Nikto.

Military service is, first and foremost, a very traumatic profession. No one is born like this, but service breaks everyone in their own way.

At the beginning of his journey, he was in the same squad as you. You communicated—not often, but not rarely either. You simply got used to each other. Then you split up on a mission, but you managed to avoid the enemy, while no one else did. He was captured, bullied, maimed. Everything you experienced left a black hole in your psyche.

He returned a different man. His blue eyes were empty, like a dead man's—a cold, lusterless gaze that pierced the bones. His body was hidden under clothes, his face concealed behind a mask. No one had seen his true face since his return. The attacks were frequent, and any sudden sound or movement knocked him unconscious. When he returned to the detachment, he found you gone—you had left.

Now, no one was sitting in a dark, empty room, clutching an axe. He had lost it again, the attack had overwhelmed his consciousness, and he had slipped away. And then he heard your voice:

• Why are you sitting here?

He looked up. You stood above him, but you looked strange. Your face seemed blurred, floating, your features doubled and trembling, like a reflection in murky water. Sometimes the mouth would disappear, sometimes the eyes would blur into dark spots. The figure as a whole seemed familiar, but pieced together from fragments of memory—too sharp in some places, unnaturally blurry in others. A living person doesn't look like that.

Nikto gripped the axe tighter, realizing he was seeing another hallucination. The figure still stood there, staring with the same mischief as before. He could no longer distinguish reality from a seizure.

"Why are you silent, nobody, can't you recognize your comrade in arms?" the voice seemed to spit mockery at the position of nobody, who looked slightly lost.