Yoichi must have slipped into a lucid dream –or dream within a dream- as he dropped from the last step of the arduously winding staircase that seemed to have taken him as long to descend them as it had done for him to get to this point over the whole night.

Awakening from his thoughts of which now he had no previous recollection of, Yoichi narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing this tenebrous chamber for any meagre hint of movement or sign of passage free from this darkness, he found none. Simultaneously, numerous points of light sparked to life at various points around the centre of the small room, Yoichi saw candles placed ceremoniously around the cage, which now lay empty in between them. From this now brightened cave, Yoichi noted the two doors leading away from the room to his left; these doors -just like the two before- were plastered in more talisman tags, each burned and dry; but in darkness such as this it could not have been from the sun's natural effect of yellowing paper but instead perhaps from some inconceivable force powerful enough to break through as many wards as such to destroy them completely.

Despite what would turn most the other way at the very thought, Yoichi shifted the doors –which seemed a great deal heavier than the last- inward, following them in to a room not unlike the underground river he had passed across before, though here, the feeling of emptiness and despair was heavy and repressive. And as he approached the next set of doors, the notion that something terrible was about to happen blanketed him, what's more; somehow, Yoichi knew that he didn't have much time left, as though soon he would either wake up from this dream…or be put to sleep, forever.

The next room, a vast and largely empty cavern, made Yoichi feel as though hidden faces from all around the room were watching his every movement. Along the floor a strange layer of thin mist rolled gently across the floor and like a body of transparent water, the lamps seen crossing the water before now meandered across the plain. Anxious and growing sick of this overwhelming coercion, Yoichi crossed the room, toward a staircase at the back of the cave, leading up to an enormous stone door frame which seemed to be constructed from a number of large blocks, stacked one atop another with a gap, between which two stone doors appeared to enclose the temple inside.

Stepping closer a luminous light broke through a space before him, almost as though the world before him were a giant painted canvas and someone had pierced a gap through to the vivid sunlight shining down from the other side, and before his eyes, his beloved materialised, making her way up the colourless staircase into the colourless abyss beyond.

'Wait!' The words sprung from Yoichi's tongue like a champion diver; 'Hitomi please!' He called out.

She stopped, and then slowly drifted around, her expression that of a scorned child: sorrowful and knowing.

'Please,' she shook her raven hair gently from side to side, 'Yoichi, please, you have to stop, if you carry on this way…'

'I know.' Yoichi blurted, suddenly falling to his knees, 'I understand, but I don't care now. I'll follow you to my death if that's what it takes.'

She stared at him for a moment, her dark eyes flickering from side to side until at last she bowed her head and as she turned she continued up the stairs, becoming one with the blackness inside the temple ahead.

Yoichi found strength to lift himself to his feet, slowly he dragged his feet forward and toward the doors, then just as he was readying to tumble up the stairs, a small hand tugged at the loose fabric of his kimono, shocked he glanced down to see a tiny face smiling between two pigtails;

'Big brother,' she exclaimed playfully, 'I'm not allowed inside, it's through there.'

Yoichi nodded hesitantly and pushed himself up and through the doors, he threw a momentary look back, but she had already vanished. This time Yoichi was sure, this was it: whatever fate or destiny or just sheer bad luck had arranged in that room for him, he was too tired and had come too far to walk away from it now; furthermore, his candle, now on its last few minutes of light, would not last him a return journey

The temple was black inside, and something really did not feel right in here. An obnoxious stench, musty and rife, caused Yoichi to pause for a moment as he entered, the doors grinding closed behind him and sealing away any glimmer of light. His candle did little to abate the powerful darkness packed into this relatively miniscule space; so Yoichi crept forward, inch by inch until his foot collided with something metallic, a sound that resonated through the chamber surely alerting anyone of his presence. Looking down Yoichi collected the lamp that his foot had made contact with and checking inside he just managed to light the semi consumed blue candle contained within, with what flame still flickered from the end of his own moribund candle.

He held it aloft, and with the blue flame now casting pale hues across the floor Yoichi's eyes widened: Scattered everywhere, like the casting room of an ornate doll factory, lay the bodies of countless tattooed priestesses. Like a shooting star crossing a land of pale flesh, rivers of ink and sea's of black, soulless eyes; Yoichi's lamplight drifted across the twisted carpet of bodies, then he stopped.

There she lay, Hitomi - her hands and feet skewered to the earth through four long and well established wooden stakes. Yoichi lost the will to stand and dropped to his knees, casting cerulean lamplight across her gentle, unblinking eyes. Yoichi was still for a moment; then he leant in close and whispered her name:

'Hitomi?'

The her wide eyes shifted and her lips parted a little as she recognised the face behind the light,

'Hitomi!' Yoichi exclaimed, unable to do anything but smile a little as he contemplated their twinned fates from this point in.

'In my dreams,' Yoichi began, his voice silencing the sudden shuffling from behind him, 'I-'

With a muffled crunch and a sudden blunt force rushing from the back of his head, everything went black.

What happened?

What is this blackness?

Where do I go from here?

If I die in my dreams, is that it?

Is this it?

Is this…all there is?

At least, I suppose, this time

we died together.