yuputka (n.) the phantom sensation of something crawling on your skin.

He had dreamed of nothing again, and woke feeling like he had wrestled with angels in his sleep. Or was this waking? Was he still sleeping? Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separated happiness from melancholy; he found himself straddling its edge. What was this feeling, this sudden sensation of completion? Had he ever wanted for anything? Had he ever doubted? He was here, awake – or maybe asleep – or perhaps awake – and all that which had been he was dissipated and now he was him and maybe that had always been the case.

He was asleep, and dreaming of nothing. Here and there, the suggestion of what might have been something: the silhouette of a dead thing on the floor, the shape of the stars in the sky, blood on the cobblestones, and her standing alone. Alone? Alone. He thought to himself, have you ever seen a Hanged Man go so cleanly? He thought to himself, I love you, truly, I love you and to hell with your curse, I love you. He thought to himself, it began thus and maybe it always was. This was nothing; this was the sound of the ocean, that had been his madness. Here was the bottom – he knew it with his mind's root. It had been what he had feared.

For the most part, he dreamed of nothing. It was a particularly caged manner of spending his sleep, so tightly circular that his mind at times felt like a labyrinth that his conscious mind spent the whole of the night trying to escape. He was sure there was some meaning there, if he cared to search more fervently for it, but he had too little time to probe too deeply into the machinations of his own mind. Life as a Warrior allowed so little time for introspection; if the ache in your soul and the war in front of you weren't taking up all of your focus, then you weren't working hard enough. Matthias had always thought thus.

(….that didn't sound right.)

Now was then. Before him sprawled all that had been – all that would be – all that was. Whose face was he wearing? He couldn't feel for it; his limbs were lead. A mirror, he thought, that was all this was – he was staring into a mirror. He was still sleeping, and dreaming of nothing. In his peripheral vision crept something that was not human, and maybe never had been, something that certainly never should have been. I'm sorry. He should have told her. He should have warned him. What would he have said? Had he included it in his notes? Would it matter? They would meet again, they would part once more. This he knew. Hadn't they lived a thousand lifetimes at each others' side? Could they hope to escape, threads intertwined thus? The wheel kept turning; the world could not be stopped. Thus it had been, and thus it would always be. Think, Matthias, think.

(….was he Matthias?)

He was marooned here in his mind, an island between here and there, a moment between now and then. Could he reel himself back to waking? Sometimes he managed. Sometimes he was motivated. He could see her silhouetted in his mind's eye now – her dark eyes, her wry smile, disingenuously delicate. She could draw blood with a look. She could cut you to ribbons with those eyes. He would have bled if she had asked him to. Had she died when she ought? He hoped she had - he would follow her. They had always made that pledge: there is no place you could go that I would not follow. He had meant it, once; he could mean it again. When, again? Now? He would follow, if he must; he was happy to bleed for her now.

Overhead, the sun was desolate; the stars were blighted. He could see the end: here, the end lay. The towers had fallen for less; here, he could see her dying, bleeding, suffocating, and watching him, and behind her the others, the others, the others. They lay dead. This was the end. She said, why didn't you warn us? and he could not tell her that this was how it must be. Why didn't you warn us?

(….was he thinking of Ina?)

He was dreaming of nothing; something was falling from the stars, trailing feathers, and she was watching him with those amber eyes of hers and saying, did you see this? Did you say nothing? Had he said nothing? This was the voice of nothing. This had been his madness.

Behind him, someone said, won't you promise me, Czarnecki? Look after her when I'm gone.

Here were the cracks now: her face, like a broken mask, splintering and fracturing away like a broken mirror. It was a warped reflection of the girl she had been - once beautiful, once whole, once full of light and life. How heavy was her heart now? She said, if only we had cut her strings. Cut her strings. Cut her tongue out. They should have, shouldn't they? Why hadn't they? The thing that had once been a girl was watching him, expecting an answer, and he had none, for he was dreaming of nothing.

(….that wasn't Ina. It couldn't be. He wouldn't let it be.)

Somewhere Zoran Czarnecki was being born and somewhere he was dying. He felt them both, now, in the very fibres of his being. He was dreaming of nothing, and he was dying, and he was thinking to himself, with the desperation of he who is lying to himself, we'll meet again, we'll part once more. This I know.

They were sitting beside the lake, and she had just finished braiding Hyacinth's hair. The smaller girl had stayed still the whole way through, and seemed proud of herself for doing so – even when there were knots, even when there was pulling. Myghal had just thrown Azula into the water; she had resurfaced, spluttering, just in time to see Ilja tackle Myghal so that they joined her, shouting. Their voices carried across the water, cacophonous. Nerezza was calling something to Belle across the grass, where she and Mielikki and Uriasz were making daisy chains; Khalore had Ghjuvan in a headlock near the trees, kicking up dust as they moved; Kinga had offered Ragnar a calloused hand out of the lake and shoved him in again almost immediately, where he was seized by Azula, who seemed intent on drowning him; and it was all noise, noise and laughter and sunlight on the water.

