🌧️ — Eternal Recurrence 600108

[lunafleurette]

YUMESHIP ANECDOTES — #2
(Originally Posted December 19, 2025 on Toyhouse and Tumblr)

Title: Eternal Recurrence 600108
Fandom: Honkai Star Rail
Rating: T
Relationship: Mydei/Ligeia
Summary: ""Remember not to look," she says each time he turns his back to her. Hands as cold as the waters around them skim along the curve of his spine, lingering at his tenth thoracic vertebrae in a caress that leaves a sharp pain in his chest and the taste of blood in his mouth.
Wordcount: 541
Artist: NAKIZAYA

The Sea of Souls has its way of... clinging.

He has always known that. Countless times he's encountered the strangest figures as he made his way from Styxia, the viscera of his past deaths still clinging to his form and slowly sluicing off, remaking his body anew. Cleansed by the death-touched waters, he tries to ignore the whispers that tickle at the nape of his neck.

Mydei has always been good at ignoring them. His people need him, Amphoreus needs him, he needs to be Strife incarnate, the lance of fury that pierces through the black tide. There is no room for his grief to drag him deep into the waters.

And then she started appearing to him: smile as inscrutable as the darkened skies of her ancestor's domain, eyes like gems glinting off-set against the endless dreary blue that spans for what feels like an eternity around them.

She holds out her hand, each and every time. There's a question in her eyes; the answer is always no, and there's no resentment in the crescent of her smile. Only understanding, and the understanding cuts between them like a gash.

"Remember not to look," she says each time he turns his back to her. Hands as cold as the waters around them skim along the curve of his spine, lingering at his tenth thoracic vertebrae in a caress that leaves a sharp pain in his chest and the taste of blood in his mouth.

Don't look back. Don't look back. Don't look back.

She always, always tells him this in that unhurried voice of hers. It digs in deep each time, as if she has used her power on him, when he has never known her to turn it against him. It slithers down his spine like a lover's caress, a pale imitation of the touches they used to exchange. The blows they used to trade in the heat of battle, now embers left cold in the hearth.

Her lips linger at his ear as he forces his way through the monsters, tearing them asunder with hands that don't tremble. Even in death he has never known peace, but this is the closest it will ever come for him — as long as he doesn't look back.

He can have her, for as long as he could remain in the Sea without it taking him; she will let him have her, for as long as he does not turn and look. He is only allowed that one gilmpse of her upon each death.

It is only when they reach the boundary that he feels the light touch of her fingers entangling with his. "May victory always be yours, Mydeimos. Until your last death... I will always wait for you at the shores of the dead."

"And I will always turn from you," Mydei says. "Until the last death."

She laughs. It is the hardest trial he has ever known, to never turn and look. "Very good, Mydeimos."

He leaves behind more and more pieces of himself in the Sea of Souls; each and every one of them remain in her hands. There is so much she could do to destroy him, but it is her smile that always comes the closest.