desperately wants to preserve flawlessly, refusing to expose you to the elements.

He wants to appease you, in his own strange way. And who are you to deny him in anything he does, when the world you stand upon is in his hands?

“You didn’t appear to be very fond of the jewellery I got you last time.” Sunday starts. You flinch, as he rests his gloved hand on your shoulder, reaching around you to tug at the cloth. “I thought maybe something more familiar to you would be better received.”

“Familiar?” You echo hoarsely, as you turn your head, forcing yourself to spare a glance at what lay beneath the now uncovered cloth.

It’s just a cage, you realise a second later, shoulders slumping forward as you heave a sigh. It seems to be holding nothing more than what appears to be some sort of feathered bird that takes you a brief moment to recognise.

“I remember you were telling me about them long ago.” He continues on unperturbed, gesturing to the bird that sits idly in the cage, inviting you to take a closer look. “Their melodies were quite nice.”

“Right...” You wince at the memory.

It’s like a distant dream to you now, one that you had wanted to forget, despite having clung to you for all your life, itself a hell comparable to this one. They had circled in the skies overhead, up and and away from it all, freer than any other within that world.

Yet now like you, it too appears to have strayed a long way from such, to be trapped in the confines of this cage.

But they’ve had a taste of freedom. To you, it has been nothing more than a wishful dream, eyes having been set upon those same skies. Perhaps to be made of human flesh was a curse, chained down by a nightmarish world who denies such dreams.

He had found you then.

As to you, who hadn’t seen a world beyond these skies, trapped in a cold hellhole that housed nothing but the vain and cruel beings you cannot bring yourself to embrace—he had appeared as your saving grace. A guardian angel almost, wings of purest white flaring out behind him, and eyes of the brightest living gold that had left you transfixed as he spun such sweet promises from his lips.

It’s what he intends, to leave you clinging to his words, enraptured by his being, to take you someplace safe forever.

Somewhere where no other hands can ever be laid upon you, nor any eyes cast upon you except his own. Because when you look at him so hopefully, as if he is truly some divine being—one that had descended from these far reaching heavens you had once looked up towards amid a starless sky, he ensures he is the only god you believe in.

Alas, gods too could be selfish. You crave freedom amid the skies, yet he wants nothing but to cling to you, to treasure as his own, first and foremost. Insincerity frames such promises, faltering momentarily in its partial truth—yet you had taken his hand willingly that day, believing him to be your saviour from this cruel world.

But not for the next, the one you now stand upon with him as your captor. Too late, do you realise you've merely traded one cage for another—and now you’re alone in this world.

“I can’t accept this.” You force yourself to say, pushing his arm off you. He watches you stride back to the window, peering outside where birds of similar colour had gathered, making their way across the skies.

You don’t spare a glance back at Sunday. A frown crosses his face at your abrupt reaction. You’re doing it again, pushing him away. He doesn’t understand why you always turn away from him, always looking upwards at something else instead, as if nothing beside you impresses you. Isn’t everything he’s done for you?

He tries again. “Is it not to your liking? I chose the finest one out of all those ones out there. Would you prefer one of those, if that’s what it is?”

“There’s no guarantee those ones will sing though. Of the ones caught, most didn’t make a noise.” He adds.

You scoff then, as stating an obvious fact. “You cannot expect a caged bird to sing.”

Perhaps he’s brought this pet in as a mockery of your own predicament, but you intend to tell him likewise. For are you too not trapped within a cage of your own? He cannot expect you to be complacent when you sit so restlessly, knowing freedom lies in sight, itself a reflection in your eyes, whilst the rest of your body is chained, tethered by his sole fixation.

“But a caged bird is at the mercy of its master is it not?” He hums, yet it’s devoid of the previous pleasantry in his voice as he steps up next to you.

Your eyes slide to the side. You don’t say anything, carefully weighing your words as he rests his hand atop your own.

“If it does not wish to sing, there are other ways to make it do so. Perhaps it will respond kindly to some encouragement and reward, it is the most favourable way after all.”

He pauses, and you feel his grip tighten ever so slightly.

“Yet if all else fails, I suppose more ah, drastic measures can be taken. Don’t you agree Y/N?” He tilts his head innocently in your direction, as you stare back at him blankly.

“I-” You swallow thickly. “There’s no need to resort to such means.”

“Hm. I hope not either.” He flashes you a knowing look. “It would be a real shame to see.”

Sure it would, you think dejectedly in your head. It proves nothing more than the fact he is willing to harm anything that threatens to break from his control, to challenge his absolute authority over this place. You’ve seen through his subterfuges of pretending to be some divine being one owes their reverence to.

He’s making little effort to hide it now after all.

“Anyways,” he sighs, before you can form a coherent response to his chilling words, the grip on your hand loosening. “I shall bother you no longer. I have other important things to attend to. I bid you a good day.”

“Enjoy your gift.” Sunday smiles, bending down to brush his lips against the back of your hand, before sauntering out of the room.

***

You wait for the door to click shut before you loose a breath, wiping the back of your hand with a handkerchief with palpable disgust. It’s slimy, almost comparable to a snake even. You throw it aside without a second thought, slowly walking over to the cage that had been sitting here the entire time, careful not to startle the bird inside.

It truly is a magnificent bird, one of the most beautiful you’ve ever seen—and truly, it doesn’t deserve to languish in such a cage forever, while the rest of its kind soar freely in the skies outside. Unlike your own circumstances, their master is merciful.

You throw open the window, closing your eyes in a contented sigh as you feel a soft breeze rush in for a brief moment. It’s the most you can ever enjoy, as you look down at the levels below you, and then the objects in the room before you. He’s been careful with his gifts, there’s no rope, nor anything that can aid an escape, having filled it with nothing but pointless vanity.

