He awoke at a funeral. It had been hard to make sense of at first, but the solemn air, the preaching figure, and the repeated mentions of God's embrace for the dearly departed had helped confirm his suspicion.

He assumed it was his own funeral. It would only make sense - a very logical conclusion. The last thing he remembered was the impression of drowning: this intractable feeling of choking, trying to take in air but finding none. The coughing had been incessant, with secretions stuck deep in his lungs, refusing to clear out. The only sounds surrounding him had been those of alarms and shouts, cold and efficient. The memory of his helplessness was imprinted in his mind. He recalled being stuck in his body without any reprieve in sight, with fatigue slowly overcoming his will to live as seconds passed. 

Or had he been choking on smoke instead? A different image had sparked in his head. A scene from his point of view, of a compacted earth floor slowly passing under him, illuminated by nearby flames. He remembered his throat being parched and tight as he coughed on ashes. The fire had gained on him, the blaze licking his feet while screams battered his eardrums, and hoofs almost trampled him. 

Whichever sequence he preferred, the ending was clear: death. His, to be precise. A horrible, breathless death, steeped in panic and pain. His last moments had been a constant fight for survival. An exercise of will doomed to fail by the ruthless circumstances. Considering where he was, the inevitable had happened. He had failed to survive despite trying his hardest to live, despite his desperate cling to life. Death had finally welcomed him in their bittersweet embrace. 

He took a look around him and noticed how most faces were unfamiliar. Actually, all faces present belonged to strangers. Weird. Wasn't a funeral supposed to gather loved ones, friends, and family of the deceased? While he had never been a particularly popular guy-hard to be when one spent most of his life sick in bed - he would have at least expected his favourite nurse to show up. To be abandoned even at his own funeral was a bit much. His estranged grandparents should have shown up, for appearance's sake at the very least. Their precious reputation should have forced them to fake the bare minimum of consideration due to their lone grandson's death. 

Oh well, nothing to do about it. Hard to act from the afterlife.

Centering himself, he was pleasantly surprised by how calm he remained. He felt somewhat numb, emotionally speaking. Death wasn't that bad after all. Deceptively not that different from living. He was not even cold. He was quite warm in fact - for a dead guy at least. And sweaty. And a little hungry. Not enough to consider himself in the "ravaging ghoul" category of undead, but a little concerning. He had never envisioned himself as someone at risk of becoming a fantastical evil entity, but maybe that was a mistake. Maybe he was the exact type of person who later became a horrible undead monster. Clearly, he needed to work on his introspective skills...

Guess you keep on learning about yourself, even when your life is over, he surmised.

Nonetheless, he would prefer to avoid such a transformation. Becoming an all-devouring ghost did not appeal to his sensibilities. He did not wish to ponder the associated moral dilemmas. Vegan versus meat-eating - cute animals and environment against deliciousness - was as much ethics as he could take. He did not need to add unhinged consumption of sapient beings to the things he had to think about. He would aim to dodge devolving into any type of human-eating entity with all of his meagre power. 

Looking around, he realized the church, or perhaps it was a temple–not like he knew the difference- was odd. He had expected his service to be in a church, a synagogue or a boring and basic funeral home's non-denominated space. Neither he nor his late parents had been religious, but one of those would have made sense, culturally speaking. This edifice, however, was none of the above. He did not recognize what kind of spiritual building he was in. 

The bizarre building's inside was clad in shades of white, gold, and touches of purple. It looked quite fancy. The nine-sided, even shape of the main room was pleasing to the eyes, especially with the abundant natural light present. Gentle sunlight entered through stained-glass mosaics set in the domed ceiling. Gold and white rays descended on the room, adding an ethereal feel to the dour ceremony.

The people in attendance were murmuring all around him. Their low chatter made a subtle buzz in the background of the priest's chanting. It gave a mildly dissonant effect, cutting with the solemnity of the event.

Looking further, he noticed everyone, without exception, was dressed in light gray. No sombre suit in sight. Instead, men wore embroidered kaftans over robes with flowing sleeves, and a similar outfit for the women, with the kaftans replaced by shorter, corset-like belts with extravagant over skirts attached. No colour other than light gray was seen. Not even black or white, the only "funeral appropriate" shades he knew of. Unexpected. Although he had to admit he had never researched other cultures' funerary customs. Regardless, the monochrome impact of the crowd managed to awe him for a moment.