She had said to him, you have that look on your face, and he said, what look?, and she said, you're thinking again; you're thinking again; you know I hate it when you do that.

He didn't know how to tell her that she had, as ever, expected too much of him: that he had not been thinking, that he rarely thought around her, that he had only been trying to remember this memory utterly as it was. The water was so still and perfect; it reflected the world back in every detail and, today, the world was worth reflecting. In the end, he hadn't said anything at all. She had smiled, without needing an answer, and leaned into him, and then it just been that, on and on again: noise, and laughter, and sunlight on the water.

For Zoran, it was a clumsy wakening from the dreams-that-were-not-dreams; it was a sudden rising to consciousness, reeled back to reality in an abrupt rush of sound.

Shit. Ina.

He tried to rise; his limbs would have given out from under him, if he had been able to move his limbs. It felt as though his very blood was lead in his veins; he was pinned to the bed like a butterfly behind glass. It was a bed, he perceived more clearly now; he was lying in a grey-stone room, a space with very high walls and a ceiling very far away. He was clutching something in his hand - a pile of letters, he thought, bound by butcher's twine. There was sound, nearby, very nearby – not a scream, not weeping, not Inanna, but a frantic back-and-forth, calls for help and the sound of someone saying don't, don't, don't.

Something had gone wrong.

For a moment, he seemed to stand outside his own skin. What had happened? The strength was coming back, slowly now, slowly. He could feel his heart beating again; his muscles ached beneath his skin. It felt like he had been fighting something while he slept – what had that thought been, wrestling with angels? He could feel, acutely, that he had sweated through his clothes. His hair was slick against his face; it felt like he had burned through a year's worth of fever in a single hour. But he was alive, if this was life; he was awake, if this was waking. He had survived initiation, if this was initiation ended. He could barely remember what had passed: the last thing he could remember was looking down at the card in his hand and thinking, the Hierophant, he had never considered the Hierophant. And before that: shaving with Ilja, outside the barracks, Myghal grousing from within that they were taking too long, Azula running through the grass on her way back to the barracks.

Were they okay? Something had gone wrong. Who was hurt?

Was someone dying?

It felt like there were insects crawling on his skin, under his skin. They had said there was always one. Zoran had never truly wanted to admit it to himself, but that was what they had said: one of you will always die. Such were the odds. If it had not been Zoran….

His every heartbeat seemed to thud out the name of another: Inanna. Azula. Ilja. Myghal. Kinga. Hyacinth. Ghjuvan. Khalore. Mielikki…

There was always one.

He could move his arms now, and did, slowly, clumsily; he moved himself upright with such a gargantuan effort that for a moment it was all he could do to hold himself there and shake like his whole being would come apart at the joints. Orfeas Halkias, the chancellor's maven, was rushing past him towards the third bed, seeming to pay no attention to Zoran, awake and moving. He was not the only one: the room was lined with beds, four in all. On every bed, a Warrior.

That was what they were now, Warriors – and yet Azula looked so tiny in the bed next to him, tiny and breakable, her limbs twitching as though controlled by strings that he could not see. Her eyes were open, open and panicked; they wheeled about the room in a desperate whirl, but she said nothing, and seemed to see nothing, and only lay there. She lay there, and she twitched like a spider missing two legs, a fly with its wings torn off. Seeing her like that... his heart broke. Zoran tried to reach for her, but he could not; he was not strong enough, and he did not know what he could do to ease her suffering.

On the other side of the room, havoc: the man in the third bed.

He was not writhing, as Mielikki writhed in the bed next to him, her veins standing out against her skin; he was not twitching, as Azula now twitched, her eyes searching and frantic; he was not shuddering, as Zoran found himself shuddering. He was not even breathing. He just lay there, and he stared. There was no life there. If Zoran had not known better, he would have said that there never had been. He just lay there, and he stared. This was what it was to see nothing. Zoran found himself staring as well. It wasn't possible, he thought, it wasn't. Of all that could have gone wrong – of all who could have died – of all which could have happened….

This couldn't be real. He refused to believe it. If this was real… If this had happened…

No!

He had never even thought to fear for him, but here he lay now: part of his lip had turned to pink-laced marble, where only the previous day her thumb had traced a path across it; his hair was gold, as it had ever been, gold and ore and heavy; his flesh lay open along his limbs and his abdomen as though it had been peeled back by some great grip from above, baring those great muscles that looked now to be more grey concrete than red sinew. And his eyes…. staring. Open, and staring. How were they meant to be Warriors without him?

His eyes – it was like looking into the concrete gaze of a statue.

Oh, dear god, who was going to tell Ina?

Orfeas Halkias was saying, his voice hushed, "bring him to the World. Perhaps he can be salvaged..."

And Aubert Abreo was saying, quite determinedly, "what do you expect the World to do? He is gone. There is always one.."

Always one, Zoran thought dully. Always one. One. One. Did that mean….? Were the others safe? Had this been his final act of protection?

After all, Pekka Hämäläinen had always tried to take on the burdens of others.