Turning your attention back to the matter at hand, you find the key lying on a folded cloth next to the cage, carved of pure gold, but the detail is dismissed in your eyes, jamming it into the lock and twisting it open.

It opens with a click, swinging out, and before you even have time to think about it—much less regret the consequences of your decision—it bursts from the cage in a flurry of golden feathers and a derisive chirp, darting straight for the window, into the open air, towards its freedom.

You watch as it flies off in a streak of gold into the sunset with a sad smile, unaware of a pair of similarly coloured eyes also intently watching its path across the skies from elsewhere.

***

For you dreamt you were the one flying, soaring against the endless expanse of the sky, as the world below seemed to shrink into infinitesimal nothingness. And how you marvelled at that feeling, of freedom and joyous harmony as you rose in this long reminisced ascent, following the paths of the same birds whom you had once watched from afar.

And these wings you flew upon, they were truly magnificent. Beneath the light of day, they reflected silvery hues and the outline of the stars itself, as if it had captured the essence of the universe within a singular canvas of white.

You could almost laugh, rising past the clouds, away from the one who had attempted to keep you trapped in the world below. The heavens were in your sights, and the desire to go further almost as blinding as its highest point, of planetary bodies suspended amidst the stars, its beauty drawing you ever so closer.

But in a world of dreams, he wishes you would dream otherwise, standing in witness to your thoughts that have never lingered upon him, brushing past in reach for a distant wish he has denied you time and time again. He’ll endeavour to stop you each time—for you’ll leave him otherwise.

As one had reached towards that beyond, they had forgotten all that was once behind them, having paid no mind to the angered retribution flying their way—only having sought to look forward, to bask in the light of ephemeral glory and blissful freedom.

“Tell me, have you heard the story of dear Icarus?”

The question strikes you, as your fingers curl around that faint sliver of light.

Laughter that was not yours echoes within your mind, as if whoever knew something you didn’t—the only warning you had gotten as the world turned dark, and fire had arced through you, eliciting a pained scream from your lips.

Because you had indeed forgotten, blinded by the stars in your eyes, that you truly held no freedom when all that surrounds you is nothing more than a dream. Just as quickly, do such wings of feathered gold suspended by a thousand winds, turn to the failings of wax, when met with the hand of the one who had weaved such dreams.

He stands there, the mocking voice in your head, molten wax dripping from his hands to announce how one’s sojourn would inevitably come to an end, whilst the wings upon his own back remain ones of arcing magnificence, his existence blinding in the rays of the sun, worthy of a being whom guards the gates of this heavenly realm.

Yet there’s nothing but the cruel smile that paints his lips, aureate eyes gleaming viciously in light of his true nature.

“You’re just like him. So beautiful in your emotion—” he muses, the searing touch of his finger brushing against your cheek. “…yet so easy to kill.”

“No.” You breathe, eyes widening.

And then you’re screaming, falling again.

You reach a hand out to grab onto him, but he eludes your grasp. He’s the last thing you see, amid the tangle of limbs against wings that are now burning, melting and riddled with deformities as you had then plummeted, a spiralling descent—the heavens you had reached for, in plea of a saviour, growing further and further out of your reach.

Even the birds have scattered, leaving you in fear. For there was nothing else to feel but the rushing of wind in your ears, and the strange heaviness within your limbs, as if they too had been reduced to resignation, dragging you down, the clouds, the sky blurring around you.

Another bout of laughter rings through the world, before fading to a strange quietness—away from dreams of eternal flight across the skies, and back to the cage in which you had first witnessed the world.

***

You jerk awake, gasping for air.

“Oh gods… no— it was just a dream.” You mutter to yourself as you push aside the strands of hair that stick to your forehead, blinking the spots out of your eyes as the morning light pours into the room.

It’s strangely stuffy, someone had come in to wrap you in extra blankets, leaving behind a smell of sweat and some heavy metallic scent you can almost taste on your tongue. A shudder runs through you at the thought of who that could be, immediately throwing the covers off yourself.

It’s just a dream.

Yet you can still feel the ghost of his grip on your arm as you cross the room, past where the cage had sat several hours earlier. It seems to grow tighter with each step closer—reaching up—tightening around your chest as you force yourself to exhale. There’s no birds outside to your surprise, staring through the glass at the orange streaked skies of the morning.

You reach to open the window anyways, hand half suspended in the air, and that’s when you notice something golden in the corner of your vision.

You immediately regret looking down at the windowsill in the next second.

You scream.

You slap your hand over your mouth immediately, head snapping around—turning away. A strangled retching sound escapes you, your stomach sinking as you force yourself to look up once more.

It’s just a dream.

Trembling, you turn your head back slowly around, gulping in a deep breath, as if to push down the rising bile in your throat at the sight before you, and the tears that have begun to prick at the corner of your eyes—as you bring yourself to take a proper look.

It’s just a dream.

This is no dream.

There’s no mistaking that golden plumage, whose feathers are splayed before you, its ends blackened and smoking—severed from the main body in crude disfigurement, crimson blood trickling from flesh wounds that expose pearly white bone.

It had flown only yesterday, yet now it will never fly again, as your eyes travel over the remains of its body, twisted and broken—and irrevocably dead.

There’s nothing else but a crinkled note pinned to its side.

A carefully worded threat:

It should’ve sung when it still could.