He honed in on the priest again. The officiant's attire was undoubtedly the most striking, so flamboyant was he. He had donned a golden robe threaded with white, shimmering silk thread. His white overgarment was inversely embroidered with gold. Disproportionate shoulder pads and a stiff, flared bottom gave an exaggerated and sharp hourglass effect. The priest's attire could also be described as a borderline successful marriage between a 1980s power suit and ancient Chinese emperor garb. As he looked at it, he found it less and less odd, and more and more fashion-toward. Bold even.

Was this setup a governmental attempt to, in a weird way, compensate for the lack of love at the end of his life? Did they decide, in their oh-so-grand wisdom and good intentions, to invent flashy new traditions for lonely foster kids, especially chronically sick ones? Depressing, it was all so depressing, he...

"Myrkas? Myrkas! Are you there?" a feminine voice screamed, next to his ear.

Surprised, he turned to his right. The girl standing next to him looked frazzled. She had grabbed his shoulder and was shaking it gently, as if afraid to hurt him. Her hazel eyes stared straight into his own, large and unblinking. It took him a moment to process. Up until then, he had been convinced no one could see or touch him. He assumed he was a ghost, after all. 

He examined her closer. He could detect a mix of fear and hope on her visage. As if she had a wish she held dear, but was afraid it would never come true, just missing the mark. An eternity passed while they gazed at each other, both bewildered. Then relief, tremendous relief fell upon her, and a weight visibly vanished from her shoulders, She had found whatever it was she had searched for in his eyes. A luminous smile instantly transformed her entire demeanour. 

"Oh Myrkas, you are finally back! I was so scared you'd be lost forever. That you'd stay like that... You have no idea how scared I was, how worried. You were so empty. You would not answer. You barely ate or drank. It was as if the ashes we recovered you from, still kept buried whatever spark you had left. Like what made you you had been burned away," she said, with complete disregard for the ongoing ceremonies. 

She turned silent then and, without further warning, proceeded to bear-hug him. She threw her arms around him and crushed his head to her sternum in a smothering embrace.

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Utterly confused, Myrkas - apparently his name- froze. The skinny girl - young woman? - had clearly recognized him. He sensed he should have known her. The name she called him, Myrkas, wasn't exactly right, but it wasn't wrong either. It could very well be his name, not like he knew any better.

Wait, did he not know his own name? Wasn't a first name a pretty basic thing to know? The exact manner of his - presumed- death, he could understand forgetting. Trauma response and all that. But his own name though, was going too far. Something was wrong, very very wrong.

Unaware of his sudden existential crisis, the young woman continued to squeeze him to her chest, unfortunately restricting his breathing in her unbound enthusiasm.

As panic surged. Myrkas - he would roll with it for now - pushed her away. Gasping for air, he had no time to compose himself before getting surrounded by the crowd. In an instant, gawkers flooded him from all around. A chorus of "Ohhh" and "Aaahh" and "Thank Allrikh" assaulted his eardrums. Hands grabbed him. Prayers rose. Bodies collided with his own. Myrkas could not manage. His breathing quickened along with his heart rate, the beating organ attempting to escape his chest. His vision darkened, becoming tunnel-like. He barely had time to acknowledge how alive he felt for a supposedly dead man before blissful relief rushed over. Myrkas had passed out.

–––

"Silence," the bass voice resounded inside the temple. 

People quieted as the imposing middle-aged man parted the crowd and reached the collapsed boy. Carefully, he cradled Myrkas in his darkly tanned arms.

"Nirrina, come girl," he ordered, before leaving the main room through a side door hidden behind drapes. Few heard his whispered "worse than a pack of vultures, the lot of them" as he left. 

The girl, Nirrina, half-walked, half-ran after him. She kept her eyes low, conscious of the ongoing murmurs in the crowd. The ceremony had been irrevocably interrupted. The priest paused, able to take a hint. How could he proceed when the front-row guests - the remaining family of the deceased - were leaving for a side room? The holy man did not seem overly upset by this unexpected break in his duties. It might had to do with the clergyman's known penchant for stiff drinks at any hour. Rumour was he hid expensive Eternal Willow Wine under his robes at all times.

While the ceremony came to a halt, Nirrina sat quietly next to an unconscious Myrkas. The same imposing man who had quieted everyone sighed in a corner as he rummaged through his bag. No words were exchanged between the two. The near silence in the room weighed heavily on Nirrina's spirit, the muffled brouhaha seeping in from the main room insufficient to distract her.

