Nikolai scoffed, though he was grateful for that. In the midst of all his worry, he hadn't had the time to sit down and think anything through. He admitted his plan was half-baked and seemingly suicidal. It wasn't as though he wanted to do it, but perhaps it didn't come across to Lana or Martha that way. A misunderstanding was all it was...

Brymlight was only a tiny region in the whole of Silraphia. Nikolai wondered what it would be like to be someone else in another part of the world at present time. Surely they had their own worries, but were they as bad as the situation he was facing? Dead ends in different circumstances, perhaps? They may live under the same heavens, but they knew nothing of the suffering that went on in Brymlight.

As the young man walked, he looked up at the sky. The clouds had come in, shielding his eyes from the unforgiving sun. It was just another beautiful day in Brymlight. The trees were of different shade of green, their leaves dancing in the light winds that blew by. The clouds were like white brushstrokes painted over a wide blue canvas -- a masterpiece of a painting should anyone be able to capture it. Who would have thought that such a sight hid the darkness that clutched so tightly onto a little village outsiders hardly cared about?

In dire need to offload his thoughts, Nikolai found himself squatting in front of Kane Freydon's grave once more.

"Mother just told me a whole bunch of things to think about..." he said. It still felt strange that he was talking to no one physically. But it helped that nobody was talking back. "They're probably right but... Is it so terrible that I want to save them?"

Nikolai sighed and shook his head, looking around at all the tombstones. While he came to voice aloud his frustrations, it was unnerving to know that there was still no solution to the nightmare that loomed over him.

The quiet of the cemetery allowed him to think. Lana wanted to talk to Oswald, to negotiate the terms of the cure for the villagers. It sounded sensible, but then again, this was Oswald they were talking about. He felt that the plan would be a waste of time, and that he would yield better results if he worked directly for him instead.

"Wish you were here..." Nikolai whispered. He touched the hardened lump of soil. "You would have known what to do."

The young man left the cemetery, feeling slightly better than before. It was now time to reconcile with Lana. So, Nikolai walked over to her place, wondering what in the world he would say.

Nothing went right ever since the plague came, and he regretted the many things he never told her. He had his chances but he took them for granted. And now that they were stuck in an endless looping hell, he might not get the chance to let her know how much she meant to him. He wanted to... but he couldn't. He knew Lana was waiting for him to do so, to seal the deal between them but again... he simply couldn't. It felt like a trap. He felt that the moment he talked about it, the worst things he imagined could suddenly decide to happen.

As fate would have it, Lana wasn't home. Her door was open so he took a peel inside. Her bow and makeshift arrows that were usually by the bedside table were absent. It was an odd time for her to be out hunting, so he wondered where she could have gone.