[qilinism]

you find him at the foot of the staircase.

crimson drips onto floors of black hewn stone, pooled in a steady stream that pours from a strewn pile of bodies left in his wake, rays of faded light pouring through the shattered windows illuminating the slaughter upon the silvery edges of his blade — illuminating the path he has taken to get here, to you.

to hear you breathe the name of your saviour, your knight in shining armour.

“capitano.”

your eyes light up, a rare thing found in an eternal night, itself a faint flicker of starlight amongst the black heavens — the last fragments of the divine which had long abandoned these lands.

truly it is no world for you, these confines of hell where faithless eyes have scorned the divine, with twisted creatures that snatch up scraps of lifeblood for their own embittered survival. there is no god to turn to, only mere beasts hungering for its essence — they’ll rip it from your face and devour you whole.

they had almost taken you then.

almost.

perhaps capitano is no different from such beasts in fighting tooth and nail for survival. there is blood beneath his nails, and withered life in the palm of his hands, ingrained in the nature of every crude being beneath this black mantle. there are thousands of deaths by his hands, blood rusting the greatsword by his side, slaughtering his way through the levels of hell itself for a piece of you.

as swathed in the crown of both the mundane and divine, your existence is effervescent, angelic almost, against his bloodstained belief. you have not yet been defiled, met with the horrors of this world, in those who would sully and clip the wings of an innocent dove.

“you are not hurt, are you?” he murmurs, his gloved hand lifting your chin, brushing back your hair.

you blink, shaking your head. he’s careful, allowing only the lightest of touches upon your skin, with these same hands that are capable of devastation. you are but vulnerable in comparison, easily breakable beneath him — and truly, what would it take? a mere word? or just his bare hands?

he could be the one to do it — you, this divine creature who has placed all belief in him in holding any inclination to that of honour, made to realise a world where all pretence of virtue and heavenly gifts of goodness have all but dissipated in the streams of blood that drench the earth.

but he is not so cruel to do so, to tarnish this beauty he holds at his fingertips.

he wonders, would you crack? your skin is like porcelain beneath his callused digits, easily smudged with blood and made to crumble, the glittering rhinestones of your eyes losing its lustre until you are no more than an empty carcass for the crows, no different from every other broken soul that has lost its way. for even the most beautiful flowers, once wilted, will never be the same.

he does not intend to let that happen. you are his to treasure, the singular being in this world that has not been tainted by sin. they are his reprisals to bear in your name among this circle of death — you draped in white, eyes closed to a world which has drowned in blood, where lives are cut from undead bodies until he stands as the sole victor amid this circle.

“shall we go then?” he extends a hand towards your ethereal figure, stepping out from the carnage and into the light.

you oblige, eyes fluttering shut, allowing him to scoop you up from the ground, carrying you in his arms as he walks through the path he has carved.

it is no pretty victory, but alas, nothing fought in this world is ever clean. there is filth upon his blade from hacking and slashing — none of these deaths are clean, he silently observes from the disfigured bodies as he walks past.

but they cannot bring further harm to you.

[qilinism]

“we shouldn’t be doing this.”

“we really shouldn’t.” comes the captain’s response, his lips quirking up in a wry smile.

you both know of the consequences if you were caught. of his honour tarnished, your name disgraced, the fine line you tread between these altercations. for what would the world say, if they saw their beloved princess — the treasure of khaenri’ah, defiled by the likes of a common man?

but tucked away in a clandestine retreat of a private garden, you would say to hell with it.

oh it must be so terrible, the way he touches you, staining you with his blood soaked gauntlets, there is surely better company you can indulge in than the captain of the royal guard himself, battle hardened, and with that helmet surely hiding a monstrous face — for why else does he wear one?

alas, you’re the only one who knows why, it lying discarded beside him alongside your underwear.

and he is far from anything terrible, handling you with a gentleness that almost couldn’t possibly have been associated with his imposing being, the brush of his fingertips featherlight, pushing up your skirts and spreading your legs.

his breath fans against your core, warm and airy, barely giving you any time to think before he’s brought you to bliss, dragging his tongue against your folds in a singular motion.

your hands tighten on the top of his head, fingers entangling between ebony locks as a choked gasp escapes you, eyelids fluttering gently. ”oh gods.”

the rest of your words fade into babbled, incoherent moans just as quickly under him, his tongue delving deeper inside you, swirling around your walls and flicking over your sensitive spots like a man starved.

“f-fuck capitano.” your legs tighten around him, caging him in, tears pricking at the corner of your eyes at every thrust of his tongue, sending pure ecstasy through your veins, your head falling back, holding him there as you shudder and curse out.

it hasn’t even been that long and you’re shaking, hips thrusting up against his face. and you gaze down at him, how he flicks his eyes up at you, sapphire irises gleaming in the light with such devotion. he’s beautiful.

toes curling, you can’t control the moans coming from your throat. it makes a delightful sound mixed with your heavy breathing. how you love him, you need more—

“capitano, please,” you gasp out between trembling breaths, tears staining your flushed face. “need you…hh—”

he lifts a hand to wipe away your tears a moment later, shushing you — stopping those words from slipping past your lips, a solemn reminder of where you stand.

“don’t. you know i cannot.”

he closes his eyes, loosing a breath. he knows what you desire, and despite all the lines you’ve crossed already — this was one he would never cross, the last scrap of dignity and honour whom he is loath to part with.

the royal guards existed to serve, and he had already gone above and beyond in that field, in the chase for your pleasure. but to indulge you further — lay a claim upon your body, take you as his, went against everything.

“but i would let you. no other should.” you enunciate, the dazed, glassy look over your eyes has dissipated, peering up at him with such burning indignation. ruin me, ruin us — i’d let you.