She occupied herself as best she could, laying a fresh, damp cloth on the boy's forehead. She worried her bottom lip as she looked at him. Her short-lived elation upon his awakening was all but forgotten. Nirrina felt powerless, again, at the precipice of despair. She had lost too much in too short a time. She knew she could rebuild her life - she was still young, barely eighteen. She had time if little resources. But she did not want to do it alone, not again. And the only person in the world she had a true connection to, her only family, lay unconscious next to her. 

She had so hoped her prayers had been answered when his gaze had lit up back there. When Myrkas had looked around, "seeing," for the first time in two long weeks. It had lasted but a moment. Now, they were back to square one.

And that useless uncle of his was still not doing anything. Stuck in a corner, ceaselessly muttering, shifting through powders, pills, and concoctions but never actually trying anything. What a reputed alchemist he was, leaving his only living relative in a catatonic state.

Myrkas was only twelve, for Allrikh's sake. He was so young, so full of promise. And all that fool of an alchemist could do was lock himself in his workshop and worry endlessly about " deviations," "anomalies," "twisted flux," and "soul cracks," whatever those meant. Myrkas' uncle had shelved everything he had made these past two weeks, from potions to pills to elixirs. Even that one weirdly shaped candle had been shelved, never to be lit. 

The pathetic man did not dare look at his own nephew. Myrkas was the last of the Hakhmir line, the fool's only blood left, his only heir. It should mean something. Prompt the alchemist to save his lineage at minimum, bring him to try something, anything to save Myrkas. That old man had no other options.

Unless... unless he finally decided to use her key and unlock her belt, as was his right. Such was Nirrina's fate, as Myrkas' uncle had "inherited" her through this tragedy. But she preferred not to think about that. Myrkas needed her attention and care, everything else would wait. She would be there for him like he had been for her, her only ray of sunshine in his father's house over the past two years. She would get back her sweet, serious Myrkassa. 

He will wake up again, he will. Soon, or I swear I will find a way to make that useless uncle of his act. No matter the price I pay. I swear on my face, may I be damned to the deepest hells if I fail, Nirrina promised herself.

For the second time that day, he awoke at his funeral. Wait. Scratch that. Rewind, restart. A funeral, not his. Myrkas felt way too alive to be dead. Dead people did not faint from panic attacks. They also did not possess a beating heart. It was pure logic. One needed to be alive for their heart to speed up. No one had ever heard of fainting ghosts, vampires or zombies. 

Not that those were actually real but whatever, semantics, Myrkas snarked inward.

Hence, Myrkas had concluded he was very much alive. And he could breathe, truly breathe. Big gulps of air easily flew in and out his airways, without any mucous rattling in his chest or the need for an oxygen mask to blast in his face. Myrkas did not need to sit forward with a desperate hold on his knees, muscles shaking with effort to suck in his next breath. There was no ringing alarm to be heard or screaming people to manhandle him. He just breathed, in and out, effortlessly. He had no recollection of ever breathing so easily, of the last time his innate breathing reflex had been sufficient to sustain him. He breathed automatically, no need to think about it, like a normal person. What bliss, what sweet sweet bliss. 

His momentary musings were interrupted by a feminine voice. A growly older man answered her soon after. Myrkas assumed she was the same girl who had been so happy to see him, though he still could not recall if he was supposed to know her.

He quickly decided to keep his eyes closed to gather clues the others might reveal while he still appeared to be sleeping. The important people - though Myrkas wasn't sure who, why or when- tended to talk around him, about him. They discussed critical decisions at his bedside, usually when he looked asleep. While Myrkas' memories of those occurrences were vague, he knew it was a tried and proven technique to gather intel. 

So he kept his eyes closed, his ears opened, and his breathing regular - once again deeply grateful to all available superior beings for his seamlessly working lungs. 

"We could try smelling salts at least, Master Hakhmir. It should be harmless enough by now," the girl said. 

"Nirrina, girl, it's not his body that's the problem," the older man replied. "The burns are all healed, with almost no traces left from the fire. Myrkas' lungs have little residual damage anymore. No girl, the problem lies in his soul. It's cracked. Still fracturing as we speak. That is a whole other monster, one you don't mess with lightly."

"But how? Myrkas never cultivated. He never received any aid or resources. How could his soul be damaged? 

"Myrkas was awake, I saw it right before he fainted. It has to be a good sign, no? Is there really nothing to try? He is my only family. Please, I beg you, I will do anything," Nirrana said, sniffling. Her sobs were subdued as if she tried to keep them inside.

"I don't know girl, I don't know. It is what it is," the man replied softly. "However it happened, the fact remains. I'll look at him again though. We should aim to make him stand until the end of the prayers at the very least."