Bariyan raised a hand to his mouth. He thumbed the gap where there had once been a tooth, looking up to meet Martin's stare. The blue of his eyes had faded away, back to red, but the awe was still there.

He dropped his hand from his mouth to his neck, running over the stitches and catching in the chain links that wrapped the medal to him. Pulling it away to hold the medal between his fingers and look, at the surface, at the edges, the curve and the reflection. And there: the boy, too, reflected and indistinct in the metal gleam, but there all the same. Not some ghost, not some delirium-induced vision come to make Bariyan suffer further -- here.

Bariyan looked up. He did not move to stand. He only let go of the medallion, and hesitantly reached forwards again, fingers surprisingly steady. But his movements were slow, and his disbelief was still etched into sharp, painful lines across his face.

"Martin."