“i know.” he murmurs, dipping his head, your fingers tracing the scarred outlines of his face with the gentle caress of a lover’s.

but you know in your heart, you could never be that. the nation always came first.

you would soon be wed, a suitor chosen for you amongst the nobility. and you would live out the rest of your days, serving your nation to the best of your abilities. he would not take it from you, be the one to deflower you, leave you tainted and defiled by the touch of a common guard.

his honour would never allow it, to take what is not his to claim.

but you cannot seem to let each other go completely. the feel of his skin brushing against yours, searing kisses shared beneath the twilight entwined in this delicate dance that teeters upon a precipice of ticking time, yet restrained by it all the same.

you would always desire more, eternally yearning.

“i love you.”

he presses a chaste kiss on the top of your head. “i know.”

[qilinism]

“we shouldn’t be doing this.”

“we really shouldn’t.” comes the captain’s response, his lips quirking up in a wry smile.

you both know of the consequences if you were caught. of his honour tarnished, your name disgraced, the fine line you tread between these altercations. for what would the world say, if they saw their beloved princess — the treasure of khaenri’ah, defiled by the likes of a common man?

but tucked away in a clandestine retreat of a private garden, you would say to hell with it.

oh it must be so terrible, the way he touches you, staining you with his blood soaked gauntlets, there is surely better company you can indulge in than the captain of the royal guard himself, battle hardened, and with that helmet surely hiding a monstrous face — for why else does he wear one?

alas, you’re the only one who knows why, it lying discarded beside him alongside your underwear.

and he is far from anything terrible, handling you with a gentleness that almost couldn’t possibly have been associated with his imposing being, the brush of his fingertips featherlight, pushing up your skirts and spreading your legs.

his breath fans against your core, warm and airy, barely giving you any time to think before he’s brought you to bliss, dragging his tongue against your folds in a singular motion.

your hands tighten on the top of his head, fingers entangling between ebony locks as a choked gasp escapes you, eyelids fluttering gently. ”oh gods.”

the rest of your words fade into babbled, incoherent moans just as quickly under him, his tongue delving deeper inside you, swirling around your walls and flicking over your sensitive spots like a man starved.

“f-fuck capitano.” your legs tighten around him, caging him in, tears pricking at the corner of your eyes at every thrust of his tongue, sending pure ecstasy through your veins, your head falling back, holding him there as you shudder and curse out.

it hasn’t even been that long and you’re shaking, hips thrusting up against his face. and you gaze down at him, how he flicks his eyes up at you, sapphire irises gleaming in the light with such devotion. he’s beautiful.

toes curling, you can’t control the moans coming from your throat. it makes a delightful sound mixed with your heavy breathing. how you love him, you need more—

“capitano, please,” you gasp out between trembling breaths, tears staining your flushed face. “need you…hh—”

he lifts a hand to wipe away your tears a moment later, shushing you — stopping those words from slipping past your lips, a solemn reminder of where you stand.

“don’t. you know i cannot.”

he closes his eyes, loosing a breath. he knows what you desire, and despite all the lines you’ve crossed already — this was one he would never cross, the last scrap of dignity and honour whom he is loath to part with.

the royal guards existed to serve, and he had already gone above and beyond in that field, in the chase for your pleasure. but to indulge you further — lay a claim upon your body, take you as his, went against everything.

“but i would let you. no other should.” you enunciate, the dazed, glassy look over your eyes has dissipated, peering up at him with such burning indignation. ruin me, ruin us — i’d let you.

“i know.” he murmurs, dipping his head, your fingers tracing the scarred outlines of his face with the gentle caress of a lover’s.

but you know in your heart, you could never be that. the nation always came first.

you would soon be wed, a suitor chosen for you amongst the nobility. and you would live out the rest of your days, serving your nation to the best of your abilities. he would not take it from you, be the one to deflower you, leave you tainted and defiled by the touch of a common guard.

his honour would never allow it, to take what is not his to claim.

but you cannot seem to let each other go completely. the feel of his skin brushing against yours, searing kisses shared beneath the twilight entwined in this delicate dance that teeters upon a precipice of ticking time, yet restrained by it all the same.

you would always desire more, eternally yearning.

“i love you.”

he presses a chaste kiss on the top of your head. “i know.”

[qilinism]

Please I beg of you a continuation to that friends with benefits with blade PLEASE IT WAS SOOOOO GOOD 🙏🙏🙏

bet when blade makes an appearance in game again 😼😼 (probably never)

[qilinism]

the arrangement was clear from the start — there was supposed to be no feelings, no strings attached.

feelings are fatal, and desire all the more. they bring down everything you have built up, worming their way into even the most wretched, shrivelled up of hearts if shown the slightest of weaknesses. 

but blade is no man of such weakness. 

in his mind, there is only one singular goal he chases, and nothing was to lead him astray from its path laid out by destiny’s slave. it is rare that any other need should arise, and even so, they are normally dealt with quickly, efficiently, like he is known for. 

you are but one of those methods, reserved for such occasions where he is stricken by the urges that plague every human. for immortality has not changed him completely, only giving him an eternity to let his grievances and frustrations fester. the mara lingers in the back of his mind, always threatening to overtake him, in reminder he cannot hold all this within him. 

you know he’s dangerous — you don’t pretend as if you haven’t seen his face in wanted posters across the galaxy. it’s all the more reason you should never cross that line with him, into anything else beyond mere passing acquaintances. nothing good is sure to come of it, meeting those piercing crimson irises that seem to burn into your frame. 

it’s bad, it’s reckless, it’s every infringing word that comes to mind, yet it still leaves you gasping for breath and your body trembling — those same hands that soak in bloodshed and end lives, that do nothing now but bring you pleasure. 

“fuck.” he hisses through gritted teeth as he pushes himself into you, slowly, so you can feel every inch of him, stretching you out as your legs wrap around his hips, your walls clenching around his length, desperately sucking him in. 

it’s a blurring of contradictions upon one another, that sweet mixture of pain coupled with the thrumming of desires within your blood, and the way such cruel hands could be capable of such sensibilities, rocking into you as tears spring to your eyes amidst its euphoria. 

there’s something that’s oddly, devastatingly beautiful about him in the moonlight, pale skin illuminated in a silvery incandescent glow, the hard planes of his chest carved in the likeness of a marble statue, and loose ebony black hair spilling over his shoulders. you can only wonder why he has turned to such a crude existence, chipping away at himself as nothing more than a blade. 

and one day, will you find that blade turned upon you? such thought hangs heavy over your head, shuddering when his grip tightens against your skin, digging into flesh, threatening to draw blood. he holds your life precariously in his hands, yet too exposes his own vulnerability, and in allowing this — what is it that he sees in you? 

you can never tell. his face betrays little emotion, with eyes just as cold — they scrutinise your form, as if finding the most efficient way to reach your climax with each thrust of his. perhaps it really is only transactional, with you yourself just lucky enough to have caught his attention. 

but there are times where he almost holds you with the gentleness of a lover, cradling your cheek, his breath warm against your face, eyes drifting to your parted lips. they’ll never touch, of that which you had agreed, your skin remaining unblemished and unbroken — leaving no reminder such an altercation had existed. 

instead he presses his head deeper into the crook of your neck and deeper into you. you  inhale sharply, surrounded by his scent which seems to grow stronger in your proximity — flowery and rich and smooth and comforting. 

your hands entwine themselves within the soft stands of his hair, grasping it in between your fingers, itself but a fleeting moment to cherish, alongside every roll of his hips, brushing against the most sensitive spots inside you, your body arching into his as he draws pleasured moans one after another out of you. 

it’s a good night, a good time — so where did it begin to go wrong? 

but it happens all too quickly, yet another reminder that moments like this are short lived. every conjecture is entertained by your fancy, only to be shut down by its contradiction, cementing your place in the reality of it all.

when you awake, the sun’s rays are peeking through the windows, bathing the room in a golden light — you’re surprised to see him still here, fast asleep, instead of a cold bed. 

it strikes you, that you’ve only ever seen him beneath the silvery outlines of moonlight, himself like an eclipsing star, disappearing before the morning light can creep up upon him. the way the light that dances across his skin is mesmerising, giving him a touch of colour across his cheeks, and illuminating the navy hues you didn’t know existed in his hair. 

you had foolishly wondered what it was like to wake up to this view every day, spurred by the giddy feelings pounding in your chest. you had reached your hand out to brush away the bangs covering his face for a better view, fingers trailing across his skin — it’s soft, his expression relaxed. 

or for a moment it was. 

you’ve brushed against the line, threatened to cross it. but he stops you in your tracks, eyes snapping open immediately at your touch, scarlet hues widening with alertness as his hand flies to grasp your wrist, suspended only mere inches from his face. “what are you—”

“i—” you start, opening your mouth to apologise, voice quivering slightly at the look on his face, those same eyes boring into you with a piercing intensity. 

he’s unamused, eyes narrowing, his expression hardening. he’s returned to the way it always has been — cold, unfeeling and apathetic. his walls come up again, after having unwittingly let them down in front of you. 

“save it.” blade turns away, dropping your hand. he slides out from underneath the sheets without another word, already moving to get dressed. 

you watch his back muscles flex as he ties up his hair — you’ve never questioned the pale, jagged scars that crisscross his figure, nor what exactly that he is. you are reminded once more that you truly know almost nothing about him, and that it should stay that way. nothing good comes out of knowing more than you should. 

to want that, to want anything more than he owes you is a selfish wish. 

“we’re done here.” his admission is biting, set with a sense of finality. he doesn’t give you a chance to react to his abrupt outburst, merely turning on his heel and leaving as quickly as he could allow. 

he offers you no explanation, nor does he spare you one last glance, still curled up in surprise on the bed, as you watch him retreat out the door — as nothing more than a stranger. 

you won’t see him again. 

that is just the reality of your relationship. 

and such will remain as the truth to you. it is the truth blade wants to believe as well. but unlike you, who has had no choice but to accept what has come from his mouth, doubt lingers in the back of his mind — you linger there. 

would it be worse, had he stayed for a moment longer, indulged you? the thoughts eat away at him like pounding nails in his head — the very reason he cannot be in yet another second of your presence ever again. 

you’ve made him think, when all he had wanted was to be lost in a mindless haze. 

you’ve made him feel weak. even if it was only for a moment, to let his thoughts have been consumed by the idea of you. your lips, the soft mound of your flesh, they invite nothing but a temptation he hasn’t felt in a long time — the very thing that had led to his downfall once. it cannot be something he can indulge further, even for a momentary final glance. 

so he tries to forget you, amongst what he does best, hacking and slicing away at his frustrations, tearing through the path he’s cut with his bare hands, drowning in a red sea pilfered with weeping misery. he is like his name, unrelenting and unmoving, each edge as sharp as the next. 

but it offers only a brief reprieve from all the pains his body is racked with. 

for it creeps up on him, on nights of tranquil silence and when he stands as the sole victor amidst fields of slaughtered dead — that his existence is a lonely one. 

he feels the absence, pressing in on him in the darkness of his dimly lit room, freeing his hard-on from the constraints of his pants, palming it in his hand. 

it’s a poor replacement for something he knows could be better, he remembers it all too well — the way your pussy had clenched around him, the feel of supple flesh beneath his fingers and the fleeting illusion that there had been something shared between you. 

“fuck.” he groans. 

he thinks of you, all the ways you had been splayed out before him, moonlight dancing upon the curve of your delicate breasts. you had been so vulnerable, so soft — his teeth ached to bite, yearning to leave marks across the valley between your breasts until the skin is bruised in the shape of his name. 

and your lips — your lips had always seemed so enticing, glistening cherry red, never to be touched, to be sullied by him. 

he wonders, would things have been different, in that moment had he closed that distance, tasted its forbidden fruit upon his tongue? 

as by you, he’s already come undone.

[qilinism]

“don’t move.”

it’s a threat, laced with a hint of sarcasm as you feel the cold metal of a gun press against the back of your head — a loaded one at that, for the galaxy rangers do not play at such bluffs.

perhaps you should’ve thought twice before crossing him, now at the mercy of the same man, pushing you further into the wall, trapping you between him.

“shame if i had to blow your pretty brains out don’t ya think?”

oh he’s entertained the idea, after having chased you through the streets and across rooftops — you’re far more than just an innocent barmaid that had served him his drinks. especially with the way you’ve utterly ridiculed him, swindled him from right under his nose with the sway of your hips that too had bore away almost all his credits.

you’re a tricky one, he’ll give you that. people like you, they’ll find a way to slip through the cracks. but he won’t let you escape this time, not under his watch — and not until you pay back what is due.

with a face like that, it really is a shame. if you had asked him only mere moments ago, it would almost be hard to believe a person like you had an inclination toward such criminal things.

for you had been good, so very good to him.

“another drink?” your voice wafts in his head, sultry and full of a saccharine sweetness that too lies present upon your lips.

indeed, you were a rare beauty amid the desolation, and he had been awestruck, enraptured beneath your spell, passed into a momentary daze where all conception of reality had flown from the window.

for what seemed like a moment, you had been whispering sweet nothings in his ear, hands tangled in his hair as another had moved lower, tracing along his chest and then further down… until he didn’t remember where you had gone, nor had realised why his pockets had felt almost infinitely lighter until now.

“to think we were havin’ a heck of a good time, until you sweep all my savings from under my nose! we have unfinished business, don’t ya think?”

“i—”

you feel the metal dig further into your head in response as he leans in, hot breath tickling your neck as he whispers, almost in disbelief. “you’re a damned crazy woman. making me chase ya all this way? can’t leave me hanging like that.”

“i should get my money’s worth at the very least.” boothill grins, dragging the gun down your face, tilting up your chin with it, eyes meeting monochrome ones glinting beneath the light of the sun — fixated upon your figure as if you’re a target finally caught in his sights. “you’ve practically made it off with all my money for fudges sake!”

you have nothing to say back to him, he’s right after all. your mouth betrays you, the words on the tip of your tongue cut off by the quiet gasp that escapes you. you’ve dealt with all sorts of people over the years — but you seem to have bitten off far more than you can chew this time.

“what’s wrong? cat got ya tongue?” he asks, hands digging into your hips as his breath tickles your chin, closing a distance you hadn’t recalled was ever there, his bodies pressed against you back. you can feel every ridge of hard metal, as his fingers slip downward, brushing against the flesh atop your thighs, slowly creeping between the folds of your dress.

his teeth nip at the exposed skin of your neck, its abrupt sharpness causing you to arch back with a stifled gasp, teetering on the edge of pain as pleasure as you subconsciously buck your hips against him, almost as if he still didn’t have a loaded gun pointed at your head.

one wrong move and it could go off, a part of you has the sensibility to remember.

truly, you think, if anyone were to walk down this alley at this moment, they’d witness such a spectacle of debauchery — you’ve never felt nor been seen as pathetic as you are now. he’s barely done a thing, yet you’re dripping wet, bent over at his mercy.

you wonder, has that been how he had felt? being left feeling so hopelessly vulnerable after a mere taste you had offered so tantalisingly. you shudder beneath his touch, eyes rolling to the back of your head as you feel him slip a finger inside.

the sound that escapes you is nothing short of debased, an altercation between a surprised gasp and a pleasured moan, tears pricking at the corner of your eyes at the sudden intrusion. it’s not anything you’re used to for sure — it’s cold, textured almost, with its rough edges.

he hardly gives you any time to adjust before he’s curling his fingers inside you, feeling your walls flutter around him, coated with slick. soon does his name falls from your lips like a plea for forgiveness, a high pitched moan rolling from your tongue as he finds that sweet, sweet spot within you.

“haah… fuck… boothill...!” you brace yourself against the wall, legs trembling as he continues with an almost reckless abandon, leaving your figure reduced to dishevelled mess beneath him.

boothill thinks you’re prettier like this, when you’re dancing in the palm of his hand and not him in yours, one that had only had him wanting more, left to only entertain as mere thoughts as you had showed your hand, disappearing like a faint wisp. for that taste had been your spell and yet too a disenchantment.

you may have covered his eyes, yet still he runs on primal instincts, chasing after you like a hunter pursuing its target, spurred on by necessity yet too partially from lust. he does not only think of his hard earned credits that now dangle tauntingly from his reach, but how they’re grasped in your delicate hands, that had held him only moments ago, where the ghost of your touch lingers upon his skin.

oh you had been crazy — crazy enough to test him at the very least. he won’t hesitate to remind you of that, for you too have unknowingly tread into the domain of a thrill seeking madman.

he lowers the gun pressed against your head, grinning like a shark.

in your muddied haze, you hardly notice the pressure being lifted — whining almost at the loss of contact as his fingers slip out of you at the same time. you feel empty momentarily, not registering where his gun has slipped to, until it’s moved elsewhere much more sensitive.

your eyes widen as you feel the rough edge of the gun brush against your entrance, a choked noise escaping your throat as you shoot him a look of disbelief. “that’s not…!”

“oh you can take it darlin’”

“i— ahh…” you whimper as the tip of the gun dips between your folds, your legs trembling even harder than before, slick coating the barrel and dripping down your thighs. you feel tears streaming down your face again, as if mourning the loss of the remaining shreds of self dignity you had left.

“there ya go.” boothill rasps against your ear, teeth latching onto your neck as he pushes it further in, your walls clamping down around it with a mixture of fear and anticipation.

then without so much of a warning, he drags it out and plunges it back in, watching as you turn to putty in his arms — your eyes are rolled to the back of your head in a fucked out bliss, your body shaking beneath him in equal force to his thrusts.

“ha! that’s more like it baby.”

you cry out as his hand cracks down on your ass, the stinging pain fading into the waves of pleasure crashing down on you, the rough edges of the gun brushing against your puffy clit coupled with the grip he has on your neck — there’s stars swimming before your eyes almost.

you’re babbling incoherently, his name spilling from your lips with each thrust amid your gasps and moans, with that tightly wound knot coiled in the pit of your stomach threatening to snap at any moment.

and when you’re begging for forgiveness, for him to let you come, hips grinding against his hand for more friction in a desperation for release — truly, it’s filthy, yet endearing at the same time.

but he only adjusts the position of the gun in you with a smirk, his other hand squeezing your ass.

“we’re far from done here.”

[qilinism]

omg please i love you and that aventurine fic of yours i liked was so delicious 😮‍💨ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི

ABSHDHS THANK YOU?? not proud of the filth i am writing but like aventurine brainrot is real 😓

BESTIE I AM STILL NOT RECOVERED FROM THAT BLADE GUN FIC OF URS FROM A WHILE BACK THAT WAS A WHOLE CULTURAL RESET THE GASP I GASPED WHEN I SAW IT 🤌🤌

[qilinism]

𝜗𝜚 masterlist !

horny…

mara-struck — blade ( honkai: star rail )

fingering — yingxing ( honkai: star rail )

friends w benefits — blade ( honkai: star rail )

gun kink? — boothill ( honkai: star rail )

debt collection — aventurine ( honkai: star rail )

duty bound —capitano ( genshin impact )

drabbles

dark fantasy au — capitano ( genshin impact )

hunger games au — caleb xia ( love & deepspace )

oneshots

wax wings — sunday ( honkai: star rail )

the prophecy — jing yuan ( honkai: star rail )

i love you, i’m sorry — yingxing ( honkai: star rail )

timeless — kazuha ( genshin impact )

[qilinism]

you find him at the casino.

your casino, before the ipc had come and run it to the ground, along with every other business your family had owned in this world — crushed beneath the weight of taxes, tallying up to a century's worth of unpaid debt now imposed by this foreign corporation. 

he seems to be having fun though, you think dejectedly, as you scan the brightly lit room, where the blonde haired male now sits in the middle of it all, engrossed within a game of poker, chips piled high by his side. you can only watch as golden coins are exchanged between hands and cash is pocketed, knowing its profits will never reach you. 

everything belongs to the ipc now. they’ll soon drain this world dry and move on to things with greater promise, as you look hopelessly at the business card he had handed you earlier, embellished with the logo of the ipc and his name written in curling golden letters on the other side — aventurine. 

“aventurine.” the name rolls from your tongue quietly, trying to hide the slight tremor in your voice — you’re still unsure of this whole affair, as you approach him. 

the game pauses. 

aventurine lifts his head, glancing up at you. his lips pull up into a smile a moment later, his purple eyes gleaming. “ah miss y/n, we meet again.” 

he knows you — your type, barging in to negotiate as if another singular conversation would lift the debt on your families, to change the mind of the ipc. perhaps the spirit is there, but truly you have no grasp on any business, nothing more than a girl who had grown up among riches, who now had the world crashing down around her, seeking him out in desperation. 

you’re all clueless, and willing to do anything — this the first time in your life where you’ve struggled, despaired even, at the uncertainties of the future which had once been promised to you. 

“this game is over.” he tells the others crowded around, throwing a bag of gold onto the table. they scatter immediately, scooping up any loose coins before disappearing out the door. 

some spare you an almost pitying glance, as they pass you on the way to the door, leaving you alone with aventurine. 

he gets up from his seat at the table and walks over to a nearby couch, plopping himself down with a sigh. he pats the spot next to him, indicating for you to sit down. 

begrudgingly you sit, careful not to let your dress ride up. 

“i’ll have you know there is little i can do for your situation.” aventurine sighs, lounging back, his arm splayed across the back of the couch. 

you look pretty today, he thinks, swept up in a short dress that hugs your figure. there’s something about you that gives off regality, despite the slow collapse of it all he’s to witness — he’s surprised you’re keeping it together still. 

“i know but,” you swallow. “there is something right? can’t you pull some strings? this isn’t right— this must be a mistake, they should reinvestigate this. my family has always been honest and paid their taxes, it doesn’t make sense for all this to happen all of a sudden.” 

he huffs. “of course i can pull strings, but that comes at a price, one that many aren’t willing to pay.” 

“we can pay it.” you blurt, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes. “we still have some money left in savings—”

“uhuh” he places his finger on your lips as if to silence you, and you pause, a confused expression crossing your face. “not that price. it’s not something able to be bought. you can’t buy a lot of things these days i suppose; loyalty, respect, sincerity all that.” 

“don’t cry.” he adds, as he notices your face fall, almost as if it offers any consolation to your situation — to himself even. he knows he’s a terrible person, having committed countless sins to get to the position he sits in now.

“what do i do then?” you glance up at him, looking almost hopelessly lost. but he can see the faint flicker in your eyes, that’s still willing to blindly sacrifice. you really are clueless — so much, it’s almost endearing. perhaps he is to offer his guidance. 

“i really do like you y/n, you know.” aventurine offers you a look, a pitying one almost. but alas, you can never truly tell what intention brews behind those eyes. “it really would be a shame to see someone like you lose everything like this.” 

“you’re quite a pretty thing aren’t you?” he murmurs in your ear, hot breath tickling your neck as his cold hand slides across your exposed thighs, eliciting a quiet gasp from you. “and what can i say to a damsel in distress after all? i can’t let her leave unhappy.” 

“aventurine—” you don’t recall how you ended up sitting atop his lap, his mouth trailing across your bare neck as his free hand slides beneath your dress, toying with the band of your panties, before pulling it aside. 

“shh relax.” he silences your muffled cry with his own mouth, lips meeting your own as he slides a finger into you — then another, there’s tears watering your eyes again as your walls clench around him, soft whimpers escaping you as he pushes them further in. “you’re so tight, let me fix that.” 

truly he does think you’re pretty, from your first meeting where you had stood as an elegant figure of ethereal grace — he had not thought such a treasure existed in such far flung corners of the universe. and now, he sees you laid out before him, face flushed, in likeness to a fragile porcelain doll he handles carefully, lest you break amid the tears that stream down your face. 

his free hand pulls down the zipper of your dress, you shiver — revealing the full flush of your figure, his mouth trailing past your collarbone, down to your exposed breasts, his tongue flicking out as if to savour the feeling of your bare skin, a low moan of satisfaction escaping him. do you know you smell so heavenly? so divine? 

it’s inviting. he thinks maybe you look prettier when you cry, tipping your head back as he curls a finger against that sweet spot inside you, his name pushing past your lips. 

yet even such a sight is not enough for him — one who seeks the most grandiose spectacles after all. he’s not a selfless man, looking only to pleasure you. you had been the one that had come to him begging, owing him a debt that has yet to be repaid. and had he not taken that opportunity for himself? 

you just make it all the more tempting for him, as he pulls his fingers out from you, denying you. you seem to shudder at the loss, vacantly staring as he licks your arousal from his fingers. it’s sweet, he thinks. 

he unbuckles his belt, letting it slip to the floor with a clink, snapping you from your daze. there’s a brief moment of hesitation that seems to flash across your eyes at the sight of his hardened length. but you seem to get the hint, remembering who it is you serve — perhaps you aren’t entirely clueless after all. 

your eyes flutter shut as you swallow back a gulp, sinking down on his cock, your breaths shaky and haggard, burying your face in the crook of his neck, as if to stifle your cry, as a groan rumbles in his own chest. “fuck.. you feel so good.” 

“look at me baby.” he gasps, pulling you from his chest, fingers tangling themselves in your hair, violet irises dancing, as he rolls his hips against yours and you moan. he didn’t think you could make such a beautiful noise, lips crashing against yours as if poised to devour the essence of your angelic being completely. 

it’s truly some exalting paradox in your existence, yourself a diamond in the rough. he thinks himself enamoured by you in the height of his pleasures, drawn in by this innate vulnerability you exhibit toward him when you yourself are at your lowest, marked by the tears upon your lashes — and momentarily he questions, is it sinful to have taken such an advantage over you? 

but alas, he’s committed a great many sins. 

you’re dancing in the palm of his hands, tits bouncing up and down as he thrusts upwards into you, letting that sweet, sweet melody of your pleasure fill his ears, pushing any coherent thoughts from aventurine’s mind. 

your own mind is equally blank, you’re numb, shaking all over as you ride his cock, gasping as his fingers dig into your thighs, lifting you up and slamming you back down — a cry escaping you, your legs trembling, as the knot in your stomach seems to tighten with each movement of his. he’s grown rougher, faster. 

“a-aventurine!” 

“mm you’re beautiful.” he kisses along your neck, as you wrap your arms around him, nails digging into his back amid a muffled sob, as he continues, settling into a steady pace. 

at this point you’ve begun to lose count of the times he’s abused your cunt, your vision blurring as a sudden orgasm crashes through you, the knot in your stomach growing taut — then snapping, without so much of a warning, as his cock hits that sweet spot of yours, one that has you seeing stars. 

he fucks you through your release, your first, and then every other one that follows, in chase of his own, your walls growing tighter and more desperate — your cries becoming higher and higher in pitch, you’re practically keening with your head thrown back, eyes rolled back into your head. 

you can’t feel your legs anymore, aventurine being your sole support, bouncing you up and down. you feel his cock twitch inside you moments later, a breathless moan leaving you as his warm seed spills into you, the excess leaking down your legs in a stream of milky white. 

you slump against his frame with a tired sigh. you don’t know how long you sit there for, his cock still inside you. he doesn’t make any effort to move either, content to have you rest against him. 

“so.” he says a moment later, lazily caressing your bare thigh, arching an elegant eyebrow at you. “same time. next week?” 

back to business so quickly, you think. you manage to raise your head to look at him with a confused expression, eyes bleary and unfocused. 

“you seriously didn’t think repaying this debt was a one time thing did you?” a smile curls across his lips, purple eyes gleaming in the light. 

“i— of course not.”

"good."